So have you ever read a book that the pages flew by, you really wanted to find out what happens, and then you get to the end which is not really satisfying and you say, did I really like this book? That’s how I feel about book 20 of 2010 Jericho’s Fall by Stephen L. Carter. The story revolves around the dying possibly crazy ex-Director of the CIA, Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor – generally Mr. Everything – Jericho Ainsley. He is at home in a mountain fortress in Colorado dying from cancer and everybody is out to kill him before he can reveal his secrets! In steps Rebecaa (Beck) DeForde his former lover and the reason for his fall from power fifteen years earlier when she was a 19 year old student and he a professor! Beck sets out to discover Jericho’s secrets and where he has hidden them! Here what a review in The Washington Post said about the book:
Thus begins Stephen L. Carter’s “Jericho’s Fall,” an odd but readable mixture of spy thriller, literary novel and haunted-house mystery. In an author’s note, Carter declares that the book’s “only purpose is entertainment,” and he provides plenty of that. When the book fails, it is because the author, who is a professor of law at Yale, tries too hard to entertain us. Even for a novel about a Machiavellian, possibly mad, ex-CIA director, this novel contains an alarming number of unsolved, probably unsolvable mysteries.
Did I like the book – I guess I liked Beck and the story moved along well but like the review said there were a lot of unsolved mysteries in the book. I gave it 3 out of 5 – but it may even be a 2! From what I’ve read Carter’s other books are better so maybe I’ll read another.