The other day Glenzilla mentioned a political thriller on his blog, so I decided to try it.
I'm happy to report that Fault Line by Barry Eisler is both a gripping page-turner and a thought-provoking novel.
The story revolves around patent attorney Alex Treven and his older brother Ben, a highly trained military assassin. The brothers have been estranged for years, but now Alex thinks he may be the target of a professional hit man because of his association with a new computer encryption program, Obsidian. Reluctantly, Alex turns to his brother Ben for help.
On one level this is a standard espionage yarn and Obsidian is its MacGuffin; on another it's a tale of two brothers confronting their past as they try to navigate the fault line of their relationship, complicated by the presence of Sarah, the young associate who may or may not be mixed up in the tangled plot.
Not only is Ben forced to deal with the family tragedies that he thought he had left behind, but as Sarah keeps pressing him, he begins to question the very nature of his chosen line of work.
One of the many joys of this book is that the author names many of his characters after some liberal blogs and bloggers (cf., Obsidian). Along the way he also mentions a number of real web sites, like www.nononsenseselfdefense.com
Highly recommended!
