Nicolas Freeling: Gadget (USA 2023)

From the Publisher:
From an Edgar award winner, this thriller about a physicist forced to make an A-bomb is "a splendid account of the excesses of science and bureaucracy" (The New York Times).

An American physicist working in Hamburg, Jim Hawkins is on his way home from his job at a German nuclear institute when he is rammed off the road and abducted by terrorists. Drugged and taken to a secret location, he wakes to find himself being held hostage alongside his terrified wife and daughters. With nothing else to do but comply with the terrorists' demands, Jim begins to build a weapon powerful enough to destroy the world. The target: a conference in Lake Geneva, where heads of state are meeting, even as news of his abduction has reached the ears of the American president, only to be dismissed as rumor. Will anyone be able to convince the world leaders of the threat in time?

Nicolas Freeling: Gadget. Early Bird Boodk / Open Road Media, ISBN: 9781504090247 (December, 2023), 3747 KB (346 p.), $14.99.

Nicolas Freeling: Gadget (2001)

From the Publisher:
Nicolas Freeling, a master of crime writing, is teamed here with a distinguished American physicist in this factual account of an unspeakable event that could so easily happen. Applying his engrossing insights into psychological observation, Freeling presents a chilling portrayal of the nuclear age which will leave you free from many a good night's sleep.

Nicolas Freeling: Gadget. House of Stratus, ISBN: 1842328700 (July, 2001), 272 p., £6.99, $11.50.

Nicolas Freeling: Gadget (1979)

From the Publisher:
A "gadget" is physicist's jargon for a nuclear device, a playful and harmless word for what we would call a nuclear bomb. Jim Hawkins, a minor physicist working in Hamburg, is kidnapped by terrorists who have collected enough fissionable material to make a big bang. To encourage Hawkins's cooperation they have also taken his wife and children. Ultra-civilized living conditions and gourmet food did not make captivity too unbearable, and Hawkins had to admit that the technical challenge was fascinating.

"Brilliant indeed" -- Kirkus Review

Cover design by Robert Hollingsworth

Nicolas Freeling: Gadget. Penguin, ISBN: 0140048987 (August, 1979), 244 p., 80p., $1.95.

Nicolas Freeling: Gadget (USA 1977)

From the Publisher:
JIM HAWKINS came off shift from the nuclear research station DESY at 4:00 a.m. and headed his VW towards the dark suburbs of Hamburg. A peculiar traffic incident was his last memory before waking to champagne in an elegant country villa tucked away in the hills of the Black Forest. As Jim regained consciousness, a suave and elegant Herr Doktor explained that Jim was being "borrowed" by a sophisticated terrorist organization. Only in exchange for his nuclear expertise would the Doctor's organization return Jim, his wife Leora, and their daughters to freedom.

Resigned to his imprisonment and withdrawn from his nearly hysterical wife, Jim gradually sets aside his moral scruples and applies his energies to construction of a "gadget" -- a practical military weapon built principally on the basis of technical information available to the public and raw material taken in small amounts from ineffectually controlled government stockpiles. Chocolate brown bare uranium in quantities great enough to reach "critical mass" accumulate among calculators, remote control devices, and ballistics equipment in Jim's converted garage laboratory. The gadget, neither playful nor imaginary, takes on crucially realistic proportions.

Recognizing her frenzied husband has gone beyond her reach, Leora resolves to escape with her daughters. Her frantic night descent down mountain paths and her hair-raising story of kidnap and impending nuclear holocaust all meet with a lethargic and condescending officialdom... until one policeman persists in following a lead all others had failed to perceive.

NICOLAS FREELING, author of sixteen novels, established his reputation as a mystery writer with his Inspector Van der Valk series. He was born in London in 1927, spent his childhood in France and before taking up writing worked for many years as a chef in Europe. Mr. Freeling and his family are currently living in Strasbourg.

Drawing by MARKIEL: Paris 1975
Jacket illustration by FRANK RILEY

Nicolas Freeling: Gadget. Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, ISBN: 0698108108 (November, 1977), 243 p., $8.95.