Light at Dusk

A Novel

by Peter Gadol

Picador, 277pp., $24

In Light at Dusk, Peter Gadol has written a graceful novel of international intrigue. The players are Will Law, “a rising star in the U.S. foreign service,” who has abandoned his post in Mexico under mysterious circumstances and come to Paris, where his ex-lover, Pedro, studies French architecture. Just as soon as he arrives in Paris, though, Will is drawn into the web of a woman named Jorie, who’s traveling with the Lebanese son of her estranged lover. When the child is abducted on the streets by a gang of nationalist hoodlums, the race begins to find the child before it’s too late, a race that forces the principal characters to find out who they really are. Besides the abduction, the novel features all-night searches, riots on the streets, even wheeling and dealing between diplomats and thugs. And yet, for all this, the novel feels politely muted and less tension-filled then it could be. Gadol wants his novel to be smart and pretty and exciting, and in trying to balance it all, he comes up short. Light at Dusk has its merits — mainly Gadol’s crisp prose and his moody evocations of Parisian streets — but in the end it fails to live up to its pulse-quickening premise.\

This article appears in August 25 • 2000.

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