Ultimate Power by Stephen Frey

Published by Thomas & Mercer on February 13, 2018

For the sake of a good story, I can accept an unlikely premise. Ultimate Power imagines a conspiracy that hopes to unseat (or worse) the president in a military coup. Unlikely, but most thriller conspiracies are unlikely and suspending disbelief is increasingly necessary in the modern world of thrillers. On the other hand, even after suspending as much disbelief as I could manage, Ultimate Power was so far over the top that I couldn’t buy into its premise. For that reason, I didn’t become lost in the story, which is my primary goal when reading a thriller.

Ultimate Power imagines that a liberal woman (much more liberal than Hillary Clinton) has been elected president, having narrowly defeated a candidate who almost won by appealing to white nationalists. Apparently Stephen Frey started writing Ultimate Power before the 2016 election. The real world doesn’t matter since this is the world of fiction, so we begin with a liberal president. The story involves a conspiracy to assassinate her (and the veep) because of her popular plan to slash the military budget by 80% — as if that would be a popular plan, even among liberals — while vastly increasing wealth taxes on the rich, as if that’s something Congress would ever consider. Politically, the premise is so divorced from the political reality of today’s America that it’s difficult to take the story seriously, but that’s only a small part of the problem.

The conspiracy also calls for instigating a race war and manipulating funds available in red state banks to make sure that the white population supports the coup. The race war scheme involves a social justice organization that is in the pocket of the schemers. Assassins are being paid a lot of money to kill cops. They need to get a lot of money because they know the cops will kill them in turn. I can almost imagine an orchestrated race war, given the current political climate, but I didn’t buy any of the characters who try to bring the scheme to fruition, or the plan they concoct to implement it. Frankly, the collective lot of the conspirators seem to lack the brainpower to fly a paper airplane, much less get a complex scheme like this one off the ground.

The protagonist and only character with a modicum of depth is Andrew Falcon, a hedge fund manager in his early 30s who makes a billion a year for the shady investment bank that employs him. The bank, of course, has a connection to the conspiracy. Falcon isn’t married and the only person he really cares about is his niece Claire. Just after the investment firm makes him a partner, he learns that Claire has been kidnapped.

Falcon is the novel’s only believable character who plays a significant role in the story. Stephen Frey is at his best when he’s in the world of finance. I like his work when he sticks to financial thrillers. When he strays into conspiracies involving military coups, he loses his footing. Unfortunately, there’s too little of Falcon and finance in this novel and too much focus on the silly military/race war conspiracy.

The rest of the characters are underdeveloped. There isn’t much substance to President Karina Hilton, but she seems well-rounded compared to the villains. General George Fiske depends on Colonel John Brady to supply him with a disposable woman every few months. Fiske also depends on Brady to help advance his vision of white supremacy. Even by standards of modern thrillers, Fiske is an over-the-top villain. I found it difficult to believe that his minions would murder six innocent people just so he would have an isolated cabin in the woods where he could rape, torture and kill his latest victim. The fact that he’s a white supremacist makes him sufficiently evil without stirring in his predilection to abuse and murder strippers.

There are enough good moments in Ultimate Power that, despite the negative tone of this review, I won’t give it a “Not Recommended.” I think Frey’s heart is in the right place, but the story didn’t grab me, and it certainly didn’t convince me. I’d like to see Frey go back to writing the financial thrillers that he does so well.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

James Bond Casino Royale by Ian Fleming, Van Jensen, and Denis Calero

Published by Dynamite Entertainment on April 24, 2018

Casino Royale is my favorite of the Ian Fleming Bond novels. It is, at least, the one that stands out in my memory, primarily for the scenes of Bond first losing and then winning at baccarat. It’s also my favorite Daniel Craig Bond movie, in part because it bears some resemblance to the novel, particularly when Bond’s delicate parts are being pummeled in the torture scene.

Casino Royale is notable as the first of Fleming’s Bond novels. It also features the first appearance of M, of Felix Leiter, and of SMERSH. As Fleming fans know, the movie Bond and the Fleming Bond are quite different. The movie Bond generally appreciates Bond girls (and in recent movies, generally accepts them as equals); Fleming’s Bond finds seduction and disentanglement (the before and after of sex) unacceptably boring. The movie Bond is portrayed as sophisticated; the Fleming Bond is more of a tough guy who happens to be a good card player. The movie Bond is sassy when Le Chiffre whacks him in the balls; Fleming’s Bond more realistically passes out.

The Fleming Bond is also philosophical in sort of a fatalistic way. Queen and country is all well and good, and it’s nice to have the respect and admiration that comes with being a double-0, but getting your manhood beaten is enough to make anyone rethink the spy game. Playing a hero and killing villains doesn’t have the same appeal when the tables are turned. And perhaps it’s wrong to kill villains, because they provide a contrast that enables the virtuous to feel, well, virtuous.

Both Bonds are cold in a masculine way, but Fleming’s Bond is acutely aware of his harsh qualities and is disturbed when they are endangered by warmth. In Casino Royale, at least, the idea of caring about a woman is positively disturbing — almost as disturbing as the fear that he won’t be able to have sex with one after the beating he endured. He wants to use Vesper to test the functionality of his equipment after being tortured, but is unsettled when he realizes that she has crept under his skin. Of course, trust does not come easily to Bond, and in Bond’s world women can never really be trusted. Or perhaps Bond cannot trust himself to judge them properly.

This graphic adaptation is faithful to Fleming’s novel. It keeps the best stuff and doesn’t sacrifice intellect for action. It would be a good introduction to the book for people who don’t want to take the time to read it. While the adaptation preserves some of Fleming’s best prose, much of the text is replaced by art, which is exactly what should happen in a graphic novel. Although the graphic novel is a condensation, all the critical scenes are present, and the most important scenes (the developing tension in the casino as Bond faces off against Le Chiffre, the torture scene, Bond’s philosophical discourse, Bond’s interaction with Vesper) are played out in enough panels to give them their full weight. Most of the art is straightforward, but some panels are enhanced by diagrams and sketches that provide insight into Bond’s thoughts. The art captures a reliable sense of the novel’s mood, accented by some surprising choices of coloring. I enjoyed revisiting Casino Royale in this graphic version of Fleming’s first and best Bond novel.

RECOMMENDED

Killed in Action by Michael Sloan

Published by St. Martin's Press on January 30, 2018

I remember the television show The Equalizer as being shallow and boring. I thought the novelized version would be better. It isn’t. (I can’t comment on the 2014 movie because I haven’t seen it.) I could try to pick apart all the logical flaws in Killed in Action — I actually started listing them — but there are so many that the effort proved to be exhausting. Nor does it matter, because the brain-numbing nonsense that passes for a story here is less important than the fact that the novel just isn’t written very well. The sentences that don’t depend on a cliché are lifeless. The novel reads like something composed by a screenwriter who is used to setting down simple declarative sentences and letting actors and directors fill in the gaps.

Part of the problem is that Michael Sloan tries to do too much. There’s a human trafficking plot and a jihadists attack America plot and a rescue the wounded soldier from Syria plot and a bad landlord plot and an escape from a Korean prison plot and a “someone is pretending to be the Equalizer” plot on top of a conspiracy to eradicate all evidence that the head of a spy agency ever existed. None of the plotlines are developed in sufficient detail to be convincing, and the overabundance of stale ideas is draining to a reader who just wants to latch on to an interesting story. Sloan never delivers one.

In a novel like this, no character takes “a gun” from another character. No, they take a Marakov P-64 nine millimeter or a Glock 26 with an Osprey 9 silencer or a Heckler & Koch VP9 because gun porn fans need to know exactly what gun is in the character’s hands (or belt or shoulder holster) before he’s disarmed or killed. Warfare fans will also enjoy the scene in which a 9K114 Shturm antitank missile is fired from a Mi-24 helicopter into a UAZ-469 military vehicle. All the model numbers are apparently meant as a substitute for engaging storytelling. The novel takes note of the nutcases who make violent nuisances of themselves thanks to the gun culture that pervades parts of the country, but there’s a certain irony in pointing to the evil caused by people who too easily obtain guns while writing a book that is clearly meant to appeal to people who love their guns.

Anyway, the story revolves around ex-spy Robert McCall, who calls himself the Equalizer and does good deeds gratis for people who are facing poor odds. The same idea has more recently been adopted in the Orphan X novels, which at least have the virtue of being written with a bit of gusto.

McCall has no friends (probably because he has no personality) but he has a colleague named Kostmayer and a former boss named Control, both regulars on the TV show, who pop up in one of the endless subplots (or maybe the main plot, it’s hard to tell) in Killed in Action.

McCall’s ability to fight and defeat four men armed with knives is a common feature of tough guy fiction. In this case, it’s so common as to be dull. Sloan creates no sense that McCall might actually lose a fight. Even Superman had kryptonite to worry about. McCall is an unerring shot who is never at risk. No risk means no suspense. And, of course, hot women are dying to jump into bed with McCall, who is cool and indifferent about when and how he gets laid. No suspense there, either. I’d like to find something good to say about Killed in Action, but the book is a serious mess.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Château by Paul Goldberg

Published by Picador on February 13, 2018

A cosmetic surgeon known as the Butt God plunges to his death. His college roommate, Bill Katzenelenbogen, recently fired from his gig as an investigative science reporter for the Washington Post, decides the death might merit a book, perhaps jumpstarting a new career. Bill was fired for insubordination, meaning he didn’t give a hoot about any of the stories he’d written during the last six years. He was one of the typing dead.

Bill needs the book to succeed because he has no income and, thanks to an unfortunate divorce, no savings. The book project forces Bill to reunite with his father (with no salary, Bill can’t afford a Ft. Lauderdale hotel) and to meet his stepmother Nell for the first time. His father (along with many other established immigrants who, having achieved modest wealth, hates new immigrants) lives in Château Sedan Nueve. His name is Melsor and he acquired his wealth through one of his shady operations, this one involving Medicaid fraud, of which he was acquitted.

Bill’s relationship with his father was never strong, but it deteriorated rapidly twenty years earlier after Melsor ignored Bill’s warning about a “miraculous” cancer treatment that killed Bill’s mother. The choice of doctor was one of many stop signs that Melsor spent his life barreling through.

Bill’s social, political, and religious observations as he muddles through his newly unemployed life are darkly amusing. He also expresses entertaining and wide-ranging opinions about relationships, interior design, Russian poetry, Russian vodka, aging, sex, aging sex, truth as an irrelevant virtue, global warming, real and fake news, fascism, and any number of other topics.

Bill’s father is even more hilarious. His philosophy is an eclectic assemblage of maxims from Russian poetry, Donal’d Tramp’s The Art of the Deal, and an amalgam of American and Russian ideals that have been conveniently edited to support his own financial interests. He is at war with the corrupt condominium Board that, in his view, is selling out the Château residents by accepting kickbacks in exchange for shoddy and needless construction that will increase the residents’ fees with no corresponding benefit. Whether his suspicions are true is both unclear and irrelevant, because believing them to be true fits Melsor’s jaded view of the world.

The story ends in ambiguity that highlights the ambiguous nature of the modern world. Readers who can’t bear any criticism of Trump will no doubt vilify Paul Goldberg as a liberal, that most detested of creatures, but the novel actually has little to do with Trump or American politics. It is more about American life, as seen through the lens of two perspectives: a Russian Jewish immigrant and his Americanized son, neither of whom have managed to live perfect lives but both of whom have strong opinions that readers are free to test with an open mind. To the extent that the novel criticizes the president, it does so lightly.

The story’s humor, and particularly its send-up of Florida condominium boards (which, according to a local journalist, are all assumed to be filled with corrupt back-biters and therefore evidence of corruption isn't newsworthy), kept me laughing consistently. The central characters have the kind of quirks that bring them to life, but they aren't based solely on stereotypes. The Château won’t appeal to every sense of humor (or to people who have no sense of humor), but it appealed greatly to mine.

RECOMMENDED

The Hush by John Hart

Published by St. Martin's Press on February 27, 2018

The Hush is a sequel to The Last Child, which I haven’t read. As I understand it, The Last Child is a straightforward suspense novel that deals with Johnny Merrimon’s search for his missing twin sister. The Hush returns Johnny as a central character, but the novel blends suspense with horror and the supernatural. It’s kind of a haunted woods story, although the woods are swampy which makes them even more foreboding. The supernatural slant will upset readers who think a sequel should be just like the novel it follows. I admire John Hart for changing up his game (there’s not much point in writing a sequel if you’re just going to rewrite the last book), but readers who can’t abide horror novels will likely be disappointed. In any event, the novel stands alone, and I don’t have the sense that I missed anything in The Hush by not reading The Last Child first.

Johnny lives alone in Hush Arbor, with no electricity or phone or running water, and no desire to leave. He inherited six thousand acres in North Carolina and is fighting to keep it. Sometimes he finds himself in the swamp in the middle of the night and has no recollection of walking there. The swamp was once thought to be haunted by slaves who were hung from its trees, as we learn in a flashback involving a young boy who made the mistake of hunting there in 1931.

Johnny drives to town once a month but prefers his own company. His father is dead. He avoids his mother and her new husband, a police detective named Clyde Hunt who apparently played a significant role in The Last Child. Johnny is trying to forget the past, but he knows he is forgetting how to live a normal life.

Johnny’s best friend, Jack Cross, is a new lawyer, having overcome a difficult childhood. Jack seems to be the only person who notices that Johnny is changing in ways that cannot be explained by isolation alone. His senses are abnormally heightened. His wounds heal with impossible speed. He is acutely aware of everything that happens in the woods and water, whether it involves animals, fish, humans, or trees. As the only person who visits Johnny, Jack senses the presence of something evil in the swamp and worries that it is affecting Johnny.

Johnny needs an appellate lawyer to save his land, but can’t afford one. Jack introduces him to an appellate lawyer in his firm who might represent him pro bono, for reasons that only she understands. Some of those reasons have to do with the arousal she feels when she thinks about Johnny, a sensation that multiplies when she meets him in person.

A grizzly death in the woods leads to a murder accusation, but the murder clearly couldn’t have been committed by one individual — a fact that doesn’t deter the sheriff from accusing Johnny. The murder provides the reader’s first inkling that The Hush is a horror novel. More deaths follow, as do a series of gruesome events with supernatural origins that are closely connected to the Hush, the Merrimon family, and North Carolina’s evil history as a slave state.

All of the secondary characters are created with an abundance of detail, including a rich hunter named Boyd who wants to buy Johnny’s land, a young woman named Cree who dreams (as Johnny does) about bloody events from the past, Cree’s mother who is trying to take Johnny’s land, a fellow named Leon who operates a ramshackle tavern/restaurant at the outskirts of the Hush, and the seemingly crazy old woman who raised Leon and who is the only person capable of understanding the dreams that trouble Johnny and Cree.

I don’t read many horror novels, but I enjoy them when the author creates an environment that is truly creepy. Hart does that in The Hush. As a place, the Hush is such a carefully rendered world that I set aside my skepticism about the supernatural and became absorbed in the story’s convincing detail. But The Hush is also the story of Johnny’s internal struggle — an eternal struggle between good and evil, when good and evil are not easily distinguished — and of his loyal friendship with Jack. Hart’s believable characters and settings, combined with a plot that is chilling and suspenseful, makes The Hush one of the best horror novels I’ve read in recent years.

RECOMMENDED