The Nameless Ones by John Connolly

Published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books on October 26, 2021

Charlie Parker makes only cameo appearances in the nineteenth Charlie Parker novel. His dangerous friends Louis and Angel carry the novel, traveling to Europe on a dark mission that places Parker at risk despite his absence. Shaking up the series by giving collateral characters a starring role is a bold move that Parker has made before, always with a strong payoff. The Nameless Ones is one of the best recent efforts from a writer who produces nothing but excellent thrillers.

The Nameless Ones is a tale of two Serbian brothers, Radovan and Spiridon Vuksan. They are villains. The brothers and the criminals who work with or against them dominate the story. Louis and Angel have their moments, but the plot focuses on the brothers’ increasingly desperate attempts to survive the various forces that want to end their existence.

An FBI Agent named Ross has a history with Parker. That history began with the death of Parker’s wife and daughter. More recently, it includes an adventure that Parker had in the Netherlands and the death of a man named Armitage, whose phone (according to Ross) showed communications with the Vuksans. The Vuksans learned from Armitage that their cousin died at the hands of Louis, who was doing a favor for an old friend named De Jaeger. When Spiridon (the less reasonable brother) tortures and kills De Jaeger and his family in a scene that is all the more gruesome for being understated, Louis has new deaths to avenge.

The Vuksans have more enemies than Louis to worry about, but none more formidable. The Serbian and American governments would both like to consign the Vuksans to oblivion. Radovan would like to disappear, although not by dying. He tasks a shady Austrian lawyer named Frend to acquire fake passports that will allow the Vuksans to retire in a foreign land. Spiridon is less interested in retirement. The brothers quarrel about Spiridon’s wish to return to Serbia, where he will surely be punished for his history of war crimes.

Parker novels almost always have an element of the supernatural. In some novels, the supernatural dominates the story. In others, including The Nameless Ones, it lurks in the background. The supernatural element here is a woman named Zorya who kills ruthlessly for Spiridon. Zorya has the appearance of a child but has lived a long existence on the border of life and death. The only thing that frightens her is Parker’s dead daughter.

The novel’s supernatural terror is less frightening than its depiction of the evil war criminals and the various thugs and henchmen who populate their world. Frend, whose estranged daughter conspires against him to help Louis, is one of the novel’s few sympathetic characters, although he is far from a good person. Good people are rare in Charlie Parker novels. On a continuum from purely good to purely evil, Louis and Angel are somewhere in the middle, capable of empathy that motivates extreme but focused violence. Most of the other characters are scattered along the evil side of the continuum, with Spiridon and his ghost woman at the dark end and Riordan approaching it. Ross is the kind of ambiguous character who would rather not know how someone like Louis accomplishes the government’s ends as long as they are accomplished. Series readers might be happy to see the Fulci brothers make a brief return. They provide a bit of comic relief for those who have a taste for very dark comedy.

The novel gives the reader a more informative look at Serbia’s dark history than the rather sunny Wikipedia entry provides. John Connolly brings all of the novel’s locations alive, from Amsterdam to Vienna to South Africa. As always, Connolly’s graceful prose is masterful. He is among my favorite prose stylists in crime fiction. With its dense and intricate plot, its complex characters, and its insightful examination of evil men in evil times, The Nameless One showcases Connolly at the top of his game.

RECOMMENDED

Better Off Dead by Lee Child and Andrew Chlid

Published by Delacorte Press on October 26, 2021

Despite their formulaic nature in recent years, I’m generally a fan of Reacher novels, in part because the formula is a good one, in part because of Lee Child’s spare writing style. The formula is to have Reacher walking down a road, stumble into a dangerous situation, make a reluctant decision to help the endangered, and fight his way through adversity as he subdues dangerous thugs and saves the day. Better Off Dead follows the formula but it lacks the tension and the style that keeps me coming back to Reacher.

In a slight departure from the formula, the story begins with Reacher lying dead on a morgue table. Readers know that Reacher is indestructible of necessity; killing him would end Lee Child’s income stream.

A few quick flashback chapters get back to the formula. As Reacher walks down a road, he spots a woman in a crashed car. She pulls a gun on him when he tries to help. Satisfied that Reacher isn’t one of the bad guys for whom she set a trap, the woman (Michaela, a/k/a Mickey) resets the trap and acquits herself handily, despite having a prosthetic foot. Reacher gets her to explain her problem, which involves the capture and possible murder of her twin brother, then reluctantly agrees to help her go after the bad guys. Part of helping her includes the opening scene in the morgue.

Dendoncker is the first of two bad guys. He seems to be manufacturing bombs. Maybe they are smoke bombs. Maybe they will release a poisonous gas. Michael was either willingly or unwillingly helping Dendoncker make the devices. I didn’t care much about Michael's fate because Mickey is such a one-dimensional character that her woes about her brother left me unmoved.

The second bad guy is named Khalil, although he exists more as a name than as a character. Whether he is working with Dendoncker or working at cross-purposes is a question that isn’t set up sufficiently to whet the reader’s interest in the answer. The eventual explanation of their relationship is strained and uninteresting.

The plot goes off the rails in the second half when Dendoncker decides to enlist Reacher in his evil scheme. The smart move, easily accomplished, would be to kill Reacher, but that would end Lee Child's income stream, so the villain can't behave intelligently. It’s not like Dendoncker has a shortage of lackeys to do his bidding. Instead, he has Reacher deliver one of his devices while holding Mickey hostage. The outcome is easy to predict.

The nature and purpose of Dendoncker’s device wasn’t made clear until after I stopped caring. Unfortunately, its purpose is the only clever and unexpected part of the story. The rest of the novel consists of Reacher hitting people. That’s fine, it’s what Reacher does, but the fight scenes in Better Off Dead lack pizzazz. At least Reacher didn’t hit someone in the throat (the current go-to move in tough guy thrillers), although he thought about it.

Lee Child is known for a crisp writing style that emphasizes short, punchy sentences. His style makes for easy and rapid reading, which probably contributes to his popularity. At the same time, he balances fragmented sentences with longer, more elegantly constructed passages. He creates a rhythm. This novel emphasizes the punch and minimizes the rhythm. I don’t know if that’s because Lee had less input into the writing style than his brother Andrew, but the style differs from other Reacher novels. I’m not used to seeing pointless sentences like “That was for sure” and “That was for damn sure” in a Reacher novel. The writing style feels like an attempt to copy Lee Child rather than authentic Lee Child. Enough Lee Child bleeds through the narrative to make the novel worth acquiring for Reacher completists, but readers looking for Lee Child at his best might to give this one a pass.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson

Published by Doubleday on October 15, 2019

“We are the only creatures that cry from feelings, so far as we can tell. Why we do so is another of life’s many mysteries.” My takeaway from Bill Bryson’s The Body is that medical science is perplexed by the mysteries of the human body. Almost as soon as scientists believe they have discovered something true about our physical containers, the truth turns out to be false. From balancing the body’s humors with leeches to using lobotomies as a cure for headaches, the history of medical science is a history of getting it wrong. Unfortunately, modern scientists are just as apt to be mistaken, although modern doctors are a bit less likely to base deadly treatments on ignorance.

Some of the body’s mysteries are inherent in evolution. The Body makes clear that humans are not the product of intelligent design. Our bodies are largely the product of evolutionary workarounds. Yet evolution is nothing if not mysterious. Zebra fish regrow damaged heart tissue. Humans don’t. Seems like pretty poor planning for an intelligent designer.

Bryson explores the body in enough detail to cause the reader to marvel at its workings, but not in so much detail as to create a multi-volume text. He examines skin and bones, organs (the brain and heart, liver and kidneys, lungs and guts), the neurological system, and cellular biology. He points out the many ways in which the body acts as a factory, producing chemicals that scientists don’t understand or misunderstand until they develop a working theory about their importance — a theory that will probably be subject to wholesale revision a few years later.

Bryson discusses food and how we experience taste before our bodies convert it to fuel. He considers cancer and other diseases, as well as the checkered history of medicine. He examines ever-changing opinions about exercise and conflicting experiences about the need for sleep. Naturally, he takes a look at reproduction, without which there would be no more bodies, and sex, without which there would be no reproduction.

Bryson is nothing if not informative. He explains why ATP (the chemical adenosine triphosphate) is “the most important thing in your body you have never heard of.” He provides miniaturized biographies of scientists who made crucial contributions to the human understanding of the mind and body, only to be undercut in their time or overshadowed by scientists who stole their work.

Some of Bryson’s most interesting paragraphs remind us how science is always at war with profit. When a biochemist in the 1950s reported a clear connection between the high intake of trans fats and clogged arteries, his work was disparaged by lobbyists for the food processing industry. More than 50 years passed before the American Heart Association recognized that correlation and nearly 75 years went by before the FDA stood up to food producers and declared excessive consumption of trans fats to be unsafe.

Bryson reports his findings with good humor, although perhaps with less charm than some of his earlier books. He notes that sex may be biologically unnecessary, given the number of organisms that have abandoned it as a reproductive strategy. Geckos have done away with males altogether. He considers it “a slightly unsettling thought if you are a man” that “what we bring to the reproductive party is easily dispensed with.”

On a more serious note, although this is a pre-pandemic book, Bryson talks about how much risk the human race faces from the rapid spread of disease. If Ebola were a less efficient killer, Bryson notes, it would not strike such panic into communities and would make it easier for afflicted individuals to mingle, allowing it to spread farther and endanger more people. His discussion seems prescient, given the spread of Covid-19.

Bryson’s knack is for communicating a wealth of complex information in digestible morsels that readers who don’t have an M.D. or a PhD in a biological science can comprehend. He engages in storytelling, explaining how scientists stumbled across or misunderstood facts and how their mistakes became part of the medical canon until it became impossible to ignore scientific findings that contradicted them. The information in The Body is a bit overwhelming, but the book’s true value lies in reminding the reader that medical science is constantly improving its knowledge of what makes us tick, and that our current certainties are likely to be replaced by more accurate knowledge tomorrow.

RECOMMENDED

Over My Dead Body by Jeffrey Archer

Published by ‎HarperCollins on October 19, 2021

Over My Dead Body is the latest and best of four novels (with another to come) that chronicle the early career of William Warwick, a British cop who rises quickly through the bureaucracy of Scotland Yard as the series progresses.

Warwick is now a Detective Chief Inspector. He’s about to take charge of a unit that will examine cold case murders. Before that happens, he takes a cruise with his wife and rather handily solves an onboard murder with an assist from a precocious young American named James who attends a high-end prep school in Connecticut and plans to go to Harvard before becoming director of the FBI. William and James get along well, probably because they are both insufferably smug.

James is an American teen but he doesn’t sound like an American or a teen. His belief that American lawyers use the phrase “on the balance of judgement” rather than “beyond a reasonable doubt” suggests that James isn’t as smart as he believes himself to be. Or maybe he doesn’t watch American television.

In any event, the main story takes place after Warwick is recalled to England. Warwick’s nemesis throughout the series has been Miles Faulkner, whose crimes involve art and an ongoing attempt to swindle his wife Christina, who either is or isn’t the best friend of Warwick’s wife, depending on Christina’s shifting loyalties. Warwick is again hot on the heels of Faulkner, this time chasing him to Spain.

Jeffrey Archer overcomes the failings of the earlier novels in the latest installment. Warwick and his family have taken great pride in demonstrating the extraordinary refinement and proper behavior of British aristocracy. traits that make them annoying and dull. Fortunately, Warwick’s perfect father and sister play no role in this story, making Over My Dead Body less a novel of manners than the earlier books.

Warwick still has a stick up his bum, as is evidenced by the sole G-rated sex scene. Warwick’s idea of foreplay is to discuss his latest case with his wife while they’re getting undressed. But at least they’re getting undressed, which is an improvement from the earlier novels.

Archer brings a character named Ross to greater prominence in this novel. Ross acts as a counterbalance to “choirboy” Warwick. Having finished his undercover assignment, Ross becomes involved with a former hooker whose loyalty to Ross or to the forces of evil is not immediately clear. When Ross is given reason to seek revenge for an injustice, he does so untroubled by the law. This should give the moralizing Warwick fits, but he sublimates his law-and-order instincts to some degree, allowing a more interesting plot to develop than Archer achieved in the earlier novels.

RECOMMENDED

The Judge's List by John Grisham

Published by ‎ Doubleday on October 19, 2021

Legal thriller fans should expect few thrills in the latest Grisham novel. Nor does the novel have any of the courtroom theatrics that make legal thrillers so compelling. The story’s interest lies in its focus on a lawyer who works for an inconsequential state agency charged with regulating judges, a thankless job that comes with a small budget and little legislative interest in acknowledging that judges ever break the rules.

Jeri Crosby’s father was murdered. The killer was never identified. Jeri has dedicated her life to finding him. She concludes that several other people were victims of the same killer, a conclusion that seem obvious given that the killer strangled each victim with identical lengths of identical rope that he tied around their necks with identical knots. Having identified a pattern that the FBI didn’t notice, Jeri looks for someone who has a connection to every victim. That someone turns out to be Judge Ross Bannick.

Now Jeri could give the FBI a gift-wrapped case, but she instead takes her evidence to Lacy Stoltz, a lawyer at a Florida board that regulates judges. (Lacy was apparently a character in The Whistler, a Grisham novel I haven’t read.) Jeri claims to be worried that the FBI will not protect her from the judge but believes Lacy can safely investigate her complaint if she files it anonymously. Lacy agrees, somewhat reluctantly, and only because the evidence of guilt, although circumstantial, is pretty compelling.

The story tracks Lacy’s investigation, although Jeri has done all the legwork, giving Lacy little to do. Later in the novel, Jeri decides to spice up the plot by taunting the judge, placing herself and Lacy at risk and setting up traditional but low-key thriller scenes. I didn’t buy Jeri’s reckless behavior given how often she tells Laci of her fears and the care she has taken to investigate without being noticed. But then, I didn’t buy the notion of a regulatory agency investigating a judge for murder. I suspect that Grisham contrived this plot as an excuse to revive Lacy as a character.

I give Grisham credit for not overplaying the drama when the judge goes after Jeri and Lacy. Still, the whole story is a bit dull. Tangential plots (Jeri is hoping for an injury settlement, her sketchy brother wants to take advantage of her when it is finalized, Jeri’s relationship with her boyfriend is uncertain) do nothing to enliven the story. I’m not a huge Grisham fan, although he’s certainly done some good work. I wouldn’t put The Judge’s List on my relatively shortlist of good Grisham legal thrillers.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS