Book Corner: EMPIRE OF LIES by Andrew Klavan
Let me start by saying that thrillers and spy novels are not my genre. Usually, if a book does not have psychohistorians circumventing the downfall of the Galactic Empire, or Martians starting new orgy-based religions, or mind-reading space-spies gunning down evil alien dope-runners, it is not a book for me.
Because thrillers are not my genre, it is entirely possible that certain types of plot twists or tropes of the genre which are new to me, are old hat to old hands of the genre. At the risk of sounding like a newbie, nonetheless, I give two thumbs up to Andrew Klavan’s latest book EMPIRE OF LIES.
The premise is a simple one, and one which is old hat in the genre: perfectly ordinary joe pops down a rabbit hole and finds himself in a dark and dangerous wonderland, where he is not sure who is telling the truth, and who is an enemy. In this case average Joe had a degrading and rough youth, which he left behind him when he got religion and got married. The past catches up with him when an old girlfriend phones and needs his help: apparently her daughter is mixed up with some bad types, and there may be a murder involved.
What I liked about the book was not the plot, but the setting, and the main character. EMPIRE OF LIES ranges from the Midwest to the mean streets of New York, from academia to Hollywoodland. The book takes place in a world where political correctness has run amok, and where every excuse is made for the excesses of the Muslim religion, and every slander made against the Christian religion. Whether this world is our own, I leave as an exercise for the reader to determine.
The main character, named Jason Harrow, won my heart, because he is a family man who has to step away from his comfortable life, and deal with some of the consequences of a past he’d rather leave behind. And his sins are a lot like my own sins, so I felt a strong sympathy with him. What I liked was his sense of duty and his sense of humor. Anytime some slander against his middle-class "moral majority" type life was thrown in his face, he answered with self-deprecating mildness: but the morals of his life were the one thing all the people around him lack, and that lack is really the reason why they lack the strength to persevere. I also liked the fact that the main character’s religion was depicted as a saving grace in his life. As for the bad guys, well, let us just say that if this book is made into a movie, the bad guys would be changed to Austrian white supremacists.
There is also a thinly-disguised version of William Shatner, which, as a Shatner fan, I just loved.
Drawbacks? Two of the plot points were introduced awkwardly, so I knew the author was mentioning them only because they were plot points. That could have been done more seamlessly. Also, the main character relies on intuition, and the plot relies on coincidence, about as much as intuition and coincidence tends to happen in real life, which, for my taste, is more often than a reader should be asked to swallow in a spy-novel or thriller novel.
But I did like all the plot twists, because they were both surprising and logical, which is the only really satisfying way to twist a plot. It has to be something you do not see coming before it comes, but after the fact looks so reasonable that you wonder how you did not see it coming.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
