Cobweb

The Gulf War is imminent and there’s something mighty strange going on in the Agriculture Department of East Iowa University, United States. When as Arab student turns up drunk – and dead – in the Lake Pla-Mor, redneck Deputy County Sheriff Clyde Banks gets a feeling he’s on to something big. It’s a suspicion shared by low-ranking CIA agent Betsy Vandeventer.

But before two greats minds yell conspiracy theory, in steps top United States policy-maker James Millikan.

Here’s a man well used to dictating the Middle East’s future – from a comfortable seat at a top Paris restaurant. While shenanigans in the Midwest might not be exactly his style, there’s a technique that serves America well in all matters of national security. It’s called the ‘Cobweb’, and it backfires every time.

‘Stephen Bury’ is actually Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George. So when I saw Neal Stephenson name on this book, I never have second thought to buy it. Be as one of my favourite authors, makes me believe that this thriller will not disappointed me, and it’s true.

I visited a few bookstores in Kuala Lumpur and find out that Cobweb being re-published by other publisher, together with their other thriller, ‘Interface’.

When this latest wacky thriller from Bury (Interface, not reviewed)--a pseudonym for Neal Stephenson (The Diamond Age, 1995, etc.) and J. Frederick George--puts a bunch of overweight, incorruptible Iowa huskers up against Saddam Hussein just before Desert Storm, you know the bad guy with the moustache is going to take a fall. Washington, D.C., couldn't be farther from Folks County, Iowa, where the murder of an Arab agriculture student sends the slow- talking Deputy Sheriff Clyde Banks poking into the drab closets of a high-tech bioscience laboratory that just might be cooking up Saddam's next biological warfare weapon. Meanwhile, Betsy Vandeventer, a meek, low-level CIA analyst, formerly of Folks County, makes the mistake of informing her superiors that not enough of the billions in Food for Peace foreign aid going into Iraq is being spent on soybeans. Targeted for bureaucratic extinction, Vandeventer forms an uneasy partnership with Richard Spector, a slickly confident CIA executive of uncertain loyalties. The authors play satirically with the humble cloth from which history stitches its tapestry, as the fate of the free world stumbles on, propelled by the random, inconsequential, frequently stupid, and often hilarious foibles of mere mortals. Slimy ``inside of the inside of the inside'' power-players join unctuous hit men and hopeless drunks to create mayhem for the plain Heartland types like Vandeventer, Banks and his bride, Desiree ``Deltoids'' Dhont, an Army Reserve nurse who sticks Banks with their five-month old daughter so she can win one for Poppy Bush when Desert Shield becomes Desert Storm. The plain folks take a few tumbles, Banks changes more than his share of diapers, and the world remains safe for democracy--until, at least, the authors bless us with a sequel. A charming, uproariously clever thriller, in the tradition of Ross Thomas and Richard Condon, with plenty of wry wit and deftly rendered characters. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.