What is Derek Haas reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Derek Haas, author of The Right Hand.

His entry begins:

Currently, I'm reading Reamde by Neal Stephenson. It's a globe-trotting, character jumping espionage thriller focusing on a young woman who gets caught up in a web of intrigue after she discovers her hacker boyfriend has been stealing credit cards and handing them over to a Russian crime syndicate. That is actually way too simple of an explanation… I'm thoroughly enjoying the book but you have to set aside a couple of months to read it because Stephenson leaves no detail underplayed. I am...[read on]

About The Right Hand, from the publisher:

Meet Austin Clay, the CIA's best-kept secret.

There has always been a need in the spy game for operations outside the realm of legality-covert missions so black no one in the American government, and almost no one in intelligence itself, is aware of their existence. The left hand can't know what the right hand is doing.

Austin Clay is that right hand, executing missions that would be disavowed by his own government were he ever to be compromised. His team consists of only his trusted handler and himself. His missions are among the most important and dangerous in U.S. history.

Clay is sent to track down a missing American operative, a man who was captured outside of Moscow, in the Russian countryside. Soon he discovers the missing officer is only the beginning of the mission, and finds himself protecting a desperate woman who believes a mole has penetrated the top levels of the U.S. government, throwing the international balance of power into jeopardy.

With blistering pace, international intrigue, and a high-stakes plot that spans continents, THE RIGHT HAND introduces a new hero, from the novelist whose work the New York Times Book Review has proclaimed "devastatingly cool."

Learn more about the book and author at Derek Haas's website.

Haas is the co-writer of the films The Double, Wanted, and 3:10 to Yuma, and author of The Assassin Trilogy: The Silver Bear, Columbus and Dark Men.

My Book, The Movie: Dark Men.

Writers Read: Derek Haas (December 2011).

The Page 69 Test: Dark Men.

Writers Read: Derek Haas.

--Marshal Zeringue