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Politics & Patriotism: The Fisk Conspiracy
Justin Oldham
By Marta Palos
In 2000, Jason Cutter, a former National Security Agency officer, accepts
the proposal of a group of Cold War espionage veterans to lead a conspiracy
against the corrupted American government. Which government the author
has in mind — the current or a future one — is not immediately
clear. Bypassing the Bush administration, and the next after that, the
author shifts the plot to 2014. The conspiracy is the brainchild of
the Cold War veterans, called the Founders, a powerful and well-funded
patriotic organization. To succeed, Jason Cutter has to change his identity.
He undergoes a drastic physical transformation, his personality is reprogrammed,
and his name is changed to Preston Fisk. The plan is to arbitrarily
create a corrupt and autocratic government, which would then lead to
a nationwide revolt. It takes Preston Fisk 14 years to develop the scheme.
(At this point, the question why would anyone need 14 years to create
something that already exists today inevitably comes up in the reader's
mind.)
Fisk helps an ambitious politician named Madeline Hill to the presidency,
fills the White House with corrupt senators and representatives, and
manipulates the power-hungry Hill. As her chief advisor, he plans to
lead the country into chaos through economic and political maneuvers,
then lets the President gain absolute power under the auspices of a
national emergency. It is then the revolution is supposed to kick in.
The President's hunger for dictatorship derives from her sexual desire
for Fisk; rejected, she seeks fulfillment on the political arena. Eventually
Fisk falls out of favor, and
murderous plots become the order of the day in the White House. The
few remaining honest officials are eliminated, and Phase One of the
conspiracy is temporarily crushed. The plot tapers off with hints at
the Founders' continuing struggle.
The characters feel as if they were cut out of paper. About 85 percent
of the 624-page book is told in dialogue, with the exception of a few
short chapters where a character acts alone — for example, when
Fisk's female bodyguard blows up a sailboat. One night, while the hero
is fleeing his pursuers, he still has time to stop at a café,
just to have a five-page-long conversation with three students about
the state of the nation. The too many minor characters cluttering the
story could have been combined into just a few, and cutting the numerous
redundancies would have reduced the book to normal size, at no big loss.
About the writing: the generous amount of political and technical lingo
rather confuses than clarifies matters. The correct use of "blonde"
vs. "blond" or "who" vs. "whom" is ignored,
and adverbs abound: people grin wolfishly, laugh mirthfully, smile wickedly,
nod grimly, sneer gently. (I tried to picture how to nod grimly and
sneer gently, but my imagination failed me.) The frequent "as"
construction is used in an awkward manner: "Madeline stepped aside
as the agent nodded." "..., he snorted as they started to
walk." "Doris nodded as a pair of medical technicians walked
by." Characters repeatedly tug at, smooth down, or straighten out
the wrinkles in their clothes, and bile often rises in the throats of
upset people.
The author's moral worries are legitimate. However, in my subjective
judgment, the book falls apart at the seams. To create a dictatorial
government in order to generate a revolution is a convoluted idea, and
the way the conspirators are trying to restore constitutional democracy
defeats the very message the story intends to convey — in the name
of doing good, they also lie, betray, and kill. One wonders what kind
of government these ruthless patriots would put together if they came
to power, and how the American people and the international community
would react to the achievement of freedom and democracy through means
suggestive of the French revolution in the 18th century.
Considering the tremendous work invested in the book, I would advise
the author to take a close look at the necessary elements of novel writing
before embarking on another project.
Rating: ** (Fair)
TurnKey Press, 2005 (ISBN: 1933538325)
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