On American soil, a terrorist bomb explodes at a Georgetown restaurant, killing CIA operative Kirk MGarvey's girlfriend and wounding his daughter. Now Mcgarvey seeks vengeance while at the same time struggling with the growing crisis in the Far East where a mysterious underground nuclear explosion has destroyed a power station off the coast of North Korea.

From the corridors of power in Washington to the Japanese space launch center at Tanegashima, White House tells a gripping story of suspense about one man's race to sabotage a cunning terrorist operation before it eliminates the White House-- and everyone he loves.

A nuclear showdown in the Far East becomes the backdrop for Hagberg's latest installment in the Kirk McGarvey series, which begins when the CIA operative is nearly wiped out by a terrorist bomb while dining in a Georgetown restaurant. The bomb does kill McGarvey's erstwhile girlfriend and severely injures his daughter. He soon discovers that the purpose of the attack was to keep him from accepting a promotion to become the head of CIA operations. As McGarvey assumes his new duties, an underground nuclear explosion off the coast of the Korean peninsula becomes the focal point of a confrontation between China, Japan and North Korea, and McGarvey quickly traces an intelligence leak to a wealthy Asian businessman who exerts a powerful influence over a variety of high-powered legislators and the U.S. president himself. As an American nuclear submarine battles to keep the potential combatants in the Far East apart, the focus of the intrigue shifts from the North Koreans to the president and finally to Japan when McGarvey discovers some suspicious behavior surrounding a major Japanese space launch that eventually results in the murder of a U.S. astronaut. Hagberg's premise of a potential nuclear meltdown is frighteningly plausible, and he deftly juggles several well-researched subplots involving the commander of the American submarine, the American astronauts assigned to the space mission and the hyperactively heroic McGarvey, who must defend his family from another attack before embarking on a one-man mission to stop the launch. While his climactic mission stretches credibility to the breaking point, Hagberg delivers a powerful payload of action, suspense and political intrigue in the meantime. (Aug.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This is Hagberg's eighth novel about superspy Kirk McGarvey. The fun begins with two seemingly unrelated incidents. The first is the destruction of a North Korean nuclear weapon site by Japanese commandos. The second is an attempt to murder McGarvey by bombing a Georgetown restaurant. Kirk's French girlfriend is killed and his daughter wounded in the explosion. With Washington worried about North Korea, Japan, and China--who's likely to do what to whom, when and how?--McGarvey puts aside his desire to resign from the CIA and instead takes on the job of deputy director of operations. Guided by a computer whiz who lives on Twinkies, he deals with a president preoccupied with campaign funds, an Asian money man who has slept in the Lincoln bedroom, and an assortment of villains on both sides of the globe. A nifty nonstop-action tale that deserves comparison with Clancy, Cussler, and the other lords of technological mayhem. Budd Arthur