The Facts of Death

Benson's 007 is a chip off the old block, said Kirkus Reviews of the classic secret agent depicted in Zero Minus Ten, Raymond Benson's first James Bond novel. Fast-paced, fun summer reading, wrote The Boston Sunday Herald. Bond is still as irresistible as ever. Now Benson takes Bond to the heart of a fanatical cult whose sinister mission is wrapped in the teachings of the great Greek mathematician Pythagoras. His cult is committed to following their brilliant and mad leader on a series of assignments, each one more diabolical and destructive than the last. When Alfred Hutchinson, Great Britain's Goodwill Ambassador to the World, is murdered by a stranger whose umbrella tip bears a tiny capsule of ricin poison and who leaves behind a scrawled #4, Bond is called upon to halt the escalating body count of the Number Killer. His hunt will take him from the wild backroads of Texas to the crumbling ruins of Greece, a trail that crisscrosses the potentially explosive tinderbox of Cyprus. At every step he must use both cunning and brute force to stay ahead of--or even with--the grand plan of the Monad, the shadowy mastermind behind the cult. Propelled by an extraordinary Jaguar XK8 coup designed for this mission, challenged by life-threatening underwater and aerial attacks, and seduced by a galaxy of beautiful and destructive women, James Bond is once again the archetype action hero--this time caught in a final countdown, where each heartbeat could be his last.