BOOKReviews
Assassin by Ted Bell 558 pp, 2008 Pocket Books paperback. Available at Asia Books and leading book stores, 350 baht
While the 9/11 outrage caught the Intelligence agencies flatfooted - they knew but didn't know - and sent a tsunami-shock wave through the US, today every American anticipates that the terrorists are preparing at least one more attack, even more devastating.
The big question is where? Satellites are up, antennae are turning, phones are being tapped, computer communication monitored, suspects at home and abroad picked up and leaned on, but nada.
Bin Loony and his psychopaths have gone to ground. It is an ill wind indeed that doesn't blow somebody some good, the somebody in this case being authors of thrillers. The nervous tension is grist for their mill. Aware that the next attack will be chemical, biological or nuclear, they let their imaginations run wild. Where? The States again most likely, yet not necessarily. Destroying the Chunnel between England and France in one plot, the Panama Canal another. Poisoning reservoirs is increasingly used. Spreading the bubonic plague on Wall Street. Nuking Los Angeles, etc.
None are impossible, the terrorists reading the same books. And they are sure to have ideas of their own. Ted Bell offers the readers his own in Assassin. In no hurry to get to it, he opens with two murders. One of a bride in the UK, the other of an American ambassador in Venice. For 558 pages we are taken sightseeing around Britain and the US, Italy and France, the Middle East and Indonesia, Japan and the Emirates. A yacht is hijacked, a helicopter sabotaged. Alex Hawke, Bell's literary creation, is set upon by a giant thug and has a match against a sumo wrestler. American ambassadors in various countries are being assassinated or kidnapped. The murderers are beautiful women who seduce them first. It takes a while for British Intelligence (Hawke) and his Langly counterpart to latch on to who's responsible.
The author has nothing against knives and guns but prefers poison, komodo dragons and electronic flies with tiny bombs attached. Whenever the story flags, an action-packed chapter is thrown in to pick up the pace. Later on, a mountain is blown up. The book's nail-biter chapters concern a life and death decision the President of the United States has to make: whether to order what appears to be a commercial airliner shot down. Does it contain ordinary passengers or terrorists carrying a virus?
According to Bell's reasoning, lovely women should be placed at the top of the most likely terrorist list. Who would think to delve into their possibly Arab or mixed Arab backgrounds - until too late, if ever?
The terrorist genre in novels is rapidly filling. These works are pretty much on a par. The writers don't really understand the terrorist mind-set. For that, we will have to wait for a literate terrorist to pen his own book.
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