Just Thieves by Gregory Galloway

Published by Melville House on October 19, 2021

Rick steals things for a man named Froehmer. Rick’s father was corrupt. Rick accepts dishonesty as a way of life. Froehmer was his father’s good friend and Rick trusts him. Trusts him enough, anyway. Rick isn’t cut out for a nine-to-five job so stealing helps him support his daughter. Denise, Eva’s mother, doesn’t want anything to do with him, but Rick gives money to Denise when he has some to spare. He spends time with Eva when Denise allows it, which isn’t often. Rick accepts his situation just as he accepts the other circumstances of his life.

Rick started small, stealing from construction sites, working his way up to residential burglaries. As Rick made progress in his craft, Froehmer asked him to steal more valuable items that were usually within easy reach, like a rare coin displayed on a desk. Rick doesn’t ask questions about the object’s value or destination because it’s not his business. Nor does he care who the victim might be because, in his view, stealing doesn’t really hurt anyone. We’d all be better off if we weren’t so focused on acquiring and keeping property, wouldn’t we? The morality of crime, and the deeper question of what it means to be moral, pervades the novel, but Gregory Galloway doesn’t hammer the reader with the philosophy of larceny.

At a meeting for recovering addicts, Rick meets Frank, a counselor who gives life and morality more rigorous and intellectual thought than Rick can muster. They are living together when the novel begins. The text is never explicit about their relationship, but when Frank’s sister mentions that Frank’s mom doesn’t know, it becomes clear that they are lovers. Frank steals watches and knows how to disable alarm systems. He helps Rick steal for Froehmer because he doesn’t want Rick to be caught. Frank is cerebral, which is both a benefit and a curse. Frank plans, Frank takes precautions, Frank makes sure they don’t get caught. But Frank also needs to figure things out. When a dead horse appears and disappears in front of the hotel where they’re staying, Frank can’t let it go.

If you added an intelligent plot to a Liam Neeson movie and gave it the tag line “People who have everything fighting over nothing,” you’d get something like Just Thieves. Galloway tells the story in the first person from Rick’s perspective. The narrative style is simple and plain spoken with the elegance of noir. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. So like every other idiot, I bought a gun.” “We spend all our time waiting for one thing to stop and waiting for something else to start.” In addition to crafting his own memorable lines, Galloway borrows a few choice phrases from classic works of literature and noir; he credits them in the end.

The action heats up when Frank is apparently troubled by something that Froehmer asks them to steal, something that seems entirely valueless to Rick. Toward the end, Rick thinks he’s being set up for crimes he didn’t commit, leading to a surprising reveal of the person who committed them. To get himself out of a messy situation, Rick makes his life messier, straining his self-image as someone who does no harm to others.

The story jets along from key moment to key moment, sometimes flashing back to establish Rick’s character in greater depth. The simplicity of the story and of its few characters is appealing, although the simplicity masks the deep questions that Rick ponders as he considers his life with and without Frank. Just Thieves is a smart, compelling story told from the perspective of a person who regards himself as uncomplicated, as portrayed by an author who understands that every person is complicated.

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This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno

Published by MCD x FSG Originals on October 12, 2021

As Halloween approaches, publishers release horror novels. This one asks the reader to consider whether their Alexa might be haunted.

The protagonist of This Thing Between Us, Thiago Alvarez, has a device called Itza that is obviously Alexa by another name. Itza begins to turn itself on, answers questions it hasn’t been asked, plays bad music, orders unwanted products (including swords and sex toys), and behaves like an unwelcome guest. Mostly Itza wants to be pulled out of the wall, a phrase that only makes sense later in the novel. Returning Itza to the seller seems like a good solution, but Thiago takes more decisive action.

Perhaps it is not Itza that is haunted. Perhaps the former occupant of Thiago’s condo put a hex on the place. The floorboards squeak at night, as if someone is walking on them. There are scratching noises in the walls and spots in the home that are inexplicably cold. Yet Thiago’s worries about Itza and hexes fall to the wayside when his wife Vera is killed after being pushed down a flight of subway stairs by a fleeing criminal.

The criminal is an undocumented alien, a status that sends certain parts of the media into a frenzy while the remaining media devotes its time to covering the frenzy. Thiago writes: “My life was a series of disasters, and the aftermaths only attracted scavengers who picked the rubble for parts they could use for their own means.” Thiago doesn’t want his wife’s death to become a political football, so he says goodbye to his late wife’s mother (Diana) and moves into the woods to hide from his inability to comprehend life or death or meaning.

After that setup, the story ratchets up the creepy. Thiago finds a dog who seems sweet until, perhaps in a reincarnated form, it turns into Cujo. A wall appears in the woods and then moves into the yard. Words appear in books that shouldn’t be there, asking for release from the wall. Someone seems to be possessed. When Diana shows up for a visit, she walks into a nightmare.

This Thing Between Us is written as a communication from Thiago to Vera after her death. The purpose of the communication is revealed near the novel’s end. In the twisted logic of horror fiction, writing to a dead wife makes perfect sense.

Gus Moreno hides the ball for a while. Is this a novel about demons? Is the person wo behaves like a zombie possessed by evil spirits? Have the ghost stories that pervade Mexican culture taken root in Thiago’s family? Is Thiago delusional? The ending leaves most of the reader’s questions unanswered.

Still, the plot is really a device that allows Moreno to consider more important questions. The story asks whether people believe in the afterlife as a way of avoiding loss. At some point, Thiago is invited to join an afterlife that offers the illusion of Heaven, perhaps as a literary suggestion that Heaven is an illusion for all living people who embrace its reality.

Culture and individualism play a big part in the story, from the social schism over undocumented aliens to the cultural knowledge that informs Diana’s effort to exorcise evil from Thiago’s dwelling. Thiago is ashamed that he doesn’t speak Spanish, but Diana was born in Mexico and accepts the supernatural as a given. Thiago is antisocial, a burnout who takes odd jobs in the gig economy, part of America’s culture of loners. He resisted Vera’s preference for social connections, although Vera was also different from her friends in that she preferred museums to clubbing. Perhaps opposites attract, but Thiago feels guilty about “the times we argued because you felt you couldn’t invite people to the condo on account of me hating to be ‘on’ all the time, or me wishing you put half as much effort into taking care of yourself as you put into your job.” He regrets using his mother’s cancer as a tool to manipulate Vera into staying with him when she couldn’t deal with his failings.

I’m not a big fan of horror fiction — reality frightens me more than the supernatural — but I am a fan of insightful writing. Moreno gets into Thiago’s head to explore the universal experience of grief and loss. “In this world we struggle and bitch and fail and hurt and then weep over someone checking out of it all.” “It’s like being at a party and the one friend you knew is suddenly gone.” “When you died I mourned you, but also the version of myself I was with you. So then there were two deaths.”

The story is bleak and the ending is both unhappy and unsatisfying, but it has the advantage of pulling no punches. Moreno blends supernatural horror with the horrible impact that loss has on survivors. I’m not sure that all of the horrific elements make any kind of unified sense, but I am sure that the story would be powerful even without its supernatural foundation.

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Damascus Station by David McCloskey

Publsihed by ‎ W. W. Norton & Company on October 5, 2021

Damascus Station does what a spy thriller should do. It engages the imagination with tradecraft, appeals to the intellect with political intrigue, and excites the senses with action scenes. Some of the action takes place in the bedroom (or other convenient locations). More violent scenes play out in the streets and buildings of Damascus.

Much of the story takes place in Syria, where a brutal dictatorship is fighting a war against rebels. Samuel Joseph works for the CIA. His Levantine Arabic is flawless. He begins the novel in Damascus, where he has been sent to exfiltrate an asset, as well as Val Owens, the asset’s handler who is in Syria under diplomatic cover. The mission does not go well, particularly for Val.

A well-educated woman named Miriam, a Syrian general’s daughter, secretly opposes the government that employs her. Miriam’s cousin Razan makes no effort to hide her disdain for the Syrian president. She gets away with it because her father has a position in the government that allows him to shield her.

Sam is sent to Paris, where Miriam is attempting to coerce a brave Syrian woman into returning to Syria and renouncing her criticism of the Syrian regime. Miriam must threaten harm to the woman’s family to carry out her mission, threats that cause her to despise herself. Sam’s task is to recruit Miriam as a double agent for the CIA. The task is easy to accomplish, both because Miriam hates the ruling regime and because she feels an immediate sexual attraction to Sam. The rules prohibit Sam from acting on that attraction, but rules have never stopped fictional spies from hopping into bed with assets. Sam puts his career at risk and, as is the custom in novels of this nature, falls in love with Miriam.

Miriam is the kind of character a reader might love, as well. She’s intelligent, a fierce warrior, and willing to take risks to fight the leaders she serves. Sam is your prototypical spy, stalwart and loyal and an all-around good guy apart from his inability to keep it in his pants. My favorite character might be the tough chief of station in Damascus. She’s vulgar, lethal with a shotgun, and proclaims herself (with some justification) to be the Angel of Death.

The plot takes Sam to Damascus, where he follows Miriam as her handler, using the usual diplomatic cover for his spying. Spy novels are all about betrayal, and the time comes when Sam must question whether Miriam is playing him. That’s the kind of plot point that makes espionage novels so addictive.

Word gets the US that the Syrian president intends to use sarin gas to wipe out a city in rebellion. That’s a step too far for the US, as is the capture and beheading of an American. The US intends a targeted assassination in retribution for the murder and selective bombing to prevent the use of sarin. The story eventually brings the US and Syria to the brink (or slightly over the brink) of war. By the end, Sam and Miriam are both in peril. Quick thinking and sacrifice offers the only hope of averting disaster.

The story features the usual tradecraft — a good thing, because tradecraft establishes a spy novel’s identity — including dead drops and (perhaps too many) surveillance detection routes, all taught to Miriam in a frenzy. The theme of a spy breaking the rules by getting sexually involved with a source that he’s running is familiar, but it’s a credible theme that works well in the context of the story. The action scenes in the novel’s second half justify the novel’s categorization as a thriller. The balance between action, political intrigue, and relationship drama is just about perfect. And the ending, without being artificially happy, is at least hopeful.

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The Survivors by Alex Schulman

First published in Sweden in 2020; published in translation by Doubleday on October 5, 2021

Three sons and two dysfunctional parents are the only significant characters in The Survivors. The sons reunite for their mother’s funeral, their father having died years earlier. The funeral requires a change of plan when the kids discover a note that their mother left behind. The reader does not learn the content of the note until the novel’s end, as it reveals a fact that Alex Schulman keeps secret until the novel’s late stages. The secret changes the reader’s understanding of the events that precede its revelation.

Much of the story consists of memories of unpleasant childhoods, scattered across the story that takes place in the present. The memories are “spread out like Lego bricks” for a therapist (and the reader) to examine. Transitions between time frames are not always clear. The story is sometimes disorienting, an effect that I assume Schulman intended.

The parents were educated and had refined sensibilities, but they lived in poverty. They gave their kids “an upper-class upbringing that somehow occurred below the poverty line.” The children’s “academic upbringing had been undertaken halfheartedly; it began with great to-do but was never completed.” At some point, the parents lost energy and their parenting project ground to a halt.

Mom was usually sullen but sometimes erupted in emotional outbursts. The kids found making Mom happy to be a hit-or-miss task at which they usually missed, although she did little to encourage their efforts. She seemed to have more affection for the dog than for her boys, although even the dog earned inconsistent attention. Dad had an anger management problem, compounded by a drinking problem that he shared with Mom. Dad spent time with the kids only when he felt a need to alleviate his loneliness.

The brothers are Nils, Benjamin, and Pierre. “Benjamin was always trying to get closer to his parents; Nils wanted to get away.” Nils, who had “special standing” with his parents because he was a good student, feels he was abused by his two brothers. Pierre feels he was abused by his parents and blames his brothers for not protecting him. Even before an electric shock induced visual disturbances, Benjamin had moments when he disassociated from reality.

The parents once encouraged the three bothers to have a swimming contest, then went inside for a nap, apparently unconcerned whether the kids were capable of swimming to a distant buoy. Nor were the parents particularly attentive when Benjamin nearly electrocuted himself at an abandoned power station. That event is significant not just to Benjamin, but to the plot that eventually unfolds. Benjamin felt “a deep love for his father in spite of everything,” but Benjamin lived in his own world. His memories, like his perceptions of the present, might not be reliable.

For much of the novel, the story feels true to its Swedish origins. Gloom overwhelms the characters and threatens to infect the reader. The therapist is a familiar fixture in Scandinavian literature. We only catch a late glimpse of a therapy session, but it is the breakthrough session that reveals the hidden truth, a truth that has been distorted by memory. The truth is known to the therapist, who wastes no time dropping it in Benjamin’s lap. Her hurry to get to the point comes as a relief, as the time the reader spends with this dysfunctional family is far from joyful.

Still, the lives of the depressive characters have some interesting moments and the story is nicely detailed. The woods, the lake, the power station, the cabin — all are easy to visualize, as are the sullen characters. The story is at times maddeningly ambiguous, and it is only at the end that the reader realizes how those ambiguities serve the story. My reaction to the big reveal was more “huh” than “wow,” but I admired the skill with which the story is constructed.

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When We Were Young by Richard Roper

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on July 20, 2021

Richard Roper used a familiar formula to create When We Were Young. He begins in the present and constructs the novel’s foundation from the memories of the two protagonists. The formula requires the protagonists to arrive at a dramatic moment in the present while the parallel story of their past explains how they came to be in their current position, revealing some secrets along the way. While excellent novels have been concocted using that method, the risk of following a formula is that the novel will feel formulaic. This one feels like Roper followed the formula for writing a soap opera.

As the story begins, Theo Hern’s parents are evicting him from their guest room as an act of tough love. Theo is pushing thirty. He aspired to be a comedy writer but settled for a series of marketing jobs, quitting the last one to chase the hope of a dream job that disappeared.

Theo’s old friend, Joel Thompson, suddenly reappears in Theo’s life after years of estrangement. When they were kids, Joel and Theo talked about walking the Thames Path. Joel proposes that they walk it now while using their time together to write scripts for a television series that they had envisioned before their friendship ended. Joel promises that a producer has agreed to back the series, a promise that more than stretches the truth.

Theo needs a gig so he overcomes his bitterness about Joel sufficiently to say yes. Joel’s actual motivation is to reconcile with Theo. Joel is dying from liver failure and the Thames Path walk with Theo is on his bucket list. The reader knows of Joel’s impending death but Theo does not. The reader also knows that Theo will tumble to the truth eventually because that’s part of the formula.

As the guys walk along the Thames Path, they tell the reader their backstories in alternating chapters. Joel was an awkward, friendless teen. Theo saved him from being bullied and they became best friends, bonding over a shared love of comedy. Joel eventually confesses to having worshipped Theo, which seems a bit much. In any event, Joel went on to have a career writing for television and began living with a childhood friend, Amber Crossley, who became a successful television actress. Joel messes that up with his drinking, putting an end to their relationship. The drinking is apparently motivated by Joel’s involvement in a traffic accident that put Theo’s sister Alice in a wheelchair. Alice, unlike Theo, has forgiven Joel, while Theo’s route to becoming a self-pitying loser caused Babs, the love of his life, to break up with him. Whew!

All of this is just too much. The dying protagonist who needs to come to terms with his life. The broken friendship that needs to be repaired. The abusive stepfather who comes between mother and son, creating another relationship that needs to be mended. The hidden truth that destroyed a friendship (I won’t spoil it but rest assured that a hidden truth exists because hidden truths and big reveals are part of the formula). The failed and failing romances. The alcoholic who is tempted to resume drinking. “I always suspected my husband was gay” is about the only soap opera theme that doesn’t appear in When We Were Young. Maybe that one has been reserved for the sequel.

The backstories are full of syrupy heartstring-tuggers, as if Joel’s upcoming death is insufficient. Characters frequently erupt at each other or share their feelings and hug it out. Readers who like to have a good cry might appreciate When We Were Young, but only if rolling eyes are capable of forming tears.

Blurbs describe the story as heartwarming. And it would be if it felt authentic. Instead, it feels like an exercise in obvious emotional manipulation. All of the contrived problems make it possible to bombard the reader with happy and sad endings. A good many readers like that sort of thing. Since I’m not one of them, I can only say that the story is well-constructed and has some enjoyable moments. The ending certainly could have been worse, but it’s a long walk to arrive at an ending that isn’t really a surprise. The story as a whole is just too predictable and formulaic to take seriously.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS