Brad Meltzer is the man. I say this not only because he gave me an amazing blurb for my book. I say it not only because he’s a terribly nice guy in person. I’m saying it because the he has skillz (yes, the kind with a “z”). Brad Meltzer knows how to tell a good story.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I heard the pitch for The Book of Lies. It was something about how the Biblical murder of Abel was connected to the 1932 murder of Mitchell Siegel, father of the boy who would grow up to create the comic book hero Superman. Weird premise. Was thriller writer Meltzer about to take an avant garde detour with this one? Was this going to be The Hours for comic book geeks? A misguided time travelling tapestry of nerdiness and religious revisionism? I cracked open my limited edition autographed Book Expo galley with a mixture of fear and excitement.
And then, I never closed it.
My fears were quickly allayed once I realized the book was set in present day. Yes there was the background religious/historical mystery about Cain and Abel, Mitchell Siegel, and undiscovered murder weapons. But at its heart, Book of Lies is really just a MacGuffin story — and a darn good one at that. What is a MacGuffin, you ask? “MacGuffin” is a term popularized by Alfred Hitchcock to describe a mysterious thing that everybody wants. It is the Maltese Falcon, the secret plans, the magical ring, the stolen breifcase, the Holy Grail, or, for that matter, the thing Indiana Jones tries to steal from the bad guys in every movie. It doesn’t really matter what the MacGuffin is, so much as it matters that everyone wants it, that heroes and villains will kill each other to get it. The MacGuffin is one of the oldest and most reliable plot devices around (to read more about MacGuffins, click here).
In Meltzer’s novel, the eponymous Book of Lies is the MacGuffin. Does it really matter what the Book of Lies is? Not really. But it’s a lot of fun to see who’s going to chase it down first. The guy we’re rooting for is protagonist Cal Harper, a down-on-his-luck former customs agent. Cal gets swept up in the action when his long-lost father is shot with a gun that traces back to Mitchell Siegel’s 1932 murder. There are some father/son issues in the book, some “who do you trust” drama, some mysterious bad guys, a little philosophizing, and some interesting Superman stuff. I’ll let you decide whether all these elements work for you or not. For me, they did — at least most of the time. But what kept me turning pages was the chase.
Simply put: the book is hard to put down. My wife and I both lost a fair amount of sleep reading it. You will too. It may remind you of The DaVinci Code, another MacGuffin story, in terms of pace and structure, but it’s written with a sense of humor that DaVinci lacks.
It’s a fun read. And addictive. Definitely addictive. So, check it out, folks. And read at your own risk.
