Review: If you're depressed...
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 06 12, 2011
This book started out interesting and went downhill from there.  Perhaps in the last third of the story I would have found something redeeming in it, but I'll never know...I gave up on it shortly after Mark makes it home from his protracted detention with the CIA.First, I give credit where credit is due.  The author is good with pen and paper.  His prose flowed and he's well practiced at clicking two words together to make a thought.  For that, I give him kudos.The story, however, is one mad depression from start to finish (or at least to as far as I got).  The cynical tone in the title says it all.  And the story elaborates.  We find that intelligent, and well-meant officials of the CIA can take the word of a man who is hell-bent on confusing that fine Intelligence Organization with a red herring, and turn the life of an innocent, nay not just innocent, but fine and upstanding member of the American Continuum into utter chaos, even though all they have is that one confession made under torture.  Perhaps there have been real honest mistakes made like poor Mark Taylor, but I found myself saying, "no, this makes no sense."  I could see them taking in an innocent Middle eastern American and treating him this way (because they are at heart racist bigots), but not someone who looks like an altar boy from Northern Scotland, ready to take vows.  As far as I was concerned, the premise was flawed from the beginning.  I kept expecting the "thriller" portion to cut in when Mark Taylor breaks out, finds the culprit who framed him and then sets the world right, but that never happens.  Even after he is released, life goes downhill rapidly for him.  I suppose there is some redeeming moment in the book when he shakes of the shackles of oppression and decides that he is going to fight for justice and the rights of his fellow humanity, but I never saw it coming and I never will. I gave up reading it.You've heard of jingoistic diatribes?  Well this is the same kind of claptrap, only coming at the reader from the opposite end of the spectrum.  If you simply enjoy a good book for the escape it provides, then don't pick this one up because, admittedly, this is a well-drawn picture of hell on earth.  If you enjoy torture, a never-ending spiral downward where everyone turns against you (after all if the CIA thinks you're evil, you must be) and a depressing tale that includes a heaping helping of abuse upon the best efforts of our government to fight terrorism, then go ahead and pick it up.  If that's the kind if read you enjoy then you probably watch Apocalypse Now once a week as vindication of the filthiness of the human condition, especially as it is manifest in the American soul.  For me, life as I now live it in the real is hard enough.  I found nothing redeeming in this book and plan on giving the author a wide pass in the future.