The Rules of Silence

February 24, 2003
Lindsey is an efficient thriller author who sometimes (as in Mercy) reaches considerable heights of suspense and terror. The present book, however, is no more than just efficient, despite its smooth prose, a Lindsey trademark. It has a workable plot—Titus Cain, a self-made Texas millionaire software developer, is being bled financially by a Latino thug who threatens to kill Cain's nearest and dearest if he fails to pay large sums into a series of front companies—but it soon becomes clear that the plot is all there is to the book. Titus; his wife, Rita; and the outlaw techno-whiz they hire to get them out of their horrible situation are not brought to life for an instant, but remain the ciphers of a mindless action movie. It soon becomes clear that the Cains' would-be savior, Garcia Burden, has his own dark agenda, and that their nemesis is not stockpiling money just for himself but perhaps for a sinister Arab group that could be planning a new terrorist attack. There's a great deal of planting bugs, scrutinizing laptops, dashing around in SUVs and the occasional burst of mayhem, but it's basically an unengaging and mechanical exercise. Lindsey can do much better.

March 1, 2003
Multimillionaire Titus Cain is approached with a strange proposition: if he doesn't give a certain man $64 million, this same man will kill off some (or perhaps all) of Cain's friends and loved ones. The money has to be given to the extortionist in such a way that no one suspects anything is going on (primarily through deliberately bad investments), and if Cain even tries to seek help, the killings will start instantly. Lindsey's latest novel is thoroughly exhilarating, even if the premise isn't completely fresh: Jon Katzenbach's " The Analyst "(2001) was also about a man who had to do a specific thing if he didn't want the villain to kill his loved ones. Titus Cain is a sympathetic protagonist, a man forced to make tough decisions in the face of enormous danger; Cayetano Luquin, the powerful extortionist, who apparently does this sort of thing for a living, is vastly evil without being cartoonish; and Garcia Burden, the ex-CIA counterterrorism expert to whom Titus turns for help, is resourceful and inscrutable. Lindsey's novels sometimes suffer from lethargy, as though he's just sort of wandering through his story, but this one moves swiftly to its rousing finale. It's a definite winner.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)