I’d fallen behind in my Stephen Hunter reading the last year or so. I get most of my books from a used book store, and they never seem to have any Hunter in stock. But I recently got a chance to order his two most recent paperbacks, and Night of Thunder is the first in line.

Night of Thunder is about NASCAR, the races, the business, and the culture. It exhibits many of the qualities of NASCAR itself—lots of action, lots of color, plenty of thrills, and very little substance. In other words, Night of Thunder is an entertainment, the most purely cotton candy, Coors-in-a-cooler, hoo-rah spectacle of any of Hunter’s novels. That sounds like a put-down, but it all depends on what you’re looking for. Nobody delivers more entertainment per consumer dollar than Stephen Hunter, and you’ll have fun with this book. But I don’t think you’ll remember it long. Continue reading Night of Thunder, by Stephen Hunter →

I’d never heard of author James Church (a pseudonym for a former western intelligence officer) before someone lent me A Corpse in the Koryo. It’s carefully written, in a restrained, picturesque style that seems (to me, as an ignorant westerner) evocative of Asian thinking. And it delivers all the grim tragedy one expects, in a story set in North Korea.

Inspector O, a police detective in Pyongyang, is a loose cannon in the honored tradition of fictional cops. Of course, a loose cannon in North Korea enjoys a lot less scope than one in, say, Los Angeles. He expresses his individuality through small acts of rebellion, like “forgetting” to wear the uniform badge that bears the portrait of the Dear Leader, and pursuing the solitary (hence suspect) hobby of woodworking, when he can get his hands on wood and supplies.

He’s lucky, too. He’s the grandson of a national hero, and a government minister who was his grandfather’s friend gives him a certain level of protection.

Still, Inspector O is under constant suspicion. But then, everyone is under constant suspicion.

The story, presented as a debriefing given to a British agent, begins with Inspector O sitting on a hill overlooking a highway, with a camera, waiting for a particular car to pass by. He’s supposed to take a picture of the car, but when he tries, the battery in his camera is dead (par for the course). Shortly after returning to his office, he is told that a little boy has been killed near the site where he had been watching. Then he attends a tense meeting with several police and intelligence officers, and is ordered to go to another city for a while and lay low. However, when he gets there, there are messages and clues, and mysterious meetings.

And so it goes. Nothing is what it seems in O’s world, and anyone not known to be a friend is probably an enemy. No one speaks directly. Messages are conveyed by nuances and things left unsaid. The mystery is convoluted, and the normal difficulties of police work are exacerbated by the difficulty of getting things as simple as aspirin, a meal, or notebooks (to say nothing of information).

But for all the subtleties of Korean society, death is brutal, bloody, and unsparing.

A Corpse In the Koryo is an excellent mystery for grown-ups not afraid of sorrow and futility, and anyone interested in a glimpse into the world’s most closed and secretive society. It’s not an easy read, as the reader needs to pay close attention both to spoken words and silences. Recommended.

A few days back I mentioned a book I was reading that was so languid that I had trouble staying with it. The Edge, I shall now reveal, is that book.

Train stories are an interesting genre. In books and movies, a railroad train can provide the stage for high drama—derailments, dynamiting, bridge collapses, mysterious strangers all packed into a limited space, engines racing against the clock.

In real life, most rail journeys are pretty dull. Aside from enjoying the scenery—which depends heavily on where you’re traveling—the passenger has to pretty much bring, or make, his own entertainment. It’s nice not to have to drive, but driving at least gives you something to occupy your mind.

Sadly, The Edge is more like a real train journey than a movie one. Great stretches of prose pass by the coach window, all of it moving the story forward, but at a glacial pace. The climax, like the distant Rockies, looms forever (it seems) in the distance. Points of interest are far between.

The hero is Tor Kelsey, a special agent for the British Jockey Club. Independently wealthy, he could afford to live a life of leisure, but he was raised to do useful things and keep busy. In his professional capacity he’s developed a facility for being overlooked, for fading into crowds in order to observe unobserved.

As the book opens, he’s trailing a suspect, a man who probably murdered a jockey on the orders of a shady horse owner named Filmer, who recently got off on a charge of blackmail. The strong arm man, unfortunately, drops dead of a heart attack, leaving Kelsey without a good line on Filmer.

Then word comes that Filmer plans to join a much-publicized race event in Canada. Called the Great Transcontinental Mystery Race Train, the exclusive excursion will send major race horse owners from Montreal to Vancouver, in a special luxury train featuring, for their added pleasure, a scripted mystery play. It appears that one or two of the travelers are about to be further victims of Filmer’s schemes, so Kelsey is delegated to join the crew as a waiter and actor, while keeping an eye on Filmer.

Which he does. Unfortunately, Filmer does almost nothing except ingratiate himself with the other owners for most of the book, which dampens the excitement. There’s finally some real action when they get to the Rockies, but even that seems to me underdeveloped, considering the possibilities. Many characters (I had a hard time keeping track of them) interact, mostly without a lot of drama.

Francis is a genial author, and Tor Kelsey an appealing character. But I found myself wondering, for many, many pages, why I should care what happened next.

I’d been looking for the late Stephen J. Cannell’s The Viking Funeral: A Shane Scully Novel for some time, just because of its title. I’ve enjoyed the other books in the Shane Scully series, and had kept my eye out for it, but the second-hand bookstore where I get most of my books never seemed to have it in.

Having finally found it, I have to confess to a little disappointment. It’s a diverting actioner, and moving in places, but it’s by far the darkest book of the series. I wasn’t prepared for the grimness of the thing.

In this book, our hero Shane Scully spots an old friend driving on the freeway, a friend who—he had every reason to believe—had committed suicide some time before. The friend’s response to catching his eye confirms the identification. His investigation of the matter leads Scully into very deep corruption in the police and sheriff’s departments, and to some terrible moments of betrayal, given and received. Scully spends a good portion of the book grieving his own killing of someone very important in his life.

It’s kind of depressing.

It gets better after a while, but the fun level in this one is pretty low, despite Cannell’s penchant for injecting cinematic violence, explosions, and automatic weapons fire at every opportunity. Worth reading, but not as light as one might hope. Cautions, as usual, for language, violence, and adult subject matter.