I’m trying a stab at something new. I wanted to do a monthly book thread to get a sense of what people are reading and to get a somewhat constant dialog going since many of the readers here have aligned tastes, while those who aren’t in the intellectual elitist sci-fi fantasy circle jerk threads also read what seem to be interesting books (ie, I wanted to take half of Toxic Adam’s book giveaways).
I just finished David Morrell’s The Brotherhood of the Rose, where in two elite espionage agents are turned on by their handler. David Morrell is the author who wrote First Blood, the book which begat Rambo. He does really good suspense and up to this year, most of my interaction with him has been done through the form of short stories (he has a GREAT one in the anthology 999 called “Rio Grande Gothic” which is worth hunting down from a library).
BotR hangs on the conceit that previous to WW2, the heads of all the major espionage agencies got together and decided on a pact which would be a series of safe houses wherein any agent has sanctuary, and the violation of that sanctuary means open season on that agent. They also established retirement communities wherein agents and controllers may live out their twilight years in comfort and safety if they qualify.
It’s nice because it slots in with the Gentleman’s Game which is a recurrent theme and tone of old spy novels and nostalgic modern books. It romanticizes the past at first only to slowly vilify it throughout the rest of the book until the end, well the term “nothing is as it seems” is so clichéd, but the book takes delight in presenting something, then twisting it, then breaking it.
The main characters, Eliot, Chris and Saul, are all damaged goods. Chris and Saul were orphans, recruited by Eliot into the CIA then into the military for additional training then to the Mossad wherein they became prize pupils. The orphanage portions of the book were quite well done and this probably owes to the fact that the author spent time in orphanages and the Characters well drawn so you get a sense. There are no villains, per se, which is good because far too often it’s a black or white morality in these types of books, especially from the era (1984).
Really though, the main import with a spy caper/thriller of this nature are the twists and the set pieces. The twists are good and the counter twists are also good and the book does move at a brisk pace, I was able to tear through nearly a hundred pages a day.
There are some issues with Clancyism wherein the author will interject knowledge at the expense of the story. It’s been pared down from some of the other books by the same author (I learned more about Anarchy Online from his book Scavengers than I ever did from the gaming media), but still a day long hike by a character nets you nutritional and hydration techniques, while the author’s own experience with martial arts gets you what must have been novel information in the early 80s but japonophilia the nation experienced after that managed to let a deal of this information creep into popular conscious.
But basically the question comes down to, is the book a waste of time? I don’t think so. I ate through it in about a week and enjoyed my time with the characters and plot enough to buy the rest of the books in the loose trilogy.
