win military conflicts, but they provided an endless stream of peacetime data to agencies like the CIA, NSA, and Department of Defense, helping them thwart terrorism, locate crimes against the environment, and give policy-makers the data needed to make informed decisions on an enormous array of topics. NRO technologies not only helped the U.S. The Scarlet Flush, originally published in 1963, is hands down one of my favorite Carter Brown books and well worth tracking down.In total secrecy, the NRO built and maintained an astonishing arsenal of cutting-edge spy technologies-worldwide electronic intercepts, spy satellites, silent embedded relay chips in telecomm products, even a global naval-recon network known as Classic Wizarda secret web of 1456 hydrophones mounted on seafloors around the world, capable of monitoring ship movement anywhere on the globe. There's even a crafty twist involving Kluger's wife I didn't see coming. While the criminal element itself plays out in page turning anticipation. Every woman Farrell encounters (bar one, I should mention) is gorgeous and willing to drop their inhibitions as quickly as they are to drop love laced one liners. The Scarlet Flush is cheesy and entertaining. Sure, he just happens to 'look' like Kluger, but can he pull of 'being' Kluger in order to find where the hidden diamonds have been stashed all these years? The kicker - she's also got a proposal that'll not only clear Mikes' debt but leave him twenty thousand dollars richer.Īll Mike has to do is impersonate Mike Kluger, a jewel thief who is due to return home to a lovely and lonely wife after seven years in prison.

Soon he's hustled into a back office by a couple of heavies thinking he's about to get a beating, only to be confronted by a dame to kill for a curvy blonde with a heart-shaped face and a body that draws the eye in all the right places.

Putting all he has on 0 at the roulette wheel in a last chance high risk, high reward stake he nails the risk but not the reward.

Down on his luck and in debt to the house for over ten thousand dollars, gambler Mike Farrell finds himself staring at a bottomless pit one that sucks the cash and life right out of him.

The Scarlet Flush by Carter Brown