Category Archives: Reviews

Fiction, Reviews

‘Darkest Fear,’ by Harlan Coben

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Darkest Fear

Her blue-black hair fell in big, loose curls, like thermal fax paper fresh out of the machine.

This is more like it.

I positively reviewed Harlan Coben’s latest Myron Bolitar novel, Home, a few days back. My only real quibble with the book was that the author seemed to be taking particular pains to virtue-signal – to demonstrate very obviously his politically acceptable views on gay marriage and cultural appropriation.

This earlier novel, Darkest Fear, avoids most of that. It’s just a fun mystery/thriller.

This time out, Myron is contacted by an old girlfriend, to whom he has no desire to talk. Not only did she break his heart years ago, but she broke it in favor of the guy who was responsible for the knee injury that ended Myron’s basketball career before it started. But now she insists on seeing him. She has a teenaged son who suffers from a fatal bone marrow disease. Only a marrow transplant can save him. One genetic match has been found in this country, but that person has inexplicably dropped off the grid.

Oh, and one further thing – Myron is actually the boy’s natural father.

Myron picks up the quest, which leads to a wealthy and secretive family, and to a series of unsolved serial killings. Several people may be the real killer – and the killer may even be the donor.

Darkest Fear is a fun story, full of excitement, humor, and heart. I enjoyed it immensely. Language is relatively mild, and adult situations not too extreme.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Home,’ by Harlan Coben

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Home, Coben

Part way through my reading of Home, Harlan Coben’s latest Myron Bolitar novel, I remembered that I had sworn off these books not too long ago. It’s not that Coben isn’t a superior storyteller. And it’s not that he doesn’t offer the kind of character insight and humanity that I crave from an author. I just felt he’d gotten too PC for my taste. But I carried on, having purchased the book, and enjoying the story. Home is a good novel, but marred (for me, probably not for most readers) by progressive elements.

In this outing, we start with Win Lockhart, Myron’s wealthy, effete-but-deadly, longtime friend. Win has dropped out of sight to hunt for a missing person, his sister’s kidnapped son, gone ten years. His search has brought him to London, where he locates a boy who looks to him like his nephew’s friend, also kidnapped on the same occasion. In approaching the boy, he encounters three thugs, whom he easily dispatches. But the boy takes fright and runs away. That’s when Win calls Myron, who drops everything and flies to London to help in the search.

They encounter criminals and pimps in their investigation, but most of all they encounter lies. The lies are old, and deeply buried, and the true secrets lie not in London, but close to home. Old wounds are opened, and old betrayals revealed. The final resolution of the story is remarkable for its grace – but there’s a less inspirational anticlimax.

Home is a very good book. Author Coben possesses deep empathy for the human situation, drawing the reader in and making us care. My problem is mainly with two characters, Esperanza and Big Cindy, who are a married lesbian couple. I suspect they were originally added to the cast of the books for purposes of comic relief. But changing times have persuaded the author to treat them with increasing earnest seriousness. For me, this is a conformist and disappointing element in stories this good and well-grounded in human nature. Various hints suggest that Coben himself does not entirely buy into modern ideas about gender and gender roles, but he nevertheless genuflects to all the prescribed altars, in this and other matters.

Other than that, highly recommended. Coben doesn’t use much bad language, and the sex and violence are relatively restrained.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Coffin Road,’ by Peter May

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Coffin Road

I’ve become a fan of Peter May’s novels, so I bought Coffin Road, even knowing that the subject matter wouldn’t make me entirely happy. It’s pretty much what I expected. A well-written, thoughtful novel promoting a cause about which I have doubts.

At the beginning of Coffin Road, the main character/narrator (author May has an interesting technique of describing the narrator’s action and thoughts in the present tense, then switching to past tense when jumping to other characters) finds himself washed up on a beach on the island of Harris in the Hebrides. He is soaked through and on the verge of hypothermia. But what troubles him even more is the fact that he can’t remember who he is, or how he got into this situation.

Through a lucky meeting he finds his way back to the cottage where he’s been staying, but he still can find no clue to his identity or what he was doing renting the cottage. This in itself is suspicious and troubling. Gradually he learns that he was involved in some kind of research involving bees. But he can’t find any equipment or records.

Following a clue, he takes a boat to a nearby island, where he finds a murdered body in a lighthouse. Terrified that he is himself the murderer, he flees the scene, but that doesn’t keep him from police suspicion.

The story is well-told, and the tension rises and the stakes get pricier as we go along, just as they ought. The narrator’s meditations on the subject of identity and memory are well thought out and intriguing. My only real problem with the novel is that it’s a message story, promoting the argument that modern pesticides are killing off bee populations, and that human life itself is endangered by the greed of the agribusinesses.

I’ve never been inclined to believe that corporations really think they can earn a profit from global depopulation and environmental devastation. This article from the Washington Post argues that the threat, though not imaginary, has been exaggerated. I don’t know. Maybe the Post writer is in the pay of the big corporations. Or maybe May is in the pay of the environmental lobbies. You’ll think what you like about that issue.

Aside from that, this is Peter May doing what he does so well. His vivid evocations of the storm-lashed Hebrides are, as always, one of the great rewards enjoyed by the reader. Adjusting for political quibbles and my own prejudices, I otherwise recommend Coffin Road. Cautions for adult language and situations.

Fiction, Reviews

Re-review: ‘The Uncanny,’ by Andrew Klavan

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The Uncanny
While reading Andrew Klavan’s autobiographical The Great Good Thing (which I reviewed a couple weeks ago) I was reminded of his novel The Uncanny, which I had enjoyed a great deal, though I understand that opinion isn’t universal. I thought I’d read and review it again, even though I’ve already reviewed it here.

The story is of Richard Storm, a Jewish American movie producer who has made a fortune doing horror films. After hearing shocking medical news, he has traveled to England to see the locations that inspired his love of the horror genre. There, while reading a story called “Black Annie” out loud at a Christmas party, he beholds – and falls in love with – an Englishwoman named Sophia Endering. Then she walks out of the house and out, apparently, of his life. But he will meet her again, as he assists an elderly English woman friend, Harper Albright, in chasing down the origins of the Black Annie story. That story shares elements with other legends and ballads, and inspired Richard’s own movies. The truth of the legend carries a threat with it, that of a monomaniacal cult leader with a macabre plan for the future of humanity.

On a second reading, I can see how some critics might find fault with The Uncanny. When I first read this book, I marveled at how the various story elements clicked together to set up an inexorable climax. But some might find that plot choreography implausible, as depending too much on coincidence. I think the coincidences are just the point. “The Uncanny” of the title is more than a feeling or a setting – it’s a force operating in the world. Klavan wrote the book as he was beginning to recognize the real existence of the supernatural. It may be that people resistant to that idea might find The Uncanny unpalatable.

Anyway, I liked it a lot. Cautions for language and sexual situations.

(As an added note, information Klavan has provided in his blog posts indicates that the Harper Albright character was based on a real woman he knew, who was an aunt of the actress Olivia Wilde.)

Authors, Non-fiction, Religion, Reviews

‘The Great Good Thing,’ by Andew Klavan

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For years, maybe most of my life, I had languished in that typical young intellectual’s delusion that gloom and despair are the romantic lot of the brilliant and the wise. But now I saw: it wasn’t so…. The hungry can’t eat your tears. The poor can’t spend them. They’re no comfort to the afflicted and they don’t bring the wicked to justice. Everything useful that can be done in the world can be done in joy.

Has Andrew Klavan written Surprised by Joy for the 21st Century? I’m not qualified to say. But I will say The Great Good Thing is a wonderful book, a book in the great tradition of spiritual autobiographies like those of Lewis and St. Augustine – but with a modern edge.

You already know I’m wholly sold out to Andrew Klavan as a writer. He may be the best author of mystery/thrillers alive. You probably also know that he converted to Christianity from secular Judaism a few years back. In Klavan’s view these two facts aren’t unconnected. As he internalized the elements of storytelling, he reports, he was drawn ever closer to eternal truths.

Klavan tells us of his youth – economically comfortable – in a Jewish neighborhood in Great Neck, Long Island. His family seemed normal – he himself believed it was normal – but in fact it was deeply dysfunctional. His father was angry and a bully. His mother was a disengaged, frustrated social climber. The first real motherly love he experienced was from a Christian Ukrainian nanny, and her influence lingered. A smart but lazy kid, Drew Klavan faked his way through school and then college, buying the assigned books but never reading them, bluffing in classroom discussions and on tests. Continue reading ‘The Great Good Thing,’ by Andew Klavan →

Fiction, Reviews

‘Black Knight in Red Square’ by Stuart M. Kaminsky

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Black Knight in Red Square

In the second Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov police procedural by Stuart M. Kaminsky, Black Knight in Red Square, the shrewd Moscow police detective faces the challenge of terrorism. The Moscow Film Festival is going on, and someone just poisoned four hotel guests – two Russians and two foreigners.

Rostnikov’s superiors assign him and his team to investigate – but on the quiet. Keep it out of the news. He suspects strongly that they expect him to fail, and that they are fine with that. He’s expendable. But Rostnikov has his own agenda. He’s working out a way to emigrate to the West with his Jewish wife.

In the midst of a three-pronged investigation, one of Rostnikov’s assistants – the dangerous-looking fanatic Communist Karpo – will come face to face with an adversary who is his equal in shrewdness and single-minded devotion to a cause. The climax is highly dramatic and satisfying. We also get to see Rostnikove participate in a weight-lifting competition.

What can I say? It’s Kaminsky, so it’s a satisfying story, full of well-conceived and rounded characters. Also it’s set in summer. I can bear Moscow a little better in summer than in winter. (That comment should indicate how good the author is at evoking place and climate.)

Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews, Uncategorized

‘Death of a Dissident’ by Stuart M. Kaminsky

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Death of a Dissident

The doznaniye or inquiry is based on the frequently stated assumption that “every person who commits a crime is punished justly, and not a single innocent person subjected to criminal proceedings is convicted.” This is repeated so frequently by judges, procurators, and police that almost everyone in Moscow is sure it cannot be true.

I felt a sudden longing for an old favorite author, so I thought I’d tackle Stuart M. Kaminsky’s Inspector Porphiry Rostnikov books. I’ve generally avoided this series, because the one I did read was so grim. It’s not that the writing’s bad. It’s great (as witness the dry-humored passage above), and Kaminsky’s always perceptive and humane characters are as good here as anywhere else. I just don’t like the Soviet Union. The ugliness of the architecture, the scarcity and hunger, the deadening regulations, the fear of surveillance, even the cold of Moscow – it tends to wear me down. Even when the stories are good and the characters fascinating. As they are here.

Author Kaminsky decided to challenge himself to write a police procedural like Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct books, but set it in Moscow. The result is, I think, very successful (when you adjust for my prejudices). Porphiry Rostnikov, hero of Death of a Dissident, is a wounded World War II veteran (the time is the 1980s), disabled by an old leg injury, which doesn’t stop him working. In fact, he’s a weight lifter, contemplating entering an amateur competition. His subordinates are Karpo (a dedicated Marxist who looks like a vampire), and Tkatch (a young detective recently married).

When a prominent dissident is murdered in his apartment two days before his scheduled trial, a suspect is quickly identified and arrested. Word comes down from above that this will do for an investigation. No further inquiry will be required. However, a seemingly connected murder that follows shortly after has Rostnikov walking a dangerous line, trying to stop a serial killer while not upsetting the political cart. A man of lesser strategic intelligence would wreck his career and perhaps lose his freedom, but Rostnikov knows his business.

Good book, and people less prejudiced toward the Soviet Union than I will probably enjoy it even more than I did. There’s nothing pro-Soviet here; the anti-Communism is subtextual but ubiquitous. Nothing much in the way of objectionable material either.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Thank You For Smoking,’ by Christopher Buckley

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Thank You For Smoking

Continuing my course of reading Christopher Buckley novels, I decided to try Thank You For Smoking, the novel that made him a star.

Compared with the two previous novels I read, written more recently, Thank You For Smoking is strong stuff. All his novels (at least the ones I’ve read) have concerned a man with some residual decency, doing a job he knows to be wrong. They’re novels of equivocation. TYFS is in the same line, but the basic decency of the hero, Nick Naylor, spokesman for the tobacco lobby, is more submerged than in the other books. Nick feels some guilt, but he genuinely enjoys the challenge of twisting facts to confound anti-smoking activists, who don’t look much better than he does in this story. They are portrayed as humorless neo-Puritans. Nick gets a kick out of tweaking their noses.

When the novel starts, Nick’s hold on his well-paying job is getting shaky. A new boss has taken over, and he’s keen to kick Nick out so he can replace him with his sexy blonde assistant. But then Nick appears on Oprah. It’s an ambush interview, and he finds himself face to face with a bald kid with cancer. But Nick has great instincts, and he manages to turn the tables, making himself – and the tobacco industry – look persecuted and heroic. That earns Nick the support of “The Colonel,” the venerable head of the firm. Nick’s future will involve being kidnapped, spending time in the hospital, having an affair with the aforementioned sexy blonde, and going to jail. It’s quite a ride, but a kind of moral closure is achieved in the end.

Thank You For Smoking is a bravura comic novel. There are few actual, quotable gags, but absurd juxtapositions and situations provide frequent laughs. I was troubled by a plot element that seemed to equate guns and alcohol with cigarettes, though I think that wasn’t the purpose of the exercise.

But I found it all kind of rich for my blood. I’m going to take a break from Buckley for a while. Nevertheless I recommend Thank You For Smoking, with cautions for language, adult situations, and tasteless moments.

Fiction, Reviews

‘In the Lion’s Den,’ by S.D. Thames

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In the Lion's Den

“I know that having a woman like that, it don’t do nothing for a man’s soul. If a man’s evil inside, no woman in the world’s gonna change that. Once that evil gets its hooks in you, you’re done. You ain’t ever gonna get them out.”

Having enjoyed S.D. Thames’ novel, A Mighty Fortress, as I did, I bought his earlier novella, In the Lion’s Den, as well. It’s a very good read, with definite similarities to AMF, though in less developed form, which you can’t help in a novella.

Danny Grey did a stretch in prison for felony murder. Now he’s out on parole, living in the Bronx, keeping his nose clean. He works in a pizza joint and saves his money. Four more months and he’s a free man. He plans to move to Florida and open his own pizza place. Legit all the way from now on.

Then he comes up against his old boss, the gangster he used to hurt people for in his old life. The boss blackmails him into working for him again, driving prostitutes around at night. That’s how he meets Veronika, a gorgeous Russian woman his boss treats as property. Gradually Danny falls for her, and then he faces a choice – he can escape from this trap on his own, or he can try to figure out a way to rescue Veronika. His decision will call for real courage and real sacrifice.

In the Lion’s Den is a cleanly written story that will draw you in. There are many similarities to A Mighty Fortress – Dan is a lot like Milo Porter, the hero of that book. But the religious elements are more subtextual here. For some that will be a reason to prefer this one.

I liked In the Lion’s Den very much, and I recommend it highly. Cautions for raw language and adult stuff.

Fiction, Reviews

‘A Mighty Fortress,’ by S. D. Thames

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A Mighty Fortress

As Jimmy drove us farther north, I realized a serene calmness had fallen over me. It was as though I’d had my fix—maybe the way heroin calms an addict, or porn calms someone addicted to it. I’m my calmest when someone is pointing a gun at me.

[Cue sound effect: Ringing bell.] We have a winner! From a quarter where I wouldn’t have expected to find one! A Mighty Fortress is a first (full-length) novel by an author I’d never heard of. It has so much going against it – it’s a Christian novel (which usually means low quality, let’s face it, especially when the authors are starting out). It’s a hard-boiled mystery into which the author injects supernatural and theological elements. There are even miracles. The miracle for me is how well this thing worked, and how much I loved it.

Milo Porter is a Gulf War veteran suffering from PTSD. He makes his living as a private investigator and process server, working for lawyers in the Tampa area. When not working, he lets off steam doing power lifting at a gym owned by a friend, whose sister is Milo’s girlfriend. He sees a counselor for his insomnia and flashback dreams, but what he really enjoys is taking risks.

One Sunday he’s offered an unreasonable sum to do a special subpoena service on a guy connected to the mob. He figures a way to accomplish this and get out safely, but he still gets ambushed and kidnapped by the target and his henchmen later that night. But that’s the best part, as far as Milo’s concerned. By the end of the night somebody has been murdered.

Milo is compelled to get involved in the investigation, trying to locate a beautiful prostitute whose life is in danger. He encounters crooked politicians, crooked cops, pornographers, an alcoholic ex-judge, a preacher who’s lost his faith, and – a supernatural being. And that’s only the beginning of the weirdness.

The wonderful thing is that author S. D. Thames makes the whole thing work. His prose isn’t fancy, but it’s solid and compelling, highly professional in quality. The characters are interesting, and they often surprise us. Milo himself is a fascinating study.

I found A Mighty Fortress a delight, a little reminiscent of John D. MacDonald in style. I’m reading a previous novella by the author now, and look forward to more Milo Porter books when they come out. Well done. Not for the kids, but for anyone else, I highly recommend it.