From
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While I was in college, I did not have a great deal of time to spend
on recreational reading. I worked at two jobs through most of my
college years, and so when I wasn't studying or delivering furniture
or driving an ambulance or washing cars, I was usually sleeping or
eating. But even with my limited available time, I was able to read
occasionally, and if I were to be honest with myself, I would have to
admit that there were times when I allowed reading to interfere with
studying.
In those days I had three favorite writers: James Fenimore Cooper,
Charles Dickens, and Robert Ludlum. I know. I know. Those three
writers are widely diverse in their subject matter, and many literary
purists would very much like to beat me severely about the head and
shoulders for mentioning Robert Ludlum in the same sentence with
Cooper and Dickens. But I loved the three of them then, and I still
love them today.
The novels of Robert Ludlum are not literary classics on a level that
competes with Dickens or Cooper, but they are good entertainment. With
the reading of my first Ludlum novel, The Parsifal Mosaic, I became
hooked on the spy thriller genre of novels. Ludlum passed away several
years ago, and even before his death his writing had been curtailed by
declining health. So I have been looking for a writer to take his
place.
Of course, there are the works of Tom Clancy and I have read and
enjoyed all of his novels. But it has been a great while since Clancy
has published one of his tomes. I have read all of Vince Flynn's
works, and while I can say that I enjoyed them, I should also say that
Flynn does not provide all of the complicated plot twists that I came
to expect from both Ludlum and Clancy. And I have to say that I have
not yet begun to like Mitch Rapp, the main character in Flynn's
novels.
I think that I have stumbled upon a writer who, if he continues to
write spy thrillers, and if he can control his desire to insert
awkward political commentary into his novels, will have as much
success as Ludlum. His name is Alex Berenson and his latest novel is
The Ghost War.
Mr. Berenson is a reporter for The New York Times. Since it has been
well-documented that large portions of the reporting in The New York
Times is fictional, it should not surprise anyone that a reporter for
that paper would be a superior fiction writer. I suppose that
fabricating a column on a regular basis would provide a writer with
great plot development skills. I can imagine Berenson and Jayson Blair
getting together and swapping ideas on various fictional characters
and places. You will recall that Jayson Blair was the Times reporter
who was finally fired from his job after it was determined that he
completely fabricated portions of thirty-six of his reports. Now that
I have made my gratuitous attack on The New York Times, I will return
to discussing the book.
Actually, there is one scene in The Ghost War that takes a clever jab
at The New York Times and provides a glimpse at the wit of Mr.
Berenson. The scene involves a press conference held by the
President's press secretary, and in attendance at the press conference
is a New York Times reporter named Dan Spiegel. Berenson describes
Spiegel as "smart, but not as smart as he thought himself to be," and
who "liked hearing the sound of this own voice," and who "believed
mistakenly that he was as important as the people he wrote about." I
like a writer who does not take himself too seriously, and Mr.
Berenson seems to qualify as just such a writer.
A specific example of Berenson's superior character development skills
can be found in the character of a homeless Chinese man named Jordan.
I was moved by the poignant and realistic depiction of this young
man's attitude and the conditions that he endured.
It seems to me that in order for a fictional spy in a spy thriller
novel to be well-liked, that spy needs to have a tortured soul. It
seems as though we need for these fictional characters to be
constantly battling the mental anguish that they suffer as a result of
the shadowy, bloody world in which they live, and they must always be
questioning the morality of their work and the authority that orders
them to do their work. For example, Ludlum's character, Jason Bourne,
is one of the most successful and famous spy characters ever created
and is without a doubt the character who has the most tortured soul.
It would be difficult to imagine a character with more soul-searching
angst than a man who lost his memory and had to alternately deal with
the idea that he might be a paid assassin or that he might be a
government operative. The mental anguish that he suffers as he seeks
to reconcile himself to slowly learned and sometimes conflicting facts
makes him a man with which we can somehow empathize.
The main character in The Ghost War, John Wells, is also a tortured
soul who is at times troubled by his past actions and is at times
conflicted by his personal morality which allows him to take actions
which he considers to be moral, but which may not be legal. This
internal conflict makes me like him immediately. Indeed, in the
acknowledgements for the book, Berenson refers to Wells' tortured soul
and acknowledges the help of a Dr. Jacqueline Basha who assisted him
in writing about the internal conflict. Actually, Berenson refers to
his own personal torture when he says that "without Jackie, John Wells
- and his creator - would be a lot more tortured."
We do not know anything about the nature of Berenson's personal
torture that required Dr. Basha's assistance, but we do see evidence
of his internal conflict in attempting to rise above the baser
instincts that are second nature to a New York Times reporter. For the
majority of the novel, Berenson is indeed able to rise above the
sophomoric writing that seems ingrained in all Times reporters, but in
one particular paragraph he fails miserably in his attempt.
In The Ghost War, Berenson writes one paragraph that is one of the
most utterly moronic paragraphs that I have read in quite some time,
and since I read hundreds of books every year, I do tend to encounter
quite a number of moronic paragraphs. John Wells has been captured and
is about to undergo extreme physical torture. As he contemplates the
coming days and hours when he is likely to be beat severely,
castrated, have fingers and toes cut off, have eyes poked out, etc.,
he contemplates the possibility that his coming torture may be
"primordial justice" for President Bush having flown out to the USS
Abraham Lincoln in May of 2003 and having had his picture taken with
the "Mission Accomplished" sign in the background. I am not making
this up. It seems that Berenson needed to prove to all of his Times
colleagues and his leftist buddies that he still believes the
"President George Bush is the root cause of all evil in this world"
mantra.
I should mention that The Ghost War is a sequel, and I have not yet
read the book, The Faithful Spy, which preceded it. But Berenson does
a masterful job of preventing any loose ends, so you will not feel any
loss of content or connection if you read the sequel first.
Berenson leaves little doubt that there will be a sequel to The Ghost
War, and we can be fairly certain that the storyline will to some
degree involve an arms dealer bent on revenge for the rough manner in
which he was treated by Wells. I will purchase that book when it is
published, and I can recommend The Ghost War as a good read. But I
will say that if Berenson becomes any more moronic or obtrusive with
his political commentary, I will quickly begin searching for another
replacement for the Ludlum vacancy.
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