Grace's novel has a fascinating premise. The scope of the effort to develop a "Star Wars" missile-defense shield has necessarily involved a broad range of corporations. Grace's novel explores what might happen if one of those corporations chose to use the technology for its own commercial advantage. In the near future of Grace's novel, Skye Aviation, a corporation specializing in commercial satellite launches, has also been centrally involved in the development of laser weapons and has ingeniously concealed the launch of a stealth weapon into orbit.

After practicing on several "junk" satellites, the leadership at Skye begins to turn the weapon on competitors' satellites and then on the competitors themselves. Of course, the competition includes the national space programs of the United States, Russia, and the People's Republic of China. After a manned Chinese space capsule and an American space shuttle suffer catastrophic failures within a relatively short period of time, all of the resources of the governments are employed in the ensuing, overlapping investigations.

Grace is very good on the technical side of his story. As a preliminary to writing the novel, he must have very carefully mapped out both how such a plot might be executed and how it might be unraveled. In the opening sections of the novel, he reveals who is committing the crimes and why. But a great deal of suspense is generated from several complementary interests. How will the investigators come to recognize and then uncover the truth? How exactly has the company managed to conceal its activities? What will the company leadership do when it realizes that its scheme is gradually coming to light?

Although Grace works a lot of technical jargon into the narrative, he explains it concisely, and it generally enhances rather than disrupts the story. Furthermore, he also explores technical innovations in realms other than the aerospace field - in particular, the development of a super-sensitive holographic alternative to conventional sonar and the operation of state-of-the-art deep-diving equipment -and he imaginatively connects these elements to the main story line.

Bird of Prey has a winning protagonist, an ex-SEAL named Kilkenny who now functions as a freelance weapons consultant and an impromptu investigator for the United States government. He has two sidekicks, a ponytailed male techno-geek named Gin and a female former double-agent named Tao. Kilkenny's fiancée is an astronaut aboard the space station, and so his investigation has both a public and a personal urgency. The investigation takes him from the Pacific Northwest to London, to Moscow, to Chile, and finally to Skye Corporation's launching station in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. At each location, Kilkenny meets with some colorful characters whose rich stores of relevant experience are deftly integrated by Grace into the narrative. At each stage, Kilkenny is stalked by Skye Corporation's goons and shadowed by Chinese agents, and some of the scenes detailing the layers of surveillance are reminiscent of the best passages of this kind in John LeCarre's and Robert Ludlum's novels.

Unfortunately, the many strengths of Grace's novel are somewhat undermined by some conspicuous limitations and weaknesses. First, the novel illustrates what has become one of the standard problems in the techno-thriller genre. It is so crowded with characters that character development is inevitably sacrificed to plot. The most underdeveloped characters may be the villains, who are little more than morality-tale embodiments of ruthless greed. Likewise, there are a large number of characters who are personalized just enough for the reader to feel a thin sense of empathy when they are gruesomely killed.

Second, for all of the intricate plotting, there are several sequences of events that just don't make sense. For instance, when Kilkenny and Tao travel to Moscow, a violent attack on them makes it very clear that they have been tracked by someone with considerable resources who wants to eliminate them in order, ostensibly, to forestall their investigation. But it doesn't quite make sense that a corporation that has taken such great pains to conceal its criminal schemes would resort to a kind of thuggish violence that will inevitably serve to bring increased attention to the matter. Moreover, Kilkenny and Tao are also pretty clearly acting at this point on behalf of the American government, and so eliminating them will serve only to heighten the effort of that government. Even though some witnesses and documents have been eliminated, other investigators could surely reconstruct what they have learned. Then, to compound the lack of credibility, when Kilkenny and Tao travel to Chile, they neither ask for nor receive any extra security, allowing a devastating attack on a research vessel that they have hired.

Lastly, the novel too much depends on two incredible feats of survival - one in deep space and the other in the deep sea. Without the first, there would be no provocative evidence of Skye Aviation's "Star Wars" attacks on the satellites and manned space vehicles. Without the second, the multiple points of view through which the novel is told would be severely truncated. (I'm being very convoluted here to avoid giving away too much of the plot.) Including two such incredible feats in one story certainly strains credibility. Likewise, the ending of the novel is just too neat. The antagonist is given swift and viscerally satisfying justice, and the hero is rewarded in the most clichéd way one can imagine. All I'll say is that he gets the girl and more.

So, although I think Bird of Prey is overall quite suspenseful, it's not an entirely satisfying novel.

--Martin Kich