Paranoid America Revealed

It’s comforting to think of McCarthyism or the Salem Witch Trials as exceptions, as bursts of madness and vindictive cruelty in an otherwise sane country.  But they’re not exceptions, they’re par for the course in the United States where fear of conspiratorial plots is the “great unseen engine of American history.”  That’s the verdict of cultural historian Colin Dickey.

In a memorable, chilling phrase, the author of Under the Eye of Power throws down the gauntlet with the opening line of his new book: “The United States was born in paranoia.”

Dickey goes on to explain that there’s nothing hyperbolic about this statement.  In briskly narrated and sometimes alarming chapters, what follows is a parade of secret, secretive, or “foreign” groups that have  been seen as targeting America for a hostile takeover of one kind or another.  All these groups have supposedly sought total control, and the unreasoned fear of their machinations has consistently created “moral panic.”

The culprits include real and quasi-imaginary groups: Freemasons, the French, Catholic immigrants, the Molly McGuires, Mystic-Red, Abolitionists, labor unionists, The Illuminati, slave owners, Jews, anarchists and socialists.

All of those groups have been viewed as malign, destructive, nefarious and subversive, deviously operating behind the scenes as puppet masters and saboteurs of American values and independence.  And so there’s been a drumbeat of fear, outrage and violence throughout this country’s history going back to the time of the Revolution.

One of the many surprises in this ugly catalogue of craziness is the fact that even George Washington was prone to see the unseen hand of conspiracy behind contemporary events. Ditto Samuel Adams, as Stacy Schiff shows in her splendid biography of Samuel Adams–he thought that the English were definitely conspiring to “enslave” the colonists and deprive them of their liberties.

The author brings to our attention riots and massacres that deserve more attention, but does the second incarnation of KKK really belong here when it was so ostentatiously public in its racism and violence?

The book definitely needed a firmer editorial hand.  Dickey keeps explaining in different ways that belief in secret groups with inordinate power supplies a simple explanation to complex and frightening realities.  Yes, we got that the first time, and it’s not an especially original observation.

The author has a degree in comparative literature , so it’s curious that he doesn’t mention the influence of Matthew Gregory Lewis’s classic tale of priestly depravity The Monk when he discusses wild, anti-Catholic novels featuring depraved monks and nuns that were best-sellers in the 1840s.

The book is colorful and often shocking, but even at only 328 pages of text seems too long for its thesis.  And given that Dickey ably pinpoints our continued forgetfulness about these episodes, his book will likely fade away too. ★★★

Lev Raphael is the author of twenty-seven books in genres from memoir to mystery and has seen his work appear in fifteen languages. He has reviewed books for The Washington Post, The Detroit Free Press and other publications.

“The Street” is Too Easy to Figure Out

It’s no surprise that Anna and Peter have been moved in The Street from London to a brand-new, upscale, little development in Scotland because they’re in witness protection.  Anna’s experiencing high anxiety, she and Peter are very much at odds, and their new home is too meticulously furnished and equipped.  The street of eight houses itself is on the creepy side: “perfect white cubes with their perfect gardens.”

Tension mounts when Anna starts meeting the neighbors, all of whom live in identical homes whose doorbells play the same annoying tune.  You start to wonder: Are they cult members?  Aliens?  Spies?  Is this some weird kind of prison?  The enclave is gated and there are security cameras, okay, but why does Anna have a very intrusive phone app?

Something is definitely amiss on this street, because no matter who Anna talks to after her boozy first night (more about that below), she experiences “an odd sensation, a shift in the atmosphere that seemed to happen every time she spoke to one of the residents.”

Their next-door neighbors seem like fun, drink a lot, and enjoy Indian food just like Anna and Peter, and the four of them have a hard-drinking, hilarious night before the couple have settled in (or tried to).  But the day after, those neighbors have disappeared and their house is totally empty. Everyone on the street denies they were even there. . .

It’s an intriguing hook if you’re going to be hooked.

As the book progresses, we learn through flashback chapters more about how the couple came to be ripped out of their London lives and planted in Scotland, and why they might be in profound danger.  She’s a writer and he’s a carpenter but each of them is far more complex than they first appear to be, and they have some ugly stuff to hide from the world and each other.

Holliday writes keenly about fear, paranoia, and how married couples can work each other’s last nerve and not have any idea who they’re really married to. She builds tension skillfully and  keeps you actively guessing as to what’s going to happen next. 

All the same, the  book has a gigantic sinkhole of a problem: the explanation for all the strange behavior on Anna’s street was so obvious early on that you may wonder why Anna couldn’t figure it out herself.  After all, she’s a crime novelist.  The time changes throughout the book complicate the storyline, but they don’t camouflage the excruciatingly simple solution that’s apparent before the book truly takes off.  This is a mystery that’s ultimately not mysterious enough. ★★

Lev Raphael is the former crime fiction reviewer at The Detroit Free Press.

Review: The Real Russia

Russia has been in the news most recently for the war in Ukraine and previously in terms of election interference or climate change.  But information about what the country is really like doesn’t seem to interest journalists or their editors.

Luckily for us, Russian-born TV producer Peter Pomerantsev has done a deep dive about his experience making documentaries there and meeting people ranging from aspiring small town models to obscenely powerful oligarchs.  Nothing is True and Everything Is Possible examines a country that shifts like a kaleidoscope on steroids as its leaders stealthily fight for global supremacy and tens of billions of dollars illegally slosh through its economy in often unchartable ways.  A country that seems to have lost its mind in the rush to grab wealth wherever it can.

One thing you can count on with today’s Russia is insane impermanence, especially in Moscow. The city itself is in a perpetual paroxysm of building and rebuilding, and the author’s descriptions of those changes are so memorable. “Whole swathes of town are demolished in fits of self-destruction, wastelands abandoned for years and for no apparent reason, skyscrapers erupting before there are any roads leading to them and then left empty in the dirty snow.”

This re-invention frenzy dwarfs anything that Americans have experienced. People become wealthy there with the speed of light and for “its new heroes, life is just one glittering masquerade, where every role and any position or belief is mutable.”   The whole book captures the bizarre reality that has taken hold of Russia and squeezed it dry, while making some people so desperate to feel positive that they’re hypnotized by TV charlatans and self-help cult leaders.

Corruption and bribery rule in every sphere of life, whether getting a driver’s license or snagging exemptions from being drafted into the army.  That’s simply how things get done.  But one of the most egregious examples is the Sochi Olympics.  Those games cost tens of billions more than the previous Olympics–the extra money just drifted away.

That’s what seems to happen across the country with one venture after another, and much of that money has been buying real estate, soccer teams, fabulous art, and companies in London and all across Europe.  Rapacious, dangerously charming Russians seem to have colonized that city, appearing as brash arrivistes but slowly becoming “classy” and moving on from plush city addresses to country estates.

Deep Russian paranoia is stoked by state-controlled media that makes Fox TV seem as anodyne as a chirpy Hallmark greeting card. Against an apocalyptic backdrop, it constantly warns viewers against “Gay-Europa,” Western fascists and the CIA infesting Ukraine, Western plans for genocide against Russia, and “American-sponsored fascists crucifying Russian children on the squares of Ukrainian towns.”

That media machine has produced weeping women who testified to those appalling horrors.  Of course they were fake. It’s all fake news meant to keep the government in power and hide the reality of corruption so widespread that you can’t say it permeates the state. It is the state.

The author notes that the Kremlin “has finally mastered the art of fusing reality TV and authoritarianism to keep the great, 140-million-strong population entertained, distracted, constantly exposed to geopolitical nightmares, which if repeated enough times can become infectious.”

You have to wonder if this is a warning to readers that the same thing could happen in Western countries, perhaps with less drama and less notice–because who could imagine it possible?

Lev Raphael  has reviewed for The Washington Post, The Detroit Free Press and many other media outlets since the mid-1990s.

 

 

Review: When Friendship Goes Terribly Wrong

Has a new friend ever seemed a bit too friendly, too helpful, too willing to please? This friends gets close to you very fast, sharing intimate life details while doing everything possible to basically seduce you.  It happens at time when you’re desperate to break out of your isolation and depression. You share confidences really quickly and this friend becomes a lifeline.

Until the friend shows flashes of something troubling and things start to go wrong….

That’s the premise of Andrew Kaufman’s terrifying thriller What She Doesn’t Know which manages to turn this situation into electrifying high drama while keeping it very intimate.

Riley Harper is a pariah in her small town but doesn’t have the money or energy to escape.  Falsely accused of killing her teenage daughter, she’s spent time in a mental institution and even her sister Erin isn’t sure about what happened.  It doesn’t help that Riley flies off the handle way too easily and is intensely paranoid.  This state of mind has roots in a very troubled childhood and it’s no surprise when she starts stanning a beautiful, wealthy neighbor.  Riley is obsessed by this woman’s lifestyle and actually breaks the law to wallow in her obsession.

But she has a roller coaster of shocks ahead of her.  Her new friend Samantha Light, living off inherited wealth, may be beautiful, generous, and affectionate–but she has darkness in her past as well and the two women bond around shared misery.

On the surface it starts out feeling like Christmas.  Samantha treats her to a shopping spree, lets Riley drive her luxury car, and gives Riley the kind of affection and support she desperately needs from her sister but isn’t getting.  Life couldn’t have taken a better turn for someone who is barely scraping by and can’t be sure that she knows what’s happening in her own crappy apartment.  Is she forgetting where she put things–like a big kitchen knife?  Is she being stalked, perhaps by a detective who was determined to convict her of her daughter’s murder?

And then Samantha reveals another side to her personality that throws Riley off kilter.  Is Riley over-reacting?  Is she too sensitive?  Or is she in deep trouble?

The prose is lean, the story moves like a high speed train, and the emotions are utterly believable.  Riley is the kind of character you keep yelling at: “Don’t do it!”  But of course she does, and it makes sense at every turn because the author understands the depths of despair and the craving for a lifeline. Kaufman’s constructed a tale with some wild twists and Riley’s plunge into a new kind of darkness is likely to keep you reading through the night.  And make you wonder about a new friend’s possible hidden motives.   Riley’s paranoia is almost contagious, and that’s a fabulous achievement.

Lev Raphael is the author of Writer’s Block is Bunk! and two dozen other books in many genres. He offers creative writing workshops, editing and mentoring online at writewithoutorders.com.