Freedom to Kill

by Paul Lindsay

Overview

An Ebola-type virus unleashed at Disney World. Random car bombings on interstate highways. Children's medicine bottles laced with poison. All the work of a demented but brilliant terrorist determined to blackmail the White House and bring the U.S. government to its knees.

FBI agent Mike Devlin breaks rules—and cases. But the hard-edged Devlin has never faced a manhunt as enormous and challenging as this before. Racing against the clock, scrambling for leads, clashing with fellow G-men, Devlin must break the case before one lone madman holds hostage the security of an entire nation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679450160
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/24/1997
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.46(w) x 9.58(h) x 1.06(d)

About the Author

Paul Lindsay was born and raised in Chicago. In 1968, after graduating from MacMurray College, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps and served in Vietnam as an infantry officer. After the publication of his first novel, Witness to the Truth, he retired from the FBI. He is also the author of Code Name: Gentkill. He lives with his wife and two children in New Hampshire.

Table of Contents

Editorial Reviews

Freedom is at the heart of this fast-paced thriller about a killer who dreams of making the average American so afraid to do anything that the entire country will shut down. Dubbed a "cataclysmist" by an FBI profiler, this so-called Freedom Killer looses a virus in Disneyland, poisons heart medication in one city and children's aspirin in another. Assisting in the FBI's attempt to stop the Freedom Killer is Special Agent Mike Devlin, who gets assigned to the case after he captures a gang of Detroit-area bank robbers by taking the place of their driver and crashing the getaway car. But Devlin is nobody's assistanthe's a reckless loner who crosses the line of duty not by breaking the rules but by repeatedly (and needlessly) risking his own life. With the help of Tony Bonelli, a computer whiz who has multiple sclerosis, Devlin quickly takes the lead in the investigation and captures the Freedom Killer's attention. Ex-agent Lindsay (Witness to the Truth) knows his way around an FBI investigation, and he's made a believable maverick out of Devlin, somebody who automatically runs into a fire to see whom he can save. And the way Lindsay wrings the idea of freedomin particular by contrasting the killer's emotional handicaps with Bonelli's physical drawbacksadds a layer of depth to an already exciting and entertaining thriller. Author tour. (July)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Detroit's own FBI cowboy Mike Devlin, who never walks away from a loaded gun, is banished to D.C. to shuffle records and get his blood pressure down—only to find himself staring down a monomaniacal terrorist.

The assignment Devlin backs into is to identify the Freedom Killer, a man who starts the ball rolling by taking a doped-up Disease Control technician and two vials of African Lassa virus for an outing at Disney World. Pretty scary stuff—but the Freedom Killer is only warming up, as his grandiose, threatening letters make clear. This "cataclysmist" is so consumed with resentment against the US government that he's willing to do anything—adulterate drugs, plant bombs, assassinate public figures—in order to create the kind of mass hysteria that will shut the whole country down. Browbeating Tony Bonelli, an FBI records clerk with multiple sclerosis and a chip on his shoulder, into helping him, Devlin goes up against the Freedom Killer armed only with a psychological profile, the Bureau's formidable database, and the hope that he'll be able to narrow the list of suspects from a quarter of a billion to one. It's a familiar story—the lunatic loner ("Take a moment to look around and witness freedom's last dance") versus the machinery of the heroic bureaucracy—and this time, Lindsay, who turned Devlin's hair-trigger individuality to such stunning account in Witness to the Truth (1992) and Gentkill (1995), seems stifled by the side he's chosen; the only acting-out Devlin gets to do, apart from the repeated obligatory brandishing of loaded weapons, is dueling with an I'm-so-tough bartender for a description of the killer, and facing down his loyal wife Knox (an obvious Anne Archer role), who just doesn't think she can take his heroics any more.

Expert but synthetic, then, with a much better part for the brilliant, wigged-out Freedom Killer (who doesn't half live up to his billing) than for our hero.

Kirkus Reviews