There are books that you know by reading the dust cover are going to be good. Others make you think that their content will be wonderful, but fall way short. Somewhere in the middle are books like the one I just read. The book is called The Marching Season and was written by Daniel Silva. It was copyrighted in 1999 and published by Random House.
Michael Osbourne used to be in the CIA. In an earlier book, The Mark Of The Assassin, Michael went toe-to-toe with an international killer. Michael ended up killing this assassin and resigned from the CIA soon after. Now he is being slowly drawn back into the intelligence community.
It seems that Michael's father in-law is a former US Senator, Douglas Cannon. The President wants Cannon to be the next US Ambassador to England. The problem with that is there is a new wave of unrest in Ireland. There have been new acts of terror around the world and Cannon might become a target if he accepts this post.
Michael gets involved with trying to find out what this whole terrorism campaign is all about. Are the terrorist acts related? A bold killing in broad daylight has Michael doubting the death of the assassin he killed.
This all has to do with the Society. This is a group of folks who represent Big Business and try to keep the world in a state of turmoil. This allows some of them to keep their political positions and others to make money from the sorry state of the world. The Society has its fingers everywhere, from corporate CEO's to heads of governmental agencies.
The more he gets involve, the more Michael's family wants him to quit. His wife didn't want Michael to go back to the CIA. And now that he's back in the swing of things, Michael could be a target for assassination again.
In a showdown, Michael gets his man and stops the reign of terror.
Although The Marching Season was well written, it's been done before. I felt like the author should have been Robert Ludlum. The "secret society trying to take over the world" theme has been done over and over again. I quit reading Ludlum for that very reason.
Despite being a cookie cutter book, I sort of liked The Marching Season. It was well written and brought forth a few interesting characters.