A Long Island Story by Rick Gekoski

Published by Canongate Books on July 3, 2018

Rick Gekoski's first novel, Darke, was published when Gekoski was 72 years old, which makes me think there is hope for me yet. A Long Island Story is his second novel.

Is it bad to give up a dream? Or can giving up a dream be an important step toward getting on with life? That’s one of the central questions the reader of A Long Island Story is invited to ponder.

Ben Grossman works for the Department of Justice during the dark days of McCarthy, barely hanging onto his job but living in fear that, like so many of his innocent colleagues, he will be denounced as a Communist. Ben and Addie live in Alexandria and are raising their two children to respect the struggle for civil rights. Their liberal political views make it only a matter of time before Ben is purged from an intolerant government.

Ben and Addie generally agree on political goals, if not strategies, but passion has bled from their marriage. Addie and the kids are spending a seven-week summer vacation with Addie’s parents, Maurice and Pearl, at their Long Island bungalow. Addie’s brother Frankie and Frank’s wife Michelle join them, as does Ben briefly, during his vacation from work. But the stay with Addie’s parents is prefatory to a move to Long Island that Addie dreads: public schools for the kids, a suburban apartment instead of a home in Virginia’s farmlands. Ben plans to open a law practice in Huntington, a stifling place for women. Addie can barely tolerate Long Island for the summer and has no desire to return to the childhood home from which she escaped. The stress is one of many forces that might tear their marriage apart.

Also having an impact on their marriage is the affair Ben is having with a wealthy woman who wants to support him while he pursues his dream of being a writer. Addie is about as unsupportive as a wife could be, choosing her family’s lifestyle over her husband’s happiness. She thinks it is bad enough that he wants to abandon his job before being fired; she views his desire to write, even in his free time, as frivolous and regressive. Ben and Addie spend much of the novel competing to see who can be more selfish, leading to novel’s most confrontational (and strongest) moment.

Maurice has his own problems, giving rise to a subplot that relates to a side business he operates — a legitimate business, but one that leaves him indebted to an Italian with mob connections. Ben and Addie’s children have their own anxieties, the uncertainties and fears that children have when parents aren’t getting along.

Some of the story is taken up by kids building forts and letting the day drift by, which might be a nice way to spend time but dull to read about. More interesting are the typical fears that parents experience: the brief disappearance of a child, the polio epidemic, whether to risk taking the children to a polluted but convenient beach.

Characters are assembled in detail, perhaps excessive detail, not all of it terribly interesting. It is good to know about the family history and the longings and failings and triumphs that shaped their personalities, but their individual reactions to the latest hit song and their meal preferences and the inevitable fights and illnesses among the children who crowd into the back of a car are less enlightening.

The setting is also carefully rendered. Ben’s job sends him to the South and Midwest, where he makes legal arguments in support of rural electrification to local judges who (as Ben imagines it) are put off by the eloquent “Yankee Jewboy bigshot who thought he could hornswoggle a bunch of rednecks.” The country has readily swallowed McCarthyism because the American public “has an insatiable need for someone to blame.” How little the country has changed.

While A Long Island Story did not consistently hold my interest, the novel’s best moments are compelling. The main story could have resolved in many different ways, but Gekoski bucks the modern trend of leaving stories unfinished. Given that the story is set in 1953, following the conventions of less modern novels seems appropriate, but the ending benefits from a modernist realism, shedding light on what a conventional ending to a 1950s story really means. If I didn’t like A Long Island Story as much as I liked Darke, the honesty with which the characters are rendered, the subtlety of the ending, and the theme of pursuing or abandoning dreams combine to earn A Long Island Story an easy recommendation.

RECOMMENDED

Warning Light by David Ricciardi

Published by Berkley on April 17, 2018

Iran has a “secret” nuclear facility near the site of a recent earthquake, but not so secret that the CIA is unaware of its existence. A British Airways flight with apparent engine and hydraulic problems approaches the airspace over the facility and makes an emergency landing at Sirjan, much to the consternation of the Iranian military, given the flight’s intrusion into prohibited airspace. However, shooting down a crippled civilian craft with a large number of passengers would be bad for Iran’s image, so Zac Miller, an American passenger, finds himself on the ground at an airport that was shut down due to the earthquake. Not long after that, he’s taken prisoner as a suspected spy because he took some pictures of a mountain sunset.

Of course, the Iranians are right. Miller is a spy, but not a field agent. He’s an analyst who is slotted into the mission at the last moment, after the real spy had to drop out. The CIA’s brilliant scheme is to have him take pictures of the “secret” nuclear facility as he strolls across the airport tarmac. And for this they put the lives of everyone on the British Airways flight at risk. The idea is just dumb enough to be real.

Miller is taken prisoner because he’s the only passenger taking pictures of the “secret” facility. With improbable speed, the Iranians set up Miller as a suspect in murders committed in Singapore and Paris. Also improbable is Miller’s escape from custody, but it sets up the cross-country trek that takes up a good part of the story, as Miller tries to evade Iran’s military and make his way to a friendlier environment.

The story takes Miller to Iranian goat herders and later puts him in the hands of Dubai police officers, one of whom lost his wife when the U.S.S. Vincennes, an American naval vessel unlawfully operating in Iranian waters, shot down a civilian aircraft that was leaving Iran. The police officer believes the military action was deliberate; Miller believes it was a mistake. The truth is less clear, but the novel acknowledges that the incident shaped the way many Iranians view the American government.

In any event, Miller feels abandoned by the CIA, which decides that he has gone rogue and turned into a serial killer. The CIA wants to kill Miller because that’s how the CIA solves problems. That creates a classic "good guy must prove his innocence before other good guys kill him unless the bad guys kill him first" plot that is standard in thrillers.

An elderly high society British woman also plays a key role in the story, having taken a shine to Miller while sitting next to him on the British Airways flight. I wasn’t persuaded that she would be so obsessed about a man she knew for such a short time, particularly after she learns that he’s accused of multiple murders.

The plot struck me as a bit farfetched, from the scheme to put civilian passengers on British Airways at risk to the Iranians’ immediate and successful effort to make Miller look like a murderer (maybe Iran has a contingency plan to frame CIA agents). More troubling is that Miller’s adventure is just too easy. He readily evades capture, crosses borders at will, and never faces a threat of death sufficiently serious to cause the reader to worry about his survival. The story lacks tension and suspense. Not all thrillers need to be thrilling, but this one was clearly meant to be, and it falls short of the mark.

The promotional materials for Warning Light emphasize that David Ricciardi incorporated his personal experiences into the novel, including backpacking through the mountains of the western United States. Backpacking in mountains in the US is fun and not particularly dangerous. That’s kind of how Miller’s trip through the mountains in Iran comes across, but for the occasional battle to the death.

Having said that, Ricciardi delivers one good scene involving a sailboat trying to cross the English Channel in a storm that conveys a true sense of excitement and danger. If the novel had done that more often, I would have no reservations about recommending it. Ricciardi’s prose and pace are fine and, as first novels go, Warning Light isn’t a bad effort, although the ending (which sets up the next novel) is weak. I would chalk this up as decent first draft that wasn’t quite ready to be published.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Remind Me Again What Happened by Joanna Luloff

Published by Algonquin Books on June 26, 2018

Claire Scott contracted Japanese encephalitis from a mosquito bite in India. She is hospitalized with a high fever in a Florida hospital before her panicked husband Charlie finds her. Charlie was in love with Claire once, but they have been separated for some time. When Claire comes out of her coma, her seizures and memory loss cause them to reunite, soon to be joined in Boston by their old friend Rachel. The novel explores the evolution and disintegration of their triangular relationship, and the discomfort that comes from their reunion.

Claire’s memories from age 17 to 34 are gone, and her ability to form new memories is impaired. She doesn’t recall living with Rachel and Charlie after the death of Rachel’s parents. Rachel is helping Claire sift through memories with old photographs and boxes that Claire packed away, but Claire spends most of her time keeping track of Charlie’s sighs and unspoken criticisms of her endless questions about her past. Charlie does not respond well to not being remembered. He wonders if Claire, who traveled the world as a journalist, was sleeping with Michael, her photographer, during their separation. Claire wonders whether Charlie was sleeping with his co-worker Sophie. Neither of them seem capable of recapturing the love that united them in marriage.

Remind Me Again What Happened is told from the perspectives of its three primary characters. Claire’s and Charlie’s chapters explain why each is irritated by the other. Claire feels suffocated by Charlie, who fears that she will suffer a seizure if she leaves the house and does not understand why she resists his desire to keep her safe. Claire feels Charlie blames her for her memory loss and that he resents the time he spends filling in the gaps, reminding her of events again and again because memories refuse to form. Those perceptions are accurate, as Charlie tells us that he is “still too twisted up with old anger and hurts” to treat Claire, who clearly feels no desire for him, as anything other than an obligation.

From the photographs and Claire’s stories, the reader learns about Claire’s childhood, which she remembers vividly. Recalling stories told by her parents shapes her current understanding of how she should be living her life. It is easy to feel sympathy for Claire, both because her memory loss has robbed her of an identity and because her seizures have robbed her of the opportunity to leave home long enough to gain new experiences and build a new identity. It is harder to sympathize with Charlie, because he is controlling and selfish (at least from Claire’s perspective), but the chapters that are told from Charlie’s point of view make it possible to understand that he also feels trapped in a situation that is beyond his control.

Rachel’s chapters focus on the relationship she once had with Charlie and the difficulty she has deciding whether to forgive Claire for an act that she views as a betrayal. She also recalls her anxiety when Claire and Charlie began to date, signaling the time when Charlie and Claire would move out and leave Rachel alone. She wonders if Charlie is correct in saying that Claire has not forgotten the past but is trying to rewrite it, to make it more palatable. Rachel finds herself caught in the middle, her loyalty to two friends divided, wondering if she will eventually choose sides in the growing divide between Charlie and Claire. Joanna Luloff builds sympathy for Rachel, as she does with the other characters, but like all people, Rachel sometimes lets undefined anger overcome her better nature. The reader likes Rachel in her better moments and is able to understand why there are times when her conduct is less than exemplary.

As is usually true in memory loss novels, the plot feels a bit contrived, but this relationship drama is character-driven. The plot is just a framework to reunite the characters after they have drifted apart. The reader wonders whether the characters will be able to reconcile their feelings, to gain insight into their own behaviors rather than blaming each other for making them act as they do. They all have secrets (even if Claire does not remember her secrets), and the reader wonders whether they will finally reveal their secrets to each other, or whether some secrets are better left concealed.

As is common in character-driven novels, the ending provides little closure because the lives of the characters will continue to evolve even after the story ends. That can be frustrating, but even if the ending of Remind Me Again What Happened isn’t entirely satisfying, it allows the reader to imagine any number of ways the story might continue by opening the doors to potential futures, just as all of us are engaged in a constant process of reinventing our own futures. Luloff scores points for reminding the reader of life’s uncertainty and of the struggle we should undertake to be good to each other, even if we do not ultimately succeed. She also scores points for telling the story in elegant, understated prose that brings the characters fully to life.

RECOMMENDED

For Honor by Jeff Rovin

Published by St. Martin's Griffin on May 29, 2018

The full title of this book is Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: For Honor. Tom Clancy died in 2013, but his name appears in the largest font on the cover. The name of the actual author, Jeff Rovin, appears in the smallest font, despite the fact that Rovin has written most of the Op-Center novels and Clancy wrote none of them. Regardless, you can bet that some gullible readers will write Amazon reviews complaining that Tom Clancy doesn’t write as well as he once did, or praising Tom Clancy for his continued literary excellence. I don’t know if publishers intend to deceive readers when a dead author’s name dominates the cover, but the practice has a bad smell. I like to see the writer who actually wrote the book get top billing.

The Op-Center series was relaunched in an excruciatingly dull 2014 book by Dick Couch and Steve Pieczenik. Returning Rovin to the helm was a wise decision. Rovin at least makes things happen in For Honor. Not everything that happens is interesting or credible, but enough of the novel works to earn a very guarded recommendation.

The plot follows a theme that have become popular in current thrillers: Russia is teaming up with Iran to cause mass destruction in the United States. The story throws in some action in Cuba involving series regular Kent McCord, but the Cuba plotline comes across as filler. It adds nothing of value to the story.

The better plot thread involves Konstantin Bolshakov, who disappeared from Soviet military records in 1962 and resurfaced after the Soviet Union broke up, having transitioned from naval officer to arms dealer. Bolshakov went into hiding after a rival arms dealer killed his wife, but only after taking the eye of the rival’s daughter. Bolshakov placed his son Yuri in a place of safety before he went into hiding. Entering adulthood, Yuri vowed never to have contact with the man whose career caused his mother’s death. That vow is broken when Yuri, now a faithful member of the GRU, needs his father’s knowledge about nuclear weapons that were stored and sort of forgotten in Anadyr, a Russian city in cozy proximity to Alaska.

Thanks to a snazzy Ops-Center computer program that scans social media posts worldwide, Kathleen Hays spots the elder Bolshakov in a photo at a Moscow parade, and spots him again catching a flight to the port city of Anadyr, where no sane person would go. Why she cares about a has-been arms dealer is unclear. With a bit of snooping, she finds that Yuri is also going to Anadyr. From this she deduces that world peace is once again threatened.

Meanwhile, the Ops-Center is helping with the interview of an Iranian defector named Ghasemi, who claims to be a closet Christian who is being persecuted by the Russians, but quickly admits that he has been planted to provide disinformation to the Americans, and claims that his daughter will be killed if he does not cooperate. A video showing the daughter being tortured is offered as proof of his story. Chase Williams, who heads the Ops-Center, is suspicious of Ghasemi, while Ghasemi’s daughter, a nuclear physicist named Parand, eventually comes to play a role in story other than that of a helpless torture victim. Unfortunately, the father-daughter relationship involving Ghasemi and Parand is less well developed than the father-son relationship involving Konstantin and Yuri. In the end, the father-daughter story just sort of fizzles out.

Naturally, the good guys quickly albeit improbably draw a connection between the Russian and Iranian storylines. In support of the Cuban storyline, we’re told that “planes, ships, and even submarines” from Cuba are “constantly shuttling senior planners of terror groups to Florida and the Gulf Coast.” Homeland Security knows about most of these trips but lets them happen because it prefers to “watch and listen” rather than disrupting “terror groups” by arresting their “senior planners.” This is an astonishingly paranoid view of Cuba, but it’s red meat for a certain kind of reader. It also suggests a certain ineptness on the part of Homeland Security that, at least, isn't difficult to believe.

The reader will need to tolerate the usual thriller veneration of “men of action” (i.e., guys with guns) who do what needs to be done while “bureaucrats” and “academics” (i.e., people who solve problems by thinking rather than shooting) never understand anything and should really just keep their mouths shut and listen to the guys with guns. I particularly laughed at the notion that soldiers who fought in Iraq know more about Iran than a scholar who has devoted a career to studying the country. Iran is ruled by a theocracy, Iraq by something that passes for sectarian government. “Boots on the ground” in Iraq won’t give anyone useful information about Iran, but extolling the virtues of soldiers while bashing academics and politicians is standard fare in novels like this one. Again, red meat.

Rovin also tosses in some Krav Maga workouts and fights, including one at a pointless NATO war games digression in Poland. Krav Maga is a trendy form of martial arts in thrillers and Rovin is nothing if not trendy. Unfortunately, the fights add nothing to the plot, which meanders a bit before Americans rush in to save the day. In the end, I found the Bolshakovs to be more compelling than the American characters, simply because their disagreements were based on substance while the Americans are busy mouthing talking points. The novel offers little in the way of tension or suspense, and action scenes are too standard to be exciting. Rovin knows how to keep a story moving, so it is easy to breeze through the chapters. I found For Honor worthwhile for the Russian father-son dynamic, but the rest of the novel lacks sufficient energy to be work as a thriller.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Judge Hunter by Christopher Buckley

Published by Simon & Schuster on May 1, 2018

The Judge Hunter tells the story of how New Amsterdam became New York, but tells it sideways, as the tale of an unwitting spy who is purportedly searching for two regicides who fled to New England because of their involvement in the death of King Charles I. A history lesson has never been funnier, even if the funny bits are invented.

Samuel Pepys is Clerk of the Royal Navy, giving him the means to support, albeit reluctantly, his unemployed relatives, including his feckless brother-in-law, Balthasar de St. Michel. When Lord Downing hatches a plan to annoy the colonial Puritans who have sheltered two regicide judges (Whalley and Goffe), Pepys recommends sending Balthasar (“Balty”) to the colonies, because he knows of no one with a greater natural talent for annoyance.

In Massachusetts, Balty is both annoying and annoyed. He has little in common with Puritans, who immediately threaten to skewer his tongue with a hot poker for his blasphemous manner of speech. But as he learns from Colonel Huncks, who has been assigned to assist him in judge hunting, the Puritans would happily murder him rather than give up Whalley and Goffe, given that Whalley and Goffe did God’s work (in the Puritans’ eyes) by ridding England of Charles I, who was no friend of Puritans.

Unlike Balty, Huncks is competent. He’s also a British spy. Much of the novel’s humor comes from the contrast between Balty’s bumbling and Huncks’ efforts to keep him alive as they pursue their mission. Huncks’ true mission is not to find the regicides but to gather information in anticipation of the arrival of the British Navy, which plans to attack the Dutch colonists in New Amsterdam, a plan that Pepys opposes on the ground that the Navy is not equipped to win a war.

With that setup, the story proceeds on two fronts: in England, Pepys faces accusations of disloyalty, much like the colonists who are harboring Whalley and Goffe, while in New England, Balty hastens forward on a mission that never seems to be supported by a plan. In blissful ignorance of political matters, Balty goes about his business, inadvertently saving a pretty Quaker named Thankful from being flogged to death after she wanders nude into a Puritan church nude as an act of protest.

Balty might be annoying but he isn’t rude, and his unwarranted sense of self-importance adds to his charm as a character. He also has a good heart, which makes him a likable character. Balty finds himself drawn to Thankful, perhaps because he has seen her in the nude, but Thankful also has a good heart and is another character the reader will easily like. A bit of romantic comedy adds spice to the historical comedy, with familiar figures of colonial history making cameo appearances. In fact, Christopher Buckley appended a short discussion of actual history to the novel, giving context to the story’s characters and events.

The Judge Hunter isn’t an action novel, but it has enough action to keep the story energized, and more than enough silliness to keep the reader laughing. At the same time, parts of the story are gruesome. Some scenes are sad and some of those are poignant. That’s what happens when fiction is based on history: reality intrudes. That isn’t a bad thing, because one of the novel’s points is that life and the people who live it can be quite funny, even clownish, but that the incalculable value of life can only be measured against the certainty of death. And if we must die, we might as well die laughing.

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