cover image Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment

Ryne D. Pearson. William Morrow & Company, $22 (412pp) ISBN 978-0-688-12983-5

Pearson's latest thriller seems chillingly prescient in light of the Oklahoma City bombing and the sarin attack on the Tokyo subway. White supremacist John Barrish and his two sons obtain a deadly nerve agent known as VZ and decide to attack both an L.A.-area office tower and the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., during the State of the Union address. But Barrish needs help, so he contacts a black nationalist group, the New African Liberation Front (NALF), and, without revealing his racist past, convinces them to do his dirty work. Besides establishing a frightening criminal conspiracy, Pearson effectively juggles a cast of FBI agents, politicians and civilians, focusing on FBI partners Art Jefferson, an African American, and Frankie Aguirre, a Latina, both last seen in October's Ghost. As four NALF members release the deadly VZ into the L.A. building's ventilation system and then begin a murderous cross-country dash to D.C., Jefferson and Aguirre try to link Barrish to the crimes. Pearson sends a none-too-subtle anti-racism message as the minority-hating Barrish family and the white-hating NALF members, working in tandem, close in on the center of the federal government and on the novel's climax, which features down-to-the-wire suspense. Some elements here are given short shrift (for instance, the L.A. office-building disaster, which kills thousands, would, we now know, affect the country more than Pearson allows), but the story makes up for such shortcomings with intensity and a troubling verisimilitude. (July)