A Most Wanted Man by John le Carré

Published in the UK and by Scribner in the US in 2008

There is no more observant student of human nature than John le Carré. He explores the spaces between what people say and what they leave unsaid. He examines motivations, which are so often failings: an aging man’s irrational devotion to a young woman; an aging woman’s loyalty to a bond that never existed; bureaucracies at war with each other and bureaucrats at war with their souls. His protagonists are keenly aware of their shortcomings and often think of how their lives could have, or should have, turned out differently. So it is with Tommy Brue.

Brue is a private banker in Hamburg, having inherited and then moved the bank he inherited from his father. Brue also inherited some questionable accounts that his father created to hold wealth smuggled from the collapsing Soviet Union.

A lovely and lively young lawyer for a charitable organization gives Brue an account number that was given to her by Issa, who got it from his father, who got it from Brue’s father. Issa is from Chechnya and has spent time in a Turkish prison. He managed a harrowing journey to Hamburg despite being wanted by law enforcement agencies in several countries.

To determine whether Issa is entitled to funds that Brue would prefer his father had never accepted, Brue must delve into Issa’s identity and history. John le Carré develops not just Issa’s story, but the story of Chechnya — the home of Issa’s mother, who was raped at fifteen by Issa’s Russian father. Issa looks to Brue for protection rather than money, but Brue is not in the protection business. Brue is in the uncomfortable position of addressing moral questions rather than banking questions. If (unlike his father) Brue insists that legal formalities be followed, Issa will likely be deported and then will certainly be tortured, by Turks or Russians or others.

Brue is typical of John le Carré protagonists, particularly in his later work. Brue suspects his wife is cheating on him but doesn’t want to know. He runs from difficulties, preferring avoidance to confrontation. His social behavior is proper but he is incapable of expressing true feelings. He behaves prudently during an uneventful life until the time comes to choose between cautious behavior and meaningful but dangerous action. When he makes the choice, he isn’t entirely sure why. He is energized by a young woman who ignites, if not lust exactly, an opportunity for self-examination.

Issa’s lawyer, Annabel Richter, is also typical of le Carré in that her character is complex and conflicted. She views Issa as “her tutor in unbearable pain and hope.” She has learned from failure — hers as a lawyer, or the legal system’s — that a time would come when she would break all the rules for a client. Issa is that client.

The other key character, apart from Issa, is Gunther Bachman, a German intelligence officer stationed in Hamburg as punishment for his sins. One of his people sees that Sweden has identified Issa as an escaped prisoner from Turkey who gave the slip to Swedish authorities. Bachman works out that Issa may be coming to Hamburg. He then finds himself in a bureaucratic nightmare as British intelligence, the CIA, and his German superiors engage in a turf war.

Issa is far from a terrorist. He wants nothing to do with violence or his father’s wealth, which he regards as ill-gotten and thus in violation of Islamic law. He wants only to pursue a career in medicine. The plot focuses on how the fighters in the war on terror are at war with humanity in their willingness to sacrifice the innocent, all to make doubtful gains in their efforts to thwart terror. Some readers might see the novel as cynical; I viewed it as honest. As always, John le Carré tells a good story and creates characters who stay with the reader long after the last page is turned.

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Atmosphæra Incognita by Neal Stephenson

First published in 2013; published by Subterranean Press on July 31, 2019

Atmosphæra Incognita first appeared in Starship Century, a 2013 anthology devoted to interstellar travel edited by James and Gregory Benford. Neal Stephenson uses the term “Atmosphæra Incognita” to describe a place “that, hidden from earthlings’ view by thunderheads, stretches like an electrified shoal between us and the deep ocean of the cosmos.” It is, he imagines, a dangerous place to dwell.

The narrator of this novella is a commercial real estate agent who is tasked with finding property for her wealthy friend Carl. He wants to build a steel tower, 20 km high. Most of the story addresses the logistics of building a tower that reaches into the stratosphere. The story is reasonably interesting even to those of us who don’t have engineering degrees.

Stephenson gives the narrator the rudiments of a personality. Her description of Carl suggests that he might have more personality than she does, but this isn’t a character-driven story. The most dramatic moment concerns an atmospherically endangered human near the story’s end. Most of the story’s drama, however, resides in the creation of a seemingly impossible-to-build structure and the creative solutions that designers devise to keep the tower standing in the face of menacing winds and upward traveling lightning strikes known as superbolts.

I’m not an engineering geek, but I thought Atmosphæra Incognita was surprisingly interesting. That’s a tribute to Stephenson, who took a break from writing science fiction epics to pen this novella. It is now available to readers who don’t want to track down Starship Century.

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The Last Astronaut by David Wellington

Published by Orbit on July 23, 2019

The Last Astronaut is a first contact novel. Early in the story, the contact kills an astronaut. If you have seen any of the Alien movies, you’re familiar with the concept. Fortunately, although the novel feels like a patchwork of ideas borrowed from Alien and Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama and a couple of Star Trek episodes, the story offers a moderate measure of fun for readers, particularly those who don’t read much science fiction and are not put off by the absence of fresh ideas.

The story begins in the past. Sally Jansen is the mission commander of a crew traveling to Mars when something goes wrong. She jettisons a part of the ship to save the rest of it, killing a crew member and aborting the mission. Whether Sally is a hero for saving the ship and the rest of the crew or a failure for allowing a death divides opinion at NASA.

About 20 years later, Sunny Stevens is working for a private NASA competitor when he observes an object approaching Earth that has spontaneously started to slow. His employer doesn’t seem to care, so he quits and goes to work for NASA. Parminder Rao, an astrobiologist, is pulled from her project and assigned to the discovery. Sally Jansen is recruited to join the team, returning to NASA after a long absence. Windsor Hawkins is added as the representative from Space Force. The astronauts are sent to make first contact with what is assumed to be an alien vessel. They actually make second contact, as a ship launched by Stevens’ former employer beats them to the prize.

The dual themes of The Last Astronaut will be familiar to science fiction fans. First, our ignorance is vast. Any aliens that humans encounter are likely to be truly alien. Making assumptions based on our limited knowledge of how things work on Earth is more likely to impede than to assist understanding. Second, the tendency of hawks in or out of the military is to kill anything they don’t understand, and that tendency will certainly assert itself in any first contact with aliens.

The secret of the alien ship is revealed a bit more than halfway through the novel. Science fiction fans will have guessed that secret in the novel’s early pages (again, the concept is far from original) but the real question is what our intrepid space travelers will do once they learn the truth. Their actions are predictable, but they keep the story moving. The ending is so artificially upbeat that I didn’t buy it. Some of the action on the way to the ending is nevertheless entertaining in an unchallenging, summer beach read way.

A few details of the story don’t make much sense. For example, the description of its airlocks is difficult to reconcile with what we learn about the nature of the alien ship. More problematic are the melodramatic efforts to bolster Jansen’s heroism. The novel drags when expository sections remind the reader of Jansen’s fears and courage. At several points I was muttering “just get on with it.” About 20% of The Last Astronaut could have been trimmed. Even then, the story would not be meaty, but it would have been a better action/adventure novel if its efforts to make the reader feel sympathy for Jensen had been less forced.

If you want to read an action/adventure novel with science fiction trappings and you don’t mind stock characters, you might enjoy The Last Astronaut. If you have read a fair amount of science fiction, you won’t find anything fresh here.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Black Sun by Owen Matthews

Published by Doubleday on July 23, 2019

Major Alexander Vasin is a former homicide investigator from the Moscow police who is now a KGB agent. In 1961, Vasin is sent to Arzamas-16, a city that does not officially exist, to investigate a physicist’s death. Fyodor Petrov was working on the development of a new bomb when he died from ingesting a radioactive substance. The local KGB pronounced the death a suicide. The Politburo is not convinced.

Vasin encounters obstacles as he investigates. Scientists proclaim themselves too busy to speak to him. The local KGB officer in charge insists that Vasin confirm the death as a suicide and go home. Yet there are secrets being kept and Vasin has been tasked by his boss in Moscow to uncover them. His mandate gives him power, but he suspects that he will be in danger if he pushes too far.

Vasin has a secret of his own, involving his boss’ wife. That secret seems destined to come out after Vasin's wife learns about his affair. If she doesn’t expose him directly, the fact that the KGB listens to every phone conversation in Russia may eventually be Vasin’s undoing.

The plot of Black Sun is built on intrigue, deception, and betrayal. The mystery — who killed Petrov and why? — is a good one. Owen Matthews sets up a range of suspects who might have a motive and places them against an overlapping backdrop of characters who have an incentive to send Vasin home with the crime unsolved. Any distraction from the goal of building and testing the ultimate weapon is unwelcome.

The retrospective look at the arms race is interesting not just for its potential impact on humanity, but because it immunized Soviet nuclear scientists from the constraints that governed the lives of most Soviet citizens. The scientists have access to “subversive” music and literature that are forbidden to most. The sense the scientists have of being a privileged and untouchable elite adds interest to Vasin’s investigation.  

Black Sun dramatizes the risks that politicians take with human lives when they order scientists to design and test nuclear weapons, risks that necessarily have unintended consequences, as the United States learned when it destroyed Bikini Atoll. The story, Matthews tells us in an afterword, is based on the reality of a bomb that Soviet scientists feared might set the world’s atmosphere on fire. A bomb with reduced power that the Soviets eventually tested shattered windows in countries 900 kilometers from the test site. The bomb’s inventor, Andrei Sakharov, lobbied the Soviet Union to enter into the first Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

The characterization of Vasin as a man who believes himself to be a swamp dweller, undeserving of happiness, is suitable both to a noir novel and to the setting. The oppressive atmosphere of Soviet Russia pervades the story in chilling detail. Informers advance their careers by denouncing the innocent. Patriotism is measured by loyalty to people who hold power rather than loyalty to country. Survival depends on sacrificing principles. In a society where everything is relative, a world of lies where there is no room for moral purity, Vasin does his best to tell good lies that will make incremental improvements in the lives of those who are engulfed by Soviet darkness.

The story is tight and the resolution of the mystery is satisfying. Vasin finds a way to do justice (of a sort) without doing more harm than is necessary. Vasin has a bit in common with Arkady Renko and Bernie Gunther, two noir icons who pursue justice in unjust societies. If Vasin goes on to have a series of adventures behind the Iron Curtin — the next one is set up in the last chapter — the series will likely be one that Renko and Gunther fans will want to follow.

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The Bouncer by David Gordon

Published by Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press on August 7, 2018

The Bouncer is a fun, fast-moving, light-hearted thriller. The premise is that the FBI and the NYPD are coming down hard on criminal organizations in New York because their anti-terrorism details can’t catch any actual terrorists, so going after organized crime (on the contrived theory that their money laundering and drug dealing somehow abets terrorism) is the next best thing. To get back to business as usual, mob boss Gio Caprisi offers to help the FBI catch terrorists in exchange for leaving his businesses alone. That sounds like something that could easily happen, given the uneasy history of coziness between the FBI and the Mafia.

Meanwhile, Joe Brody is working as a bouncer at one of Gio’s places. He gets involved with a robbery (ripping off some arms dealers) that goes wrong, but he manages to rescue a fellow criminal from the clutches of an attractive FBI agent. That gets him invited to help with another caper, this time stealing a sample of a new perfume from a vault. Or at least that’s what he thinks he’s stealing. That crime also goes wrong in a way that proves there is no honor among thieves.

Bouncers have a good bit of down time when the strippers aren’t on stage. Joe uses his time productively by committing crimes, evading law enforcement, and reading classic literature. Eventually, Gio has him take on some terrorists.

David Gordon writes action scenes in a cinematic style. He gives Joe the kind of personality that a criminal protagonist should have — flawed, a bit beyond concerns about society’s norms, but fundamentally decent when it counts. Other characters, particularly the FBI agent who gets under Joe’s skin, have enough personality to make them interesting.

This novel is the first in the “Joe the Bouncer” series. Fans of intelligent, action-driven crime novels will likely enjoy it. I look forward to reading the second installment.

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