The Venetian judgment

Winter in Venice and a killing frost has cut deep into CIA cleaner Micah Daltons heart as he heads out into the night to erase the last members of the Serbian gang who shot his lover, a hand-to-hand vendetta Dalton does not intend to survive. And he might not have, if a mysterious jade box containing a stainless steel glasscutter had not arrived at his villa. The glasscutter has powerful meaning for only a select few people high up inside the American intelligence establishment. The box, and the dangerous message it contains, triggers a global search for a possible mole within the upper echelons of the CIA itself, a pursuit that takes Dalton from Venice to Santorini to Istanbul, where he collides with a shadowy group of spies determined to prevent the discovery of a plot that could paralyze Americas most critical intelligence operations around the world. Through airborne firefights above the Sea of Marmora, a harrowing sea chase up the Straits of the Bosphorus, and then halfway across the globe to a violent confrontation in the mangrove swamps of Floridas Emerald Coast, Dalton and his associatethe half-American, half-English aristocrat Mandy Pownallrisk their lives and possibly their sanity in a desperate hunt for the architects of a cunningly deceptive espionage offensive mounted by one of Americas most subtle and ancient enemies. Intelligent, sophisticated, and filled with pulsing suspense, The Venetian Judgment is a brilliant thriller from a master craftsman.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.