Not A Bing Crosby/Bob Hope Movie

Nor is The Road to Gandolfo a Family Guy parody of those movies. So it has that going for it. It's a bit of an absurd story by Robert Ludlum, author of The Aquitaine Progression! Oh and some books about a guy named Bourne.

Ludlum admits in a preface that this is one of those stories that started out some great piece of work in his mind, but then turned out as a bit of a farce. Military lawyer Sam Devereaux can't wait for his term of service to end, but first he must travel to China to try and help American patriot Mackenzie Hawkins. Hawkins is accused of shooting the manhood off a Chinese monument. He claims he was drugged. The Chinese government claims he was just drunk. The U.S. government decides to throw Hawkins under the bus to keep getting cheap gas. Devereaux manages to find a solution all three sides can accept. His reward is to be dragged into Hawkins mad scheme for his post-military career. Namely, to hire a crack team of specialists and abduct the Pope, then ransom him to the Vatican at a price of 1 dollar for every Catholic. The Hawk's 4 ex-wives also figure prominently as aides to his plans. Quite impressive to maintain friendly relations with not just one ex-wife, but four.

There's a bed and breakfast here in town. At the bottom of their sign is the statement, 'Kindness Inspires Kindness'. Since I saw that sign, I've been debating its accuracy. It really depends on who you're kind to. Some people will be inspired to kindness, but other people will perceive that kindness as weakness, or something to be scorned, which leads to abuse or exploitation. This does have something to do with the book.

Devereaux doesn't particularly like Hawkins. He says at one point that politically they're about as different as can be, and describes Hawkins as either a fascist, or near fascist. It would have been easy to half-ass his counsel for Hawkins and just burn the days until his term is over. Let Hawkins pride condemn him to a 4,000 year prison sentence in Outer Mongolia, but he didn't. He felt, regardless of politics, Hawkins deserved better from his government. So Sam came up with a solution that everyone found palatable. The Chinese and U.S. governments were satisfied, and Hawkins won't be spending time in prison. After the return home, Sam agrees to go along with Hawk as he travels to Agency headquarters to close out some files. Hawkins' repayment of Sam's kindness is to make him an accomplice to the theft of any number of classified documents. Actually, considering Hawkins friends in the Pentagon, Sam's the only one who would take the fall for that crime. So much for kindness inspiring kindness.

This book reminds me a bit of Crichton's Great Train Robbery, which I read in 7th grade. This book is far less serious, but it's similar that the actual crime is only a small part of the story. When I read the Crichton book, that was a problem for me. The title promises a train robbery, but it takes 80% of the book to get to it. I hated that, found it boring. The Road to Gandolfo takes it's sweet time getting to the papal abduction, but it didn't bother me. Perhaps because the book was so much less serious, the crime seemed doomed from the start, and that removed any impatience on my part to get to the act.