Even when he is not at his best, Steve Martini ranks among the top authors of legal thrillers with his richly interesting characters, masterful plots and beautiful writing.

For those reasons, his new one is a compelling and enjoyable read despite some flawed pacing and two unbelievable twists in a plot that takes readers from San Diego to Colombia to Costa Rica to Mexico and back.

In the process, it rekindles the Cold War nuclear terrors of baby boomers who endured practice air raids by hiding under their grammar-school desks.

Back as protagonist for the 11th time in Martini's 14 books is San Diego defense attorney Paul Madriani, who represents Costa Rican beauty Katia Solaz in a double-murder case. Emerson Pike, the major victim -- his cook also gets killed -- is a former CIA agent who brings Katia to Southern California.

Pike tried to use her to track down her grandfather, former Soviet soldier and nuclear bomb technician Yakov Nitikin, who has been "protecting" an atomic bomb since the days of the Cuban missile crisis.

At present, though, he's in Colombia under the "protection" of a Mideast terrorist who is planning a missile crisis of his own.

The pacing problems come in the sections of the book dealing with Nitikin in Colombia with his nuclear weapon. Martini did lots of research on the weaponry, perhaps too much, for the detail slows his usual lively prose. The pace of those sections speed up as the book nears its climax.

And the climax is terrifically exciting, more than exciting enough to make one forgive the legal stupidity and appreciate the lessons about decades-old nuclear weaponry.

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