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The song 'Don't Leave Me This Way' was a wan success for one of the most popular 70s Philly soul groups but hit the big time when Thelma Houston covered it in America's Bicentennial year. Ten years later it would again do wonders as a cover in the UK, when, taking up and carrying the standard from Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, Jimmy Somerville finally got a UK No.1 hit after leaving BRONSKI BEAT in the mid 1980s. Named for the members of the French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris for 2 months and 10 days in 1871, THE COMMUNARDS fared only a bit better than the Paris Commune and fizzled out as a band in 1988. Calling to mind Hans Gruber's 'Folksfreie Movement' and the members of the mysterious Asian Dawn, a radical offshoot of the Green California Campaign rears its head as peace-loving communards 'Don't leave me this way' plea about their Federal Government sweetheart land lease is ignored and their existence threatened by the heavy weight of corporate influence. After peace, love, and tree hugging falls on deaf ears, THE HAMMER OF EDEN is driven to take extreme measures to preserve their way of life and the American Dream.
THE HAMMER OF EDEN dials it back to a world of violence, ugliness, pollution, riots, crime, poverty, and with presidents who tell lies and break laws. It isn't 2023--welcome to 1998. For all the heat California takes, there's a place where people live in peace and harmony, no sexual jealousy, no money, and no conformist rules. A happy commune who (that?) lives off the fat o' the land. That is, until the state government comes a-knocking with plans to flood the Silver River Valley, some distance from the nexus of where all seismophobes live in California, San Francisco. Not quite giving enough credence to the gov'mint of America, the communards believe the leaders of the free world to be prejudiced, sanctimonious, hypocritical, self-righteous, and really stupid. Crazy is as crazy does; with a little non-linear editing and plotting, the leader of the municipality, aptly named 'Priest', counters with the only solution that seems to make sense to all those living on that spot of God's green earth. Not trial separation, no marriage counseling, straight up domestic terrorism to get the California State leadership to bow to leave them in peace and stomp grapes until they catch the sun.
The threats of a bag of mixed nuts was an instance that the FBI loved to jump on prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, given that they met the critical threat criteria analytics of motivation, intent, and target selection. THE HAMMER OF EDEN tries real hard to get somewhere near the crisis that incidents like Ruby Ridge and Waco were in the early 1990s, but never rises to that level of catastrophe. Presented as an all-powerful, infallible, and well-resourced organization, the FBI's agents are smart, confident and dedicated. Though there is a cloud on the horizon of this paradise of law enforcement, a cloud in form of nepotism and gender-based discrimination. For being a paragon of morality, the seismic ripples of workforce change after the Tailhook scandal appear to not have yet impacted the fictional 1998 Federal Bureau of Investigation. That is exactly what Judy Maddox, Vietnamese-American Federale extraordinaire, faces--a total diss on the promo track after brilliantly solving a gnarly case involving the Foong Brothers, the most devious of criminals from Hong Kong, branding northern California with the worst crimes on the Federal docket; money laundering and tax evasion. Instead of champagne brunch with the Director on the seventh floor of the Hoover building, Judy's assigned to a unit that is basically equivalent to busting counterfeiters in Alaska. The rest of the book is spent by Agent Maddox toiling away at having to prove herself again and again to her peers, superiors--that she's good enough, smart enough, and dog-gone-it, people should like her. And she does. Naturally she stumbles into THE solid gold case that can and will make her a star.
Basically a hunter/hunted yarn with what Californians call "the big one" as the outer limit marker, THE HAMMER OF EDEN is a barebones thriller, a race against terrorists and time, built around a handful interesting characters and personal problems. This is the meat of what Ken Follett brings to the table, although THE HAMMER OF EDEN at times feels like it was undertaken only to appease the agent/manager/publisher loop, irrespective of whether there is a solid story to shake, rattle, and roll the reading public. Although alleging that there was a computer program for everything at the time (before it was 'apps'), THE HAMMER OF EDEN insists that you should [personally] fight for what you believe in, but woe to you if you fight as unfair and imperious as the government. Moreover, the narrative will teach you how to play guitar and break down nine out of ten songs out there and familiarize the concepts of bright line issues, seismic vibrator, psycholinguistics and that the FBI raids at dawn; no exceptions. Though no balm for seismophobes, THE HAMMER OF EDEN is a compelling investigative thriller, police procedural and character study that ripples with intrigue and frightening enviro conflict.
