Folsom,
Allan. The Machiavelli Covenant. Forge. January 2007. c.558p.
ISBN 978-0-765-31305-8. $25.95. Fiction.
At least
seven men in the U.S. president’s cabinet are
members of a cabal, which turns out to be a coven with at least
200 “major world players” who take part in annual
ritual sacrifices. They want to assassinate the leaders of
France and Germany, then launch a biological war against Muslim
states. Why? Because the two European powers failed to support
the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the cabal fears that jihadists
might strike Saudia Arabia “one night.” If they
did, “In less than thirty-six hours . . . Arabia would
fall, then Kuwait, then Iraq and Iran, Syria and probably Jordan.” The
flow of oil to the West would stop, “just like that.” Learning
this, the president goes on the run. Fortunately, he has his
toupee with him. Add to Folsom's (The Exile) brew an assassin
who plans to kill three presidents with a single shot, a female
photojournalist who learns that 27 other women in her family
have been sacrificial victims, and . . . enough. As the president
says, the situation “borders
on the impossible if not the absurd,” though he later
claims this is “not fiction”; this is “real.” Some
thrillers are so gripping that one forgives bad writing; this
novel—clichéd, repetitive, melodramatic, filled
with insipid prose and mistranslations of foreign languages—is
not one of them. Emphatically not recommended.