Books: Barry Levy has written a dark thriller ready for prime time

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From the deadly jungles and rice fields of Vietnam to the dangerous streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Barry Levy’s The War Machine is a near-perfect noir thriller, complete with all the iconic characters, themes and plot elements of the genre.

Tormented, hard-drinking action hero? Checked. Trustworthy sidekick? Checked. Beautiful woman in danger – checked. Mysterious villains, foreign and domestic – checked. Bloody violence, complete with blood splatters and bullet holes? Checked. Corruption in high places? Checked. Spies and crime bosses? Checked. Levy deploys all of these elements with a smooth expertise that’s unusual for a debut novel.

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Although The War Machine is Levy’s first novel, he already brings a wealth of relevant experience to the table. The novice novelist had a successful career as an actor and screenwriter before turning to prose, and he also worked as a radio host. He earned an MFA from UBC’s Faculty of Creative Writing, and his film The Shasta Triangle won Best Feature Film at the 2020 Roswell Sci-Fi Film Festival.

The “war machine” in the title has at least two meanings, and the tension between the two energizes the novel. The book’s protagonist is himself a war machine, a Canadian who volunteered to fight in the American armed forces during the Vietnam War and became a trained sniper and assassin during and after the conflict. Kick is “born in Canada and trained in America,” and he is a terrifyingly effective killing machine.

But another meaning of the phrase haunts the book. Although Kick is still connected to the shadowy world of spies, assassinations and intrigue, he has become obsessed with and enraged by another war machine, what Dwight Eisenhower, another reformed warrior, called the “military-industrial complex.” Although Kick is by no means a hippie or peace activist and has a disdain for the American war resisters he calls “conscientious objectors,” he is enraged to learn that the Canadian government and industry profited significantly from the Vietnam War, sometimes colluding with the American side while maintaining a public appearance of neutrality and innocence.

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