Would Osama bin Laden still be on the loose if Sherlock Holmes were on the case?
The answer might be obvious (of course he wouldn’t) and the
question might be wildly fantastic and unhelpfully simplistic, but such
is the nature of Will Thomas’s mildly entertaining detective novel “To
Kingdom Come.”
“Kingdom” is Thomas’ second novel, and, as in his debut,
“Some Danger Involved,” it features the crime-fighting duo of Victorian
“private enquiry agent” Cyrus Barker and his young assistant, Thomas
Llewelyn. Barker is a sort of Sherlock Holmes on steroids: in addition
to possessing a strange omniscience, he is in peak physical condition
and can defeat even the most formidable of adversaries in hand-to-hand
combat (or, as is inexplicably the case here, stick fighting). He is
also a botanist with an Edenic garden, a man with connections of every
sort in several nations, and the inventor of a bulletproof lead coat—in
1884. He is never required to outrun a speeding bullet or stop the
passage of time, but it wouldn’t exactly come as a surprise if he
could. (At least Holmes had a drug problem to humanize him).
In addition to pumping up the detective figure, Thomas’ main
innovation is combining the classical detective fiction of Conan Doyle
with the hardboiled works of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. The
two subgenres meet in Llewelyn, the only character with any sort of
depth, who narrates his boss’s exploits à la Watson while participating
in them with the laconic wit of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade.
In “Kingdom,” Thomas unleashes this team on the urgent
subject of terrorism. It is May 30, 1884, and the Irish Republican
Brotherhood (IRB), a terrorist organization working to liberate the
Emerald Isle from British rule, has just detonated a bomb at Scotland
Yard. Barker and Llewelyn immediately offer their services to the
government and infiltrate a secretive IRB faction, posing as a German
bomb maker and his assistant. They must work to earn the group’s trust
while preparing to stop its ultimate plan to bring London to its
knees—without concern for innocent life and perhaps more for personal
than national gain, of course. Llewelyn, for his part, must also fight
against his desire for Maire O’Casey, the femme fatale sister of one
radical.
At the most basic level, “Kingdom” is only a partial success.
The writing is at times clumsy, and almost every character seems cut
out of cardboard (something especially evident when a burly Scotland
Yard cop hilariously bullies Barker with the prospect of preventing him
from teaching his “precious physical training classes” and when the
criminal mastermind maniacally blathers like the worst sort of Bond
villain). Still, Thomas maintains a brisk pace, and the read is quick
and often fun.
Beyond that, however, the novel falls completely flat. Any
contemporary work that features terrorism is bound to have political
implications, but those in “Kingdom” are so thinly veiled as to be
laughable.
“Patriotism aside, I fail to see what you hope to gain,” the British Spymaster tells Barker of his mission.
“As far as I am concerned,” Barker later says, doing his best
Rambo impression, “it became my affair when they injured innocent
London citizens and damaged public buildings.”
In case any reader flirts with becoming a terrorist
sympathizer, Thomas is sure to reduce a complex political situation to
a black-and-white equation any child can understand: terrorists are
bad, others are good.
One Irishman “could have played Mephistopheles” while another has “a devilish appearance.”
“They would ally themselves to Satan if it meant they could have their own country,” Llewelyn observes.
Whether or not the Oklahoma-based Thomas voted for President
George W. Bush, he has effectively written the wet dream of all those
who did. The adolescent fantasy of a lone ranger detective
single-handedly thwarting the plot of terrorists has alarming
implications for unilateral American militarism (though one must wonder
if Thomas sees the humor in having his duo defend an imperialist
monarchy).
Even the president’s conservative Protestant religiosity
finds its way into the novel—Barker freely quotes Scripture, complete
with chapter and verse citations—and, indeed, an emphatic and annoying
self-righteousness underlies Thomas’ political posturing.
“While many pastors across London were no doubt calling for
peace after the recent bombing, Barker’s pastor warned us of false
peace-makers and assured us that there would be no peace in the world
until the Lord’s return,” Llewelyn says.
Ultimately, that is the backbone of Thomas’ book, which feels
more like an action novel than a calculated mystery and fittingly ends
with a fight and a chase: a self-assured reinforcement of the most
extreme beliefs of our President and a willful ignorance of any nuance
or complexity in what is probably the most important issue facing our
nation.
Unfortunately, this is far too simplistic: Osama bin Laden is
still on the loose, and there is no omnipotent detective to bring him
in. Though “Kingdom” can entertain at times, it completely misses the
mark.
—Reviewer Patrick R. Chesnut can be reached at pchesnut@fas.harvard.edu.
To Kingdom Come
By Will Thomas
Touchstone
Out Now
Multimedia
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