White

May 23, 2005
The hero of Black
(2004) returns to star in a thriller plot that's pretty familiar, but which becomes steadily more absorbing through understated treatment and well-done incidentals. Jeremy Waller, a dedicated family man and FBI special agent, is on his way back from Indonesia, where he was rooting out terrorists with a lethal sidekick known as G.I. Jane, when a fleet of terrorist planes attacks not only Washington but a handful of other American cities. Could American fundamentalists be in league with Islamic terrorists? Such speculation is only the tip of the cabalistic iceberg as Waller infiltrates a shadow arm of the Christian Identity movement called the Phineas Priesthood. Black
's Senator Elizabeth Beechum is back, a political veteran with questionable ties to big business, as vice president; she and naïve, skittish new President David Ray Venable clash repeatedly. Whitcomb, a 15-year veteran of the FBI, is dead-on with the tech talk and introduces a slew of tight plot lines and characters (time line location headings help) before bringing everything together complexly and believably. Agent, Suzanne Gluck
. 6-city author tour
.

June 1, 2005
Maybe we've become easier to scare since 9/11, but Whitcomb leaves nothing to chance in this fully loaded follow-up to " Black" (2004). A blizzard is crippling the nation's capital while an untried new president is arranging his tchotchkes in the Oval Office, and an unlikely fellowship of Islamic and Christian fundamentalists unleashes a well-coordinated series of attacks all across the American heartland. Stir in stolen radioactive material, a high-level sleeper spy, a mysterious invasion into top-secret data-encryption technology, detailed weapons specifications, an alphabet soup of government TLAs (three letter agencies), twisting plots and spiraling conspiracies, a wild-card agent called G.I. Jane, and a one-eyed albino, all linked with fast-paced, cinematic crosscutting, and you've got more than enough thriller to keep fans of David Hagberg, Brian Haig, Vince Flynn, or Andy McNab happy. FBI agent Jeremy Waller returns, as does tough-as-nails Elizabeth Beechum, now vice president, and the enigmatic billionaire Jordan Mitchell, who still seems like something out of James Bond. Over the top? Only if you stop to think about it, and who wants to do that? Pass the sunscreen.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)