The Marching Season
by Daniel Silva
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Book Summary Information
Author: Daniel SilvaEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-01-06
ISBN: 045120932X
Number of pages: 512
Publisher: Signet
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780451209320
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The Marching Season
Book Review: A Happy Ending for the Bad Guys?
Summary: 2 Stars
Daniel Silva is a good modern writer, and I've read and reviewed several of his books. If you don't mind a superficial re-hash of the age-old "Irish Problem" you may enjoy this book (first published in 1999), but it is similar in structure and outline to all Silva's books: cookie-cutter assassin-espionage formulae, easy to read and easy to forget, filled with very forgettable characters. The plot is always more interesting than any of the people in the story. It's been only a few days since I finished reading this book, and already I am having trouble remembering enough to write this review.
Not one of the characters is likable, especially the American "heroes." Lead American characters Michael Osbourne and his wife Elizabeth are sappy, too rich, unpleasant, self-centered, nasty members of a whiney Long Island in crowd with way too much influence and prominence politically and in international circles. What's really fascinating is that the 2 primary "bad guys" enjoy a distinctly happy ending here, with their long-delayed but eerie new identity reunion. This suggests the really implausible feature of this story: Delaroche and Wells (man-woman "bad guy team") are in fact actually more likable and appealing than are the "good guy" American characters!! And they develop consciences!! Assassins with a conscience? Say it isn't so! We readers don't really want the "bad guys" to survive, do we? The ending does not help the readability of the book.
The first part of this 364-page book moves slowly with way too much background material about all of the key characters, the key issues, and the key plot features. Silva was not better when he wrote this one than when he wrote later novels: they are all too long, and he is guilty of TMI (too much information) about everyone and everything. Several times I noted in the margin something like this: "get on with the story!" Disguising George W. Bush as a hapless president of the US is part of the plotting, but Tony Blair is inserted as real.
Though the story revolves in part around the centuries-old conflict between Catholics and Protestants on Irish soil, Silva fails to provide a reasonable amount of information about why the conflict exists and why it could not be resolved. His research fails him (and readers) here.
The more interesting part of the story is about personal revenge. Silva links the Irish conflict part of the story to the personal revenge part of the story between Osbourne and Delaroche, and at times, the mixture is not only confusing, but as we see, barely linked at all. Two stories really, joined together by common characters. The other sub-plot (involving unlikely conspiracies of important world leaders working together in a greedy behind-the-scenes organization to disrupt the peace process everywhere so that they can make money)is simply not credible.
The silliest part of the plot occurs in Washington, D. C., where Michael has a head-to-head, life-or-death encounter with Delaroche. To save his own life, Michael makes a deal with the assassin. It's all downhill from then on. This is only one of many hard-to-believe scenarios, the outcome of which dictates the next directions of the story.
A mediocre read at best, it rates a 2.4, rounded down to a 2.0.
Summary of The Marching Season
"[A] Tom-Clancy-esque Thriller." ?USA Today
The Good Friday agreement that promised to bring peace to the embattled Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland is jeopardized by a new paramiltary group bent on destroying the truce. Michael Osbourne, the hero of Silva's previous thriller, The Mark of the Assassin, is rerecruited by the CIA when Douglas Cannon--his father-in-law, a former senator, and the new ambassador to the Court of St. James--is targeted for death by the Ulster Freedom Brigade. Osbourne has long since given up on the spying game and is reluctant to be drawn back into it again. Then he discovers that the Brigade has shopped the contract on Senator Cannon to October, the assassin who narrowly missed killing Osbourne a few years ago but succeeded in murdering the woman he once loved. It's a good setup for a political thriller, with nonstop action that moves from Belfast to Armagh, New York to Washington, London to Mykonos. What really notches up the suspense is the double-dealing in the corridors of power, particularly the CIA and a secret organization called the Society--a nasty assemblage of politicos, spymasters, arms merchants, and killers bent on destabilizing nascent peacemaking efforts all over the globe. Down but not out at the conclusion of Silva's latest, the Society and Osbourne will likely be back for a return engagement the next time warring factions attempt to beat their swords. In fact, as the director of the Society says in the last chapter, "The Kosovo Liberation Front would like our help: Gentlemen, we're back in business." --Jane Adams
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