French Kiss [Hardcover] LUSTBADER, ERIC VAN

Chris Haye thought he'd left the covert life behind — until his brother's brutal murder drags him back into a shadow world of international espionage, yakuza power plays, and a conspiracy that stretches from Washington to Tokyo. Van Lustbader, who cut his teeth on ninja thrillers before crafting this Cold War-era potboiler, weaves martial arts expertise into a globe-trotting plot thick with double-crosses and political intrigue. The "French Kiss" of the title refers to a lethal martial arts technique, and Lustbader deploys it as both metaphor and weapon in a story where trust is the rarest commodity. If you loved the paranoid energy of early Robert Ludlum or the exotic menace of Trevanian's Shibumi, this hits the same nerve — testosterone-fueled, labyrinthine, and unapologetically 1980s in its geopolitical scope. A hardcover relic from the era when airport thrillers came with body counts and Atlas page references.