Tender Is the Bite by Spencer Quinn

Published by Forge Books on July 6, 2021

Chet the Jet is back in the eleventh installment of Spencer Quinn’s Chet and Bernie series. Bernie Little is the only human employee of the Little Detective Agency. Bernie is much loved by Chet, his large and loyal canine partner. Chet helps solve crimes, often inadvertently, while puzzling about the mysteries of human behavior.

To Chet’s dismay, Bernie decides to investigate a mystery without a paying client. The story begins with a young woman named Mavis following Bernie, working up the courage to speak with him. When Bernie asks whether she needs his help, she flees, apparently frightened off by a political bumper sticker that she sees on the floor of Bernie’s car. Bernie, who has no interest in politics or politicians, has no idea where the bumper sticker came from until he learns that one of his neighbors dropped it into his car. The top is always down on Bernie’s Porsche, making it all the easier for Chet to jump in and out.

Bernie gets a plate number as Mavis drives away. His police contacts advise him that the car is registered to Johnnie Lee Goetz. He also learns that Johnnie Lee has a restraining order against Mickey Rottoni. Sensing a mystery that needs his attention, Bernie goes in search of Johnnie Lee, hoping to find Mavis.

The restraining order was served by Weatherly Wauneka, who has a dog that  looks very much like Chet. Weatherly might become Bernie’s new love interest. Series fans will know that Bernie’s former girlfriend, Suzie Sanchez, married someone else, although she pops up for a cameo in Tender Is the Bite.

The plot involves a ferret, a Russian thug named Olek, a potential client who wants to hire Bernie for a job in Kauai, a senator and his horse-loving wife, the eventual disappearance of Mavis and Johnnie Lee, a dead body or two, and a blackmail scheme. All of that (minus the ferret) might be standard fare for a crime novel, but the story differs from traditional crime novels because it is narrated by Chet, who has no use for ferrets or perps.

After eleven novels, many of Chet’s opinions will be familiar to readers, including his animosity toward horses, bears, and birds. We know that Chet wants to go through every door first, that he wants to sit in the Porsche’s shotgun seat (forcing human passengers to sit on the back bench), and that he’s certain Bernie is the smartest human in the room. At times during Tender Is the Bite, I thought Quinn should make a greater effort to develop new material, as many of Chet’s observations seem to be recycled from earlier books. Still, the Chet and Bernie novels are always a joy, at least for dog lovers, if only because Quinn has nailed the way we imagine dogs would think if they had the vocabulary to express their thoughts.

The plot is as credible as it needs to be in a novel that is narrated by a dog. Action scenes give Bernie and Chet the chance to save each other from harm. Chet even tries to climb a rope ladder, a difficult task since he hasn’t yet mastered regular ladders. I’ve probably read about half of the Chet and Bernie novels and have never found one I wouldn’t recommend to dog lovers, although some are better than others. I would rank Tender Is the Night in the middle of the pack.

RECOMMENDED

Who They Was by Gabriel Krauze

Published in Great Britain in 2020; published by Bloomsbury Publishing on June 29, 2021

Gabriel Krauze tells the story of Gabriel Krauze using the language of the street. Specifically, the language of South Kilburn, a large London housing development that is largely demolished by the time the novel ends. I don’t know how much of Who They Was is autobiography and how much is fiction, but from the standpoint of reading pleasure, the distinction doesn’t matter. Krauze’s voice rings true and his story is unvarnished. Even if some details have been fabricated or changed, the story’s raw power, together with Krauze’s street eloquence, makes Who They Was a compelling read.

The first-person story follows Krauze from the age of 17 through his early adulthood. It is the story of a complicated man, a thug with artistic talent, brains and ambition, who excels both in school and in street crime (incidents to which he refers as “madnesses”). Students and professors who share an academic life with Krauze appear to admire his intelligence and analytical ability. He has an unhealthy passion for Nietzsche, but he reads widely, understands what he reads, and brings insight to his studies. Yet those who admire Krauze at “uni” would likely be appalled by his off-campus life.

On the other hand, Krauze has a plentiful supply of admirers in the neighborhoods where he hangs. He is respected for his audacity and fearlessness. He robs the helpless, stabs his adversaries, and beats people with little provocation. He accepts short stints of incarceration as the price of living his own life. He has no interest in being supervised by the authorities and blows off his community service, leading to more time behind bars. He loves his parents, Polish immigrants who don’t understand Krauze’s failure to conform, but he has no interest in following their rules. He stays in their home on occasion but he’s usually in South Kilburn. He sees his nagging mother as “covered in spikes. Maybe that’s how she survives the world. Maybe that’s how she survives me.”

Krauze narrates a series of incidents, some violent, some sexual, some involving bonding with friends, some involving his studies. Krauze robs innocent people, sells drugs, smokes an impressive amount of weed, and maintains his street cred by punishing anyone who gives him a screwface (dirty look). To many readers, this will seem like the astonishing waste of a life, but Krauze earns his degree so his time is not entirely wasted. As Krauze explains, his lifestyle is “totally accepted” by his peers, “if anything it sets a standard for the young g’s to live up to and you can see it in how the violence becomes the inspiration for everyone’s lyrics when they spit rap and grime bars about bussin guns and murking man.” Who They Was does not come with a glossary, but a few trips to the Urban Dictionary will bring the reader up to speed.

In Krauze’s world, “only money and status matters” and “any act of violence, exploitation, whatever, can’t be unfair because that’s how life works.” At the same time, he feels compelled to attend the university “for the sake of my brain. I knew I’d go mad if I couldn’t read books.” The two halves of Krauze seem inconsistent, not because educated people don’t commit crime — an education doesn’t prevent the educated from preying upon the vulnerable — but because they don’t usually commit violent street crimes.

Despite the insights that education has given him, Krauze shows little interest in living a different life. His girlfriend wants him to get a nine-to-five but he’s “not gonna become a version of me that doesn’t exist.” He explains, “I don’t want to run from the law and feel my heartbeat making me sick. … I want to see fear in people’s eyes and eat my own fear. I want to live dangerously, on the edge of existence.” He justifies his lifestyle by reference to Nietzche’s belief that “morality is just a rule of behaviour relative to the level of danger in which individals live. If you’re living in dangerous times, you can’t afford to live according to moral structures the way that someone who lives in safety and peace can.” Of course, Krauze could make an effort to live in safety and peace, and with a degree he probably could, but he’s convinced that his former life would come back to haunt him, that if he tries to live differently he’ll be dead in a year. That seems unlikely, particularly if he moves away from London, but it’s also pretty clear that he’s an adrenalin junky who doesn’t want a conventional life. “Better to take risks, better to plunge into the fire and feel alive, if only for a moment, than not have really lived at all.” He understands the risk of “living with demons until you become one yourself” but doesn’t seem to fear the possibility that he might cross that line. Or maybe he just doesn’t care.

Krauze might be a sociopath, but he is not without emotion. He makes a point of shutting down his emotions, but he seems to feel genuine love for his parents and friends. He appreciates beauty. He learned to play the piano and enjoys Chopin. His cellmates praise his drawings. He looks at the moon and marvels that everyone on the planet throughout human history has seen the same moon and that all humans are connected by it. He sees life as performative, as not quite real, which might simply be a sign of immaturity.

Who They Was is a fascinating narrative of a complex life. They rhythms of Krause’s language, the creative juxtaposition of slang and academic argot, set the book apart from less inspired stories of hard lives. There is nothing sentimental, nothing artificial, nothing contrived about the way Krause tells his story. A reader can like him or hate him and he just doesn’t care. From a literary standpoint, how the reader feels about Krause is unimportant. His passion, the intensity of his story, and his brutal honesty provide a convincing window into a life that most readers can barely imagine.

RECOMMENDED

The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Barry

Published by ‎ G.P. Putnam's Sons on July 6, 2021

The “many worlds” theory of parallel universes lends itself to many stories by science fiction writers. The 22 Murders of Madison May is the latest parallel universe story. The novel is apparently being developed as a television series. Television might be its natural element.

Madison “Maddie” May is an actress who was cast in a film that gave her career a jump start. Sadly for her, a fan named Clayton Hors sees the movie and falls in love with her. Clayton has a portal, a device that allows him to travel from one universe to another when the universes happen to be bumping against each other, an event that happens once every 30 hours. As Clayton journeys from universe to universe, he searches out the Maddie in each new place he visits. She’s never quite the woman he fell in love with — she’s usually not an actress at all, or at least not a successful one. Clayton feels betrayed by his encounters with Maddie and invariably kills her and moves on to the next universe. He’s done this about twenty times when the novel starts.

A group of people who have also acquired portal devices are moving through universes, following the path that Clayton creates. How this happens is the subject of a muddled explanation that requires travelers to acquire anchor points known as “moorings” to assure they will end up on a similar world (as opposed to, for example, travel to a universe where Earth doesn’t exist or has a noxious atmosphere). Where and how the travelers acquired portals and why they banded together are unanswered questions. While science fiction requires the suspension of disbelief, some writers try to provide a credible, science-based explanation so that the reader will not be discomforted by accepting unlikely realities. Max Barry doesn’t bother with credible explanations, but this isn’t the kind of science-based story that demands them.

It is instead a story of good guys chasing a bad guy. Clayton is the bad guy. The primary good guys are Hugo Garrelly (who really isn’t all that good) and Felicity Staples. Hugo is one of the travelers who has a portal. Hugo is chasing Clayton through various universes in an attempt to save various Maddies, hoping in the process to get ahead of him so that Clayton can be stopped. Felicity is a reporter who, quite against her will, joins Hugo on his travels.

The rules of physics that govern that novel posit that a new arrival in a dimension will replace that person’s existing counterpart. The novel’s most interesting aspect involves Felicity’s reaction to the lives that her counterpart was living as she enters each new universe. She has the same significant other in each, but they aren’t identical. One likes to cook. One has a beard. One is learning to make shoes. One largely ignores her while another is surprisingly attentive. Naturally enough, she likes the attentive one. But when she leaves a universe she leaves nothing behind. While she feels guilty about abandoning her significant others, Hugo gives her little choice.

Also of interest is the notion that the dimensional travelers might be motivated by the desire, not just to stop various Maddies from being murdered (there are an infinite number of Maddies, after all, so a couple of dozen deaths are inconsequential in the grand scheme of things), but to spread good things (such as music and art) from worlds where they exist to worlds where they don’t, making worlds better, one world at a time. The notion is never fully explored because it might not be consonant with the actual intent of the travelers.

At bottom, The 22 Murders of Madison May is an entertaining chase novel, with interdimensional portals substituting for the airplanes and fast cars that usually facilitate chases. Felicity and each of the Maddies are likable. Their character development isn’t deep but it isn’t shallow. Each incarnation of Madison makes her sympathetic — the reader might feel sad that she’s probably going to die, given her persistent determination to live a better life — while Felicity’s moral struggle (as well as her career struggles) make her an appealing character. Clayton is a basic sociopath who probably doesn’t need any more characterization than his obsession with Maddie. The plot isn’t complex but it isn’t overly simplistic, despite the absence of any real explanation for the underlying premise of interdimensional travelers and their mysterious portals.

The novel has the feel of being thrown together to meet a deadline without taking the time to flesh out the story’s premise. Maybe it was thrown together in anticipation of selling the story to television. After all, few television shows worry about whether the premise makes sense. Max Barry could have written a better novel, as he’s done in the past, but The 22 Murders of Madison May has sufficient entertainment value to qualify as a decent beach read.

RECOMMENDED

Bad Moon Rising by John Galligan

Published by Atria Books on June 29, 2021

Thrillers with original or unusual plots are difficult to find. Bad Moon Rising combines a variety of plot elements — homeless men gone missing, a sheriff running for relection who receives mysterious opposition research, a man who believes a creepy diet will flush chronic wasting disease from his system, Amish witnesses to crime who see no evil, and a couple of damaged teens — into a flavorful stew.

The novel is set in fictitious Bad Axe County, near (and perhaps modeled upon) Richland County in western Wisconsin. Wisconsin might not be as crazy as Florida, but its memorable serial killers include a cannibal and a man who made lampshades out of his victims. One of the killers in Bad Moon Rising might have been shaped by that history.

Rumors are flying about Bad Axe County Sheriff Heidi Kick. Some of the rumors are being spread by Barry Rickreiner or his mother. Barry is running against Heidi in the next election. One rumor is that Heidi is pregnant and that her husband Harley isn’t the father. The pregnancy, at least, seems to be more than a rumor.

Heidi and Harley already have three kids. Their daughter is at a summer camp for gender nonconforming youth. Their two boys, Taylor and Dylan, are bothered by Barry’s nasty election campaign. Taylor is the more sensitive and therefore the more disturbed of the two, which makes Heidi wonder whether she needs to involve a therapist. All of Heidi’s woes make her a more multifaceted protagonist than crime fiction typically produces.

Heidi has received anonymous emails that include “opposition research” about Barry, including the possibility that he poisoned his former girlfriend, whose death was regarded as a suicide. That potential crime plays a role in the plot, as does a priest who worries that homeless men are picked to join work crews and never seen again. The priest’s concern seems well-founded when Heidi chases a runaway Amish buggy that is carrying the dead body of a homeless drifter.

Other characters who contribute to the story include: a 17-year-old schizophrenic boy who mostly disobeys the voices that tell him to harm people; a girl of about the same age whose parents allowed her to be sexually abused; a couple of brothers (the bad one and the really bad one) who might or might not be Amish; and a newspaper reporter named Leroy “Grape” Fanta whose newspaper has not survived the arrival of electronic media. Fanta plays a significant role while invetigating crazy screeds about deer prions that, in the screed writer's view, are transferring chronic wasting disease to humans.

Bad Moon Rising might be seen as an indictment of an underfunded mental health system that fails to detect and treat mental illness, leaving it to law enforcement to address the aftermath of that public health failure. Yet John Galligan doesn’t use the novel to make an overt political statement. Rather, he weaves multiple story threads into a tight knit, generates excitement with timely action scenes, and builds tension as one of the deranged characters places Heidi’s family members at risk. Heidi’s troubles make her a convincing and sympathetic character, but she doesn’t lose the reader’s support by endlessly reflecting upon her imperfect life.

Bad Moon Rising tells an engaging story about colorful characters. Galligan moves the plot at a good pace without sacrificing atmosphere or characterization. Only a skilled writer can tell such an offbeat story and make it seem so real. Bad Moon Rising is the third book in a series that deserves a long life.

RECOMMENDED

A Distant Grave by Sarah Stewart Taylor

Published by ‎ Minotaur Books on June 22, 2021

Sarah Stewart Taylor understands the mechanics of storytelling. She tells her stories with fluid prose. That display of talent overcame my reservations about The Mountains Wild, the first book in the Maggie D’Arcy series. It isn’t quite enough to earn a full recommendation for the second book, A Distant Grave.

Maggie is a homicide detective in Long Island. In the first novel, Maggie traveled to Ireland, the home of her ancestors, and solved the disappearance of her cousin twenty years earlier. She made friends with some Irish cops and developed a love interest.

In the second novel, Maggie has planned a vacation to Ireland so she can shag her Irish boyfriend (my interpretation of the trip, although Taylor presents it in a more romantic light). Before she leaves, a man is murdered in a park. Maggie is worried that she won’t be able to take her trip because, it seems, she is the queen of Long Island homicides and therefore indispensable. I found that difficult to accept since Maggie doesn’t seem to have any deductive or procedural abilities that are beyond those of typical police detectives. When she isn’t using her work hours to take care of her personal problems, she’s giving mundane assignments to other cops. The qualities that make Maggie so special are difficult to recognize. In any event, by a happy coincidence, the murder victim turns out to be visiting from Ireland, giving Maggie a chance to combine work with pleasure, although her vacation turns out to be mostly work, much to the consternation of her boyfriend and daughter.

Taylor’s development of Maggie’s character focuses on how much she loves her daughter, how guilty she feels about disappointing her daughter and boyfriend because of her commitment to work, and how she worries that she won’t be able to make a life with her boyfriend because her job is in America and he doesn’t want to leave Ireland. Long distance relationships never work and Maggie should probably understand that, but Taylor’s instinct is mix a romance novel with a crime novel. In romance novels, love conquers all, so perhaps there is hope for Maggie. By the book’s end, I was so tired of Maggie fretting about her woes that I didn’t care. Nor did I care about Maggie’s tedious concern that she can’t be the supermom she wants to be despite telling her teenage daughter at every opportunity how much she is loved. All of that is meant to build characterization, but it isn’t terribly engaging and it seriously distracts from the story’s development. Perhaps insecure moms will have a different take on Maggie than mine.

Maggie is distracting in other ways, as well. She frets about an ongoing threat from a fellow who drove past her house, although that storyline eventually fizzles out, accomplishing nothing apart from giving Maggie another source of anxiety. Maggie frequently feels the need to tell us how her boyfriend smells, presumably to let us know how important everything about him is to his existence. One day he smells like rain and dog. Another day his deodorant smells green and his laundry detergent smells fluffy. Are green and fluffy even scents? It turns out that I don’t care.

The plot relies on too many coincidences. The story is needlessly convoluted. It involves the victim’s work for a humanitarian organization, his experience as a hostage in Afghanistan some years earlier, his rescuer, and a couple of politicians who feel the need to cover things up that, in a time when the public shrugs off scandals, could as easily have been ignored. A related murder occurs while Maggie is visiting Ireland. If her Irish cop buddies had any sense, they would tell her to stay home since her visits portend trouble, but they can’t because she’s just so loveable and perfect, even as she worries that she’s just not perfect enough.

The novel works a perceived social problem into the plot. Babies in Ireland who were born to a woman out of wedlock were given to a Catholic orphanage so the mothers could avoid shame. The babies were shipped to America where they were placed for adoption with Catholic families. Maggie is outraged about this, not because unwanted children were given the loving parents they deserved (which seems like a good thing), but because the children were not told they were Irish by birth. This seems to me to be a failure of the adoptive parents who kept that fact a secret, not a systemic evil that traces to Ireland, but the novel is largely driven by Maggie’s sense that all the players (other than the adoptive parents) were part of a monstrous plot to deprive babies of their Irish identity. In the grand scheme of social problems, I found it hard to share Maggie’s outrage.

So we have a well written novel with an unlikable protagonist and a convoluted plot that depends on unlikely coincidences and misplaced moral outrage. A Distant Grave isn’t awful but to continue reading the series, I would need to care about Maggie D’Arcy. I just don’t, so this will be the end of the series for me. Fans of romance novels that are driven by women who prevail despite their self-doubt might love this series, so as always, your mileage may vary.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS