Book excerpt: A vintage car rally in Northern Ireland--a three-day race over rough country roads through hostile territory where armed patrols shoot to kill. An American woman of a certain age, clever and independent, is along for the ride, co-driver and navigator to a charming narcissist who is also her son's best friend. She has known Ludo since he was a boy--knows, too, that their affair is forbidden ground. He is a sensualist, selfish but magnetic. Life, death, sex, politics--all are no more than entertainments to him. Dangers erupt. Police respond to a bomb threat. Rumors spread. One of the cars may be carrying explosives. Warnings come that a bridge is mined, a road booby-trapped. And a wild young British princess, driving incognito in a competing car, may be the target of terrorists. May be a terrorist herself. And tying uncontrolled rumor to barely repressed violence: the cynical manipulation of big money, willing to trade in anything--drugs, arms, nuclear fules, human lives. Moving as swiftly as the race it runs, No Brakes is a taut, erotic thriller in which speed, danger, and passion are players in a sinister game no one can win.