by Jonathan Dee
Gene Trowbridge is coming to the realization that the unexamined life isn't very satisfying. Perhaps he's coming late to this epiphany—almost 65, he's about to retire from his job as an advertising executive. The impetus is provided by a reclusive, enigmatic though charming neighbor, Albert Ferdinand, with whom Gene strikes up a friendship and who may be a Brazilian war criminal. Trowbridge, heretofore a contentedly married man in a placid Long Island community, has little to worry about but getting to the station in time to catch the 7:51 to New York City. He is drawn into a search for the truth about Ferdinand's past and into a moral dilemma he finds himself astonishingly ill-equipped to handle. The Liberty Campaign is terrifically effective in its evocation of Trowbridge, a calm, deliberate man who's close kin to the man in the gray flannel suit. But despite the novel's accomplishments, it is marred by Dee's insistence on doing too much of the reader's thinking, and he never makes a convincing case that the heart of darkness beating in Ferdinand's chest could just as surely belong to Trowbridge. (Doubleday, $22)
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