Foreign intrigue

THE PILLARS OF SOLOMON. By Jon Land. Forge Books. Hardcover, 348 pages, $24.95.

Someone is abducting Palestinian children off of West Bank street in The Pillars of Solomon (Forge Books. Hardcover, 348 pages, $24.95), and the circumstances are mysterious -- one of the mothers denies it even happened. But since the latest victim reminds Ben Kamal of his own dead daughter, killed at age 13, the Palestinian police detective takes a personal interest. He hasn't conducted an investigation since teaming up many months before, both professionally and romantically, with Shin Bet investigator Danielle Barnea, in the intrigue and mayhem of Walls of Jericho.

Danielle, now a chief inspector with the Israeli National Police, enters the same mystery through another door. A shady Jerusalem character called the Engineer is murdered, and his petty criminal enterprise soon appears to have been more ambitious than smuggling contraband in and out of the West Bank. Some of the cargo he brokered may have been human.

The two investigations speed long on both sides of the Jordan, and by the time they meet, the consequences threaten to explode into incendiary revelations far more shocking than the international traffic in children. A high-level conspiracy has been keeping two secrets for 50 years. One would sully the names of highly decorated war heroes, and the other would shake the very foundations of national and Jewish identity.

Bad guys abound. Al Safah, which means "the butcher" in Arabic, is a legendary bogey man that children are threatened with. However, we find, he actually exists, and is such a monster that one scar-eyed villain is terrified when his name is mentioned. The most capable good guys here may be women. Pinned down when their Jordanian guards are killed, Danielle leaps through a window under fire and returns with a Jeep. And then there is Faustin, from Interpol, a swift, black-garbed Ninja of a heroine who was herself stolen as a child by the network she's waging a personal war against.

Oddly enough, the exotic collaboration and star-crossed romancing of two Palestinian and Israeli detectives is downplayed in this, their second thriller together. They don't work side-by-side until near the end, and then only fleetingly, as their investigations steam ahead on parallel tracks. That's a shame, because chemistry can't happen without physical proximity, and the plenty of both in Walls of Jericho made for a fairly thrilling thriller.

In fact, the first explosion -- the first violence at all -- waits until page 73, when Ben shoots a Hamas bomber in a Jerusalem public square. That typifies the restraint that author Jon Land is after here, filling out the characters instead of choreographing them through shoot-'em-ups every dozen or two pages, which was the breathless style -- which succeeded -- in the earlier book.

Which is not to say that The Pillars of Solomon is bedside reading to lull you to sleep. Twists and turns and elements of suspense dot the narrative like "Dangerous Curve" signs down a steep mountain road. Periodically throughout the story, an adventure tale of four friends is being told to a little girl by her grandfather, one of the four, as the two secrets overshadow events. Three of the men were refugees who grabbed guns as soon as they hit the Israeli beach in 1947, smack into the nation's first war with the Arabs. One of them was the "Engineer," the smuggler who was later murdered, and the intertwining lives of the friends, through Hagana military exploits and civilian life, present histories of the Jewish nation in microcosm.

Land gives a firm sense of being there, notably in the little details. For example, we learn that because of bomb risks delivered parcels are never left unattended at addresses in Israel, so there are usually long lines at post offices to pick them up. Phone bills in Israel include the name as well as the number of the party called. Little things like that accumulate, supplementing the expected travelogue descriptions of places such as the title's Solomon's Pillars, towering sandstone "guardians of the past."

Walls of Jericho was a local best seller, and if the author's fans expect that breakneck pace and cinematic style, they may be disappointed. But for those who are unfamiliar with Land's novels and enjoy thrillers, this novel may provide an enjoyable excursion with two unusual and diverse points of view. While international politics may get confounding and chaotic in the newspapers, The Pillars of Solomon resolves confusions and fashions the kind of amicable outcome that we could use in the real Mideast.
--B.R.

---

Back to "Novel ideas"

---

| home page | what's new | search | about the phoenix | feedback |
Copyright © 1999 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group. All rights reserved.