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From: ecl@cbnewsj.ATT.COM (Evelyn C. Leeper)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf-lovers
Subject: PROMISES TO KEEP by George Bernau
Message-ID: <4257@cbnewsj.ATT.COM>
Date: 19 Mar 90 22:21:07 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 65


		      PROMISES TO KEEP by George Bernau
		Warner Books, 1989, ISBN 0-446-35605-0, $5.95.
		      A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		       Copyright 1990 Evelyn C. Leeper

     This is a parallel world novel masquerading as an alternate history
novel.

     Huh?

     I'll explain.  The back cover blurb reads, "November 22, 1963.  Dallas.
A time and place the world will never forget.  An assassin's bullet strikes
down the youthful, charismatic president of the United States.
Miraculously, as a tearful nation prepares itself for the worst, the
president survives."  And the President is Irish, his wife is glamorous and
interested in a Greek tycoon, his brother is the Attorney General, his
Vice-President is an uncouth Texan, his (would-be) assassin is gunned down
in the Dallas Police Station, etc., etc.  But the President's name is John
Trewlaney Cassidy, his wife is Suzanne, his brother is Tim, his Vice-
President is Ransom W. Gardner, his would-be assassin is Arthur Allen
Strode, and *his* assassin is Leo Green.  None of this is anywhere on the
cover.

     Now, an alternate history novel is based on the assumption that we are
in our world, but something somewhere along the history line has changed.
In the case of this novel, we are led to believe that everything up to
November 22, 1963, was the same and that was when the divergence occurred.
But that is not the case.  *Similar* things happened, but there does not
appear to be a single split point that resulted in everyone having the same
function but different names.  Nor is it clear why this is the case, unless
Bernau is worried about getting sued.  (But even then, I doubt that a simple
name change would get him off the hook.)  No, so far as I could tell, the
main function of the name change was to confuse the reader.  At least I
found myself constantly saying, "Rance Gardner?  Oh, yes, the Lyndon Johnson
character."  This does not strike me as the most effective way to write a
book.  I wonder if Bernau is unfamiliar with the whole idea of alternate
histories and didn't realize he didn't have to change the names.  Or maybe
he thought his readers would be confused.

     "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"

     Normally an alternate history is devoted in large part to figuring out
what would have happened if event X had turned out differently.  But this
novel can't really ask the question, "What if Kennedy had survived?" since
it isn't Kennedy.  Oh, there is some examination of how his survival might
have changed the course of our involvement in the Vietnam War, though most
of the changes there are due to subsequent events rather than anything
inherent in Kennedy's, I mean Cassidy's personality.  Instead, most the
novel is devoted to tracking down the real brains behind the assassination
attempt and the reasons for it.  The book is far more a look at what if
Bernau's ideas about the motivation of the attempt were true, not nearly as
interesting as "What if Kennedy had survived?"  And of course, since this is
marketed as mainstream, there is the usual amount of explicit sex and
violence.

     As an adventure-thriller, PROMISES TO KEEP is passable, even good.  As
a reasonable explanation to the assassination, it is unconvincing (though
there is no indication that Bernau intends his explanation to be taken
seriously in the real world).  As an alternate history it is disappointing.

     (It is noted on the copyright page that the paperback edition has been
abridged by the author.  It is still 671 pages long.)

Evelyn C. Leeper   |   +1 201-957-2070   |   att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com