You won’t find Reacher or Jason Bourne here
‘The Black State’ is a very different kind of thriller
Black site, rendition, redaction: as remote as these ideas are from the daily routines of practically everyone, they’re literary staples. Along with sleeper cells, rogue agents, yellowcake and cryptocracies, these mainstays populate a manly genre towered over by Lee Child, Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum — and the screenplays based on their books that have made the Jacks (Reacher, Ryan) and Jason (Bourne) into household names.
We all know what to expect from the genre’s familiar do-or-die reality that’s just a few removes from our own.
A globetrotter on the side of right (give or take) against a ruthless mastermind or a shadowy cabal of baddies, the stealthy, steely-eyed operative — brutal but balletic as he infiltrates a criminal lair or slits a throat — outwits his opponents and makes the world safe (more or less) for another day.
Gauging by “The Black State,” Ottawa writer John Delacourt (“Butterfly”) knows the genre well. “Deep state secrets” appear in his opening chapter, as does “secret prison.” Soon, along with a bank robbery, a kidnapping, a jailbreak and a suicide, there’s extortion, theft, spying and murder. Double agents, half-truths and ulterior motives abound.
Yet, rather than joining the moreis-more fray — watch as Jack/Jason defuses a nuclear device as he hangs by two fingers on a crashing helicopter! — Delacourt builds a different kind of thriller, a bureaucratic one. Most notably, there’s no Jack/Jason. The closest we get is a conservative politician well into middle age, who seems the type to get winded as he climbs a staircase.
Secondly, with a nod perhaps to Graham Greene’s “The Quiet American,” Delacourt appears less interested in non-stop, edge-ofyour-seat action than in taut … conversations. Whether set in Morocco or Canada, the majority of the book’s 36 chapters take place in rooms or bars or on park benches and feature two people deep in discussion.
Jack Reacher might be an “unstoppable force,” as his author has called him, and capable of demolishing a criminal gang single-handedly. In Delacourt’s book, action happens, true, but it’s often determined by a professor who speaks to a lawyer, who spoke to a senator who’s close to an ambassador’s assistant. One’s larger than life, a fantasy. Grounded in realism, Delacourt’s men and women face obstacles and decisions that require meetings, appointments and followup discussions. They’re armed with words, impacted by words and reliant on words to get from A to B. For them, knowledge of firearms and concussive grenades isn’t terribly important.
The plot turns on iffy statecraft (an egregious political agreement that Ottawa — “a good town for blue pills and hair products that turned that touch of grey to dull magenta” — has stooped to) and a photographer. A visual artist renowned for his series about black sites, former Vancouverite Henry Raeburn is arrested in Morocco as “The Black State” begins.
A guy with complex motivations who is recovering from burdensome divorced parents and his own drug addiction, Henry is incarcerated and suffers blows and beatings. State machinery — in the form of words spoken and actions taken by a Canadian ambassador and his assistant, Henry’s father, Senator Gordon MacPhail, as well as an art dealer, a lawyer, a professor, a student and many others — hints not only at the immense difficulties of getting anything done but the ethical trade-offs necessary.
In Delacourt’s world, quid pro quo is a foundational philosophy.
A slow-burner, “The Black State” builds to a page-turner with the requisite twists and turns. Refreshingly verbose, the novel subverts its own genre with its amusing insistence on much talk before any action.