Here are the twists. The good guys are really the bad guys. The bad guy is a good guy – sort of. The dead are alive, and the living – at least in the case of protagonist Wes Holloway – might as well be dead.
Brad Meltzer’s recent outing “The Book of Fate,” has such twisty-twists, how can he go wrong?
Unfortunately, what should be good, really just isn’t.
Meltzer has an insider approach to D.C. politics that rings with authority. Conversations could have been taken from any Oval Office recording, and his characters should carry any story - but it is hard to root for the criminals.
Grisham’s “The Brethren,” for example, offers discredited judges as heroes, running a blackmail operation from behind bars. Sorry, John. Didn’t work. Bad guys are supposed to get what they deserve.
Meltzer takes rogue FBI, CIA, and Secret Service agents and alternately has them protect Holloway, then harass him to cover their scheme – selling secrets to the government. The true bad guy, an unfortunate schizophrenic off his medication, eventually saves Holloway, but it’s hard to feel good about it.
Meanwhile Holloway has to figure out the clues, if he can just get past his whining, self-indulgent focus on the past. Fortunately, he possesses Hawaii Five-O (remember that show?) abilities to shoot truth from thin air, just like Steve McGarrett.
Danno: “No one has a motive.”
McGarrett: “What if it was three rogue agents working in collusion to sell information to the government in an espionage scheme?”
Danno: “Of course!”
Meltzer tosses in Masonic references to hit that bandwagon, and codes to decipher for another, which have no bearing on the little plot. His fans may hope for better material next outing. “The Book of Fate” expresses the fate of books built from a house of cards.
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