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Millions of lives and entire world order at stake in nail-biting thriller

THE theme of the book Deep Black: Death Wave, by Stephen Coonts and William H Keith is based on good against evil.

The authors take the US "war without borders" to another level.

Deep within the national security agency is " desk three", a top-secret unit of special operatives deployed to the field when the threat is great and the response demands sensitivity and invisibility.

Set in Southern Asia and the beautiful Canary Islands, a high-tech US national security team, "Deep Black", attempts to prevent a global catastrophic nuclear, geological incident.

The introduction of the book reads: "A large white sign in Spanish proclaimed the era off-limits to tourist, a special reserve for the Scientific Institute of Geological Research.

"He called himself the Jackal. That nom de guerre wasn't original, of course.

"Another man a Venezuelan revolutionary had carried that name many years earlier, before he'd been betrayed and sent to prison."

The back cover reads as follows: "This spells disaster for Charlie Dean. He leads the National Security Agency's crack undercover team, Deep Blacks: Desk Three, whose job is to neutralise the threat

"The terrorist plot is headed by an Islamic terrorist code-named 'the jackal'.

He aims to destroy the West by detonating the shells deep inside the Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma, Gran Canaria. This would send a tsunami across the Atlantic Ocean, straight to the East Coast of America."

In this book, operatives are told that 10 suitcase-size nuclear warheads have been stolen by the Russian Mafia.

The team's mission is to find the weapons before they are smuggled out of Central Asia.

The book has all elements of a good-selling masterpiece.

It refers to the bad guys as the "Islamic extremists", collaborating with Russians and Chinese.

The authors are following a common theme in literature of good winning over evil.

Critics have labelled the book as part of a "propaganda" for the United States in its war "without borders".

The good guys are the Americans, as well as some expatriate Russians, with a lot of experience tagged under their belt in military special operations from the former Soviet Union.

As a norm, there would not be any good book on intelligence activities without women spies.

The late Markus Wolf, former foreign intelligence service of East Germany, is credited for using "Romeo agents" against the West to steal secrets from lonely secretaries of the then West German government.

One of the main characters of the book, Lia, is sent to Berlin to infiltrate the empire of a ruthless Chinese billionaire whose machination have come to the attention of national Security Agency.

The scene is set as they all converge in Canary Island.

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