Jeffrey Travers is an internationally acclaimed architect who specializes in designing embassies around the world. He teaches at Yale and lives in a huge Soho loft. He is rich and influential. Just ahead of flying off to the Middle East on a business trip, he is lured to a meeting in Brooklyn to discuss a renovation project. The businessmen he meets aren’t who they say they are and Travers finds himself kidnapped by a jihadist terror cell. If he won’t help them in their plot to destroy the American embassy in Uzbekistan they will execute his daughter. On learning of his disappearance the CIA come to believe he is a traitor and collaborator. They are more likely to kill him than rescue him. If he wants to stop the bombing and save his daughter he is out on his own.
Author Charles Belfoure is making a name for himself in the rather niche genre of thrillers featuring architects. His first novel, The Paris Architect, was a surprise hit that climbed The New York Times bestseller list. Now he is onto his fifth and MONSTERS WITH HUMAN FACES again uses architecture as a base from which to weave a globe-trotting, high tension thriller. Opening with a well paced and very dramatic sequence set in the ancient city of Bukhara, Uzbekistan, the story is action packed. Belfoure is very good at setting scenes, whether amongst the high-rises of New York or the deserts of the Middle East. He has an eye for detail and is a skilled enough writer to make both exotic and urban locations come alive. The same can’t quite be said about the characters that populate the novel. The protagonist Travers is smug, condescending and self-obsessed. He considers himself rather good looking. “His looks opened doors,” writes Belfoure. “It happened all the time, women and to his constant annoyance, men, were mesmerized by his handsome face.” These character traits are, of course, entirely acceptable in the make-up of a fictional architect.
The problem with the somewhat unlikeable hero of this novel is that the things he says and does are inconsistent and unbelievable. After witnessing a beheading, Travers queries why a chainsaw was used rather than a sword and then quips, “Don’t suppose you could carry a guillotine with you, it’d take up too much room in the truck”. These kind of wisecracks might work in an action movie with a Bond-esque hero ready to save the day but here, with a supposedly out-of-his-depth architect, they come across as incongruous and clumsy. The fanaticism and brutality of the terrorist cell, each named after an architect as a presumed nod to the nicknaming of the infamous ISIS Beatles, is cartoonish to the point of complete caricature. As indeed is a brief cameo appearance from Vladimir Putin whose departing line is, “We’re finished here, now back to the goddamn Ukraine. Who knew they had such a fuckin’ good army?”
Charles Belfoure’s MONSTERS WITH HUMAN FACES is a fast-paced international thriller with a simple plot that races to a satisfying conclusion. While it lacks believable and consistent characterization and a nuanced view of geo-politics, it is a diverting and generally entertaining read.
~Kent Lane for IndieReader