The Hidden Assassins [Paperback]

Robert Wilson's "The Hidden Assassins" is an intricate novel about the lengths to which extremists will go to achieve their goals. Wilson's recurring hero is Seville-based homicide inspector Javier Falcon, who is called to the scene when a naked corpse is found in a pile of rubbish. The victim had been scalped, his hands had been cut off, and his face was burned with acid to prevent identification.

Falcon is still pining after Consuelo Jimenez, a beautiful woman with whom he had a brief and torrid affair four years earlier. Little does Falcon know that Consuelo is close to an emotional breakdown because she is tormented by demons from her past; she is considering entering therapy with a blind clinical psychologist whom Falcon himself has consulted, Alicia Aguado. Meanwhile, Falcon's ex-wife, Ines, is unhappily married to a philandering and arrogant judge named Esteban Calderon who abuses her.

The main plot centers on a huge explosion that destroys an apartment building and mosque, and damages a nearby preschool. Falcon and his team, along with agents from Spanish intelligence and the antiterrorism squad, work tirelessly to find the perpetrators of this atrocity before they strike again. The public is inclined to believe that the explosion is the work of Islamic extremists, but why would they bomb a mosque? Could the explosion have been accidental? There are many questions to be answered, and it will take superior investigative work to break open this case.

"The Hidden Assassins" is a textured and atmospheric novel in which the author closely examines his characters and their actions, demonstrating that appearances may indeed be deceiving. Falcon discovers the existence of a fanatical Catholic group whose members despise Muslims. Could this right-wing organization have been involved in the bombing? If so, what did they hope to accomplish? Does the disfigured corpse discovered at the beginning of the novel have anything to do with the explosion? Falcon and his colleagues have their hands full interrogating witnesses, tracking down elusive clues, and making sense of a vast and confusing array of facts. More dead bodies pile up before this agonizing case is resolved, and Falcon is not completely at peace with the outcome.

Robert Wilson has written a suspenseful and literate book that examines the breakdown of the fabric of modern society. Spain, where Catholics and Muslims live uneasily side-by-side, is not unique. Resentment and suspicion have infected mixed ethnic and religious communities all over the world. In addition, the author examines his characters' troubled personal lives. There are loving, loyal, and courageous men and women who are willing to make sacrifices for the greater good; however, there are also quite a few individuals who are petty, selfish, cruel, and sadistic. "The Hidden Assassins" refers not just to the terrorists among us, but also to the people we know who kill us a little bit each day with their cutting remarks and vicious betrayals. This intelligent, challenging, and suspenseful novel has a number of thought-provoking and disturbing themes that will resonate with readers for a long time to come.

Inspector Jefe Javier Falcon returns in one of the most baffling and sophisticated cases of his career when a horribly disfigured body is found in a local dump in Seville, the face burned off with acid, hands surgically removed, making recognition virtually impossible: "The unidentifiable corpse was like a neurosis." Although Falcon goes into action with his usual sense of purpose, the investigation is soon overshadowed by an explosion that demolishes a building in the poor section of town, killing the innocents who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, a horror all too familiar since the 2005 Madrid bombings. That the bomb originated in a neighborhood mosque only serves to exacerbate the incipient turf wars of the anti-terrorism agencies, the din of their competition a testament to the new world order.

Falcon retains control of the investigation, at least figuratively, Juez Esteban Calderon assigned to the bombing case as well. Falcon has a history with Calderon, married for four years to the inspector's ex-wife, Inez. Given the pressure of public panic and the threat of terrorist activities, the process is retarded by internal entanglements and agency distrust, while the outraged citizens clamor for protection. The charismatic Calderon skillfully steers the volatile public debate, but his influence is short-lived when personal demons and a previously-hidden murderous temperament surface, Falcon's case fraught with internal complications ("Charisma... an intense form of self-belief. Its closest friend can quite quickly become corruption").

Since we first met the serious, honorable Falcon in The Blind Man of Seville, his job has altered with the passing years, the terrain of police work become a hotbed of self-serving opportunism under the vast umbrella of terrorist conspiracy. Not given to easy platitudes or simplistic explanations of good vs. evil, the Spanish are sensitive to the intricate workings of religious zeal, politics and public policy, the delicate links between a passion for change and the slippery slope of strange bedfellows in aid of a cause. Falcon uncovers a morass of moral uncertainty corrupted by hidden agendas. In the end, the hidden assassins are not the individual perpetrators of terrible events, but the constantly shifting landscape of expediency, fundamental splinter groups, Christian, Muslim and related interests activated by tragedy, opportunists rushing in to take advantage of the chaos and further their own political gains.

Suddenly everything is relative, the waste of innocent lives a collateral issue rather than an outrage. All of this goes against the natural grain of Falcon's psyche, the purity of his intent distorted in a tragedy with the Shakespearean flair of a modern man tormented by the convoluted logic of a terror-obsessed world. A catalyst for more intense questioning than the accepted rhetoric of the last few years, Falcon clings to the integrity that fuels his existence, undiminished by violence, a profoundly moral man in an increasingly immoral environment. Luan Gaines/2006.

"The Hidden Assassins" is the 9/11 novel that's not about 9/11. The bomb blast that takes down a building in a Spanish city is an atrocity is on a smaller scale than the World Trade Center attack, but the aftermath covers the same routes that the survivors travel, and reflects the trauma a nation goes through at the hands of terrorists.

The book doesn't begin with the blast, but with the discovery of a man's corpse, sans hands and facial features, in a Seville landfill. The investigating detective, Jefe Javier Falcon, barely gets the investigation rolling when sounds of the explosion roll through the city.

But the book is not a direct recreation of 9/11. The presence of a mosque in the basement of the building raises important questions. Was the blast a bombmaker's error? Or was it revenge? There are several groups in play: intelligence services that may have been investigating the mosque, a political party from the Andalucia region that sees its popularity growing, a major multinational with a mysterious agenda. Anything is possible.

While the explosion doesn't affect everyone, there are those whose lives fly apart as if it had. Much of the tension in "Assassins" comes from watching them try to hold the center. Who will collapse? Falcon's ex-wife, who learns of her husband's affair? The husband whose family was pancaked in the building? Or Falcon's Arab friend who's asked to spy for him?

Wilson's story rarely does what's expected, keeping us off-balance throughout, and implying that life can be as combustible as a hundred pounds of semtex. I gave myself only two weeks to read the book, and I wished, at the end, that I had more. It's that good.

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