Beware the Revenge of the Ghost Dancer

It's often said that revenge is a dish best served cold. If that's the case, then Jack Wilson has prepared a feast to meet the most lavish of epicurean fantasies. For an appetizer, Wilson intends revenge for the last nine years - but that's only the appetizer: for the main course, it's his intention to "stop the motor of the world"; thereby avenging the maltreatment of his forefathers since the fateful day that Columbus grounded his little rowboat in the New World.

Though it sounds as if the half-Paiute has been dining on sacred datura and funny cacti, perhaps not. After all, Wilson is an engineering graduate of Stanford and perhaps the only person ever to have four articles published in mathematics journals while in a federal penitentiary. He's a very smart guy, this Mr. Wilson, and has every intention of following in the footsteps of another very smart guy: that twentieth-century all-around genius Nikola Tesla. Wilson, it would seem, has perfected Tesla's "peace ray," aka "death ray."

Before he can serve up this heapin' helping of revenge, however, Wilson needs to generate a couple million in cash to fund construction of his... toy. Though a scientific genius, he's apparently a little lacking in social smarts, which is how he ends up smuggling drugs, guns, and then diamonds for an al Qaeda splinter group. Naughty-naughty, Jack...

When the al Qaeda cell is accidentally exposed, Wilson's involvement (although not his plans) becomes known to a series of bumbling backstabbers scattered throughout US Homeland Security. One by one, however, they drop the ball on an impending act could will make 9-11, Oklahoma City, Pearl Harbor, and every other sneak attack rolled into one look like a walk in the park; leaving a lone American expatriate from Dublin to save the day - and perhaps the world.


In five previous novels, author John Case has covered a broad range of topics, from biological weaponry (The First Horseman) to behavioral control (The Syndrome) and, in his most recent novel, The Murder Artist, the agony of a parent whose child has been abducted. In Ghost Dancer, Case revisits the theme of impending apocalypse he first employed in The First Horseman. In that novel, terrorists attempt to recreate the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic; this time out Case's lone protagonist would perfect a century-old weapon and use it to rid North America of European interlopers. Jack Wilson is nothing, if not certifiable - but the line between genius and madness has always been a bit fuzzy. Through expository passages describing the mad genius Tesla, we learn that Wilson's idol displayed a few... unusual tendencies of his own. A fuzzy line, indeed.

Structurally, Ghost Dancer follows an atypical pattern: as protagonist, Jack Wilson dominates the text with the reader following his steps through the long and labyrinthine process of amassing funds for his weapon. The hero Michael Burke, on the other hand, makes but brief appearances until the final reel, when he picks up the search for Wilson after a hypochondriac spy abandons the search to lick his imaginary wounds. Readers accustomed to a string of heroic deeds from their protagonist might find themselves dismayed as Wilson invariably chooses the darker path when confronted by a choice between good and evil. After all, when it's your intention to kill a couple hundred million, an innocent or two is just another appetizer. Wilson is clearly not intended as a sympathetic villain. Yet Case manages to instill in Wilson a counterpoint as well, a streak of profound humanity displayed in his dealings with ukrainebrides.com.

Case ties his plot to recent affairs by depicting the agencies guarding our security as riddled with semi-competent agents, political games and petty rivalries, and arrogant martinets - hence the need for a complete outsider to crack the case. Unfortunately, Michael Burke makes an unsatisfying hero, for he is on stage so rarely that his character is but a few paragraphs removed from flat. Such, however, is often the fate of the novel focused on the villain.


Case, as always, has crafted a taut thriller in Ghost Dancer. Each building block in Wilson's scheme adds to the suspense; fashioning a gradual crescendo in the tension as both Burke and the reader uncover the details of his ultimate plan for the ultimate weapon. Be prepared to find your sleep troubled just a little as you ponder the possibilities that the world is full of Tesla fanatics, and someday, one of them could just be another Jack Wilson.