Duel of Assassins

by Dan Pollock

Two highly trained killers... ex-comrades turned sworn enemies... the hunter and the hunted... on a collision course with each other and with above a mountainside in Austria, a Soviet citizen with an American-sounding name sails beneath a hang glider, taking one more daring risk in a life full of risks. What Marcus Jolly doesn’t know is that an old man in Siberia—facing his moment of death—has called on him for the most dangerous mission of his career.In Washington, a man named Taras Arensky—one of the most highly trained killers in the world—is called to the White House to take on an extraordinary protect the Soviet president from assassination.Once Taras Arensky and Marcus Jolly had been the best of friends. Now they are to meet again on the moonlit cliffs of Yalta, at the Soviet President’s summer retreat. It is the opening move of a duel that will be fought across Europe, enmeshing a beautiful woman and climaxing at an international summit in Potsdam. It will call on all the deadly skills and cunning the two men have acquired over a lifetime.Taking its place beside the best in action fiction, Duel of Assassins captures a world of shifting loyalties and boundaries, and two unforgettable modern-day warriors who live or die by their own code of honor.

326 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 11, 2014

About the author

Dan Pollock was born in New York City to a family of writers and grew up in Laguna Beach, California. A former syndicate editor with the Los Angeles Times, Pollock is the author of five thriller novels--Lair of the Fox, Duel of Assassins, Orinoco (originally published as Pursuit Into Darkness), Countdown to Casablanca and The Running Boy; along with a specially commissioned “logistics” thriller, Precipice.

With his wife, Constance, he has edited and published three literary, inspirational volumes: The Book of Uncommon Prayer; Gospel: The Life of Jesus as Told by the World's Great Writers; and Visions of the Afterlife: Heaven, Hell and Revelation as Viewed by the World's Great Writers.

The Pollocks live in Southern California with their two children.

Reviews

[Kevin Bowser · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book started a little slowly for me. I am not sure if it was the plot or my busy schedule during the holidays. However, it seemed to pick up the pace at about the mid-point during the long flashback sequence. And the pace seemed swift and steady through the remainder of the book.

[Chaplain Stanley Chapin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great action description

Really good inside descriptions of government politics, intensity, intrigue. How ever would be disrupted by pages of detailed sex that could have been conveyed in a couple of sentences