Chasing Shadows
A Special Agent's Lifelong Hunt to Bring a Cold War Assassin to Justice
Published by Macmillan.
On a warm Saturday night in July 1973 in Bethesda, Maryland, a gunman stepped out from behind a tree and fired five point-blank shots into Joe Alon, an unassuming Israeli Air Force pilot and family man. Alon's sixteen-year-old neighbor, Fred Burton, was deeply shocked by this crime that rocked his sleepy suburban neighborhood.
As it turned out, Alon wasn't just a pilot—he was a high-ranking military official and with intelligence ties. The assassin was never found and the case was closed. In 2007, Fred Burton—who had since become a State Department counterterrorism special agent—reopened the case.
Here, in Chasing Shadows, Burton spins a gripping tale of the secret agents, double dealings, terrorists and heroes he encounters he chases leads around the globe in an effort to solve this decades-old murder. From swirling dogfights over Egypt and Hanoi to gun battles on the streets of Beirut, this action-packed thriller looks into the dark heart of the Cold War to show how power is used, misused, and sold to the most convenient bidder.
“This investigation dealt Burton as many twists and turns as in any five detective thrillers... . As a result of Burton’s efforts, resolution came to the case at long last.”