Patricia Marchak has set out to write a book that combines a detailed academic study of state terrorism with first hand testimonies of the horrors of the '70s. It's an admirable appraisal of a complex period of history and, for those with a detailed knowledge of the period, her investigation into the inevitability of 'El Proceso' will, I am sure, be enlightening. However, as someone coming to the subject for the first time I found the academic text too dry and the personal testimonies ultimately unsatisfactory. I wanted more of them.

Marchak comes from the class rooms of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of British Coloumbia. Not surprisingly, then, a large percentage of the book reads like a scholarly dissertation. There is a clinical objectivity in the way she sets out her argument, which takes the reader from the roots of terror to the bureaucratic management of El Proceso. However, while her academic studies provide the context, it is the often heart rendering testimonies from those who lived through the terror that make this book come alive. Sadly there are too few of them.

Marchak defines 'El Proceso' as "a process by which a military force constantly increased its power over the society by redefining ideological sins". Robert Cox, former editor-in-chief of the Buenos Aires Herald, described it in an editorial at the time as "a mindless Frankenstein's monster gone beserk". It is the latter's plain speaking that I prefer.

Being an academic I feel that Marchak is hamstrung by her desire to categorise movements and events in terms of -isms and-ists. She endeavours to define what the testimonies clearly show was an incredibly complex period of fear, denial and half-baked ideologies. She admits herself that the military's lack of any clear definition of the term 'terrorist' was one of the main reasons that so many people were disappeared, that fear was so widespread. The testimonies support this. Stories of people disappeared simply because they were obstacles to personal ambition, or because they had something worth stealing, illustrate that this is a period to which you cannot apply the broad brush of generalisation. Of course terms such as Marxist and neoliberal were bandied around at the time but one feels these served only to paper over the cracks of a deeply divided society. I don't think the author uses them any better.

But what 'God's Assassins' has done is to whet my appetite for more. Marchak raises several interesting questions - was Firmenich a double agent? And she makes some very poignant points - "the military was a creation of the society on which it preyed". I only wish that she had explored these further and illustrated them better with more eye-witness accounts.