Bishop's Endgame: A Spy Game Novel

The Aiken Trilogy - Book 2

by Michael Frost Beckner

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Pub Date Sep 05 2022 | Archive Date Mar 01 2023

Montrose Station Press

Literary Fiction | Mystery & Thrillers

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Description

It's not how you play the GAME... It's how the game plays YOU.

The sequel to the Robert Redford/Brad Pitt #1 hit movie Spy Game, Bishop's Endgame (The Aiken Trilogy, Book 2) picks up a decade after Redford's Nathan Muir escaped CIA headquarters after a double-cross of his Langley rivals in the successful rescue of Brad Pitt's Tom Bishop and his wife, international aid worker Elizabeth Hadley (Catherine McCormick in the film), from a Chinese prison.

Now Muir is retired to Princeton University where, as a professor of mythology, he keeps his hand in the spy game working as a CIA recruiter, while Tom Bishop--rogue in Kosovo--fights a private war against the ethnic cleansing his former Agency has turned its back on.

But when all of Muir's former agent networks vanish worldwide and Bishop is dragged in from the cold to rescue Muir's last spy from Malaysia, it once again falls to manic, somewhat delusional, CIA lawyer Russell Aiken to run interference for the Agency without managing to set off a civil war. Yet, what Aiken lacks in self-awareness he more than makes up by his unusual loyalty to both men trapped by a remorseless father-son struggle between spies.

Bishop's Endgame is a CIA house of mirrors where life and death operations hinge on the unravelling of past secrets, personal loyalties slam against hard walls of institutional betrayal, and the clock strikes as enemies within the Agency are revealed sometimes as deadly as the foreign enemies without.

It's not how you play the GAME... It's how the game plays YOU.

The sequel to the Robert Redford/Brad Pitt #1 hit movie Spy Game, Bishop's Endgame (The Aiken Trilogy, Book 2) picks up a decade after...

Advance Praise

"In a nutshell, the mythology of Nathan Muir is nothing short of epic, and nothing he says or does should be ignored. Electric from the get-go, Beckner's sequel is a supercharged fireball, a raging inferno of action and thrill." - RECOMMENDED, The US Review of Books

"Reading Michael Frost Beckner's latest episode in the Spy Game saga is like seeing Picasso's Guernica for the first time. A Cubist deconstruction of the spy trade, Bishop's Endgame traffics in what one might call Le Carré's Complications of Spying--that sense of moral responsibility--but couples it with an interior absurdist monologue worthy of Vonnegut... Bishop's Endgame bears the unmistakable stamp of unprecedented mastery." Alex Abella, New York Times Notable Author & Emmy Award-winning journalist

"Michael Frost Beckner is the rarest of spy novelists, a beautiful and compelling writer who also has a mastery of tradecraft and a deep understanding of how espionage really works." Joe Weisberg, former CIA Officer and Emmy winning creator of The Americans

Praise for the Spy Game universe:

"Muir's Gambit is part fast-paced thriller, part intricate cat-and-mouse confessional between two spies consumed by lives of betrayal and vengeance; everyone should be reading this!" Michele McPhee, best-selling author, Emmy-nominated investigative journalist, and award-winning columnist

"It's rare, in the thriller genre, to find such an ongoing and neat juxtaposition of interests and vying forces, [but] Michael Frost Beckner's Muir's Gambit…proves a far deeper inspection of a spy's world than most… Hard-hitting psychological insights [are] as powerfully depicted as the wider arena of world conflict for maximum impact. Libraries seeking standouts in spy literature and cat-and-mouse suspense will relish Muir's Gambit, which succeeds on so many levels that its course is not only unpredictable, but thoroughly delightful." D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

"In this prequel to the espionage thriller Spy Game, [Muir's Gambit] returns to Nathan Muir's CIA origins...[where] the line between [truth] and [lies] is blurred, often beyond recognition. Beckner consistently demonstrates a knack for taking high-stakes situations and storylines and adding an array of dimensions that deliver a more intimate connection." - RECOMMENDED, The US Review of Books

"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

"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 Spy Game is a thinking man's thriller... A real adrenaline blast... I loved it!" Robert Redford, "Robert Redford: The Biography" by Michael Feeney Callahan

"A chess game...laid out on the real world of espionage." Brad Pitt, Hollywood.com/Screen Slam

"It's policy versus heart... Will challenge you in ways you haven't been challenged before." Tony Scott, Spy Game director

"Trades in the kind of shadings and moral quandaries that have been the meat and drink of Le Carré." The Boston Globe

"A taut...timely...intelligent thriller." The Washington Post

"Asks tough, unflinching questions about America's responsibility to maintain world peace-and the price we are willing to pay in order to accomplish that." The Miami Herald

"Enormously satisfying." San Francisco Chronicle

"Pretty, gritty, engrossing and fun." The Oregonian

Marketing Plan

Robust review coverage in online & print media
Social Media Advertising
Search Advertising
Pre-Publication Trade Advertising
National & International Podcast Interviews
National Print & Online Media Coverage (tie-in with forthcoming Beacon Pictures series announcement)
Pre-Publication Online Buzz Campaign - Includes Influencers and Consumer Reads
Library Marketing Campaign
Author Website: http://www.michaelfrostbeckner.com/
Author Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MichaelFrostBecknerAuthor/
Author Twitter: https://twitter.com/MichaelFBeckner
Author Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelfrostbeckner/
Reader's Edition Available through NetGalley
Cross-Promotion with the two other books in trilogy, MUIR'S GAMBIT (September 2022) and AIKEN IN CHECK (September 2022)