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“This was a book recommended to me by a co-worker years ago and I only recently stumbled on it. I read it quickly and, man, I have to wonder what John was thinking.
It's not bad, per se, but it's not great either. It's certainly a piece of Victorian England and the anxieties that society suffered. The main character is 'Thursday', a man who manages to sneak his way onto an Anarchists council...only to discover that there may well be no anarchists on the council at all. I figured out the "twist" pretty early on, though I was hoping that the good guys became the bad guys while trying to catch the bad guys. That didn't happen.
There are parts of the novella that are awsome, dog-eared little sections where the writing lilts towards greatness and the social commentary, never heavy-handed, sings. But it doesn't quite work itself into a lather, with Chesterton keeping the moral world starkly black and white. This is not an investigation into how police and criminals are connected, nor is it a mediation on the nature of societal paranoia. It could have been, but Chesterton seems content to weave a cute little tale full of hooks and spin and darling little police men who are never properly put through hell, though they complain a lot.
In other words, the characters are not fully challenged. Hence, neither are we.”
Alan H wrote this review Monday, February 4 2008.
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