AT times it seems that all we have in common with the United States is a language, and often even that seems not to be the case. Religion in America today is an example of this difference. Evangelists compete for audiences on prime time television. It's big business, which means big money, and big money means big power which, as we all know, corrupts. Prophets who felt the Lord speak through them are nowadays in the States being bundled off to jail in a string of cases from fraud to naughty behaviour with members of their adoring flock. And we all remember what happened at Waco, Texas. Religion in America, therefore, is a powerful modern day edifice holding within it great extremes of good and evil. It's the evil we're involved with here.
Another great American edifice, encompassing almost limitless possibilities for good and evil, is "The Federal Government". In the context of a thriller like this, the Federal Government means any one of the myriad agencies such as the FBI, CIA, DEA, ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco), the Justice Department, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, Capitol Hill and the White House. Although it is legal and possesses huge resources, the people in the Federal Government (who in fiction are usually nasty and stupid) are impotent when it comes, as it does here, to confronting a secretive religious sect with an extreme, right wing philosophy (i.e. antiabortion, racist, homophobic, but also subscribing to freewheeling promiscuity so that the sacred sperm of cult leaders can find pretty and willing vessels).
Finally, there is the theme of Vietnam, running through the blood of modern America like the Fall of Man in Paradise Lost. Vietnam marginalised great sections of American society, and thus it comes as no surprise to find that the leader of the fringe sect in this story is a Vietnam veteran with a record of pathological violence.
The hero, an ex cop turned undercover agent, Jesse Warden, is the custodian of all the virtues we would die for, or have someone else die for. Pro choice, pluralist and hard working, he was only in jail because he had to steal to fund his dying wife's medical expenses (Hillary Clinton/ health care system theme). Up to now he has never slept with another woman (AIDS) and he is ferociously fit and anti smoking (health and environment). When undercover agents of the Federal Government sent to penetrate the cult disappear like taxis on a Saturday night, Jesse is plucked from a federal penitentiary and sent into the evil evangelist's lair.
Mr Woods knows it's action we're after, and so he trims descriptive passages to the minimum: a garden is "planted with many flowers"; "her mouth [was] broad, revealing large teeth when she opened it". Nor is time wasted searching for alternatives to cliche: "For a moment he was sure he had dreamed... but her scent was still in the sheets, arousing him again".
We all know that America is the land of opportunity, and just to prove it, within 24 hours of arriving in the target town, Jesse has bedded a cult ex disciple. Barely seven weeks go by before Jesse is anointed successor to the owner of a 500 employee timber factory where recently he was just a labourer.
The action flicks along and even if the hero's most memorable encounter is with a polygraph machine, the well sign posted siege at the climax is ready made for a movie orgy of special effects. The book - nothing to do with the current Hollywood movie of the same title - is harmless, entertaining stuff with a likeable hero whose mission is about as likely to fail as a woman is to be elected pope.
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