Thrillers

By JEAN HELLER

THE PROGRAM, by Stephen White (Doubleday, $24.95) The condemned man's final words to New Orleans prosecutor Kirsten Lord were ominous: "For every precious thing I lose, you will lose two." The threat begins to come true in the opening of Stephen White's new thriller, The Program. First, Lord's husband is gunned down on a New Orleans street as they are about to meet for an anniversary lunch. The gunman has been told to be sure that Kirsten sees the hit, and she does.

Certain that the man she prosecuted is behind the killing, Kirsten and her young daughter assume new names and backgrounds and flee to a small Louisiana town where everybody knows everyone, and a stranger will be noticed. After the daughter barely escapes a kidnap attempt, Kirsten accepts an offer that they be hidden in the Witness Protection Program in Boulder, Colo., conveniently the home of psychologist Alan Gregory, the protagonist of White's previous eight novels. This time around, Gregory is a secondary character, charged with helping Kirsten and her daughter settle into their new lives.

While in Boulder, they meet Carl Luppo, a former hit-man who is also trying to settle into a new life and isn't quite comfortable with it. When Luppo realizes the dangers confronting Kirsten, he takes steps to help, putting his own life on the line to free them from the threat to theirs.

The Program is a book that improves with each chapter. White might have been a little uncomfortable at first, proceeding through a new adventure without Alan Gregory. But once the psychologist shows up, the story takes on a riveting head of steam.

THE INTERPRETER, by Suzanne Glass (Steerforth, $22) Londoner Dominique Green, fluent in seven languages, travels to New York as "The Interpreter," a simultaneous translator at an international pharmaceuticals conference.

Her vow of absolute confidentiality brings her head-to-head with a searing moral dilemma when she learns that there has been a breakthrough on HIV treatment which is being kept secret.

Since her own good friend is dying of AIDs, Dominique is driven to find a way to help him.

Meanwhile, she has fallen in love with Nicholas Manzini, a specialist in pediatric leukemia research. She has no idea that Manzini's work is behind the HIV breakthrough, no idea that he is struggling himself to decide whether to move from his current position to a better one, since such a switch could delay his most important work.

The Interpreter is Suzanne Glass' nicely realized debut novel, and she handles two points of view well, letting Dominique and Nicholas narrate alternating chapters without getting in the way of the story. The ending is a knockout, too, which should take most readers by surprise.

AIDING AND ABETTING, by Muriel Spark, (Doubleday, $21) If you never read Memento Mori, if you never read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, then introduce yourself to Muriel Spark in her new and delightful mystery-thriller, Aiding and Abetting, a delightfully manipulated what-if story based on the true case of the seventh Earl of Lucan, who disappeared in 1974 after killing his children's nanny and seriously injuring his wife. He was convicted in absentia.

Clearly, he couldn't have done what he did without the financial support of friends in the aristocracy who believe they and their peers are above the law, and their lives are more important than justice. Flash forward to the present. In this incredibly complex and twisted tale, two men introduce themselves as the earl to an outrageous French psychiatrist forced to try to resolve the issues until one of the men learns of her true past and threatens her with blackmail.

Nothing is as it seems in this wonderfully entertaining read that presents a puzzle of truly epic proportions. Yes, some of the coincidences of Aiding and Abetting are too convenient, but in Spark's able hands, who cares?

Jean Heller is the author of the mystery-thrillers, Handyman and Maximum Impact (Forge).

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