ROOKS is the world's first genuine chess novel. It tells the story of Morton Hanley, a brilliant young games player from NYC, thrust into a life and death struggle by a phone call in the middle of the night. It puts him in the cross hairs of a criminal mastermind desperate to contain his old and murderous secret; and on a quest to gain justice for his long ago murdered uncle. The man is Mikhail Mikhailovich Droshin, the most powerful, treacherous, and charming general in the KGB. Forty-six years before, in 1942, he was a Soviet émigré living in Lisbon and working for a Nazi spymaster. He betrayed a top secret allied intelligence operation to get Akiba Rubinstein, the last of three grandmasters involved in the Ultra secret, out of occupied Paris. He also murdered Milton Hanley, Morty's uncle, as well as his Nazi boss, all witnessed by the old resistance fighter who just called him out as a traitor on a Paris street. The two adversaries start out unknown to each other and at intercontinental range. Droshin, with his own minions and sub-directorate, strikes first and hard then plays a waiting game, hoping Hanley will go away. He does not. Hanley's plan is to enter the Soviet Union by invitation. To do this he must win chess games. With strong spiritual guidance from the three grandmasters of yore, he presses on relentlessly. On the way he must deal with the likes of world champion Marek Minki, an equally formidable but much more honorable adversary. From the first sentence to the last ROOKS is imbued with the eternal game. It has historical characters and references, positions, scores, and games; a real chess players holiday. The final confrontation is face to face and fatal. Only the game remains.
