I was thinking that Separation might be sort of interesting to Lexie Kelly, who almost took Canadian history last fall, and who likes that sort of thing. (Her introduction was Brian Busby's Encyclopedia of Questions and Answers About Canada.) But Rohmer keeps tripping over the difference between what would actually happen in our system and what he needs to have happen for his plot. He can't have Parliament called back into session and still keep Pseudeau Trudeau as PM, so he figures out a way for that not to happen. It feels like the same sort of thing is happening with the national government in Great Britain. People from opposing parties agree to table all kinds of issues they'd never table, just to keep the story moving.
The same goes for (SPOILER ALERT, STAN) the Palestinian terrorist assassinating the Saudi who shut off England's oil for selling missiles to Israel. She should be on his side. You just have to accept that she thinks she's gotten a better offer.
This assassination subplot really does feel like it was from some other book, and by "some other book" I mean The Day of the Jackal, which came out five years before Separation. I kept waiting for the Lady Hawk to kill everyone who helps her -- the plastic surgeon, the gun shop owner -- and I realize now it's not because I've got better armchair-quarterback ideas than Rohmer, it's because that's what happens in Jackal. And every other thriller with an assassin playing tourist in France. The chapter fades from the sexy assignation to morning, with the car driving away from the small hotel, and then the maid -- farmer, mailman, barge captain -- finding the body.
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