Susan Whitcomb, a brilliant New York trial lawyer, has learned her craft from the best in the field?Professor Farlan Amory Adams, her Columbia law teacher, millionaire mentor, and eloquent would-be lover. She needs every shred of the rigorous mental training he has given her when, without warning, she is catapulted into the vicious world of international terrorism. Susan's well-ordered Manhattan life comes to a sudden end with the news that her father, an army general based in Rome, has been assassinated. When she, too, becomes a target of the terrorists, a mysterious, driven young man called David Smith presents himself to her in Rome and tells her he has been assigned to protect her from the dangers that will follow her back to America. And this is only the beginning…. As the story develops, Susan becomes a pawn in a deadly game of escalating complexity, brutality, and suspense in which life, love, and loyalty all hang in the balance. The millions of readers who were riveted by Sol Stein's previous best-sellers, The Magician and The Touch of Treason, will recognize the hand of a master storyteller in this psychologically dense and driving thriller. Not for nothing did The New York Times write of his work: "If you read a Sol Stein novel while walking, you will walk into a wall."