BookBrowse Reviews The Recruit by Alan Drew

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The idyllic paradise of a Southern California suburb is shattered by a string of violent, racist acts pointing to a bigger conspiracy in this gut-punch thriller set in the 1980s.

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In 1987, Rancho Santa Elena is a sleepy, sunny California town with rolling green hills, orange groves and breaking swells for hundreds of eager surfers. But when Bao Phan makes a grisly discovery in the alley behind his Vietnamese grocery, Detective Ben Wade feels uneasy by what he finds: a nearly decapitated dog with a note pinned to its ear containing the words "Kill 'Em All!" In Alan Drew's thrilling follow-up to The Shadow Man, Ben and forensic expert Natasha Betencourt team up to fight a local menace that is on the verge of metastasizing nationally thanks to a burgeoning new technology: the internet.

With the recent serial killings of the Night Prowler behind him, as well as the painful but necessary reckoning with childhood memories of abuse by a trusted adult, Wade enters a new phase of life: newly single and co-parenting his teenage daughter, Emma, while building a tentative and tender new relationship with his colleague, Natasha. Both seek to escape the haunted house of their pasts and move forward toward a brighter future, but something ugly is festering under Rancho Santa Elena's tranquil veneer. A violent gang of youths are being groomed for the dirty work of a quasi-religious white supremacist movement targeting marginalized immigrant communities of the area, leaving behind a call sign of Posse Comitatus (roughly "power of the county") in the throats of their victims.

When the murdered body of a wealthy, white real estate developer is found floating face up in his beach house swimming pool, a message reading "Traitor! - Posse Comitatus" shoved down his esophagus, Ben and Natasha sense an organized madness is orchestrating these acts. When they come across clues to a nefarious internet forum called "Liberty Storm Net," the chase is on to crack the security layer to derail future acts of terrorism. Drew brilliantly offers a slice of nostalgia for those who remember when the internet was "young" as his characters speak curiously about "how it works," but the fuzzy feelings end when the reader witnesses how racist domestic terrorists in the novel set up electronic bulletin boards to design, stage and execute their diabolical plans for what they call "the Tribulation."

The emotional center of Drew's novel is Ben, Natasha and the Phan family (who, it is revealed, Natasha has a long acquaintance with) — but the black heart of it, pumping out agony and hatred in alternating beats, is 15-year-old Jacob Clay. Daily witnessing his parents' loveless marriage and his nonexistent relationship with his damaged father, a Vietnam veteran, Jacob is subject to indifference, at best, and physical abuse, at worst, when his father slips into flashbacks resulting in uncontrollable rage. Friendless and seething at his life, Jacob is drawn to the self-possessed confidence of his 20-year-old neighbor, Ian Rowan, who lifts weights, wears suspenders and jackboots and gives Jacob the attention and advice he so desperately craves. Jacob is Drew's most sinister and woeful character, one who shows how the seeds of hate are sowed and eventually blossom into violence.

A fascinating feature of the novel is the focus on refugees who were relocated to America after the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam so dramatically. In Orange County where the story takes place, there is a sizable Vietnamese community, often referred to as "Little Saigon." One of the most memorable characters Drew creates is Bao Phan, a man seared by the war who yet rises above to own a business and send his daughter, Linh, to college. But even after 12 years of backbreaking work and sacrifice, Bao feels he fights a war almost daily:

"Once a war started, it never ended—not really. You kept fighting it in your head, or you were forced to fight its aftermath—the displacement, the anger and shame, the forever bitterness of violence. This was his American war, fought against people who felt they could just keep taking."

Drew draws on knowledge gleaned from a personal relationship with Vietnamese American writer Monique Truong, who landed as a child refugee not far from where he grew up (see Beyond the Book). In a must-read afterword acknowledgment, Drew identifies the resources and research that inspired his vision of Bao Phan and his fiery daughter, Linh. These are events and characters not soon forgotten, and readers will likely hope to encounter Bao again in any future installments in this series.

Setting The Recruit 25 years ago lends an eerie sense of prophecy to the story, as the brutish faces of white supremacist movements are an all-too-familiar feature of today's current events. In this way, Drew gives the reader a mini-history lesson in how these movements were early adopters of the internet, and shines light on the many hidden codes, numbers and symbols of white supremacists. (For example, for those in the know, tattoos of the number "88" signal the double use of the eighth letter of the alphabet, "H," which stands for "Heil Hitler.")

The Recruit is a nail-biter in the classic sense of the thriller, offering taut prose, compelling and diverse characters, and pitch-perfect pacing that delivers an explosive ending reminiscent of real-life events. Despite the unpleasant subject matter, Drew underscores the fact that good people still outnumber the bad ones — and that hope is an ever-replenishing gift we all should hold onto…for dear life, if necessary.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in July 2022, and has been updated for the August 2023 edition. Click here to go to this issue.