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SAUL BURG: A MAN OF MANY PARTS
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In 1954, deep in Israel’s Negev Desert, Palestinian fedayeen massacred the occupants of a bus trundling through the hills between Eilat and Beersheba. The sole survivor, eight-year-old Saul, suddenly orphaned, was placed with a German kibbutz in Galilee, growing up in a rich cultural envelope. As he matured and rationalised the moment his parents were killed, the contempt for terrorists he developed accompanied him into adulthood.
The military call up pivoted him from farming to fighting and a lifelong confrontation with terrorism began.
As an Israeli special forces soldier, he killed terrorists covertly; as an operative with Mossad, he eliminated still more.
As Saul transitioned from Mossad hitman to spy master, Germany’s ambassador in Tel Aviv took notice of his skills and arranged recruitment into Germany’s Intelligence Service. A decade later, 9/11 brought Saul Burg a further assignment — a post in Berlin to advance Germany’s contribution to the global war on terror.
Sixty years after the bus massacre, hardened by a lifetime spent battling terrorism’s darkness, yet pursuing enlightened thinking, and sometimes falling under the influence of strong women, Saul relocates from Berlin to Geneva to oversee UN humanitarian work.
Working with him in Geneva is Blake Caldwell, a tech-savvy young assistant. Blake builds databases to track the global humanitarian effort; his search tools uncover names . . .
This gripping novel with two interwoven time lines explores Saul’s enduring fight against terrorism and Blake’s quest to unravel his identity.
Reviews
What the readers are saying
While Adrian de Hoog may not be a household name yet, he’s probably well on his way with the release of his second tale of political intrigue, Borderless Deceit.
De Hoog, an Ottawa writer who turned to mystery after a 30-year career as a Canadian diplomat in countries as varied as Kenya and Germany, received critical acclaim for his first book, The Berlin Assignment, a story rooted in German reunification, which was released in 2006.
Mark G
March 2012
Adrian de Hoog, an author from the wide-open prairies and icy-cold of Canada, delivers a fresh, new perspective on the game of espionage in his two novels: The Berlin Assignment (2006) and Borderless Deceit (2007). These are not bang and boom spy thrillers, but are rather novels with spies in them. The Berlin Assignment plays out against the backdrop of post-wall Berlin and the problems of German reunification. Borderless Deceit is the tale of the Canadian role in the intelligence war against illicit weapons trafficking and money laundering that begins with the same kind of cyber attack that was launched on Georgia before the Russians invaded in August 2008. The world of fiction was ahead of the real world on this one. Borderless Deceit came out before the attack became a fact.
Mark Hooker
October 2008
Adrian de Hoog, an author from the wide-open prairies and icy-cold of Canada, delivers a fresh, new perspective on the game of espionage in his two novels: The Berlin Assignment (2006) and Borderless Deceit (2007). These are not bang and boom spy thrillers, but are rather novels with spies in them. The Berlin Assignment plays out against the backdrop of post-wall Berlin and the problems of German reunification. Borderless Deceit is the tale of the Canadian role in the intelligence war against illicit weapons trafficking and money laundering that begins with the same kind of cyber attack that was launched on Georgia before the Russians invaded in August 2008. The world of fiction was ahead of the real world on this one. Borderless Deceit came out before the attack became a fact.
Mark Hooker
October 2008
