Taking Liberty

by Lawrence Dunning

In this sprawling novel of suspense and terror, a ruthless professional killer, a disillusioned career spy, and a beautiful Sorbonne professor cross paths with Moscow intelligence. They are all in a race to find the fabled Romanov jewels, smuggled out of Russia a century ago and secreted inside the Statue of Liberty before it was shipped from France to New York. The scene shifts compellingly from the present-day United Nations building to the Czarist Russia of Alexander II, the elegant boulevards of Paris and the sun-drenched Cote d’Azur, and ends in a spectacle of violence at America’s shining symbol of freedom standing in New York Harbor.

The international hunt is interwoven with the efforts of Paris-based CIA agent Martin Toberts, his new-found love Solange Cordier who holds a secret more than a hundred years old, and his bloody-minded nemesis Pell Bruckner, a rogue agent intent on only one thing–satisfying his lust for personal wealth–at the expense of anyone or anything that stands in his way.

It is, finally, a story of staggering wealth secreted in a place no one can believe, causing individuals and nations to kill for it and, in some cases, die for it.

“Dramatic and immensely visual” – Publishers Weekly

482 pages, ebook

First published January 14, 2014

About the author

Lawrence Dunning has published many novels and short stories during a long career of writing fiction. The novels include Neutron Two Is Critical, Fallout!, Keller’s Bomb, and Taking Liberty, which interested a Hollywood film agency after being reviewed in Publishers Weekly. He also has a new book of his collected short stories titled Rondo and Fugue for Two Pianos. He has published some 30 short stories in literary journals. The stories have won three Colorado Authors’ League awards, and two of his stories were named in the annual Best American Short Stories list of the 100 best stories. He has worked for the Dutch government, a petroleum publication, and the U.S. Department of Defense. He lives in Colorado.