Review: Not One Scintilla of Espionage Here, But It's a Very Good Story
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 3, 2012
"The Diaries: An Espionage Thriller" by Chuck Driskell is an excellent story, more like a police detective story populated almost entirely by civilians, but with ominous more-or-less international overtones. But definitely this story is not anything remotely related to espionage. Historical secrets, maybe, but no espionage. A strange choice of title, the "espionage thriller" part.In comparison to Driskell's novel "Doppelganger," here the gruesomeness is toned down quite a bit, although there are 3 or 4 quite shocking scenes of murder, maiming and inhumanity. Seems kind of like a Driskell trademark - gruesome episodes involving great cruelty. In "Diaries" you'll find plenty of horrific murders, ghastly maiming, and utter disregard for human life, on the part of the bad guys as well as the "good guy," whose name is Gage. But the gore and awful treatment of people are not the main features of the story and do not dominate the book - as was the case in "Doppelganger".I think Driskell's real skill is in creating an involving, reasonably believable, fictional story line, which employs a lot of action, almost non-stop throughout the book, right up to the very last page section of the book.  The basic premise (the long lost and now found diaries from pre-WWII, involving Hitler) is in fact somewhat of a stretch, but once you buy into the story, you don't really have to suspend disbelief very often. And, it's all tied up very nicely in the last 10 pages.The main guy (not really a hero in my view) is one of those former army, then super-secret-ops guys, who is kind of lost psychologically, but maintains his killing skills enough to wreak havoc on even the most formidable of modern foes. On one of his shady operations, he finds the "diaries." He's a survivor rather than super-hero, a fundamentally tragic figure who seems to need to start his life over and over again to grasp hold of his own identity. His psychology is not particularly attractive or compelling. And his angst is a mite bit overdone.The secondary characters are really excellently drawn, even the bad guys.  Not sure about the conversion of one of the bad guys to the good guys' side, however. Seemed like an easy out of a bad and sticky situation that Gage got himself involved in. I always think that authors who so creatively get their heroes into untenable situations should usually use that same creativity to get them out.While it's a really good read which I recommend to people who like this kind of adventure story, I give it a 4.49, not good enough for 5 stars, but almost. Thus, it gets 4 stars from me.