Sound like a Cold War newspaper headline? Sound too good to be true? Well, I have news for you, my friend, IT'S TRUE! Robert Hockney's back. This time he's married to Julia Cummings and they're expecting a baby. Monimbo's the code-name of a Cuban plan to bring the United States to its knees. It begins with a conference in Monimbo, Nicragua, and one of the people there, an eighteen-year-old Nicaraguan named Monkey Diaz, defects to the United States and warns the new President of this plan but nobody believes him. Except for Hockney, who's now the Washington editor of the New York World, a couple of Miami cops, and an FBI agent in San Juan, Puerto Rico. A U.S. Senator's kidnapped and assassinated by Puerto Rican nationalists. Then there are a series of blackouts up and down the east coast from Miami to New York. According to the book, the Mariel Boat Lift of 1980 was part of this plan. A CI for the Miami police and Julia Hockney are both killed in the rioting in Miami when the blackout hits that city. The same thing happens in New York.

It is a good book, i read the Chinese version in my 20 ten years ago. And i wanna read the English wersion now.

This was a book that made an impression on me. The newspaper
reporter writes a story that gets a CIA operative in big trouble.
He learns after the fact that the information he has used was false information supplied by the Russians. From here it is nonstop action for our reporter. This book also gives you a very good idea about the power of the press and how it can be manipulated to achieve various means and goals.Through this book you go to several locations worldwide. The characters in the story are also well written. This is a good book that you will
enjoy very much. Buy it and read it. It is a winner.

In these times of public health and other scares
being exacerbated by the US media, it's important
to read something that puts the power of the news
media - and the fact that not everyone who spills
ink is a friend of this country - into a new perspective.
The American people too often believe that everything
that they read in the papers and see in the news is true.
The Spike is a novel whose time has come again.

The reason I give the new CSIS study on Russian organized crime merely one star, is that it fails to meet elementary standards of scientific inquiry. The CSIS shows no interest in theoretical issues, nor does it contain a discussion of the methodological problems that are inherent in any study of crime phenomena. Unsurprisingly, the findings of the research are based in large part on press reports, and perhaps also unsurprisingly, only point in one direction: the US face a serious threat from Russian organized crime. Now, press reports and descriptive, non-theoretical work of course can offer information that may be of use in research, and also the CSIS study in this respectmay be of interest. Nevertheless, the reader can only use this kind of information if he or she has the impression that authors handle information sincerely, otherwise one does not know what to believe and what not. In this respect the CSIS report falls short in a big way. This becomes obvious when one looks at how it handles the study by Finckenauer and Waring ('Russian Mafia in America', 1998), a study that does live up to the requirements mentioned above, but that comes to a quite different conclusion than the one the CSIS reaches. I found only one referenceby the CSIS to this work (on p.22: "A recent nationwide survey of police agencies revealed that at least 34 states have some contact with ROC in émigré communities"). The reference suggests that the survey confirms the image of dramatic proliferation of the Russian mafia, while in fact the opposite is the case. Finckenauer and Waring conclude: "Our conclusion - which may be startling to some - is that the Russian organized crime in America widely known as the Russian Mafia is first, not Russian; second, not a mafia; and third, not even organized crime" (1998, p.xiv). If the CSIS has access to information that refutes this indeed remarkable conclusion, it should have presented it. The only impression the reader now gets it that the CSIS simply did not do its job properly. From an institution on the board of which we find many functionaries from the CIA and other government agencies, and which gives advice to policy circles in the US, we should have expected a more convincing handling of the subject - how reasonable or not the advice given may be. Now the reader is left with the impression that Finckenauer and Waring were right when they wrote that "The label Russian mafia offers a convenient hook for understanding but at the same time sensationalizes matters so as to peak interest. It thus serves both law enforcement and media interests"? (1998, p. 250).