RESURRECTION DAY

Reviewed by Steven H Silver

Alternate history seems to be a growing field among novelists who are not generally regarded as science fiction authors.  Some notable recent works in the field include Robert Harris’s Fatherland, Howard Means’s C.S.A. and Peter Delecorte’s Time on My Hands.  The latest addition to this list is Brendan DuBois’s Resurrection Day.

As with Fatherland and C.S.A., Resurrection Day is set up as a political thriller-cum-mystery.  Set in 1972, Carl Landry is a reporter for the Boston Globe in an America broken by the nuclear war which was the result of the Cuban Missile Crisis ten years earlier.  Following the death of President Kennedy, Vice-President Johnson, and most of the cabinet, America has fallen into a permanent state of emergency as military troops are used to attempt to rebuild the destroyed cities of San Diego, New York, Washington and Omaha.

Landry is drawn into a world of political intrigue when his story about the murder of an old veteran is censored.  Rather than following common sense and everyone's advice, Landry decides to follow his leads, resulting in his teaming up with an attractive British reporter from the London Times who invites him to join her on a rare trip into the wilds of New York.

DuBois has created an interesting world in which the United States is no longer a superpower despite being the only country in the world with a nuclear arsenal.  He introduces several plot twists and turns, often playing the story so close to his chest that the reader has difficulty seeing exactly how Landry is putting the clues together.

The author has written several mysteries and knows how to introduce red herrings and false leads to keep the story interesting.  Nevertheless, the ultimate culprit is a cliché, but that doesn't lessen the tension over whether any of a number of plots and counterplots will succeed before the novel eventually comes to an end.

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