LAZARIADA THRILLS

BY

Valentin Fortunov



Valentin Fortunov is really a new voice in the genre. He integrates successfully the best traditions of British and American thriller, European perspective and true literary talent. His thrillers have human face, social commitment and memorable characters in an extraordinary fast pace and dramatical conflicts. His international action moving characters – Lazar, Ben and Martha appear in all his thrillers lending them the charm of a serial.

VALENTIN FORTUNOV

A journalistic club at a five stars hotel in Sofia is blown to heaven, car-bomb is parked in front of the Israeli Embassy, and the investigating team of the anti-terrorist is under rude political pressure.

The American president and the world media flatly indicate "Al-Qaeda" as suspect, but the rebellious chief of the anti-terrorists Lazar thinks otherwise. And when special agent Ben Stanton, chief of the Sofia FBI branch and the resident of the Israeli Military Intelligence AMAN on the Balkans, captain Martha Freidman back him up, an unthinkable Davids' "Interpol" was born. Do they have the courage to stand against the Goliaths? May be. But someone is trying to kill Martha, the death stalks Ben nearby the American military camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, Lazar's beautiful daughter slowly fades in a Cardiology Clinic.

And this is just the beginning ...

... The real nightmare begins when colonel Igor Losev of the Russian GRU advises Lazar about deadly cargo carried on a nameless ship to Burgas. And from that time on they've got only 24 hours and not a second more ...


The thriller Bastet is based on actual events. A secret archeological expedition was sent in the Bulgarian part of Strandzha mountain in the early eighties of the twentieth century after confidential meeting between Bulgarian top political person and MI6 man. All of a sudden the excavations were stopped and a state’s top secret ban over the region was put. The ban is still in force. Locals talk under one’s breath that Egyptian goddess Bastet’s necropolis and extraterrestrial artefacts were found ...


   VALENTIN FORTUNOV

Sensational archeological find besides the Pyramid of Cheops... An Egyptian student keeps the key to a mysterious message of goddess Bastet. Everyone that comes in touch with the find dies. The New York agency team, including the former cops Ben, Lazar and Martha undertakes to investigating. After betrayals, chases throughout half the Europe the Davids’ team is abandoned by everybody or almost... Then, in the Strandzha mountain recesses, under Gradishte peak, in the Southeastern end of the Balkans, everyone of them have to make his personal choice. Bastet’s enigma is deadly but Lazar and Co are even more inflexible and stubborn than ever!

   VALENTIN FORTUNOV

Istanbul, the capital city of several empires, is doomed. Being inauspiciously built over the West end of the North Anatolian fault, the horrified city waits for the next, the last earthquake that will dump it into the Earth's infernal throat open to the Tartarus. It's time of ideas, sane and insane for the salvation of the millions in Istanbul, but a plan has already been started in full secrecy, a plan that might be leading to destruction of the Balkans. Top secret soviet Mercury-18 Project, the tectonic bomb, developed still in the eighties in Azeri's scientific lab is out of control and yet somebody promotes it…

The good news is the international detectives' super gang, Lazar and the company are there and the bad one is – they have fallen by the ears, distrust each other not without reason as it seems. Would they cope with the salvation of Istanbul, the Balkans and even the Caucasus? Before they try it at all, they do have to stop looking at each other with distrust and suspicion and that would probably be even the more difficult task!

BIO


Valentin Fortunov is Bulgarian and lives in Burgas on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria.

As a journalist he watched and reported on the collapse of the Communist regime in Bulgaria. He also conducted and published a famous and unprecedented book from the last Bulgarian Communist president, Todor Zhivkov, shortly after his overthrow.

In 1990 he founded Bulgaria’s first private publishing company (Dolphin Press) and translated and published the works of many Western writers including John le Carré, Jeffrey Archer, Rex Stout, Dominick Dun, Harold Robbins and others. He also published a wide range of business books (translated from English) and introduced direct marketing to post-Communist Bulgaria. He is General Editor of Dolphin’s Dictionaries and Encyclopaedias series including over 30 hardcover volumes in all aspects of business and commercial law. Trud Publishing House releases in September 2008 the new World Business Encyclopaedia, grand volume, whose General Editor is Valentin Fortunov. He published under the penname Maximillian Strugatzky (co-authoring with Artemida Senkevich) the first book of the multivolume International History of the Serial Killers – American Killers.

Besides his various intellectual activity and wide interests and capacity Valentin Fortunov is most popular with his thrillers – Vox Dei and Bastet and his classical social mystery A Mystery at Christmas Time.

At the present he is working to finish his third thriller The Devil’s Aftershave.

Valentin Fortunov has MA degree from Sofia University St. Climent Ohridski. Fluent in English and Russian.