With his critically acclaimed and award-winning Muir's Gambit, Bishop's Endgame, and Aiken in Check, novelist and screenwriter Michael Frost Beckner thrilled espionage fans worldwide with a return to his classic Robert Redford/Brad Pitt movie Spy Game. Kaleidoscope: 4th of July expands Beckner's Spy Game universe to dig deep into the personal and professional lives of three generations of a CIA family trapped in the web of the Agency's oldest and darkest secret.
Praise for the Spy Game Series:
"Pass the popcorn!" Amazon Editors' Pick, Vanessa Cronin, Sr. Editor
"The top of the thriller heap." "Chilling." "Inspired." Editor's Pick, Publishers Weekly
"Marvelous." "Relentlessly tense." Kirkus Reviews
While furthering the exploits of Nathan Muir and Tom Bishop, Beckner introduced readers to memorable new characters: Russell Aiken, Lara van Eyck, Charlie March, and Nina Alverez. But perhaps most provocative were CIA Chief of Counterintelligence Silas Kingston—"the most feared man at Langley;" the only person who ever outmastered Nathan Muir at the spy game—and his determined, conscientious but emotionally-scarred daughter, CIA operations manager Lynn.
Now, following in the footsteps of Charles Dickens and Stephen King (The Green Mile), Beckner embarks on his most ambitious project to date: an espionage saga told in five parts to be released throughout 2024. A tale of loyalty and love, betrayal and redemption, Kaleidoscope spins around three generations of the CIA Kingston family...
PART ONE: 4TH OF JULY
There are other families, neither happy nor mindfully sad; sanctioned to deception, these families kindle their lives with the flint of authorized deceit. Their pyre is "service," and it is "national security." Its flame is "duty." "Honor." And it is "faith." Thus fueled, these families allow this fire to consume their every honest emotion.
Relentlessly.
Equally.
And to completion.
"Nobody vanishes," Silas Kingston insists, but one Kingston has...
A vanishing or an escape? Conspiracy, or treason? When clandestine officer Michael Kingston goes missing in Turkey, the secrets and lies of three generations of a CIA family—spies, spouses, lovers, children—collide with the most fiercely protected operation within the CIA.
KALEIDOSCOPE
Since the 20th century, energy—its possession, production, distribution—has been the key to a nation's power. The "why-eternal" of all conflict. Today, global demand for energy outstrips resources. As directed by Silas Kingston, KALEIDOSCOPE is the hidden hand within the CIA, older than the Agency itself, overscoring all operations. Intimately personal and international in scope, the secrets of KALEIDOSCOPE entwine with those of the Kingston family, pitting the survival of one against the destruction of the other.
BUY NOW and receive A SPY GAME BONUS! Three preview chapters of Beckner's upcoming (Fall 2024) Spy Game novel, Drought - Book I of The Muir Trilogy.
KALEIDOSCOPE does for the CIA what THE SOPRANOS did for the mob... The function and dysfunction of a whole family where the patriarch is ensnared in a dark and dangerous world.
MICHAEL APTED - Academy Award nominated film director of COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER, THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, ENIGMA
An utterly distinctive voice in spy fiction. Nobody captures espionage quite like Beckner. Cerebral and unvarnished, with dialogue so sharp it's like dancing on hot coals.
I.S. BERRY - Author of THE PEACOCK AND THE SPARROW, A New Yorker & NPR Best Book of the Year & Edgar Award Nominee
You can set off a million firecrackers, but if you don’t have a story to tell, you have nothing but smoke... Michael Frost Beckner’s electrifying script is a thinking man’s thriller... A real adrenaline blast… I loved it!
Robert Redford
A chess game... laid out on the real world of espionage.
Brad Pitt
Among the classics… A smart, sturdy, and fascinating glimpse inside a hidden world.
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Michael Frost Beckner serves up a judicious blend of showy action, political intrigue, ticking-clock suspense and intramural CIA one-upmanship for mainstream entertainment.
Variety