A Review of The Watchman’s Rainbow and Other Works, by Bill Wyant

ISBN: 978-0-9600201-0-2 (paperback)

DISCLOSURE: For four years the author of this collection of short stories, plays, essays, and poems was a student in my creative writing classes held through an extension program offered by a community college in West Virginia. Most of the pieces that create the seemingly disparate yet unified tapestry of this collection were developed in those classes; I edited many to varying degrees and published early versions of The Watchman’s Rainbow at the literary site for which I am Founding Editor, www.newmystics.com.

That said, my objectivity could rightly be put into question. With sensitivity to such a probable circumstance, what follows is more of a book report than a book review. I have chosen this modification of my approach over the prospect of abandoning the work altogether for one simple reason:

These works are well written, exquisitely researched, and, as the author tells us in several of his Author Notes to the various sections, he has lived at least to some degree the realities that he has crafted into his fiction.

Constituting the bulk of the page-count for this collection, The Watchman’s Rainbow is a geopolitical action-thriller in the tradition of  le Carré and Clancy. It takes as its focus the drug wars between the United States and Mexico, although, as writers and able readers know, we do not read or care about subjects when it comes to fiction—we read and care about people. And the person at the core of this collection of stories and theatre-like interludes is Amos Sanson (a pseudonym) who is coming to the end of a long, successful career as a watcher for a cabal led by a man named Simon Stoddard (think Charlie directing the Angels or the voice on the Mission: Impossible recordings). As we first meet Sanson he is struggling, akin to Sherlock Holmes (a character with whom Wyant, like myself, has great affinity) with whether or not to retire in the face of the fact that he is no longer the man he was, mentally or physically, although the villains—and his employers—are making it hard to walk away.

It was clear from the first day Bill brought the bones of The Watchman to class that his knowledge of the watcher’s world was impressive (he has nearly 30 years of experience in the “active and reserve component Army … [with] qualifications in military intelligence and special operations” according to his bio) and put him squarely on a research level with le Carré and Clancy.

His commitment to improving as a writer (and, truth be told, he was more than proficient to start) put him on their level in other ways as well.

The Watchman’s Rainbow boasts an intriguing cast of international secondary and tertiary characters, plenty of action, and many insights into the geopolitical realities of the twenty-first century.

Showing his range, Wyant follows up the novella with five poems, the first of which, “The Master Mysterian,” is an homage in quatrains to none other than Sherlock Holmes. He follows this up with a poem about the first literary detective, C. Auguste Dupin (a creation of Edgar Allan Poe). The final three poems cover Reality, War, and Death.

After the poems, Wyant offers two one-act plays. The first takes as its subject the Monongahela River, in north-central West Virginia, and its importance and function through history. A life-long resident and champion of the area, Wyant explores over the course of centuries of development one of the defining features of the river: the struggle between economic profit and protection of the environment. As a playwright and social justice activist who spent seven years researching and producing historical fiction in north-central West Virginia, I can vouch for Wyant’s historical research and authenticity of his characters.

The next play, titled Parlor Games, is one for which my theatre company gave a staged reading, with myself as director, as part of an evening of new one-acts several years ago. It is a tragic tale of gossip and jealously in a small town. It reads as well as it plays on stage.

The collection then offers a non-fiction section of essays on the state of the twenty-first century. Fans of only fiction might be tempted to skip them, but that would be a mistake—Wyant synthesizes his professional work as an analyst and deep thinker with his creative writing, situating the essays in the nexus of fact and fiction, drawing on the works of George Orwell, Dan Brown, Tom Clancy, and Jack London to observe and prognosticate—ala Amos Sanson—on the current geopolitical landscape and its obstacles and hopes.

And so we come full circle, or, more aptly, go from one end of the rainbow to the other.

The collection closes with a brief essay on the “Greatest Generation” and an Afterword.

The Watchman’s Rainbow ends with a cliffhanger, so I hope we will be reading more from this experienced and talented author in the not too distant future.