The Anarchist

October 12, 2009
Smolens's plodding sixth novel revolves around the assassination of President McKinley. Among the ensemble cast is assassin Leon Czolgosz; Buffalo police captain Lloyd Savin; Pinkerton agent Jake Norris; and various informants, the most important of whom is Hyde, the only person who knows what Czolgosz looks like and thus is in high demand by both the police and the grimy assortment of anarchists and thugs who hope to exploit the shooting for their own purposes. Czolgosz remains a bit of a cipher: he's enamored, sometimes to the point of delusion, of Emma Goldman, but his motives for wanting to assassinate the president are murky; sometimes he wants to “secure his place in history,” and sometimes the killing is his duty. Though other characters fare better—Hyde is particularly well drawn—Smolens never fully sells the era, leaning too heavily on cut-and-dried class and ethnic tensions (the white establishment oppressing the immigrant anarchists), while the surprisingly reserved narrative feels very at odds with the inherent tension of the assassination plot. The prose is competent, even rather nice at times, but the narrative's slowness is crippling.

November 1, 2009
Smolens (Fire Point, 2004, etc.) takes us inside the mind of the man who shot President McKinley.

Buffalo police captain Lloyd Savin recruits Pinkerton detective Jake Norris in August 1901 to investigate the murder of a young prostitute named Clementine, whose body was found floating in the Erie Canal. Norris has come from Washington to look into anarchist threats against McKinley, scheduled to appear in Buffalo next month. Specifically, Norris is tracking the movements of a young firebrand named Leon Czolgosz, who has been speaking in public about workers' rights and changing history; reportedly, Czolgosz has said it's a citizen's duty to kill the president. Norris correctly deduces that Big Maud's house, where Clementine worked, is connected to Czolgosz. When the focus shifts to the assassin-to-be, the reader gets a far more human portrait than history has commonly provided. Born in Cleveland, where his parents owned a small grocery store, Czolgosz is part of a vibrant populist movement seen by some as a threat to the nation. He is also obsessed with meeting his idol, Emma Goldman. A third major narrative strand concerns Moses Hyde, Czolgosz's confidant and Norris' informant. A restless soul brimming with vague empathy for the common man, Hyde has understandably complex feelings about his situation, staying in Buffalo mostly because of his crush on a majestic Russian prostitute at Big Maud's. The assassination occurs before the novel's midpoint, with the narrative moving slowly through its aftermath. The McKinleys, Theodore Roosevelt and other characters both real and imagined all hold center stage for a time; readers are drawn into their various stories by carefully crafted prose whose quiet authority is bolstered by a firm grasp of period detail.

A character-driven historical novel that transcends genre and provides a fascinating perspective on the current spate of populist discontent with Washington.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 1, 2009
This is a skillfully rendered historical novel about the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. McKinley's assassin, Leon Czolgosz, was the poor son of a Polish immigrant family who came under the influence of a group of radical anarchists advocating the assassination of political and business leaders in order to liberate the working class. The historical records regarding Czolgosz are, as Smolens ("The Invisible World") notes in an afterword, "scant, murky, and contradictory." Nonetheless, Smolens has fashioned a believable, complex, and human protagonist. He also puts forth a novel about historical conditions that produced this assassination; throughout, we see revolutionary ideas like socialism, communism, and anarchy being discussed (and, in some cases, tested) by various characters, who protest the repetitive, demanding, and dangerous work laborers performed for meager wages. VERDICT These were indeed dangerous and tumultuous times, and Smolens brings them convincingly to life. Highly recommended for fans of historical fiction.Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., Manchester, CT

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2009
On September 6, 1901, President McKinley was shot twice by a young, unbalanced anarchist, Leon Czolgosz; McKinley died a week later. The weeks preceding and following the assassination are the subject of this intense, moody, and engrossing novel. Smolens is the author of five previous novels, and he is a professor of English at Northern Michigan University. He provides an excellent portrait of the seamier side of the Gilded Age. He captures the virulence of class hatred and the aura of violence that hung over various radical groups. There are finely drawn characters, including a Russian Jewish whore with a heart of gold and corrupt policemen and politicians. At the center of the narrative are two contrasting men drawn together by events: Norris is a hard-nosed Pinkerton detective with contempt for working-class activists; Hyde is his informer with ambivalent feelings toward the anarchist movement. He is sympathetic with their demands for social justice but repelled by their violent tendencies. This is a well-written novel that works as both a political thriller and as a depiction of a tumultuous era in our history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)