Dropshot
is
Jack Bickham’s second novel featuring Brad Smith. It was published in 1990 by
Tor, and it is one of the best titles in the series. It opens with Brad in a
crazy grief; his wife, Danisa, died in a plane crash, and Brad has little to
live for. He is doing leather work trying to forget, struggling to keep sanity
enough to muddle through his zombie-like days. On an October afternoon he
receives an invitation to Al Hesser’s Tennis College in St. Maarten—free room
and board with no strings attached. Brad files it in the “too hard” category,
and immediately throws it out.
A few days later Collie Davis, Brad’s CIA contact,
arrives in Richardson. Collie wants Brad to accept the invitation and snoop
around the resort. Brad rejects the idea outright. As he does again when his
old friend and doubles partner Pat Reilly asks Brad to accompany him to the
island. A decision Brad later regrets because Pat dies in a suspicious scuba
accident after sending Brad a desperate letter and a signature card for bank
safe deposit box. Brad goes to St. Maarten—off the radar of both the CIA and
the tennis resort—to investigate Pat’s death. What he finds is much larger and
more dangerous than he expected.
Dropshot
is
a clever, twisty suspense novel. One of its major themes is death. Brad’s wife
is only one of the ghosts, and there are some powerful moments. An example is an
early scene when two tennis hackers are preparing for a charity tournament, and
one of the men tells Brad his wife died of cancer—
“There
are times like that when you want to say you notice. I’ve never known how to
say it in a way that will make sense. We walk around, making our social noises,
and occasionally someone opens the shutters over his eyes and we see that
glimpse, that we share something crucial. But it always seems to come out
wrong, and everyone ends up being embarrassed, or mystified. And so we don’t
try to say it.”
It is also a novel of recovery. The investigation
breaks Brad’s grief, and a new woman enters his life. But most importantly it
is exciting, suspenseful, and exotic. There are a handful of distasteful villains
including Sylvester—who acts as Brad’s Moriarty in three of the novels. There
are also several well-designed characters; a predatory nymph, an overextended
resort owner, an angry teenager whose body as outgrown his emotions, a gambling
computer programmer. The plot is devised perfectly. There are seemingly small,
almost inconsequential moments that payoff big in later chapters.
Dropshot is
a cold war novel and it has held up well since its publication 25 years ago.
The reason has less to do with the plot and setting than it does with Brad
Smith’s narration. He is sympathetic, tough when he needs to be, and a
proclaimed coward. He has a realistic view of the CIA—a necessary evil—and he
is likable as hell.
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