Cold Glory by B. Kent Anderson

Published by Forge Books on October 11, 2011

B. Kent Anderson is a capable writer. He has a good sense of pace, his prose is clean, and he has a sharp eye for detail. It's unfortunate that he chose to write a formulaic thriller that rests on an implausible premise.

Cold Glory is the latest entry in the ever growing field of (for lack of a better term) historical conspiracy novels -- stories that imagine generations of people acting secretly and in concert for some nefarious purpose. The founders of the secret society at work in Cold Glory called themselves the Glory Warriors. The organization was born during the Civil War but continues to thrive in the present.

In the prologue, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee sign a three page document during a private meeting in Appomattox, shortly before Lee's public surrender to Grant. The rest of the novel takes place in the present, beginning with historian Nick Journey's discovery of buried documents in southern Oklahoma. Journey puzzles over a single page that refers to an additional clause to the peace treaty that ended the Civil War -- a clause that will take effect if the President, the Chief Justice, and the Speaker of the House are all removed from office by conspiratorial means. The document's second page, containing the text of that clause, is missing.

Following the formula of historical conspiracy novels, the two men who attempt to kill Journey so they can recover the document have an identifying mark -- in this case, they're wearing gold G.W. pins -- giving Journey a convenient clue to the existence of the secret organization. One might think that secret society hit men wouldn't wear the secret society insignia while doing their secret work, but that's the formula and Anderson follows it dutifully. True to the formula, the out-of-shape history professor must rely on his wits to survive until he can recover the missing pages and divine the document's meaning. In that endeavor he is assisted by Meg Tolman, a beautiful agent of a fictional federal law enforcement agency that opens a file on Journey despite the absence (at least initially) of any reason to believe the federal government would have jurisdiction over (or interest in) an attempted murder in Oklahoma.

None of this makes the slightest bit of sense. The novel asks us to accept that intelligent people, some of whom have a legal education, believe that a "treaty" signed by Grant and Lee would permit a group of unelected individuals to seize control of the government in the event of a specified crisis. You don't need a legal education to understand that treaties (even those that are ratified, which this one wasn't) do not supersede the Constitution. Even though the conspiracy's leader controls a television network that is widely viewed by the gullible and intends to use that network to convince the public that his seizure of power is legitimate, I can't believe that this guy would find even a handful of people in a position of influence who would agree that his treasonous scheme would enjoy public support. The novel's premise is just so silly that it undermined my willingness to suspend my disbelief.

Another problem: We never learn the size of the "invasion force" that will support the coup, but it would take a significant number of people to occupy the structures of government. Anderson doesn't explain why so many members of the Armed Forces, all of whom took an oath to protect the Constitution, would be willing to overthrow it.

Unfortunately, the sad plot isn't redeemed by interesting characters. Journey is given an autistic son for no other reason than to show us what a wonderful person Journey is -- unlike the son's mother, who wants to institutionalize him. The theme of "evil selfish mom doesn't love her autistic son as much as heroic self-sacrificing dad" is too obviously manipulative to succeed.

The story starts losing steam about two-thirds of the way to an anticlimactic ending. The last couple of chapters are a bit dull. There is some solid writing here, but it's wasted on an ill-considered plot and tedious characters.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS