PHANTOM PATRIOT

A bereaved young Frenchman takes aim at British power and privilege as he sets about avenging his family in Gosselin’s thriller.

Jean-Paul Martineau, after he and his Huguenot family flee to Britain in the 1720s, leap from the proverbial frying pan into the fire after his merchant father, René, runs afoul of entrenched mercantile interests. Jean-Paul rapidly loses his loved ones in a tragic tale that climaxes with trumped-up treason charges and capital punishment for his father.Oddly, rather than escape with the son he’s grooming for greatness (“It's all arranged. A ship will be waiting”), René passes on a more basic remit: “Survive. And make them pay.” It’s one of several suspensions of disbelief that’s required in following Jean-Paul to 1750s-era Boston, where colonial resentment against British oppression is simmering and gathering steam. Without missing a beat, Martineau assumes the quintessentially anonymous persona of “Mr. Smith” as he seeks to determine who can be compromised for the brewing revolutionary cause. The final shots of the Revolutionary War rang out nearly 300 years ago, yet readers’ fascination with the conflict, and its runup, has never abated, as this taut thriller suggests. Gosselin presents a world of cold pragmatism, served in crisp, pithy aphorisms (“Practical men live to see revolutions succeed”), with characters driven by the promise of money or opportunity; the novel also includes some larger-than-life figures, including George Washington, Thomas Paine, and Benjamin Franklin, to name a few. Plots and counterplots unfold at dizzying speed as Jean-Paul seeks to repay a nearly 40-year-old debt, and the story’s resolution is most unexpected. Some readers may be reminded of the AMC series Turn: Washington’s Spies, and fans of that show should feel right at home here.

An intricately plotted tale of revenge.