Cover image of "Ah, Treachery!," the final Ross Thomas novel.

In the final Ross Thomas novel, the master was at his best. The late Ross Thomas wrote some of America’s most fondly remembered novels about politics, espionage, and crime, creating some of the most colorful characters in the genre. One measure of the esteem in which Thomas was held by his peers in the Mystery Writers of America were the awards they granted him for his writing, including a posthumous lifetime award. Another is that each of the books in the reprint editions brought out under the Minotaur Books imprint of St. Martin’s Press early in the 21st century includes an introduction by one of today’s best-known authors of suspense fiction.

“I’m not a cynic . . . I’m a spoiled romantic”

Joe Gores introduced the 2007 reprint of Thomas’ twenty-fifth and final novel, Ah, Treachery! His introduction is typical. Like every one of the others, there are several hilarious anecdotes about Thomas, clearly establishing him as a man who defied categorization. For example, Gore describes an exchange between Thomas and the screenwriter for a film based on one of his books set in Africa. The screenwriter “remarked that the locale wasn’t coming through enough in the script. ‘Then let’s set it in Omaha,’ said Ross. He was serious.” Gores also quotes Thomas from a dinnertime conversation with him: “‘I’m not a cynic . . . I’m a spoiled romantic.'” And the description fits many of the protagonists in Thomas’ novels.

Ah, Treachery! by Ross Thomas (1994) 292 pages ★★★★★

Lots of surprises in the final Ross Thomas novel

Many mystery and suspense authors construct elaborate plots that create suspense and offer multiple surprises on the way to a shattering conclusion. Thomas’ plots may be a little more diabolical and surprising than most. But what is most distinctive about a Ross Thomas novel are the endlessly colorful characters he creates. In Ah, Treachery! the protagonist is a cashiered Army major who was involved in the “secret” U.S. effort to support Salvadoran death squads in the 1980s. He is hired as a bodyguard by a woman who was a rainmaker for the Democratic Party in the 1992 Presidential election and is now feigning fatal illness by hiding out in a luxurious hospital suite to escape being named Ambassador to Togo.

There are two other women, one the rainmaker’s daughter, and both step right out of real life onto the page. Two generals, a colonel, an assassin-for-hire, and a Greek-American CIA officer who rides a motorcycle and wears an earring, an eyepatch, and a red bandanna around his head are among the other characters who round out the cast.

The final Ross Thomas novel is a “sprightly new suspense thriller”

Gores obviously loves Ah, Treachery! He concludes his introduction, “[L]ike most of Ross’s novels, after all the twists and turns and betrayals and murders and blood and assaults, it has a totally satisfying ending. Even a happy ending of sort, in a Ross Thomas sort of way. Nobody ever wrote ’em like Ross Thomas, and to me Ah, Treachery! is Ross at his very best.” I agree. And so did Kirkus Reviews: “The title, a sly translation of Beethoven’s aria, perfectly captures the disapproving, exhilarated tone of this effervescent concoction . . . [A]ll the characters project such a deliciously matter-of-fact sense of knowing exactly what they’re talking about, from campaign finance reform to assassination techniques, that just meeting, listening to, and watching them in action will leave you dizzy with pleasure.”

Publishers Weekly favored it as well, calling it a “sprightly new suspense thriller” upon its publication. Sadly, this was the final Ross Thomas novel.

What Gore doesn’t mention but comes out in the introductions to other Ross Thomas novels is that Thomas may have been a spook for a time, as are several of the characters in his books. And when he writes about electoral politics, he clearly knows what he’s doing as well. I was never a spook, but politics is a field I know well.

I’ve listed and linked my reviews of all the Ross Thomas novels I’ve read here: Reviewing Ross Thomas – thrillers that stand the test of time.

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