Customer Reviews

Secret Players

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Secret Players

A Review

Secret Players is a marvelous read. Mr. Nelson has crafted a superb thriller with global implications: politically, economically and militarily. The adage "write what interests you and write what you know" is very apparent in the author's telling of his story, a cat and mouse game start to finish. The novel is a jewel and an excellent source of history, economics and politics beginning with World War II to the present.
Secret Players is one of the finest examples of what Elizabeth George (Write Away!) calls the hourglass plot, where two sets of characters bear equal weight in the novel and two plot lines run separately like two parallel lines. Our curiosity is aroused. We wonder how and when we'll see the relationship between the two characters and the two plots: all the time we sense that we are heading toward a convergence.
After finishing the novel, you'll sit back impressed by the characters and unique plot and at the same time enriched with a retelling (lesson) of world history.
Congratulations, Mr. Nelson. A wonderful novel worthy of a large reading public.

Robert Vigil
Independent reviewer

Secret Players is clearly a sweeping HISTORICAL novel. Although the plot/characters (five women and four determined men) are held together through Buck Steele's life, Sako his Japanese enemy, and the Cass dynasty, it seems to me not fair to market it other than as a great slice of American life during the COLD WAR.
HISTORY makes these American characters pivotal, with the Japanese and other characters in the wings, always waiting for their cue! HISTORY eventually upstages all other elements. Of course it's rife with international intrigue.
But promoting it as "a literary novel" that 'carries the weight of history' isn't enough.
I thought immediately of Gone with the Wind, Giant, The Forsythe Saga and Gettysburg.
During my read, again and again I came across fascinating cultural/historical/economic stuff, a great slice of cultural life, again, during the COLD WAR .
And I found allusions--accurate and fascinating--and perceptions about, for instance, the Marshall Plan, incredibly interesting observations about post-war Japan, Japanese-Chinese relations, the Bilderburg group, depicted as "a new world order with a global agenda, dominated by Europeans!---(wasn't Buck Steele a member?).
And, as was my luck, various snapshots of Americana popped out, such as the possibly apocryphal tale of Edgar Bergen and the bartender who became Charlie McCarthy's prototype in the Saginaw Club. Wow! This is wonderful, rich CULTURAL stuff!
I know Secret Players will do well---but it needs to be marketed for what it is---otherwise it tends to come across as another Danielle Steele novel. Wish I'd had more time to expound.
Congratulations on a really super book.