From the man 60 Minutes called "America's  top undercover cop"comes a gripping companion  to his bestselling expose, Deep Cover --a novel  inspired by real events. Drawing from  the most dangerous real-life deep cover mission of  Michael Levine's illustrious career as a DEA  agent, Triangle of Death is as  fast-paced and explosive as his bestselling expose Deep  Cover. While working on a top  secret assignment, Rene Villarino, Levine's only  friend and fellow agent, has disappeared. Rene's  mission was to find the source of La Reina Blanca, or  The White Queen, a deadly new form of cocaine  engineered as one of the most addictive and dangerous  drugs known to man. Levine finds  his friend's tortured body in Argentina and  immediately suspects that the Triangle of Death, a huge  underground organization created by escaped Nazi  war criminals, is responsible for both Rene's death  and for the manufacture of The White Queen. Now  Levine, with the help of the Israeli Mossad, must  bring the Triangle of Death to its own timely  demise. A Paraguayan drug lord teams up with a sect of long-lost Nazis to produce a drug called White Queen, which can radically alter the sexual abilities of humans before it kills them. Chasing White Queen through the Mediterranean, South America, and the United States is a Drug Enforcement Agency undercover operative--based largely on Michael Levine himself, who is a former DEA agent--posing as an Algerian businessman. Husband-and-wife team Michael Levine and Laura Kavanau, draw on Levine's experience to ground the story while its characters rush off in a whirl of international intrigue and science-gone-bad. In 1990, Delacorte published the best-selling Deep Cover, Levine's nonfiction account of his findings as an undercover agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Noting in the preface to Triangle of Death that secrecy laws prevent the revelation of "the truth behind many of the events that are the fabric of this book," Levine has invented an alter ego, also named Mike Levine, who puts his life on the line for the same causes. The enemies are brutal drug traffickers, devious insiders at the DEA, a Nazi-inspired female villain, and flocks of corrupt individuals. The good guys are fellow agents willing to bend rules and other men and women of honor and commitment. The catalyst that triggers Levine's desperate final act is a new drug, so powerful that it addicts users at once because it mimics orgasm. Levine's best friend, also an agent, is killed as he gets too close to the secret source. The violence is extreme, and the characters and action are over the top, yet the style and observations are skillful, realistic, and entertaining. The story is powered by vivid dialog. Highly recommended for libraries with a clientele that just can't get enough of shoot-'em-up justice. -?Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. Action, adventure, karate kicks, and just about every spy thriller clich‚ possible in a federal drug-buster's roman … clef debut fiction. Casting himself as the hero of his own novel, former DEA undercover agent Levine (called ``Lee-veen-ay'' by one of his thickly accented comrades) gives his all to avenge the torture murder of one Rene Villarino, his best friend and fellow agent. Along the way, he spends a fortune in airline tickets, jetting briskly around the world as he beguiles Manhattan mafiosi, inscrutable Israeli spies, scheming Nazis, and unctuous Arab bad guys along the path to the Paraguayan headquarters of Nadia Ricoard, a lethal female crime boss and the manufacturer of White Queen, a superpowerful cocaine that variously stimulates sexual orgasm, transforms its victims into murderous fiends, or kills them outright. Readers of Levine's memoirs (Deep Cover, 1990; The Big White Lie, 1993) will recognize some thinly fictionalized scenes and grow weary of his tendency to portray those who question his reckless, high-spending methods as paranoid, backbiting incompetents. When he isn't dodging bullets with his hotheaded, street-savvy former partner Tito Garza, or romancing a sexy Mossad spy, Levine's globe-hopping brings out a nail-biting xenophobia: Everywhere he goes he uncovers sleaze, foul odors, and criminal types who eagerly betray God and country for a few hundred million dollars. The story becomes almost comically preposterous as Levine breezily becomes a high-rolling Arab drug dealer, wins effortlessly at blackjack, fends off numerous femmes fatales, and survives a deadly plunge down a waterfall. And all of this, Levine insists, is presented as fiction only because his former bosses won't let him tell the whole truth. A bull's-eye for Rogue Warrior fans but not nearly as interesting, or entertaining, as Levine's nonfiction. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Reading Michael Levine's novel Triangle of Death is like riding on the back of a Tomahawk missile, sk