A Case of Strange Alliances

A Case of Strange Alliances is the first book of a trilogy. The story takes place in the 1980s. We meet Mariam Al Saffat, a 1960s activist who has gone mainstream but still has radical underpinnings. A divorced mother of three, she has earned an undergraduate degree and a master's degree; she is CEO of her own very successful company. She expresses her radicalism and altruism through sponsoring and managing a home for unwed mothers in Harlem. Terry Maskonov is her business partner and friend. He is an ex-KGB agent who has relocated to the United States. The two met during the 1970s while both were involved with a left-wing newspaper that was funded by the Soviet Union. Their consulting firm deals primarily in industrial espionage. Both believe that the new cold war will be fought on the business front and with computer technology instead of nuclear weapons. The book opens with a prologue in which Mariam finds one of her sixties radical pals, Addy, who was stuck in the past, dead on his bathroom floor. She calls her best friend, Ralphie, who was also a part of the sixties radical group and is now a beat cop. The death was originally deemed due to natural causes, but Ralphie's unauthorized investigation resulted in two men confessing that they killed Addy for a ＄100 drug debt. Ralphie doesn't believe it and vows to continue the investigation. Mariam cautions against her doing this due to the fact that she has been given a gold shield, made a detective, due to her work on the case (even though this work was against police policy and procedure). Ralphie feels that she was given the gold shield to shut her up and stop her from further investigation. The story begins three years after the prologue. Ralphie has taken the money and run. She retired at the salary of detective, after a year, with a lot of overtime, resulting in a big pension. She has become an investigative reporter for a daily newspaper and won two Pulitzer Prizes. She is currently working on something big but has gone missing. Her editor, a powerful and cunning Latino, contacts Mariam first because of her relationship with Ralphie and second, because of her investigative and industrial espionage background. The story takes off from this point. In the search for Ralphie, we are taken into the dark and evil world of a hate group; we meet its insane leader. We learn of a clever scheme to infiltrate every level of corporate America and government bureaucracy and of a diabolical plan to pit African Americans and Jews against each other. The goal is to destroy the relationship forged during the Civil Rights era. The ultimate plan is to destroy American society as we know it and replace it with the one aspired to by the Third Reich. The subplot deals with a very sexy and complex relationship between Mariam and Terry.