Book Review: Enemy Within

Reviewed By: Luke Croll - RAM

[4 stars]

Enemy Within Amazon US PB Amazon UK PB Amazon UK HC Amazon Canada PB
Paul Adam
Class/Genre: Mystery Thriller
Time Warner Books, 2005 412 pages 6.99 GBP

Tom Whitehead is a lecturer in the History department of a British redbrick university. However, his normal life is shattered when the police come and charge him with possessing child pornography. Tom discovers that he has been the subject of an investigation for a long time and it seems to be no accident. He sets out to clear his name, unaware of just how deadly the situation is.

ENEMY WITHIN is a frightening tale of how confusion and a mistake can endanger one man’s life. Adam paints a frightening picture of the machinery of the Government and officialdom closing in on a man who has done nothing wrong, and it will make any reader realize just how easily the same thing could happen to them. It also makes a pleasant change to see a thriller of this genre set in the UK. So many of these thrillers take place in the USA and it is easy for the reader to forget that there are other possible settings as well.

The plot works well and it seems that there may well be some of Adam’s own political beliefs within the work. Certain comments and asides seem to suggest the current ‘Big Brother’ nature of the world is something that we should be striving against, rather than supporting. Adam puts in a lot of technological information, but this is all explained and made to seen only too real. We get used to being filmed by CCTV, but the idea that computers could be recording our every word spoken on the telephone is much more worrying.

Adam’s characters seem very human, although some of them, just like parts of the plot, do require some suspension of disbelief. There is no doubt that ENEMY WITHIN would make a good drama series or movie, especially given the fair pace at which the story moves. Overall, this is a very enjoyable thriller.

Luke Croll - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Luke Croll - RAM

Luke Croll - Conference interpreter and translator
http://lukecroll.translatorscafe.com