The Right Side by Spencer Quinn

Published by Atria Books on June 27, 2017

Spencer Quinn is justly celebrated for his Chet and Bernie stories, which are light and amusing. The Right Side is dark and serious. About halfway through the book, however, a wonderful dog appears, although the dog isn’t Chet, who narrates the Chet and Bernie books. This dog, like the novel, is dark and serious. But she’s still a dog.

Readers who want a favorite author to write the same book over and over might dislike The Right Side. Readers who admire the ability and courage of a good writer who departs from a successful formula might like The Right Side even more than the Chet and Bernie novels.

Raised by a former Green Beret, LeAnne Hogan knows how to shoot. But she lost her shooting eye on a mission in Afghanistan and she has shrapnel embedded in her brain. Her memory is fuzzy as she recovers in Walter Reed, although she remembers the childhood that shaped her. As she recuperates, she has repeat visits from a psychiatrist and an Army intelligence officer, neither of whom she trusts.

LeAnne was in Afghanistan at the request of a female colonel who wanted her to join a team that would gather intelligence from Afghan women (on the dubious theory that women are more likely to talk to women). During the first third of the novel, LeAnne’s backstory alternates with her present, as she tries to cope with her injuries and memory loss, and with unexpected death, at Walter Reed and in her post-hospitalized life.

LeAnne’s experiences have changed her. Her injury has made it difficult for her to focus and to keep track of time. She’s become something of a bigot with regard to Americans of Middle Eastern ancestry. She’s gruff and short-tempered. She’s developed a sense of entitlement because of her military service and a sense of worthlessness because of her injury. In other words, she’s imperfect. That makes her interesting and realistic.

What happened on the mission that took her eye? LeAnne isn’t sure. The Captain from Army intelligence drops some hints, suggesting that there’s more to the story than LeAnne remembers. He keeps track of LeAnne as the story moves along, leaving the reader to wonder why he’s taking such an interest in her. And since LeAnne’s brain injury makes her a less than reliable narrator, part of the reader’s challenge is deciding whether LeAnne’s perceptions of reality are entirely accurate.

After this set-up, a dog appears. I’ll leave it to the reader to discover how that happens and the almost mythical role that the dog plays in LeAnne’s life, despite her general antipathy to dogs. Suffice it to say, it would be hard for a dog lover not to love this book.

A brief friendship at Walter Reed with a woman named Marci animates the rest of the novel, as LeAnne becomes embroiled in Marci’s past while trying to make sense of her own past and present. Other characters help or hinder Marci, but she would be largely directionless if it weren’t for the dog, who leads her in the directions that only make sense to dogs, but as dog lovers know, those directions often turn out to be the right ones.

Quinn honed his storytelling skills in the Chet and Bernie books, all of which I’ve enjoyed. He knows how to keep the story moving at a good pace without sacrificing characterizations or setting. As LeAnne moves around the country (and Afghanistan), Quinn always establishes a convincing sense of place. His supporting characters are convincing and, given the serious nature of the novel, LeAnne has more depth than Bernie (or Chet, for that matter).

A couple scenes in the book would be difficult to believe if not for the dog’s mythical quality. This is the sort of story that a reader believes because the reader wants to believe it, not because it’s particularly plausible. That Quinn made me believe the unlikely is one reason I loved The Right Side. LeAnne’s character development and the dog story are the other reasons. The twin mysteries (what happened in Afghanistan? what happened to a kid who goes missing midway through the story?) are entertaining enough, but this is a novel I admire for reasons other than the plot.

RECOMMENDED

Zero Sum by Barry Eisler

Published by Thomas & Mercer on June 27, 2017

John Rain is back in Tokyo during the Reagan years, looking for work. A Russian named Victor has monopolized the assassination business. Rain’s friend Miyamoto introduces him to Victor, with the understanding that Rain will replace Victor if he can take Victor out of the game. Rain also gets an informational assist from his cop buddy Tatsu. All of that adds up to a standard John Rain novel, focusing on Rain’s formative years, but this one is formulaic and the formula is getting stale.

Rain’s only opportunity to get close to Victor is to work for him. That unlikely scenario leads to an assignment: killing an important person, but not without first bedding the important person’s wife. That produces some conflict in Rain’s quirky moral sense, leading him to kill a bunch of other people instead of his target, but not without bedding the important person’s wife again. When he thinks he’s eliminated all the threats, of course there is another, which he’ll deal with as soon as he beds the important person’s wife once more.

The sex scenes, by the way, are more childish than titillating. Particularly the “pretending to say no when she really means yes” scene. I thought authors got over that in the 1970s. Also a bit lame is Rain’s evolving fashion sense, as he learns that Italian designers make nice clothes (who knew?). That leads to many opportunities for Rain to change his clothes, sometimes sporting Kevlar beneath his designer outfit, other times going commando.

The plot involves Victor and his silly insecurities, coupled with the CIA’s Byzantine meddling in Japanese politics, but it’s difficult to see the plot as anything other than a contrivance that allows Rain to show off his killing skills. Look ma, no gun! Earlier Rain novels built Rain’s character and gave greater purpose to his assassinations, but the formula has taken over. I didn’t dislike Zero Sum, but it feels like a book written on autopilot.

To be fair, Zero Sum isn’t a bad book, and I might have liked it more if I hadn’t read the earlier, much better Rain novels. I would recommend to readers who are new to the series that they start with the first one and read them in order. If they don’t ever get around to reading this one, they won’t be missing much.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

"Never Stop on the Motorway" and "It Can't Be October Already" by Jeffrey Archer

Some authors have started marketing short stories as ebooks. That practice sometimes makes me wonder whether the stories were turned down by magazine editors, but maybe direct marketing is the wave of the future for authors with substantial name recognition. In the case of the stories reviewed below, however, Jeffrey Archer is selling individul stories that have appeared in his earlier story collections.

Whether it makes sense to pay at least 99 cents for a short story, rather than buying a collection that includes the story, is something each reader will need to decide. With regard to the two stories reviewed here, I can only say that, while I enjoyed them, neither are so substantial that I would read them again. I would probably feel I was getting more value for my dollar if I purchased the collections in which these stories first appeared. On the other hand, the publisher provided me with free digital advance reading copies of the stories, so my concerns about value are only theoretical.

"Never Stop on the Motorway"

Published digitally by St. Martin's Press on July 3, 2017

"Never Stop on the Motorway" is included in at least two Jeffrey Archer story collections: The Collected Short Stories and Twelve Red Herrings.

Heavy traffic gives Diana time to think about her failed marriage, but when she can finally reach highway speed, her euphoria is unsettled by a thump after a small animal darts in front of her car. She stops and, soon thereafter, a vehicle begins to tailgate her. She can’t shake the driver and begins to fear that she will be the next victim of the killer who recently cut a woman’s throat on the same road, prompting police to warn motorists not to stop.

This is a fast-moving story with a mildly surprising ending. It creates tension in a predictable way and develops about as much characterization as could be expected in a relatively brief story. I was hoping for an ending that would be even more surprising, but the ending that Jeffrey Archer provides isn’t one I expected.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

"It Can't Be October Already"

Published digitally by St. Martin's Press on June 6, 2017.

"It Can't Be October Already" is included in Cat O'Nine Tales and Other Stories.

A fellow named Pat goes to jail every October. Pat is unfailingly polite to the various officers who arrest him, lock him up, and take him to court, all of whom are familiar with his annual ritual and see him as something of an old friend, or at least a harmless nuisance. Eventually the reader discovers what’s up with Pat, and Pat finally gets to finish telling the joke that everyone has already heard.

“It Can’t Be October Already” is a light, amusing short story. It isn’t particularly substantial, but it doesn’t pretend to be. Pat's joke is more interesting than the plot of the story itself, which leads to an obvious conclusion. I didn't get the impression that Archer put much effort into this one.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Lot and Lot's Daughter by Ward Moore

First published as short stories in 1953 & 1954; published by Open Road Media on June 6, 2017

Ward Moore was far from prolific, but some of the science fiction he generated has achieved classic status. The short story “Lot” (1953) and its sequel “Lot’s Daughter” (1954) certainly deserve to be enjoyed by each new generation of sf fans.

“Lot” is the perfect antidote to all of the loathsome prepper porn and self-published survivalist literature that has become so popular with a certain segment of society. Moore seems to have anticipated the genre and savaged it before it was born.

The Jimmon family, car packed full of essentials, no room for the dog, flees Malibu, along with countless others who are heading north from the LA area. David Jimmon is pretty pleased with himself because he put his own selfish interests ahead of those of his neighbors and, for that matter, his family by pushing ahead of the pack on the crowded highways. He views himself as a romantic hero, the individualist who survives while the docile masses perish. His family views him as a tyrant who has gone off the deep end.

David is enormously frustrated with his wife and kids, who (in his view) don’t understand the enormity of the war that has destroyed LA and Pittsburgh, inevitably leading (he believes) to primal battles among the survivors as they try to steal food, weapons, and women from each other. David’s family, on the other hand, is fed up with his “there is no law but the law of survival” attitude. When his son brightly asks if it is now okay to steal cars, only David's wife seems to understand that the breakdown of society is a choice, not an imperative.

The war, and the chance it gives him to show off his planning skills, is the only thing that has gone right in a life as a buttoned-down accountant that is primarily defined by David’s insecurity. But the story’s payoff comes in just how far David is willing to go to bring about his vision of a brighter survivalist future.

“Lot’s Daughter” takes place several years later. David is still awash in the constructs of his antisocial mind. His daughter, who believes that humans have an instinct for cooperation, clearly did not inherit her father’s craziness gene. All of David’s survivalist preparations reveal his ineptness at pretty much everything. He is much better at theorizing how to survive than at acquiring the practical skills that might allow him to thrive.

Both “Lot” and “Lot’s Daughter” involve a shock. In “Lot’s Daughter,” the shock arrives when it the reader realizes just what a hypocritical dirtbag David really is. Both stories excel at giving the reader just enough information to appreciate the themes while allowing the reader's imagination to fill in the gaps.

The quality of Moore’s prose and the depth of his thought set "Lot" and "Lot’s Daughter" apart from most modern post-apocalyptic fiction. The stories are small and personal but they hold up a mirror to an outsized, vocal segment of society that, I’m sure, would be just as useless in a crisis at David proves to be. The second story drips with irony, a perfect counterpart to the first, but both stories illustrate the consequences of a misguided philosophy, an eagerness to abandon civilization, that is just as prevalent today as it was when Moore created David Jimmon.

RECOMMENDED

Binary Storm by Christopher Hinz

Published by Angry Robot on November 1, 2016

Binary Storm is a prequel to Liege-Killer. Binary Storm introduces the Jeek Elemental known as the liege-killer, but it sets up a good bit of background before reaching that point.

In 1995, Nick Guerra was nearly stabbed to death. One hundred years later (after napping from 2010 to 2086), Guerra is in the unsecured part of Philadelphia to meet Ektor Fang, a Paratwa assassin. Like all the Paratwa, Ektor occupies two bodies. From Ektor, Guerra learns that the Royal Caste, consisting of a special breed of genetically engineered binaries known as the Ash Ock, is scheming to create a world in which the Paratwa rule.

Guerra works with the nonprofit Ecostatic Technospheric Alliance (E-Tech), an organization dedicated to “putting the brakes on unfettered science and technology.” Christopher Hinz nevertheless envisions some cool futuristic tech that E-Tech hasn’t managed to suppress.

Guerra is trying to get intelligence information to the E-Tech leadership when the leadership changes. After that, his self-imposed mission is to go after the Paratwa. He hits upon a scheme to turn a Paratwa against other Paratwas. The rest of his scheme involves training a specialized team of four fighters in a special technique to defeat the Paratwa.

Binary Storm takes place on Earth, before humanity’s flight from Earth that precedes Liege-Killer. Hinz fleshes out the background that gives rise to his earlier, post-apocalyptic Paratwa novels. The ease and prevalence of gender change is one of the points he emphasizes, giving it an interesting twist with the notion of “gender vacations.”

Guerra brings with him the guarded optimism of the late twentieth century as he confronts the pessimistic sense of doom that dominates the late twenty-first, providing a philosophical spark that gives depth to the story. For the most part, however, this is an action story, and there is enough futuristic fighting to keep action fans happy. Hinz delivers the action in a fluid writing style that makes Binary Storm easy to read. Some aspects of the lengthy novel come across as filler, but Binary Storm is a strong introduction to the earlier Paratwa books, which are more intense and, for that reason, somewhat better.

RECOMMENDED