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THE SLEEPER features the return of Kurt Kurtovic, last seen in Christopher Dickey's INNOCENT BLOOD. INNOCENT BLOOD is a novel of catharsis and redemption; THE SLEEPER is tinged with vengeance and betrayal. It begins with Kurtovic having obtained a separate if uneasy peace in Westfield, Kansas with his wife and daughter. That tranquility is shattered on the morning of September 11, 2001. Kurtovic is approached by Griffin, a government man who brings to mind both the best and worst of Kurtovic's past. Griffin would like Kurtovic back in the world of his former colleagues in Al-Qaeda. He wants Kurtovic, in Griffin's words, to "take out the bad guys." And Kurtovic does just that, with a vengeance, in a world where, as Kurtovic is told, "nothing is true and everything is permitted."
Following an incident of unspeakable carnage in Somalia, however, Kurtovic finds himself taken prisoner by U.S. Forces and incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay for some dark purpose. Griffin, who is supposed to protect Kurtovic, is at once a part of and apart from a devious plot that puts Kurtovic and his family in terrible danger, a danger that leads to an apocalyptic ending and the exacting of a rough but mysterious justice.
Dickey possesses extraordinary literary ability. He gets deep into the crevices of Kurtovic's mind in a way that few of his contemporaries can equal. It is accordingly all the more noticeable when he takes two brief but totally unnecessary plot deviations in order to somehow impute complicity in the terrorist attacks to Bush. It does nothing for THE SLEEPER other than to keep a great book from being even better.
I will readily admit that I approached THE SLEEPER with some trepidation. Dickey writes regular essays for a website published by a weekly newsmagazine that are uniformly interesting but too often ruined for me by that faux gravamen too often exhibited by those citizens of the United States who, for whatever reason, choose to live abroad and have thus been granted the key to enlightenment denied to the beetle-browed who remain behind in the colonies. In light of the foregoing, one might be surprised to find me wholeheartedly recommending THE SLEEPER.
Also to be noted, given that THE SLEEPER is the second book of an intended trilogy, it will be interesting to see where Dickey goes with this in the third and final volume.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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