Rift Zone

By Raelynn Hillhouse

Book Overview

A woman who smuggles, spies and lies, Faith Whitney can run just about anything through the seemingly sealed borders of Eastern Europe. Now powerful people want to use her skills to carry out a small part of a massive conspiracy. One fateful day the East German secret police kidnap Faith and make her an offer she can't refuse. If she smuggles a single package into Moscow, the Germans will tell her everything she's always wanted to know about her mysterious father. If she doesn't, she'll be exterminated. As Faith navigates the shadows and back alleys of Berlin and Moscow, she realizes she is being used as a pawn by two nations with very different goals, and her life is not the only thing at stake. Thrown into a plot that may change the course of history, Faith must use every bit of skill and contact she's accumulated through the years to find a way out of this deadly Rift Zone.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 076534890X
• ISBN13: 9780765348906
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: Forge
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 4.4" x 6.6"

Customer Reviews

Thrilling ride

Rift Zone is an enormously entertaining book. Set in a pivot point of history, it captures the texture of the moment, with an eye for genuine details of that place and time. The book is populated with interesting characters, and takes the reader for a thrilling ride across the Iron Curtain just as it was crumbling. It's great escapist fare, highly recommended for summer travel.

When 's The Sequel Out?

Being a thriller novel reader, I aways compare books with Clancy's novel; how they pull you in and hold your attention. Well this book did all that and more for me. Not only did it engage me in the story immediately but it held my attention like Clancy. However noted differences dirverge here. Hillhouse provides a genuine suprise chuckle scattered throughout; sometimes at the most inauspicious moment. Whereas most thriller novels, involving obfuscatory Russian names, are difficult to resume and keep everyone straight, given the inevitable family diruptions, Hillhouse has a way of presenting that I found eased me back into the story and characters without having to regroup and glance back to keep eveyone identified. This was a totally unexpected storyline. A female heroine. Just the right amount of everything here, except.......when's the sequel out?

Fascinating Spy Thriller

RIFT ZONE opens as Faith Whitney searches for antique china in East Berlin. As she leaves the store with her packages she's told by the manager two men were in the shop earlier asking questions about her. She badly needs a multi-entry visa between Berlin and Russia and in order to get it, is looking to obtain a sponsor as a visiting professor--but we soon find this is only a cover for her real profession. Faith is a double-espionage agent, well-known by insiders, trusted by no one, but highly sought after just the same, simply because she's the best there is and nobody has ever caught her in the act. To further complicate her life, she's trying to find her father while trying to dodge all the people who want to either use her or kill her, and maybe both. At the same time, on another part of the continent, Margaret Whitney heads up an orphanage for Armenian children and fiercely fights to protect them while she smuggles weapons inside of Bibles. Hillhouse has created a riveting story of suspense and adventure drawn from her own background. This, her first novel, covers post-cold war relations and spans the European continent as well as the US. My husband, a real spy thriller buff who normally refuses to read spy thrillers written by women, also read it and said this book is great. He's right, it is. RIFT ZONE, is interesting, intense and frightening; a real sink-into-it-and digest-it thriller.

Rapidly Moving Action

The action of Rift Zone moves rapidly from one peril to the next with interwoven schemes by the heroine, Faith, to checkmate her adversaries. The plot is well structured utilizing the author's knowledge of Germany and Russia to make several dynamic scenes seem plausible. International consequences with probable nuclear war is expected unless Faith and her two associates can thwart the plans of a group of high ranking East German and Russian conspirators. One of these associates is a highly capable lesbian lieutenant colonel in the Russian Service whose motivations are not certain until late in the book. The other associate is a past lover who is an American demolition expert. Finally, the confrontation with the conspirators results in the resolution of a mystery, who is/was Faith's father (a clue is given earlier), and leads to an exciting climax culminating in an unexpected scene at the end.

Rift Zone

Le Carre lives in a woman's body. This author knows her territory and it shows. She brings us in to the pre glasnost world in East Berlin and immerses us in a complex thriller/mystery. An easy read that I couldn't put down once I got past the first 60 pages. The first pages aren't bad, it's just it took a while to get into the characters. A great first novel.