I promise you--if you get past the first 10 pages (actually page 23) you'll read this thriller with unflagging interest to page 702. The broadness of its scope along with the breathlessness of the personal and political dramas puts it in a league with the best modern suspense epics, not the least of which is "The DaVinci Code." You're in for a ride that takes you from L.A. to Zurich, from the Argentine Pampas to the heart of Moscow. But, even as you race around the globe, you're held within the grasp of a man versus man contest of will and destiny.

One of these men is a cop. John Barron is the youngest and newest member of LAPD's feared 52 squad -- one with just about the best kill ratio in the service. Barron's been accepted into the cream of the detecting crop, and he quickly discovers he has little taste for their extreme methods. But, once in, there's no way out except by an early death.

The other part of the deadly pursuit is Raymond, a man who gives new scope to the term, "serial killer." After a few strange deaths in Chicago, his easy slumber aboard an Amtrak train en route to Los Angeles is interrupted by his ever-vigilant notice of new passengers at the Barstow station. He recognizes a team of law enforcement when he sees one and it arouses his paranoia. Could they know about Chicago so soon?

The good news is that it isn't him who is being targetted. The bad is that the object of the 52 squad's net is an arch criminal who takes Raymond as a hostage, and gets him involved and in jail. His claim of merely being a hostage is compromised by a tape that makes it appear that he's all too much of a willing accomplice.

As tense and murderous as things get, this introduction of the principal players leads into a story of geo-political dimensions that can't be predicted. Nor that, in the course of the hunt, Raymond and Barron will each appear to be mortally wounded and disappear from sight, thought dead. Both, when recovered, will reappear under different names and new identities.

The welfare of Barron's ravishingly beautiful sister is a greater concern to him than his own welfare. Rebecca is under institutionalized care while in a near catatonic state as a result of traumatic terror. When Barron finally quits the squad after Raymond kills Red McLatchly, its leader, and he's held responsible by the surviving members, he becomes a fugitive from the squad's own style of justice. Falling into their trap while trying to flee the country with Raymond and Rebecca, she is stunned into recovering her voice and, ultimately, her capacity for a most unlikely romance.

The mystery behind a string of murders grows considerably when the bodies that are appearing all over the globe turn out to be Russians, the first signs of a power play at the highest levels of that government by the crafty and unscrupulous Baroness. This dragon lady incarnate is the one who guided the training that gave Raymond his powerful and devastating skills in murder. Now, with him as her capable, sociopathic assassin, her long-awaited design is being played out like a chess game.

Allan Folsom's ability to hold you captive along such a broad landscape, with gripping action set pieces and through devastating emotional turns, surely establishes him as a major writer in the genre, perhaps stealing the crown from Ludlum. His third novel after coming onto the scene with nothing less than "The Day After Tomorrow," his control over his high paced and elaborately conceived material, and his never-let-up energy is an entirely unique voice that thriller lovers will embrace with appreciative applause even while losing sleep in order to get to his book's last page.