Stone, David 1946- [A pseudonym]

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Stone, David 1946- [A pseudonym]

PERSONAL:

Born 1946.

CAREER:

Has worked as an investigator for a state-level law enforcement agency. Military service: Served in the military and as an intelligence officer.

WRITINGS:

The Echelon Vendetta (novel), Putnam (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

David Stone is the pseudonym of a former investigator and military intelligence officer whose debut novel, The Echelon Vendetta, is "fast-moving, smart, sexy and alarming," and "everything you want in a thriller," according to a Kirkus Reviews critic. Protagonist Micah Dalton is an efficient and professional CIA "cleaner," who is tasked with stepping in and cleaning up when missions go wrong and messes are made. Dalton's latest assignment is made even more difficult by the fact that the man who has died was longtime friend and CIA colleague Porter Naumann. Naumann has apparently killed himself in a particularly gruesome and brutal way, having torn out his own throat in a small town in Tuscany. Intelligence officials believe, however, that Naumann was driven to his bloody suicide by outside forces.

While Dalton investigates, he ingests a nearly deadly dose of the same psychotropic drug that was found in Naumann's system. Soon thereafter, Naumann's sardonic ghost begins to appear, sometimes to harangue, sometimes to help the bewildered Dalton. The investigation continues in London, where Naumann's family is discovered hacked to death. Clues point to an unusually tall Native American in cowboy boots who has been dispatching CIA agents who were involved in a project called Echelon. Washington Post reviewer Patrick Anderson remarked that the novel is "well-written, intelligent, and sometimes funny, but most of all it is violent." Stone "clearly knows his way around the higher levels of official treachery," observed a reviewer in Publishers Weekly. David Pitt, writing in Booklist, called the novel a "smoothly written spy thriller" and a "promising debut" for Stone.