Review: Deceit

I have to admit right from the start that I am a big fan of Siegel’s work, from his debut with Epitaph, and then Derailed, Detour and now his fourth and most interesting thriller Deceit. Siegel’s novels always feature an ordinary ‘Joe’ getting enmeshed in a conspiracy of sorts and having to use his ingenuity to find the way out. Derailed is perhaps his best known, despite a disappointing film adaptation; it remains one of my favourite thrillers of this decade.

In Deceit, we have a book that will challenge those who thought Derailed was his best, because the new one is really extraordinary. At its heart Deceit is tale of redemption, and of understanding loss. We have Tom Valle a small town journalist in small town California, harbouring an open secret and stumbling upon a huge conspiracy from the simplest of incidents – a car crash which leaves one man dead, and the other soon appears to be a stooge in a bigger game. Valle far from being a small town journalist, is in fact The Tom Valle big-time and disgraced journalist who fabricated a series of stories to give himself the oxygen of ‘fame’ and ‘notice’; something deprived of him due to a fractured and tragic childhood. The scenes where Siegel describes the boy Valle sitting at the diner joining the dots in a puzzle book while his delinquent mother drinks herself to oblivion makes you understand how childhood shapes the future person, warts and all.

Valle soon harasses his editor about the car crash, and how it is linked to an old woman in a nursing home, as well as a dam-burst that flooded a town and killed all but one child. The editor is sceptical [due to Valle’s own track record on fabrication], but that does not deter Valle as he embarks on a journey to seek the truth, from the fabrication and conspiracy he sees around him.

Tracing a war veteran, he heads straight to the heart of the truth, a journey that is peppered with his recollections of his own tortured youth. I must admit that there are curious coincidences along the way, and the writing style is terse with the protagonist Valle not being one of the most likable people you’d want to share a journey with, but Siegel’s prose keeps the pressure on, as Valle’s search is perhaps one of redemption and finding out why he is the way he is. Deceit is full of pathos which contrasts markedly with some visceral violence as Valle is tailed by a mysterious hitman who is referred to as ‘The Plumber’. The terse dialogue makes this novel more movie material for Siegel – But as a thriller novel, this is right-up with Buchan’s 1915 thriller ‘The Thirty-Nine Steps’. You’ll read this like Siegel’s other work in one sitting, so in a word, Excellent and shows that the world around us is brimful of misdirection and deceit in all shapes and forms

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Ali Karim - RAM

Book Review: Deceit