Nothing quite equals lying in the summer sun—having already paid your dues to the multinational corporations for exorbitantly priced gasoline, ridiculously priced motels and, if things continue as they have, beach sand itself that costs money—and reading a good book about one man alone fighting the insidious system.

So consider this man, Nicholai Alexandrovitch Hel, hero of [Shibumi], as he confronts for the first time the hatchet man of the megalomaniacal—and successfully so—Mother Company. (Mother's man is named Jack O. Diamond, Trevanian never having been terribly subtle with names.)

Diamond is dispatched to stop Hel from using his unique prowess to halt the PLO from skyjacking a Concorde. As distasteful as the Mother Company (a consortium of the multinational oil interests) may find the Arab terrorists, they must be coddled to keep the Arab petro-states happy….

Though Hel is the central figure in a...