Twilight

Starred review from October 1, 2007
With exceptional restraint and the accretion of small but telling details, DuBois, already acclaimed for his 2003 thriller Betrayed
, leaps to the forefront of speculations on the future of the war on terror with this quietly devastating cautionary tale. His callow but sympathetic hero, Canadian journalist Samuel Simpson, has joined a United Nations unit attempting to gather evidence against those responsible for a devastating terror attack and document war crimes in the ensuing civil strife. In a twist Rod Serling would have been proud of, Dubois reveals that Simpson's beleaguered team, dodging gunfire in a shattered landscape, is assigned to the United States, which has fallen into anarchy after a dirty bomb destroyed lower Manhattan and other attacks seriously damaged electrical systems across the country. The balance between action and introspection is superb, and DuBois is confident enough of his readership and his premise to avoid a pat, upbeat ending. Those seeking a thoughtful look at a plausible aftermath of further attacks on America will find much to ponder.

October 15, 2007
A small United Nations team moves through a war zone, looking for the site of a mass execution. Finding the site will seal the fate of militia leaders on trial at The Hague. Attacks by local militias are always a threat, and the death and destruction they see haunt the team members.But this isnt Darfur or the Balkans; its upstate New York in the near future: a suitcase nuke has been detonated in Manhattan. Others have been detonated from weather balloons, disrupting communications and transportation. Panicked refugees stream out of the city, overwhelming small towns upstate. The U.S. government is paralyzed, and the U.S. military is fully committed in Iraq and Iran. The killing begins, and the fault line is Red Stateversus Blue State. There are some serious flaws here: DuBois characters are almost caricatures, andhis proseis at times downright clunky. But the novel works simply because of its utterly compelling premise: the gut-wrenching, heartrending plausibility of a frightened, angry, post-Katrina America riven by bad government and the politics of division. A powerful cautionary tale, though not a particularlyartistic one.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)