Customer Reviews

Panama

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I read this book several months ago and so I don't remember all the details of it. I do remember that it was a very enjoyable read. The plot is very clever and complex, the characters are interesting and well defined, and there is some action and suspense in some parts. The best thing about this book is its atmosphere; you really feel transported to late nineteenth century Paris. I wouldn't say that it was an outstanding novel, but it definately deserves a lot more than the one star some reviewers gave it.

As you will see from many of the customer reviews, this historical thriller is not a purely plot-driven page-turner, a la Robert Ludlum or Ken Follett. If that is what you are looking for, you will be disappointed. Rather, the author takes the time (and, yes, forces the reader to do so) setting a mood, at the same time capturing the spirit of the age and the tormented inner spirit of the protagonist (Henry Adams). This is first and foremost a book about Adams' emotional recovery, so, no, it is not as fast-paced and action-packed as The Alienist. (I liked both books very much, but they are different--perhaps the marketers are at fault for raising false expectations.) But, so long as you are willing to savor a mood, and to arrive slowly at your destination, this is an excellent read.

I think men are by nature either Mont-Saint Michelians [the Cathedral] or, if you will, Virginians

[the Virgin Mary]. ... Either they see the protection of the collectivity as absolutely crucial or they see the collectivity as being justified only because it serves the development of individual moral excellence. So you have the basic question: What is one's social duty? The survival of the group or individual moral integrity? Reason of state or personal honor? -Henry Adams, Panama

I suppose you have to admire Eric Zencey's courage in making Henry Adams the hero of a thriller. Adams was, after all, an intellectual, best known for not becoming President of the United States--as his grandfather and great-grandfather had--and for his autobiography, which mainly dwells on the lack of great truths for his generation to believe in. These elements and the fact that the story occurs while Adams is still recovering from the suicide of his wife, Clover, combine to make him a most unlikely protagonist for a mystery.

The story places Adams in Paris in 1892, the period during which he was working on his great Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres A Study of Thirteenth Century Unity. On a visit to Chartres he meets and is captivated by Miriam Talbott, a young American painter. When her body purportedly washes up near the quai de Valmy, Adams is called on to identify the corpse, but it is not the woman that he met. He subsequently becomes involved in the scandal surrounding the failure of the French Panama Canal Company, which threatens to destroy the reputations of men like Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, and Gustave Eiffel, and even to bring down the French government. Meanwhile, Adams's friend John Hay may or may not be mixed up in the whole mess, though it is certain that he wants the United States to take over the building of the canal.

Zencey does a fine job of evoking the time and the place of the mystery. The blend of fiction and history does not seem forced, and some other interesting historical characters crop up, including Georges Clemenceau and Alphonse Bertillon, who helped popularize the use of fingerprints, which play a key role in the story. But the very ambivalence--about himself, his times, the truth, etc.--for which Adams is famous, finally makes him an unsatisfactory hero. Even the most psychically damaged detectives in fiction have typically been driven either, like Sherlock Holmes, by a certainty that mystery will yield to reason, or, like Sam Spade, by a personal code of honor, or, like Batman, by a burning desire to see justice done. Adams does not have sufficient faith in reason, honor, or justice to be motivated by any of them, he just seems to want to know what happened to the girl with whom he has become irrationally infatuated. Because we do not share this emotional attachment, the mystery is not as involving as it should be.

Instead, the pleasures of the book lie mostly in Zencey's development of Adams's ideas and the portrait of his character.

Adams knew. But how could he answer? To a mind as evenly divided as his--a mind, his brother Brooks had warned him, that would never find a place in politics, where simplicity of vision was required; a mind to which evil never seemed unmixed with good, nor good unalloyed with evil; one to which no object appeared important enough to call our strength of action, nor absolutely necessary enough not to allow that its absence just might be possible to accommodate--to such a mind, the only accurate answer to bluntness was contradiction: yes and no.

This description of Adams's mind is similar to that offered by Louis Menand of some of the other key figures from that generation--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr; William James, etc.--in his book The Metaphysical Club (see Orrin's review). One can't help but be saddened that this scion of the family that led the fight for American Independence (John Adams) and against Slavery (John Quincy Adams) succumbed to this kind of banal moral relativism.

GRADE : C+

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. So what if it's slow, should every "historic mystery novel" be a comic book like The Alienist? Contrary to what others have said, I couldn't put it down.

A stellar effort for Zancey's debut. Taking place in 1892 the story is a mixture of fact and fiction. Henry Adams is an American historian whose descendants include two U.S. presidents. He becomes fascinated with the story surrounding the Panama Affair which is where the French royally messed up the building of the Panama Canal due to poor planning and widespread corruption among government officials. While in Paris a woman is pulled from the Seine named Miriam Talbot. This is someone Adams has befriended a couple of months previously and he goes to identify the body. It's not her but she has gone missing. He then starts his own amateurish investigation. We then get to see the quirkiness of his character and the humourous and uncomfortable situations he gets himself into. We get wonderful descriptions of Paris circa 1892 and meet some wonderful characters on both sides of the law. We get into the beginnings of forensic science and become acquainted with power hungry French politicians such as Loubet, Delahaye and Clemenceau. Adams is constantly at odds with himself also. Why is he pursueing this dangerous escapade? Is it for adventure and to fill the void of his wife Clover's suicide seven years ago? He observes the encroachment of the industrial age and wonders if it is destroying man's moral fibre. Overall the story is so vivid, each conversation and confrontation can be clearly imagined. It's not a page turning suspense thriller but it is a rich experience that leaves you feeling very satisfied. Stick with it through the first 50-60 pages and you will be generously rewarded. A charming, intelligent read.

When PANAMA first appeared on the scene it astonished reviewers & readers alike for its brilliant analysis of turn of the century politics & moral philosophy, as well as for its great page-turner-ability.

The novel continues to amaze. Anyone interested in the plight of our planet in the early years of the twenty-first century should read it.

This book took me back to my student days in Paris. Funny though, I thought the book would be more about Panama: the jungles and malaria. Still, I loved it and only wished it had been longer. I especially enjoyed the scientific analogies, as I think any scientist would. I don't know what those who gave it a one-star review expected: Something on the order of Terry McMillan? This book was thoroughly engaging.

When I read the book, I thought it only moderately well written and mildly entertaining. A year later, however, I still recall scenes and commentary developed by Zencey. Recommended if you enjoy a richly described period piece and commentary on historical stages in an entertaining, if not completely engrossing, package

Panama takes a real person, American historian Henry Adams, and makes him the central character. He is living in Paris after the French failure to build the Panama canal. He meets a young American artist and spends a few days with her, developing an infatuation. When she disappears, he works tirelessly to find her, becoming friendly with several policemen and discovering she was not who he thought she was and that she is embroiled with the scandal surrounding officials in the French government who used funds meant for building the canal for themselves.

There was a point where the answer to the mystery became important to me and I could not stop reading. However, it took a while to get there. In fact, I almost stopped reading this book several times because I was so bored. Zencey spends too much time describing things that ultimately have nothing to do with the story. Even after I became interested in the central mystery, he frequently veered off-track causing me to skim pages until he came back to the story. I also never felt the motivation for Adams obsession at finding his missing friend. They had only spent a small amount of time together and there was no affection revealed on her part. All in all, not a bad novel, but not as good as some critics will lead you to believe.

Thoroughly exciting historical novel delivering multi-level suspense by the bushelful.

Set in 1880's Paris, Zencey vividly portrays the failings of the political system and the accompanying corruption in the French attempt to build the Panama Canal. Zencey's background as a historian adds to the qult of detail in this novel. I only wish that he will become prolific in his writings