It is presidential election year 2000, as the United States prepares to enter upon a new millennium. Henry Newell, candidate of the Constitutional Party, riding a groundswell of public support that has instaled party members in statehouses, legislatures and the Congress, is elected president with a plurality. The party is committed to passage of the twenty-eighth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which will finally separate state and economy, as the First Amendment did with religion and state.

This is the premise of James P. Hogan’s new novel The Mirror Maze. Hogan is the author of the Prometheus-Award-winning Voyage from Yesteryear. In fact, mention of this award is the first comment of the book’s very brief author’s biography. Mirror Maze is considerably closer in spirit to Tom Clancy than it is to Robert Heinlein.

Lawyer Melvin Stearns is propelled into the center of a whirlwind of international intrigue by the death of Eva Carne, a former college girlfriend, who has herself been a longtime activist for the Constitutional party. Sinister forces are obviously plotting to interfere with the new direction that the Constitutional administration-elect intends to pursue.

The book has much of the quality of a Hitchcock film as the innocent hero slowly unveils the layers of intrigue in search of an explanation for the predicament into which he and Stephanie Carne, Eva’s sister, have been thrust. As the plot moves toward its denouement the novel acquires the hurried pacing that characterizes all well-done suspense novels. Seldom do matters come to depend upon such final second timing.

Hogan handles the international developments deftly and the characters are drawn believably. Indeed, as a stand-in for the uninitiated reader, Mel Shears serves another of the author's purposes well. The book moves back and forth in time, from the college days when Mel knew Eva and Stephanie, to the present time of the action. In the process of uncovering the intrigues which threaten a new beginning for America, Mel comes also to understand a great deal about himself. In this same process, he (and of course the reader) is also exposed to the free enterprise philosophy of the Constitutional party.

In comparison with Voyage from Yesteryear, Mirror Maze is a much less libertarian book. The philosophy of the Constitutional party is minarchist at best, and probably better characterized as free market Jeffersonian. How well the free market ideals discussed in the course of the plot will be absorbed by the average reader is difficult to guess. Perhaps for many readers the best to be hoped for is that the philosophy that they did not attend to while following the story will eventually begin to resonate with other experiences in their life. Then, like Mel, they too will ultimately recognize the truth of what they had heard before but had not fully understood.

I have not mentioned Hogan's technological optimism, which should be familiar to his readers from previous books. Along with this optimism is Hogan's appreciation of the value of freedom for the millions of individuals who make up society. I recommend this book as an enjoyable read, and look forward to hearing the reactions of other readers.