Out of Time by David Klass

Published by Dutton on July 7, 2020

Out of Time tells a story that, in most respects, thriller fans have encountered many times before. A bright young man, living in the shadow of his celebrated law enforcement father but never meeting the father’s standards, decides to show his dad he’s got the right stuff by joining the FBI. He defies orders issued by his less competent, publicity-seeking superiors and follows his instincts to catch the bad guy. He manages to do this by thinking like the criminal he’s chasing, which of course he does with a nearly telepathic ability. The bright young man is chivalrous (he has reservations about sleeping with a married woman but agrees to be seduced when he learns that her husband is a cheating cad). He is dedicated but feels a conflict between his need to bring the killer to justice and his support for the killer’s cause. The bright young man has a boring name (Tom Smith), an appropriate moniker for a character so dull and predictable that the book, although an unchallenging summer read, is difficult to finish.

When the thriller protagonist is dull and predictable, a reader might hope that the villain will be interesting. Unfortunately, the villain — known for much of the novel as the Green Man — is so unbelievable that asking a reader to be concerned about any threat he might pose to society is asking too much. He is an eco-terrorist, a creature that exists largely in the imaginations of lobbyist and public relations firms that work for environmentally destructive industries. The Green Man starts the novel by blowing up a dam, drowning some children in the process. He has committed several other vaguely described crimes that also killed children. Had David Klass spent more effort detailing those crimes, explaining exactly how they were accomplished, he might have added a spicy dash of credibility to a bland and unbelievable plot.

The Green Man supposedly feels conflicted that he is killing innocent kids to call attention to climate change and other vaguely described environmental perils, but he ultimately feels justified because his cause is noble. He is egged on in that regard by his wife and a couple of other people, none of whom struck me as the type of folk who believe that killing children is a smart way to gain followers to a cause. The notion that collateral damage to human lives will win support for an environmental cause rather than hardening existing opposition is hopelessly naïve. That Green Man (or his wife or his other high IQ supporters) would hold that belief is inconsistent with Klass’ portrayal of the Green Man as a rational, well-educated individual. The Green Man is presented as a conflicted fanatic with a skewed moral compass, but the absence of conflict defines a fanatic. The character simply doesn’t ring true. His “God forgive me for killing innocents” prayers are entirely artificial. The Green Man and his co-conspirators are so superficial that only superficial readers are likely to accept them as people who could exist in the real world. Additional efforts at characterization, particularly giving the Green Man a plucky daughter he meets for the first time in the novel, are too trite and manipulative to make the reader care about the man.

Tom Smith is supposed to be complex but really, he’s pointlessly confused. He supports the Green Man’s cause but not his methods, although he seems to hope that the methods will wake up the world, as if blowing up dams and tanks filled with the waste from fracking is going to win hearts and minds. I thought Tom should crap or get off the pot, but he stays pretty constipated until the end, when he more or less cops out by making the easy choice that Klass hands him.

By the novel’s end, it’s not clear if the reader is meant to like the Green Man or to despise him. Since Klass didn’t make me care about him or believe the story, I saw little reason to like or dislike him. Instead, I was looking forward to forgetting about him and moving on to a better book.

On rare occasions, a novel might succeed despite its unconvincing characters by telling a captivating story. Klass doesn’t do that in Out of Time. The story generates no suspense. The final chapters, in which characters attempt to reconcile their emotions, fail to ring true. I will give Klass credit for writing an unpredictable ending, but that wasn’t enough to save the novel.

NOT RECOMMENDED