House Privilege by Mike Lawson

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on July 7, 2020

Mike Lawson’s Joe DeMarco novels amuse the hell out of me. DeMarco is a fixer for the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, who as a result of the last election is about to resume his role as speaker. DeMarco doesn’t care about politics or much of anything other than golf. He’s a nonpracticing lawyer who hopes he can hang onto his fixer gig long enough to retire with a government pension, allowing him to spend all his time golfing rather than most of it. Violent circumstances keep interfering with the easy life he wants to lead. Those circumstances combine with DeMarco’s long-suffering attitude to fuel entertaining novels that are surprisingly light, given the number of mobsters, sleezy politicians, crooked lawyers, and sociopaths who populate the pages.

Congressman John Mahoney has a teenage goddaughter named Cassie. Mahoney’s wife adores Cassie but Mahoney pretty much ignores her, as he does anyone who can’t help him gain more power. Cassie’s parents die in a plane crash that almost kills Cassie, leaving Cassie with a trust fund that has been managed by a lawyer who inherited the job from her father, another lawyer who was a friend of Cassie’s father.

Until Mahoney’s wife can get back from a friend’s funeral, Mahoney wants DeMarco to figure out what Cassie might need. DeMarco doesn’t develop much of a rapport with the teenage girl or the nanny who is taking care of her or the lawyer who is managing her trust. None of them are as interesting to DeMarco as the Boston bartender he starts dating while he’s checking up on Cassie. DeMarco becomes suspicious, however, when an accountant who was auditing the trust is killed in a convenience store robbery. The series of suspicious deaths leads DeMarco to one of Boston’s most powerful mobsters.

House Privilege tells a good story at a steady pace. Eventually DeMarco chases a criminal around Montenegro, a country that has no extradition treaty with the U.S., in a series of chapters that accelerate the story’s action. Many of the laughs in House Privilege are unexpected, as when a character lies down in a jail cell and wonders why there is blood on the ceiling.

The DeMarco novels remind me of John Sandford’s Virgil Flowers novels. The books are good beach reads, mixing a fun plot with a likable protagonist who is always a bit disappointed in the world he navigates. Not all of the DeMarco novels have been as good as the last two, but at the age of 76, Lawson seems to be hitting his stride.

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An Unnatural Life by Erin K. Wagner

Published by Tor.com on September 15, 2020

An Unnatural Life imagines that Jupiter’s moon Europa has been colonized. Its colonists dwell underground. Robots with Artificial Intelligence, called robotniks, do most of the grunt work for the colonists. A robotnik known as Worker Class 812-3 killed a human co-worker. Or maybe he didn’t. Responsibility for such things is difficult to judge in the case of robotniks who can be controlled by others. A jury of humans found 812-3 guilty. The robotnik doesn’t feel guilty and, depending on one’s view of the law, he might not be. On the other hand, the robotnik thinks he acted out of love, so 812-3 might not have a reliable perspective when it comes to the human world.

A lawyer named Aiya Ritsehrer is working with a program that hopes to rehabilitate robotniks. They are good laborers with strong backs when they aren’t killing people, but most humans are skeptical that killer robots can be rehabilitated. That isn’t surprising, since many humans are skeptical that humans can be rehabilitated.

Aiya decides that, in the absence of robotnik jurors, 812-3 wasn’t tried by a jury of his peers. The plot is driven by Aiya’s determination to appeal 812-3’s conviction and to obtain a new trial based on United Nations rulings that grants equal rights to AIs. Aiya encounters resistance from human colonists who almost universally agree that AIs can’t be trusted because they aren’t true humans. Much of the resistance comes from angry shouters who apparently still plague humanity in 2145.

Isaac Asimov wrote the first widely read stories about robots who yearn for human rights. He wisely put the focus on the robots and their struggle to be recognized as human. Stories about civil rights for robots tend to be allegories that channel the struggle to protect the civil rights of everyone who is treated as less than equal. They work when they make the reader see the robot as having the qualities of a human. Erin K. Wagner alters the traditional framework for stories of this nature by making the unfortunate decision to shift the emphasis away from 812-3 and to place it on Aiya.

The story’s focus is not on the legal issue, which is underdeveloped, or on 812-3, whose enigmatic personality isn’t explored in any depth. Rather, the focus is on the impact that Aiya’s battle for justice has on Aiya. Her friend/partner insists that she move out when a mob of angry shouters gathers in front of their home. Aiya worries that she won’t be protected by the police or prison guards who oppose giving human rights to robotniks. Aiya is a depressive, downbeat, surprisingly timid character who did little to win my sympathy despite her belief in justice. She doesn’t have the fire in her belly that draws lawyers to civil rights work. Instead, she seems to be a bit of a doormat who doesn’t have much desire to fight back against her oppressors and has to force herself to do the right thing for 812-3, a robotnik she instinctively fears.

The ending is downbeat. That may be a realistic commentary on the history of the civil rights struggle, but Aiya responds to it with her usual air of misery. Readers are apparently expected to be more indignant about the story’s events than Aiya ever becomes. Wagner tries to soften the bleak ending by having Aiya give freedom to a cleaning bot that likely lacks the processing power to appreciate it, but Aiya’s final attempt to make a statement seems contrived and a bit pointless.

I admire Wagner’s prose style. Perhaps a longer work that explored the underlying issues and 812-3 in greater depth, that wasn’t satisfied with depicting Aiya as a Debbie Downer, would have done justice to the story’s premise. As it stands, Wagner wrote a mildly interesting novella that adds little to a concept that other writers have exhaustively explored.

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The Abstainer by Ian McGuire

Published by Random House on September 15, 2020

The two key characters in The Abstainer are both bent on revenge. They must each decide whether satisfaction is worth its cost. Those decsions are difficult because the true cost of vengeance is often hidden.

James O’Conner drank himself into oblivion after his wife died. Having disgraced himself as a police officer in Ireland, he is transferred to Manchester, where he has the chance to make a new life. He stops drinking and develops a network of Irish informers who give him tips when the Fenians are planning a crime to further their rebel cause. The English officers tolerate O’Connor but they will never accept an Irishman as one of their own, no matter how often he proves himself. “He knows he is better off here in England were no one knows or cares about him, where he is free alike from history and expectation, but he wonders too how long this balancing act can last and how it will end.”

Stephen Doyle fought for the Union in the Civil War. He is the kind of man who only finds purpose in war. He believes war rescued him from “faithless years of lassitude and drift.” Traveling to England in the cause of Irish rebellion suits him, gives him a purpose and a use for his skills. Three members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood have been hanged in Manchester. Doyle has been sent from America “to take revenge for the hangings, show the world that we’re not weak or afraid.”

Michael Sullivan meets Doyle on the ship from America. Sullivan is O’Conner’s nephew. He’s running from trouble of his own making. Sullivan volunteers, and is later coerced, to spy on Doyle and the Fenians. He hopes to use his contact with Doyle to infiltrate the Fenians and learn the details of their plan.

Events do not go well for any of the characters. One of O’Connor’s informants is identified and killed. His sister Rose tells O’Connor she can’t stay in Manchester, having been branded as the sister of a traitor to the Irish cause. O’Connor flirts with the idea of making a life with her, but his plans are derailed by a moment of bad judgment and more deaths. O’Connor finds himself suspected of loyalty to the Fenians. His career in shambles, O’Connor decides to seek his own revenge by tracking down Doyle.

The story is dark but riveting. Like most stories of revenge, one killing leads to another. “There’s always another wrong to be made right, another lesson to be taught or learned.” O’Connor blames himself for the deaths of Doyle’s victims. “The dead are in command, he thinks, now and always. Each step away is a step toward, every turning is part of the same circle, and what we call love or hope is just an interlude, a way of forgetting what we are.”

Doyle's life is less complicated than O'Connor's, but they are similar characters, both groping for a path forward, uncertain of their destination. After Doyle leaves Manchester, not knowing that O’Connor is on his heels, he wonders if he will lose his resolve, grow soft and weak. To an outsider, the question is whether a life of contentment might be worthier than a life spent in pursuit of an unattainable cause.

Doyle and O’Connor each have a chance to walk away from vengeance. Whether they will do so, or whether they established their fates as soon they set revenge in motion, is the question that gives the novel its suspense. The ending is depressing and the last chapter seems disconnected from the rest of the novel, but the story as a whole is a compelling examination of the way in vengeance destroys lives, including the lives of the avengers.

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Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

First published in Sweden in 2019; published in translation by Atria Books on September 8, 2020

Anxious People is a novel about a bank robbery that triggers a hostage drama. But no, it’s really a novel about a desperate man who jumps from a bridge and a desperate girl who doesn’t. But no, it’s not really about any of that. Fredrik Backman tells us that Anxious People is about idiots because that’s what we all are: idiots who are doing the best we can. Anxious People is a sweet, unpredictable, laugh-out-loud story of diverse individuals who begin to overcome their anxieties by recognizing the need to let go of the past while embracing a more compassionate future.

Abandoned by a spouse who had an affair and desperate for money to avoid eviction and an ensuing loss of child custody, a parent makes the unfortunate decision to rob a bank. The robbery is futile because the robber unwittingly chooses a cashless bank. The fleeing robber dashes through the nearest door and up a light of stairs where a realtor is showing an apartment. By wielding a gun that the robber assumes to be a toy, a hostage situation begins. Or maybe not, because the robber doesn’t want to frighten anyone and taking hostages was never part of the plan.

The story is driven by the quirky personalities of each person attending the apartment showing. From time to time we also encounter Jim and Jack, police officers who are father and son. Backman mixes in transcripts of Jack’s interviews with the hostages after they are released. None of the hostages are particularly good at being interviewed, but they are quite good at infuriating Jack. The interviews digress into silliness that makes a strong contribution to the story’s merriment.

As the title suggests, the characters are anxious. A couple of them are anxious to buy the apartment, but all are anxious in the sense of experiencing anxiety. They seem to be concerned about how others perceive them, taking political correctness to extremes for fear of being seen as prejudiced when they discuss gay people — except for Julia and Ro, lesbians who are expecting a child. They argue constantly, perhaps because they enjoy making up.

Competing against Julia and Ro for the apartment are Roger and Ana-Lena, an older couple who may be together as a function of habit rather than connection. Roger is obsessively competitive (he makes money by flipping apartments) while Ana-Lena feels the need to explain what Roger means every time Roger speaks.

Lennart appears in the story after he is forced out of the apartment’s bathroom because Julia needs to use it. Lennart has no pants but is wearing a rabbit head. Despite his unconventional attire, Lennart is probably the story’s most idealistic character. Apartments typically come up for sale because of death or divorce, but Lennart believes there’s something romantic about all the apartments that aren’t for sale. It is possible to imagine that they are occupied by happy couples.

Zara and Estelle have each attended the showing for reasons unrelated to a desire to purchase the property. Estelle is an older woman learning to live without her husband, a man who was everything to her despite having little in common with her. Zara, a prosperous banker who annoys her therapist, is acerbic and judgmental, making it no surprise that she’s lonely. Zara is surprised to discover a connection between her therapist and one of the other characters.

Jim and Jack love each other, as father and son should, but don’t know how to express it, as fathers and sons almost never do. Jack is among the characters who have been touched by the man who jumped from the bridge ten years earlier. Jack became a cop with the noble purpose of saving people, but it is up to his father to teach Jack that making an arrest isn’t always the best way to save someone.

The hostage drama triggers empathy in each of the characters, all of whom have at some point been frightened and lost, all of whom felt anxiety before the robber appeared. We live in a world we share with strangers who harbor the same anxieties. We brush against each other and, as Backman illustrates, we have an impact on each other in ways we may never understand.

Each character in Anxious People makes a bit of progress toward anxiety relief, because one bit at a time is all that anyone can manage. We start by admitting that there’s “an ache in our soul, invisible lead weights in our blood, an indescribable pressure in our chest,” and by recognizing that other people feel the same way. We try to internalize the belief that things we blame ourselves for are not always our fault. We make an effort to understand other people and to care about them, even if they are not like us, because caring about others is essential to caring about ourselves.

Letting go of negativity and all the unimportant things that anchor us might create anxiety in the form of uncertainty, but not knowing what happens next is a good starting point from which to build a better life. If we are nothing more than the sum of our experiences, Backman says, we could not live with ourselves. “We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.” Sometimes we need someone to give us a second chance. Sometimes we need to give ourselves one.

Backman keeps the reader guessing about the bank robber’s fate. Will the robber escape and, if so, how? Backman dangles possibilities to make the reader think “I know how the robber escapes” before foreclosing them. So there’s an element of mystery, but the plot exists largely to frame the characters and to showcase their anxieties and the lessons they learn. And to make the reader laugh, a goal Backman accomplishes on every page.

I suppose there’s a degree of sappiness in the self-help advice that Backman offers, but the story is told with so much heart and humor that even the most cynical reader should be able to embrace it. Whether or not a reader appreciates Backman’s lessons, it would be difficult to dislike the characters or to avoid laughing at them in recognition that they are, like us, idiots who are doing the best they can.

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The Forger's Daughter by Bradford Morrow

Published by Grove Atlanti/Mysterious Press on September 8, 2020

The Forger’s Daughter is a sequel to Bradford Morrow's The Forgers. Like the novel it follows, The Forger’s Daughter is a literary suspense novel. Since the relevant plot details of The Forgers are scattered through the sequel, it isn’t necessary to read the first novel to appreciate the second. While there is always some benefit to reading the first novel before reading the sequel, The Forger’s Daughter can be read as a standalone.

Will is no longer a forger. Instead, he works for an auction house, offering opinions about the authenticity of signatures. His wife owns a bookshop that specializes in rare books. His daughter Nicole has learned his skills as a forger, although she devotes her talent to assisting Will with the letterpress shop he operates. Will and Meghan have adopted a child named Maise whose true heritage is known to Meghan but not to Will.

In the first novel, a villain named Slader robbed Will of three fingers. Slader returns to blackmail Will with pictures that purport to show a crime that Will committed in the first novel. Slader has stolen a rare edition of Poe’s Tamberlane. He wants Will to replicate it so that the original can be replaced with a forged copy. The plan calls for Will to then alter the original a bit, to add Poe’s signature. and to forge an accompanying letter asking a reviewer to read it. Will agrees not just to avoid exposure but because of an implied threat that Maisie will be harmed if he refuses.

Will and Meghan narrate The Forger’s Daughter in alternating chapters. They tell their stories in the same voice, a fact that isn’t troublesome, given that both are well educated devotees of literature and are thus likely to share an elegant narrative style.

The two novels are something of an homage to Poe, particularly drawing uppon “The Purloined Letter,” a story in which the story’s hero, Auguste Dupin, creates a forgery. Apart from educating the reader with Poe lore, the novel offers some tips in the art of literary fakery, adding both interest and authenticity to the narrative.

The element of suspense in The Forger’s Daughter is low key. In fact, the novel as a whole might be characterized as low energy. It never creates the strong sense that anything bad will happen to anyone, apart from a cat that goes missing for a while. The characters, good and bad, are all very civilized, perhaps too well bred to behave violently, notwithstanding Slader’s amputation of Will’s fingers in the earlier book. Even when a moment of violence does arrive, the act is low key, the sort of thing that might be followed by a cup of tea (actually, it’s followed by a fine wine).

The novel’s value is found in its characterizations and prose more than its plot, and perhaps for its insights, some purloined from Poe. The ending of the sequel creates a pleasant symmetry between the two novels. The Forger’s Daughter tells an interesting story rather than a memorable one, but Morrow tells it very well.

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