SECRET PLAYERS

Secret Players
by Carl Nelson
328 pages
ISBN: 1-890035-32-7
New Century Press
2003
$ 16.95

What is the effect of behind the scene players with our economy and life style today, as well as our relations with other countries?

Secret Players begins during World War II on a U.S. Naval vessel that has been attacked and is about to sink. The attacking pilot, however, missed his suicidal mark and was rescued on the ship. While the ship is slowly sinking, Buck Steele heroically rescues injured and endangered men on the ship and also prevents the pilot from killing himself.

For the Japanese pilot though, this was a curse. He was then sent to an Australian prison camp, learned English, and returned to Japan to find his land devastated after the effects of war and the bombing. To Sako Amanuma, this humiliation of his honor and his country cannot be forgotten and must be avenged. “Revenge is the only thing that has brought purpose to my life.”

Sako Amanuma’s father contacts a friend who mentors Sako to continue the dream of Japanese revenge upon the United States. Through Sake’s brilliance, he earns a college degree and the position to change his country’s position into one of success and power. The ultimate goal is to cripple the United States and to change their status into one of a Third World Country. To add to this, Japan is no longer allowed by its constitution to have a military force which is also true in reality. This goal must be attained on the economic playing field. “Turn our shame into success and let that be your revenge.”

The two main characters have parallel lives with similar ambitions, while continually holding on to their own personal hatreds of each other. Their families, traditions, relationships, and the changing roles of women in the last half of the twentieth-century, all influence these two dynamic men in their daily lives. What is most difficult for both though, is their personal honor. With Sako, the traditions of the old Japanese culture of samurai, the wandering ronin, and committing seppuku are always at that back of his thoughts. With Buck, the Irish-working class of the steel mills in Pittsburg haunts him as well, as the troubles of the Cass family with their business ventures and their own personal problems.

Secret Players is written in a casual style that allows the characters to be real people with a personal voice and personality. To incorporate the ideas of global economics within a fictional novel and to create suspense within the lives of these fictional characters is masterfully accomplished with this novel.

I definitely am looking forward to more novels by Carl Nelson. Any novelist that has me wondering about the economic behind the scene influences upon the government and the future obviously has found his true calling in life.

Carl Nelson is a masterful story-teller of history and what could have happened, or having the reader wonder if it really did happen. His background of growing up in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, enlisting in the Navy, enrolling at Annapolis, and then retiring at the rank of Captain has given him a wonderfully diverse view of the political world and how it affects our country. He currently teachers at the college level with a doctorate in international business and trade. He has already written eight non-fiction books and Secret Players is his second full-length fictional novel.