The Fund by H.T. Narea

Published by Forge Books on May 10, 2011

Although The Fund seems to be marketed as a financial thriller, the plot is driven by terrorist bombings. The Shari'ah-complaint fund that gives the novel its title is less important to the story than the terrorist attacks. Narea serves up a smorgasbord of culprits, including the Venezuelan and Cuban governments, al-Qaeda terrorists, Basque separatists, and suicide bombers who are energized by a secret serum that makes cats chase dogs. The chief bad guy, Nebibi Hasehm, controls the fund. Its structure assures that it will do well if certain sectors of the economy are distressed -- the kind of distress that might follow a significant terrorist attack directed at Wall Street. The chief good guy, Kate Molares, an analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, happens to have been Hasehm's lover six years earlier -- one of several coincidences (including Kate's father's involvement with the fund) that are a bit difficult to accept.

Narea deserves credit for weaving these threads into a coherent whole. Still, there is at least one plot thread too many. The storyline involving the serum that makes cats chase dogs is both central to the plot and unnecessary. It is too James Bond-ish to integrate well with the sophisticated financial thriller that the book sometimes tries to be. For all the emphasis Narea places on the serum, its existence does little to advance the story. My sense is that Narea intends this novel as a warning; if so, the threat of dirty bombs accomplishes that task without trying to make the reader fret about drug-fueled suicide bombers. (Frankly, if terrorists were given the serum, we'd all be better off. The serum seems to have the same effects as meth. How many meth addicts are capable of following instructions?)

Putting aside the serum and the financing (neither of which make a substantial contribution to the plot) and viewing The Fund as a conventional thriller about terrorists and dirty bombs and the like, the novel is entertaining, although it rarely achieves and never sustains the level of tension that the best thrillers produce. It's important to create a sense of atmosphere but at times The Fund reads more like a travelogue than a thriller. Narea's writing style is what a reader might expect to encounter in a first novel: sometimes stilted or awkward, a bit wordy, but for the most part serviceable. Dialog is too frequently used to explain things for the reader's benefit that the characters would already know. And while it might be beneficial to translate the phrases "Allahu Akbar" and "insha'allah" once for the benefit of readers who haven't encountered them before, it isn't necessary to repeat the translation every single time one of the phrases appears in the text.

On the positive side, The Fund tells its story with vigor and the characters are likable if not particularly deep. To his credit, Narea didn't create a superhero to rush in like Jack Ryan and save the world from evil.  On the other hand, Molares waltzes through the novel without doing much of anything other than (too predictably) renewing her romantic entanglement with Hasehm. By the novel's end, the primary characters are all but forgotten in a rush to finalize the story. Narea ends the novel with an excess of exposition: this happened here, then that happened there, and it all changed the world. Like much of the rest of the novel, the ending lacks punch.

The Fund is in many respects a worthy effort that suffers from too little originality and an insufficiently tight plot. Had the focus been more on the funding mechanism for terrorism and less on the terrorist plot itself, this would have been a better novel.  Hardcore fans of novels about terrorism will enjoy it; for others the novel is a mixed bag.

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