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In Writing to Sell, Scott Meredith described the "plot skeleton," (I'm sure he was not the first) a structure which every novel inevitably must follow. To wit, a protagonist, for whom the reader feels sympathy, has a problem. The protagonist's attempts to solve the problem come to nothing, usually making the problem even worse. Finally, when all seems lost, the protagonist solves his problem.

Ed McBain has been doing it for forty years, and very few have done it as well. Ed McBain knows all about the plot skeleton. In this book, he deliberately ignores the convention. There is no protagonist, instead, a lonely group of people, tied together by nothing except proximity, must attempt to stop a plot designed to involve the U.S. in a major war. Every time you think you've identified a character who might turn into a protagonist, he or she gets killed, and the bad guys wander on their merry way, unimpeded. Finally, when all seems lost, the bad guys lose-- by pure serendipity. McBain is playing with his readers here, and the readers have the right to resent it. The book is a political commentary, not a novel, and as such, it's overdone and heavy handed. By far the most disappointing McBain that I've read (and I've read most of them).