The Lady Killer by Masako Togawa

First published in Japan in 1963; published in translation by Pushkin Vertigo on October 30, 2018

Pregnant from a one-night stand, Keiko Obana hangs from a windowsill until she plunges to her death. The police rule the death a suicide, but the inspector who investigates the case believes Keiko killed herself because of the pregnancy. So does a woman who believes her death is attributable to the rogue who made her pregnant.

After that prelude, the story follows Ichiro Honda (the rogue) as he seduces one woman after another, always assuming an identity other than his own, generally pretending to be foreign visitor to Japan. Honda keeps a diary of his sexual conquests that he refers to as his “Huntsman's Log.” The reader also follows Honda’s surprised response when he discovers that some of the women he seduced have been murdered. He even finds one of them dead when he turns up for a new assignation. Of course, the reader knows it is only a matter of time before Honda is blamed for the deaths.

The novel’s second half shifts the focus away from Honda to a young lawyer named Shinji who is helping an older lawyer handle Honda’s case. The older lawyer is the novel’s Sherlock, while Shinji does all the investigative legwork. Shinji is startled to learn that one of Honda’s conquests was a woman he was dating in college. Masako Togawa uses that coincidence to develop Shinji as a dispirited and lonely young man who is also a bit judgmental about Honda’s promiscuity — unless he is simply envious.

The Lady Killer creates a mystery for Shinji to unravel (how and by whom was Honda framed?) but it maintains interest by giving Shinji a series of interviews with characters who are carefully developed despite their brief appearances. Those characters — a medical intern, a salaryman, a salesman, a day laborer, and a gay prostitute — open a window on different aspects of Japanese life. The investigation also reveals how people are like “toothed cogs; once one cog slips out of sync, it damages not merely those around it but also others having no direct connection with it.”

The novel is noteworthy for its glimpse of Japanese culture, including the divide between older people who hold traditional values (for example, values that compel suicide for disloyalty) and younger people who have adopted a western approach to moral decision-making. Themes of duty and loyalty are prevalent throughout the novel. The Lady Killer also explores social norms, not unique to 1960s Japanese culture, regarding the judgment that society visits upon men who use women, even if the women happily agree to be used for a night of passion, and upon women who are branded as promiscuous because they enjoy casual sex.

At the same time, Honda’s view of himself as a hunter and of women as his prey makes it difficult to feel sympathy for Honda, even though he is an innocent accused. Yet Honda is far from being the most aberrant character in a story that exposes the dark side of humanity. This example of Japanese noir strives to spotlight darkness rather than to promote empathy for its characters.

The plot depends on an elaborate scheme to frame Honda for multiple murders that will expose him to the death penalty. My initial reaction was that the killer could more easily have killed Honda; the decision to kill several innocent people struck me as an unlikely way to seek revenge. By the end of the novel, however, a plot twist allows the reader to see the story in a different way. Combined with an epilog that fills in the gaps, the mystery’s resolution is credible, surprising, and satisfying.

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Boomer1 by Daniel Torday

Published by St. Martin's Press on September 18, 2018

Boomer1 imagines a new way to divide Americans, young against old, as a social movement fueled by viral videos sparks resentment of Baby Boomers, prompting Boomers to direct their anger at Millennials. The risk of “us-against-them” movements, according to Boomer1, is that “at some point animosity based in the broad strokes of identity simply pervaded, its origin obscured, only the intangible residue of its conflict remaining.” True enough.

It’s also true (and a point Boomer1 makes effectively) that “generations” are just demographic groups, defined by arbitrary “born between” brackets, while members of a defined generation are individuals who may have little in common with each other. The two key characters in Boomer1 are Mark Brumfeld, who is living in his parents’ basement and raging at Boomers who refuse to retire (as if Boomer retirement would automatically qualify him for a high-end job), and his former girlfriend Cassie Black, who scores a high-end job using digital-world skills that come more naturally to Millennials than Boomers. In other words, Cassie’s new career undercuts the foundation of Mark’s outrage, although she’s reluctant to tell him about her good luck.

Before all of that happens, Cassie attends Wellesley and then returns to her roots as a bluegrass fiddler. She has a relationship with a woman and then with Mark, who plays in the same band, and then cheats on Mark with the woman. Relationships are not Cassie’s strength.

At some point after Cassie breaks up with Mark, she sees that he has changed his name to Isaac and is starring in viral YouTube videos that he calls Boomer Missives. A failure as an intellectual, as a journalist, as a doctoral candidate in search of a teaching gig, and as a boyfriend, Mark moved in with his parents before launching “the most infamous domestic revolutionary group in the country,” based on his perception that all Millennials are screwed because acquisitive Baby Boomers, who care only about themselves, have raped the planet’s resources and destroyed the global economy, leaving nothing for the Millennials. Mark’s videos advance a manifesto: “Resist much, obey little.” Boom boom.

Mark’s complaints that Boomers have not been good custodians of the environment are fair, although unfocused. More than half of all Boomers actually care about global warming and unequal wealth distribution and the other topics of Mark’s Boomer Missives. Many of Mark’s complaints are self-serving and ill-conceived — yes, his social security taxes help the elderly, not him, but the system was never designed to be a savings account, and the next generation will be paying taxes for Mark’s support — but any complainer can find an audience of self-identified victims living in their parents’ basements, so it is credible that Mark’s videos would go viral.

The novel alternates between the stories of Cassie and Mark, with occasional digressions to explore the life of Mark’s mother Julia and her love affair with “pure American” bluegrass music before she begins to cope with hearing loss. Toward the end of the novel, Julia emerges as an important character, a sympathetic representative of the Boomers who has done nothing to fuel the anger of the Millennials. [Disclosure: As a Boomer, I might be inclined to have greater sympathy for Boomers than Millennial readers of Boomer1.]

Leaderless social movements in the digital age (like Occupy) tend to gather steam quickly and to fade just as quickly. Boomer1 explores that dynamic in a story that seems plausible, even if not all of its events are convincing. (I mean, even viewing them as generational icons rather than musicians, how could anyone dislike Jerry Garcia or Neil Young?) Nor have I sensed a wave of hostility against Boomers that Millennials might ride upon, but as a Boomer, it is possible and perhaps likely that I am entirely oblivious to what Millennials are thinking.

In any event, I view the larger message of the story as more important than the details. The story asks whether the immediacy of video has supplanted the power of the written word. The advent of YouTube and social media and the dark web make it easy for people to spark something they don’t anticipate by venting anger that they haven’t carefully considered and don’t really understand. The fire they spark might be damaging, but should they be judged harshly for sparking it? It’s hard to think of Mark as a bad person, even if his actions set events in motion that eventually have a bad outcome, but media pundits would clearly blame him (pundits are in the business of blaming) despite his benign intent. On the other hand, perhaps anyone who uses video to fuel rage against an amorphous “other” deserves a bit of judgment (although there is a world of difference between deserving disapproval and deserving punishment).

In addition to asking meaningful questions about how social movements evolve in the Millennial age, Boomer1 works best for me as the story of youngish people trying to figure out who they are. Daniel Torday uses a wealth of detail to create Mark and Cassie as individuals rather than Millennial stereotypes. I also like the juxtaposition of things that change relatively quickly (technology, generations) with things that don’t (the Rocky Mountains, the struggle to make sense of life). In that sense, Boomer1 offers important insights into both the things that divide generations and the things that will always connect them.

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Whiskey by Bruce Holbert

Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux/MCD on March 13, 2018

Most chapters in Whiskey are divided into three sections. The sections titled Exodus are set in the present (1991) and bring us to the story’s end. The sections titled Genesis begin in the 1950s and tell the story of Pork White’s family. The Lamentations sections pick up the story of Pork’s two sons during the 1980s. The typical order within each chapter is Exodus - Lamentations - Genesis, so the story is told both backwards (within each chapter) and sideways (as it moves from chapter to chapter). Whiskey is like a winding river that flows through and connects the parts of the story.

When Whiskey begins, a lawyer walks into a bar and hands divorce papers to Andre White, who promptly burns them. Several drinks later, Andre and his brother Smoker have enlisted the lawyer’s armed assistance in a search for Smoker’s daughter Bird, who has been spirited away by Smoker’s wife. A chance encounter with a bear delays that mission before the bear joins it.

Andre and Smoker were born after Pork White, a Native American, fell in love with a white high school girl named Peg who used Pork to carry out her agenda of retribution. The relationship was a wrong turn in the lives of both of its participants. The reader learns how life turned out for Peg in one of the Lamentations sections of the book.

The brothers are distinctly different. Bruce Holbert portrays Smoker as “sharp-featured and rakish; women tripped over one another to be his fool. He had a knack for appearing to have feelings and the prospect of excavating his heart kept them on.” Smoker has no money and clearly never will, but he listens when women talk and for that they adore him.

Andre isn’t as attractive but he has more intellect, or at least more interest in using his intellect, than Smoker. In 1983, when he met Claire, Andre was a math teacher who still managed to remain sober during the day. In the evening, he stalked Claire until she caught him at it and commenced a romance. Given the way the story begins, the romance has clearly fizzled by the Exodus timeframe.

The themes in Whiskey are familiar. They include the impact of growing up in a dysfunctional family, brothers bonding as protection from woeful parenting, and sibling betrayal. Alcohol and violence pervade the story — alcohol consigns painful memories to oblivion (“If knowledge was the apple the serpent proffered Eve, then memory was the first bitter harvest outside Eden’s gates, and angels guard the tree of life, which bears the sweet fruit of amnesia we cannot reach”) — but Holbert softens the drunken violence with moments of tenderness, compassion, and unexpected humor. Just how Bird will turn out, raised with love but surrounded by cruelty, is an open question.

The brothers’ interaction provides a steady supply of surprises and revelations. Even when their relationship is at its worst, their connection is a harbor against a world for which they both seem unsuited. They have been (in Smoker’s words) “gutshot since birth.” They see living as a slow and sometimes agonizing process of dying.

Holbert conveys a strong sense of realism with the detailed setting and distinctive personalities that he gives to each character. His prose combines grace with grit. The rhythm of the brothers’ dialog is uniquely their own, cementing their relationship apart from everyone else in the world. Whiskey is worth reading just for the brothers’ far-ranging conversations. And while the novel as a whole is dark and tragic, it is also worth reading as a powerful reminder that people who endure dismal and violent lives are also capable of love, honesty, gentleness, and insight into the human condition that their more privileged neighbors may never develop.

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The Watcher by Caroline Eriksson

First published in Sweden in 2017; published in translation by AmazonCrossing on September 18, 2018

The Watcher, like many other thrillers built on domestic drama, is the story of people who seem to be behaving badly. This one is a bit different in that it challenges the reader to decide whether the primary narrator is perceiving and interpreting unfolding events accurately. Unfortunately, the novel’s resolution is not as interesting as its setup.

Elena is the author of a successful thriller who hasn’t written a word in two years. She is separated from her husband Peter and spends her time moping and gazing out the window rather than living, although she tells us that she’s always been more an observer of life than a participant. Most of the novel is narrated from Elena’s point of view, although some chapters are told from the perspective of an unfaithful husband and some from the point of view of a woman who plans to kill her husband.

Considering how much drama she has in her own life, it can’t be healthy for Elena to take on another family’s drama. Yet alone in her home, Elena becomes obsessed with the neighbors across the street who seem to be having (to put it gently) domestic problems. Through Google, she learns that they are Philip and Veronica Storm. She soon meets their son, a young teen named Leo, who wants to be a writer. Leo seems eager to strike up a friendship and Elena, listening to his stories about his parents, seems to sense a source of material she can use to make her own stories.

Elena’s curiosity and snooping — where does Leo’s mother go during the days when she’s supposedly lying in bed? what is Leo's father saying to the woman he's apparently meeting on the sly? why is there a knife under the Storms' marital bed? — leads her to fear that something bad will happen. Can she do anything to prevent it? Should she do anything, given that her suspicions may be unfounded and, in any event, result from invading the privacy of Leo’s family? She fears, with good reason, that anyone to whom she voices her suspicion will question her mental health. The reader might do the same when Elena starts to wonder whether the novel she is writing is in some way influencing the actions of her neighbors.

One of the novel’s pleasures, in fact, is the challenge that the reader faces in deciding whether Elena is just too unbalanced to have a reliable perception of events. Maybe someone is in danger. Maybe Elena is imagining the danger, creating a greater drama than the evidence supports. Caroline Eriksson builds suspicion that the danger might not involve Philip or Veronica but a secondary character, like Peter or Elena’s sister, both of whom play tangential roles for much of the story.

While most of the novel is told from Elena’s perspective, occasional passages are narrated by two unnamed characters. Again, the reader makes assumptions about who those narrators might be, but those assumptions must be reconsidered as the story progresses. Eriksson’s deft misdirection and her reliance on a potentially unreliable narrator are the novel’s virtues.

At the same time, while the novel builds to a surprising moment, the ending seems a bit tame, given the dramatic buildup. My reaction was more “huh” than “wow.” The final pages are determinedly optimistic, as if Eriksson thought it was important to let the reader know that Elena is a strong woman and that there’s no need to worry about another critical character. That seems like a betrayal of the darkness the precedes those pages. There’s also a message in the final paragraph that comes across as a writer force-feeding a dish of self-help to the reader. So while The Watcher has its rewards, it also comes with a bit of disappointment at the end.

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Paris in the Dark by Robert Olen Butler

Published by Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press on Sept. 4, 2018

Christopher Marlowe “Kit” Cobb is a war correspondent in France in 1915. He is also an American spy. As a journalist, he is doing a story on American ambulance drivers with the hope that tales of American courage will prod Wilson to enter the war. As a spy, Cobb is asked to contact a German informant in Paris who knows something about the recent bombing of a hotel, presumably a German tactic to spread fear in Paris. He learns that a dangerous man has entered France using the name Franz Staub and posing as a refugee. Cobb’s mission is to kill Staub — assuming that Lang’s information is accurate.

Cobb finds and follows Staub, but he also finds a nurse. When he delays his mission to spend amorous time with the nurse, he finds reason to condemn his departure from duty. But it’s Paris, so Cobb can hardly be blamed.

In the meantime, Cobb is riding along with an American ambulance driver in France as part of his journalistic cover. Cyrus Parsons is a farm boy turned bookworm who seems to be concealing greater depth than he can easily reveal to a reporter. Another driver, John Barrington Lacey, strikes Cobb the wrong way, perhaps because of Lacey’s Harvard hauteur, perhaps because Lacey has designs on the nurse.

The plot of Paris in the Dark (Cobb's assignment is more challenging than it first appears) is not particularly surprising, but the story is engaging, fast-moving, and convincing. Robert Olen Butler builds suspense by placing Cobb in a series of tense moments that lead to the novel’s final dramatic encounter. Butler includes enough action to make the story fit the conventions of a thriller, but the novel's focus is on the characters whose lives have shaped their differing perspectives on the value of anarchy.

Butler has had a versatile career as an author, dancing between literary and genre fiction, but he invariably brings a literary flair to his storytelling when he chooses to write thrillers. He creates atmosphere and develops believable characters without relying on unnecessary detail. His prose is gritty but graceful. There’s an appealing simplicity to Paris in the Dark — Butler doesn’t make the mistake of overreaching — but unlike some of Butler’s other work, the story does not stand out as a commentary on the human condition. Butler isn’t going to win another Pulitzer for Paris in the Dark, but the book should entertain fans of historical thrillers.

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