The carefully crafted projects and deep secrets of the Islamic Republic of Iran and their opponents in the Iran Nuclear Weapons Interdiction Project each bring their best and their worst to fruition in this the final book in the Trojan Horse in the Belly of the Beast Trilogy. Both sides are playing an extremely expensive and dangerous game with apocalypse or economic ruin as real consequences. Cyber war is waged with a vengeance, but Afsoon and Gideon hold strategic advantages. The question is whether or not their elaborate plan will succeed in time to prevent the impending holocaust. The answer to that existential reality will depend upon whether or not Afsoon can survive.

In Secrets, Dr. Sybil Norcroft feels as if she has gotten in over her head in a welter of secrets and conflicts. She undergoes a lie detector test, gets a major national award, and gets inveigled into a secret association with the CIA, all in a dizzyingly brief period of time. She used to think her career as a practicing neurosurgeon was serious; but, after she is vetted for her CIA position, she gains a new appreciation for “serious”. The director asks her, “After you are actively engaged in Company work, failing the lie detector test may mean a Company trial and swift and sure justice—the least noxious being dismissal. Any questions about the seriousness of that kind of justice?” Sybil felt chilly after completing that line of questioning. Her first assignment is to hack into the Russian president's computer system. The second assignment is to kill a man. What on earth has this nice lady from California gotten herself into?

Sybil Norcroft, M.D., Ph.D, F.A.C.S. leaves California under a cloud. She has been found innocent of a murder charge there but cannot be certain that she will succeed in her new profession as a Wolf News Medical Consultant. The health news story of the century falls into her lap, and the novice commentator runs with the story of weaponized Marburg virus, murdered pygmy slaves, and a world-wide manhunt for the perpetrators. Sybil succeeds beyond anyone's prediction, gains a new daughter in the Congo, and a host of serious friends and enemies who will be part of the rest of her life. She becomes a media darling and an accidental CIA operative. Sybil has to learn like never before how to keep secrets in the new and uncharted country where she now lives.

This is the first book in the trilogy, The Trojan Horse in the Belly of the Beast, by Carl Douglass. The two young mental giants who dominate this trilogy could not have come from more different backgrounds if they had been born on separate planets. Though they come from the ends of the earth, the similarities between the two geniuses—math prodigies—are striking and of serious import to the deputy director of the defense intelligence agency of the United States. His task is to undermine and to interdict the secret Iranian project to build nuclear weapons of mass destruction--Project Jahannam Adur [Hell's Fire]. The effort to subvert the planned Iranian holocaust will eventually take more than a decade and a terrible amount of sacrifice, but it could avert a war with the potential to wreak more havoc and loss that WW I and II combined.

The Mysterious Alexandra Tarasova-Yusupov is historical fiction about the glory years and the end of Tzarist Russia, and the time when Australia came into its own. It is a tale of swashbuckling heroes, ferocious pirates, and ruthless business tai-pans. The book chronicles the life of a woman who could outcompete them all, but could not conquer her own demons. Alexandra was at once lovable, beguiling, reasonable, and admirable, but also despicable, disenchanting, capricious, and—at times—deplorable. She was always mysterious.

Sybil makes a serious mistake. Everyone who knows her or of her is aware that she and Attorney Paul Bel Geddes have locked horns for a decade, and each regard the other as the nemesis. Sybil's error is to get angry, then loud and demeaning, of Paul in a very public black tie New Year's Eve gathering after having received yet one more intent to sue 90 day letter" from the man. Her billionaire husband tries to shush her, but she all but shouted, "Don't patronize me, Charles. That bottom feeder has gone too far. Somebody needs to do something about him.""

This is the eighth book in the Sybil series and may prove to be one of the most upsetting. She is a reasonable government official trying to cope with an unreasonable world ruled by narcissistic sociopathic populists. The worst of the bunch is the Prime Minister of the UK--Brexit Style. She becomes embroiled in spy v. spy, navy v. navy, and ally v. ally in the most touchy, confusing , and changeable adventure of her action-packed career. It is exhausting and anxiety provoking for her and for the president who is ill.