John R. Maxim

 

The Bannerman Solution

Paul Bannerman was once his nation's deadliest weapon - a top covert operative heading up the most lethal group of contract agents and network specialists in all of Europe. Now Bannerman is a liability - an unpredicatble loose cannon that could irreparably damage America's shaky intelligence structiure, if he chooses to. So the decision has come down from the top : Bannerman and his people must be eliminated. Suddenly death is running in Westport, Connecticut - one in a nationwide network of secret "halfway towns" where the country's most dangerous former agents have been "retired". At war with powerful elements within his own government - a war not of his making - bannerman has been lured here to this place of yard sales, minivans, commuter trains, and murder. The plan is for Bannerman and those he ran to die here, quietly. But Bannerman has other plans.

 

The Bannerman Effect

Hidden behind a maginot Line of safe houses and front operations in quiet Westport, Connecticut, are Paul Bannerman and his elite group of contract agents. They don't look any different from their neighbors. They run restaurants, a medical clinic, a travel agency - until something big brings them out of retirement. When Bannerman boards a plane fro Switzerland, all he and his girlfriend have in mind is a lot of loving and a little skiing. Instead Susan Lesko winds up in a cocaine-induced coma, and Bannerman can't figure out whether the hit was set up to hurt him, or Susan's father, Ray Lesko, a retired New York City cop. Between the two of them they have plenty of enemies, including the narcotraficantes and the CIA. But what Bannerman doesn't know is that his group has been chosen as a test case for a new State Department toy - a computer program called the Ripper Effect. Generated on the giant Cray-3 machines deep in the Department of Defense subbbasements, its purpose is to destroy criminal organizations though stategically chosen assassinations. The secretary of state wants to know if it works well in the field as it does on the screen. Yet in picking Bannerman and his band of deadly operatives, he may have made the biggest mistake of his life.

 

Bannerman's Law

 On the last day of her life, film student Lisa Benedict stumbles onto something that no one, not even the government, wants her to see. Sur La Mer, an insane asylum for movie people, is being used to train some of the world's most wanted fugitives in the use of identities. Lisa must be silenced. Her death is made to look like the work of a psychopath then loose in Los Angeles. He has already murdered and mutilated at least six young women. It seems a good plan until they learn that Lisa Benedict is the younger sister of one of Paul bannerman's deadliest operatives. And Carla Benedict has come looking for them. Back east in "Fortress Westport", Bannerman has been trying to retire. He and his entire group of contract agents only wish to blend into the community, live normal lives. No one believes him. When they fly to Los Angeles, solely to find Carla, Bannerman becomes both hunter and hunted. His enemies: the powerful, the corrupt. His unlikely allies: an actress who has not spoken since the coming of talking pictures, a deadly husband and wife hit team who had tried to save Lisa, and a maniacal killer who resents being blamed for a murder he did not commit.

 

Bannerman's Promise (formerly A Matter of Honor)

Paul Bannerman thought he had finally left the world of contract assassins and spies behind. With the fall of communism and the triumph of democracy, he was ready to forget his bloody past and start a new life as a private citizen. Then he gets an urgent call from Zurich that shatters his false sense of security. Carla Benedict is Bannerman's most ruthless agent - but she's also a woman in love. And she's just had to eliminate her new lover, a smooth, lethal spy. It doesn't take long for Bannerman to realize that Carla's call will have deadly and far-reaching implications. Meanwhile, in Russia, a retired American police detective and his Swiss bride have been invited on a honeymoon trip that is far less innocent than it seems. Soon they will all become unwitting pawns in an underground civil war involving hard-line Communists, devious reformers, drug smugglers, and a new and brutal Russian mafia. And Bannerman, along with the unlikeliest ally of all, will blast his way out of retirement...for A Matter of Honor.

 

Bannerman's Ghosts

Bannerman is back! The return of the New York Times bestselling Paul Bannerman series--the first new novel in a decade, and the first ever in hardcover. They're called Bannerman's People, and they could be the bartender, the gardener, or the librarian--but, in fact, they're former operatives who've "retired," en masse, to the sleepy, affluent community of Westport, CT. It's the peaceful life they crave--and they'll go to any lengths to protect it and one another. Now a Machiavellian entrepreneur sets his sights on one of their former associates--a "ghost" named Elizabeth Stride (from Haven), long rumored to be dead--Paul Bannerman and his neighbors must mobilize. Very quickly they discover that their mission is about much more than fealty and friendship, as they find themselves in the midst of a terrorist's deadly game.