American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson

Published by Random House on February 12, 2019

American Spy is a mixture of domestic drama and spy thriller. Much of its focus is on the difficult childhood and questionable parenting that shaped its protagonist, Marie Mitchell, and on Marie’s problematic relationship with her mother. Surrounding those domestic problems is a plot that follows Marie’s short career with the FBI and as a contractor working against the interests of a politician in Burkina Faso.

The novel begins in Connecticut in 1992. An attempt to kill Marie in her sleep doesn’t end well for the assassin. Two days later, using fake passports, she moves her two sons to Martinique, where her mother was born and is currently living.

After a day, Marie begins writing a journal so that her children, who believe their father died in a war, will one day understand the truth about her mother’s life. Most of the story consists of that journal. Do mothers who write extended explanations to their children include dialog and atmosphere? Maybe literature professors do, but not FBI agents who have been trained to stick to the facts and produce the dullest prose imaginable. I didn’t buy the journal concept, although most of the time it is easy to ignore the fact that the story is not told in a conventional narrative.

Marie’s story starts in New York, when in 1987 she is asked to leave the FBI so that she can work as a temporary contractor for the CIA. But Marie’s backstory dates to her childhood in Queens, where her father was a cop. Her interest in espionage may have been born when her 13-year-old sister confidently announced her intent to become a spy, showing no concern that her race might be a barrier to joining the intelligence community. Helene was always the braver, less timid sister, and it was Helene who encouraged Marie to follow in her footsteps. Some of the novel’s backstory follows Marie’s aborted relationship with Helene during their adulthood, as well as Helene’s romantic relationship with Daniel Slater. That relationship leads to revelations that become a turning point later in the story.

By 1987, the FBI had proven itself to be more lawless than the organizations upon which it spied, including its role in the murder of Fred Hampton while he slept. Marie has little love for her employer and is pleased to be asked to help gather intelligence about Burkina Faso while its president, Thomas Sankara, is in New York. The long-term goal is to influence the country’s elections with a political party America controls — the CIA’s version of “true democracy.” Marie has little interest in American expansionism, and even less in sleeping with Sankara in exchange for an obscene amount of money, but in the belief that she can outwit both her handler and Sankara, she accepts the assignment in order to pursue an agenda of her own.

The main plot follows Marie’s relationship with Sankara as she tries to sort through how she feels about his charismatic condemnation of imperialism and his flirtation with authoritarianism, how she feels about the CIA’s attempt to use her, and how she feels about the revelations mentioned above. The pace is deliberate but the story is so rich in detail that it never becomes dull. The plot holds a nice surprise although not the sort of surprise that has become conventional in spy novels.

The decision to emphasize domestic drama might put off some spy novel fans but it might also appeal to domestic drama fans who typically avoid spy novels. I wouldn’t herald Lauren Wilkinson as the second coming of John le Carré, as have some people who blurbed the book, but Wilkinson’s fresh take on spy novels has some appeal. I appreciated its focus on a country that is rarely in the news and on the way in which private companies meddle in foreign affairs with America's under-the-table blessing, not to promote democracy but to increase private wealth. Apart from the novel’s other merits, I also appreciated Wilkinson’s graceful prose.

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Waiting for Bojangles by Olivier Bourdeaut

Published in France in 2015; published in translation by Simon & Schuster on March 19, 2019

Waiting for Bojangles is a whimsical celebration of living, of crazy love, and of “Mr. Bojangles,” the Jerry Jeff Walker song that so perfectly captures the grief and joy that defines a life. The narrator’s family dances every day to Nina Simone’s rendition of the song, sometimes forgetting to eat, often with the guests who fill their rooms above a grocery store or their vacation castle in Spain, joined by their pet crane, Mr. Superfluous.

Most of the story is told by a son who describes growing up with eccentric parents and the lascivious senator who lived with them. His father George gives his mother a new name every day, Yvonne or Hortense or whatever suits him; his mother gives her son a freshly scented glove every day so that her hand will always guide him. Occasional passages appear from George’s notebooks, giving the reader a slightly different perspective of the family.

The mother has taught her son to believe that “etiquette was the main guardrail in life” and “a lack of manners put you at other people’s mercy.” She believes that “aesthetic balance” is more important than conventional education, so the son misses school when the almond trees come into bloom. Conflicts with teachers lead to his early retirement from school, giving Olivier Bourdeaut an opportunity to explore creative ideas for home schooling, all of which are more fun than being ridiculed by a teacher for having been instilled with an unconventional view of life by a mother who “thumbs her nose at reality.”

Waiting for Bojangles is in part a love story, a story of enduring devotion. The family never opens its mail, which leads both to freedom and tax debt. It is the latter that triggers even more bizarre behavior in the narrator’s mother, such as a nude stroll to the grocer for mussels. George frets that she is losing her mind and doesn’t know where to find it. Yet George knows he cannot live without her love, and if it is crazy love, “that craziness belongs to me, too.”

The characters are eccentric because they make it a point to enjoy life and don’t much care how they are judged. Bourdeaut’s writing style is as whimsical as the story, featuring a random rhyming scheme. For example: “The object of my dread has now hit us in the head, along with fire and brimstone, right in our own home.” Some of the rhymes are forced, but that might be an artifact of translation.

The story, like the song “Mr. Bojangles,” is both happy and sad, the sadness deriving from the realization that someone as joyful as the mother is not equipped to live in a society that prefers to medicate the mentally ill until they have no personality rather than tolerating a personality that cannot easily be understood. Yet mental illness takes a toll on families and the novel does not pretend otherwise. The story’s lesson, I think, is that joy and sorrow are inseparable, that both are fundamental to life.

The book, like the song and like life, is short. Waiting for Bojangles reminds us to embrace joy while we can during a life that will end too soon. The story is such a joy to read that the importance of its message might be lost in the laughter.

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Cheer Up, Mr. Widdicombe by Evan James

Published by Atria Books on March 26, 2019

The Widdicombe family is “a sociable clan” grappling with the “curse of success.” Its members spend their days happily bickering with each other. Carol Widdicombe presides over their summer home on Bainbridge Island, a home she desperately wants to see featured in an interior design magazine. Her husband Frank’s usual state of depression has deepened because his annual trip to France, a reunion of college friends that he views as therapeutic, has been cancelled.

Frank responds by throwing himself in to a new project, writing a disjointed self-help workbook he calls The Widdicombe Way. Chapters include “On Putting on a Few Pounds” and “The Company of Cats.” Frank’s thoughts are less than profound but all the funnier for their randomness.

Frank is a retired sports psychologist. His son Christopher is also depressed, primarily because he is not in Italy playing with his older Albanian boyfriend. Christopher is unhappy that his parents are so tolerant and loving. To market his watercolors, he must pretend that he is the victim of “disgrace and loveless rejection.” In reality, his parents accept that he is gay in the same way they accept pretty much everything.

Bradford Dearborne, a “carefree loafer,” is a guest of the Widdicombes on a trip to borrow money from his father, a coffee mogul in Seattle. His father has financed Bradford’s screenwriting efforts for a year. Bradford partied in LA but made little progress on his horror film, and his father seems unreceptive to renewing his financial support. While Bradford sulks at the Widdicombes, he finds himself quite taken by Michelle Briggs, Carol’s assistant.

Other notable characters include a self-help guru who happens to be Carol’s best friend (Gracie advocates “decorating for enlightenment” and making a home into a “creativity shrine”), a gardener named Marvelous, and a gay Dane who is Michelle’s best friend. Each character benefits from a quirky but believable personality. The narrative flits from character to character, giving each due attention without lingering long on one character’s story before landing on another.

The novel finds fertile ground for humor in America’s self-help obsession. Self-help is a popular and deserving target of ridicule in comic novels. One problem with self-help, as the book illustrates, is that it distracts from actual living. Another is that the people who dispense self-help advice often have a tenuous grip on reality. But people like to be told they are sick so that they can learn the cure — or so one of the characters believes.

While its relationship humor is not as sharp as its self-help satire, Cheer Up, Mr. Widdicombe is an amusing domestic comedy. In the tradition of literary novels that emphasize characterization at the expense of plot, the novel doesn’t have much of a story to tell or even much of a point. It ends without resolving any of the questions it raises about how life might turn out for the various characters. Bradford all but disappears; other characters hang about but are little changed from the novel’s beginning to its end. For readers who won't be put off by a story that has no resolution, the novel's value lies both in its gentle wit and in its modest insights into unconventional characters who struggle to find purpose in their charmed lives.

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Creation Machine by Andrew Bannister

First published in the UK in 2016; published by Tor Books on March 5, 2019

Creation Machine takes world-building to the level of galaxy-building. The Spin consists of 89 artificial worlds and a number of artificial suns that seem to have been created as a joke. As is true of all good galaxies, the fun planets are fairly lawless while the boring planets are tightly controlled. Taussich is among the planets of the Cordern, the six innermost planets at the center of the Spin. Taussich has established a five-planet protectorate controlled by the Patriarch, whose advisor/enforcer (because every dictator needs a Darth Vader) is Alameche, a sadistic and Machiavellian Head of Security who does most of the Patriarch’s thinking and all of his killing.

Taussich would like to have a greater role in the Hegemony, which dominates the worlds of the Inner Spin. The Hegemony is repressive — it doesn’t like artificial beings or artificially enhanced humans, nor is it tolerant of free thought. Its rigidity has not yet spread to Catastrophe (where a couple of planets once collided, creating from rubble the Catastrophe Curve) although it is expanding its reach to the Outer Spin.

Taussich all but destroyed the protectorate’s fifth planet in order to bring it within its protective fold. Certain powerful interests took notice but decided to leave the barbarians alone until they learned that Taussich discovered an artifact on the planet it most recently plundered. The artifact may be an apocalyptic weapon, although the humans on Taussich have no clue what it is. A mechanistic representative of the powerful interests, Machiavellian in its own right, comes to Taussich to assert dominion over the artifact.

A good bit of work and imagination went into the novel’s background. I’ve only described the basics, but there are enough planets and aliens here to power a television series for several seasons. Of course, a novel needs plot and characters in addition to ideas and atmosphere, something certain sf writers tend to forget. Fortunately, Andrew Bannister delivers an entertaining story with a nice mix of likable and despicable characters.

Fleare Haas begins the novel as a prisoner, one of the few survivors of a group that challenged the Hegemony. Fleare’s father is a rich bastard who has a powerful position in the Hegemony. Fleare rebelled against her evil father — hence her imprisonment. Fortunately, Fleare’s former lover Muz is still alive. Perhaps less fortunately, Muz now exists as a cloud of nano-machines. He’s handy in a fight, but maybe not a girl’s dream date.

There are plenty of fights and chases and adventures as Fleare reconnects with a couple more members of the old rebel group on an anarchistic planet, then tries to stay free and alive. Eventually the story shifts away from Fleare and refocuses on Alameche’s scheming.

During the late chapters that take place on Taussich, we learn something about the nature of the artifact. Not coincidentally, we also learn something about why the novel is titled Creation Machine. There is clearly more to learn, and the path to discovery will presumably extend into the rest of Bannister’s Spin Trilogy. Those have been published in the UK and I’m guessing Tor will soon market them in the US.

As the first novel in a trilogy, the story doesn’t really end, although a few of the characters do. Some of the dangling threads are perplexing, as is the nature of one of its surviving characters. The novel avoids a cliffhanger but the reader will need to move on to the next book as the first one cannot be read as a self-contained story. I don’t mind doing that because it would be a shame to waste all that galaxy building on a single novel.

The story’s political intrigue is fairly standard for science fiction (or world history texts, for that matter) but the greater intrigue lies in the artifact. We get only a glimmer of its nature and purpose, enough of a teaser to invite interest in a full development of the concept. Given the Bannister’s fluid writing style and his ability to integrate detailed story elements with fast-paced action, I look forward to seeing what happens next.

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Treason by Rick Campbell

Published by St. Martin's Press on March 19, 2019

Treason is the fifth novel in Rick Campbell’s Trident Deception series. The only other one I’ve read is the third, Ice Station Nautilus. I enjoyed that one because I’m a sucker for submarine novels. Happily, there are submarines in Treason, although submarine fans will need to wait until Chapter 12 to voyage below the surface of the sea. The two series entries I’ve read share some central characters, but can easily be read as stand-alone novels.

The focus is on National Security Advisor Christine O’Connor, with whom Russia’s post-Putin president would like to have an affair. Since Christine killed some important Russians in an earlier novel, the president’s libidinous intent is unsettling to other members of the Russian government, who believe that justice requires Christine to be assassinated before the president has a chance to get her into bed. Fortunately for Christine, they aren’t the president. Unfortunately for Christine, sleeping with Russia’s president does not occupy a position on her bucket list, and she has been invited to his summer home for what the president hopes will be a tryst. What’s a National Security Advisor to do? Détente between the sheets?

Christine is still peeved at a SEAL named Jake Harrison because, after she twice rejected his proposals, he promised to wait for her, then stopped waiting after ten years. Don’t promises like that come with an automatic expiration date? Before the novel is over, Christine will have another unreasonable reason to be angry with Harrison.

Before that soap opera unfolds, a group of Russian military leaders plot an unsanctioned act involving a secret weapon that, they believe, will cripple NATO and allow Russia to reclaim Ukraine, the Baltic States, and half of Poland. Their success requires them to get Russia’s president out of the way until he is on board with the plot or dead, whichever is most convenient. Unfortunately for Christine, she has a front row view of the coup. The coincidence that once again places Christine at the heart of the action is a bit contrived and the secret weapon isn’t all that believable, but thrillers often require the suspension of disbelief, so I rolled with it.

Other aspects of Treason are also a bit of a stretch — particularly a SEAL invasion of Russia's Ministry of Defense, which didn’t strike me as even remotely plausible — but after the initial set-up, the novel sustains such a rapid pace that the reader won’t have time to wonder whether the story is credible. Sometimes plausibility gives way to enjoying the action on multiple fronts. Christine and Russia’s president try to stay a step ahead of the Russian plotters who want to kill them; the American president and his team try to figure out why America’s military technology has fallen under Russian control; and the submarine sends a Navy SEAL team into Russia on a rescue mission before engaging in an undersea battle against a bunch of Russian subs. Fun stuff.

Campbell doesn’t put much effort into characterization, but Treason works well as a military action novel. Even with SEALs running around, the emphasis isn’t on tough guys being tough. A female protagonist who isn’t in the military and who manages to be tough without having a tough guy persona makes the story more interesting than testosterone-laden action stories. Given my fascination with submarine novels, I particularly enjoyed the detailed submarine chapters, but I recommend Treason to anyone who enjoys military thrillers or fast moving action stories.

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