Nearly five years ago, I read and reviewed Shadow Man by Alan Drew, and I said it was “the best kind of novel: one that truly entertains the reader while making us THINK. Ben Wade is a great character, and I hope Shadow Man is the first in a series.” Then my (long) wait began, and finally I was ecstatic to receive a copy of The Recruit from Random House and NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.
Like Shadow Man, The Recruit is set in the fictional Rancho Santa Elena in 1987. Having grown up in Southern Orange County, I have loved Drew’s ability to capture the setting so well: When detective Ben Wade responds to a call, he goes to “…a nice street…every house painted a shade of beige, little squares of mowed green grass, sprinklers draining the Colorado to keep that green.”
As Ben looks over the town, “...it struck him, suddenly, that South Orange County looked like the kind of place Nazis might have built if they had occupied California. The cultivated perfection…felt, well, fascist through a seductive facism, a type of authoritarianism that made you feel like you wanted to be controlled. Behind the “orange curtain” for sure.”
Ben seems like he may be getting ready for a life away from law enforcement: “Body surfing and tacos, that’s the retirement he wanted.” But there is something going on in paradise: a series of strange crimes that are seemingly unrelated until the seemingly unrelated clues of poisoning and red threads left at the scene are connected by Ben and forensic expert Natasha Betencourt.
Rancho Santa Elena has a growing white power movement, and it seems to be linked to a much wider terror network, using a new technology (remember, it’s 1987) called the internet. The pioneers in using this new tool find it can be helpful to spread their ideology, plan attacks, and lure young men (always young men!) into committing crimes. As Ben digs deeper, the parallels between the fictional Rancho Santa Elena and present day U.S. suburbia are chilling.
The plot twists and turns are terrific, and Drew’s writing is amazing. As the crimes and their perpetrators are revealed, I found the story VERY unsettling, as deep-seated hatred, violence, and racism emerge. I often wonder how it is that the current U.S. has become so angry and filled with scary crazy people, often young men “...in transition to manhood, that in-between place of confusion.” Ben understands how living in the rough parts of L.A. might contribute to violent behavior, but the reasons for the white power movement in Rancho Santa Elena aren’t so obvious to him as he goes deeper into the movement. When he is in the courtroom as one of the leaders faces justice, “...it struck Ben how small he looked, so lost in his own sense of genetic superiority that he was blind to his mediocrity. ..It struck Ben then that racism – the violent kind Rowan traded in and the kind that lied beneath the surfaces of places like Rancho Santa Elena–was a sort of suicide…a whole lot of white people in this country would be willing to burn it all down, democracy, America, the whole damn thing, to maintain the fantasy of their superiority. “
Holy crap, that writing is perfection in so many ways. As for how the news about the movement is presented, “...reporters and the anchors couldn’t quite wrap their heads around the idea that these nice-looking white people could do such terrible things.“Just as Shadow Man told a great story while looking at two social issues (the plight of farmworkers and the effects of child abuse), The Recruit does a masterful job looking at the disturbing and growing issue of the white power movement. I truly can’t say enough about how great this book is. Why do I only get five stars?