The Poet Game : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Poetry of Espionage
Review: The book, succinctly put, is about terrorism, espionage, Islam, love, and poetry. Perhaps not exactly in that sequence. There's much packed here. An intelligent book, but also one of the most successful in depicting an era since John Le Carre's breakthrough novel, 'The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.' 'The Poet Game' can be read quite fast, but I would suggest taking one's time with it. The plot comes close to fizzling in a couple of place. I don't know if that is on purpose or not. Nevertheless, there are passages in this book that should be read by every intelligence agent in America today. An eerie book, dead-on. Not movie material, however. And thank God for that.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliance
Review: You often read the back of a literary thriller and see that, yet once again, the author of the book has been compared to the great John Le Carre or even the greater Graham Greene. Usually I take such comparisons with a grain of salt. But being a fan of the genre, I cannot dismiss such comparisons and end up reading the works, often much to my disappointment. There was no disappointment with The POET GAME. This literary thriller pretty much shatters all the boundaries of the genre I have ever come across, and I've come across quite a few in my time. The simplicity of the language and ease with which the story moves is like a contrapuntal dance to a backdrop of terror and betrayal beyond anyone's imagination. The author, Salar Abdoh, knows the territory too well. I don't know if he's been there and done that or if he has access to sources few, if any, readers and even writers of this type of book have. If you want to know the psychology behind what just took place in America on September 11th of 2001 you'd better read this book. I've read many books by other writers who thought they were giving a portrayal of what the men on the other end of the war look like. Well, those authors often failed where Mr. Abdoh succeeds. The book is a tragedy in waiting. I don't want to give more away. I read the first page where the author was describing the different personality traits of various Middle Eastern operatives, and I thought: wow! this guy seems like he's come right out of the trenches of southern Lebanon or some place similar. He may or may not have, but the portrayal he gives is chilling, stupendously written and far above the inanities of your usual thriller with too much gadgetry and not enough psychology. If there is any shortcoming to the work it's that I would have liked the book to go on another hundred pages. I didn't want it to end. But end it did, on a note that well ... I don't want to give the story away.