HoodaThunk?

In running around DC’s Metro last week I noticed a whole bunch of posters around advertising a new book that offered to reveal the secrets of why the Masons put their various touches on the city of Washington, DC. That book, Brad Meltzer’s Book of Fate, centers on the character of Wes Holloway, the aide to then-President Leland Manning. Here’s part of what Publishers Weekly had to say about it on Amazon:

Set against a backdrop of Oval Office corruption, bestseller Meltzer’s overblown thriller opens with a frantic assassination attempt on President Leland Manning, who manages to elude the gunfire. Manning’s deputy chief of staff, Ron Boyle, is killed, and his top aide, the cocky, ambitious Wes Holloway, is left facially disfigured. Eight years later, his motivation and confidence drained by his handicap, Holloway still toils away for the out-of-office Manning, fetching refreshments and handling the daily social calendar. On a goodwill junket to Malaysia, however, Holloway spots Boyle, surgically altered, but unmistakably the same man who was supposed to be dead and gone. From this turning point, Meltzer (The Zero Game) follows Holloway step by excruciatingly slow step as he tries to find out what really happened eight years earlier.

That much is true. If you want my take on it, open the rest of the story:

I have rarely had such high hopes for a book only to have them so completely dashed in my entire life. The entire draw for this book – the history of the Masons’ secrets and the revelations of the ‘Book of Fate’ itself – are given just the barest scratch. The Masons’ involvement in the architecture of the city of Washington, DC are related solely as the “proof” of their control over everything given to a class-1 homicidal nutjob who proceeds to kill just about everyone he makes contact with. (That the aforementioned nutjob is a bible-thumping “I-am-an-instrument-of-God” Christian should surprise no one who’s paying attention to the media today.) Aside from this, there’s literally nothing mentioned about the Masons throughout the book.

And as for the 200-year-old code used by Thomas Jefferson, you can say it’s used in the book, yes. But it’s literally used in exactly the same way Jefferson used it and for the same purpose. Anyone with any historical knowledge of the code’s existance at all would have the entire plot (such as it is) solved within seconds of reading about it the 1st time.

The characters are all 2-dimensional, wooden,unsympathetic and just plain dumb. The lead character of Wes Holloway is such a whining loser I’m amazed he didn’t commit suicide years ago.

I’d tell you to wait until this one comes to your local library but I don’t even want to waste that much of your time. Save yourself the time, money, and effort and go read something else.