Hutchinson, £18.99
A question often posed over the last few years, on both sides of the Atlantic and in circles both politically sophisticated and politically naive, is this: how could Tony Blair, a politician of such superb promise, have squandered it all on that misguided misadventure in Iraq? And the inevitable corollary: why did such a clever fellow hitch his wagon to a nincompoop like George W Bush?
We'll probably never fully know the answers. But Robert Harris, no doubt after seething over the questions for years, has offered us a nifty fictional explanation. A couple of things need be said straight away: The Ghost does not concern, as some reports have it, a Tony Blair-like former Labour prime minister. The protagonist is quite clearly intended to be Tony Blair, although here christened Adam Lang. Lang's biography, along with many of his physical and personal characteristics, are sufficiently similar to Blair's to clinch the point pretty unambiguously. Several of the characters in Lang's political household also have recognisable real-life prototypes, most prominently Cherie Booth, Anji Hunter and Alastair Campbell. Other public figures put in cameo appearances (I even noticed a brief walk-on by former US defence secretary Robert McNamara, unnamed but amusingly identifiable to those who know him). The protests of authors like Philip Roth that works of the imagination should not be read as barely camouflaged journalism simply don't apply in this case.
Nevertheless, conversely, it would be a mistake to take at face value the alleged misbehaviour attributed to these identifiable figures, these fictional avatars of prominent real-life personages. Using the puzzles posed by Blair's premiership as a springboard, and further energised no doubt by his own very real and quite personal sense of outrage and betrayal, Harris has composed a divertissement, an entertainment, that is surely not intended literally. The sex and skulduggery in this novel are not being offered as actual exposé. It's rather a case of Harris saying to us, "How could Blair have made such dreadful, bone-headed mistakes? Well, here's one entertaining possibility."
In brief, The Ghost is about a professional ghostwriter hired to pen a former prime minister's memoirs when the original ghost, Lang's long-time aide, dies suddenly in suspicious circumstances. Within the next few days, while huddled, during the inclement off-season, with Lang and his small entourage-in-exile on Martha's Vineyard, the ghostwriter begins to uncover the personal and political malfeasance that warped Lang's career and threatens his current existence.
In structure and tone, The Ghost is conceived as a thriller. There are dangerous secrets, diabolical political machinations, hidden motives, chases, violence, suspense, and mysteries to be unravelled in the final pages. As such, the novel is thoroughly successful—it works. Harris is a professional. The suspense is suspenseful. The surprises—well, most of them—surprise. The pieces all fit together, the disparate strands end up tied together neatly. And the book boasts several ingenious plot novelties, including the very inventive deployment of an automobile's global positioning system; something tells me this device will be pirated in many future thrillers.
And Harris writes well; clearly, vividly and without fuss. He also possesses a fairly secure hold on American usage, a necessity in a book the bulk of which takes place on US soil. I counted only a handful of slips, and only one real howler: when Lang's American attorney boasts that he has arranged a meeting with the house majority leader, he doesn't seem aware that this is a relatively lowly position (British readers probably aren't familiar with the honourable Steny Hoyer of Maryland). He surely means the speaker of the house. In general, though, the author seems to know his eastern seaboard.
Still, for all the book's incontestable strengths, I can't help but wonder whether it really represents the most profitable use Harris could have made of his material. Despite the efficiency of its plotting, despite the skill that has gone into its execution—and even despite the fact that it's a rattling good read—The Ghost strikes me as a lesser book than Harris could and should have written. The subject matter—a political naif thrust into the intimate domestic lair of a disgraced (or at least tarnished) world leader—is so pregnant with narrative potential, it seems a shame to reduce it to the level of a thriller, no matter how professionally rendered. Harris is accomplished enough to try extending his reach a little. Take as emblematic the follow-up to the book's only sex scene: a situation rife with psychological and dramatic tension, worthy of pages of fascinating internal monologue and external conflict, leads nowhere, provides almost nothing of dramatic value except an edgy quasi-tiff between the two profoundly inappropriate lovers, and has almost no narrative consequence. And Lang himself remains a cipher throughout the book; avowedly, deliberately, explicitly, but no less frustratingly for that. Deep exploration of the network of relationships and cathected situations Harris has taken the trouble to provide would, it seems to me, have been more valuable than dozens of chases and murders and startling plot twists. And it might have had the additional advantage of making Harris's implicit political argument even more powerfully.
