week of 3/20/02
 
 
 

Black’s novel contains prescient treatment of terrorist problems
By Jeff Minick
All The Dead Were Strangers by Ethan Black.
Ballentine Books, 2001. $24 — 464 pp.

Conrad Voort is a New York police detective. He lives in a townhouse on 13th Street in Man-hattan, a house owned by generations of Voorts before him, Voorts who were also, like Con-rad, members of the city’s police department. Various old investments have left Voort a wealthy man. He drives a red Jaguar, eats well, and is unconcerned regarding money. Voort is often seen at extravagant parties. He has recently broken with his lady friend Camilla.

Now Voort is approached by his oldest and dearest friend, Meechum Keefe, who has learned of a possible conspiracy involving the murder of suspected terrorists. Meechum hands Voort a napkin with five names, addresses, and social security numbers written on it, then promptly disappears. As Voort begins tracking after both Meechum and the five strangers listed on the napkin, he runs into a network of betrayal, intrigue, and killing that extends far beyond New York City. On his journey Voort also falls in love with Dr. Jill Towne, a specialist in exotic diseases whose name appears on the list.

So goes the plot in Ethan Black’s thriller All The Dead Were Strangers. Black, who has written two previous novels around Voort — The Broken Hearts Club and Irresistible — has created in Voort a fully developed character, a man of several interests and moods. Ethan Black — the book jacket tells us that this is a pseudonym for a best-selling author, although the author’s photograph inexplicably appears on the same jacket — clearly knows both the New York Police Department and the workaday activities of a detective.

Black also gives us another character who leaves an impression, an Army officer named John Szeska who becomes involved in intelligence work after his tour in Vietnam. His work leads him into counter-terrorism; driven by memories of his wife, who was murdered by terrorists, he pushes hard — finally, too hard — to thwart terrorists. Written before the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, All The Dead Were Strangers contains this prescient passage on page 363, a dialogue between General Rourke and Szeska in which Rourke says:


“I wanted to tell you, face-to-face, that you kept your promise to her, which you told me about in the cemetery. And that ten years from now, when this country knows better about the threats it faces, people like you will be heroes. I wanted you to know you never failed me. Your country owes you, not the other way around.”


Black also gives us a timely warning near the end of the book in terms of terrorism and the Constitution. This time the conversation occurs between General Rourke and Voort. General Rourke says:


“John Szeska was a hero to me, just like the men in those books. He knew what was right and he did it. Things are breaking down in the country. The dangers are inside the country now. Soon people will understand how vulnerable they are to the dangers that project identified. Meechum was ahead of things. So was John.

“And when people see that, realize that, all the things those two did will become legal. The Italians went the extra mile against the Red Squads. The Germans did it against Bader Meinhoff. They stayed democracies. And we will do it here when people get disappointed enough, when the money runs out and this country starts disintegrating.”

Voort says, “I’ve read those kinds of words before.

“Who said them?”

“Adolf Hitler.”



All The Dead Were Strangers is a riveting, action-filled novel. Equally important, it can be approached as a meditation of sorts on terrorism, what drives different terrorists, and to what extent we are willing to sacrifice our liberties in the current war on terrorism.

(Jeff Minick can be reached at saintsbookco@aol.com)