Word: talismans
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...Talisman is a suspense novel that tries to be political, but ends up being unbelievable. The story itself is plausible, if only barely; the right combination of pumps and levers probably could raise the Unknown Soldier's coffin, and in any case, part of the fun with the book is in finding out how it is done. That was the case with Godey's earlier The Taking of Pelham One Two Three--how in the world, the reader wants to know, could a group of men kidnap a subway car in New York...
...With The Talisman, though, the fun of the plot becomes confused with the characters' politics. The coffin-nappers here are not simply crooks looking for a big haul, but political protesters, holding one national symbol for the ransom of another--but very different--symbol. The trouble is that just as the book is too serious to be taken as light fiction, it is too outrageous to be taken seriously by anyone...
...NOVEL ABOUT CHARACTERS like Parmentier and Booth could examine just what it was that made some people leave society for "the movement," or for any movement, in the '60s. But The Talisman is not that novel, and most of the other people in the book are merely caricatures of stock political figures. The President seems to be mostly concerned with his makeup looking right on television, when, after the Unknown Soldier is taken from Arlington Cemetery, he will announce whether Francis Rowan will be freed or not. His news secretary is a nearly imcompetent former newspaperman who once worked...
Most current political novels have a Kissinger figure, and The Talisman is not exception. Here, it is Emerson Albert Griese, first special assistant to the President. Griese is arrogant, ruthless, and considered the "power behind the throne" in the White House. And to make the connection between Griese and recent actual White House staffers even clearer, Godey writes that "Like Kissinger, he was foreign-born and had been drafted from the Harvard faculty for a high position in the new administration...
John Godey has almost, but not quite, written a good thriller. The Talisman is more complex than it should be for easy, late night reading, and even the title, which somehow refers to the Unknown Soldier, is difficult to understand. But the book does not quite qualify as a serious novel, either. Godey is reaching for importance in describing the hopes and feeling of anti-war protesters stranded without a war to protest. In the end, however all his book achieves is sensationalism...