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A review by tonyzale
The Paladin by David Ignatius
2.0
David Ignatius’ Paladin is a Trump-era techno-thriller starring ex-CIA operations officer Michael Dunne. We follow Dunne before and after a yearlong stint in prison for spying on Americans, despite assurances from his director that the mission was legitimate. His target was “Fallen Empire” a shadowy organization leveraging AI to produce high quality fake videos to manipulate public opinions and market forces. They are equal-opportunity manipulators, agitating both the right and left against one another. The agency disavows their complicity in his work, leaving him looking like a loose cannon.
Upon release from prison, Dunne is a driven, angry man: “It would be the beginning of his ‘R&R’, he had been telling himself for months; his revenge and redemption.“ The writing style is hard boiled and humorless, and the plot doesn’t shy away from excess: when his operation goes off the rails he loses not only his job and freedom, but also his wife and a family member. Elevating the characters a notch above cardboard is a secondary theme of American decay. A native Pittsburgher, Dunne returns to the city to rebuild his life after prison. He laments the closed steel mills, resents the area’s small, burgeoning tech industry, while simultaneously also hating local Trump supporters with racist, nativist views. He begrudgingly interacts with hedge fund managers he suspects are destroying the working class. Dunne seems to find no redeeming qualities in anyone or anything he interacts with.
As Dunne works to unwind the plot against him, we enjoy the tropes of luxury associated with the genre: superyachts docked on the Sardinian coast, cross-country journeys in Gulfstream jets, and wandering the streets of exotic locations like Urbino and Taiwan. It is entertaining but vacuous, pulling few surprises out of these environments. Similarly, the story’s tech underpinnings are minimal, at best. There’s not much exploration of the data and code behind the fake news AI. The climax nearly abandons this threat in favor of a more typical social engineering hack to manipulate financial data. Finally, Dunne’s emergence from prison is much too straightforward; he’s back on his feet within a month of leaving prison, landing 6 figure consulting gigs and readily getting old work buddies to share confidential info and access. I don’t know anything about how the FBI and CIA operate, but I can’t imagine life is this easy for discredited officers.
Paladin is a reasonable espionage time killer that does little to push the boundaries of the genre.
Upon release from prison, Dunne is a driven, angry man: “It would be the beginning of his ‘R&R’, he had been telling himself for months; his revenge and redemption.“ The writing style is hard boiled and humorless, and the plot doesn’t shy away from excess: when his operation goes off the rails he loses not only his job and freedom, but also his wife and a family member. Elevating the characters a notch above cardboard is a secondary theme of American decay. A native Pittsburgher, Dunne returns to the city to rebuild his life after prison. He laments the closed steel mills, resents the area’s small, burgeoning tech industry, while simultaneously also hating local Trump supporters with racist, nativist views. He begrudgingly interacts with hedge fund managers he suspects are destroying the working class. Dunne seems to find no redeeming qualities in anyone or anything he interacts with.
As Dunne works to unwind the plot against him, we enjoy the tropes of luxury associated with the genre: superyachts docked on the Sardinian coast, cross-country journeys in Gulfstream jets, and wandering the streets of exotic locations like Urbino and Taiwan. It is entertaining but vacuous, pulling few surprises out of these environments. Similarly, the story’s tech underpinnings are minimal, at best. There’s not much exploration of the data and code behind the fake news AI. The climax nearly abandons this threat in favor of a more typical social engineering hack to manipulate financial data. Finally, Dunne’s emergence from prison is much too straightforward; he’s back on his feet within a month of leaving prison, landing 6 figure consulting gigs and readily getting old work buddies to share confidential info and access. I don’t know anything about how the FBI and CIA operate, but I can’t imagine life is this easy for discredited officers.
Paladin is a reasonable espionage time killer that does little to push the boundaries of the genre.