- Thor, Brad.
Hidden Order.
New York: Pocket Books, 2013.
ISBN 978-1-4767-1710-4.
-
This is the thirteenth in the author's
Scot
Harvath series, which began with
The Lions of Lucerne (October 2010).
Earlier novels have largely been in the mainstream of the “techno-thriller”
genre, featuring missions in exotic locations confronting shadowy adversaries
bent on inflicting great harm. The present book is a departure from this
formula, being largely set in the United States and involving institutions
considered pillars of the establishment such as the Federal Reserve
System and the Central Intelligence Agency.
A CIA operative “accidentally” runs into a senior intelligence
official of the Jordanian government in an airport lounge in Europe,
who passes her disturbing evidence that members of a now-disbanded CIA
team of which she was a member were involved in destabilising
governments now gripped with “Arab Spring” uprisings and
next may be setting their sights on Jordan.
Meanwhile, Scot Harvath, just returned from a harrowing mission on the high
seas, is taken by his employer, Reed Carlton, to discreetly meet a new client:
the Federal Reserve. The Carlton Group is struggling to recover from the devastating
blow it took in the previous novel,
Black List (August 2014), and its boss is
willing to take on unconventional missions and new clients, especially ones
“with a license to print their own money”. The chairman of the
Federal Reserve has recently and unexpectedly died and the five principal
candidates to replace him have all been kidnapped, almost simultaneously,
across the United States. These people start turning up dead, in
circumstances with symbolism dating back to the American revolution.
Investigation of the Jordanian allegations is shut down by the CIA hierarchy,
and has to be pursued through back channels, involving retired people who
know how the CIA really works. Evidence emerges of a black program that
created weapons of frightful potential which may have gone even blacker and
deeper under cover after being officially shut down.
Earlier Brad Thor novels were more along the “U-S-A! U-S-A!”
line of most thrillers. Here, the author looks below the surface of
highly dubious institutions (“The Federal Reserve is about as federal
as Federal Express”) and evil that flourishes in the dark,
especially when irrigated with abundant and unaccountable funds. Like
many Americans, Scot Harvath knew little about the Federal Reserve other
than it had something to do with money. Over the course of his investigations
he, and the reader, will learn many disturbing things about its dodgy history
and operations, all accurate as best I can determine.
The novel is as much police procedural as thriller, with Harvath teamed with
a no-nonsense Boston Police Department detective, processing crime scenes
and running down evidence. The story is set in an unspecified near future
(the Aerion Supersonic Business
Jet is in operation). All is eventually revealed in the end, with a
resolution in the final chapter devoutly to be wished, albeit highly unlikely
to occur in the cesspool of corruption which is real-world Washington. There
is less action and fancy gear than in most Harvath novels, but interesting
characters, an intricate mystery, and a good deal of information of which
many readers may not be aware.
A short prelude to this novel,
Free Fall,
is available for free for the Kindle. It provides the background of
the mission in progress in which we first encounter Scot Harvath in
chapter 2 here. My guess is that this chapter was originally part
of the manuscript and was cut for reasons of length and because it
spent too much time on a matter peripheral to the main plot. It's
interesting to read before you pick up Hidden Order, but
if you skip it you'll miss nothing in the main story.
December 2014 