John Tanner lives with his wife and two children in a small town somewhere in New Jersey.  He manages the news department of a TV-company, and his house and swimming-pool form a nice antidote for the stress of his job.  Next weekend he'll have more than enough of that antidote since the Ostermans, long time friends, will be spending the weekend with them, and they have invited a few neighbours too. This has been a tradition for many years.

Small things annoy Tanner.  For some reason the police seems to be everywhere, and they sure give him the impression they're keeping an eye on him.  And then he's called to Washington with a lame excuse.  There he hears that the CIA is watching his house because of Omega, a shadowy Soviet plan.  And one of his friends that will be visiting next weekend, the Ostermans, the Tremaynes, or the Cardones, are part of that plan.  Tanner is manoevred into accepting to go on with the weekend and pretend everything is normal, to allow the CIA to find out which of the three is part of Omega, and capture them.

Needless to say paranoia starts to dominate Tanner's life.  Each of his friends seem to be hinting about Omega, each behaves suspiciously - or is Tanner's mind playing games with him?  Then all of a sudden one of the surveilling agents is found dead, murdered, in Tanner's backyard.  Now the safety of his family is in danger...

The story takes off a little slowly, but quickly lets the reader experience exactly what Tanner experiences: what the heck is going on?  Which information is correct?  Who can be trusted?  Tanner is just an ordinary human thrown into a not so ordinary situation, how would you react if you were in his shoes?  You'll find the suspense building up when he decides to stop undergoing the events and starts to act, even if he knows just as little as the reader about what exactly he's reacting against.  Leaving the reader in the same darkness as the main characters is not something that works all the time, but in this case it sure helps making a real page-turner of this book.

Very un-Ludlum-like this book is not very long, only 230 pages in my translation.  This makes that this book is condensed to its essential: a thriller that makes the reader want to know what happens.  True, the characters are not too deeply explored, true, the plot could be more fitting.  But that doesn't matter - what matters is that this book does exactly what it intends: take you at full speed towards a finale that has some surprises hidden.