All Fall Down by James Brabazon

First published in the UK in 2020; published by Berkley on February 2, 2021

It is the nature of espionage that things are not always as they appear. That is also the basis for many espionage novels, including All Fall Down.

Frank Knight gives Max McLean what seems to be an easy assignment. Travel to a cottage in “the wild country of Donegal” and kill “an Old IRA man” named Chappie Connor. After two days of surveillance, Max enters the cottage and pulls the trigger, only to make three discoveries: first, his victim is already dead; second, the dead man is holding a hundred-dollar bill bearing the word Archangel written in Cyrillic; and third, whoever killed Connor is now trying to kill Max. One shootout and explosion later, Max is swimming for his life.

Max doesn’t know what’s up, but he pretends to have lost the C-note while swimming. That swim and the preceding shootout is the first of many action scenes in All Fall Down. I often think that action scenes work better in movies than novels, but James Brabazon writes them with such cinematic detail that the shootouts, explosions, and chases — culminating with a shootout during a chase while riding a racehorse in the midst of explosions — are just as exciting as they would be on a big screen.

Max decides to check in with his oldest friend, Doc Levy. What he finds haunts him for the rest of the novel. When Knight calls Max in Levy’s house and tells him to run, Max barely has time to wonder how Knight knew his whereabouts before he’s engaged in the novel’s second high-action scene.

Max quickly determines that the British, the Russians, the Americans, and the Israelis all want to get their hands on the hundred-dollar bill. They’re willing to shoot up a bar and kill everyone in it (and each other) to get a chance to go through Max’s pockets.

There’s nothing for it but to investigate the provenance of the bill and the Russian word Archangel. That investigation brings him to a forger, to an information broker, and to a young math genius named Bhavneet (“Baaz”) Singh. Max has a momentary moral dilemma after he saves Baaz from the novel’s fourth or fifth shootout (this one in the Catacombs beneath Paris), only to come close to killing him before deciding that Baaz’s math skills might be useful.

Max isn’t necessarily a deep thinker, but he at least reflects (when time permits) before he kills, which elevates him above the average thriller protagonist. He spends most of the novel wondering why so many people are trying to kill him over a hundred-dollar bill, only to learn that some of the players are not who he believed them to be. In the meantime, he learns something about quantum computers and algorithms and a lot of jargon that sounded good to me, as someone who vaguely grasps the concept of anything that begins with the word “quantum” but soon gets lost in the details.

If you can believe that Max can survive an endless series of shootouts and explosions — and you need to believe that to enjoy most action novels — then All Fall Down tells a reasonably credible story. The plot twists are surprising, as befits a spy novel. The world hopping (Ireland, Paris, Israel, Russia) is interesting and the characters are developed with all the personality they need. As spy novels of the action variety go, All Fall Down offers more thrills than most.

RECOMMENDED

The Unwilling by John Hart

Published by St. Martin's Press on February 2, 2021

The best thriller I’ve read in this young year will certainly be among the best of the full year. The Unwilling mixes the strong characterization of fine literature with an absorbing plot and the escalating tension that thriller fans crave.

The story is set during the Vietnam War. It focuses on two brothers. A third brother, Robert, was killed in the war. Robert’s death prompted his twin, Jason, to join the Marines. He became something of a legend but the military made him a scapegoat. Dishonorably discharged and addicted to heroin, Jason soon did a stint in prison, where his fighting skills caught the attention of X, a serial killer on death row who uses wealth and fear to control the warden and everyone who comes within his orbit. X employs killers of his own, including Reeves, who has a taste for young women.

Jason’s younger brother is Gibby. His father is a police detective and his mother, who has lost two sons (having written off Jason), is unbearably protective. Gibby is still coming of age and isn’t sure who he wants to be. When Jason comes back into his life after his release from prison, their parents fear that Gibby wants to become Jason. While Jason repeatedly tells Gibby not to follow in his path, he sends mixed signals, including bringing Gibby along to spend a raucous day with two young women, Tyra and Sara. Tyra teases prisoners on a bus during that trip, rude behavior that eventually brings Jason back to X’s attention.

When one of the women is tortured and murdered, Jason becomes the prime suspect, setting up the rest of the story. After the other woman disappears, some police detectives suspect Gibby’s involvement. Jason’s father is torn between his duty to the police and his love of his sons. Gibby never falters in his refusal to believe that Jason committed the murder. As Gibby and his loyal friend Chance begin a search for evidence to clear Jason, they face danger from the police and from the killer. Gibby’s father is then torn between his love of Jason and his need to protect Gibby from the man he fears Jason has become.

The story seems like it might be far-fetched, but John Hart makes every page seem real. This is a textured story, filled with small moments that evoke a variety of responses. The horror of discovering a woman who has been tortured and hung from chains is seen from the perspective of cops (and we’ve seen that before), but the aftermath is seen from the perspective of a troubled child who first discovered the body — a discovery that will likely shape his life. Those small moments help make the story memorable.

Hart’s ability to create conflict through the interaction of characters while avoiding melodrama is one of his strengths. The growing desperation felt by Gibby’s father, coupled with his growing realization that he’s not been a supportive father to Jason, is emotionally agonizing. Gibby’s internal struggle with his feeling about Jason and Chance’s struggle against life-defining fear are captivating. Hart deftly balances atmosphere and characterization with a plot that builds pace and tension until it races to a conclusion.

John Hart has grown as a writer over the years. Of the Hart novels I’ve read, The Unwilling stands as his best effort.

RECOMMENDED

Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

Published by Scribner on February 2, 2021

Milk Fed begins as a light novel about a woman struggling with an eating disorder. It becomes heavier and darker as it transforms into an exploration of sexual and religious identity. Add the eating issue and the novel is about self-acceptance in the face of societal or parental judgment.

Rachel works for a talent agency. She also performs one evening a week at a comedy club. In her dreams she receives wisdom from a rabbi. In her waking hours she sees a therapist to address her mother issues.

To her mother’s displeasure, Rachel indulged her sweet tooth as a young girl and got chubby. At sixteen, she compensated by eating too little and nearly becoming anorexic. Eventually she saw a nutritionist who balanced her so that she ate the right amount of healthy food. Now she counts calories obsessively. She also thinks about food (particularly sweets) obsessively. And she frets about her mother obsessively. Her therapist wants her to detox from her relationship with her mother because it is “emotionally unsafe.” That’s easier said than done.

Also to her mother’s displeasure, Rachel is either bisexual or a lesbian. She’s never had a sexual relationship with either gender that was completely satisfying. Early in the novel, Rachel develops a friendship with Miriam, who works in a yogurt shop. She’s not sure whether Miriam shares her interest in a physical relationship, but she allows Miriam to feed her decadent yogurt sundaes and high-calorie Chinese food. Rachel also consumes Shabbat meals at the home of Miriam’s parents. She thus experiences the pleasure of flavor but the frustration of weight gain, mixed with the pleasure of friendship and the fear of trying to move that friendship to a more intimate level.

Miriam is not by nature averse to having sex with a woman, but she resists her desire because her Orthodox parents will be less than pleased at her choice of partners. The relationship does eventually change. The later chapters are rather graphic in their description of that change, which I report not so much as a warning as an endorsement for readers who might enjoy graphic titillation. But Rachel eventually gets it on with a male client in violation of her employment agreement. That scene also leaves little to the imagination.

Sexual uncertainty might be a lesser conflict in the Rachel/Miriam relationship than religion. Rachel enjoys the time she spends with Miriam’s family, which seems more accepting of her than her own mother, but she also feels the need to avoid their judgment. She does not share their uncritical embrace of Israel and the occupation. When Rachel politely suggests that Palestinians might have legitimate grievances, Rachel’s mother reacts with knee-jerk hostility, accusing Rachel of self-hatred and betrayal. Rachel wonders what it means “to love a version of something that might not really exist — not as you saw it. Does this negate the love?” While she asks that question about Israel, it might also be asked about Rachel’s love of Miriam, a love that must be kept secret to avoid the judgment of Miriam’s mother.

Despite the novel’s exploration of self-image, sexuality, intolerance, and parental judgment, the story doesn’t bear an oppressive weight. This is journey of discovery. Rachel learns about herself by tasting the forbidden flavors of chocolate and sex. She lets down her barriers and becomes less uptight, less fearful of her desires. She doesn’t know if this new feeling is “surrender, freedom, or a total delusion that was ultimately going to hurt me.” It is certainly not without consequences, but experiencing consequences is a necessary condition of growth. The period of Rachel’s life that we see in Milk Fed is one of difficult change, but the Rachel who emerges is more confident and less fearful of the choices she will need to confront in the future.

RECOMMENDED

The Effort by Claire Holroyde

Published by Grand Central Publishing on January 12, 2021

The Effort begins as a pre-apocalyptic novel that images, perhaps correctly, humanity brewing its own destruction as soon as people fear the threat of destruction by an outside force. The novel is, in the end, the story of the Wayãpi, an indigenous people of French Guiana and Brazil. The ending is more interesting than the beginning. Unfortunately, The Effort takes too many dead-end detours before it finds a story worth telling.

The novel begins with a comet hurtling toward Earth, the premise of more than one “can the Earth be saved?” movie. The usual suspects, including scientists and a multi-lingual interpreter, gather on the equator to consider Earth-saving options, culminating in the usual plan to nuke the comet. Unfortunately, a rocket that can deliver the warhead can’t be developed before the launch deadline until, with an assist from left field, a rocket suddenly appears. That part of the story, involving a Chinese scientist who arguably betrays her country to save the planet, is too muddled to build dramatic tension.

In fact, the entire “save the planet” premise eventually fizzles out as the story follows other plotlines. One involves passengers on the final voyage of a Coast Guard vessel performing scientific research on a polar expedition. The ship is eventually recalled after everyone on Earth is panicking and killing each other in anticipation that the meteor will kill them anyway. Before it reaches port, however, the captain discharges a couple of passengers, allowing the lovers a chance to survive in isolation, for a time at least, if the meteor doesn’t kill them immediately. The ship’s captain ends up doing a survivalist bit in the Cascade Mountains as he searches for his family, but his character development is so belated that the reader has no investment in him when he finally becomes important. The captain encounters a legitimate survivalist but, thankfully, The Effort isn’t an addition to the horrid collection of survivalist novels. In any event, that story fizzles away as Claire Holroyde moves on to another plot thread.

The concept of mass panic should be exciting but Holroyde makes it into an abstraction. The story breaks the “show, don’t tell” rule by keeping food riots and hoarding in the background, usually reported on the news or, in one instance, observed by a kid using a telescope on the balcony of a high-rise that seems to have escaped looters. For the most part, it is easy to forget that the world is falling apart because the story is so unfocused.

Holroyde’s most interesting theme concerns the Wayãpi, rainforest dwellers whose habitat is threatened by global warming and other sources of pervasive environmental destruction. Not only are they well situated to avoid the rioting and loss of technology upon which the rest of the world depends, the meteor might actually save the Wayãpi by destroying all the corporations that were ravaging the rainforest for their own selfish interests. The possibility of karma adds an upbeat note to the story, although I wouldn’t call this an upbeat novel.

There is ample reason to be pessimistic about the world’s future and there’s no reason fiction shouldn’t reflect that pessimism. My complaint about The Effort is that the story is too scattered to carry any weight. The potential meteor strike is a springboard for story lines that go nowhere. The Coast Guard ship and its captain and the couple who strike out on their own all have their moments, but not enough moments to make it possible to care about the characters or their fate. Most of the characters who work to save humanity from the meteor eventually fade from the story and the effort to save the Earth almost becomes an afterthought.

My sense is that Holroyd's ambition exceeded her ability to manage the story. The novel’s drama is dispersed along storylines that make no contribution to a larger point, while the central drama — the hope of saving Earth from the meteor or the panic caused by impending doom — isn’t dramatic at all. In the end, only the story of the Wayãpi gives the novel a purpose, but all the other plotlines get in the way of the one that matters. I liked the Wayãpi story enough to give the novel a cautious recommendation but I didn’t like the novel well enough to recommend it without caution.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Prodigal Son by Gregg Hurwitz

Published by Minotaur Books on January 26, 2021

Prodigal Son is the sixth Orphan X novel. Gregg Hurwitz seems to have gained confidence in his material as the series has progressed. The early novels were a bit gimmicky, placing a routine, indestructible thriller hero in two overlapping roles: protector of the weak (along the lines of the Equalizer) and victim of a government plan to turn kids into deadly assassins (along the lines of Jason Bourne). The novels have steadily drifted away from those clichéd themes while developing the hero’s personality in greater depth. Prodigal Son is the best in the series so far and will probably be hard to top.

A man named Andre, working a dead-end security job at an impound lot, watches a man die in a way he can’t explain. The death is caused by an advanced military weapon. Andre doesn’t know that, but he knows enough to flee. Having been the only witness to a killing on U.S. soil committed with secret technology, Andre becomes a high value target of the weapon developer.

None of this should concern Evan Smoak, who has removed himself from the savior business he started while operating as the Nowhere Man. But Andre happens to know Evan’s mother, and Evan’s mother wants Evan to help Andre.

Wait, Orphan X has a mother? Yes, we learned that at the end of Into the Fire. Fans of the series will understand why Evan has some issues regarding his mother, but they reunite in Argentina and Even agrees to help Andre until he decides not to help him until he decides to help him again. Andre and Evan knew each other as orphaned children but Evan, who has an understandable coldness in his soul and an unfortunate superiority complex, views Andre as a loser until Evan’s ward Joey reminds him that compassion has greater value than smugness.

Other series characters return in Prodigal Son, including the formidable Orphan V, the dog who helps Joey embrace her soft side, and the neighbor who would like to be Evan’s girlfriend if he weren’t always running around the world and killing people. All of the collateral characters are growing into their individualized personalities (except fo the dog, who displays the constancy of a dog). I particularly enjoy Joey’s teenage snark. Andre promises to be a good addition to the cast.

It is Evan’s character development that sets Prodigal Son apart from most action novels. There’s plenty of action in a plot that has Evan infiltrating a military base (twice), dodging advanced weaponry, and using controlled violence to teach bullies that their actions have consequences. But the story is enhanced by Evan’s struggles to understand why his mother abandoned him, his recognition of the impact that abandonment had on his controlling and obsessive personality, and his realization that he needs to make some changes if he wants to live his best life.

Not all of Prodigal Son is credible, but that’s a charge that can be lodged against most modern thrillers. I was particularly unwilling to believe that the developer of secret technology for the military so easily consented to meet with Smoak (posing as a tech writer) and gave him a tour of classified projects. On the other hand, various technologies that appear in the story reflect impressive research by Hurwitz. They help the plot seem plausible.

The story ends with a cliff-hanger and with another link to Evan’s past that might be explored in a future novel. This is a series that I will continue reading regardless of cliff-hangers in the hope that Hurwitz can continue writing with the depth he has shown in recent Orphan X novels, and particularly in Prodigal Son.

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