ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Sunday, March 10, 1996                 TAG: 9603080050
SECTION: BOOKS                    PAGE: F-4  EDITION: METRO 
                                             TYPE: BOOK REVIEW 
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY rOBERT ALOTTA O{LEAD}    IZMIR. By E. Howard Hunt. Donald 
I. Fine. $23.95.
   I must confess. I have been culturally deprived. I have never read an E. 
Howard Hunt Jack Novak novel before.

E. HOWARD HUNT SENDS JACK NOVAK ON ANOTHER THRILLING CAPER IN `IZMIR'

After reading "Izmir," I plan to make up for lost time.

Hunt, whom many remember from Watergate days, is an exceptional storyteller who leads his readers through more twists and turns than a laboratory maze.

In "Izmir," Novak's best friend and former DEA partner, Manny Montijo, is kidnapped.

Novak finds this out when he and his first-year-law-student girlfriend, Melody, are in Switzerland trying to get married. Our hero puts off the marital plans until he's able to recover his friend.

When he gets to Miami, he learns that the DEA thinks Montijo took off with some narcotics money. Novak knows better than that.

With sly wit, deft manipulation of plot, and a healthy dose of Anejo (a rum the hero fancies ... in great amounts), Hunt takes the savvy Novak through the world of former Venezuelan war lords through biker bistros to the yacht of Mehmet Kurdlu, a Turkish multimillionaire with a penchant for rare art.

Along the way, Novak erases large numbers of bad guys. Some more-or-less good people, mostly whores with heart, get killed along with them.

After Montijo is saved - a not too easy project, Novak finds Montijo's cousin, the lovely Pilar, is snatched by the same guys. They assume that Pilar, seen leaving Novak's house, is his wife-to-be and that killing her is fair retribution. Not to our man Novak. He's on them like fleas on a mutt. His instincts are great, and everything turns out fine. Or does it?

Hunt fills his pages with sly little touches, such as Pilar. Readers may remember that was the name of one of Hemingway's heroines. He also reminds Vietnam veterans of the habit of chambering one round and ejecting the clip, then adding another bullet into the clip, affording one additional shot.

The "fat lady" doesn't sing at the end of "Izmir." Hunt has more up his sleeve and, guess what? This reader is going to try to be the first to catch that one. In the meantime, I'm on the prowl for his earlier Novak novels, "Islamorada," "Ixtapa" and "Mazatlan."

Robert Alotta is an author-historian who lives in Harrisonburg.

LENGTH: Short :   49 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  (headshot) E. Howard Hunt.