Peter T. Deutermann - The Moonpool

Praise for P. T. Deutermanns

SPIDER MOUNTAIN

Fast-paced imaginative plotting.

Publishers Weekly

Another pulse-pounding thrill rideAn unnerving, tightly woven thriller.

Cincinnati Library

The stuff of series heroesa battle royal.

Kirkus Reviews

Non-stop action.

Mysterylovers.com

One of the crime genres more original and memorable creationsa welcome change from the usual sort of thriller villain.

Booklist

Praise for

THE CAT DANCERS

Grippingoriginal and intense.

BookPage

Full of surpriseskeeps you reading past your bedtime.

Charlotte Observer

A spellbinding novel of suspensequite possibly his best.

Nelson DeMille

THE FIREFLY

Complexfascinating.

Washington Post

A first-class page-turner.

Atlanta Journal Constitution

A deft thrillerimpeccably authentic!

Library Journal
MORE

A top-notch thriller from a top-notch writer.

Nelson DeMille

Addictively enthralling(wait till you get to the jaw-dropping ending!).

Entertainment Weekly

HUNTING SEASON

Explosive tour de force.The author exceeds his near-perfect Train Man with this ripped-from-the-headlines plot pitting a middle-aged Rambo with a small but deadly arsenal of spy gadgets against spine-chilling villains, corrupt agency brass, and powerful political forces. Deutermann never sounds a wrong note in this nonstop page-turner.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

You think you have read this before. Trust me. You havent. And you shoulda great read.

Tribune (Greensburg, PA)

One of the lasting conventions in thriller writing involves putting the hero in a situation where the reader is forced to ask, How can he possibly get out of that?Deutermannexploits that convention to the hilt in Hunting Season.

Houston Chronicle

Enough techno and black ops to satisfy Clancy fans, enough double-dealing, back-pedaling internecine treachery to keep Carre fans reading, and enough plot turns and suspense to keep Crichton and Higgins Clark devotees guessing.

Florida Times-Union

Deutermanns previous novel, Train Man, was a marvelous, bang-up action novelin Hunting Season he equals the thrillsDeutermann writes with authority and inventiveness. Add in top-secret gizmos, heroes meaner than villainsand youve got one of the best by one of the best at what he does.

Telegraph (Macon, GA)

The tale is loaded with political and bureaucratic skullduggery, and there are plenty of well-banked curves and clever twists. A solid read from an author whose own tradecraft is every bit as good as that of his characters.

Booklist

Deutermann has sold three novels to Hollywood already. Theyre blind if they pass on this one.

Kirkus Reviews

DARKSIDE

Grippingthoroughly absorbing.

Publishers Weekly

Deutermannwrites page-turners. And this one has a surprise endingone that comes as a bombshell.

Houston Chronicle

A dead-on sense of place and appealing characters in tight cornerssatisfying.

Kirkus Reviews

Deutermann has now published seven pounding-pulsers. For this book, he was back at Dahlgren and Mahan, updating his reef points.

Baltimore Sun

TRAIN MAN

Deutermann delivers his most accomplished thriller yet. Intelligent, expertly detailed, and highly suspenseful.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Another solid performance from Deutermann, this time about a train-hating, vengeance-hungry madman and the FBI agents seeking to derail him. Quality entertainment: the details convince, the people are real, the plot twists legitimate.

Kirkus Reviews

I hesitated before asking the next question, but there was no way around it. If the NRC is going to investigate this from the outside, and the companys going to be turning over rocks from the inside, and the Bureau is going to be watching both, tell me again what you want me to do?

He glanced around the steel deck once more. Dr. Martin and her techs had disappeared, and we were alone with the moonpool and its unearthly glow. It looked like some Northern Lights had drowned down there.

Do you know what a Red Team is? he asked.

I did not.

Its a government expression, normally used in war gaming. When the government conducts a war game, it postulates a hypothetical crisis scenario, and then pits a group of actual government officials against the crisis. These are real officials, but theyre role-playing. Someone from the White House staff will play the president. Another person, say from the Defense Department, will play the role of secretary of defense.

Yeah, Ive read about those.

Right. The game directors gather them into a room and throw a tabletop crisis situation at them. They work the problem until they either solve it or it beats them. The good guys are called the Blue Team.

I believe.

Good. The Red Team sits in another room and reacts to what the Blue Team does, typically by throwing complications into the game. The idea is to make the war game truly dynamic, and to test how well the Blue Team can handle an evolving crisis situation when all their nicely preplanned contingency plans go off the tracks. Plus, the Red Team is privy to the Blue Teams assumptions and contingency plans before the game starts. They hit those assumptions, and the Blue Team now has to deal with a changing crisis situation.

So the Red Team people are the bad guys.

Exactly. The Blue Team assumes their simulated Katrina relief convoys can get to New Orleans on the interstates. The Red Team knocks out all the bridges.

So you want me to act like a bad guy? See if I can get through the perimeter, break in here and swipe some radioactive water or some spent fuel rods, then go package it and, what? Sell it?

Not exactly, he said patiently. Unless you have a death wish. But heres the problem: The NRCs going to come in here this time and try to prove that radioactive water got loose from Helios, either from the moonpool or somewhere else in the reactor system.

Reasonable reaction, I said.

PrimEnergy has to defend itself, and the company is going to take the position that it not only didnt happen but couldnt happen. Now: Unless some unhappy camper stands up and confesses to a crime that would jail him for about ten successive life sentences, its going to end in a Mexican standoff.

Which would suit the company, right?

Frankly, I think that would suit the government, as well. They dont even want to hear that theres been a clandestine radiological release from an operating plant, because that would probably lead to an industry-wide shutdown of this type of nuclear power plant.

Why all of them?

Because the security system here is common to all of them. It would be a very big deal. Nobody at the NRC or in the industry wants to do that.

Youre telling me the NRC would cover it up?

No, no, not if they find something concrete, some glowing gun, so to speak. But if it turns into a stone-cold mystery, theyll study it. They might keep probing, but, basically, theyll keep all the BWR plants turning and burning.

And you want me to do what, specifically?

I want you to Red-Team it. Not actually do it, mind you, but see if you can figure out a way to get radioactive water out of this plant and into Wilmington. I want you to do this independently, without the official, approved assistance of anybody at this plant, including me.

But if the experts cant prove it, how can I?

You werent listeningthe experts on both sides of this equation dont