The hunt for a Palestinian bomb builder who killed 130 Israelis during a two-year reign of terror is recounted here in vivid detail, from his origins on the West Bank to his death at the hands of the Mossad. Yehiya Ayyash was a necessarily paranoid but very successful young Palestinian bomb builder known as "The Engineer." His three-year terror campaign in the mid-1990s killed 130 Israelis and wounded about 500 more. It also disrupted (as intended) Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's negotiation of a controversial peace deal with PLO leader Yasir Arafat. The intense pressure to catch Ayyash led to a massive international manhunt, and his killing just a couple of months after Rabin's assassination only increased his mythic stature. This work by terrorist expert Katz (Israel versus Jebril: The Thirty Year War Against a Master Terrorist) is very descriptive, reading almost like a thriller such as John le Carre's The Little Drummer Girl (LJ 2/1/83), in which the Israelis track down a Palestinian bomber in Europe. There is no index or bibliography, but chapter endnotes are included. Obviously, a lot of the material for this book had to come from unattributable interviews with participants. Suitable for academic and large public libraries.ADaniel K. Blewett, Loyola Univ. Lib., Chicago Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. The story of the slaying of an Islamic bomber, told by Katz (Israel Versus Jibril, 1993, etc.) with a self-imploding mix of adrenalin rush, one-dimensional characters, and TV morality. The years 1994-97 witnessed a huge number of terrorist bombings in Israel, even by Middle Eastern standards. Many of them were the work of Yehiya Ayyash, known as The Engineer, an explosives expert in the much-feared Izzedine al-Qassam Brigade of Hamas. Ayyash was killed when a cell phone took off half his head, an assassination claimed by no one. Katz builds his story around pocket histories of various Islamic extremist groups and Israeli secret counter-terror groups, culminating in this instance with Ayyash's death. Katz relates the military operations with verve, rendering the terrorist acts as gorily as possible, and pulling out all the stops to hold the reader's attention. Yet Katz presents the actors in this drama as black and white, although in so uncompromising a landscape doubts and ambiguities aplenty forestall the likelihood that either side would have a monopoly on brutality. The Palestinian bombers he puts on display are not complex but simply evil thugs who ``would murder for profit or pure pleasure,'' reveling ``in the explosion and the pink spray,'' motivated by the understanding that ``seventy-two virgins will meet them on their arrival in paradise.'' The often harsh reprisals of the Israeli counter-terror operatives, by contrast, get a wink and a grin from Katz, who understands that the agents sometimes take out their anger and frustration on the hapless souls who are unfortunateor guiltyenough to be sitting inside one of the Shin Bet's interrogation cells.'' Equally unfortunate is how little the Israelis bravado achieved. Once Ayyash was killed, the bombings only intensified. Katz's glorification of the Israeli military response feels disturbingly misplaced. (B&w photos) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Samuel M. Katz is the author of six other books about the Middle East, including The Elite and The Night Raiders: Israel's Naval Commandos at War. His articles have appeared in magazines around the world. Used Book in Good Condition