Capital Punishment

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)