The Righteous Men

Published 03 July 2006

The NS guide to The Righteous Men

Normally when a newspaper spikes a book review, few people get to hear about it. But when the Guardian opted not to print Michael Dibdin's review of Sam Bourne's The Righteous Men earlier this year, it set tongues wagging throughout the literary world. Sam Bourne is the alias of hotshot Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland. The paper, apparently extending a policy of critical protectionism to its staff, deemed Dibdin's review "too negative" to publish. Dibdin offered it instead to the Times, which published it in its full glory, along with a diary story revealing its troubled origins.

Elsewhere the novel was largely ignored, apart from in the Observer, whose reviewer Matilda Lisle (itself a nom de plume for a "staff writer") wrote that it "isn't much of a book". Oh, and the Guardian published a long commentary by Freedland in which he detailed why he had adopted a pseudonym. It was thought that it was "best to have a clear separation between this new venture and my day job", he wrote. Which makes it odd that he is clearly identified as the author on the book's copyright page.

The novel's resounding critical thumbs-down, however, hasn't prevented Richard and Judy selecting it for their "Summer Reads", thereby guaranteeing the paperback edition (just out from Harper) bestseller status. Which is clearly what Freedland has craved all along. The book is a blatant attempt to replicate the success of Dan Brown, being, as the Mirror put it, a "sort of Jewish Da Vinci Code". It is a global religious conspiracy thriller, replete with sinister cabals, seemingly motiveless murders and endless code-breaking. If you ignore the absurdities of the plot, the paper-thin characters and the copious cultural stereotyping, it isn't actually all that bad: the story zips along and the prose is serviceable. Still, there is an air of shabbiness about the whole affair, which Richard and Judy's leg-up has done nothing to dispel.

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