TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE

After surviving an assassination attempt, an American senator investigates an imminent terrorist attack on the nation in Kent’s thriller.

Nate Tourneur, a senator representing Rhode Island, takes a much-needed break from his hectic schedule by going sailing in Martha’s Vineyard. While there, he’s enchanted by a beautiful stranger, Sarita Montoya, an entertainer from Puerto Rico, and their flirtatious conversation continues back at Nate’s hotel room. When he wakes, he finds her dead, and later her body simply vanishes; his situation shifts “from tragic to a miasma of intrigue.” When he finds a small microphone in his room, he anxiously frets that she was part of a blackmailing scheme. Later, while sailing, he’s attacked by a sniper in a helicopter. In a scene so ludicrously implausible it will elicit more guffaws than thrills, Nate manages to survive both gunfire and a launched rocket and successfully downs the helicopter. While discussing the incident with various intelligence agencies, he recalls a peculiar poem Sarita recited that emphasized the words “imposing encounter,” which turns out to be a code for an imminent attack against the United States, likely aided by Iran. Nate decides to conduct an investigation of his own, and, accompanied by FBI agent Pilar Cruz, he flies to Puerto Rico in search of information about Sarita. The duo discovers that Sarita had ties to the PDL, a shady outfit that specializes in organ donation run by David Rashidani, an Iranian who served in the Revolutionary Guard.

The author intelligently pieces together a complex plot against the U.S., one that possibly includes a devastating biochemical assault. The great virtue of the story is its impressive unpredictability, which allows Kent to build an atmosphere of suspense and chilling expectancy. But too much of the plot is entirely unbelievable, as is the novel’s protagonist, who seems like a pastiche of action-movie characters played by Harrison Ford. Nate is a 41-year-old former Naval intelligence officer and star athlete, perfectly capable of physically fending off assassins with cheerful aplomb. He relentlessly makes light of his terrible predicament by bombarding his interlocutors with clever quips—to his great fortune, they all respond in kind. When tackled to the ground by an FBI agent tasked with bringing him in—Nate didn’t realize his pursuers were FBI agents and was running away—this exchange occurs: “‘Are you a terrorist from Texas?’ I say. ‘San Antonio,’ says the leader of the pack. ‘You set me in a horn-tossing mood.’ … ‘I won’t apologize,’ I say. ‘You’re lucky to be alive, jumping through those trains.’ ‘When you’ve chased jackrabbits on the prairie, you don’t need breakfast to catch a man.’” No one talks like this, certainly not under conditions of such duress and fear. Unfortunately, this exchange is exemplary of all the dialogue in the novel. Readers will be entirely engrossed by the first 50 pages of Kent’s political thriller, but the remainder offers only diminishing returns.

A tale of espionage and political intrigue that invites incredulity and, finally, indifference.