The Assassination Option

December 1, 2014
In 2014's Top Secret, the first in bestseller Griffin and Butterworth's Clandestine Operations series, Capt. James Cronley was given a military intelligence assignment in Germany: overseeing the relocation of German officers to Argentina after WWII. In this engaging sequel, Cronley's duties have expanded, and he's running the European division of the Directorate of Central Intelligence, now known as the CIA. As usual, a number of characters, some familiar, some new, sit around and figure out how to accomplish a mission. The fun is in watching the authors and characters meticulously plan the operation, all the while indulging in clever badinage. In Top Secret, a Russian intelligence agent, Col. Sergei Likharev of the NKGB, was turned and taken to Argentina. The mission in this book is to get his family out of Russia and reunited with Likharev. It's a testament to the authors' skill and wide experience that the pages seem to turn themselves. Agent: Robert Youdelman, Rember & Curtis.

November 1, 2014
In their second Clandestine Operations spy thriller, Griffin and his son and co-author, Butterworth (Top Secret, 2014, etc.), delve into the down-and-dirty work necessary to turn the OSS into the CIA.Griffin's regular cast of thousands-Cronley, young captain from a rich Texas ranching family; Dunwiddie, African-American Norwich graduate commissioned into the officer corps just in time to join the CIA; Gehlen, current POW, former chief of Abwehr Ost, a so-called "good German" with the scoop on the rotten Red Menace; and Adm. Souers, Truman's friend named Director of Central Intelligence-is charged with building a viable spy organization to succeed Wild Bill Donovan's OSS while keeping the new gang out of the clutches of the Pentagon and FBI. Young Cronley is "chief, Directorate of Central Intelligence, Europe" in case higher-ups need a fall guy if something goes wrong in unstable occupied Germany. There are new players: Maksymilian Ostrowski, Free Polish Air Force veteran now displaced person; and (next adventure, perhaps?) Cronley's cousin Luther Stauffer with suspected links to Odessa, a program to "help SS officers get out of Germany." Griffin employs big shots like Bedell Smith, Ike's right-hand man; covers internecine jealousies over bureaucratic fiefdoms; and suggests Israel's Mossad benefited from Russian triple-agent Seven-K, who spied for Abwehr Ost for quid pro quo release of Zionists from concentration camps. Griffin slips enough historical factoids-Katyn Forest massacre, Hoover's botched attempt at Manhattan Project's secrecy-to assure history buffs he's still got the right stuff but-whoops!-again has the USAF in action one year prior to its founding. Characters communicate in repartee, bend rules like Bavarian pretzels, and aren't above dropping a bad guy in an unmarked grave, no paperwork required, so that a turned NKVD colonel's family can escape Leningrad. Another Griffin adventure to bring out the Walter Mitty in every red-white-and-blue-blooded American male.

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