Reviews
'Bossuet
Conspiracy' a good caper
Local author weaves religion, murder, family
into thriller
By
SARA McDARIS
For The Huntsville Times
on October 3, 2003
"The Bossuet Conspiracy," by Bill Goodson,
iUniverse, Inc., 2003, $17.95, 272 pages.
You
will have a romp with this novel from a well-known
local citizen.
Bill Goodson is a Huntsville native, having been born
and raised here by parents who left their mark on
the community. After a career in psychiatry, he is
finding time for writing, and we are the beneficiaries.
Goodson has taken the strange death of a distinguished Catholic priest, Thomas Merton, the changing attitudes of the Catholic Church in the last quarter of the 20th century and a good imagination to bring us a murder thriller. He has managed to work in national politics, a prominent Tennessee family and Bill Clinton's presidency.
His story begins in 1968, when Merton died. Several times the tale slides back to that moment. However, most of the action occurs in the '90s.
Fittingly, his main character is a Tennessee psychiatrist: a man with strengths and flaws, just like the rest of us. During a divorce he has managed to hang on to his college age son and lose his high school daughter. This secondary plot entwines itself around the main one, eventually reaching resolution.
The main plot deals with army base closings, Disney World possibilities and drug traffic from Mexico, which camouflages murder and greed.
The Japanese/Mexican Matsaku of Matsaku Enterprises wants to establish a huge playground for all ages on a Kentucky army base that may be closed down. He has the money and the contacts to make that happen. Those contacts include some of the highest officials of the U.S. government and one important Tennessee official. His goal is to sway the congressional vote to close the base his way.
The intrigue extends to the religious realm, for Matsaku is a devout Catholic who supports the Kentucky retreat, Gethsemani, where Thomas Merton lived toward the end of his life. One of the priests in the novel is placed here in Huntsville, and may be the best character that Goodson describes.
Characterization is one of Goodson's strengths. And it's not limited to adults. His teen characters lived for me.
I was also impressed with his ability to mix the different time periods and make the blend believable and enjoyable.
Sara McDaris of Huntsville is a regionally known story-teller.
A Novel Twist on Merton's Death
Review of
The Bossuet Conspiracy
By Bill Goodson
Lincoln, NE : iUniverse, 2003
272 pages / $17.95 paperback
Reviewed by Robert Waldron in the Summer 2004 issue of The Merton Seasonal.
After my encounter with Paul Hourihan's novel The Death of Thomas Merton with its subtitle: "A Confessional Portrayal of the Last Day in the Life of the Famous Catholic Monk and Writer," I was leery of reading another fictional account of Merton's life and death. (Why read fiction when we have so much of Merton's autobiographical writing, both prose and poetry?) In fact, Hourihan's book was downright distasteful, written by a disgruntled ex-Catholic who on the first page suggests that everything Merton wrote was "rubbish" and full of his "own emptiness." To Hourihan, Merton's life was a tragedy because he remained a Christian, failing to embrace the locus of Truth, to be discovered only in Yoga, Vedanta and Indian mysticism.
Needless to say I couldn't finish the book.
Bill Goodson's novel The Bossuet Conspiracy, on the other hand, is the opposite of Hourihan's: first, it's written by a man who obviously admires Merton; secondly, by a man who believes that Merton teaches an authentic spirituality for modern people.
Since 1968, many people have been fascinated by Merton's death. The seemingly unanswerable question is: "Was his death the result of a conspiracy?" In pre-Watergate America, such a question would have been dismissed as absurd. But we are a more sophisticated people today, and conspiracy theories don't sound so much like theater of the absurd. I remember reading Matthew Fox's autobiography Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denonimational Priest and being rather surprised that he believed that Merton might have been assassinated. He writes, "I once asked a CIA agent who was in Southeast Asia at the time whether they killed Merton. 'I will neither affirm it nor deny it,' he said. 'Could you have?' I asked. 'A piece of cake,' he replied." A rather enigmatic exchange, and although it's intriguing, it really doesn't prove a thing.
But proof be damned, for Bill Goodson's lively imagination has concocted a rather wild storyline, laying blame for Merton's death at the hands not of the CIA but of a secret, ultra-conservative Catholic organization called the "Bossuet Society," whose aim is to save the church from the infection of ecumenism. On its hit list are the Pope and Thomas Merton. Yes, it's crazily far-fetched, but a willing suspension of disbelief makes Goodson's novel fun to read.
Plot: an international cartel headed by Manuel Matsuku, son of a Japanese father and a Mexican mother, is spearheading a plan to purchase 105,000 acres of land now used by Fort Campbell in Kentucky. Matsuku plans to build "the largest entertainment venue in the world." He names the enterprise after his deceased mother, Dolores, thus the name "Dolores Project." He considers his mother a saint; she was a devout and influential Catholic friendly with the Pope and with Thomas Merton. Her significant role in Merton's death is revealed at the end of the novel.
The only obstacle to Matsuku's purchase of Fort Campbell is Senator Jonas Crockett, who has mustered enough votes to stop the closing of the military base. Thus begins the blackmail of the senator's alcoholic nephew Trey Crockett, guilty of violating his psychiatric license; blackmail leads to murder and the involvement of the Mexican Mafia; the plot thickens when Trey's son Scott and his daughter Rachel become involved. Aficionados of Merton's writing, they try to solve the connection with Merton and a certain monk, Dom Phillipe Flaget, confidant to Dolores Matsuku, now an elderly resident at Merton's abbey.
The author is obviously quite familiar with the Abbey of Gethsemani; his best scenes occur at the monastery where Dom Phillipe is on his deathbed. He possesses letters to which no one but he has ever had access. A friend of Merton's, Flaget was at the site of Merton's death in Bangkok, Thailand (and also knew about the plan to kill Merton but didn't warn him); the letters reveal why Merton was killed and how Manuel Matsuku's mother was involved. The novel's climax occurs when Matsuku reads the letters just minutes before the vote on the closing of Fort Campbell (Matsuku has achieved a majority vote) in Washington, DC. If he goes ahead with winning the vote, the letters will be published and his revered mother's reputation will be ruined. There are three letters, two from a Cardinal of the church and one from Madame Matsuku. Keeping the revelation of the letter's content to the very end of the novel is Goodson's cleverest strategy.
I have two suggestions for the author. The press releases he uses in the book should be identified as fictional or factual. I also found some of the dialogue to be awkward and would suggest that the rule to follow in novelistic dialogue is "less is more." I should say that a certain innocence comes through the plot and characters: one has to force oneself to believe in the bad guys. But, again, with a jaunty willed suspension of disbelief, one can thoroughly enjoy Goodson's thriller. So, if you're one of the millions of readers who suffer from a gullibility for conspiracy theories then this novel is for you. And it will definitely serve as a good beach book this summer.
But a word of caution: keep in mind that although some of the book is based on real events in Merton's life, Goodson's book is fictional. There's no proof (as far as I know) that there was any conspiracy involved in Merton's death: A faulty electric fan fell on him as he was coming from the shower, and he was electrocuted.
Fortunately, we can't say "end of story," for in many ways it was just the beginning. . . .
Robert Waldron is the author of three books on Thomas Merton, including Thomas Merton in Search of his Soul: A Jungian Perspective (1994), Poetry as Prayer: Thomas Merton (2000) and Walking with Thomas Merton: Discovering His Poetry, Essays, and Journals (2002), as well as a monastically themed novel, Blue Hope (2002). His latest book is Walking with Henri Nouwen: A Reflective Journey (Paulist Press, 2003).
This review appeared in the Fall 2005 issue of First Draft, The Journal of the Alabama Writers' Forum. Reviewed by Jay Lamar
Bill Goodson's The Bossuet Conspiracy combines international intrigue, religious quests, and good old-fashioned southern politics in a suspense novel that makes an interesting and satisfying read.
Turning partly on the life-or, more accurately, the death-of Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton, the book opens with psychiatrist Winton Sevier "Trey" Crockett III trying to pull his life together after a nasty divorce and a stint at the Alcohol and Drug Treatment Unit at Oak Valley Retreat in Memphis. Now a regular at his local AA meetings in Nashville, the good doctor is drawn into international hijinks thanks to his close relationship with his uncle, U.S. Senator Jonas Crockett.
Where does Merton fit in? The monk, from the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, was a prolific writer and highly influential figure in the Catholic Church. Toward the end of his life, Merton became keenly interest in Asian religions and in fact was attending a conference of Eastern monastic leaders in Bangkok when he died, in 1968, supposedly of accidental electrocution.
His interest in the East brought him into contact with others who shared his broad view of spirituality. Among them was the mother of Manuel Matsaku, now chairman of the board of Matsaku Enterprises and the man behind a plan to create the largest entertainment venue in the world. The location for the project: the military base at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, which, if Trey can swing his uncle's vote, will soon be closed.
Toss in a few DEA agents, some Mexican mafia, a romance between Trey and the first female speaker of the Tennessee House, who knows more about Matsaku's plans than she lets on, and it is hard to know who is on which side. This keeps Trey guessing, but equally compelling is what he learns of "La Societe de Bossuet," a secret society of priests and monks dating from the 18th century that aimed to "undermine excessive papal authority and to stem the tide of liberalism wherever it appears in Church circles." It is possible that Merton's death has something to do with the Bossuet society, but Goodson keeps the mystery ball in the air until the very end.
Some of Goodson's best writing is to be found in descriptions of the Abbey of Gethsemani, which surely is a place he knows well. The place is well visualized and both its physicality and its spirituality nicely rendered: "There was a distinctive odor in the church difficult to define, a curious admixture of the brick and wood interior and incense. Trey thought it probably the smell of God."
Goodson also develops a compelling storyline involving Trey and his children, a college-aged son with whom he is close and a teenaged daughter from whom he is estranged. The well-developed characters include the young people, which makes this a novel that young adult readers would enjoy.
Jay Lamar is interim director of the Auburn University Center for the Arts & Humanities and Alabama Center for the Book.