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.

RECOMMENDED

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.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

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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Sirens by Joseph Knox

First published in Great Britain in 2017; published by Crown on February 20, 2018

The third strike against Detective Constable Aidan Waits sent him to undercover work. None of the strikes are legitimate, but the world is unfair. Newspapers refer to Waits as disgraced, but David Rossiter doesn’t believe what the papers say. Rossiter is a Member of Parliament whose 17-year-old daughter Isabelle is mixed up with a drug dealer named Zain Carver. Waits has been surveilling Carver; Rossiter wants him to keep an eye on Isabelle while he’s playing his undercover role as a suspended dirty cop.

Waits cozies up to Carver by revealing inside information that Carver’s own informants within the police don’t have. He is able to cozy up to Isabelle because Isabelle likes that Waits is unlikable. She’s tired of “backpacking round a cultural wasteland with people my own age” so she’s trying out a different wasteland. But Waits suspects that she’s become involved in Carver’s nefarious dealings, and he is not inclined to babysit her when more age-appropriate women, including Sarah Jane and Catherine, are also hanging around Carver’s party house.

The suspense in Sirens comes from Waits’ unfailing ability to dig himself into a hole and then to dig it deeper as he tries to escape from it. The central question is whether someone will kill him before the police arrest him for his misdeeds, both real and perceived. People who want to kill him are not in short supply. He’s in the middle of a war between Carver and rival drug dealers, including the nefarious Sheldon White, while Carver’s inside sources in the police department might sleep more easily if Waits were laid to rest.

Joseph Knox presents Waits as terrifyingly alone in the world, partly as a result of his upbringing, partly by choice. He ignores efforts of his estranged sister to reach out to him. He is a less than ideal boyfriend. His dark and alienated personality might serve him well as he tries to understand the criminals he chases, but he is barely a step removed from them. He does, however, have a conscience, and that’s the difference that makes it possible to feel empathy for him.

Waits’ miserable life brings him into contact with all sorts of characters, from crooked cops to feuding drug dealers, from drag performers to aristocrats. Knox gives every significant character a strong personality that fits the character’s past without turning the character into a caricature.

The plot maintains tension by placing a number of characters at constant risk, while maintaining interest by layering one mystery on top of another. The labyrinthine plot never loses credibility, and for all the story’s complexity, Knox manages to tie up every loose end. For all its darkness, the story allows a ray of hope to filter through in the end, a chance for new beginnings. Sirens isn’t the right story for fans of sunny and optimistic literature, but if you like your noir extra dark, Sirens is a good choice.

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A Double Life by Flynn Berry

Published by Viking on July 31, 2018

The police have been looking for Colin Spenser for 26 years. He is wanted for the murder of his wife’s nanny, Emma. The police theorize that he mistook Emma for his wife Faye, who survived a subsequent attack and was able to identify Colin as her assailant.

The case made headlines because Colin Spenser was Lord Spenser, an earl. His brother and sister helped him flee and then told the press that his wife hired someone to kill the nanny so that Colin would be blamed. The family has enough money to mount an effective smear campaign and the British press laps it up, because smears are so much more interesting than the truth.

Colin’s daughter Claire has changed her name but lives in unlikely fear of her father’s return, concealing pepper spray in various locations inside her home. Claire’s other worry is her brother Robbie, whose drug addiction causes seizures and other problems.

A Double Life gives the reader a glimpse of Colin’s courtship of Faye, their honeymoon and separation and short-lived reconciliation. Sometimes the backstory is told from Claire’s childhood perspective and sometimes in the third person, focusing on Faye. Other flashbacks acquaint the reader with Claire’s perspective of the night that Colin committed murder. On occasion we get some insight into Robbie’s life, although he is largely a secondary character.

The main plot follows Claire’s clandestine search for answers about the role various people played to conceal her father’s guilt and current whereabouts. During the course of her stalking and still disguising her true identity, she befriends the daughter of her father’s brother, who has not seen Claire since childhood. She meets other family members, considers rumors about their actions on the night that her father killed the nanny, and plots a course of action after learning where he might be living.

I admire the fluid style in which A Double Life is written and the careful attention Flynn Berry pays to the details of Claire’s strained life. Berry does a fine job of depicting British aristocracy in the unflattering light that the story requires without turning them into stereotypes. While it is easy to sympathize with Claire and to understand her obsession with her father, Berry does not make a convincing case for her continued fear of him a quarter century after he disappeared.

The buildup to the climax generates a modest level of suspense, but the climax is underwhelming. The plot resolves with a couple of twists, but the story’s construction creates the anticipation of a more surprising ending than the one Berry delivered.

Colin is loosely based on Lord Lucan, who is suspected of murdering his wife’s nanny before disappearing. I suspect that the true story is more interesting than Berry’s fictionalized version. While much of the story is strong, the ending dampened my enthusiasm for the novel as a whole.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS