Pulse Pounding Thrill Ride With Non-Preachy Commentary. This is one of those books that *is* overtly political… *because it is dealing with political assassinations in and around Washington, DC*, among other topics. So while not all books are political and not all reading is political, this book absolutely is – though the act of reading and reviewing it is *not*.
Joyner’s background writing for the screen is evident here with his quick cuts to seemingly random groups of characters, which can be a bit hard to follow at first until you manage to get a grip on who everyone is, but at that point the story really does begin to flow quite readily.
And what a story it is. The action is relentless and seemingly non-stop, and yes, the aforementioned quick cuts actually help in this regard. The inventiveness of the reasonings, techniques, and tactics of both our bad guys and our good guys are truly something to behold – Joyner clearly has a lot of ideas here, and for the most part they tend to land exactly as desired.
There is quite a bit of class-based commentary baked into the flow of this story, though it never really becomes preachy and is even at such a level that trying to determine the author’s actual views are… not as clear as some would likely want them. For example, commentary on the dark web seems both technology-forward *and* pro-police. Similarly, commentary on class speaks to the lower classes *no matter* their race, and even points out how even some black characters would never face certain things in certain situations. And commentary about immigrants both shows their plight *and* cautions against the rise of illegal immigration. And yet every bit of this commentary is done well in-world and thus seems true to the characters taking each position as they take them, thus avoiding sounding preachy to the readers.
Overall truly an interesting book with a perspective and topic rarely seen in fiction.
Very much recommended.
This review of Bazaar by Miles Joyner was originally written on March 6, 2025.
