Fast-paced Silva
The treadmill rating of readability
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Book reviewing is entirely subjective, yes? No way to quantify how powerful a book is?
Yes, there is: 31,000 steps in one day as measured by Fitbit, the most I’ve registered in the 15 months that little device has been in my pocket. That’s a bit over 14 miles, so I can objectively say that Daniel Silva’s The Black Widow (Harper, 2016), the prompter of such frenzied walking, is for me the year’s most gripping novel.
It’s also the latest in a series of elegantly written and ethically thoughtful spy novels featuring Gabriel Allon as the main character: He is both a superb restorer of classic paintings and an agent/leader of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency known as the best in the world.
The novels have terrific characterization, powerful narrative, and pungent comments on how silly U.S. politically driven decisions often are. Thankfully, Silva does not stop the action too often to have his characters give commentary—but he does have one good guy, French counterintelligence agent Rousseau, sputtering about “this folly we called the Arab Spring. Mubarak must go! Gaddafi must go! It was madness, absolute madness. And now we are left with this. ISIS controls a swath of territory the size of the United Kingdom. … And what does the American president tell us? ISIS is not Islamic. ISIS is the jayvee team. … Does he truly believe this drivel?”
After a little back-and-forth, Rousseau continues: “The truth is, ISIS is indeed Islamic. And it has more in common with Muhammad and his earliest followers than some of the so-called experts care to admit.” He explains: “ISIS doesn’t crucify only because it is cruel, [but because] crucifixion is one of the prescribed punishments for the enemies of Islam. It crucifies because it must.” Later, a Jordanian spymaster describes Obama administration thinking: “‘Not our problem,’ they said. ‘We’re putting the Middle East in our rearview mirror. No more American wars in Muslim lands.’ And now look at the situation.”
That’s about it for political commentary, and commentary would not keep me going (and sometimes turning pages slowly, relishing the writing) for 31,000 steps. Thoughtful action and character development can do it, and Silva is superb in both. A small warning: Suicide bombers bring violence, and characters five times in 500 pages use expletives.
Bookmarks
George Washington had to absorb defeats without becoming defeatist, and J.B. Simmons’ The Awakening of Washington’s Church (2016) clearly tells how The Falls Church that Washington once attended had to walk away from its beautiful building when Episcopalian hierarchs traded in biblical belief for a new trinity of Me, Myself, and I. William Dembski’s Being as Communion: A Metaphysics of Information (Ashgate, 2014) sits high up on the ladder of abstraction, but graduate students will follow his argument that information is more important in intelligent design than matter or energy.
Thomas Laqueur’s The Work of the Dead (Princeton, 2015) offers 700 scholarly but necessarily macabre pages about churchyard and cemetery burial over the centuries, cremation, monuments to the dead, and more. Rankin Wilbourne’s Union With Christ (David C. Cook, 2016) is a clear delving into the mystery of what it means to walk with God. Malachi Then and Now by Allen Ross (Weaver, 2016) features not only sound exegesis but a clear, step-by-step introductory explanation of how to do expository preaching and writing.
Mark Batterson’s Chase the Lion: If Your Dream Doesn’t Scare You, It’s Too Small (Multnomah, 2016) is part of an overused Christian genre: story, exhortation, story, exhortation … Still, I have to acknowledge that Batterson’s stories are pretty good. Fred Rosen’s Murdering the President (Potomac, 2016) shows, with true-crime plotting, how sound doctoring could have prevented President James Garfield’s death in 1881. Robert Wuthnow’s Rough Country: How Texas Became America’s Most Powerful Bible-Belt State (Princeton, 2014) combines scholarship and a good narrative style. —M.O.
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