Book Reviews: "Force" and "Risk"

Oriana Fallaci is very angry and that comes across loud and clear in her second book of a three book series, The Force of Reason. So loud and clear that I had to literally put down the book several times before finishing it because that anger was so infectious. For those uninitiated, Oriana Fallaci is an Italian journalist who wrote The Rage and the Pride as a response to 9/11. She’s noteworthy because she’s equally unapologetically pro-American and unequivocally blunt (read: un-PC) about her feelings toward Moslems in general and what she sees as their deleterious effects on Western civilization in particular.

To tell you the truth, while I found The Rage and the Pride to be a breath of fresh air with a European’s staunch support for America and its ideals, her unvarnished feelings toward those who perpetrated the 9/11 atrocities and her sense of the dangers ahead with this demographic (young male Islamists), I found The Force of Reason just ragingly angry and as DH Jeff says “a book-length blog rant.” Now, keep in mind that while many of her assertions and warnings parallel my own, I am uneasy with what her prose evokes in me.

And yet – I had just finished the book when the news broke of the foiled plane blow-up plot in Great Britain. And the arrest of two young Moslem men (oops! add three to that) stateside who had engaged in mega-purchases of tracphones (disposable phones). And the missing Egyptian eleven. Those events certainly reinforce my belief that Islam is not our friend and that we (the West in general and the US specifically) MUST stop being “sensitive” (read: permissive, weak, ambivalent) about those in our midst and throughout the world who may indeed be planning our harm – at least – and our total annihilation at worst. All in all, I’d give this work a B or B- for the reasons above and the fact that Fallaci provides no citations for her historical assertions or quotes.

The book I read immediately after Force was Patricia Cornwell’s At Risk. Cornwell is one of my favorite authors and in this instance, provided a balm after the impotent fury of Fallaci. This book told of much more garden-variety criminals with no in-the-name-of-God motivations and the authorities’ pursuit of them through sleuthing. Now, purist Cornwell fans (those who only like the Kay Scarpetta story lines) will not be impressed by this effort: the author introduces a third story line with new characters. However, I found it to be an enjoyable read with engaging subplots which will undoubtedly be explored in future books. The forensic tech talk about improvements in evidence analysis held my interest as well. I would give this book a solid B+: engaging writing and plot, but with new, unknown characters (ok, there’s a bit of the purist in me).