A Thousand Steps by T. Jefferson Parker

Published by Forge Books on January 11, 2022

A Thousand Steps is an interesting but frustrating novel. I couldn’t quite lose myself in its setting or plot, notwithstanding that both are a bit offbeat, because neither are quite convincing.

The setting is Laguna Beach in 1968. Timothy Leary is one of the characters, although he is more a caricature than a character. Various gurus, artists, hippies, cops, bikers, and high school kids also populate the novel. I suppose that Leary and Be-Ins and acid tripping might be how people remember Laguna Beach today, but there was clearly more to the city than T. Jefferson Parker acknowledges.

In addition to the flower children, acid consumers, and obligatory criminals, the story features Matt Anthony, who is 16-going-on-40. Matt has a paper route and is always hungry. Matt’s brother is nearing the end of his tour in Vietnam. Working as a waitress, his mother barely makes enough to pay their rent. Strait-laced Matt tends to judge his weed-smoking mother harshly, particularly after she graduates to weed laced with opium. Oddly, he is less judgmental of his father, a former cop who bailed on the family and is gone for years at a time. Since Matt’s mother stayed around and raised him, you’d think Matt would cut her more slack than he gives his dad.

The novel opens with the discovery of Bonnie Stratmeyer’s body on the beach. She’s a couple years older than Matt, about the same age as Matt’s sister Jasmine. Bonnie has been missing for a few weeks. Shortly after Bonnie’s body appears, Jasmine disappears. Jasmine just turned eighteen. She fights with their mother, making it possible that she’s just asserting her independence and getting away from home, but it soon becomes clear to Matt that she has been abducted. The police are less certain, although the police don’t seem to have much interest in any crime that isn’t related to drugs and hippies. That seems about right, given the time and location.

Apart from rampant drug use, Matt is exposed to a variety of sketchy behavior, from hippies stealing his wallet to a biker gang stealing his wallet, from vaguely pornographic photo shoots to constant invitations to smoke weed. Smoking up might be good for Matt. He’s a perfect patsy, which is why he’s chosen to commit various crimes that he doesn’t know he’s committing, even though the reader will want to shake him and acquaint him with reality. He’s annoyingly uptight, even when his wallet isn’t being stolen. The portrayal of hippies and drugs in Laguna Beach is largely negative, although Parker balances the karma with an equally negative portrayal of the police.

The police and Matt’s father are the kind of “Love It or Leave It” flag wavers who can’t say the word “hippy” without adding the word “scum.” They exemplify the narrow-minded version of conservatism and selective patriotism that was abundant during the Vietnam War and is little changed today. Matt idolizes his brother who has gone to war (fair enough) but he doesn’t grow sufficiently during the course of the novel to recognize that the war was a mistake, that advocating peace and love isn’t necessarily a bad use of one’s time, or that his dad is a bully. Matt’s father returns from his six-year absence both to find Jasmine and to “put the sinful world back right,” which might include taking out hippies, Asians, and anyone who opposes the Vietnam War, including Walter Cronkite. Matt’s dad insists that Matt own a gun because without one he’s not a man. In fact, Matt must buy that gun from his dad because that’s “the Anthony way.” Matt clearly comes from a messed-up family but he shows little ability to stand up to his father or to recognize the harm that his father continues to cause.

Conversations that Matt has with Timothy Leary and Swami Om seem unlikely. Since Matt clearly isn’t part of their scene, I doubt that anyone in that scene would pay him much attention. Beyond that, the entire plot is unlikely. The identity of Jasmine’s kidnappers and the reason for the kidnapping is just silly. The story spends too much time on Matt’s paper route and on the various chores that are making him big and strong, although there are a couple of fun scenes in which Matt gets to first and second base with his female friends. Apart from the almost-sex and action scenes that lack credibility, the story is a little dull. On the other hand, Parker’s prose is sharp and his characterization of Matt as a kid who is ready to come of age but never quite does is convincing. Balancing aspects of the novel I liked against those that troubled me, I can’t give A Thousand Steps an unqualified recommendation, but I wouldn’t tell anyone not to read it.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

BOX 88 by Charles Cumming

Published in Great Britain in 2020; published by Mysterious Press on January 11, 2022

Lachlan Kite works for an off-the-books organization created by intelligence agents from the US and the UK. The organization, known as BOX 88, hasn’t been authorized by either government. Few people know that it exists, although key CIA and MI6 agents divert their agency funds to BOX 88.

Kite was born and raised in Scotland, where his parents operated a hotel. When his father died, his mother sent him to Alford, a boarding school for the elite that Kite attended on a scholarship. Kite got into the requisite amount of boarding school trouble, usually in the company of his friend Xavier Bonnard, the son of an elite father. A “beak” (teacher) at Alford named Billy Peele spotted Kite’s potential for intelligence work and recruited him into BOX 88. Kite’s friendship with Xavier positioned him for a special assignment before he started college.

The story begins with Kite attending Xavier’s funeral. He meets a woman who has a flawed cover story. Kite correctly assumes that the woman is with MI5 and that she’s investigating BOX 88. Kite also meets an Iranian who claims to have been a friend of Xavier. Kite is inclined to believe the Iranian until he’s kidnapped and interrogated. The kidnapper questions Kite about his first mission. Kite weaves a story while denying that he was a spy when he visited the vacation home of Xavier’s family in France. As Kite answers or dodges questions, he recalls his childhood, recruitment, and efforts to gather intelligence on an Iranian guest of Xavier’s father, Luc Bonnard. He also recalls the passion he felt for Martha Raine.

Most spy novels are about betrayal. Kite feels that he is betraying his friendship with Xavier by taking advantage of the friendship to spy on Luc Bonnard’s Iranian friend. He feels that he is at least indirectly spying on Xavier’s family, a feeling that intensifies as Kite’s mission continues. In the present, Kite comes to feel that he has been betraying his wife by concealing the truth about his occupation, particularly after the kidnapper tries to gain leverage over Kite by threatening to kill his wife.

Charles Cumming balances action and characterization as the novel switches between Kite’s captivity in the present and his intelligence gathering as a teen. Both the scenes in Kite’s teen years and in the present build suspense. Aspects of the ending come as a surprise.

BOX 88 is apparently an origin story, the first in a series of books that will feature Kite and his clandestine organization. I hope that’s true. Cumming’s spy novels have generally been enjoyable if a bit uneven. BOX 88 is one of his best.

RECOMMENDED

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

Published by ‎ Simon & Schuster on January 4, 2022

The School for Good Mothers projects all the flaws of the child protective services system into a future that demands the complete subjugation of mothers to the state’s authority. That’s easy to imagine, given the ease with which children are snatched away from parents based on the mere suspicion that they might be at risk. Removing children from their parents is sometimes necessary to protect them, but it is traumatic for children and devastating for innocent parents. There are almost always better ways to protect kids who are not being subjected to clear physical abuse.

Rather than tackling that issue in a realistic novel, Jessamine Chan writes about an “experimental” program that threatens parents with termination of their parental rights unless they complete a one-year program. During that year, they raise blue robotic dolls that are programmed to behave like children. Social workers micromanage the parents’ behavior with their dolls as well as their personal behavior when they aren’t with their dolls. The parents are held in captivity and are under constant surveillance. They are given a monthly Facetime call with their real kids but social workers are quick to remove that privilege when parents fail to meet the social workers’ impossible expectations.

Frida Liu is a recently divorced American-born Chinese woman whose former husband Gust is living with a woman named Suzanne. Frida misses Gust and still sleeps with him from time to time. They share custody of their young daughter Harriet, each parenting her for half the week.

Frida is feeling pressured by the demands placed on her at work. She decides to leave Frida at home while she runs to the office to pick up papers. She answers emails while she’s there, loses track of time, and doesn’t return home for a couple of hours. Frida’s cries from her crib somehow attract the attention of the police. Harriet is removed from Frida’s custody and given to Gust.

Nothing Frida has done would remotely jeopardize her parental rights, but social workers threaten to have those rights terminated unless she completes the experimental program. Nobody in the outside world is permitted to know what goes on in the program. In the real world, any competent lawyer would tell the social workers where they can shove their program, but Frida’s lawyer tells her that she risks losing Harriet unless he complies. That advice parallels the reality that lawyers commonly advise parents to play along with social workers for fear that the social workers will otherwise abuse the enormous power they wield over families.

The story follows Frida as she raises her blue doll with other mothers and their daughters inside an electrified fence. Apart from teaching mothers the importance of being a helicopter parent, the school teaches mothers how to hug their children (not to long, not too short), how to change the blue liquid that fuels the blue kids, how to avoid activities (like chatting with adults or having sex) that distract from parenting. Instructors teach mothers that they should never shame their children while shaming the mothers at every opportunity. “I am a bad mother,” the mothers must chant, “but I am learning to be better.”

Men are also sent to classes, but not much is expected of fathers. They don’t lose phone privileges with their children. They don’t have talk circles in which they are required to analyze and confess their selfishness and bad parenting. The mothers are clearly being trained to be stay-at-home moms because, in the view of their instructors, devoting their entire lives to raising their children is the only purpose they should desire. The goal of ideal parenting, it seems to Frida, is to give no thought to your own needs while always displaying the kind of serenity one might feel after a lobotomy.

In its heavy-handed way, the novel illustrates important points. Children are too often made to suffer in the interest of protecting them. Limiting a parent’s time with a child does not promote healthy relationships between parents and children. Observing parents and children in artificial settings offers little insight into the parent-child dynamic. Constantly drumming into a parent’s head that they are a bad parent will likely turn them into a bad parent. Assuming that all parents should interact with children in exactly the same way, regardless of culture or personality, reflects arrogance rather than reality. Social workers often do what is best for the social worker rather than the family. Social workers can be vindictive and retaliatory when parents question their pronouncements about proper parenting. Parents are often made to jump through a seemingly endless series of hopes before they can regain custody of a child who has been removed from the home, and it often seems that the parents have been set up to fail.

The legal system gives enormous power to social workers. Many judges are too deferential to child protective services workers, but the Supreme Court has recognized that parents have a constitutionally protected interest in parenting their children. It is fairly easy to remove kids from a home, but it isn’t easy to terminate parental rights. The kind of nonsense that Frida endures in the program would not be tolerated by any judge, and certainly not by any appellate court. There is a place in literature for cautionary tales, but The School for Good Mothers isn’t 1984 or The Handmaid’s Tale. Reducing a problem to absurdities isn’t an effective way to sound an alarm. If spotlighting a flawed system was Chan’s intent, a novel that took an honest look at how the current system traumatizes children and parents would have been more effective.

I admired Chan’s writing style. Some passages are quite poignant. Frida’s sense of loss when she’s deprived of time with her daughter is palpable. Other passages, including women who spend most of their waking hours trying to figure out how to have sex with each other, with guards, or with visiting male parents, are just silly. The blue dolls are bizarre. The novel alternates between being a light-hearted “band camp” story and a serious tale of abused parents. The lack of a consistent tone makes it difficult to take The School for Good Mothers seriously, while the ending undermines much of the preceding story and makes the reader question whether Frida really is putting her own interests ahead of Harriet’s. Despite its merits, the book is too muddled to earn an unqualified recommendation.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Swells by Will Aitken

Published by House of Anansi Press on January 4, 2022

People of wealth and privilege are an easy target. They may be a deserving target, but it may also be difficult for a writer to poke fun at them without coming across as a bit envious. In an apparent attempt to be even-handed, The Swells takes a satirical look at class distinctions that satirizes everyone. The working class and the upper class are equally deserving of mockery. At least, that’s the message I took from The Swells.

Briony is a luxury journalist who writes for the rapidly downsizing magazine Euphoria. The magazine is going online and, in its new incarnation, Briony will be its managing editor and only writer, all as an independent contractor earning a pittance for her trouble. She will soon have no possibility of paying rent, but travel writing allows her to stay for free at luxury accommodations. There might have been a promising story in that concept, but Will Aitken doesn’t pursue it.

Briony takes a cruise on the Emerald Tranquility, a luxury liner that caters to the elite. The Swells starts as a sendup of the wealthy, going through a checklist of things to mock. Heteronormativity, check. Conspicuous consumption, check. Children who purport to reject the parents whose wealth they are spending, check. Tea ceremony, tango lessons, and other classes that wealthy people take until their ephemeral interests move elsewhere, check.

Eventually the ship is boarded by pirates and later experiences a mutiny that is incited by an older passenger named Mrs. Moore, a woman to whom Briony is inexplicably attracted. But Briony is also attracted to Teenah Tri (formerly Terrance Tri), an Asian born into wealth who professes to be rejecting the concept of inheritance. Teenah has a bigger thing for Kurd Fenstermacher, a famous starchitect who, as Teenah explains, “takes a bit of getting used to.” Other passengers who might take some getting used to include a Parisian named Gigot and a fellow named Praun Thalat whose followers call him Little Buddha.

Perhaps The Swells is meant to be a subversive commentary on class privilege or an acidic criticism of social movements. Perhaps it is merely meant to be funny. To a limited extent, it is all those things, although it tries so hard to blend pointed commentary with humor that it shoots over the top of each goal it targets.

Mrs. Moore delivers tiresome lectures about the oppression of the poor by the wealthy and the social forces that cause lower classes to believe themselves less worthy than the rich. Her lectures have some merit but they feel out of place in a comic novel.

Inhabitants of the Asian ports of call are depicted only as stereotypes, as are repressive government policies (“one son, limitless daughters”). Exploited Asian factory workers are the object of comedy (children use squirt guns to cool the backs of garment workers) that makes exploitation seem rather fun. When the wealthy travelers encounter something unpleasant (the suffering mother of a kidnapped child, a collapsing building that crushes workers), they spend a few moments wondering if there is something they should do before they return to the ship, “eager to be unreflective once more.” This strikes me as more tragically truthful than satirical. In any event, Will Aitken seems to be indirectly mocking the problems of poor countries so he can mock the indifference of wealthy Americans.

Aitken crafts funny moments, although not often enough to make the story truly enjoyable. By taking a shotgun approach to mockery, targeting the upper class and the working class with equal vigor, the story never quite finds an identity. The piracy and mutiny are silly, but silliness was probably Aitken’s goal. The novel’s flaws and charms are roughly in equipoise, making it impossible to condemn or to recommend with enthusiasm.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Cutthroat Dogs by Loren D. Estleman

Published by Forge Books on January 4, 2022

I came late to Loren D. Estleman. If my application for a second life comes through, I’ll go back and read his Amos Walker series from the beginning. Estleman pushes all the buttons I look for in private detective fiction. Walker isn’t a brainless action hero. The novels move at a brisk pace, but Estleman doesn’t depend on shootouts and fistfights to carry the story. Walker spends most of his time solving puzzles by piecing together clues and getting a handle on ambiguous personalities.

Not that the novels are free of violence. Walker begins Cutthroat Dogs by shooting a bank robber in the leg. He’s arrested for his trouble. John Alderdyce, back from retirement in a new role as a consultant for the Detroit Police, gives Walker a pass for carrying a firearm into a bank. The gunplay gets Amos some good press that attracts a bunch of kooks and one paying client. Chrys Corbel wants Amos to look into her brother’s murder case. Dan Corbel has been in prison for almost twenty years.

Corbel was convicted of murdering April Goss, a woman he dated in college. April’s father, Chester Goss, used her death as the foundation for one of those horrid “true crime” television shows. Viewers phone in tips and Goss brags about how the show helps put away bad guys. Since ratings depend on a high capture rate, the show cherry-picks crimes that will probably be solvable with massive publicity.

I’ve never been a fan of shows that exploit a family member’s victimization to create wealth for the host. Estleman is savage in his depiction of Chester Gross as a greedy, self-aggrandizing, unfeeling hypocrite. Since most television hosts who style themselves as champions for crime victims fall into that category, I was pleased that Estleman took a well-deserved shot at them. Cutthroat Dogs scored points with me by suggesting that television hosts who position themselves as vigilante crime fighters might have more interest in their bank accounts than in justice for victims.

Amos is repeatedly targeted for murder as he investigates Dan Corbel’s conviction. The investigation also has unfortunate ramifications for Corbel, a fact that causes Amos to wonder whether he is doing more harm than good. Amos is, in fact, pursuing justice in his own way, not as a vigilante but as a man with a passion for the truth.

Amos gets unexpected help from Stan Kopernick, a cop who has alienated his boss by gambling on duty. Kopernick claims that earning favorable publicity by helping Amos (whether he proves or disproves Corbel’s guilt) will balance the most recent black mark on his record. Kopernick is such a loser that he’s almost likable.

Estleman is a master at telling a tight story. He doesn’t waste a word. His prose is smart and snappy. When Amos is surprised that a woman wants to drink her scotch neat, he thinks “It didn’t go with your outfit. She should have asked for something tall and green with a garden in it.”

Amos solves the case with legwork and close observation and a keen understanding of human nature — particularly the nature of sociopaths who have no human nature. The ending is remarkable. Estelman sets up a standard crime plot and turns it upside down. I don’t know if Estleman gets the same notice as best-selling crime fiction authors who have mastered the art of self-promotion, but he’s a writer who fans of the genre shouldn’t miss.

RECOMMENDED