Spoilers: Duncan Ritchie’s political thriller, The Truth Chamber might seem familiar. All too familiar. It concerns a presidential election during a time when political parties have become toxic towards each other and acts of violence, assassinations, and conspiracies are the order of the day. It's only a slightly harsher step from life in the United States right now.
The general presidential election is in full swing and Texas governor Mack Leach and Georgia senator Anna Hoffman look to be the front runners for the Republican and Democratic Party respectively. Unfortunately a series of violent events including acts of terror, mass shootings, multiple murders, and assassination attempts keep this from being a normal election year.
Retired Navy SEAL Liam Driscoll, FBI agent Abby Reis, and investigative political reporter Caitlin Kincaid have to weed through the various leads, suspects, and witnesses to find the truth and the heart of the conspiracy behind these acts.
Then there is The Truth Chamber, an AI tool to determine if the suspect is lying or not, similar to a polygraph test but more accurate, more thorough, more analytical, and far more painful if the subject is caught lying.
The Truth Chamber is a lot. A lot of characters, a lot of plots and subplots, a lot of suspense, and a lot of twists. At 1072 pages, it is longer than most similar thrillers which gives it plenty of time to develop characters and the plot accordingly.
However the length can also be a downfall as well. At times it's a bit unwieldy for its own good. Sometimes it's hard to keep track of who is who and where they fit into the story. Some subplots are just padding.
The final chapters continue far longer than they should. There are multiple places where they could have stopped only to have some other complication occur to add more pages.
It's a thriller that pushes itself to excess when it really could have told the same story and carried the same suspense with fewer pages, fewer chapters, and a more minimalist tighter approach.
However if you ignore the length and excess, it's actually a very engaging read especially when comparing it to the real life events and people that inspired it. Both candidates have real world comparisons who are particularly obvious, especially Leach’s real life counterpart. Even some of the sound bites, personal scandals, and sycophants run parallel to his real life inspiration.
Hoffman however is more of a composite of several women, mostly those who have challenged the real life Leach prototype. She is a more polished, intellectual, big picture thinker than the more bombastic aggressive combative Leach. She has a strong moral compass but isn't afraid to compromise those morals if the situation arises.
Leach and Hoffman are two candidates who will fight each other with everything that they have, even shed blood if need be. Well one would be willing to shed blood even if they don't need to. The other would have to think about it and weigh the options first.
The supporting characters like Liam, Abby, and Caitlin are the usual characters that you would find in such a work like this. With tragic pasts, they are dedicated to their work because their personal lives are in turmoil. They have clandestine meetings with secret informants at the regular. They want to get to the bottom of this investigation and aren't above pushing boundaries to do it.
They are interesting characters and are worth rooting for but very typical in this type of subgenre. These characters represent the groups that would be involved with Liam representing the military, Abby representing law enforcement, and Caitlin representing the media. They are more archetypes of those types of characters than developed as individuals in their own right.
The investigation and crimes themselves are the right kind of gripping and chilling particularly knowing how close they are to reality. We have seen presidential campaigns that had assassinations, assassin attempts, insurrections, potential election interference, and challenges towards the legitimacy of the results.
In the past ten years each election year has been just as troubling as the previous one. That's what keeps the suspense high in this novel. Knowing that it's only a few turbs away from reality and that in theory, we are living inside a political thriller of our own.
One of the most provocative plot points in the book is the eponymous device, The Truth Chamber. It is a terrifying instrument especially considering that the people using it don't let things like due process, civil liberties, Miranda Rights, or having an attorney present get in the way of using it.
It is practically a torture device because when the AI interface believes that the person strapped to it is lying, they are given electric shocks. The interrogation chapters have a ghoulish aura because they appear straight out of a horror or dystopian science fiction film.
It makes one wonder how far people will go in the new normal of constant violence. Will old laws and standards have to change? Should they? It's chilling to even consider.
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