Breakdown by William W. Johnstone
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I figured with the unending sea of novels coming from, what I call, the Johnstone Clan of writers, eventually, one would be a dud. Here it is.

I’ve read about ten of the various series and stand alones. 2011’s ‘Home Invasion’ is one of my favorite books in recent times. So, I am quite a fan and have about thirty more Johnstones to be read – though, I’m aiming to read them in order. I’ve got lots more to add to the stacks.

This one has the first problem of being extremely poorly constructed. It is very hard to catch on at the beginning as the two main characters are thrust at us with little background except that they both are on diametrically opposed sides of the political realm. The writer presents each character with the political viewpoints and expects us to buy the relationship due to their sexual relationship. To buy that would mean to accept two people who inwardly dislike each other or two very shallow souls. As the book continues, shallow fits neither. The book is hampered by the main characters being very unbelievable.

To me most all of the characters are unbelievable and points out how different this book is from the typical Johnstone book that paints vivid images of the characters involved.

A story structure issue that was badly mishandled was setting. This book purports to span the United States. But, only a handful of locations are used. In that this story is about taking over the country, you’d think the action would be more widespread. Other locations are mentioned, but the main characters fly back and forth to the same place. (Side thought is that if a country is being taken over by whoever, someone would be sure to have landing strips monitored and closed. There are a ton of these details that are overlooked.)

Another setting issue involves characters finding each other as if they were wearing GPS units that are never mentioned. How these characters go out into a large wooded area and happen to find one person they are looking for so quickly is beyond believable.

The story is just a mess. All about various groups taking over America, all dissatisfied with government and how the country is being run. This story fantasizes that Americans have the wherewithal to walk away from their TVs, booze and other entertainment and fight each other for ideas I don’t believe most Americans understand much at all – which would be why certain politicians are in office that could manipulate them to usurp the population with controls, to begin with. If people are willingly putting people in power to take away freedom, why would the population fight the people they elected???

To me, the book reads as science fiction without the science.

This book is also hard to swallow in that it preceded the tragic day of September 11th, 2001. Seeing that Americans seemed to have set aside patriotism for materialism since then, shows the unlikelihood of this story idea ever happening. I’d say it’s impossible.

AS can be the case with the impossible story, the ending to this book is more than predictable. There are few surprises throughout except the ongoing poor story construction.

OK, how can this book be justified at all? It seems to me the attempt is to create a parable of political philosophies. Not well created, but I think that is the attempt. The book is riddled with lengthy treaties of political viewpoints – all conservative – that really don’t advance the story, but advances the political viewpoints of the writer(s)involved. There’s an effort to get a lefty viewpoint in by way of a main character, but that is mostly dismissed by way of a conservative view point. Being a conservative myself, that would be fine, but the idea is to present a non-fiction story that is readable, not a book like ‘Breakdown’.

This would have worked far better if confined to a small city, much like the later written ‘Home Invasion’. Maybe that’s why ‘Home Invasion’ came about, to produce a more coherent book about a take over of an area. It’s obvious, at the end, that this was to be the start of another Johnstone series. I guess sales or realization that this didn’t work, stopped that.

Considering the hyper sensitivities of many of today’s young and the effort of censorship of ideas that aren’t “politically correct”, I even more strongly discourage them reading this book. The lack of understanding of diverse political ideologies will lose the sensitive who will want to childishly label parts of this book racist and written in “hate”.

Bottom line: I do not recommend this book.

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