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3.0 out of 5 stars
Countries do get framed, Sep 1 2003
Patrick Robinson novels are one of my guilty pleasures. While they are not great literature, they are page-turners. I can hardly put them down and by the end am literally bleary-eyed.With every book, I ask myself whether the writing has improved. I think that it has, to some extent, although in this novel his favorite adjective seems to have become "big." He believes, apparently, that you are what you eat: all the heroes and heroines burnish their glamor with sumptuous feasts in "big" candlelit dining rooms, while Ben Adnam splurges on fish and chips. There may be some truth in this. Nick Flower, the CIA's master spy in _The Spike_ (a novel from ca. 1980 no less loyal to the West than Robinson), proved, upon his long-delayed but climactic self-revelation, to be a quietly cultured individual who "had a palate" and distrusted anyone who didn't, such as his young hamburger-gulping nemesis. But aside from that, no glamor. On the contrary, Flower reminded people of an aged praying mantis or "a survivor of Buchenwald." One yearns for a few characters as quirky as that from Robinson. That said, I'm delighted at the character development given Adnam in this book. It's a very interesting advance for the author. On the very morrow of his latest triumph of terror, Adnam finds himself-- as he had fully anticipated-- a man without a country, almost literally washed up and hiding out in Scotland. Everywhere he goes reminds him of happier times as a student years ago, and particularly of his brief bliss with the one woman who ever loved him. Knowing that his later deeds had cut him off from her ever loving him again, he spirals down into periods of remorse, loneliness, nostalgia, and depression. His every waking hour becomes torture, while he is afraid to go to sleep for the nightmares. Why did he do it all? He loses his cool and does several careless or even reckless things, seemingly indifferent to being caught. He visits Edinburgh Castle especially to spend awhile in the chapel gazing at an old stained-glass window commemmorating a fiery Scottish patriot whose enemies would today call him a terrorist, looking for an approving smile from the figure's face. In a brief casual conversation with an Irish boy "going into politics", by which he means the Irish Republican Army, Adnam discourages him from becoming a terrorist, impressing him with the fact that taking this step is irretrievable and will make him nothing but an expendable pawn, to be chewed up and spit out by his own cause. There is more to Ben Adnam than the steely killing machine that we had come to know and hate. Not many jihadists, in moments of doubt, breathe a prayer to a Christian saint. I've read somewhere that the name "Nemo" means "no man" or "no name" and wonder whether the name "Adnam" might be an allusion to the same idea. Suffice it to say that in this book we get a glimpse into some of the darkness and complexity that Jules Verne gave his brilliant submarine terrorist 130 years ago. I agree with those who found the ending abrupt and disappointing, hoping that Adnam's redemption would be more than an interlude. Apparently I'm the first to comment on this book since George W. Bush was ushered into the Oval Office and proceeded to prove Robinson ironically prophetic. Unfortunately, life seems to have imitated art, with flesh-and-blood Arnold Morgans blustering their way into Iraq under pretexts now looking suspiciously spurious and delusive-- their string-pullers lack the exculpating ingenuity or subtlety of a Benjamin Adnam. Robinson seems to admire Morgan, while some readers dismissed him in 2000 as made of cardboard (or shall we say a paper tiger) and totally unrealistic. Would that he were just a figment of fiction in our corridors of power.
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