DOMESTIC DARKNESS An Insider's Account of the January 6th Insurrection, and the Future of Right-Wing Extremism, URGENT READING!

DOMESTIC DARKNESS: An Insider's Account of the January 6th Insurrection, and the Future of Right-Wing Extremism
JULIE FARNAM
Ig Publishing
$27.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: After being named Assistant Director of Intelligence for the Capitol Police just days before the 2020 election, Julie Farnam warned its leadership of the upcoming insurrection, sharing that “Congress itself is the target on the 6th.” Tragically, her warnings were ignored.

Domestic Darkness takes us inside the explosive events of January 6, 2021, revealing how the Capitol Police disregarded intelligence about the right-wing extremists who would seize the capitol on that fateful day. In addition to offering a harrowing view of what it was like on the ground, watching the violence unfold and knowing it could have been prevented, Domestic Darkness also examines the specific groups and ideologies, such as the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, QAnon, and white supremacists, who were central to the events of January 6th and who, emboldened by Trump and other right-wing leaders, continue to be a threat to our democracy.

The book will also explore what happened within the Capitol Police in the wake of the insurrection, and how to address future dangers from domestic terrorism. With the 2024 presidential election just around the corner, we need to look at the lessons January 6th taught us to ensure something like that never happens again.

Julie Farnam served as the Assistant and then Acting Director of Intelligence for the United States Capitol Police during one of the most tumultuous periods in this country’s history. During her time there, she oversaw the identification and vetting of nearly 20,000 threats against members of Congress, most of which were made by U.S. citizens who adhered to extremist ideologies.

Prior to joining the Capitol Police, Farnam served with the Department of Homeland Security for over fifteen years.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Oh gawd, I hear y’all thinking, he’s off again, ranting about the MAGATs and their scum of a leader.

Yep. Sit down and eat your literary spinach. This is Important.

I will avoid the book report part of the read because 1. I hate doing it, b. I want to, iii. the details that Author Farnam presents made me sick to my stomach to read. That US citizens could be radicalized in this vile, scumbaggy way is a shock to my sensibilities, though in no way a surprise. I did, after all, grow up in Texas.

What I *will* discuss is the scariest, most infuriating bit of the story (to this reader, anyway)...the misogyny and unaccountability of the US Capitol Police. They dismissed a fifteen-year intelligence professional's substantiated warnings because she is a woman...they didn't have to give information to any other agencies because the Legislative Branch for whom they work is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act...they had the usual Police Department attitude towards those outside of mild contempt and utter disrespect. This is someone who came from the inside, and they treated her like she was a tourist who happened to find an unoccupied desk.

Why I want you to read it is simple: Author Farnam names names. There were those inside the US Capitol that bad, horrifying January day in 2021 who very carefully did nothing. She knows who, and makes a decent case for why. This is, by itself, worth the cost of the book. The manner in which the author makes her case for what to do with that information is a model of clarity and convincing authority. Her commonsensical call for this very important law enforcement agency to work collegially with other parts of the huge security apparatus the US is hagridden by seems modest enough, given the events of January 6, 2021. Her additional, very well founded calls for the US law enforcement establishment to expand its definitions of, and penalties for, terrorism of domestic origin are music to my cop unfriendly ears. This is a major problem and it will not go away if we just ignore it.

One of the most frustrating bits of the read was the realization that Author Farnam handed her critics a big cudgel to bludgeon her with: She had an intimate relationship with a man inside the department who, it later transpired, was feeding insider knowledge to the insurrectionists. This is in the end, however, one of the most important pluses of the read. She is upfront about it, she makes no bones about his fate of being Federally indicted for his role being just and proper, and thus assures us...possibly convinces those on the MAGAt side, too...that she speaks with real, sincere awareness of the many facets of the problems she delineates and offers solutions for.

There is no louder voice than the one from inside the house. This book amplifies that voice for us all to hear...and I very much hope heed as well.

SENDERO by Max Tomlinson, a good first thriller set in Peru

SENDERO (Nina Flores Thrillers #1)
MAX R. TOMLINSON
Sendero Press
$2.99 Kindle original, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In 1987, the dirty war that will last twelve years and kill thirty thousand Peruvians finally reaches up through the Andean cloud forest for Nina and her family. Nina’s father is shot by soldiers, her mother raped, and her brother lost to the shadowy ranks of Shining Path guerrillas. And when Agustín Malqui, the village pastor, files a legal complaint against the military, it’s no surprise when he disappears in the middle of the night—just another casualty of the military regime.

Twenty-odd years later, Nina, now an officer in Cuzco’s tourist police, comes across a familiar name on the police printer that she scans daily for any trace of her long-lost brother. Agustín Malqui is alive. After spending years in a political prison, the broken pastor has been wandering the country, saving souls and drowning his demons in pisco. Nina tracks him down, only to lose him yet again in a police sweep of political malcontents. But before Malqui disappears, he tells her a drunken tale she can scarcely believe: that her brother Miguel is still alive.

Despite warnings and threats from her chief and the pleadings of her lover, an officer in Peru’s anti-terrorist branch, Nina presses on to find Malqui. Her search takes her through Peru’s underworld, from remote villages high in the Andes to the steaming jungle haunts of the narcotraficantes, and ultimately to a secret political prison in the altiplano, where she learns the truth about Malqui and her own vanished brother.

My Review: I've been to Cuzco twice, and Peru three times, in my life. I very much like it there, and I am a big fan of the Andean people's surviving culture. I came to the book ready to love it.

I liked it a whole lot.

There are the accustomed ebook-original glitches, typos and oddly placed punctuation marks and continuity errors. I don't want to dwell on them, but one big one is the last-name change of a major character between books one and two. I sigh, and remove one star.

Ninasisa is a really sympathetic character to build a series of thrillers on, and full marks to Mr. Tomlinson for making her believably damaged by her and her country's fraught past. Nina, as she is known in most of the book, has sustained losses that would wreck a lesser person's entire life. Nina isn't rising above her beginnings, she's building her future on making the beginnings part of it. She never hides or is shamed by her mountain-Indian origins, despite the fact that she's dating a Spaniard (a white Peruvian) from Cuzco's upper classes.

She never forgets that her roots are down low, despite a US university education and a job with the Tourist Police. She could credibly downplay the past, but chooses not to, and that provides a lot of conflict between herself and the class- and race-conscious Peruvian culture. Reading her interactions with the gigantic lower-class majority of Cuzco, the ancient Inca and modern Andean capital, rang very true to me. (My contact with same having been an Andean tour guide who was at pains to inform his American guests of the true nature of poverty.)

I removed one more half-star for the first-time novelist errors of characterization, such as the all-villain-all-the-time bad guys, and the overwhelming goodness of all the womenfolk. It's not tragic, but it informs the ending of the book, which...well...it was certainly dramatic and very well set-up by the rest of the book, but was...pat. Expected. Predictable, if excitingly written.

Make no mistake, this first novel of a series is a very worthwhile way to wile the hours away. If you've never been to Peru, you'll feel like you have after reading this. If you have been to Peru, you'll feel that little pleased jolt when Tomlinson mentions a place you've visited. It's a good read.

Not quite excellent. Not perfect. A good, solid read, delivers on its promise of action, and manages a vivid sense of place. At $2.99 for the Kindle version, it's worth that and more.



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