Author Description

"7 "As in his first novel, In the Secret State, McCrum displays a talent for moody, atmospheric narration here but again lavishes that talent on a thin story--this time the familiar, didactic tale of a passive, apolitical man's radicalization. McCrum's reluctant protagonist is Philip Taylor, 30, a London academic who ""had never taken a risk worth speaking of in his life."" But Philip's older brother Daniel, an investigative journalist, has taken a whole range of turning his back on the family business (pharmaceuticals), writing anti-Establishment exposÉs, permanently alienating their old father. And, though Philip hasn't seen Daniel in years, he suddenly gets caught up in his brother's world--when he gets a call from Daniel's girlfriend, counterculture journalist Daniel has disappeared, Stevie is worried, and indeed Daniel soon turns up dead--an apparent victim of sheer loss-of-heart. So Philip needs ""to know how it all went wrong."" He retraces Daniel's career, really understanding for the first time what Daniel learned (to devastating effect) while in that the family's business in the Third World was corrupt, dangerous, even genocidal. So now, moving into Daniel's house with Stevie (who literally slaps him out of passivity), Philip ""I share your anger and Daniel's anger--you have both taught me that."" And when he discovers that a terrorist is storing explosives at the house, Philip keeps the secret; after all, if he went to the police, he'd lose ""the rapport with Stevie, the unraveling of Daniel's past, and the tiny surges of self-confidence he was now experiencing for the first time in years...."" Unfortunately, however, Philip has discovered activism too the terrorist, tracked down by the cops, holds Philip hostage--with fatal results. In Britain, perhaps, this contrived, theme-heavy scenario is less stale than it is here; very similar American stories were rampant through the Seventies.