Category Archives: political thriller

Review: Fool’s Republic by Gordon W. Dale

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As Fool’s Republic opens Simon Wylie is in an institution which is never named but is depicted as some variation on a military prison of the Guantanamo Bay variety. His senses are deprived via the use of an all white environment (clothes, walls, floors, ceiling etc) and constant light. His endless monotony is only interrupted by occasional instances of interrogation or torture. We’re not told why he has been incarcerated and Wylie’s constant request is to know what he is charged with and to be provided legal representation and a trial. We learn, via a non-linear series of flashbacks, about Wylie’s life and, eventually, what led to his incarceration.

The premise of this book intrigued me and on reading it did live up to most of that promise, offering a more insightful thriller than average. I was particularly impressed that Dale did not sensationalise the torture aspects of the narrative nor offer unrealistically simplistic solutions to Wylie’s situation or the broader issues being explored. It was all the more powerful for understating these elements and even ignoring the temptation for a flashy, Hollywood-style ending.

I must admit though I struggled with the choice of a first person narrative for the story. When an entire tale has to be carried by a single character (we only get the smallest glimpses of people from Wylie’s life) that character has to be something pretty special and, for me anyway, Simon Wylie grew less interesting as the book progressed. He is depicted as a misunderstood genius of the type who can’t (or won’t) fit into the rigid social structures that other people want him to and so ends up in some bad places: reform school, homeless etc. The people he encounters are, according to him, either horrible or in need of his peculiar brand of benevolence (there really didn’t seem to be any middle ground). In the end I don’t know that he was an unreliable narrator though I spent a good 99% of the novel believing him to be one and consequently grew sceptical of his interpretation of the events of his life. I’d like to have read some kind of input (letters perhaps) from other characters directly rather than receiving all the information about their motivations and behaviour via Simon’s somewhat self-serving filter.

The fact I didn’t find Simon particularly credible or likeable also meant I had to work a little harder to care about his particular predicament, though I am entirely in agreement with the notion that such institutions and the processes that send people to them are an abhorrent development of contemporary society. But there were times when I’d have cheerfully locked Simon away myself purely for being a whining, ungrateful SOB.

That aside though this is a very readable book and it is always refreshing to see important subjects being tackled by fiction (especially those subjects which the mainstream media seems to ignore entirely).  Fool’s Republic provides a plausible and disturbing depiction of what is undoubtedly going on behind closed doors, with the full consent of our governments, to some unknown individual somewhere in the world right now.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 3/5
Author website http://www.gordonwdale.com/
Publisher North Atlantic Books [2011]
ISBN 9781556439728
Length 239 pages
Format paperback
Book Series standalone
Source Provided by the publisher for honest review

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Review: The Ghost by Robert Harris

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6

I picked this book up second hand ages ago but haven’t been tempted to pluck it from my TBR shelves until the Good Reads Aussie Readers Summer Challenge required me to read a book that has been made into a movie.

This aptly titled tells the tale of a professional ghostwriter who is asked to complete the memoir of a fictional ex-British Prime Minister, Adam Lang (having an uncanny resemblance to Tony Blair). The project was begun by a former aide of Lang’s who apparently committed suicide and there is now a rush to get the book finished. After agreeing to take the job our un-named narrator heads to Martha’s Vineyard in the US where Lang and his wife are staying but before he can get much work done Lang, increasingly unpopular at home, is accused by one of his former Ministers of a heinous act committed during the ‘war on terror’ and the UN’s International Criminal Court looks set to charge him with war crimes. When the ghostwriter learns some of the secrets that his predecessor had uncovered his own life comes under threat.

Unfortunately this is a book with a premise that’s far more intriguing in the imagination than in execution. Harris’ historical thrillers are packed with atmosphere, interesting characters and genuine thrills but here not much is left after you spend some time trying to work out which characteristics of his former friends the Blairs he has incorporated into the ‘fictional’ couple and which he’s made up (and really there’s a limit to how interesting that activity is).

I suspect this is not what the author intended but I found the parts of the story that dealt with the craft of ghostwriting and the behind the scenes insights into big publishing far more interesting than the central plot concerning the Langs, their secrets and their acceptance (or otherwise) of their loss of power and influence. That part was plain dull. If you’ve ever had a big argument with a good friend and dashed off a long, rant-y email or letter immediately after the argument you’ll have some idea what this story is like. It’s full of that spiteful venom we humans tend to spew out when we’re hurt and it would have benefited from sitting in a drawer for a few years and being dusted off again when the worst of Harris’ hurt had faded. Perhaps then he would have been able to weave a few genuine thrills into a story that in its current form is just a long diatribe about how wrong it was for the UK to follow the US into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and what a bastard he thinks Blair was for being at the front of the charge. Whether I agree with Harris or not on this point is irrelevant, this is supposed to be a work of fiction not an op-ed piece for a major newspaper. As a work of fiction it is poorly constructed, lacks suspense, has a highly unbelievable (not to mention cringe-inducing) sex scene and an ending that made me giggle (at it, not with it).

Within the book the un-named ghostwriter shares a theory about how all good books are different but all bad books are the same: they don’t pass what he calls ‘the seaplane test’ which is named after a book in which someone landed their seaplane on the Thames as a means of getting to work at which point nothing else in the book rang true. I’m not sure if it’s ironic or just sad that this book itself fails to pass its own test for ringing true. It’s page-turning enough and there’s a nice undercurrent of humour but there’s just not enough substance to the characterisations and set pieces to be genuinely engaging.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 2.5/5
Publisher Hutchinson [2007]
ISBN 9780091796259
Length 310 pages
Format trade paperback
Source I bought it second hand

Review: Redback by Lindy Cameron

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I think I could have saved myself some trouble for the Global Reading Challenge and just read this one book from my TBR, though Antarctica is about the only place on earth it doesn’t visit.

Political thrillers which loosely base their settings and characters on real world players run the risk of having the work become outdated quickly but Redback reads like it could just as easily have been ripped from today’s news headlines (and conspiracy websites) as those of four years ago. It is a romp of a tale that I can’t seem to summarise intelligently. It involves a team of ex-soldiers and other specialists who retrieve hostages, kidnap victims and hapless travellers from the trouble spots they find themselves in. The team of Australians (and the odd Canadian), known as Redback, have to perform several rescues throughout the novel while at the same time a world-wide terrorism plot is being played out. Thanks to the work of an American journalist researching the computer games that governments develop as recruiting tools it becomes obvious to Redback and others that the terrorist activity is being orchestrated, or at least plotted, via versions of a game which are far more sinister than the original programmers envisioned.

Earlier this year, after being put to sleep by half of a fairly un-thrilling thriller, I thought at length about what I like in a thriller and Redback ticks virtually all of the boxes I came up with at the time. The plot is terrifically fast, being played out in short chapters set in various exotic locations. We move from a Pacific Island where a group of hostages has to be rescued by Redback to France and Texas and Pakistan and a half-dozen more places besides at quite a breakneck speed but I didn’t once feel as though it was all going too fast and Cameron is a master at providing just the right amount of exposition and background to hold the many threads together. There’s also a good mixture of the big events themselves, exploding trains and the like, and the impact of those events on the families of those killed and the government players who feel impotent at not being in control. In this thriller at least there are human consequences of killing, even if it’s one of the good guys doing the killing.

The Redback team is headed by the woman who came closest to being accepted to the Australian Army’s SAS unit, Bryn Gideon. She is highly physically and intellectually capable for the job at hand but also has a sense of humour which means, for me at least, that she is not as annoying as so many thriller heroes can be. In fact the whole Redback team is full of capable, funny people and the banter between them all is a highlight of the novel and picks up beautifully on some truly Australian characteristics. Other characters of interest are Jana Rossi, one of the original hostages rescued at the beginning of the book who goes on to maintain her relationship with the team and the American journalist Scott Dreher who becomes involved due to his investigations into computer games.

Aside from the overt humour in the book there is additional fun for readers in pondering which real-world political players some of the characters are based on. You don’t have to be a super politics junky to spot some traits of a recent US President for example and Aussies will have fun too picking out which players might be modelled on which members of the former Howard government. There are even some nods to issues which continue to this day, such as Australia’s absurd obsession with the notion that smart, rich terrorists would be entering the country via leaky boats when it’s far easier for them to fly in virtually unchallenged.

It’s not until you read a thriller that isn’t populated by American ex-soldiers and/or English spies saving the world that you realise how much of this genre is populated by those voices. It’s a nice change to see this kind of story played out by people with a different world-view. The fact that it is superbly plotted, has tremendously funny dialogue and engaging characters is icing on the cake. All I need now is the sequel.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Redback has also been reviewed at Aust Crime Fiction

Lindy Cameron has been writing Australian crime fiction for years and has turned her hand to one of my favourite amateur sleuth novels (Golden Relic which I first encountered when it was published to coincide with an international museum curator’s convention being held here some years ago) and a private detective series as well as this thriller. She has also written true crime. Redback was re-released earlier this year by Cameron’s own new Australian genre publisher Clan Destine Press.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 4/5
Publisher Mira Books [2007]
ISBN 9781741165722
Length 402 pages
Format trade paperback
Source I bought it

Review: Affairs of State by Dominique Manotti

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Affairs of State is a combination political thriller and police procedural set in France in the 1980′s. At its core the novel is the story of Francois Bornand, a friend and advisor to President Mitterand and head of a special unit within the security services. He can, and does, get away with things that only powerful people can get away with and his nefarious schemes include the highly profitable arms trade and he doesn’t care much who he does business with. As the novel opens small things start to go awry in Bornand’s circle, including an accidental murder committed by one of his people. The victim of this crime ultimately comes to the attention of a low-ranked rookie police officer named Noria Ghozali who is dogged in her efforts to uncover the truth behind the murder while Bornand is equally determined not to lose his status and influence.

The theme that struck home from this novel it is that power is a dangerous thing. This is probably not news to anyone but it never hurts to be reminded just how easily some people (most?) will abuse their status and privilege given half the chance. They’ll also fight dirty, really dirty, to retain their power and influence once they have it. It would be quicker to write a list of the characters in this novel who didn’t display some form of corruption or immorality including theft, blackmail, mis-using government secrets, perpetrating violence against prostitutes and murder. The plain old vice crimes that virtually everyone participated in on a regular basis don’t seem worth mentioning when stacked up against their nastier counterparts.

And while I appreciated that this depiction was undoubtedly realistic the way this insidious corruption was portrayed lost me a little. My problem was that the book starts off with a bang and never changes its tone. Virtually from page one men (yes they are all men) are doing horrible and/or immoral things to each other, to women, to their government, to anyone and everyone. And they don’t stop until the very end. This style meant that for me, after the first few pages there wasn’t much suspense because the expectation was set up that every few pages a nasty chap would kill or betray someone. So when every few pages some nasty chap killed or betrayed someone I was hardly surprised. There was some tension in considering which chaps would be doing nasty deeds and which chaps (or ladies) would be getting killed or betrayed but this didn’t really compensate for genuine tension. In the last quarter of the book this did change a little as the investigation gathered momentum and there were glimmers of possible alternate outcomes to everyone getting killed or sold out by someone they’d once thought of as a friend, but I’d have enjoyed the book more if it had focussed more on Noria and her investigation rather than having almost all of the attention centred on a succession of morally bankrupt men.

Despite the fact I was numbed by the ‘shock and awe’ style of the book I was engaged enough to keep reading because the writing and translation are first rate. The story flows well, despite its complex political details which could have dragged but didn’t, and the writing is blunt in all the right places. It has also been a very long time since I read a book that packs in so much in a tick over 200 pages.  Although I had misgivings about the overall style of the book I would recommend it to those who enjoy thought-provoking political thrillers and I would certainly not let my misgivings put me off seeking out more of Manotti’s work.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I am in the minority reacting to the book as I have done, Affairs of State has been reviewed more favourably at Crime Scraps, Petrona and The Game’s Afoot.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 3/5
Translators Ros Schwartz and Amanda Hopkinson
Publisher Arcadia Books [this translation 2009, original edition 2001]
ISBN 9781906413491
Length 204 pages
Format paperback
Source I bought it