chameleon chronicle

huh...what a great title right?
I'v been meaning to tell you about a book by Mark Burnell and the title is 'Chameleon'.Yeah, I'v enever heard of the author before but judging a book by its cover, I decided to borrow the book from USM library.The tagline boost 'A heart-stopping thriller to rival Robert Harris(who?)' and 'one woman, one man, nine passports' are pretty lame right but when I finished reading the book,wow,a major wrong-impression I've had. Honestly I've never read any fiction with this kind of storyline before and from ratio 1-10 i give Burnell a 9!!! To rank him, he would be in between Dan Brown and John Grisham.Apparently there are some praise by another author Boris Starling who wrote 'Messiah'(makes 'Silence of the Lambs' look like 'Alice in Wonderland') of Burnell.
To cut the suspense, I'll put in some excerpt from 'Chameleon'. I hope I'm not breaking any laws...
" Magenta House. An organization that doesn't exist, run by people who don't exist. An ironic consequence of the modern era. In a time of greater openness, somebody still has to get into the sewer to deal with the rats. I don't know how many assassins Magenta House operates-four or five, I should think, perhaps six- but i do know that I was unique among them. They were simply trained in the art of assassination. I was trained for more. Operating under the alias Petra Reuter- a German student turned activist turned mercenary terrorist-I was taught to infiltrate, seduce, lie, eavesdrop, steal, kill. I learn how to withstand pain and how to inflict it..."

"...The next time I wake up, my headache is worse. I shrug off the coat I'm still wearing. There are dried droplets of Bergstein's blood on the right sleeve. I knew from the start that I wasn't Petra Reuter. When Alexander saw me in Provence, he must have suspected it too. He only had to look at me to see something he'd never seen before: a physical ripeness, peace of mind, a life in balance. My softness was corporal and emotional, in equal measure. It was arrogance on both our parts to assume I could ever claw back the brutality I once had. I carry on drinking, then pass out"

Well that was Stephanie Patrick aka Petra Reuter.To my suprise(I've suspected it before), Burnell has already 3 books under Stephanie Patrick series and the latest coming out May this year titled "The Third Women", the others are The Rhythm Section (1999),Chameleon (2001),and Gemini (2003) . He also wrote Freak (1994), Glittering Savages (1995), Zoo Station(2003).So this mean, I'm going to need more time to catch up with Burnell and probably Boris Starling too...
Huh, so many to read yet so little time. The problem is now, how am I going to get ahold of all his books?

note:LOOK FOR-
1.Robert Harris, Fatherland (1992)
Enigma (1995)
Archangel (1998)
Pompeii (2003)
2.Charles Cumming, A Spy By Nature (2001)
3.Boris Starling, Messiah (1999)
Storm (2000)
Vodka (2004)
Visibility (2006)
(check at www.fantasticfiction.co.uk)
huhuh...i'm dead!
-to be continued-