Jericho's Fall

May 11, 2009
Bestseller Carter, who expertly blended social commentary and devious plots in his previous novels (The Emperor of Ocean Park
; New England White
; Palace Council
), delivers a modest spy thriller, his first work of fiction not to focus on characters from what he has termed “the darker nation.” The sententious opening sentence (“On the Sunday before the terror began, Rebecca DeForde pointed the rental car into the sullen darkness of her distant past”) sets the tone for this minor effort. Rebecca has traveled to the Colorado Rockies to visit former CIA director Jericho Ainsley, who's dying of cancer. Jericho's decades of power and influence came to an end when he began an affair with her 15 years earlier. On arrival, Rebecca learns that shadowy forces fear that Jericho will reveal damaging Company secrets, and that his life is threatened by more than illness. Fans will miss the fully realized characters and mysterious puzzles of Carter's more complex, less predictable earlier work. Author tour.

July 1, 2009
An ailing political heavyweight's secret history is gradually disclosed in this busy thriller from the industrious Yale Law School prof/sociopolitical theorist/bestselling novelist (Palace Council, 2008, etc.).

Rapidly aging Jericho Ainsley, retired from successive tenures as Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor and CIA Director, is stricken with cancer and believed to be about to reveal numerous incriminating secrets. That's what's understood, anyway, by private-sector single mom Rebecca DeForde, once Jericho's subordinate and lover, when she's summoned to Ainsley's fortified retreat in the small town of Bethel in the Colorado Rockies. Instead, Beck finds the"dying" old man still possessed of contrary life and bile—and still harboring secrets. She seeks further explanations from and butts heads with Jericho's intemperate daughter Pamela; his sister Audrey, a peacemaking nun; his ally Brian Navarro, who shares the former spymaster's commitment to Nixonian power politics; his would-be biographer Lewiston Clark; and the sometimes helpful, sometimes intimidating Bethel police department. Nobody turns out to be precisely who she or he appears to be. Jericho's imperiled state seems connected to the scandalous collapse of a huge international financial firm, but that doesn't fully explain the discovered body of a murdered dog, a prowler seriously injured in a fall from the roof or an approaching assassin known as"Max," whose concealed identity holds the novel's niftiest surprise. It may sound like fun, but this by-the-numbers caper is too frequently turgid and redundant; Beck's catfights with Pamela and her worried phone calls home to check on daughter Nina, for example, are both monotonous and momentum-destroying. Things get awfully generic in the crowded climactic pages, and an ending intended to be ironic simply falls flat.

Let's hope the real Stephen L. Carter reappears soon, displacing this unsatisfying Robert Ludlum clone.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 1, 2009
When Beck, now a single mom with a responsible career, hears that old flame Jericho Ainsley is dying, she drops her child with grandma and flies to the bedside. Suddenly, her life is on the line. Her ex-lover is also ex-CIA, ex-Department of Defense, and an ex-investment wizard. He has desperate secrets to protect even in the face of death itself. His family and associates warn Beck that Jericho has lost his marbles, but he drafts her into the front line to guard his intel. In a remote mountain hideaway, the characters battle for mastery of Jericho's assetspsychological, emotional, and tangible. Evoking notes of Helen MacInnes even as he updates for the PDA era, Carter confidently inhabits a female sensibility to portray ground zero at this grisly deathbed. VERDICT In his fourth fictional excursion (after "Palace Council"), Carter has acquired the Midas touch of good thrillersplot, pace, and explosive ending. While this represents a switch for Carter from legal thrillers to espionage fiction, fans of his other novels may enjoy. An entertaining summer read.Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2009
Former CIA director Jericho Ainsley is dying of cancer at his mountain retreat in Colorado. His familyat least his two daughtersanswers the call to see him for what might be the last time. Rebecca DeForde also answers the call, though she has not seen Ainsley since they ran away together when she was his student at Princeton. Rebecca, now a 35-year-old divorced mother of a seven-year-old daughter, is thrown back into the suspicions and insecurities of her association with Ainsley. Just a bit older than Rebecca, Ainsleys daughters have mixed emotions about her and their father. Talk of Jerichos imminent death and the threat that he will make revelations embarrassing to the CIA draws other visitors: a host of would-be assassins, a conniving writer, and Dak, a former operative who loves and respects Jericho but fears the intentions of a man who may be going mad. Can they find the secrets that Jericho holds and stop the threat he represents to the government? They all see Rebecca and her longtime hold on Jericho as the key, while she wants nothing more than to be free of the influence Jericho has always exerted over her. Carter has delivered a solid thriller, although some readers may be disappointed in his departure from chronicling the lives and intrigues of the African American elite.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)