Private Wars

August 29, 2005
Tara Chace, the heroine of Rucka's Queen & Country comics, stars in her second novel (after A Gentleman's Game
). The special ops officer in Her Majesty's secret service is back in England, recovering from a mission in which her lover, spy Tom Wallace, was killed. When Tara learns she's pregnant, she quits the service and has a baby girl, Tamsin. After a year changing nappies and mourning Tom, she's offered a mission in diplomatically crucial Uzbekistan. President Malikov is ailing, and a succession fight between his son, Ruslam, and evil daughter, Sevara, has begun. Tara is asked to perform a dangerous, solo, unsanctioned lift, spiriting Ruslam and his son out of the country; of course she can't resist. After setting up child care for Tamsin, she flies to Tashkent and the op is under way. Things quickly go to hell—novels like this wouldn't be any fun if they didn't—and Tara finds herself in mortal danger at the hands of Uzbekistan's most loathsome torturer. Tara is often likened to a female James Bond (she can drink, sleep around and kill just like a man), but she's really more interesting than the comparison would suggest. These are well-researched, intriguingly complicated, exciting spy novels in the tradition of Adam Hall and his great series hero, Quiller.

September 15, 2005
In this latest installment of Rucka's "Queen and Country" series (after" A Gentleman's Game"), Special Ops agent Tara Chace is back in London, her unsanctioned mission in Saudi Arabia having been forgiven by her SIS handlers. Now, nine months after resigning to give birth to a daughter, she is offered a chance to reclaim her job. The leader of Uzbekistan is nearing death, and his son, Ruslan, and daughter, Sevara -the latter aided by Ahtam Zahidov, head of the secret police -are both maneuvering to succeed him. Tara's mission? Get Ruslan and his two-year-old son out of Uzbekistan and back to England. But the head of the Foreign Office and the Chief of Service are locked in combat over four lost missiles and have a different goal. Tara has to appease both the CIA and the SIS, account for the missiles, arrange an exchange between Sevara and Ruslan, and avenge her torture by Zahidov. Rucka provides an initial glossary to help with the numerous acronyms that, along with his use of real names and ongoing political events, lend his many-layered tale an air of authenticity. Suspenseful and action-packed, this spy thriller is recommended for public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 7/05.] -Ronnie H. Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2005
Here is the sequel to " A Gentleman's Game" (2004), the spy thriller that was based on the author's comic book (" Queen & Country") that was in turn based on a late-1970s British television series (" The Sandbaggers"). Tara Chase, the ambitious and hotheaded Special Operations Officer for the British Secret Intelligence Service, returns from a difficult and wholly unsanctioned operation in which her colleague and lover died. To her surprise, she is not removed from active duty. To her greater surprise, she discovers she is pregnant. Denied a leave of absence, Tara quits the SIS, only to realize that life can be deadly for a spy who tries to quit the game. Rucka injects the novel with a hard contemporary edge and a heavy dose of sensuality that may prompt comparisons to the television series " Alias--"also featuring a young, sexy spy--but whereas " Alias "is slick fantasy, the Tara Chase novels are rough-and-tumble adventures that feel very real. Expect this series to stick around for quite a while.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)