An agent provocateur for the CIA is caught up in the fight of a band of rebels determined to overthrow the dictator of their Central American country.
The central figure of DUST BE MY DESTINY is Michael Reles, agent provocateur for the CIA. The novel moves with relentless passion as Reles and his sidekick, Pancho Gonzales, are caught up in the swift action of a band of rebels determined to overthrow the tyrant who rules his country with an iron hand. While the country and characters are stricly imaginary, the vivid writing makes the scenery and the people compulsively alive.
Among the main characters are: Michael, a divorced man whose ideals force him into continues danger as he battles to free an oppressed people; Pancho, a hot-tempered peasant who is oblivious to danger, except of the dark; Lillian Trebasco, a beautiful woman of the upper-class, ultimately willing to sacrifice her love for the cause; her brother Tony, a successful businessman who aids and abets the revolution; and the mysterious Colonel Calderone, cool, resourceful master-mind of the coup.
This swift-moving novel reaches a climax when Michael and a group of commandos free Lillian from prison, kill the guards responsible for her rape, and in a taut scene bring the cruel dictator's life to an end. A page-turner, this novel, with its realistic touches, is bound to please the most discerning reader as well as those who simply want a good read.
Excerpt
It was early afternoon. The sandstone buildings around the square glimmered white in the bright sunlight. The shadows of the donkeys tethered below were as black as pitch. The donkeys moved nervously to the sound of the gunfire. Their hooves raised small clouds of dust that floated across the packed clay of the square to the waterless fountain. There, caught by a breeze, the dust went whirling down the rutted road between the adobe huts.
Tomazo and Michael lay on the roof of the pulqueria in the nascent shadow of the parapet, their rifles pointed at the police lying in the field beyond the tumbled remains of the stone wall. The police were partially protected by a fallen log, and the mottled shadows cast by the trees camouflaged their movements.
Tomazo, the tar sticking to his clothes, shifted his weight to look at Michael. After a morning on the hot roof in the sun, he was tired and hungry and his patience was at an end.
"Where the hell are the troops the General promised?" he grumbld hoarsely. "They were supposed to be here by noon. How long does he think we can hold out against these bastards!"
Michael's face was black with grime. His eyes showed the strain of many hours without sleep. He turned and looked at his companion. What a scruffy bastard he was! Michael had been in many tight spots before in the couse of his long career, but not with anyone so unreliable as this peasant.
He wondered where the hell Pancho was. It was just an accident of fate he and Tomazo had wound up on the same roof
It takes you to a dark place in the company of two of New York's finest detectives as they go the extra mile to bring a sadistic serial killer to justice.
Admiral Robert Sheppard and his starship, the Phoenix, are back for their latest interplanetary adventure. Mysteries, new alien civilizations, and danger await the intrepid Star Knight and his loyal allies.
