Sam O' Hara is a fifty year old middle manager in a faceless corporation in an America moving gradually more and more right wing, towards being a fascist state. Unemployed in this America means you are in the underclass, you have no rights, you will receive no help. He is truly on the scrap heap.

Just as he thinks his life can get no wirse he is falsely accused of murdering his ex-boss, with his having discovered the corpse mere moments before the arrival of the police. In a country were you have to prove your innocence and you do not have the right to jury trial he is found guilty and sentenced to die in the electric chair. He is given a simple choice, join a secret government organisation and act as an assassin utilising the high level of marksmanship he displayed when in the armed services years before or die.

When he escapes and joins up with a woman who has stolen the car of a mafia boss, he finds he is on the run, pursued by the government, the police and the mafia.

This is a wonderful novel of paranoia. In some ways it reminded me of Norman Spirad's The Iron Dream in terms of the mood of an extreme right wing country, but whereas Spinrad's work takes place in a fictional other world this is future America, and what might be if the USA began to follow very isolationist, increasingly fascist policies.

Also differing from The Iron Dream, this book concentrates on one man caught up in the flow of events, struggling to control his life without having to totally compromise his beliefs. It's compelling and quite often chilling. I've heard many of the arguments and ideas espoused by the New American Party in power before in the reality of this world, and the book can be taken as a warning if this inward-looking, xenophobic outlook on life.

But this is also where the book's only real weakness lies. It's difficult to see how, from the standpoint of today's world, a country as powerful and influential as the USa could ever turn so far inwards, and adopt so many fascist, racist policies without a war occuring, or at the very least action form out site the US.

Allowing the author a degree of leniency is advised, as this is a fine novel. It's well structured, the characters are believable; they are flawed and make mistakes; they are bigotted and opinionated and want what they think is right.

Zane Smith has, with this novel, proven he can create good quality fiction, I want more!

Synopsis
Zane Smith gives us a United States after the attacks on The World Trade Center. In this alternate reality, the US swings to an ultra right-wing position in which personal freedoms have been suspended. Interwoven with newspaper excerpts to portray the growing political and social atmosphere, Zane Smith places his characters in a time and place that could frighteningly become reality.