Man Of The Hour -- Peter Blauner: A Book Review

Man Of The Hour
Peter Blauner
Little, Brown & Company, 1999

Here is a novel that everyone in America should read.  (You'll find that I say this quite often, especially when the book being reviewed touches on vital interests to the individual and/or our way of life in the United States.)  Why?  Not just because it is timely, well-written, and enjoyable, but also because of its subject matter.

Man Of The Hour was published in 1999.  It is about a young disaffected Palestinian youth who joins an extremist Muslim terrorist group and a teacher, the protagonist, who becomes a hero, then a suspect, in a school bus bombing.  It is about relationships, how fame and bravery, honor and love, and our preconceived and learned ideas about these things can affect everything we do and everything around us.  It is about family, friendship, and working relationships and how everything about them is affected by perception.

David Fitzgerald is an English literature teacher at a Coney Island high school.  He wants more than anything to be like the heroes in the books he assigns or like his World War II hero father.  Then, one day, he gets his chance when the bus his students were to ride on for a field trip explodes and he saves the life of one of the students trapped on the burning bus.  He becomes an instant celebrity.

In the meantime, his personal life is unraveling.  His wife, with whom he is separated, is steadily losing touch with reality and may become a possible danger to his young son, who still lives with her.  A hotshot reporter begins to suspect that David himself may have planted the bomb just to save someone -- anyone's -- life, so great is his need to be seen as a hero.  Then the lead detective on the case also begins to suspect.  Intertwined in all this is the machinations of one of David's former students, who despises David and America and, with the help of his fellow terrorists, wishes to make America pay for all its past and present sins in the Middle East.

Gripping, this novel is a page-turner.  Written and published before September 11, 2001, it highlights what fanaticism and extemism might and could accomplish if left unchecked.  (Unfortunately, it's lesson went unheeded, as we know all too well.)  It is one helluva great read.  And if you don't believe me, then maybe blurbs by Stephen King, James Patterson, Michael Connelly, Jeffery Deaver, Scott Turow, John T. Lescroart and Richard North Patterson on the book's cover might convince you of how highly regarded this novel and the author are.