The South Lawn Plot by Ray O'Hanlon

Published by GemmaMedia on March 11, 2011

As I began reading The South Lawn Plot, I thought: Not another thriller involving hidden Vatican secrets! It is and it isn't. The plotting of the priesthood underlies the story but many other storylines are layered on top of it. The South Lawn Plot has elements of a spy novel, a mystery, a political drama, and an historical thriller with a bit of romance thrown in for flavor. Ray O'Hanlon juggles so many storylines that keeping track of them all is a dizzying experience.

The primary storyline starts with two dead priests: one hanging from a bridge, the other fallen from a cliff. London tabloid reporter Nick Bailey doesn't think the deaths are a coincidence -- not when the hanging is so similar to Roberto Calvino's, who apparently killed himself in 1982 after his bank became known for its murky dealings with the Vatican. When an archbishop joins the priests in death, Bailey suspects he's chasing a story that could yield the biggest scoop of his career.

Alternating with Bailey's story is John Falsham's conspiracy in the early 1600's to force England to ally itself with Spain and the Catholic Church, a continuation of the plot to kill King James that led to Guy Fawkes' execution. Mixed in with (and eventually dwarfing) those two stories is an apparent assassination plot that targets two political figures from both sides of the Atlantic. Providing the backdrop for the modern day story are bank robbing freedom fighters in Ireland and a potential military conflict between China and Taiwan that might draw the world into a nuclear war.

That should be enough for three novels but Ray O'Hanlon manages to bring the disparate stories together with reasonable success. It might all be an illusion; I'm still puzzling over how (and whether) it all fits together. If it all makes sense, it does so just barely, but thrillers don't need to make perfect sense as long as they thrill, and O'Hanlon delivers plenty of intrigue and some nice action scenes. More importantly, the quality of O'Hanlon's prose is above par for the genre, making the novel a joy to read. His beautifully descriptive writing has true literary flair, and his main characters have well-developed personalities.

Characters are, however, the novel's greatest problem. There are just too many of them. There are dozens of characters in this book, ranging from ambassadors to priests, from secret service agents to industrialists, from a king to an African rebel leader. More than three-quarters of the way through the story, new characters continue to be introduced. In fact, a significant actor makes his first appearance in one of the final chapters. It's all a bit too much; the pace begins to drag in the middle chapters and while the novel is never boring, the loss of energy attributable to the growing multitude of characters is noticeable.

Finally, the ending is clever but not as explosive as the set-up seemed to promise. The outcome doesn't seem like quite the big deal that the book makes it out to be, but that might be due to my American perspective which is relatively indifferent to British royalty. There's also too much "here's what happened" exposition at the end, in contrast to the livelier writing that characterizes the novel's earlier chapters. Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading The South Lawn Plot despite its flaws.

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