Andrew Klavan’s latest thriller EMPIRE OF LIES is a novel of extremes. Not just good vs. evil (although there is plenty of that, rest assured), but extreme shifts in mood and credibility. When it’s good, it positively soars. But then there are moments and portions that make you groan.
We first meet Jason Harrow, the novel’s narrator, enjoying his life as a Midwestern developer. He has a loving wife, three kids and an daily existence kept secure through his political conservatism and his Catholic faith. Then he gets a phone call from Lauren, his former girlfriend from his student days in New York. She needs his help and desperately begs him to come back east.
He complies, but tells his family he’s returning to New York to clean out his deceased mother’s house and put it up for sale. That’s because Lauren is a link to Jason’s younger, former life: one filled with excesses, including drugs and rough sex. When Jason finally meets with Lauren, he learns about her missing teenage daughter, Serena. Jason refuses to get involved until
Lauren drops the bomb that the daughter might be his.
Jason finds Serena drunk at a popular dance club and convinces her to come with him before she passes out. But just before she falls asleep, she mumbles something about a murder. When he presses her for more details the following morning, she recalls a lengthy story about a boy she met at dance club. They decided to spend the night together. As they left the place, they were abducted by Jamal, Serena’s sometime boyfriend. Jamal and his gang take the couple to a swamp outside the city and execute the boy while Serena pretends to be out cold.
Not long after, Jason learns that the murdered boy is Casey Diggs, a former college student and journalist for the school paper. An article Diggs wrote about a protest by Arab students was labeled racist and reactionary, even though he reported the events exactly as he witnessed them.
As a result, Diggs was fired from the paper and expelled from the college, so his life spiraled downward into raving paranoia and alcoholism as he accused a highly regarded professor of cultural studies of plotting a terrorist bombing in New York. Almost in spite of himself, Jason embarks on an investigation of his own and eventually uncovers the truth about the bombing scheme and the terrorists behind it.
Prior to starting his investigation, we learn much about Jason. While he proudly wears his conservative and Catholic labels, he is far from a one-dimensional Puritan. We see him drink to excess alone at his mother’s house, spend lonely hours channel surfing in front of a large-screen TV and privately lusting for other women. And, like many individuals, he is plagued with occasional bouts of self-doubt. It is to Klavan’s credit that we end up sympathizing for Jason, regardless of what we think about his personal views.
But it’s the way Jason learns about Diggs that causes the
machinery to creak. During one of his drunken nights watching TV, Jason happens upon a once-popular science-fiction series. The lead actor, now older and bloated from too much drink, is currently hosting a new reality true-crime show. And the first episode is devoted to the mysterious disappearance of Diggs.
Jason immediately concludes that this is the victim of the murder Serena witnessed. Such a convenient coincidence is difficult enough to accept. But what makes it worse is that the TV actor/host is so obviously based upon William Shatner, right down to his much-parodied, halting speech. As events continue and Jason comes closer to learning the details of the terrorist
plot, this same TV actor inexplicably plays a more prevalent role in the narrative.
Then there are the climatic scenes during the premiere of a highly publicized movie, shot in a new holographic 3-D process. Klavan spends a great deal of time with gossip about the personal lives and jealousies of the movie stars. And the film title itself is so clearly Klavan’s comment on the developing events. Then the writing goes completely over-the-top as a race against the clock ensues and Jason can’t tell where his interactions with the 3-D movie characters end and reality begins.
It’s these changes in contrivances and style that make the book such a disorienting experience. The shifts from superb characterizations and suspense to obvious personal opinions and blatant plot devices are so abrupt that you’re tempted to check the front cover to make sure you’re reading the same book. It’s as though Klavan’s urge to insert his observations on popular culture and the media cost him his stylistic subtlety and creativity.
Through it all, Jason is one of Klavan’s most fascinating
characters. And EMPIRE OF LIES is recommended for the way events from the past and present put Jason through a tortuous re-examination of his personal beliefs and values. This, along with the throat-tightening suspense, is Klavan at his very best. He only needs to turn the editorial amplifiers down a notch. —Alan Cranis
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The rwview of this novel makes me bye it right now!!!!