This debut thriller has all the usual elements of a page-turning read: a dastardly villain, a terrible plot that threatens the world and a lone hero of extraordinary martial abilities -- the only person who understands the threat and bucks the system to restore order. Urszenyi's twist is that Alex Martel, FBI super-agent, is Alexandra Martel, rather than the typical square-jawed male warrior protagonist. She's a former combat medic, a crack shot and decorated Army Special Ops veteran. She's more than ready for the action that unfolds at top speed following a familiar formula that still entertains.

While assigned to Interpol and living in Brussels, Martel learns one of her few close friends, a British MI5 officer, has died under suspicious circumstances. Puzzlingly, she receives her friend's personal effects, and slowly discerns that what looks like a farewell letter is actually a veiled reference to a Russian plot to seize a nuclear weapon from a U.S. airbase in Turkey.

Eye-rolls and patronizing dismissals greet her concerns until the bomb is actually stolen, and the action shifts into hyperkinetic speed. Pursuing the stolen warhead, Martel and a CIA colleague survive a harrowing attack by a US Air Force jet, the first of some gripping action sequences, some of which are so cinematic readers can already imagine the movie trailer.

The FBI recalls her to Washington to thwart the attack on the United States it's sure is coming, but there's a time to follow orders, and a time to defy them. After further decoding and analysis, Martel figures out the stolen nuke's target, a global "Peace Summit" in central Paris. Viktor Gerasimov, the rogue Russian intelligence officer behind the plot, has aspirations beyond destabilizing the West, and is more than willing to detonate the bomb with most of the world's heads of state gathered in the City of Light and fill the expected leadership void in Russia.

With her superiors at Interpol, the FBI and the rest of the US intelligence establishment heaping scorn on her theory as she fits the pieces of her friend's puzzle together, Martel learns her late friend's darkest secret and stops her flight on the runway to speed back to the Catacombs of Paris, where the nuke is ready to blow.

As Martel plunges underground, the countdown to detonation sets a pulse-pounding pace, and her discovery of another crucial betrayal lets Urszenyi ratchet up the tension to the point readers may find themselves turning pages faster to reach the explosive conclusion.

Perfect Shot is the first in a planned series, and thriller fans will want to keep track of Alex Martel.

Perfect Shot | Steve Urszenyi | Minotaur |368 pp.| $28