Banquo's Ghosts

BANQUO'S GHOSTS by Rich Lowry and Keith Korman is great entertainment. Witness Stewart Banquo, a man who conducts espionage like a chess-master. Some reviewers on these pages have complained that they wanted more of Banquo, as he is just one of many memorable characters represented in this powerful thriller. Or perhaps they want something different; a 007-type who pitches knock-outs with every punch, makes love to every run-way model he meets and finally dispatches the bad guys with great explosions. But Banquo does little of that. He is a thinking man's spy for the 21st century. This reader found the measured development and final display of Banquo's wisdom and ability to impose order on chaos to be ultimately, inspiring and completely satisfying. The plot involves a "rogue" C.I.A. operation to assassinate an Iranian nuclear scientist, followed by an Iranian terrorist attack on New York City. The action develops at break-neck speed and for those who want pure fun this summer, this is your book. But BANQUO'S GHOSTS transcends its genre. Literature has the power, like UNCLE TOM'S CABIN of the 19th century, to affect the progress of nations, and this might be just such a work. I wish every American and European would read it. Mr. Lowry and Mr. Korman advance an important political argument here. They seem to admit that the Bush administration's rush to war with Iraq with its supposed "WMDs", was a blunder. But they maintain, and remind us that nonetheless, we must remain vigilant and fearless to act, even outside our borders. This book reminds us that even now, as we deal with a world economic crisis, we must keep in mind the ignorant Islamic extremists who admit their profound malice for the west and claim divine sanction for their evil deeds, even as they use their own naïve, young people in suicide attacks to express their hatred for their perceived enemies. And late at night in his New York office Banquo contemplates the lessons of September 11: "... the death of innocents and smoky ruins splattered in blood." This book is a powerful warning to those liberals who, as the Iraq fiasco winds down, tend to view conservatives as unreasonably warlike. We are in a war whether we like it or not. Can we accept a nuclear-armed Iran? The authors' argument here, although not explicitly stated, seems to be not in favor of all-out ground war but rather to suggest that the west should use surgical, well informed strikes to prevent fundamentalist Islamists from obtaining possession of nuclear arms. Bomb Iran? Thoughtful readers of this work will find themselves inspired to debate this subject over their dinner tables. In one of the most challenging scenes for lefties like me, Lowry and Korman conjure a scenario in which we are forced to root with guilty pleasure as Banquo directs the torture of despicable Iranian terrorist leaders, forcing them to identify their agents who are in the act of spreading deadly radioactive material throughout N

Recall HG Well's science fiction classic, "The Time Machine", where the time traveler comes upon a future London very different from the one he left - a bucolic and peaceful Garden of Eden, populated by the Eloi, a naïve and childlike evolution of mankind, living in peace and oblivion - no work, no stress. No stress, that is, except for those pesky Morlocks, that less gentle branch of this fictional evolutionary chain, living underground, running the machinery that keeps the Eloi in their state of mindless bliss (while popping to the surface from time-to-time to eat the unwary Eloi). OK, so the analogy isn't perfect - the CIA and others who live in the shadows while protecting the utopian existence of America's childlike Liberals aren't eating them - not literally, anyway - but Rich Lowry and Keith Korman's extraordinary "Banquo's Ghosts" couldn't help but remind me of Well's heavily allegorical "Time Machine". Not since Ayn Rand has an author so deftly skewered the hypocrisy and illogic of the Liberal mindset, and so clearly exposed the bias of the mainstream media, while at the same time spinning a contemporary thriller as gripping as Robert Ludlum before he got repetitive and as authentic as John LeCarre before he forgot which side of the Cold War he was on. "Banquo's Ghost" is the tale of Stewart Banquo, an old school CIA dinosaur that still believes in the value of human intelligence and is not above the occasional rogue operation as necessary to skirt a federal bureaucracy gone soft on sensitivities and other politically correct nonsense. With Iran on the brink of a nuclear weapon, Banquo finds and recruits the perfect agent, Peter Johnson, a "blame America first" journalist in search of a morale compass. Johnson is the least likely suspect with the perfect cover - a documentary puff peace on Iran's "peaceful pursuit" of nuclear energy - to assassinate (gasp!) the Iranian scientist who holds the intellectual keys to the bomb. But Banquo's plot goes awry, Johnson is captured and tortured, setting off a chain of events leading to a potential catastrophe that would make 9/11 look like a fender-bender on the Henry Hudson Parkway. The Lowry/Korman team peppers their headlines-to-life suspense-fest with characters so real you'd think they were, oh, I don't know, maybe Adriana Huffington and Peter Arnett? Spiced with enough real culprits from inside and outside the beltway to keep it credible. While the "Hope and Change" crowd will write this off as Right Wing fantasy (gosh, but Ahmadinejad said the enriched uranium is for power, not weapons), the authors build a scenario that is much too horribly real - a scarily serious drama that is guaranteed to be as sobering as it is entertaining. In short, contemporary fiction mimicking fact too closely - required reading that will make you cheering for, if not the Morlocks, then at least John Gault. And, unless you're George Soros, feeling very fortunate that real men and women like Stewart B

Banquo's Ghosts provides a fast, enjoyable, yet thought provoking read on threats facing all free nations today. Fortunately in the novel there are actors with enough courage and integrity to buck the conventional bureaucratic, social and political forces which either willingly or unwittingly aid and abet those bent upoon destruction and a return to the 7th Century filled with intolerance and ignorance. The unlikely semi-hero Johnson the Journalist begins his inner transformation after 9-11 when he realizes there truly are evil people in this world bent upon destruction of him, his family and his freedoms. That Johnson has used his freedoms to aid in building a climate for such hateful, deadly and violent acts to be committed is a realization that deeply transforms him. Though outwardly continuing his elitist scribbling and ranting, he assists a small cadre of agents dedicated to stopping horrific acts. The moral conflicts within such an endeavor are exposed and choices must be made. When the choices are stark the moral but flawed can blur and at times cross lines to insure that the darker evils do not overwhelm. In the end, Banquo and his Ghosts prevail, battered, a bit bowed but committed to carrying on. Very good first novel, looking forward to a sequel.

Every so often an important novel comes along to say something important to its age, and does so with a drama and humanness that nonfiction can't manage. Bradbury did this with Fahrenheit 451, Orwell did this with 1984, and now Rich Lowry and Keith Korman have done this with Banquo's Ghosts. I can't say whether it will have the staying power of those two classics, but I can say it captures the often ridiculous and partisan journalism characteristic of too many of today's reporters. Its anti-hero will amuse you, baffle you, and keep you turning pages just hoping, as we do with today's journalists, that he'll begin to honestly use the power of his pen.

You may have read Rich Lowry in the National Review and your local paper, or even seen him on Fox, but now he has written as he's never written before. With Keith Korman, Lowry has the CIA recruiting a magazine reporter to assassinate a scientist in Iran. Liberals beware as Lowry and Korman leave few unscathed. But better yet, the book's damn good and will appeal to anyone who likes a good, international, adrenaline boosting thriller. Very highly recommended.