The Book of Fate

THE BOOK OF FATE: Brad Meltzer: Warner Books (2006): Fiction: 510 pages

During an assassination attempt, Wes, a young Presidential aide, is scarred for life and the President’s staffer, who is also the President’s closest friend, is killed. In the aftermath, the President of the United States loses his bid for re-election. Eight years later in Malaysia the once ambitious young aide, still working for the ex-president, is sure he has seen the man he long thought dead. The Book of Fate follows a tangled course as Wes, now being tracked by the escaped assassin, works feverishly to elude a powerful conspiracy and find out why and how the President’s best friend would fake his own death.

Meltzer’s other strong political thrillers won him an audience for this book. The plot contains some surprises but it is not one of the author’s best. The Christian and Masonic symbols the author attempts to weave into the plot are really not essential to the action and so that part of the plot seems contrived and very post Da Vinci code. If you want to say you’ve read all of Meltzer’s books, well, you’ll find a couple of likable characters, no graphic sex or bad language, and you’ll learn a bit about what it is like to be an ex-president of the USA.

SH