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Book Reviews April 2003

THE RULES OF SILENCE by David Lindsey
REVIEW BY ALEX GRANT.

WARNER BOOKS – APRIL 2003.
HARD COVER @ $36.95 Can.
'Writer Lindsey has succeeded in projecting the geo-political trends of the 21st Century just a short distance ahead of the present day and the implications are dismaying'.

Since 1982 mystery-crime novelist David Lindsey has published a dozen thrillers often set in Texas on the Gulf of Mexico. His books have been compared with those of British masters Grahame Green and John Le Carre. Lindsey’s oeuvre offers both the eagle-eyed cold-blooded cynicism of Green and the intricacy and purplish, over-determined prose of Le Carre. This is an odd melding of very Anglo-Saxon literary styles and pre- and post-Cold War contents in that Lindsey’s characters tend to be what the true Texan would call "hoity-toity",rather reptilian, stiff-necked and obsessive professionals who are made to suffer all manner of personal indignities brought upon them by their success or by their former secret lives.

Green’s protagonists tend towards the terminally seedy and down-at-heel. Le Carre’s Establishment figures circulate and operate a fair number of notches higher on the social scale, but are often found fading fast, their devotion to various causes commonly souring as their perception of the ‘reality’ of their political era becomes clear.

The method of narration adopted by Lindsey to root his characters in a plausible and comforting socio-political ‘reality ’obliges the writer to devote a great deal of attention to architecture – the homes of his characters are often de-luxe and very inviting domiciles - and to the abundant flora and fauna, especially the birds, of the South-West, and to all aspects of ‘The Good Life’ led by the wealthy in modern America at its most affluent. These insistent, gracious-living details lend a verisimilitude to the unholy schemes that threaten the rich. Lindsey seems to want to subvert the complacency of the ‘entitled’ world of prosperity that has benignly molly-coddled his people. Film-director Alfred Hitchcock often used this approach to shock audiences into an awareness of external threats to the status-quo. And, of course, the agonizing events of September 11th forced Americans to take a long look at their future prospects in a world where religious fanatics run amok.

The author’s latest thriller is unerringly and elegantly cut from the same top-grade cloth as its predecessors, :an ingenious and terrifying new variant upon the classic kidnapping plot that brings this most vile of crimes right up to the minute – the vicious terrorism tactics that have held sway since 9/11/2001. The ultra-violent tactics of Colombian and Mexican drug-lord abductors are imported wholesale into the U.S. The victim is hi-tech I.T. tycoon Titus Cain whose days of blessed, bountiful contentment are drastically cut short when he becomes the target of ruthless kidnapper Cayetano Luquin, a sadist who has honed his criminality within the cruel, heartless regime of the late Colombian arch-terrorist Pablo Escobar whose dyed-in-the wool villainy brought an entire country to its knees.

"Tano" wants $64,000,000.00 - a quarter of the fortune made in advanced medical software by Titus- and he begins to methodically cause horrendous ‘accidents’ that bring about the deaths of Cain’s nearest and dearest. Shocked by the utter cruelty of these repulsive ‘accidents’ Cain resolves to liquidate his tormentor and chooses to hire anti-terrorism expert, Garcia Burden, a man with his own agenda for Luquin.

Cain and Burden devise a strategy that will rid the world of this monster and his acolytes. Their scheme is completely outside of the law and Burden is a new kind of operative who has the blessing of an ineffectual, outdated F.B.I. and an equally anachronistic C.I.A. Fortunately a minor glitch in Luquin’s intense surveillance of his quarry induces his henchman Jorge Macias to become a turncoat. And so Cain finds that he can fight back and prevent this monster from damaging countless other innocent lives. Always a good man who attempted to treat his employees with dignity and kindness Cain is forced to become as brutal and unforgiving as his torturer.
The intricacies of the sinister kidnap plot and its even more repellent counter-offensive allow Lindsey bring to bear almost futuristic weapons of cybernetic surveillance and gadgets galore. Lindsey convinces us that he and his characters – for whom money is no impediment –are at the very cutting-edge of today’s most sophisticated technology in the. universe of covert operations, operations that are diabolical in their implications for our future within a democratic society. When even the most cosseted and protected of citizens are so vulnerable to an insidious attack by total strangers coveting their wealth then nobody is safe.

If such relentless beasts, albeit highly sophisticated beasts devoted to greed and self-glory as "Tano" Luquin do exist on the fringes of today’s world of international terrorism we have much to fear. Lindsey in THE RULES OF SILENCE convinces us that such criminals will before long attempt to steal the wealth of the First World no less vigorously than they have ransacked the coffers of the Third World. Every fascist dictator since 1945 from Marcos to Saddam Hussein has stolen billions of dollars from their peoples. Why should big-time crooks and political ideologues of every stripe not wish to do the same? Banks of the highest repute in Switzerland hoarded the Nazi spoils wrenched from the Jews of Europe. The drug cartels had no difficulty finding ‘official’ money- launderers eager for their share of the spoils, too.

Writer Lindsey has succeeded in projecting the geo-political trends of the 21st Century just a short distance ahead of the present day and the implications are dismaying.

© Alex Grant April 7th 2003
alexgrantreviews@hotmail.com

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