Andrew Britton's political thriller sets up a reality that may distract some readers from a decent if unremarkable plot centering on terrorist plans to attack the U.N. and leave clues pointing to the Iranian government.
Dennis Hastert is Speaker of the House, and the American political leadership is debating whether to withdraw troops from Iraq, but the U.S. president is David Brenneman not George W. Bush, who's facing a fierce re-election opponent in California governor Richard Fiske, who's surely not Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The characters, including Jack Ryan-clone Ryan Kealey and the action-from the discovery of a high-ranking mole to the obligatory under-fire romance-offers nothing new. The path by which Kealey uncovers Vanderveen's subterfuge and ultimate trail moves a bit slowly at times during the book's first half, though much of this is due to Britton's painstaking insistence on getting his world right.
To his credit, he does not take intellectual shortcuts or talk down to his reader. If anything, it gives us time to catch our breath between flash fires and explosions, which are more than plentiful in THE ASSASSIN.
It's exciting to watch someone of Britton's talent build a career from the ground up. This is the first Andrew Britton novel for me having not yet read his first, The American.
1 comments:
One of the reasons that I try as often as possible to read an author's works in chronological order is precisely because I enjoy what you so rightly call watching them build their career. I haven't come across Britton but will keep an eye out for his books now.
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