Midnight Comes at Noon (Hardcover)

I'm happy to say that he's back on form with "Midnight Comes at Noon", which is one of the most compulsive reads I've had in a long while.

The new President of the USA is arriving at a USAF base in England. A trip into the English

countryside ends with his kidnapping. An American pilot joins the search for his young daughter who was taken with the President. As the story unfolds he discovers that there are elements in the USA who may not be working to the same agenda.

I don't like reviews that talk about books you couldn't put down, but this was a book I carried around the house with me!

I have only two minus points: For some reason the style that the book was written in didn't seem quite as polished as I have come to expect from Easterman. Also some of the early plot points seem to have been abandoned. But this didn't detract from my enjoyment.

Overall I would say this is his best novel since "K".

Then I read the Jaguar Mask on a plane (and followed it shortly after with K), and I realised I my mistake. Whilst his novels certainly often deal with the dangers of religious zealotry, and faith (or lack of) plays a important part in the motivations of many of his characters, I found that these recurring themes did not detract from the essence of what his books were; damn good, imaginative and well paced thrillers. Since then I've plowed through his back catalogue quite happily, with mixed results. K and Jaguar Mask and Final Judgement I enjoyed enormously. Day of Wrath and The Judas Testament less so. Midnight Comes at Noon falls in the latter group.

Not that I hated it. On the positive side the it has much going for it. The central conceit of the story, the kidnapping of a liberal US President, is brilliant, (even if the manner of his kidnapping is hugely far fetched) and allows Easterman to take the plot in surprising directions. The narrative also zips along at fair old pace, taking in a number of locations worldwide whilst dealing with international political conspiracies, nationalist revolutions and a number of other big ideas. On the surface it is classic Easterman.

On the downside however, it is also Easterman not quite at his best. All the pieces are in place (religion, politics, the intelligence services, extremism, etc.) but it is almost as if, in an effort to cram all his ideas in, he has forgotten to make sure they all hang together.

In an effort to maintain the pace, things just happens too fast and the narrative jumps around too much. Characters arrive, speak, leave or in some cases die at times so quickly that you barely have time to register what is happening. Massive events are suddenly referred to where there had been no mention of them previously, even though they had been on going for some time and turn out to be massively significant to the plot. Time passes without reference. Characters and Organisations are introduced without explanation and then suddenly dropped again.

All this just serves to confuse the reader. To be honest, I've just finished the book and I'm still not sure who originally kidnapped the President, which is not a good sign.

So, whilst I enjoyed the story (despite the unbelievability of it all), I was disappointed. What could have been an excellent thriller was, in the end, just too confusing and I felt that in places huge chunks of exposition had been sacrificed to keep the roaring pace going.