The Spy — Norman Garbo

A suspenseful, often shocking love story-thriller, involving three men and two women who first meet by chance on a New Year's Eve in a small, private hospital. Each has undergone plastic surgery, and the lives of all of them are dramatically affected by both the surgery and the consequences of that chance meeting.

The central character is Richard Burke, a U.S. Intelligence agent who has chosen to risk retirement after twenty years of highly classified service, and who needs a new identity as survival insurance against a notably lethal profession. The others are a woman business executive, an actress, a writer, and a prize-fighter -- each hoping for a renewed lease on life.

The five patients part on leaving the hospital. Almost a year later, they are abruptly thrown together again when it appears to be in the national interest for Richard Burke to be "terminated with extreme prejudice." The only ones who have seen his new face and can identify him are his four fellow-patients and the surgeon who operated. When Burke finds the surgeon dead, the hunt begins.

How each of these people responds to this pressure, how they stand up to threat, terror, and violence from the "right" side of the law, makes for a breathless and moving thriller and a story of love, loyalty, and betrayal which raises a pressing question: in a free society, should an individual's rights be considered inviolable, even if the survival of that society is judged to be threatened?

Do dirty tricks performed for an allegedly good cause become any less dirty?