Killing Ché: A Novel

Chuck Pfarrer’s acclaimed Warrior Soul has been called one of the finest memoirs of modern Special Operations Forces. Now the decorated Navy SEAL makes his dazzling fiction debut with this gutsy, riveting thriller about the action-packed hunt for history’s most infamous rebel insurgent: Che Guevara.

The year is 1967. Paul Hoyle, a CIA paramilitary officer, has resigned from the agency an incident in Laos that left one man dead and Hoyle’s face scarred by gunshot. But Hoyle is soon drawn back into the agency’s fold, finding himself a “fallen angel,” an independent contractor the U.S. secretly sends to global hot spots.

Bolivia, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is a nation ripe for Communist infiltration and revolution. So the stage is set for a duel between world ideologies, with players from Washington to Moscow to Havana. After a Bolivian army unit is disastrously ambushed, Hoyle is dispatched to South America by a CIA concerned that another Vietnam may be in the works. With Cuban-sponsored guerrillas afoot and a corrupt Bolivian military opposing them, Hoyle finds the jungle a treacherous place where honor and morality are surrendered to the basic business of survival.

Though Che Guevara, the charismatic revolutionary who helped Castro take hold in Cuba, is believed to have been killed in the Congo–or executed by Fidel himself–a rucksack recovered after a deadly gunfight suggests that the Marxist rebel may be heading up this new, highly effective insurgency.

World-weary Hoyle draws ever nearer to the passionate revolutionary, as a struggle between worldviews is fought with automatic weapons in steamy jungles, veiled threats in government offices, and even exchanged secrets in hotel bedrooms–for at the center of this intense cat-and-mouse game are two captivating women who may hold the keys to these men’s destinies. Tania Vünke is Guevara’s crucial undercover operative and occasional lover, a conflicted woman with secrets entrusted to her by Guevara himself. And beautiful Maria Agular is the elegant mistress of the Bolivian minister of information, a tormented soul whom Hoyle dares to trust with both information and his heart.

Terrorism expert Chuck Pfarrer packs this electrifying plot with insider knowledge of intelligence tradecraft. Populated with powerfully drawn characters, Killing Che is a stunning re-creation of a conflict that sealed the fate of one of the twentieth century’s most controversial and complex political figures–a man whose renown continues to grow decades after his violent end.

"In this ambitious, meticulous thriller, Pfarrer's first novel, set in 1967, CIA officer Paul Hoyle travels to Bolivia to participate in an operation to eliminate the leftist revolutionary Che Guevara. As Hoyle descends deeper and deeper into a web of suspect alliances and unsavory types, he begins to have doubts about his mission. His admiration for Guevara is one problem. Another comes in the form of a romance with Maria Agular, who works for a government ministry. Unfortunately, this romance never rises above clich ('not only did they delight in making love, they enjoyed each other's company'). Far more convincing is Guevara's relationship with his lover 'Tania' (Heidi Tamara Vnke). Pfarrer, an ex-Navy Seal and author of the memoir Warrior Soul, is unwilling or unable to give the iconic figure of Guevara a personal life that feels lived in or comfortable. Still, the action moves forward at a brisk pace, and the research never overwhelms the reader. If the novel falters somewhat in the last pages, it's precisely because of the failure to fully imagine Guevara the private individual." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Sent to Bolivia in 1967 with a team of Green Berets to eliminate a threatened communist insurgency and its leader, Ernesto Che Guevara, CIA agent Paul Hoyle becomes involved with an unlikely ally, an illegal KGB operative pursuing a deadly Soviet agenda, that puts Hoyle on a collision course with the murder of Che Guevara. By the author of Warrior Soul. A first novel. 15,000 first printing.

Chuck Pfarrer is the author of Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL. A counterterrorism consultant to the U.S. and foreign governments, he is also a screenwriter whose credits include The Jackal, Darkman, Red Planet, Hard Target, Virus, and Navy SEALs. He lives in Michigan.