[John Gardner's Bond 12] • Death Is Forever

The end of the Cold War spawns a fierce new villain, in John Gardner's eleventh addition to the classic, best-selling James Bond series. Now that the two Germanys have united, a joint British-American intelligence network in the old Eastern Bloc has disintegrated, to the dismay of SIS and the CIA. But their efforts to make renewed contact with the network, codenamed CABAL, fail when the two original case officers are killed under very suspicious circumstances before contacting their undercover agents. Enter James Bond and his American counterpart, Easy St. John. Following leads left by the dead case officers, Bond and the aggressive Easy track down one of the agents, who dies on his way to a rendezvous with 007. Certain now that the entire network is marked for death, Bond and Easy race across Europe, hoping to save the others from the unknown killer, only to find that they too have become the targets of CABAL's old enemy: Wolfgang Weisen, the shadowy onetime director of East Germany's Security Service. On the run since the destruction of the Berlin Wall, Weisen still maintains a following of loyal, highly trained security officers with access to a wide range of sophisticated weaponry. By setting a trap for Bond, Weisen plans to "neutralize" the secret agent before undertaking his true mission; the destabilization of Western Europe through a single, savage act. Packed with harrowing chases, magnificent settings, and a dynamite finale, Death Is Forever is a rousing read by a master storyteller.