In "Hell" you’ll meet assassins, insurgents, rockers and even a woman
U.S. president. Here, you are no one without an alias – the primary
protagonist has multiples by only 18 years of age — or a code name.
Think The Assassin. The Agent. The Spider. The Patron. The veiled
identities make it difficult to keep track of the story’s many shady
operatives. But perhaps that’s the point.
As for the author’s politics – he self-identifies as a "democratic
socialist" — those clearly shine through in his portrayal of the
Beltway elite. Each member is skewered as morally bereft or sexually
perverse. Usually both. And what is their goal? As one bureaucrat puts
it: to "make the world safe for globalized capitalism and its
appropriate form of democracy." To that end, no individual’s life,
nation’s sovereignty or American’s freedom is safe if it gets in the
way.
The personal tragedies of the central duo, Coilean and his girlfriend
Petra, drive their agenda: to stop those same powers-that-be. By any
extreme means necessary. Ultimately that means employing the same
strategy of violence they fight against. "We bask in our rebellion,"
reprises the song of Coilean.
The novel’s political overtones are impossible to miss, though overall
the author is surprisingly judicious. Violence pervades the entire
book, but delivered in a measured tone and therefore still jarring.
Some readers may complain that the complex plot is tied up a little too
easily. Too neatly. But I won’t complain. It’s a satisfying price to
pay for an engaging story told in a tidy 133 pages.
This one is a quick read. I consumed it all while waiting for a delayed
flight. It occurred to me while reading that Michael O’McCarthy must
believe that the world we now enjoy is rapidly headed in the direction
of the fictional one he paints – one of dictatorships and Front Line
Defenders. His tale is intended as cautionary. Sitting there in the
airport, after enduring liquid-free, shoeless security queues and
listening to incessant loudspeaker warnings to report suspicious
activity, it was easy to wonder if elements of "Rebels in Hell" were
just a little believable for comfort.
Kathleen Hayden has covered politics online for 13 years for Time
Magazine, CNN and, currently, as an executive producer at AOL News.
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