📚 Journal Flashback: Jericho’s Fall by Stephen L. Carter
So… have you ever read a book where the pages flew by, you really wanted to find out what happens, and then you get to the end—which isn’t satisfying at all—and you think:
Did I actually like this book?
That’s exactly how I felt about Book #20 of 2010: Jericho’s Fall by Stephen L. Carter.
The story centers on Jericho Ainsley—former CIA Director, Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor… basically Mr. Deep State Everything—who’s dying of cancer in his Colorado mountain fortress. Everyone is out to kill him before he reveals his secrets.
Enter Rebecca “Beck” DeForde, his former lover and the reason for his downfall 15 years earlier when she was a 19-year-old student and he was her professor. Now she’s back in his life, trying to uncover his secrets before it’s too late.
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đź“° From The Washington Post Review:
“Thus begins Stephen L. Carter’s Jericho’s Fall, an odd but readable mixture of spy thriller, literary novel and haunted-house mystery. In an author’s note, Carter declares that the book’s ‘only purpose is entertainment,’ and he provides plenty of that. When the book fails, it is because the author, who is a professor of law at Yale, tries too hard to entertain us. Even for a novel about a Machiavellian, possibly mad, ex-CIA director, this novel contains an alarming number of unsolved, probably unsolvable mysteries.”
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🤔 My Take
Did I like the book? I guess… I liked Beck. The story moved along well. But like the review said, there were just too many unsolved mysteries by the end.
I originally gave it a 3 out of 5—but looking back, it might really be a 2.
From what I’ve read, Carter’s other books are better, so maybe I’ll give him another shot someday.
