What if Princess Diana's fatal automobile accident were actually a successful assassination? That's the premise of this spy/thriller novel. I've not read much of this genre, but the sad, lonely and flawed agents keep us guessing as to who the bad guys are, and who the good guys are. Even though we, of course, know the outcome from the very beginning, this is still a very suspenseful read. ( )

In explaining his work Eoin McNamee has said something along the lines of 'Whatever one thinks about conspiracy theories--that that doesn't mean there isn't such a thing as conspiratorial politics'. '12:23 Paris 31st August 1997' takes on the most famous car wreck of the 20th century--the one that killed Princess Diana and her boyfriend (fiance) Dodi Fayed along with their driver Henri Paul and treats it in fictional terms not as an accident but as a politcal assassination. Saying that--there is a number of reasons to speculate that it indeed was an assassination made to look like an accident. For instance the cameras tracking traffic through the Alma tunnel going black several minutes before the crash. The mysterious movements of the real life photographer James Andanson (a man with some very dark past connections) and his white Fiat--along with his mysterious death 3 years later. One might also reasonably argue that Diana had long been estranged from the British royal house and that marrying someone of Arabic descent probably did not sit well with much of Britain's aristocracy which has always had strong ties in the military and intelligence communities within Britain.

All of this factors into McNamee's book which really in a way brings real life culmination to two of J. G. Ballard's most famous works--Atrocity Exhibition and Crash--in which the rich and extremely famous are targeted for spectacular death via more often than not motor vehicle accident. McNamee's prose style also bears some resemblance to Ballard's--the almost meticulous over objectification of the human eye as camera. McNamee mixes in the real with the specualtive. One of his characters--John Harper--has in his file the murder of a young teenager in the Kincora School scandal which references a real event. The method of Diana's assassination apparently was taken from an intelligence position paper (CIA?) in 1992 targeting then Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic. So reading this 'fictional' work might give the reader the uneasy feeling that sometimes fact and fiction are not really always that far apart.

As well this fits like a glove into McNamee's past bibliography of speculative thrillers that walk the line between fiction and reality. McNamee's interest in the sometimes ghoulish brutality of psy-ops first made an appearance in 'Resurrection Man' and later in 'The Ultras'--both concerned with Northern Ireland during the troubles. Truthfully I think these books are wonderfully written and realistically drawn--whether or not all the truths of the events described ever really come to light. In any case give the secrecy that surrounds events like the Kennedy assassination or Diana's car wreck I think they our fair game unless and until the truth about them really does make an appearance. ( )

Of all the fin de siecle deaths, none has elicited the hysterical, self-indulgent, almost masturbatory orgasm of primal grief that marked the passing of Diana, Princess of Wales.

On the 10th anniversary of her death, the long-suffering world has once again been subjected to an outpouring of rehashed tributes, tales, theories and photographs of the self-styled ‘Queen of Hearts’.

Eoin McNamee is a renowned writer of fictions based on fact and it is hardly surprising that 2007 saw his take on the ‘assassination’ of Lady Di: the difference between McNamee and the al Fayed School of conspiracy theorists is that 12:23 is, unabashedly, a novel.

The book is remarkable not only for its realism and the quality of the research but also for the spare yet lyrical tone of the writing, bringing starkly to life the timeline which concluded in the Alma Tunnel in Paris, when ‘that night’s histories reeled away into myth’.

McNamee scrutinizes the five days before the fatal accident from several points of view: the omniscient reader is privy to all the forces that cause Henri Paul, a man renowned as a skilled driver with excellent responses, to chauffeur the Mercedes into a fatal collision.

We are allowed a glimpse at a complex web: there is the former Special Branch man Harper, recruited by his one-time handler, Bennet. Adjacent to him is Grace, who once held a minor post in British Intelligence, also recruited by Bennet.

Contracted to keep a watching brief on Diana during her brief stay in Paris, the three become aware of other more sinister forces which have also converged on the City of Light in the dog days of the year, including a seedy over-the-hill photographer, who drives a white Fiat Uno…

Sex, stupidity, sleaziness, greed and blackmail are the elements that, to a greater or lesser extent, determine the fate of every one of the characters – from ‘Spencer’ herself and the hapless al Fayed boy to Furst, the mad South African hired killer.

Some have celebrated this anniversary by gleefully plunging venomous knives into Diana’s spectral back, while most have hurtled eagerly down memory lane to enjoy another cathartic fest of weeping and tooth gnashing.

But 12:23 does neither: it is the story of the assassination of the Princess of Wales, it revolves around her, she is the centre of the action – but it is not about her at all, she is just the catalyst.

A sentimental tale about the minor tragedies of unimportant lives, yet the writing is never sentimental and seldom sympathetic: it presents an interesting hypothesis and realistic characters, but avoids positing any ‘answers’ – an excellent read. ( )