Suspension of disbelief went snap
I think my suspension of disbelief is always stretched by those plots which involve Our Protag setting up some incredibly convoluted long game in the service of vengeance or an elaborate con (or a combination of the two), involving false identity/ies and deception on a wide scale. And everything going exactly as according to plan.
However, if they have at the most one, maybe two, close confederates I will give this a pass (and in fact the prime examples I can think of are in Dorothy Dunnett or else Eugenides in the Attolia books, i.e. with the strongest of tendencies to play a lone hand).
What I cannot be doing with is the notion that this is a way to run a political conspiracy aimed at overthrowing a corrupt system -
Unless, of course, what you have here is the Henry Treece Ask for King Billy stratagem of having a visible person apparently about the business in hand with the MacGuffin to distract the villains while the actual necessary task is being done in a quiet and unobtrusive way under the radar by somebody else.
But if not, what it reminds me of is the Newer Better Mousetrap invented by Michael Bentine as a mad scientist in It's a Square World, which involved luring your mouse into a Heath Robinsoneque labyrithine machine, which eventually tipped it into a vat of whisky. When it climbed out, it was confronted with a magnifying mirror, and went forth and picked a fight with the nearest cat. This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2238562.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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