On this week's Blogging for a Good Book, I'm posting about four authors who are coming to the Williamsburg Library Theatre on Monday, March 31. We'll be having a relaxed conversation with Margaret Coel, David L. Robbins, and Jacqueline Winspear, led by Willetta L. Heising. The event starts at 7 pm in the Theatre at 515 Scotland Street, and will be followed by light refreshments and a book-signing.
Any time someone writes about modern Cuba, the reader starts with the understanding that there is a conspiracy at the heart of the story. When they write about Cuba in the early 1960s, the reader knows that the conspiracy revolves around assassinating Castro. So how can any writer make a Castro assassination conspiracy fresh? The Betrayal Game, David L. Robbins' latest, has the nerve to take on the subject, and to pull it off with a real kick.
The Betrayal Game is something Robbins said he'd never do – a sequel. Mikhal Lammeck, an academic specializing in the politics of assassination, was the principal character in The Assassins Gallery, which involved an attempt on FDR's life. Fifteen years later, Lammek heads to Cuba with the reasonable expectation that Castro will be killed, and that he will be able to study the aftermath firsthand. Instead of observing, though, Lammek is drawn into a variety of plots (through mostly foul means), and has to navigate through them with his life, integrity, and relationships intact.
David L. Robbins is the 2007-2008 Writer-in-Residence at the College of William and Mary. He is also the author of 7 other novels, most of which examine the complexity of World War II through the eyes of people left out of the glorious narratives. One outside that stream, though, is Scorched Earth, a moving portrayal of a Virginia town torn by anger following the death of a bi-racial baby and the burning of a church. For a thoughtful examination of race and justice, this one is hard to beat. Check 'em out – and come hear what David, Jackie, Margaret, and Willetta have to say!
This looks like a great book that I"ll definitely have to check out. I've become hooked on the edge-of-your-seat suspense that conspiracy fiction has to offer ever since reading Conspirator's Odyssey by A.K. Kuykendall. I love the way that good conspiracy authors are able to blend fact and fiction so seamlessly that there's no way to tell which is which. Thanks for the recommendation!
Atmosphere is essential in good thriller books, and for that you've got to get the details right. David really does.
If you haven't read anything by Richard Condon, he's another writer who gets the atmosphere just right. He has a darker, much more cynical, and occasionally over-the-top sarcastic side than David, but his conspiracies are scarily plausible.