Stu doesn’t want to admit that there’s distance between he and his wife Angie, but the locked bathroom door and the mysterious bulging folder on her desk are unavoidable signs. When he discovers that she’s taken up the case of a ritualistically murdered woman from halfway around the world, he’s both proud and dismayed. Stu and Angie don’t need any more death threats after a lifetime of fighting for their principles and serving their country. Their life together–which has included raising children–is supposed to be about togetherness, not untangling violent terrorist plots. In this case, the insane Zuehb Azwad will play a much bigger role in Angie and Stu’s marriage than either of them anticipate, as a heart-wrenching and ultimately violent battle plays out across multiple continents.
Wedding the hard-charging American fatalism of a mid-90s Tom Clancy novel with the introspective emotional observations in the face of infrastructural change of Kazuo Ishiguro, FACE OF OUR FATHER is an unusual blend of action-adventure and portrait of domestic intimacy. While Stu and Angie are undoubtedly the white hats, and Zuehb Azwad’s associated cronies the dysfunctional black hats, the basic hero versus villain structure is more rewarding than this pairing would suggest. This is due to Pitir’s powerful narrative thrust, which opens each chapter with a bang and closes it with an anxious rush. Where the Cold War generated spy novels, Pitir may be the most notable pioneer in the post-9/11 genre of “terrorist page-turner.”
With well-placed internal monologues, urgent pacing, and a clear delineation of characters and their relationships to one another, FACE OF OUR FATHER maps the craggy terrain of the violent world of power struggles, centuries-old grudges, and the ordinary fight to keep a good marriage going strong.
~IndieReader.