In this next in the authors' "Clandestine Operations" series, set at the dawning of the Cold War, Jim Cronley is shoved out as chief, DCI-Europe, in favor of a new assignment. He must keep the U.S. chief prosecutor at Nuremberg from being kidnapped by the Soviet NKVD while seeking out and destroying Odessa, an organization that helps Nazi war criminals escape to South America. Is this why he's nearly been killed twice?

Set in 1946, bestseller Griffin and son Butterworth's flat, meandering fourth Clandestine Operations novel (after 2016's Curtain of Death) finds Capt. James D. Cronley Jr., chief of the Directorate of Central Intelligence in Europe, tasked by President Truman with beefing up security for Justice Bob Jackson, the chief prosecutor of the war crime trials in Nuremberg. "Loose Cannon" Cronley delegates the justice's protection to one of his officers and concentrates on capturing Franz von Dietelburg, the SS brigadeführer who heads Odessa, the postwar organization that's smuggling Nazis into Argentina. Cronley also investigates a Nazi cult established by Heinrich Himmler, the location of stolen Nazi gold, and a lot more. Numerous characters enter and exit for no apparent purpose other than to deliver lengthy history lectures. A handful of action scenes do little to interrupt the chinfest. Hopefully, the authors will strike a better balance between talk and action next time. Agent: Robert Youdelman, Rember & Curtis. (Dec.)