The Ghost is a dark paranoid thriller about a former British prime minister named Adam Lang (who seems to be a model for Tony Blair?) who is up against a firm deadline to submit his memoirs to his publisher. However, the project is dangerously derailed when his aide and collaborator, Michael McAra, perishes in a ferry accident off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. To salvage the book, a professional ghostwriter is hired to whip the manuscript into shape, but the unnamed writer soon finds that separating truth from fiction in Lang’s recollections a challenge. The stakes rise when Lang is accused of war crimes for authorizing the abduction of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan, who then ended up in the CIA’s merciless hands. As the new writer probes deeper, he uncovers evidence that his predecessor’s death may have been a homicide.
I don’t like first-person novels. The only explanation I can arrive at is because I like knowing what everyone else is thinking. For this thriller, however, not knowing is what makes it work. It’s hero remains unnamed through the whole book, which I found interesting, but he is clearly cut from the same cloth as most of John Grisham’s heroes.
It’s a bit long in the tooth, but very easy to read, especially with its gallows humor and offers an insight into politics most do not see.
I don’t like first-person novels. The only explanation I can arrive at is because I like knowing what everyone else is thinking. For this thriller, however, not knowing is what makes it work. It’s hero remains unnamed through the whole book, which I found interesting, but he is clearly cut from the same cloth as most of John Grisham’s heroes.
It’s a bit long in the tooth, but very easy to read, especially with its gallows humor and offers an insight into politics most do not see.
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