Windmills of the Gods
by Sidney Sheldon

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Book Reviews of Windmills of the Gods

Book Review: "Windmills" vs. "Jackal"
Summary: 4 Stars

The story is set in the changing world scenario of the late eighties. The Iron Curtain countries are just about opening up and the US has elected an idealistic new president whose dream is to create world peace, and the way to achieve that to open a dialogue with the communist states. For this endeavor, he chooses a bright professor of Eastern European Studies based in Kansas, named Mary Ashley. Ashley, a simple woman unaccustomed to life outside the farming community where she has been brought up, suddenly finds herself in the most coveted seat in all of US diplomacy: the ambassadorship of Romania, which is the first Iron Curtain country to have shown signs of opening up.

What follows is a very interesting account of how she copes with the drastic change in her life. Sheldon provides the reader with an excellent insight into Diplomatic Protocol (it's given a humorous touch as Ashley is shown slipping up and confused at how she should exactly behave as the ambassador). However, Ashley does manage to cope and gets some difficult jobs done, which earns her acclaim and respect at home and in Romania. All's going well, except that there are some powerful people from the Old Establishment who do not want to "sellout" to Communists and open the US to Socialist influence, and would rather maintain the status quo in the relations with the Iron Curtain. They see the President and the Ambassador as their prime enemies and resolve to kill Ashley before she succeeds in opening up Romania to the US, which would mean the other communist states falling in line in steady succession. The Old Establishment, to neutralize Ashley, hires the services of "Angel", a lethal assassin whose identity is shrouded in mystery. What's more, Ashley starts to fear that someone from her own staff is after her life. The narrative proceeds to a nail-biting climax on the American Independence Day being celebrated at Ashley's official residence in the Romanian capital.

The result is a wholly satisfying and totally recommendable book. An outstanding feature is the characterizations. Sheldon works hard at making his characters interesting, unique, and above all believable.

In all fairness, the novel does borrow its central theme from the most iconoclastic political thriller of all, "The Day of the Jackal" by Frederick Forsythe: a head of state whose most dangerous enemies are his own countrymen; an assassin at the top of his game; racy action set on two continents. You might say that Sheldon almost pulls it off, except for one serious mistake:

Sheldon tries to have two components in the book: Politics and Suspense, thus intending to produce the result of a political thriller. The first thirty pages are promising in this regard, but as the book moves on, the suspense and action is as livid and exciting as it can get, but the politics part takes a back seat in so much tension. Sheldon does not quite handle the two components judiciously, and does not succeed at making the book a memorable political thriller, in as much as the "Day of the Jackal" was, or, to a (much) lesser extent, that "The Brethren" (John Grisham) was.

Nevertheless, Sheldon does make the book move at a feverish pace unmatched by most thriller writers. It leaves you more than satisfied on having spent time and money on it.

"The Windmills of the Gods" is a legitimately good book, but I suspect that in time it will move into that corner shelf of my mind in which I store some very interesting novels I have read, but now do not remember them that well and only have a slight idea of what their plots were. There is another, a much more conspicuous shelf, which I never get tired of visiting. "The Day of the Jackal" occupies a pride of place there.

Literature & Fiction Books

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• Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery > Women Sleuths
• Thrillers > Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue
• Suspense