RULES OF DECEPTION
Christopher Reich
Doubleday
Thriller
ISBN: 9780385524063

• About the Book
• Critical Praise
• Read an Excerpt
• Author Interview –– July 18, 2008

RULES OF DECEPTION, the latest offering from award-winning author Christopher Reich, makes demands. Reich, whose bibliography consists of some of the most intelligent contemporary thrillers in print, has a penchant for what has been referred to elsewhere as "complex" plots. Fair enough; his work is challenging, in part because his stories are set very deeply in this world. As is thoroughly demonstrated in his new book, he has a good grasp of current events and the ways in which seemingly unrelated events are very closely tied together. Such things do not lend themselves to headline news, no matter how one tries to jam them to make them fit. Reich's work is painted on a much broader canvas, demanding singular attention to detail and to what has gone before. Fortunately, such effort on the part of the reader is rewarded one hundredfold.

Jonathan Ransom is the heart of RULES OF DECEPTION, a character who is both unique and an everyman, an expert in his field who suddenly becomes a fish out of water on a very hostile and inhospitable shore. Jonathan is a physician who eschews the fortune a medical practice could bring him, choosing instead to devote his knowledge and talents to Doctors Without Borders. As the book begins, he is taking a rare holiday with his nurse-wife, Emma, climbing the Swiss Alps and contemplating his career. Everything changes for Jonathan within the space of a few heartbeats when a blizzard sets in and Emma is lost to a hidden crevasse.

But he barely has time to grieve before his belief in his life and work is irrevocably altered. Not even 24 hours after the terrible mountainside accident, an envelope for Emma is delivered to their hotel room. All it contains is two baggage claim tickets, which are to be reclaimed at a remote baggage station. Puzzled and intrigued, Jonathan journeys to the site only to be attacked almost immediately by two men. Thanks to some luck and lightning fast reflexes acquired from working and living in dangerous places, he leaves one assailant dead and the other mortally wounded. However, Jonathan is horrified when he discovers that his attackers were Swiss policemen. Their deaths bring the Swiss authorities into play.

Meanwhile, two apparently unrelated deaths of "persons of interest" to Swiss counterespionage agents bring Marcus von Daniken, a quietly efficient and extremely competent investigator, into play. As Marcus's investigation slowly begins to dovetail into the deaths of the two policemen, and thus into Jonathan's world, he finds himself pursued by two Swiss law enforcement agencies and a shadowy, calculating assassin.

An unknown group of individuals are slowly but inexorably putting together the pieces of a plot to create an incident of international terrorism that will lead straight back to the Iranian government, in the hope of beginning a conflagration that will bring on a cataclysmic event. Jonathan slowly discovers, to his horror, that Emma had been leading a secretive double life and was an integral key in a plot that, if carried out, would result in the deaths of innocents. Whose side was Emma on? Was she trying to bring the plot to fruition, or prevent it? Grieving and angered by turns, even as he is pursued from all sides, Jonathan engages in an investigation on the run, aided only by an old family friend and headed toward what may well be the biggest shock of all.

Christopher Reich is a sure-footed guide through the labyrinthine plotting of RULES OF DECEPTION, and his characters --- both primary and secondary --- are every bit as compelling and memorable as the storyline, which reads as if it was ripped from tomorrow's headlines. Marcus von Daniken, in fact, almost steals the book away from the main characters, functioning in his own way as a lower key Samuel Gerard to Jonathan's Richard Kimble. And then there is Zvi Hirsch, an upper-level official in the Israeli government. He's not only one of the most intriguing characters in the book, but also one who you'll hope has a real-world model.

    --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.com.

© Copyright 1996-2008, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.

Back to top.