Shriver, a National Book Award finalist for So Much for That, which tackles health care, takes on terrorism in her newest novel (which was actually written in 1998 but is just being released now). Reporter Edgar Kellogg is sent to an imaginary outpost called Barba to report on the terrorist activities of the SOB (Os Soldados Ousados de Barba—the Daring Soldiers of Barba). He's replacing the larger-than-life Barrington Saddler, who has mysteriously disappeared. The book's satire is timely; we see reporters hungering for violence, terrorist outfits clamoring for attention, and would-be terrorists rising to positions of respect and prominence. There's also a fascinating plotline that raises the question of whether a terrorist group has to be real to be effective. Less interesting is the main character, a former fat kid and a former lawyer desperate to step out of the shadows of the various men he's idolized. It's hard to care about him; more compelling is the chemistry between him and the elusive Saddler. VERDICT While the characters are forgettable and the satire doesn't go quite far enough, this is still an interesting read that might appeal to fans of Tom Perrotta. [See Prepub Alert, 10/9/11.]—Evelyn Beck, Piedmont Technical Coll., Greenwood, SC

Shriver's last three novels have done splendidly: 2010's So Much for That was a National Book Award finalist, 2007's The Post-Birthday World was named the No. 1 Book of the Year by Entertainment Weekly, and 2003's much-talked-about We Need To Talk About Kevin has just been made into a film. So it's reasonable to have great expectations for her latest, which, interestingly, was written back in 1998. But now her themes—terrorism and the cult of personality—have truly come of age. In an alternate past on an invented European peninsula, Edgar Kellogg has replaced charismatic Barrington Saddler as reporter in a no-account Portuguese-speaking country plagued by homegrown terrorism. Great for book clubs.

A separatist organization based in a fictionalized Portuguese peninsula could have been fertile territory for Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin) to send up terrorism, but this lightly ironic novel, written in the mid-'90s and offered now that we have enough distance from 9/11, is done in by a woolly plot and an out-of-date atmosphere. Edgar Kellogg, who has always played second fiddle to more charismatic men, quits his corporate law job to pursue journalism, finding temporary employment as a stringer at the National Record. Kellogg's first mission: to locate the former stringer, missing in "Barba," a god-forsaken region of Portugal and home turf to the radical Os Soldados Ousados de Barba (SOB). As Kellogg quickly learns, the former stringer belonged to that category of charismatic men: a beloved, larger-than-life character who had everyone eating out of the palm of his hand. But soon the puzzling circumstances of the stringer's disappearance—hinting at connections to the SOB—offer Kellogg the chance to assume his predecessor's social mantle. Though Shriver's characters are sharply drawn, they lack sympathy, and several plot contrivances are too jarring to overlook. Terrorism is merely a backdrop to a fairly banal exploration of popularity. (Mar. 27)