Item - The Fear Factor: Terrorism in the City

After as poor as the other books in this series have been, I'd have never expected the final book, which is completely different from the premise of the rest of the series, to be the best of the lot. While the rest of the series is set around various historical events in British history, this one is set in a fictional near future version of London. It involves the narrator either joining up with or working against an underground terrorist organisation.

I'm not sure if the writer's style has improved or if it just lends itself better to this type of story. Rather than bland recitation of historical facts, it is instead a taught thriller in which the lack of detail works better. Their lack of descriptions is not a problem because it is set in modern (1980s) London. Also there is the fact that they are no longer constrained by historical events, which means the outcome is undecided.

They set the scene as you are an unemployed young man with no job prospects and a dire life ahead as London is full of dissatisfied youths. The USSR and USA have agreed to work together to send forces to the Middle East to protect Kuwait and the Middle East is sending underground terrorists to infiltrate the UK. (Considering this was written in 1988, before the first Gulf War and 9/11, it is pretty amazingly precient about the future of the world. I'll try not to get political here but it is hard to avoid. From their previous works, it's easy to see the authors' political leanings. Let's just say I can safely assume they voted for Thatcher.)

There are two main paths: working with the SAS against a terrorist organisation called Direct Action (which Google tells me was a real far-left French terror group in the 1980's, exactly the kind of villains our authors would love) or joining the Direct Action and becoming a terrorist against the UK government.

Surprisingly, they manage to be relatively balanced here. Both the terrorists and the government SAS are depicted as being ruthless (choosing not to join either side often results in a bullet in the head). And they manage to get you into positions where you feel forced to do the wrong thing (on both paths).

While the government good guy path is shown not to be as black and white as you might expect, it does feel unrealistic that you'd be recruited as an agent (the SAS shouldn't have to recruit blokes off the street). But the terrorist recruitment feels a bit more realistic, (the terrorists are all appropriately evil continental Europeans, because can't trust them continentals; spoken as a European continental). While actual terrorism might feel a bit harder to stomach these days, they do at least allow you to be the bad guy, and do bad things, with a chance of success (kind of a modern day Guy Fawkes).

Since the combat system involves AK-47s and claymores, its hard to survive a bad roll. But again, the authors' cold writing style feels appropriately chilling when describing deaths here, much as an actual terrorist or SAS agent would see humans as mere dots to be eliminated.

I found this to be the best of the bunch because it feels less constraining than the other books. However, I could see how the subject matter could feel a bit too depressing and close to the heart. I mean these are some really nasty scenarios, were they real. The book opens with a detailed timeline of terrorism from the 1970s and 80s, reminding us of the time in which it was written. I wouldn't like this in the hands of young kids. But as an adult, who knows it is pretend, it felt better than their previous efforts. Your mileage may vary.

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