Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Published by Del Rey on August 17, 2021

Velvet Was the Night is a story of Mexican noir. Set in the early 1970s, the novel takes as its background a CIA funded and Mexican government-supported effort to organize private citizens as shock troops (known as Hawks) to attack protesting students. The CIA wanted to suppress communism and the Mexican government wanted to suppress dissent. Those machinations cemented Mexico’s authoritarian oppression and laid the foundation for the Dirty War.

Maite is caught in the middle of that struggle. She isn’t political. She doesn’t feel she’s much of anything. Her days, as she sees them, are dull and meaningless. Her sister berates her for wasting her life. As she turns 30, Maite is a single, insecure woman who devours romance comics, wishing her life were filled with the love and drama she reads about.

Maite can’t afford to pay for her car repairs. She supplements her income as a secretary by looking after her neighbors’ pets when they are away. Maite’s only vice is her occasional theft of a small object from a neighbor’s apartment.

Maite has been feeding Leonara’s cat. She’s vexed that Leonara hasn’t returned from her trip. When Leonara finally calls Maite and asks her to bring the cat and a box to an address, Maite becomes even more annoyed when Leonara doesn’t appear. She decides to track down Leonara so she can get paid. Her quest leads her to a group of wannabe revolutionaries and brings her to the attention of the Hawks and the secret police.

The other protagonist, Elvis, is a Hawk. At 21, he is the right age to blend with and infiltrate student groups. He admires his boss, El Mago, and is more committed to following El Mago than to any political philosophy. Elvis doesn’t mind administering beatings to send a message, but he draws the line at beating women or killing anyone. He’d rather be doing something else with his life but he doesn’t know what else he is capable of doing.

The novel alternates chapters that follow either Elvis or Maite. Their paths intersect when El Mago assigns Elvis to follow Maite. El Mago wants to find some pictures that Leonara has hidden. He hopes that Maite will lead him to Leonara.

Maite and Elvis are linked in unexpected ways, particularly by their passion for music. Elvis is impressed by the record collection he discovers while snooping through Maite’s apartment. Elvis took his name from the obvious source, but he’s also a fan of Sinatra and American standards. Maite enjoys the Spanish versions of those songs. The government has closed singing cafés and banned American rock because it views dancing as a form of anarchy, but the government can’t stop Maite or Elvis from enjoying music.

As one would expect of authoritarians and revolutionaries, none of the characters trust each other. The revolutionaries correctly believe they have an informant in their midst. An agent of the secret police named Anaya is sure that his sources are all lying to him. The Hawks and the secret police share the goal of disrupting perceived communists but they share nothing else. A Russian KGB agent adds another level of intrigue to the story. A relative of Leonara seems to want her dead. Elvis becomes increasingly disillusioned as his friends die, particularly when he learns the identity of one of the killers.

For Elvis, the story is one of intellectual disenchantment and personal growth as he begins to realize that the Hawks and their methods pose a greater threat to Mexico than the harmless student protestors. For Maite, the story is one of romance followed by inevitable heartbreak followed by the unlikely possibility of a new romance. The protagonists’ stories are simple, but they are built on strong characterizations and on the novel’s complex noir setting.

RECOMMENDED

Bloodless by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Published by Grand Central Publishing on August 17, 2021

Bloodless gets off to a promising start by reimagining the D.B. Cooper airplane hijacking. Decades later (roughly in our present), a bloodless body is found in Savannah. Is a vampire roaming the streets of Savannah? It seems more likely to be the work of a particularly gruesome murderer, although sucking all the blood from a body is not an easy task. Aloysius Pendergast and his current partner, Armstrong Coldmoon, are diverted to Savannah to investigate. Pendergast’s ward, the mysterious Constance Greene, goes along for the ride. More bloodless corpses soon appear on the southern landscape, sometimes in a genuinely chilling scene.

Bloodless develops an interesting cast of characters, the kind of people who make satisfying suspects in a murder mystery, including an evil senator who is running for reelection, a documentarian who is filming a series about supernatural events, a scam artist who purports to capture digital images of spirits and demons, and an elderly lady with a collection of antique weapons who lives as a hermit in a hotel’s upper floors. Bloodless also delivers the spooky atmosphere that is almost a necessity in a story set in Savannah.

Some Pendergast novels have flirted with supernatural themes. I haven’t been taken with those stories. I prefer the stories that portray Pendergast as a modern version of Sherlock Holmes, complete with eccentricities that complement his deductive skills. For much of the novel, Bloodless seems like it could go in either direction — a supernatural force might be afoot, perhaps a vampire, or a murderer might be using superstition to mask his killings.

Unfortunately, Preston and Child take the story in a third direction, one that is more science fiction than horror. I don’t want to spoil it, but I will say [stop reading here if you don’t want to risk knowledge of a surprising plot point] that it involves a monster from another dimension. Now, the multiverse is a popular theme in science fiction novels, one that sf writers explore in interesting ways. As they have demonstrated in other novels, Preston and Child are not adept at science fiction. Their explanation for the sudden appearance of blood sucking monster in Savannah is just silly. (Hint: it involves turning a dial too far on a machine that makes no sense.)

The story crashes at the end. I was left wondering why it would be easier for one guy with a handgun to kill a monster in its own universe when it resists death in our universe after being shot with a bazooka, a Tommy gun (yes, seriously), and any number of bullets fired by Glock-wielding cops.

I was also left wondering about all the plot points that were set up in the novel’s first half. It seems like Preston and Child began to write one novel, couldn’t figure out how to end it, and decided to abandon it while writing an ending to a different novel.

I enjoyed the D.B. Cooper angle. I enjoyed the detailed setup. I admired the atmosphere and the careful construction of secondary characters. The authors add a touching scene at the end that’s almost redemptive. If the novel’s strengths hadn’t been counterbalanced by a preposterous conclusion, I would have been a happy reader. At best, I can recommend the first two-thirds of the novel and a brief chapter at the end. You might want to quit after the first two-thirds and make up your own ending if you want to get the most out of Bloodless.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Another Kind of Eden by James Lee Burke

Published by Simon & Schuster on August 17, 2021

Another Kind of Eden takes place when Aaron Holland Broussard is 26. Aaron has been to war, earned a degree, and written a novel. He describes himself as “a failed English instructor.” Aaron was a teenager when he appeared in The Jealous Kind, one of my favorite James Lee Burke novels.

As a post-war drifter, Aaron “learned quickly that the Other America was a complex culture held together by the poetry of Walt Whitman, the songs of Woody Guthrie, and the prose of Jack Kerouac.” Aaron spends the spring and summer of 1962 working on a dairy and produce farm in Colorado. The owner, Jude Lowry, is a decent man. Aaron is sufficiently decent to resist the advances made by Lowry’s wife.

Aaron works with Spud Caudill and Cotton Williams, two men who have his back when he’s attacked for driving a truck that has a union sticker. The Sheriff, Wade Benbow, briefly locks up Aaron despite his correct suspicion that the fight was started by Darrel Vickers, whose father Rueben is a well-connected rancher. Darrel is suspected of killing a little girl by locking her in a refrigerator when he was still a child.

Aaron learns the identity of his attacker from Jo Anne McGuffy, a waitress who paints macabre scenes in her spare time. Her paintings are based on the Ludlow Massacre, a mass killing of striking workers perpetrated by anti-labor militia members in 1914. Over the course of the novel, Aaron falls in love with Jo Anne, although she’s sleeping with her professor, Henri Devos, and if Darrel is worthy of belief, has been his lover, as well.

The plot involves threats to various people, mostly women, including Jo Anne and some women on a hippie bus who are being pimped out. They hippies “were the detritus of a Puritan culture, one that made mincemeat of its children and left them marked from head to foot with every violation of the body that can be imposed on a human being: state homes, sexual molestation, sodomy, gang bangs, reformatory tats, fundamentalist churches . . . . Their hallmark was the solemnity, anger, and pain in their eyes.” Spud is a suspect when a hooker turns up dead (because Spud works so that he can afford to visit hookers), but Aaron has seen no evil in Spud’s heart. Another woman, one of the hippies on the bus, is hospitalized for reasons that nobody wants to discuss.

Aaron saw more than his share of evil during the Korean War; he blames himself for a loss of an MIA friend. Benbow saw his share when he liberated a subcamp of Dachau. The notion of evil as a force is a popular theme among thriller writers who try to understand and explain the human condition. Burke has turned to that theme again and again, sometimes envisioning evil as the offspring of the supernatural. There are supernatural elements in Another Kind of Eden, including a war buddy who appears from the dead and creates a miracle at a delicate moment. Apparent demons and glimpses of ghosts, perhaps real and perhaps not, pop up near the story’s end. While I could have done without the supernatural, I always appreciate Burke’s effort to comprehend the absence of compassion and decency in human behavior.

Aaron learns something about himself as he struggles against evil men. He comes to accept that “the Holland legacy of violence and mayhem had always lived inside me,” but the acceptance of his inner demons gives him peace without encouraging him to embrace the violence. He instead embraces the inevitability of death: “As Stephen Crane wrote at the close of The Red Badge of Courage, the great death was only the great death, not to be sought, not to be feared, but treated as an inconsequential player in the human comedy.”

The supernatural elements put me off a bit, making me rank Another Kind of Eden below Burke’s best work. But novels that are not Burke’s best are better novels than most crime writers can compose. Burke’s prose style and the depth of his thought make him one of my three favorite writers of crime fiction and one of the best writers of American fiction in or outside of any genre.

RECOMMENDED

A Song Everlasting by Ha Jin

Published by Random House/‎ Pantheon on July 27, 2021

A Song Everlasting tells the story of the tumultuous middle years of a man’s life. Yao Tian is a celebrated singer in China. He performs with the People’s Ensemble, a position that ensures social status and a comfortable lifestyle. Tian is married to Shuna, who also enjoys status as a professor. They hope their daughter will attend an American college because “universities in China merely fed students with platitudes and jargons, manufacturing the sort of minds needed by the governing apparatus.”

When the People’s Ensemble performs in New York, Tian surreptitiously meets with his childhood friend Han Yabin. Yabin lost his residential status in Beijing after he began to keep company with a foreign female teacher. Yabin responded by traveling to New York and not returning to China. Tian is concerned that meeting with Yabin might be a black mark against his record. He’s even more concerned when he’s offered a good bit of money to perform at a Chinese celebration in New York. He rebooks his return flight and accepts the gig, only to find after his arrival in China that his indiscretion has not gone unnoticed by Chinese officials.

Realizing that his passport will soon be confiscated, Tian flees China. He wants the freedom to travel, and more importantly to perform, internationally. He also wants the freedom to choose the songs he will sing, rather than performing propaganda songs that are selected by government bureaucrats. Shua agrees that he should establish residence in the United States so that he can be happy.

The novel follows Tian’s successes and struggles in America for a period of years. He needs to find a way to remain in the country legally. He’s not sure whether it will ever be safe for him to return to China. His initial successes in America stem from his popularity with Chinese audiences. Chinese authorities try to bribe him to return to China, then conspire to undermine him. A brief dalliance with a Chinese woman doesn’t help his relationship with Shua, while being accused of physically abusing her undercuts the popularity that he enjoys with Chinese audiences. Tian faithfully sends money home to support his daughter, but he and his wife seem to be drifting apart. He needs to find other ways to support himself when his singing career seems to be in jeopardy.

The tradeoff between freedom and security is the novel’s strongest theme. If Tian had stayed in China, singing the songs he was told to sing and saying nothing critical of the government, he might have lost self-respect but his prosperity would have been assured. Living in America assures Tian only of an uncertain future, but it also allows him to control that future, if only to the extent that he can choose the songs he wishes to sing. Tian feels no particular desire to express political opinions, but he does feel a desire to grow as an artist, something that he would never be able to accomplish in China.

Ha Jin’s novel is heartfelt, filled with moments of quiet drama while avoiding melodrama. It is realistic in the sense that Tian’s life might not work out as he hopes or expects. That’s true of every life. We can control what we can control, but some circumstances, including health conditions and the actions of others, are beyond our influence. Tian learns to accept that his fate isn’t entirely in his hands, but he also learns the value of not giving up the fight for the life he wants to have. His relationship with his wife might change because of his extended absence, but that change might open up the possibility of a new and unexpected relationship. He might not always be able to perform for large audiences, but he might find other ways to use his talent. A Song Everlasting reminds readers that being resilient, living according to your values, and persevering in the face of hardship can create a satisfying life, even if it isn’t the life we once envisioned.

RECOMMENDED

Red Traitor by Owen Matthews

Published by Doubleday on July 20, 2021

Notwithstanding its unfortunate title, Red Traitor is a smart, entertaining spy novel that is told from an unusual perspective. Although a few American characters appear, the protagonist and most of the key characters are Russian. The story primarily alternates between Moscow and a Russian submarine near Cuba. The events are loosely based on a Cold War incident in which Russian submarines were armed with nuclear torpedoes, and on a Russian (the traitor in the title) who provided clandestine information to the United States.

The novel takes place during the Kennedy Administration. Russia is establishing a military presence in Cuba and America is on the brink of war. The more important war that the story showcases is between two intelligence agencies in the USSR: the KGB and the GRU.

Alexander Vasin is a lieutenant colonel in the KGB and a favorite of his superior, Lieutenant General Yury Orlov. Vasin became a favorite by blaming a problem on an American spy. While the details of Vasin’s previous mission are described in Black Sun, it isn’t necessary to read Black Sun to understand Red Traitor.

Vasin invented the American spy, but Orlov doesn’t know that, or perhaps doesn’t care. Orlov’s mission is to undermine General Ivan Serov, head of the GRU and his chief rival for power. To that end, Orlov wants to prove that the spy works for Serov. Orlov has a candidate in mind — Oleg Morozov, a colonel in the GRU — but has only circumstantial proof that Morozov is a traitor. Orlov wants Vasin to find evidence that Morozov is a spy and isn’t overly concerned whether the evidence reflects reality.

Morozov has been behaving suspiciously, in part by collecting information from Sofia Guzman, a translator who has access to information about a secret project. The project involves the installation of long-range missile bases in Cuba. News of the project has made its way to American intelligence, making Morozov the likely source of the leak.

Vasin learns of a related project — the arming of submarines with nuclear torpedoes that are sailing to Cuba. Kennedy is creating a naval blockade around Cuba. A Russian lunatic, without the knowledge of Khrushchev, has ordered the submarine commander to launch the torpedo if the Russian subs are attacked while trying to run the blockade. Vasin knows that this will trigger a nuclear war and the likely destruction of Russia. He resolves to use his own initiative to stop the war, even if doing so might make him a traitor.

Part of the action takes place on one of the subs, where the fleet commander is at odds with a submarine captain who is eager to fire the first strike. Much of the novel’s tension comes from that underwater conflict, although Vasin’s tricky relationships with Orlov, Morozov, and Guzman add to the drama.

Like Black Sun, Red Traitor succeeds in part because the story is based on real events and in part because Vasin is a dark character who does not equate loyalty to his county to loyalty to autocrats who are willing to harm his country to achieve their personal ends. Owen Matthews keeps the various plot elements in constant motion, building suspense that is only partially tempered by the reader’s knowledge that nuclear war did not break out in 1962. Exactly how that war will be prevented, however, is something that the reader won’t know until late in the novel. The second Vasin novel is as strong as the first, making Matthews’ unusual look at espionage from a Russian perspective a good choice for fans of spy fiction.

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