The Spy Who Vanished by Alma Katsu

Published by Amazon Original Stories on July 18, 2024

The Spy Who Vanished is the name given to its three parts collectively. Each part is available individually from Amazon as part of its Original Stories series. The cover shown above belongs to the first story. Kindle users who don’t belong to Kindle Unlimited must purchase and download all three if they want to have a meaningful reading experience, as none of the three parts stand alone. Together they are a novella (and also a marketing tool for Kindle Unlimited).

Yuri Kozlov is a Russian agent. Putin assigned him to pose as a defector to gain access to the CIA. He’s supposed to report everything he learns to the Kremlin if he manages to worm secrets out of the agents who are subjecting him to a friendly interrogation. Putin is particularly eager to learn the identity of a CIA mole who is suspected of having infiltrated Russian intelligence. If not for the CIA’s track record of indiscretion, it would be difficult to swallow Yuri's almost immediate acquisition of that information,

In addition to gathering intelligence, Yuri is told to find and kill a Russian defector, Maxim Sokolov. Putin wants him eliminated because he knows something embarrassing about Putin that he apparently hasn’t revealed. There is hardly reason to fear that Sokolov will spill the beans after all these years, but Putin is paranoid. It seems unlikely that Yuri can accomplish all these tasks without being killed or captured, but Putin probably thinks that's Yuri's problem to worry about.

Yuri learns that Sokolov died in a car accident but that he married and had a daughter. Yuri’s handler conveys that intelligence, then tells Yuri that Putin wants the wife and daughter eliminated. Yuri comes to learn that Sokolov’s daughter is someone he has met, someone he likes.

Yuri is not nuanced. He doesn't do moral dilemmas. You point him at a target, he destroys it, that's his life. Yet he killed an innocent girl once and has been at least mildly haunted by it. He wonders how he will feel if he kills an innocent girl he knows. I give Alma Katsu credit for giving Yuri even this modest amount of depth.

Setting aside the improbable plot, the story works best as a psychological profile of a Russian agent who (1) feels disrespected by handlers who view him as an uneducated thug with a talent for assassination, and (2) kind of enjoys the benefits of western life, but (3) only feels at home in Russia and worries that he’ll always be looking over his shoulder for a Russian assassin if he actually defects and stays in the US. The story’s mild dramatic tension derives from that dilemma: should be stay (in the US as a defector) or should he go (back to Russia after succeeding or failing in his mission)?

While the story is nicely executed, it lacks substance and credibility. Alma Katsu’s character sketch of Yuri is convincing but the plot is not. Nor is the story sufficiently eventful or surprising to pay a strong reward to a reader who consumes all three parts. Maybe Katsu will eventually expand it into a more satisfying novel, although it’s difficult to see where else the story could go.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Angel of Vengeance by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Published by Grand Central Publishing on August 13, 2024

Each new Pendergast novel is sillier than the last, but I keep reading them. The series was more enjoyable when Aloysius Pendergast was an obnoxious, self-satisfied crime solver. I didn’t care much for Pendergast but I appreciated his acumen as a detective. Even after the appearance of Constance Greene — a woman who stopped aging in the nineteenth century and who might be even more annoying than Pendergast — I enjoyed the novels to the extent that they focused on a recognizable reality — i.e., a world without magic, supernatural apparitions, time travel, or similar silliness.

Silliness has now overtaken the series. I had hoped that her unrequited yearning for Pendergast would cause Constance to flee from his life, but Pendergast’s forbidden yearning for Constance keeps bringing them together. Constance’s latest effort to flee took her to the nineteenth century in a dimension nearly identical to the one that Pendergast inhabits (the one that seems to host the supernatural). The latest stories have replaced magic with time travel, which might be the same thing. So now Pendergast is chasing Constance through time. Really, can’t Pendergast go back to solving crimes in the present and do away with all these quasi-science fiction themes?

Pendergast has an evil brother named Diogenes and a law enforcement friend named Vincent D’Agosta. Both are trapped in the past with Pendergast, who chose not to heed Constance’s plea that he remain in his own century after she returned to the nineteenth — albeit in another dimension — to save her sister Mary from the evil Enoch Leng, another member of the Pendergast family. She might even save her alter-self (or Binky, as the childhood version of Constance is known in this dimension and perhaps in infinite others).

Leng is a doctor whose experiments in life extension resulted in the deaths of dozens of test subjects. In Constance’s timeline, Leng killed Mary by dissecting her while she was still alive. Constance’s plan is to save this version of Mary (and this version of her brother Joe, not to mention Binky) while obtaining vengeance. The story essentially continues the plot that began in The Cabinet of Dr. Leng.

Angel of Vengeance is more an action/adventure story than a crime mystery. I suspect that’s what many series fans want. I suspect those fans will be satisfied with the story. Its 19th century atmosphere echoes Dickens. Pendergast wears various disguises, characters are captured and rescued, fights break out from time to time (occasionally with knives because nineteenth century), buildings explode, people are poisoned, and so forth. The story is fun and moderately exciting but not surprising. Readers who enjoy the series will know what to expect. New readers might want to start with an earlier novel because Angel of Vengeance won’t be easy to digest for those who aren’t familiar with the backstory.

The novel’s ending might leave the door open for another time travel story. Why can’t the brilliant detective go back to solving bizarre crimes instead of hopping around the multiverse? Maybe he will. For now, I can confidently recommend Angel of Vengeance to Pendergast fans, although less enthusiastically than I would recommend books that are more tightly attached to the same part of the multiverse that I inhabit.

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Worst Case Scenario by T.J. Newman

Published by Little, Brown and Company on August 13, 2024

Worst Case Scenario is the latest offering from disaster novelist T.J. Newman. The disastrous series of events begins with a commercial jet pilot’s heart attack. Unfortunate coincidences (like the co-pilot getting stuck in a bathroom) cause the plane to crash. T.J. Newman once worked as a flight attendant so it isn’t surprising that a flight attendant makes heroic but futile efforts to save the day.

The jet crashes into a nuclear power plant in the small town of Waketa, Minnesota. The reactors are undamaged but the crash leads to a series of problems, including a ruptured dry cask that is storing nuclear waste and a severed distribution line that has left the plant without power. Cracks are causing water to leak from a pool that holds spent fuel rods.  Diesel generators keep cooling pumps in operation, but the generators will soon be underwater. The plant is on its way to becoming Minnesota’s Chernobyl.

The formula for a disaster novel is to pair the large catastrophe with a smaller one. A wing from the jet smashed into a bridge. Apart from messing up traffic on I-35, the wing destroyed a van, killing the parents of a kid named Connor who remains strapped to his car seat as the van teeters on the edge of the bridge. Firefights try to rescue Connor but burning jet fuel hampers their rescue attempts.

Heroism and self-sacrifice are the novel’s themes. On the bridge, a firefighter named Dani Allen defies orders to get her fire truck to the nuclear plant and risks her life to rescue Connor. Back at the plant, Fire Chief Steve Tostig joins with nuclear-incident first responder Jocelyn “Joss” Vance and plant manager Ethan Rosen to fix the cascading problems, some of which will require one or more characters to perform dangerous stunts, including a swim in radioactive water.

While it is always inspiring to read about self-sacrifice, the theme is a bit overdone in Worst Case Scenario. As characters make choices that will lead to their injury or death for the good of others, they think about the things they’ll be missing when they are no longer walking among the living. All fiction is intended to manipulate the reader, but the best fiction does so with subtlety. Some of the weepy scenes in Worst Case Scenario are so obviously intended to manipulate the reader’s emotions that they lose their effectiveness.

On the other hand, the descriptions of the unfolding disasters are undeniably compelling. Newman takes time to walk the reader through the safety procedures at nuclear plants and creates what seems to be a plausible worst case scenario that might make a plant melt down. Her research is impressive. (Understand that while the story seemed plausible to me, I'm not a nuclear physicist. I lack the knowledge to spot possible errors in her description of nuclear plant operations.)

Newman keeps the story moving at a brisk pace. She builds excitement as the characters race against time. The disaster novel formula is predictable but the obvious attempt to manipulate the emotions of readers is reasonably successful. I willingly surrendered to the manipulation for the sake of learning what would happen next.

Character development is adequate, although none of the characters are memorable. Two characters are in conflict about the decision to have children — one wants to change the world, the other wants to have a family. The realization that it’s possible to do both is another predictable aspect of the story. More insightful is a character’s realization that in the grand scheme of things, his life doesn’t matter much. Freeing ourselves from the illusion that we’re important creates the opportunity to enjoy the brief time we have. That lesson is convincing.

Disaster novels often morph into disaster movies. Newman makes it easy to visualize the plane crash and teetering van, scenes that might be even more attention grabbing on a big screen. The ending emphasizes self-sacrifice that might have moviegoers shedding a few tears. Disaster fans who don’t want to wait for the movie will likely enjoy the exciting story if they set aside their reservations about Newman’s attempt to trigger their emotions with weepy scenes of heroism.

RECOMMENDED

Blind to Midnight by Reed Farrel Coleman

Published by Blackstone Publishing on August 13, 2024

Nick Ryan (at least his name isn’t Jake or Jack) is a tough guy. Tough Guy fiction is populated by one dimensional characters, the dimension being toughness. That makes them boring. No character in fiction is more tedious than a self-righteous cop. Nick is a self-righteous Tough Guy cop, meaning he’s both boring and tedious.

Ryan has the usual binary view of the world that characterizes fictional Tough Guys, few of whom have room in their brains for nuanced thought. He is proud of his enhanced ability to discern the difference between right and wrong (an ability that evolved from his military service, where “right” meant “what superior officers tell me to do” and “wrong” meant “whatever the enemy is doing”). He is untroubled by his inability to perceive any gray area between right and wrong. Nick also prides himself on not making moral judgments, as if right and wrong are not abstract, contextualized judgments. Instead of moral judgments, Nick makes “professional assessments.” Much less messy than worrying about right and wrong, not that he needs to worry because he always knows what is right and what is wrong. Lucky guy.

Tough Guy fiction is all about establishing the Tough Guy’s credentials. Nick says “tough isn’t about having a gun. Tough is how you handle having one stuck in your face.” He tells this to a wealthy woman who wants to sleep with him despite his banal dialog (Nick understands that women can’t resist “real men”) but Nick can say no to her because he knows another woman is just around the corner. Such are the benefits of being a Tough Guy in Thrillerworld.

To prove his toughness, Nick fights several armed men at a time without pulling a weapon. And while tough isn’t about having a gun, Nick usually has at least two within reach and doesn’t hesitate to kill bad guys with them. He feels sad about it (sort of), but never regrets killing because regret, like hope, gets you nowhere. Nick assures us that he has feelings; he just doesn’t “surrender to them.” Of course not, because Tough Guys can’t let their feels get in the way of their toughs. When Nick explains that he has separated himself from his daughter to protect her from all the bad guys he attracts, he’s making it clear that his feelings consist of self-love and little else. I mean, the dude could just move to a different state with her and stop killing people, but that wouldn't be the Tough Guy thing to do.

Nick is a detective in NYPD’s Intelligence Bureau. He’s also the city’s “shadow watchman.” He isn’t quite Batman, although his masters have given him a fast car and a bunch of tech, everything short of a mask and a Batarang. When Nick isn’t performing his regular duties, he works as a “fixer,” solving the city’s problems in exchange for unprecedent access to resources. While Nick has little contact with the people who control him, he prides himself on his independence, which he furthers by blackmailing his immediate superior so he can do things the say he wants to do them — the Tough Guy Way.

Nick’s former partner planted blood evidence that he hoped would lead to the conviction of a child killer. The cop’s attempt to defraud the court was exposed and the cop “ate his gun” when the killer went free. Instead of heeding the obvious lesson that cops shouldn’t plant fake evidence, Nick decided to execute the child killer. After all, if Nick thinks the perp is guilty, why bother to give the guy a fair trial? Nick might think he knows the difference between right and wrong, but he has a warped sense of justice.

Having established that Nick is boring and indistinguishable from dozens of other Tough Guy protagonists, let’s take a look at the plot. Nick is working undercover because he is truly gifted at developing the convincing stench of a homeless person. He’s going after Shea Flannery, the president of the laborer’s union. His masters want to prove that Flannery is dirty, even if Nick has to supply the dirt. The fact that Nick didn’t quit on the spot after receiving that order is evidence of Nick’s inability to make moral judgments, not to mention an impaired sense of the difference between right and wrong.

Nick rescues a boy from a likely beating. The boy’s mother is Victoria Lansdale, the rich woman who wants to shag Nick. “Wealthy women smelled different,” Nick tells us in a moment of great insight. Thugs later use mild violence to deliver a message to Victoria’s husband: “Tell him the bill is long overdue.” Nick’s involvement in Lansdale drama is part of the story.

Nick’s dad is a retired cop. He testified against corrupt cops and is now unwelcome in their company. His dad’s best friend, Tony Angelo, also a retired cop, is murdered. Nick decides that investigating Flannery is less important than solving Angelo’s murder. Tough guys never follow orders. Nick’s investigation of Tony’s death is another part of the story. So is the Flannery plot thread.

Nick’s beloved independence allows him to investigate the murder of Vlado Markovic, who was supposedly killed in New York City on 9/11. The official conclusion is that Markovic was mistaken for an Arab and was killed in a hate crime. Not true, but Reed Farrel Coleman ties Markovic’s unlikely murder to more plausible plot threads.

The plot is no worse, and in some respects more clever, than is traditional for Tough Guy novels. Unfortunately, Nick is just another Tough Guy. Coleman gives the reader no reason to care about what happens to him. Dialog is uninspired. So are sentences like “He had somewhere to do and something to do.” I have nowhere to go and some other book to read. I hope the next one is more original than Blind to Midnight.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Mercy of Gods by James S. A. Corey

Published by Orbit on August 6, 2024

The latest project of the writing team known as James S.A. Corey is a classic alien invasion story. It has elements in common with Peter F. Hamilton’s recent Salvation trilogy, in that the aliens take some humans as captives before killing the rest. While Hamilton’s story focuses on humans (and their descendants) who fled Earth and avoided captivity, Corey’s follows the lives of human captives.

The tradition in alien invasion stories is for puny humans to find a way to fight back against a more powerful enemy. And so it is a foregone conclusion that the humans in The Mercy of Gods, when facing a choice between living a reasonably comfortable life as slaves or finding a way to resist, will decide to make a stand. As a character explains: “This is about what we are. As a fucking species.” Yet making an emotionally satisfying but futile stand, while a very human thing to do, might not be the smartest long-term strategy. Whether to fight or wait is the conflict that underlies the first book in the Captive’s War series. (The Mercy of Gods is preceded in time by a novella that hasn’t yet been published.)

As alien species go, the Carryx are nothing special. I visualize them as giant cockroaches but others might imagine them differently. Their social organization is in one respect similar to an ant colony, with a Sovran playing the role of queen who is served by all the other Carryx. The most interesting characteristic of the Carryx is the change in physical form that they undergo when their social status changes (from soldier to Librarian, for example).

The Carryx have roamed through hundreds of solar systems, looking for species to enslave. They’ve been quite successful in that endeavor. The Carryx believe that “rigor and intelligence,” properly applied, will reveal that the universe is expressing an “implacable truth.” Naturally, the truth is that the Carryx are superior to all other beings and are therefore entitled to subjugate them.

The Carryx  cherry-pick the most accomplished inhabitants of an invaded planet for relocation on the Carryx home world, then kill an eighth of a planet’s remaining population to show they mean business. The newly enslaved must demonstrate that they have something to offer the Carryx. If they aren’t useful, they’re wiped out in favor of species that can bring something to the table. Producing something of value to the Carryx is the key to survival.

The human characters are scientists living on the planet Anjiin. Earth has long been forgotten as humanity’s planet of origin. When the Carryx invade Anjiin, they select Tonner Freis and his highly regarded research team to join the other worthy humans who will be transported to the Carryx home world. Tonner’s team has been performing biological research involving the proteins of different species. Their project is way over my head, but it eventually becomes important to the story. Fortunately, an understanding of molecular biology isn’t necessary to follow the plot.

Hundreds of intelligent species from a variety of planets are housed on the Carryx home world. After a species is evaluated, its useful members are dispatched to other worlds controlled by the Carryx. Each subjugated species is assigned a Carryx Librarian to catalog their knowledge.

The Carryx have tasked Tonner’s group with changing something that looks like a berry into a substance that will provide nutrition to something that looks like a turtle. The Carryx assigned the same project to a species that resembles Earth monkeys. The monkeys decide that they can gain an edge in the competition by attacking the humans. Violence ensues. The conflict makes clear that humans are competing against every other species and that the Carryx favor the survivors. Comfort, benefits, and greater resources reward species that are useful to the Carryx. Fortunately for readers, it is a given in science fiction that, in the long run, humans will always win competitions with aliens.

Most of the story is a set-up for novels to follow. Characters on Tonner’s research team include Dafyd Alkhor (who isn’t on the same level as the other researchers but used a social connection to join the team), Else Yannin (who was sleeping with Tonner before she started sleeping with Dafyd), Jessyn Kaul (who worries that she will run out of the pills that keep her brain from rotting), her supportive brother Jellit (not really part of the team but he hangs out with his sister), Rickar Daumatin (whose is defined by rage and cynacism), Campar (who uses humor to cover his insecurities), and Irinna (younger than Jessyn but a talented researcher). They all play individual roles in advancing the story and those who survive will presumably benefit from further character development as the series progresses.

The final element of the first book involves a species known as the Swarm. The Swarm pose an actual threat to the Carryx. They’ve gathered information that has enabled defenses and counterattacks against the Carryx. A spy for the Swarm has acquired critical intelligence but must work with humans to transmit that information to other members of the Swarm so it can be put to good use.

A key theme is the morality of harming a small number of individuals for the greater good of the whole. While sacrificing oneself might be an easy choice for a selfless character, sacrificing friends to save a larger number of strangers is a more difficult decision. When do humans have the moral authority to sacrifice others against their will?

Some alien species will likely be beyond human comprehension. Science fiction writers typically create aliens that humans can understand, usually by giving them the lust for power and conquest that we see in humanity’s less desirable members. Through Dafyd, Corey argues that it is necessary to understand a more powerful enemy before the enemy can be defeated. As Dafyd explains to Rickar, the Carryx can be perceived as bloodthirsty monsters, but from their perspective they are carrying out their proper role in the universe.

Dafyd’s ability to understand the Carryx will likely make him the most important character in the series. How Dafyd and the other humans (perhaps with the assistance of the Swarm) will put that understanding to use remains to be seen. Given Corey’s success with the Expanse series, I expect that the humans will concoct clever means to battle the Carryx.

Reviews of the first novel in a series are always conditional. A trilogy that begins with promise might end with disappointment. I can only say that the strong characters and intriguing set-up in The Mercy of Gods give me reason to look forward to the next installment.

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