Thriller short on thrills, long on errors

JOHN THOMPSON

It’s hard to imagine a more silly, unbelievable target for terrorists than the Alert military base and weather station on the northern end of Ellesmere Island.

But Robert Billard, an architect who lived in Iqaluit for six years, believes this plot could make the perfect political thriller, given how Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic is a hot issue in the news.

Billard returned to Iqaluit last weekend to promote his self-published book, From Within, and spent last Saturday afternoon sitting in the books section of Arctic Ventures to sign and sell copies.

As he chatted with supporters who came to buy his book, he casually mentioned he hoped to receive written blurbs from prominent Canadians intellectuals, such as John Ralston Saul.

He also said he amassed a “frightening” amount of information on the military while researching his book, and that he wouldn’t be surprised if Canada’s spy agency, CSIS, were monitoring his activities.

Billard describes his novel as a modern version of Louis Riel’s Red River rebellion. He also compares the book to best-selling thrillers set in the Arctic, such as Dan Brown’s Deception Point and Juris Jurievics’ The Trudeau Vector.

But he said those books lack the “realism” of From Within.

“I hope some people in the government and the military would read it, just to get an idea of what’s possible,” Billard said during an interview that day.

“If anything, I hope this could be a discussion piece to spur on some debate.”

What’s remarkable is that Billard is serious about all this.

To describe From Within as a thriller is misleading. It does not thrill, so much as produce a dull pain as the reader stumbles over spelling mistakes, sentence fragments, erratic punctuation and confusion over past and present tenses.

If this book were a building, it would be condemned as structurally unsound, unless it first collapsed under its own weight.

At its most poetic, the book describes a group trudging through the snow as such: “The sounds of their feet so much like a herd of cattle walking on Styrofoam.” If you think the sentence looks funny, that’s because it’s missing a verb, which is a common problem in the book.

The plot hobbles forward at a painful pace, with flat characters and dull dialogue. Several chapters are devoted to a lecture given by a political science professor who talks a lot about how the United States is bad and Canada is growing more like it, provoking the armed rebellion.

Their demands? A more powerful Canadian government, with a bigger military presence in the Arctic.

It’s bad enough the plot is unbelievable. To make matters worse, there aren’t even any dirty scenes.

The book’s cover features a bundled-up man or woman collapsed on the snow. It could well be a picture of one of the book’s long-suffering readers.

As for this reporter, he read up to page 88 of the book’s 431 pages before giving in.

Billard said his father didn’t like the book, either.

“He found the book scary,” Billard said. “He said, you know Robert, people won’t agree with your point of view.”

Billard wants to be clear he isn’t advocating an armed uprising.

“I really don’t want to come across as inciting revolution,” he said.

But his sights are set high as an author. He pointed out on a nearby bookshelf copies of the enormously successful bestseller, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.

“Controversy sells books,” he said.

As for the book launch, after one hour Billard has sold 16 copies, at $32.50 per book. “They make good Christmas gifts,” he said as a curious customer looked at a copy.

Billard explained the book is his third attempt at a novel. The first book he abandoned, while the second, a spy novel set in Europe, was rejected by publishers because it didn’t have enough Canadian content, he said.

“So I got mad and wrote a book that’s Canadian,” he said.

The book is published by Trafford, a print-on-demand publishing shop, which will print any submitted manuscript, for a price, and then print copies as they’re ordered.
Next time, he might want to consider hiring an editor.