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Satan’s Touch is Ludlum spiced with Le Carré. The story has fast-paced action, darkened by sinister logic. The novel is a tale of malice and greed.
It isn’t easy to get inside CIA. The agency is famous, yet governed by compulsive secrecy. In this challenging environment, the author worked on covert projects giving him access to the hidden lives of Eastern European agents and powerbrokers within the KGB. He shared an office with a man who operated listening posts along the Berlin Wall, conducting electronic and photographic surveillance. These experiences inspired his spy thriller, which begins shortly after the Berlin Wall is torn down in the early 1990s.
In that era, Hungary needs to cultivate tourism and trade, cementing ties with the West. The country wants its capital, Budapest, seen as the Paris of Eastern Europe. Budapest’s idyllic image is damaged when a psychotic arsonist-killer strikes time and again, appearing unstoppable. World press gives this anonymous killer a name descriptive of his murders. They call him Satan’s Touch, for his ability to incinerate buildings with hellish flames. His targets seem chosen at random. Yet there is a cold, brutal logic to the crimes.
Satan’s Touch is the story of a man trained by the KGB and still having its power behind him. Driven by twisted obsessions, he’s determined to find something he was forced to abandon years ago. What’s he looking for? Who really is he? It’ll be difficult to answer those questions. Satan’s Touch destroys all clues to his search with fires so hot they melt concrete into glass. (His arsons are based on a series of unsolved burns, done by professional arsonists who’ve eluded Interpol and our FBI.)
Satan’s Touch made certain no one of consequence stands in his way. His only opponent is a broken ex-CIA operative, Alec Ryder, now working for Interpol. Alec Ryder is unprepared to face the brutality of Satan’s Touch. The ex-CIA agent has no crime lab, no staff, no worthwhile clues to find an arsonist who seems intent on destroying the Paris of Eastern Europe. Following the arsonist’s trail, Alec discovers the closer he gets to the truth, the more Ryder himself becomes a hunted animal. Alec Ryder is pursued by a force of destruction coming straight from the corrupt fabric of a dying KGB.
The novel is told in alternating chapters from the viewpoints of the villain and his pursuer. You hunt with Satan’s Touch in the past and Alec Ryder in the present – until the men collide in a stunning twist.