Brad Meltzer
Grand Central Publishing
Release date: September 2, 2008
List price: $25.99 (352p)
ISBN: 978-0446577885
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Review - "The Book of Lies"
Reviewer: Cori Vella
Rating:
Brad Meltzer's The Book of Lies's premise was a stretch: that the world's first murder (Abel by Cain) and the murder of Mitchell Siegel (the father of Jerry Siegel, creator of Superman) had a common link. Superman and the Bible? All right . . . put down the bong and step away.
But as bizarre as the blurb seems, The Book of Lies gets it right. Using Superman trivia, a Nazi secret society, and speculations as to what precisely went down between God and Cain, Meltzer ties it all together in a neat, interesting little package. Although slow to start, once I got into it, I couldn't put it down.
Cal Harper is a former ICE agent who stumbles upon Ellis, a dangerous fanatic, while attempting to help the homeless — in this case, the homeless is not, in fact, homeless, but Cal's long-lost father. A bit of a stretch, yeah, but without the father-son drama dynamics, this book would have a lot less of a driving force for the reader to persue whodunnit. Cal discovers that his father has been hired to make a delivery — and from the secrecy involved, plus the fact that an ICE agent was murdered over it, Cal is fairly certain that whatever faux-policeman Ellis is after, it's probably something big. After a string of events, Cal finds himself in Cleveland with a mint-condition "attic copy" of the original Superman comic, desperately trying to put together the pieces. He's also wanted by the ICE, being actively persued by murderous Ellis, and forced to put his trust in his father. Whatever the clues are pointing towards, Cal knows that Ellis is being guided by a Prophet who knows his every move. Is his father the Prophet? He can't be sure. He can only see it through to the end and hope to make it out alive.
It's an action-packed thriller, one that keeps the reader on her toes. And you don't have to be a comic book fan or a Biblical buff to appreciate it or follow along. Meltzer does a good job of enriching his theories in a way that is easy for an average Joe or Jane to follow.
But let's face it, The Book of Lies is not going to butt any of the books down on my favorites list. It's fun for a Friday-night-storm read, but is written in the most aggravating, confusing, and pointless style that is becoming increasingly popular these days. In fact, both books (The Book of Lies and Testimony) that I've reviewed for LLH this issue employ this technique: a jumble of viewpoints, a mess of tenses, and too many characters that have little or no point in the scheme of things. If you don't mind third-person-past in one chapter and first-person-present in the next, you probably won't find this book nearly as irritating to read as I did. I don't know — in my day (listen to me! Saying "in my day" as if I were an old coot!), authors picked one view point, one tense, and stuck with it. And if they didn't, they needed to have a good reason for the change. They didn't get by with indecision and lazy writing like this.
Conclusion: A whacky premise delivers a well-developed storyline and interesting characters, but drowns atop bad writing. Didn't love it, but mystery and thriller fans will enjoy it.
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