The Mean Streets

What Never Happens*

by Anne Holt

Grand Central Publishing

February 2008 (24.99)            

 

*Full Review first published in Mystery News (April-May 2008)                                  

 

What Never Happens is the second novel by Norwegian author Anne Holt to be published in the United States. Oslo police Detective Inspector Adam Stubo is stymied by a series of gruesome murders; the kind of ultra-violent, high-profile crimes that only happen – or should only happen – in America. First a talk show host is found strangled to death, her severed tongue posed delicately (and incongruously) in a beautifully constructed origami flower. Next a powerful young Norwegian politician is crucified in her bedroom with a copy of the Koran placed conspicuously and quite suggestively on her person. When an irascible literary critic is stabbed in the eye and killed, the pressure and the publicity really start to mount.

 

Weeks pass, Stubo and his partner, Sigmund Berli, have no leads, no suspects and no real prospects of uncovering either. It’s only when Stubo’s wife, Johanne Vik, who is at home caring for the couple’s newborn, takes an interest in the case that the police begin to catch a glimpse of a motive and a pattern. Vik, trained as an FBI profiler, recalls dimly a lecture she heard years earlier in Quantico, Virginia. Unbelievably, the murders currently taking place in Norway bear a striking resemblance to the cases that formed the basis for that instructional workshop from long ago. If Vik is correct, the next victims will be a police officer and his or her family!

 

What Never Happens is a brooding and intense crime novel. Deftly, complexly plotted, the characters are also drawn with great care and emotional depth. While the narrative structure – interspersing scenes from the perspective of the killer as well as from the victims – is at times confusing and somewhat distracting, the end result is that the reader is given a fairly detailed snapshot of Norwegian society, culture and politics. Indeed, Holt’s achievement in that regard is on a par with what Henning Mankell does for Sweden and what Ian Rankin does in terms of bringing modern Scotland to life.

 

As if all of that were not enough, the author also creates an utterly believable villain … no mean feat when it comes to writing about serial killers where each one seems more “over-the-top” and outrageous than the one before. Here, the banality of the killer’s personality and background is set contrapuntally to the utter originality of his/her methods and motives. The rationale behind the seemingly irrational crimes is painstakingly, meticulously developed. In fact, if the novel has a flaw it’s in the fact that so much time is taken to bring to light and to describe in step-by-step fashion the killer’s chilling, almost philosophical motivation – no longer content to wait for “what never happens,” the killer decides instead to ‘make it happen.” There are times where What Never Happens moves ponderously, almost tediously. Combine that with the fact that the novel ends in truly anticlimactic fashion and, well, readers with patience and a rather refined literary palate will be the ones who most appreciate this book.

 

But make no mistake; there is indeed much to appreciate in the pages of this novel. It’s easy to see why Anne Holt has the reputation that she does. Those willing to wade their way through the text will be rewarded by a story that “sticks” … and one that takes more than a few risks and dares to be different. What’s not to like? Now that’s something that never happens!

 

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101 MINUTES*

by

James C. Clar

 

* First published on Powder Burn Flash (#67)

 

The Freighter Yang Ming cleared the Golden Gate Bridge and headed into the bay. Chin-Ning Chu watched from the Hyde Street Pier as the giant container ship passed in front of Alcatraz Island. Gulls wheeled overhead, daubs of black and white paint against a powder blue canvass sky. It had rained earlier in the day but now, just after 2:00 P.M. PST, the sun was out and there wasn’t a cloud to be seen anywhere. It was a good omen, certainly.

 

Chin turned his back to the ocean and made his way along the dock to the sidewalk. As he walked toward Jefferson Avenue, he punched a series of numbers into this cell phone. In theory he had just armed a nuclear device which lay concealed in the hold of the Yang Ming. If he had calculated correctly he now had two hours, a mere 120 minutes, to hit “send” and trigger an explosion that would lay waste to the Bay Area – symbol of the decadence and corruption of American and, indeed, of Western society.

 

Despite all his training and all his preparation, Chin still had doubts. He had lived in San Francisco now for years, assimilating, fitting in … all the while waiting for just this assignment. He had grown to have some measure of admiration, even affection, for the American people. They possessed a lust for life, an animal vitality, which 10,000 years of civilization had all but bred out of his people. Ideology and political expediency aside, he was still not sure that he could go through with what he had been charged to do. Intruth, he was not even sure whose bidding his bosses were doing. It may have been the North Koreans, his fanatical cousins; or perhaps the Iranians, strange bedfellows indeed. Certainly his government might have its own agenda vis-à-vis massive American casualties and widespread disruption of the Western economy. Whatever the case, and whatever decision he ultimately made, his life was over. The question was how to preserve his honor. The two-hour time frame had been designed to give him an opportunity to flee the immediate area. He had already rejected that as an option. He would either succumb to the firestorm that ensued from detonation of the bomb or he would take his own life if he failed – or opted not – to complete his mission as instructed.

 

At the corner of Beach and Hyde Streets, Chin waited for a trolley car to rattle and clang up the hill. Once the coast was clear, he crossed the road and turned left. He reached Columbus Avenue and headed diagonally into North Beach. As he approached Washington Square, he heard a voice from a doorway off to his left.

 

“Hey, Benihana, I could use some money. How about helping me out?”

 

Chin turned slightly only to be confronted by a disheveled looking young Caucasian man with wild eyes. Used to the ways of the streets in the area Chin disregarded the plea and, keeping his head down, walked on. A few seconds later, however, he felt a tap on his shoulder. He stopped and, calmly, deliberately, turned around.

 

“Talkin’ to you, man,” the kid barked with venom. This time, Chin noticed a knife in the miscreant’s hand. “You think I’m chopped sushi? Not really making a request. Now give me your fuckin’ money!

 

Chin could have disarmed his assailant in seconds. It would have been a simple matter to break his arm in two or three places. The hyped-up punk wouldn’t even know what was happening until it was too late. That or one quick blow to the neck and the boy would be writhing in agony, choking to death on the ground at Chin’s feet. But, no, here was an answer to his dilemma.

 

“I’m Chinese,” Chin remarked quietly, “not Japanese as you mistakenly assume. It’s a common enough error. But, no matter, here’s my money.”

 

Slowly and carefully Chin reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a money clip. It was in the shape of a silver dragon inlaid with emeralds. The mugger’s eyes dilated even further when he saw the denomination of the outside bill. He reached out and snatched the clip from Chin’s hands.

 

“Shit, I don’t care what kind of gook you are, man. All I care about is that you’re loaded. Is that a wallet in your other pocket?”

 

“No,” Chin answered, “I don’t carry a wallet. “It’s just my cell phone.”

 

“Quick, let me have it. I’m losing patience with you, dude.”

 

Chin pulled the cell phone out of his pocket and handed it over. The young tough whistled, “High-tech. I can sell it. How many minutes you have left on this?”

 

“Let’s say there’s an eternity on that phone.”

 

With that the kid smirked and made a playful lunge toward Chin. Once again the Chinese man restrained himself. He backed up and sidestepped with élan. Laughing, the thief turned on his heels and ran. Before disappearing around the corner, he shouted “Remember Pearl Harbor” over his shoulder.

 

Unfazed by the encounter, Chin continued walking up Columbus Avenue. He gazed overhead at the twin spires of Sts. Peter and Paul Church. The fate of the city was now in the hands of its own citizens, how utterly appropriate. Would they fall prey to avarice and complete moral dissolution or, by some miracle, save themselves from themselves? Either way, Chin’s obligation to his superiors had been fulfilled to his satisfaction. He was soon lost in the labyrinth of streets bordering Chinatown. There were 101 minutes left … and counting.

 

THE END

 

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What if the great Apostle Paul had been arrested before he had an opportunity to write the letters that make up nearly half of the texts in the New Testament? And, further, what if the one responsible for his execution had been doing so with the clandestine intention of thereby advancing the nascent Christian message? I offer this story as bit of alternate history with a noir twist …

 

 

A VILE CONTAGION

by

James C. Clar

 

The Governor of Bithynia sat on a stone bench in the shade of the portico. He was deep in meditation. Perhaps owing to a variation in the quality of the light that penetrated his closed eyelids, he sensed someone standing in his presence.

 

“What is it, Sextus?” he said with barely restrained anger. Were it not the fact that the man interrupting him was his trusted aide, he would perhaps have ordered the fool’s execution.

 

“I am, of course, deeply sorry to disturb you. I would not have done so were it not for the fact that we have managed to apprehend the man known as Paulos. Surely my lord recalls that he is a ringleader in that vile cult that is sweeping the province like a contagion.”

 

At the mention of the name “Paulos,” the governor looked up with heightened interest. “Indeed. Have you examined him yet and, if so, what have you learned?”

 

“We have, my lord,” Sextus replied. “In truth he is proving to be quite recalcitrant. Even under the most rigorous questioning he refuses to divulge the names of any of his co-conspirators. He is similarly adamant in his refusal to curse the name of that criminal with whom this pernicious superstition apparently originated. We have demanded repeatedly that he simply offer obeiscience to our gods in the form of incense. Excellency, he has not repented. In my judgment he will not repented. Not even the threat of capital sanction sways him. In fact, he appears almost to court death in the name of the one to whom he so perversely gives his allegiance.”

 

The governor was silent for some time. All the while he absently stroked his chin. Finally, he responded. “Sextus, I share your frustration. This whole situation is getting out of hand. Nonetheless, I think we must still exercise prudence. We are civilized, after all. If nothing else, however, this man’s obstinacy does deserve punishment. Confiscate his property and order him flogged. Thirty-nine lashes should be sufficient. Then release him. Word will then spread as to our resolve in dealing with the purveyors of such nonsense.”

 

Looking down while shifting his weight from one leg to the other, Sextus replied with trepidation. “Excellency, I must humbly beg to differ. I have been receiving disquieting reports that the temples are emptier now than they have ever been. Even more disturbing, the merchants are complaining that the sale of sacrificial animals has dropped precipitously. We both know how the emperor will react if the economy falters as a result. I need not also mention that the sages and astrologers continue to remark on the evil portents that have been observed of late. Many are beginning to equate such signs with the general abandonment of our ancestral religion fostered by this Paulos and his ilk. It seems to me that widespread civil unrest can only be avoided by bold action now.”

 

“What, then, do you suggest?” the governor asked.

 

“My lord,” Sextus continued. “I have with some temerity taken the liberty to prepare an order for the public execution of Paulos. With all due respect to your reputation for clemency, it seems to me – as it should to you – that this is our only recourse. We must put a stop to this pestilence before it spreads any further. You may think me an alarmist, but I am convinced that the future well-being of the empire depends upon our reaction to this threat here and now.”

 

Once again the governor sat in silence. He seemed to be staring at something that only he could see. Finally, with an expression of pained resignation, he looked at his assistant. “Very well, give me the order.”

 

Sextus handed his superior a tablet along with a stylus. The governor took them, appended his signature and seal, and handed them both back to his aide.

 

“I know that this disturbs you, my lord, but history will show that you have done the right thing.”

 

“Neither of us can claim to know what the future will bring, Sextus. We must leave that to the astrologers and sages in whom you show such confidence. You may go, but have the prisoner brought to me at once.”

 

Some time later the governor looked up to see a man with a short, pointed beard being ushered into his presence. Shackled, he was escorted by two soldiers. What the governor noticed, however, was the light that shone in the prisoner’s eyes. Turning to the guards, the governor commanded them, “Leave us.” Too well trained to reveal their surprise or to object, the two soldiers turned on their heels and withdrew.

 

Once the guards were gone, the governor stood and touched his forehead with his fingers and brought his right hand down to his sternum. He quickly finished the gesture by tapping his left then right shoulders. Not quite believing what he had just seen, Paulos nevertheless responded in kind.

 

“You must understand,” the governor began almost in a whisper. “I have no choice but to order your execution. Especially given what is happening in the province now, it isimportant that I remain in this capacity. It is the only way that I can continue to protect our brothers and sisters. We are flourishing here largely because I have been able to divert attention to other matters. Once again it has become expedient that one man die so that others might live. Unfortunately, you are that man.”

 

Paulos looked squarely at his captor. His gaze was penetrating. “Excellency, I understand. Be assured that I go to my death eagerly and with great joy. Is it not our greatest desire to follow in the footsteps of the one whose name we bear?”

 

The governor looked closely at the man who stood before him. The official’s expression was one of envy. “I admire your faith, but I am not sure that I share it in quite the same measure. Nor am I truly confident that the path that I have chosen will result in the desired outcome. I sometimes fear that my decisions are little more than the rationalizations of a coward.”

 

“You are no coward. As to the other matter, well, we will all one day be held accountable for what we have done, for what we have chosen. Apart from that we must trust to providence.”

 

“Guards,” the governor called out. Just before the two soldiers re-entered, the prisoner mouthed the word, “Marana-tha.”

 

“Not quickly enough,” the governor replied quietly, “not quickly enough.”

 

                                                                   THE END

 

A note on anachronistic elements in this story:

 

1. The "official" Roman attitude toward Christianity in this story is more consistent with the second and third centuries A.D. than it is with the mid-first century as implied here. In fact, the tone and language is based largely on the correspondence between the provincial governor, Pliny and the Emperor Trajan which dates from 112 A.D.

 

2. The “sign of the cross” which is used as a convenient literary device in this tale did not in fact gain currency in the West until nearly the eight century A.D.

 

 

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*Salt River

by James Sallis

Walker & Company                           

ISBN 0-8027-1617-2                         

 

* Full Review first published in Mystery News (February/March 2008)

 

“So many stories leave you standing at the altar. The crisis has been met, the many obstacles averted or overcome, most everything’s back to the way it was before or has righted itself to some new still point. You always wonder what happened to these people. Because they had pasts, they had lives, before you began reading. And they have futures, some of them, once you stop.”

 

Marvelous things really do come in little packages. Think of that diamond engagement ring or that heirloom gold locket, for example. Add to the list Salt River the latest book by James Sallis, one of America’s best but (at least in mainstream circles) most unheralded novelists. Weighing in at well under two hundred pages, this little beauty has been cut, polished and fashioned into something that glitters and shines like a rare gem. Tomes with two or three times the number of pages have neither the depth nor the clarity nor anywhere near the value.

 

Two years have past since John Turner (Cypress Grove and Cripple Creek) witnessed the murder of his girlfriend, Val Bjorn. Turner, ex-cop, ex-con, ex-therapist turned reluctant acting-sheriff of a small town on the edge of nowhere in rural Tennessee still mourns his loss. Turner’s a survivor, however, and, in the end, he’s decided that it’s enough simply to “see how much music you can make with what you have left.” And that’s a fitting question in Cypress Grove, a town on the ragged edge of economic depression and eventual dissolution – “the storm is coming in. And the town, in its last hour, is waiting.” Waiting anxiously also for the winds of change to blow is a way of life that Turner has come to love. He’s not sure how much more in the way of loss he’ll be able to withstand. It’s that largely philosophical/existential quandary – for which the fate of the town itself functions as a metaphor – that fuels the real tension and drama in this story.

 

Turner is sitting on a bench along Main Street discussing such matters with his pal, Doc Oldham. The two men watch transfixed as a car driven by Billy Bates slams into the front of City Hall. Billy, the ne’er-do-well son of the former sheriff, dies from injuries sustained in the crash. But questions remain. What, for instance, has the young man been doing since leaving the town without a word a few months earlier?  Why do two men – clearly “muscle” from out-of-town – attempt to kidnap Billy’s estranged wife? And what does any of that have to do with the nearly simultaneous reappearance of Eldon Brown, Turner’s banjo-playing friend and Val’s former accompanist? Brown’s barely half-step ahead of a Texas lawman who figures the black man to be responsible for the death of an eccentric attorney down Arlington way.

 

Since the author is Sallis, after all, the various threads ultimately fit together with grace and precision. When you get right down to it, however, that’s really not the point. Plot is subordinated to character and setting. The story line – compelling as it is – becomes in the end a vehicle for the author to meditate on the ravages of time, on loyalty and honor, as well as on sin, on redemption, on death and, hopefully, on rebirth. And meditate he does, with the economy and power of a poet: “I smelled dust, and rain. And I felt all about me the sadness of endings.”

 

 Few novelists could pack so much into such a slim volume. More than just a good “mystery,” this is a book filled with absolutely splendid writing and enough ideas to keep you thinking months, hell, maybe even years after you turn the last page. Singularly devoid of the kind of thing that generally passes for “action” in the genre, Salt River nonetheless packs the kind of firepower that really counts – the kind that touches the heart and recharges the soul. Size matters not one whit. Marvelous things sometimes really do come in small packages!

 

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What Never Happens

by Anne Holt

February 2008

Sneak Preview                                                           

 

What Never Happens is a brooding and intense crime novel. Oslo police Detective Inspector Adam Stubo is stymied by a series of gruesome murders – a talk show host is strangled, a powerful young Norwegian politician is crucified and a cantankerous literary critic is stabbed in the eye. And that’s just for starters! No progress is made in the investigation until Stubo’s wife, Johanne Vik, who is trained as an FBI profiler, takes an interest in the case. She discovers a connection between the murders currently taking place in Norway and a series of crimes she learned about years ago during an instructional lecture. If Vik is correct, the next victims will be a police officer and his or her family

 

Deftly plotted and with characters that are drawn with emotional depth, Holt also provides the reader with an intriguing picture of modern Norwegian society and politics. The killer’s motivation is both plausible and downright ingenious. Although the story is a bit lengthy and somewhat slow to develop, it’s still easy to see why the author has the reputation that she does. This is a story that will “stick” … and one that dares to be different. Now that’s what never happens!

 

Full Review to follow.

 

Also by Anne Holt … What is Mine (2006)

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*Kennedy’s Brain

by Henning Mankell

The New Press $26.95

ISBN 978-1-59558-184-6                             

October 2007                                                 

 

*Full Review first published in Mystery News (December/January 2008)

 

Henning Mankell is a star of the first magnitude. As such he can afford to take the kind of chances that he does here in the pages of this powerful but, ultimately, less than completely satisfying novel. Don’t get me wrong. Mankell’s prose still possesses the same chilly rigor that it usually does. In fact, he is nearly unparalleled as a stylist. At the same time, and although the author’s plotting is generally as elegant and as precise as a laser sculpture, when all is said and done, Kennedy’s Brain is episodic, meandering and, at times, almost incomprehensible.

 

Louise Cantor is an archeologist working on a dig in Greece. She returns to her native Sweden for an academic conference only to discover her twenty-eight-year-old son, Henrik, dead in his bed. The authorities rule the young man’s death a suicide but Louise suspects foul play. As the grief-stricken mother begins to put together the pieces of her son’s final days – in much the same way she is accustomed to re-assembling the shattered pieces of Attic pottery discovered in the ancient soil of Greece – she is confronted by strata upon strata of disinformation, conflicting data as well as the disturbing truth concerning Henrik’s HIV-positive status and his quest for the truth behind the causes of the global AIDS epidemic. In the end Cantor’s quest takes her to Mozambique and to a sinister hospice for those suffering from “the virus.” What Louise discovers is so macabre and so nefarious as to be almost unimaginable: “’Medicines are raw materials that can be just as valuable as rare metals or jewels. That’s why there is no limit to what people are prepared to do, in the name of greed’.”

 

As might be expected, Mankell creates rich characters with genuine emotions and with whom the reader cannot help but sympathize. All the same, the motivation fueling them in this story is murky at best. Louise, to be sure, is driven by grief. But quite what motivated Henrik’s often rather obscure actions is never fully elaborated. As mother retraces the desultory steps of the son it becomes a classic example of the blind leading the blind. Add to that the fact that, after 300+ pages, the story reaches no discernable conclusion and, well, frustration at what might have been is inevitable.

 

The search to establish the reality of the alleged disappearance of President John F. Kennedy’s brain after his assassination – one of Henrik’s pet obsessions – becomes a symbol in the book for the young man’s ultimately futile efforts to shed light on what he comes to believe is a global AIDS conspiracy. It thus also becomes a symbol for Louise’s quest to make sense of her son’s death. If you are confused by all of this, take heart; so am I. And I have the book right in front of me! The whole thing is a wonderful conceit but, in practical terms, it simply adds yet another layer of complexity, confusion and imponderability to a story that already has more than its share of each of those things. Either something (literally!) has been lost in the translation here or Mankell’s emotional involvement with his topic – the AIDS epidemic in Africa – gets the best of him at times and overmasters both his artistic sense as well as his immense skill asa novelist.

 

All of that aside, the author still creates a strong sense of place, both in terms of his native Sweden as well as with regard to the tropical climate of his adopted country of Mozambique. Marvelous characters abound and there are scenes in Kennedy’s Brain that, among the best Mankell has ever written, run the gamut from the ineffably poignant to the utterly hideous: “In the huts they were hit by the stifling smell of urine and excrement: patients were lying about on stretchers and raffia mats on the ground. Louise had trouble making out faces. All she registered was glinting eyes, groans and the smell … It was like sinking down through the centuries and entering a room full of slaves waiting to be transported … ‘Now I am wandering with Virgil and Dante through the kingdom of death’.”

 

By no stretch of the imagination is Kennedy’s Brain “vintage” Henning Mankell. In the end, however, it’s still Henning Mankell. For that reason, and despite its flaws, this is still an important novel and still one that is well worth reading.

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Salt River

by James Sallis

Walker & Company

January 2008

 

Sneak Preview

 

Weighing in at well under two hundred pages, Salt River is a little beauty that has been cut, polished and crafted into something that sparkles like a rare gem. Few novels (of whatever length) have either the clarity or value of this one.

 

Two years have passed since John Turner (Cypress Grove & Cripple Creek) witnessed the murder of his lover, Val Bjorn. Turner, ex-cop, ex-con and now acting sheriff of a small town on the edge of nowhere in rural Tennessee still mourns his loss. Sitting on bench along Main Street with his pal, Doc Oldham, the two men watch as a car piloted by Billy Bates the ne’er-do-well son of the former sheriff plows into the front of City Hall. The young driver dies from injuries sustained in the crash. What has Billy been up to in the months since he left Cypress Grove without a word to anyone? And why do two thugs from out-of-town attempt to kidnap his estranged wife? Turner’s banjo-playing friend, Eldon Brown, reappears as well. But Eldon’s barely one-step ahead of a Texas lawman who figures the black man to be responsible for the murder of an attorney down Arlington way.

 

A profound meditation on loss, on loyalty and on friendship, few authors could pack so much into such a slim volume. Missing much of what constitutes “action” in the genre today, Salt River nevertheless packs the kind of firepower that really counts – the kind that touches the heart and revitalizes the soul.

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*Down River

by John Hart

Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Minotaur  $24.95

ISBN 0-312-35931-4  October 2007                                     

 

* Full Review (Mystery News – October/November 2007)

                       

You can’t go home again. At least not if you’re Adam Chase and especially not if, five years earlier, you were tried and acquitted of a murder that everyone (including members of your own family) still believe you committed. But go home he does to Rowan County, North Carolina and to his family’s sprawling farm on the banks of the Yadkin River in response to a cryptic plea for help from his only remaining friend, the hard-living Danny Faith. Hours after returning from veritable exile in New York, however, Adam is beaten and his car has the word “killer” gouged into the hood. All that’s just a warm-up since Adam’s troubles only really begin when Faith’s body is discovered hidden in a ravine on the Chase property. You get three guesses as to whom the authorities pursue as their prime suspect. Not even Adam’s ex-girlfriend, Detective Robin Alexander, is sure what she thinks. And as for Adam’s influential father, well, the pair’s already strained relationship is just about ready to snap … with catastrophic force.

 

As Chase fights to clear his name and to discover the real reason behind his mother’s suicide nearly two decades ago, he unearths a family secret that, like slow-acting poison, has gradually sapped the life from his friends and relatives down through the years. Flowing like the often muddy waters of his beloved river through the middle of the Chase homestead, the alluvial deposit of the choices made years earlier hasn’t brought fertility or prosperity but desolation and ruin: “The river is my earliest memory. The front porch of my father’s house looks down on it from a low knoll, and I have pictures, faded yellow, of my first days on that porch. I slept in my mother’s arms as she rocked there, played in the dust while my father fished, and I know the feel of that river even now: the slow churn of red clay, the back eddies under cut banks, the secrets it whispered to the hard, pink granite of Rowan County. Everything that shaped me happened near that river. I lost my mother in sight of it, fell in love on its banks. I could smell it on the day my father drove me out. It was part of my soul.”  More than a few people are willing to kill in order to ensure that even those haunted, halting whispers are silenced.

 

John Hart’s first novel, King of Lies, was a New York Times bestseller. Down River is even better. Written with the lyrical grace and power of Raymond Chandler, this novel will also remind readers of Ross MacDonald. Indeed, although separated now by more than forty years and over two thousand miles, Hart and MacDonald traverse the same emotional terrain here … the foul-rag and bone-strewn mean streets of the human heart and the often sordid alleys of the ever-shifting modern American moral landscape. Couched as a thriller, Down River at its core is a novel about the power of the past to affect the present and the future – for good or ill. Loyalty, betrayal, retribution and the elusiveness of redemption are the key ingredients in a tale that will enervate and entertain at the same time. Both muscular and moving, the plot here is as multi-layered and labyrinthine as anything every created by MacDonald.Despite a small measure of melodrama – especially in the relationship between Adam and Robin Alexander – Hart is in full control all the way. The narrative possesses a fundamental coherence and plausibility. The dénouement is almost karmic in terms of its inevitability. The doom that befalls the House of Chase follows ineluctably, tragically even, from actions and decisions that were made years earlier. The novel simply could not have ended any other way. The moral ambiguity that attends much of the action in the story only adds to its overall depth and (especially) to its psychological profundity.

 

Riveting action, compelling characters and magnificent use of a powerful and picturesque setting all come together in a story that resonates on an archetypal level. Those elements almost guarantee that Down River will garner multiple award nominations at the end of the year; and rightfully so. Many authors write thrillers that aspire to the level of literature but which nonetheless fall woefully short. A very few others write literature that just happens also to make use of the thriller form. To that latter select group we can now add the name of John Hart.

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*Victory Square

by Olen Steinhauer

St. Martin’s Minotaur     $24.95

ISBN 0-312-36971-9   

  

(*Mystery News, October-November 2007)                    

 

Victory Square is the fifth novel and the concluding chapter in Olen Steinhauer’s marvelous series tracing the tumultuous history of an unnamed Eastern Bloc country from the 1940’s to the “soft” or “velvet” revolution which, in theory anyhow, brings democracy to that land in 1989. Each novel in the quintet focuses on one principal character who, in turn, then becomes a minor player in the next installment. In that way the structure of the entire opus parallels or mirrors the shifting perspectives and often non-linear narrative technique employed in each separate installment. Pretty nifty, no? Well, if you haven’t glommed onto this series yet you need to. Stenhauer is one talented comrade.

 

This time around the spotlight (or maybe I should say searchlight?) falls on Emil Brod, the policeman who was the protagonist in The Bridge of Sighs (2003). Days from retirement as chief of the People’s Militia, the old case that began Brod’s career forty-one years ago comes back to haunt him and to threaten the people (the very few people, I might add) that he loves. Half a century ago as a young and idealistic state functionary, Brod saw to the capture of a (socialist) revolutionary who was suspected of murder and kidnapping. His dogged (“all I’ve ever had is persistence”) pursuit of a man who was at the time a national hero led to that individual’s arrest, trial and ultimate exile to a labor camp. But every action has consequences and as Emil Brod soon discovers those consequences can be a very long time coming.

 

Victory Square is a stunning, utterly absorbing novel set against the chaotic and often murky backdrop of revolutionary politics. Like the other books in this series, it’s also a very difficult book to characterize. Steinhauer employs elements from any number of genres – the police procedural, the espionage novel, the political thriller – but he combines them in a manner that, in the end, transcends them all. Readers will no doubt be reminded of John LeCarré, Eric Ambler, Arthur Koestler and Graham Greene. Steinhauer is that good. At the same time he has nevertheless managed to craft a voice and a vision that is manifestly his own.

 

In the same way, the author builds his story on the superstructure of the events leading up to the Romanian Revolution of 1989. Yet those real historical events and details are used only as background, as the broad shapes and blurry shadows from which Steinhauer creates a tour de force of mythopoesis: “My piece of fictional real estate has always been the product of a Western imagination casting about for an image of the communist East”, the author writes in his Afterword, “influenced by all the countries I’ve come in contact with and guided more by my personal obsessions than by any historical exactitude.”

 

True to form, many of the characters from the previous novels in this series also play a role in this one as well. Gavra Noukias, Ferenic Kolyeszar, Jerzy Michalec and even Brano Sev, for example, figure in a story which is Byzantine in the extreme. Yet Steinhauer never serves up more than the attentive reader can handle. When all is said and done, however, it is primarily through the aging, brooding eyes of Emil Brod that we learn the degree to which our worst fears and darkest intimations about thenature of reality are in fact far more than merely paranoid delusions. “Good” and “Evil” do indeed exist, for example, but their reality is shifting, contingent and always problematic. All of our actions no matter how “private” or “personal,” ultimately have “political” implications. And the converse is also true; broader social forces impinge upon even the most intimate dimensions of our lives. “When your personal life runs so sharply into the life of your country, Brod concludes, “there’s no place to rest … stories like mine are not supposed to happen.” As Brod – and by extension, the reader – also discovers, truth itself is amorphous, plastic. What’s “true”, in other words, is what happens to be deemed most useful, most expedient, and most convenient by those in power at any given time.

 

Victory Square is a rich and rewarding novel as well as a spellbinding finale to one of the most remarkable and original series of novels written in the last decade. Truth may indeed be stranger than fiction but what makes Steinhauer’s vision so convincing, so disturbing, is the conclusion that, in the world of postmodern politics, the line between fiction and reality has been all but erased or, rather, reality is itself a species of fiction.

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Ammunition

by Ken Bruen

St. Martin’s Minotaur    $13.95

ISBN 0-312-34145-8                                     

August 2007      

(Full Review - Mystery News October/November 07)                                              

 

Who’s the biggest Ed McBain fan on the planet? Anyone who reads Ken Bruen’s iconoclastic novels featuring the exploits of the cops in the Southeast London Squad knows the answer to that question. It’s the incorrigible, irascible, nearly sociopathic DS Brant. Imagine Brant’s mood therefore when he hears of McBain’s death. Pissed off doesn’t even begin to tell the story. So it is then that the good Sergeant finds himself seated at the bar in his favorite pub as Ammunition, the seventh offering in this series, opens: “Brant was on his third whiskey, knocking it back like a good un. He was feeling real bad … and nothing could ease the loss he felt. He muttered: ‘Fuck’. The barman, highly attentive to Brant’s needs, asked: ‘Yes’? Brant gave him the graniteeyes, said: ‘I want something, you’ll know.” Moments later the pub door opens. In walks some bloke with a gun. Before you can say “Fat Ollie,” the guy empties the magazine in the general direction of Brant. The policeman is hit, but it’ll take more than one guy with a gun to bring him down. If you thought Brant was angry when he heard the news about his literary hero, wait till you see what he’s like when he gets out of the hospital. If revenge is a dish best served cold then DS Brant is the iceman and he friggin’ cometh!

 

The question in Ammunition is not “if” Brant will get his man but “when” and “how.” That, and just how much damage he will do to his colleagues in the process. I mean, let’s face it; there’s no way you could assembly a more dysfunctional group of cops in one place. The Southeast London nick is like the 87th Precinct on crack. (And I’m willing to bet that’s just the identification Bruen intends his readers to make). The Chief Superintendent is only upset because Brant survived. DI Roberts, Brant’s sometime partner, is just surprised that it took someone this long to take a serious run at the guy. With Brant’s “help” – and with Brant there is no such thing as a “free lunch” – WPC Falls has just passed the sergeants’ exam. Before she can even celebrate her stripes an old friend pays her a visit; remember Angie James the whack job from Vixen (2005)? Well, she’s out of prison and wants to settle a few old scores. The only person vicious enough and smart enough to take her on is Brant but is Falls willing to sell her soul to the devil for some help? This time around, for sure, that’s what it will take. Finally, Porter Nash, the squad’s openly gay officer and, remarkably, the person closest to Brant, gets roped in by a gung-ho anti-terrorist expert from Texas. Before you can say “Yippee-ki-yay, Motherfucker,” Nash is fighting for his professional life. All in a day’s work for the cops in a London no tourist should ever see.

 

With an ensemble cast, multiple plot lines and absolutely lethal staccato prose, Ammunition is Bruen at his mordant best. The madness and mayhem that ensues in its pages all butdisguises the sharp social critique leveled by the author. In Bruen’s postmodern calculus, theline between good and evil, right and wrong has been nearly obliterated. In order to survive the cops need to be even more vicious, more ruthless than the criminals they pursue. “Not for the first time,” DS Falls wonders, “what the fuck happened to her once bright vision of police work, some skewered notion of righting wrongs, doing the best you could, and all that good Oprah crap.” All that matters these days, alas, are results, the bottom line. In the meantime, anarchy basically reigns on the street. For all of that, it’s not the violence or even the amoral ethos that’s most disturbing when you read Bruen. What really gets to you is the gnawing suspicion that this is more than fiction. As you read you keep trying to convince yourself that things really aren’t that bad. But then you pick up the newspaper or watch the news and you begin to think, maybe this Celtic lunatic is onto something after all.

 

Not to worry, however, on its most basic level Ammunition is another high-octane romp through the mean streets of Southeast London with one of the most entertaining tour guides working in the genre today. Slowly but surely Ken Bruen is doing for the police procedural in the 21st century what McBain did for it in the 20th … taking it to another level entirely. You’ll be safe enough as long as you don’t start peeking around the corner or poking through the rubbish with your shoe. If you do that, well, you just might catch a glimpse of the abyss that lies waiting there just beneath the surface. And as a man that’s been there and come back ... for real! … it’s the abyss that most interests Bruen.

 

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