The God’s Eye View starts off mild, then builds suspense at the same time we start caring about the characters.
Evie Gallagher like any mother, wants to take care of her young son, Dash. Dash is deaf and Evie is divorced, with her ex-husband only peripherally involved so Evie needs her job. Evie is good at her work and enjoys the technical challenges and the trust and access to her boss, Anders. Evie’s job? She’s an analyst at the NSA and her boss is the director.
Anders is also fanatical about building complete surveillance, complete information access on everybody and complete ability to track and monitor everyone. He’s amoral and manipulative and sees everything he does as good for the country. In other words he is one scary, creepy menace.
The Plot
Evie keeps her head down and does her job developing a tracking system that leads her to discover a high up NSA stationed in Turkey has contacted a “subversive” journalist. Evie reports that contact to Anders and also asks him whether her report about a CIA analyst in contact with a different “subversive” had anything to do with the analyst’s reported suicide the next day. Anders denies it, but she can’t quite trust him – but she does not want to suspect him.
The plot builds from here. Anders calls in his favorite nasty guys to take down the two men in Turkey, but one of the take downs, meant to be a straightforward kidnapping/murder, backfires when the kidnappers go public with their captive. Meanwhile Anders discovers that the high NSA official, now dead, very likely knew of his pet project, God’s Eye. Anders goes into high gear to stomp out any possibility of his project becoming public.
The book moves fast. Evie is smart and connects the dots all too soon for Anders who orders her death. Unfortunately for him, one of his nasty guys, Manus, has fallen for Evie and protects her. Anders spins out of control, not caring who or how many people he has to kill in order to protect his big secrets.
The end is satisfying but not conclusive. Big Brother is still out there, just a bit less virulent.
Characters
The people are well done, especially the main antagonists, Evie and Ander. Eisler shows how someone like Anders, a decorated veteran, patriot, dedicated to serving his country, could go so far into the dark side. Evie is easy to understand. She’s smart, she enjoys being good at her work, she loves her son and needs the best job she can get in order to send him to the special school. The two nasties are less detailed, sufficient for the story.
Backstory
The God’s Eye View is darn scary. We know we don’t get the full story in the news and we know we can’t trust the government to be the shining city on the hill we all hope it to be. Author Barry Eisler uses headlines and the fallout from the Eric Snowden affair to craft an excellent story. With luck it will help us all question what we read and see.
Overall I’d give The God’s Eye View 4 stars. Very well done, reasonably enjoyable and scary as heck.
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