Book Review: Infinite Exposure

reviewed by Emily Hinton
The US Review of Books

"It's not every morning that you wake up with armed men kicking in
your door and rushing into your bedroom, but that's certainly how this
morning started. All because he really wanted a new computer. But that
want was satisfied over a decade ago. Today, he couldn't even sell
that computer on eBay. Today, it was a trip with a bag over his head,
wearing handcuffs to an interrogation room."

This is a story written in factions, with several key plots occurring
simultaneously in the Middle East. A man suspected of working with Al-
Qaeda is picked up by a secret multinational organization and forced
to help them uncover and kidnap members of terrorist cells. Captives
are sent to a pair of secret interrogation camps in Germany, which are
so swamped with black market profits that they call in a Russian
investing firm. The Russian firm works very closely with Americans who
harbor information that can destroy a large and powerful US bank. The
bank has recently relocated all of its data centers to India in an
effort to cut corners, and their data centers employ a man working
with Al-Qaeda and plotting a massive covert operation. While all these
plots seem only coincidentally linked, the final plot twist makes it
clear that they are inextricably connected.

Writing fiction about events so close to our times is often a risky
move. Pairing that with Hughes' unique arrangement of plot lines
creates a weighty story, but the result is a deeply researched, highly
detailed, and technically loaded novel, with a revolving pace that
keeps the reader moving and resists getting bogged down in jargon.
What an immense undertaking, and quite an achievement to pull off
successfully.