The Ghost

THE GHOST; Robert Harris; New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007; 335 pp. Fiction

The unnamed narrator of Robert Harris' new thriller is a ghostwriter--a "ghost" in the parlance of the trade who is called upon to complete the "autobiography" of the recently resigned Prime Minister of Great Britain, Adam Lang, whose first ghostwriter died when he fell from a ferry off Cape Cod and drowned. One of our most engaging current novelists, Robert Harris generally writes character-rich but also plot-driven historical (or alternate-history) fiction ranging from “Fatherland” (what if the Nazis had won?) to a truly frightening story of the 79 A.D. eruption of Vesuvius (“Pompeii”). This book is current, "ripped from the headlines" as they say, and filled with transparently veiled references to living politicians. Employing neither gore nor breathtaking action sequences, Harris takes his protagonist through succeeding levels of understanding and fear to an ending which it would be just short of criminal for me to reveal. Adding to the sense of menace is Harris’ carefully drawn setting—the bitter winter season on Martha’s Vineyard. Puzzling inconsistencies and gaps in Lang’s narrative, as well as the increasingly suspicious circumstances of his predecessor’s death, lead his ghostwriter into deep water in more ways than one. Many ghosts fill this narrative: of dead people, of malevolent influences “behind the throne,” and of the abuse of power. “The Ghost” is chilling in setting, tone, and denouement—a book not soon to be forgotten.

LW