I found “The Ghost Writer” by Robert Harris in the mass-market paperback book rack at Shaw’s supermarket in Gloucester. My overall report is that it’s a good, brisk read that gets the job done. I actually finished the book, cover to cover. I mention this because most of the thrillers that I pick up bore me after the first few chapters; they are crammed full of useless detail, or they are pretentious, or they start out with an action scene and the poor writer must struggle to keep up the absurdly high level of testosterone as the pages slog past. Robert Harris starts small and gradually expands his universe so that we learn something new at a regular rate. He keeps the story on a short leash, and it’s narrated in an easy conversational style with more than a few winks to the reader to let you know that the goal here is entertainment, not Masterpiece Theatre. It’s a healthy approach.
It’s also a good example of the craft of storytelling. In the book’s opening line the MacGuffin is expertly delivered: “The moment I heard how McAra died, I should have walked away.” This one sentence tells us a lot: there is a murder mystery; the narrator is, or becomes, involved in same; and the narrator lives to tell the tale. (As it turns out, we never learn precisely how McAra died, which is slightly irritating.) The principle setting is a rambling house on Martha’s Vineyard in January, and like any good cozy mystery the skies are gloomy, the rain is unrelenting, and the big gray waves crash upon the shore. Inside the house, the servants keep the fireplace roaring and various characters inhabit the many second-floor bedrooms. All the while, the reluctant hero learns more about Adam Lang, Lang’s tough but sexy wife Ruth, and Lang’s presumed mistress Amelia Bly. (We never get much explicit information about this mistress business; it is understood to be true by everyone, but we never catch them in the act and in the end it’s not relevant to the plot.)
The narrator is no James Bond. He doesn’t even have a name, at least not one that is revealed to the reader. Really – we never know his name. He’s just “the ghost.” Harris accomplished this neat trick by having Adam Lang address him by the sobriquet “man,” on the grounds that Lang forgets everyone?s name.
As the pages fly by, the mystery deepens to include the CIA and all sorts off international skullduggery involving shadowy university professors. There’s an evil company that evokes Halliburton and the suggestion that the British Prime Minister, Adam Lang / Tony Blair, was an American puppet. As the ghostwriter digs up more dirt, the tensions come to a boil – and then suddenly the story is slammed shut by a violent episode at the Martha’s Vineyard airport. It?s a little too convenient and frankly I wish that the author had had the fortitude to force his characters to end the story themselves rather than relying on a random device to wrap things up. Setting up character conflicts is difficult work, especially in high-stakes thrillers, and the reader looks forward to the characters resolving the plot themselves. It’s less satisfying when the gods on Mt. Olympus provide the denouement.
Despite this minor quibble, “The Ghost Writer” is a darned good yarn, combining elements of a cozy mystery with a political thriller. The tale is briskly told with a minimum of fuss, and Harris spices his prose with just enough literary inventiveness to make reading it fun.
