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Kirk McGarvey #3
Crossfire
Russia is in turmoil. As liberals struggle to hold power, the hard-liners in the KGB decide to fund themselves. They will hijack a vital US gold shipment. The first step will be to frame Kirk McGarvey for the bombing of the CIA's Paris headquarters...
389 pages, Paperback
First published May 25, 1991
23 people are currently reading
210 people want to read
About the author
David Hagberg
80 books137 followersaka David Bannerman, Sean Flannery, David James, Robert Pell, Eric Ramsey
David Hagberg is a former Air Force cryptographer who has traveled extensively in Europe, the Arctic, and the Caribbean and has spoken at CIA functions. He has published more than twenty novels of suspense, including the bestselling High Flight, Assassin, and Joshua's Hammer.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/davidh...
David Hagberg is a former Air Force cryptographer who has traveled extensively in Europe, the Arctic, and the Caribbean and has spoken at CIA functions. He has published more than twenty novels of suspense, including the bestselling High Flight, Assassin, and Joshua's Hammer.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/davidh...
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 24, 2022
Crossfire by David Hagberg is another easily read thriller. This time we have to gold hunts based on two different backgrounds and Kirk is right in the middle of it all. We also have the fight between him and his archenemy from Russia. Fastpaced action all the way through.
September 28, 2019
A KGB general decides to acquire some much needed funds for his organization by stealing a US shipment of gold to Iran with the help of one Arkady Kurshin, who happens to be considerably less dead than previously believed. As a distraction, Kurshin bombs the CIA's Paris station and frames McGarvey, planning to follow this attack up with several more of the kind across Europe. And while this would have made for a very interesting plot to spin the whole book around, instead more than half of it involves McGarvey running off with the supremely irritating love interest of the week to play treasure hunt and find a Nazi sub that disappeared off the coast of Argentina back in 1945.
The actually interesting part of the plot is relegated to the background and takes up maybe a third of the book, if even that much. Did we really need that hunting Nazi gold subplot? I'm so very tired of this entirely overused plot cliché - if I never encounter it in a book, movie or TV show again, it'll be too soon. Also, I very much hope that as we get closer to books written in this century, Hagberg at some point learns to write interesting, complex, nuanced female characters who exist for reasons other than sleeping with McGarvey and committing acts of utter stupidity. Thus far, he is very much stuck on the list of authors who make me wonder if they've ever even met an actual woman.
The actually interesting part of the plot is relegated to the background and takes up maybe a third of the book, if even that much. Did we really need that hunting Nazi gold subplot? I'm so very tired of this entirely overused plot cliché - if I never encounter it in a book, movie or TV show again, it'll be too soon. Also, I very much hope that as we get closer to books written in this century, Hagberg at some point learns to write interesting, complex, nuanced female characters who exist for reasons other than sleeping with McGarvey and committing acts of utter stupidity. Thus far, he is very much stuck on the list of authors who make me wonder if they've ever even met an actual woman.
February 27, 2021
This is a entertaining novel once you get past the unnecessary misdirection that the author created at the beginning. Good pacing and intrigue.
December 31, 2023
I enjoyed this Crossfire. It was a fast paced Thriller. I had trouble putting it down, especially at the end.
January 2, 2015
CROSSED OUT
[3.5 stars rounded down to three]
David Hagberg's Kirk McGarvey series. At times dated, the series is the melodramatic, slightly nuttier cousin of Tom Clancy. Book 3 in the series continues to showcase the best and worst popular tropes of spy thriller fiction, some of them still prevalent today while others have thankfully be hounded into the shadows never to return. Now to the review. What happens when an assassin just wants to get even?
We kick the book off with perhaps the best part of the book. A man claiming to be the main character infiltrates the American Embassy in Paris. He makes sure to be noticed by security and personnel. We find out that it is in fact our old pal Arkady Kurshin from the KGB who survived a knife through the chest in Countdown. Getting to a key area of the embassy, he begins planting bombs around certain support struts and along with way, finds time to murder the CIA's Paris Station Chief. We then cut to the main character who finds one of his legion of lovers is waiting for him at his apartment. This love interest is in fact a case officer sent to monitor him and hasn't fooled him in the slightest. As he dumps her, she reveals that a man impersonating him visited the Paris Embassy. Heading there, just as Kurshin manages to exfiltrate, he's just in time for the fireworks. From there, a series of strange events lead to him being framed for the bombing and getting pulled into a plot by the KGB to sabotage a potential Iranian American diplomatic overture involving gold bullion.
PLOT:
More complex than Countdown. Some of it is actually pretty decent but there is one part which is highly irritating and is ultimately fruitless. It involves a Nazi gold treasure-hunt and detracts heavily from the much more engaging Europe-Iran plot and belongs more in the 1960's and 70's rather than a spy thriller of the 1990's. Hagberg's writing style is still pretty serviceable in this one but don't expect any vivid settings which an author like Ben Coes can give to you. The dialogue is also even more corny than in the previous book. To paraphrase Harrison Ford's verdict on the writing skills of George Lucas, "you can write this S*** but you sure as hell can't read it."
CHARACTERS:
Much worse than Countdown. The beginnings of the contempt and loathing the top brass of the CIA had for the main character in the previous book has grown into a full-blown grudge. The fact that they believe McGarvey's CIA officer lover has been compromised by her feelings and is trying to cover for him does not help matters. It's stupid, ludicrous, misogynistic to the extreme and thankfully would never happen in this day and age.
Next, there is Kirk himself. Still a passive aggressive sexist womanizer but for once, the passive aggressiveness works in his favor. While everyone loses their heads, this time around he approaches the stuff that happens in the book more dispassionately than in the last book. However it does not make him likable and the character still embodies the worst cliché's of spy fiction which have come into disuses as of 2015.
Next, there is the annual token love interest. Hagberg in his early days really portrayed his female characters in such a cringe-worthy manner. Her name is Maria and she's an Argentinian-German who is in fact an asset of Mossad. Her characterization jumps all over the place. At times she's your classic "hysterical woman/conquest", at others, she's irrational and borderlines psychotic and causes more problems than she solves. Her back-story would have been sympathetic but instead comes off as lurid and has less impact than the author would have wanted. I breathed a sigh of relief when she departs from the book.
Finally, we have Arkady Kurshin. The vacation in Syria did him some good. He's even more awesome than the last time we saw him with a pretty impressive scheme to ruin the main character's life, a scheme which annoyingly got cut short (After Paris, he planned to do repeat performances in America's southern European embassies, something that would have made a better plot-line than that damn Nazi-gold). It's also quite fun to see the deterioration of his sanity and towards the end of the book, he's a laughing nut-case. One who still makes the most of his training in his final dance with McGarvey.
Overall, Cross Fire can be seen as a cautionary tale of the danger of missed opportunities in spy thriller writing. If the book had revolved more around a conspiracy to destroy the Iranian-American rapprochement, this story would have been considered ahead of its time. Instead, it's just espionage pulp fiction, nothing more, nothing less embodying all the best and worst tropes of contemporary spy fiction.
[3.5 stars rounded down to three]
David Hagberg's Kirk McGarvey series. At times dated, the series is the melodramatic, slightly nuttier cousin of Tom Clancy. Book 3 in the series continues to showcase the best and worst popular tropes of spy thriller fiction, some of them still prevalent today while others have thankfully be hounded into the shadows never to return. Now to the review. What happens when an assassin just wants to get even?
We kick the book off with perhaps the best part of the book. A man claiming to be the main character infiltrates the American Embassy in Paris. He makes sure to be noticed by security and personnel. We find out that it is in fact our old pal Arkady Kurshin from the KGB who survived a knife through the chest in Countdown. Getting to a key area of the embassy, he begins planting bombs around certain support struts and along with way, finds time to murder the CIA's Paris Station Chief. We then cut to the main character who finds one of his legion of lovers is waiting for him at his apartment. This love interest is in fact a case officer sent to monitor him and hasn't fooled him in the slightest. As he dumps her, she reveals that a man impersonating him visited the Paris Embassy. Heading there, just as Kurshin manages to exfiltrate, he's just in time for the fireworks. From there, a series of strange events lead to him being framed for the bombing and getting pulled into a plot by the KGB to sabotage a potential Iranian American diplomatic overture involving gold bullion.
PLOT:
More complex than Countdown. Some of it is actually pretty decent but there is one part which is highly irritating and is ultimately fruitless. It involves a Nazi gold treasure-hunt and detracts heavily from the much more engaging Europe-Iran plot and belongs more in the 1960's and 70's rather than a spy thriller of the 1990's. Hagberg's writing style is still pretty serviceable in this one but don't expect any vivid settings which an author like Ben Coes can give to you. The dialogue is also even more corny than in the previous book. To paraphrase Harrison Ford's verdict on the writing skills of George Lucas, "you can write this S*** but you sure as hell can't read it."
CHARACTERS:
Much worse than Countdown. The beginnings of the contempt and loathing the top brass of the CIA had for the main character in the previous book has grown into a full-blown grudge. The fact that they believe McGarvey's CIA officer lover has been compromised by her feelings and is trying to cover for him does not help matters. It's stupid, ludicrous, misogynistic to the extreme and thankfully would never happen in this day and age.
Next, there is Kirk himself. Still a passive aggressive sexist womanizer but for once, the passive aggressiveness works in his favor. While everyone loses their heads, this time around he approaches the stuff that happens in the book more dispassionately than in the last book. However it does not make him likable and the character still embodies the worst cliché's of spy fiction which have come into disuses as of 2015.
Next, there is the annual token love interest. Hagberg in his early days really portrayed his female characters in such a cringe-worthy manner. Her name is Maria and she's an Argentinian-German who is in fact an asset of Mossad. Her characterization jumps all over the place. At times she's your classic "hysterical woman/conquest", at others, she's irrational and borderlines psychotic and causes more problems than she solves. Her back-story would have been sympathetic but instead comes off as lurid and has less impact than the author would have wanted. I breathed a sigh of relief when she departs from the book.
Finally, we have Arkady Kurshin. The vacation in Syria did him some good. He's even more awesome than the last time we saw him with a pretty impressive scheme to ruin the main character's life, a scheme which annoyingly got cut short (After Paris, he planned to do repeat performances in America's southern European embassies, something that would have made a better plot-line than that damn Nazi-gold). It's also quite fun to see the deterioration of his sanity and towards the end of the book, he's a laughing nut-case. One who still makes the most of his training in his final dance with McGarvey.
Overall, Cross Fire can be seen as a cautionary tale of the danger of missed opportunities in spy thriller writing. If the book had revolved more around a conspiracy to destroy the Iranian-American rapprochement, this story would have been considered ahead of its time. Instead, it's just espionage pulp fiction, nothing more, nothing less embodying all the best and worst tropes of contemporary spy fiction.
November 30, 2015
Cross Fire is the first David Hagberg novel I have read. I look forward to reading the next 15 or so.
Similar to Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp, David Hagberg's Kirk McGarvey is a CIA assassin.
The story is intriguing, with well-developed characters that are either likeable or despicable. It involves McGarvey vs. Kurshin, a former Russian spy...each hoping for a chance to rid the world of the other.
There is also a search for large amounts of gold that had been taken from Jewish prisoners by the Nazis during WWII...its whereabouts and those searching for it.
With Americans, Russians, Iranians, Frenchmen, and Israelis all playing parts, this is an exciting, suspenseful thriller.
There are a total of 17 Kirk McGarvey novels so far.
Similar to Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp, David Hagberg's Kirk McGarvey is a CIA assassin.
The story is intriguing, with well-developed characters that are either likeable or despicable. It involves McGarvey vs. Kurshin, a former Russian spy...each hoping for a chance to rid the world of the other.
There is also a search for large amounts of gold that had been taken from Jewish prisoners by the Nazis during WWII...its whereabouts and those searching for it.
With Americans, Russians, Iranians, Frenchmen, and Israelis all playing parts, this is an exciting, suspenseful thriller.
There are a total of 17 Kirk McGarvey novels so far.
April 1, 2011
Kirk McGarvey must stop the remade KGB from stealing gold to refinance their initiatives...a fun read as McGarvey travels around the world blocking their efforts...good ol' "Cold War" spy melodrama reading!!!
May 10, 2010
Slow start, but great book. Had the really good bad guy in it again (A. Kurshin)
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews