Kaleidoscope

For the Kingstons, there is no refuge from the past. No line between family and consequence, no border between legacy and blood. From Michael Frost Beckner, creator of Spy Game, the Robert Redford/Brad Pitt spy thriller classic, comes Kaleidoscope. Kaleidoscope is a novel of espionage, family, and American power. It follows three generations of the Kingstons as their private lives become inseparable from the intelligence state they serve. No one in the family is left untouched. Spouses, lovers, children. Some innocent. Some not. All victim to the covert project that has shaped this CIA family for decades. First published in six stages and revised, Kaleidoscope appears here as a single unified novel. There are other families, neither happy nor mindfully sad; sanctioned to deception, these families kindle their lives with the flint of authorized deceit. Relentlessly. Equally. And to completion. With the whole of what they should repent classified and unobservable, they are unrepentant. Unredeemed. The Kingstons of Foxtail Farm are such a family. "An utterly distinctive voice in spy fiction. Nobody captures the complexity of personal relationships, foreign affairs, and the heartbreak of espionage quite like Beckner." - I.S. Berry, Edgar Award winner, The Peacock and the Sparrow, former CIA clandestine officer Duty hardens into doctrine; secrecy becomes a way of life. Love, faith, and moral obligation are tested where truth is never clean and justice cannot survive the institution meant to protect it. When Michael Kingston vanishes in Turkey, everything the family has managed, concealed, and survived begins to turn. The crisis falls to his sister Lynn, a CIA headquarters officer already at war with grief, duty, and drink. Through her, the structure that has governed the Kingstons' world begins to come undone. Behind that crisis moves Kolya Yurenev, the Russian spymaster at once rival, mirror, flame, and darkness. "Michael Frost Beckner captures the essence of spies-the cat-and-mouse choreography of espionage as it is lived, not imagined." - Tony Mendez, CIA Trailblazer and former Chief of Disguise, and Jonna Mendez, former CIA Chief of Disguise Since the twentieth century, energy has defined power. Beneath Langley's surface, Silas Kingston's black project KALEIDOSCOPE manipulates global fuel dominance. Older than the Agency itself, it shadows every operation, and for three generations the Kingstons have paid for serving it in loyalty, future, and self. The novel moves the way its title suggests. Scenes turn, realign across decades as memory and consequence collide: slavery, power, original sin; children reared on Arthurian fairytales whose ideals of justice, love, and sacrifice become both armor and wound, and the voices of the past press steadily into the present. A saga of espionage, legacy, and the cost of love without truth, Kaleidoscope joins literary ambition to the velocity of the intelligence novel. "Michael Frost Beckner is the rarest of spy novelists-a beautiful and compelling writer with a mastery of tradecraft and a deep understanding of how espionage really works." - Joe Weisberg, creator of The Americans

"Michael Frost Beckner is the rarest of spy novelists, a beautiful and compelling writer who also has a mastery of tradecraft and a deep understanding of how espionage really works." Joe Weisberg, former CIA Officer and Emmy winning creator of The Americans"Tony Mendez and I have been fans of Michael Beckner's work for many years - from The Agency, through Spy Game and his trilogy of Spy Game books. He captures the essence of spies and the cat and mouse choreography of espionage." Jonna Mendez, former CIA Chief of Disguise"[Beckner] evoke[s]...the moral ambiguities of John le Carré, the technical precision of Tom Clancy, and the violent impact of Robert Ludlum." US Review of Books After a degree in Novel Writing from University of Southern California under PEN/Faulkner winner T.C. Boyle, Michael Frost Beckner began a Hollywood career as writing assistant to Academy Award winner Barry Levinson on "Good Morning, Vietnam" and "Rain Man". In 1989, Michael Frost Beckner's script for "Sniper" launched a military-thriller franchise now in production on its ninth sequel. Three consecutive record-breaking spec script sales and three films later, Tony Scott directed Beckner's original screenplay "Spy Game." An international blockbuster that paired Robert Redford and Brad Pitt as CIA partners and rivals, it is now a classic in the espionage genre. Branching into television with his CIA-based drama "The Agency" for CBS, Beckner's pilot predicted Osama bin Laden's terror attack and the War on Terror four months before 9/11. In that series alone, Beckner would go on to predictively dramatize three more international terror events. Having penned close to 100 original screenplays, adaptations, and teleplays in the employ of every major film studio, television network, and cable outlet, he is a Hollywood institution. As a commentator on American espionage, Beckner has appeared on CNN, Fox News, CBS News, TF1 in France, and as a featured guest of Bill Maher on HBO. Now, in conjunction with the twentieth anniversary of "Spy Game," Beckner returns to the world of Nathan Muir and Tom Bishop with the release of his trilogy of Spy Game novels: "Muir's Gambit," "Bishop's Endgame," and "Aiken in Check."He makes his home with his family in the Red Rock foothills of Las Vegas, Nevada