I found Panama to be a remarkable book. It is much more a historical & philosophical novel than a mystery. It's written in a style that reflects the 1880s rather than today; much more formal and less straightforward. So it seemed like it was really in the period.

If readers don't know about Henry Adams, they should read his bio in Wikipedia & perhaps also those of Senator Don Cameron & John Hay.

The one thing I don't care for is the title. I think a better title would include Henry Adams' name, perhaps Henry Adams' Foreign Entanglement or Henry Adams and Intrigue in Paris.

This exceptional book is based on historical facts. Although it has been treated as a novel, the subject selected by Zencey, a History professor, describes in minute detail what happened in November 1892 when the Panama Scandal threatened the newly born French Republic. Symptomatic of our capitalistic society, these scandals still happen today. Could anyone resist a bribe?
I thoroughly enjoyed the book, a real page-turner, reviving the French society of the 19the Century. Even if one may find that there are a few long descriptions of Paris, they are not only necessary, but absolutely worth it, on a cultural point of view. Among those, Bertillon's account of his use of finger prints is a pure jewel.
I highly recommend this book to those who are interested in the Panama scandal and in the turmoil it caused in France.
Another excellent book on the same subject is "Les Deux Scandales de Panama" by Jean Bouvier, (in French. Sorry, I do not know of any translation) where the historical sources used in Zencey's book can be found.

This is unusual: a literary thriller and a first class historical novel. The portrayal of French politics, and of Paris, in the late 19th Century is convincing and interesting, the characters are expertly developed, and the intricate plot is gripping. An extremely promising first novel. Placing a real American, Henry Adams, in the midst of a most imaginative story is very clever indeed. Strongly recommended.

Five Stars

I picked up Eric Zencey's PANAMA because I lived in Panama from 1955 to 1957. However, the novel is about fin de siècle Paris in the aftermath of the failed French attempt to build the Panama Canal, an enterprise that was rife with bribery and fraud. The main character is Henry Adams, the noted historian and descendant of both John Quincy Adams and John Adams. A young female acquaintance of Henry's is murdered, though the reader learns immediately that the body is actually that of some other unknown woman. The rest of the novel is a literary whodunit, in which Adams, working with the local constabulary, attempts to find out what really happened to his friend. The investigation is intertwined with the political scandal and leads Adams into the nooks and crannies of Paris, into the mansions of famous men and into the bedrooms of lowlifes.

The writing is intelligent and immaculately detailed. Henry Adams' mind and his coming to terms with the loss of his wife to suicide some years earlier are successfully presented. Paris of the late 19th century comes alive with unusual depth. Also interesting is the fact that fingerprinting was a new forensic technique at this time, and the procedure plays an important role in the plot. What the book is not, is a page turner. If you're looking for a crime novel that you can't put down, PANAMA is not for you. If you don't mind a leisurely read filled with exquisite detail that recreates the mind of a famous man and the streets of a newly industrialized city, by all means read the book. But the wonderful details don't always advance the story.

I think men are by nature either Mont-Saint Michelians [the Cathedral] or, if you will, Virginians
[the Virgin Mary]. ... Either they see the protection of the collectivity as absolutely crucial or they see the collectivity as being justified only because it serves the development of individual moral excellence. So you have the basic question: What is one's social duty? The survival of the group or individual moral integrity? Reason of state or personal honor? -Henry Adams, Panama
I suppose you have to admire Eric Zencey's courage in making Henry Adams the hero of a thriller. Adams was, after all, an intellectual, best known for not becoming President of the United States--as his grandfather and great-grandfather had--and for his autobiography, which mainly dwells on the lack of great truths for his generation to believe in. These elements and the fact that the story occurs while Adams is still recovering from the suicide of his wife, Clover, combine to make him a most unlikely protagonist for a mystery.
The story places Adams in Paris in 1892, the period during which he was working on his great Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres A Study of Thirteenth Century Unity. On a visit to Chartres he meets and is captivated by Miriam Talbott, a young American painter. When her body purportedly washes up near the quai de Valmy, Adams is called on to identify the corpse, but it is not the woman that he met. He subsequently becomes involved in the scandal surrounding the failure of the French Panama Canal Company, which threatens to destroy the reputations of men like Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, and Gustave Eiffel, and even to bring down the French government. Meanwhile, Adams's friend John Hay may or may not be mixed up in the whole mess, though it is certain that he wants the United States to take over the building of the canal.
Zencey does a fine job of evoking the time and the place of the mystery. The blend of fiction and history does not seem forced, and some other interesting historical characters crop up, including Georges Clemenceau and Alphonse Bertillon, who helped popularize the use of fingerprints, which play a key role in the story. But the very ambivalence--about himself, his times, the truth, etc.--for which Adams is famous, finally makes him an unsatisfactory hero. Even the most psychically damaged detectives in fiction have typically been driven either, like Sherlock Holmes, by a certainty that mystery will yield to reason, or, like Sam Spade, by a personal code of honor, or, like Batman, by a burning desire to see justice done. Adams does not have sufficient faith in reason, honor, or justice to be motivated by any of them, he just seems to want to know what happened to the girl with whom he has become irrationally infatuated. Because we do not share this emotional attachment, the mystery is not as involving as it should be.
Instead, the pleasures of the book lie mostly in Zencey's development of Adams's ideas and the portrait of his character.
Adams knew. But how could he answer? To a mind as evenly divided as his--a mind, his brother Brooks had warned him, that would never find a place in politics, where simplicity of vision was required; a mind to which evil never seemed unmixed with good, nor good unalloyed with evil; one to which no object appeared important enough to call our strength of action, nor absolutely necessary enough not to allow that its absence just might be possible to accommodate--to such a mind, the only accurate answer to bluntness was contradiction: yes and no.
This description of Adams's mind is similar to that offered by Louis Menand of some of the other key figures from that generation--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr; William James, etc.--in his book The Metaphysical Club (see Orrin's review). One can't help but be saddened that this scion of the family that led the fight for American Independence (John Adams) and against Slavery (John Quincy Adams) succumbed to this kind of banal moral relativism.
GRADE : C+