Sunil Rao is brought in by US forces to investigate when an all-American diner pops up overnight in a British field. His unique talent is the ability to spot lies and fakes, and he soon realises that this diner is not, however improbable its sudden appearance, a real diner, but a construct formed of someone's idea of how a diner should look. It's apparent quite early on that the high-ups in the US military have some idea of what's going on, and Rao and his partner/minder Lt Col Adam Rubenstein (who he's worked with before) are soon off to the US, to meet with the people behind the secret Prophet project, which twists memories to control its subjects, but which is getting dangerously out of hand.
While this started off with an original idea that feels more like fantasy than anything else, the way the story progresses is like a military espionage drama - a little bit X Files, a lot of A Few Good Men or The Presedio - so not quite what I'd expected which wrong-footed me at first, and I found it difficult to get into the story and care about our two heroes, Rao and Rubenstein. The plot seemed slow to advance, with a lot of time spent in military conference rooms or laboratories, debating what is happening, who's behind Prophet, laying down military plans, with the 'higher ups' trying to obscure the issue rather than help to solve it.
The relationship between the two men also takes up a considerable amount of the book, as it delves into their pasts, and the feelings which Rao is happy to openly acknowledge while Rubenstein remains a very prim and proper model soldier. Would the story have been better without this aspect? I'm not sure. It slows the progress of events, although the ending would need considerable re-thinking without it.
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