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August 21
Hardback
• Paperback
Rock, Paper, Scissors
by Steven A. Samuel
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Reviewed by Len Abram
Shoulda. Coulda. Woulda. These three dreadful
sisters walk the heath near any enterprise,
including novel writing. Steve Samuel's novel is
fun; it just could have been much better. Given
the energy and ideas in his novel, Samuel should
have told a more convincing story.
When fiction presents an imaginary world as
real, the author provides the semblance of reality
to bring off the illusion. Verisimilitude makes the
book or play seem an actual part of experience,
even when it is sheer fantasy. People thought that
Defoe had lived through a plague and that Dante
had visited hell. Imagined places and characters,
such as Wonderland and Alice, may become
adjectives and nouns in common discourse. The
work of art seems as real as the world
surrounding the audience in the theater, library,
subway, or bedroom.
Coleridge called this transformation the
"willing suspension of disbelief." You know you
are watching actors on a stage or reading words on
the pages of a book. Yet you feel transported onto
the stage or page. This is the enchanted part of the
artistic experience. When a book fails to convince
you, then you can't suspend your disbelief. When
Samuel names a chief of security Hank Savage,
the point is not playful, just obvious. He describes
the ex-Marine as rock-hard (a possible play on
words given the title), handsome, and completely
in charge of his emotions and destiny. Samuel
offers a caricature, not a character, and
undermines the believability of his story.
Rock, Paper, Scissors starts strong by using a
traditional child's game to title the novel. The
title dramatizes the story of power and its
corruption. The game "Rock, Paper, Scissors"
shows the exercise and limits of power in
hierarchies, not unlike the more complicated
game of chess. The winner of the contest is the kid
who says (or gestures) the more powerful object,
which is not necessarily the rock. (The subtitle--A
Novel of Political Intrigue assures buyers that
they are not getting a Harry Potter wannabe). The
spunk and courage of the heroine, Sarah Peterson,
stymie powerful figures with great plans.
Samuel cleverly structures the novel into the
three parts of the game. The connection between
the game and the plot is that a child's view of the
world--Sarah's--was once shattered. At the
end of the novel, the child as an adult has
presumably put herself together and can "move
on."
Sarah Peterson is the young child of the
opening scene, when her father was killed, in
1963. Now in her late 30s, she is a first-rate Secret
Service agent whose professional career is much
more successful than her personal life. (She may
be similar to--if not derivative of--another
highly professional woman in law enforcement:
Clarice Starling, of Thomas Cahill's Hannibal
Lecter books, was traumatized after her father was
killed in the line of duty.)
If the year 1963 resonates for you, as Samuel
intends, you have guessed that the murder of her
father relates to the JFK assassination, a rather
tired topic, especially after Oliver Stone's silly
treatment. The invisible hand of conspiracy may
be running our lives, we might admit, but such a
momentous insight needs a more convincing
presentation.
Samuel's complex plot pits titanic figures, a
president, a secretary of state, a general in charge
of Special Forces worldwide, the billionaire Sam
Baldwin, and the target of his revenge, Saddam
Hussein. The Iraqi dictator plays a cameo but
central role. Political assassination and the
dangers derived from the act are recurrent
throughout the story. Baldwin plans to kill
Hussein, mostly for revenge, and thereby
destabilize the Middle East. This will not only
keep our thirsty SUVs in the driveway, but also
unleash Hussein's revenge on his neighbors. The
initial reason for the kidnapping of his daughter
is to make Baldwin back off.
As the plot tries to propel us forward, doubts
about it undermine the momentum.
The conspirators are not believable. Can you
imagine the president getting around Congress
and the press to give a private citizen two-
thousand-pound bunker busters only available to
the military? Would a president risk
impeachment to restart the war between Iran and
Iraq, derail our economy, and cause the Iraqis to
rocket biological weapons onto Israel and Saudi
Arabia? Can you imagine a secretary of state, a
Madeline Albright, Henry Kissinger, or Dean
Acheson, directing the kidnapping of a young
woman and negotiating directly (he has disguised
his voice) with the victim's father? Or ordering
the murder of adversaries? We have had abuses
in our government, but Watergate and Iran-
Contra did not reach this level.
Also undermining the story is the ineptness of
the conspirators, even when they delegate. The
two kidnappers are greedy and out of control; they
are rogue Delta Force soldiers. (This elite force
seems to breed treason in fiction, but won two
Medals of Honor posthumously in Somalia in the
1990s.) Sarah outguns one of them, the one-
dimensional sadist Grizzwald, and she is hardly
up to his level of training. The assassin that
General Buck Perry orders to kill Sarah is evil and
incompetent. Although he has the advantage of
being one of Sarah's old boyfriends, he bungles his
assignment, is caught with a sniper rifle near her
apartment, and yet surprisingly is released by the
police to attack her again.
Another problem undermining credibility is
the book's many mistaken notions about
weapons. Samuel lavishes detail on the guns and
scopes used by his characters, but he is often
wrong about them and their real power. Samuel
refers to the Bradley A-3 tank when it is really the
Bradley M-3 fighting vehicle, definitely not a tank.
(The press and Congress widely investigated the
cost overruns and failures of the Bradley, which
billions more helped make into an effective
weapon.) Samuel also has one
of the rescuers
carry 2,000 rounds for his submachine gun: 60
clips of 9mm ammunition are too heavy to carry
into close combat, even if the soldier had a place
for them all.
When two of the rescuers shoot one of the
kidnappers, with at least one bullet a thirty-caliber
hollow point, the kidnapper has a walnut-sized
hole in his breastbone (behind which resides the
heart). Somehow, the wounded man finds the
strength to kill one of the shooters. A similar
miracle of will occurs when Sarah shoots her
would-be assassin: it takes four .357 Magnum
rounds to kill him. The first and second would
have thrown her assailant into severe and fatal
shock. Instead, he keeps coming at her. Samuel
simply does not know ordnance.
None of these issues invalidates the book, but
altogether they erode its believability. Without
credibility, the significance in a novel of intrigue,
danger, courage and wit, Samuel's novel relies on
sound and fury.
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