With a historical background that goes back to 1920, set in the ‘Land of Opportunities', based on a political phenomenon, entangled with human emotions, describing the instincts that revolve around death; the plot is a strong, thrilling and a sensational piece of creativity. The expertise of Jed Rubenfeld in the field of Constitutional Law, his free-flowing English and historical knowledge creates fiction out of reality. Though the War had ended, unemployment was common. Immediately after World War I, during an election year in U.S., when President Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated and America needed a magical spell to save itself, tragedy strikes... Prohibition was in force – curfews, military orders and tension. Factories were closed, jobs were hard to find and families were losing their land. There was seething resentment and bitter hatred. In such a dismaying milieu, a bomb explodes on Wall Street.
Solving the puzzle
Everyone tries to get down to the bottom of the issue. Many theories were invented and discovered: Italian anarchists, terrorist Bolsheviks, supernatural forces or simply theft of gold from the US treasury. Witnessing this blast are the three main protagonists: the beautiful but secretive scientist Colette Rousseau; the gifted but impulsive WWI war veteran Stratham Younger and the intelligent but sometimes powerless NYPD detective Jimmy Littlemore. They are multi-faceted characters.
Bizarre, frightening disjointed pieces of the puzzle come together when Younger and Littlemore slowly unravel the mystery by piecing together small clues cleverly.
This volume expertly intertwines two stories: a compelling love story between a war veteran and a scientific researcher; and an even more interesting and gripping mystery of that powerful panicking attack. It expertly blends fact and fiction, passion and intrigue, supernatural and prosaic, excitement and suspense. But more importantly it depicts or may be develops that instinct behind death – to kill and to be killed. The author have borrowed heavily from history – bombing of Wall Street on September 16, 1920, President Woodrow Wilson's actual paralytic incapacitation, the de-facto President Emily Wilson, U.S. entering the WWI due to German pressure on the Mexicans, U.S.'s need for foreign oil and the insecurity feeling among the citizens. And along the way, the reader is also enlightened with sparks of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis; the discovery of radium and the early explorations and use of radium therapy.
Though the beginning is a bit slow, quick changes in scenes and difficulty in understanding the complex characters does exist, as the pages turn, the book becomes that ‘unpredictable, volatile fact file that could be as fast as the cheetah and as cunning as the jackal!'. Being a cocktail of fictional heroes and real heroes (Marie Curie, Sigmund Freud, Woodrow Wilson etc), a mixture of mystique and mystery; an assortment of adventure and aura; a blend of bold and beautiful; a concoction of clever clues is what sets this book apart!
Title:THE DEATH INSTINCT
Author:Jed Rubenfeld
Publisher:Hachette India
Price:Rs. 295
Kasturi Ramanathan is a B. Com Student at Christ University, Bangalore.
