THE SIEGE
Stephen White
Dutton Adult
Thriller
ISBN: 9780525951223
If you have read Stephen White’s entire body of work, then you will wonder, upon finishing his latest book, if he has any new worlds left to conquer. THE SIEGE, either by happenstance or design, is his response to requests from readers for a novel that focuses on Sam Purdy. Purdy is friend and foible to Dr. Alan Gregory, who is White’s mainstay, go-to character, a Boulder police detective who provides when necessary the enforcement heft that keeps Gregory credible. Gregory is a psychologist and not expected to be a tough guy; he can, however, have friends who meet that description, and Purdy most certainly does. He also has remarkable powers of observation and deduction, which are on display here. But what makes THE SIEGE stand out is that, for all intents and purposes, this is White’s espionage novel, and he masters that genre just as handily as he has mastered everything else he has touched thus far.
THE SIEGE is set far outside of White’s familiar comfort zone of Boulder, Colorado, almost entirely taking place within a few claustrophobic blocks of the campus of Yale University. I love the setup that gets Purdy, the fish, out of his familiar pond and onto the dry shores of the Ivy League university, and I won’t spoil it for you. Suffice to say that he responds to a request for assistance to find a young woman --- a student at Yale --- who has apparently gone missing. At the same time, her mother receives a cryptic and disturbing letter. Purdy, who is on suspension from the Boulder Police Department, has no standing as a law enforcement officer, and even less faith in his ability to help. Yet he does so, in part because it is simply the right thing for him to do. When he arrives in New Haven, Connecticut, on a Friday in April, he has no idea what is about to occur.
The young lady he is seeking, as well as an unknown number of other students, are being held hostage in the Book and Snake Tomb, an impervious building on the Yale campus, by captors who demonstrate, dramatically and repeatedly, that they will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. Purdy is at a loss. Given that he has no standing, even unofficially, he is able to do little but observe and calculate. That actually turns out to be quite important when his continuing presence on the periphery of the action attracts the attention of (the ingeniously named) Christopher Poe, a lone wolf FBI agent who heads up a small but important task force charged with investigating possible terrorist threats. Poe, a survivor of the Oklahoma City bombings, has a number of post-traumatic issues, known only to a few, one of whom is CIA analyst Deirdre Drake, with whom Poe is carrying on a “same time, next year” type of affair.
Drake is in the middle of possibly ending the relationship with Poe when events in New Haven take an explosive turn, bringing the attention of the world to Yale’s campus. Poe immediately travels to Yale, where, like Purdy, he observes things from the periphery while using Drake’s contacts as a way of acquiring what little information anyone has as to what is occurring and why the mysterious, seemingly omnipresent captors are doing what they are doing, and what they want. As Purdy uneasily --- and at first, unwillingly --- joins forces with Poe, the two men slowly discover they have separate pieces of the puzzle, ones that will not solve the puzzle but that may have the power to ultimately end it.
Meanwhile, the hostages must rely on the skills of New Haven Police Sergeant Christine Carmody, the primary hostage negotiator, whose spot-on instincts and innate talents are hamstrung as much by her superiors as by the diabolical terrorists who are silent, deadly and enigmatic. As the final moments of the crisis are played out in two unrelated locales, Purdy and Poe form an unexpected and inadvertent partnership with Carmody, one that neither team is even aware of, as things are brought to a final and frightening resolution.
Stephen White continues to be amazing. He is among the best of our contemporary authors laboring in any genre, combining plot, characterization, and excellent, solid storytelling to make each of his works not so much a novel as an event. In his latest effort, he includes a detailed map of the environs where most of the story takes place as a way of helping those of us who were neither gods nor men at Yale navigate effectively through the narration. Insert Alan Gregory for a believable cameo, and THE SIEGE includes everything one could possibly want, whether you agree, disagree or sympathize with the general and diverse worldview of the characters.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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