Spoils by Brian Van Reet

Published by Little, Brown & Co./Lee Boudreaux Books on April 18, 2017

Spoils tells a war story (Iraq 2003) from three intersecting points of view. Two narrators are Americans and the third is an Egyptian emir whose belief in jihad has taken him to Chechnya, Afghanistan, and (somewhat reluctantly) Iraq.

The emir, Abu al-Hool, is training jihadist volunteers in Afghanistan when he learns of Osama bin Laden’s success on 9/11. He is troubled because he does not believe that killing women and children is the right path. But he also knows that innocents die in war (Hiroshima being a profound example). Americans set the tone with the dismissive phrase “collateral damage," providing at least partial justification, he thinks, for the killing of non-combatants. He also belives that “great men tend to inhabit the extremes of thought, and that is one reason for their greatness.”

The most interesting chapters follow Abu al-Hool through his political struggles. He is astonished that Bush was so easily goaded to invade Iraq, playing into bin Laden’s hands. Having grown old, having lost his son in Chechnya, Abu al-Hool has no desire to take jihad to Iraq, but the choice is not his.

Abu al-Hool considers himself a freedom fighter, which is what Reagan called fighters in Afghanistan who resisted Soviet invaders, using the same techniques that now earns them the label “Islamofascists” and “terrorists.” Abu al-Hool still approves of the ancient and time-honored technique of beheading enemies, but he is no longer sure that his colleagues are employing the technique in a just way.

Other chapters follow Cassandra Wigheard, who starts the novel with mortars rain down on her Humvee. During the first half of the novel, the story jumps around in time, providing Cassandra’s background (from Kansas to Kuwait) as well as Abu al-Hool’s. Eventually she is in a position to fear becoming a propaganda tool for the jihadists.

A third point of view appears in the second half. After Wigheard and two other soldiers are taken prisoner, Sleed is among the soldiers assigned to look for them. He is also among the soldiers who, through dereliction of duty, is partially responsible for causing the problem.

Bad judgment is basically the story of America’s incursion into Iraq, along with killing innocent civilians. Those are both on display in a novel that makes no attempt to disguise the bleak reality of the environment in which the story is set. Bad judgment drives all sides of the conflict.

Spoils is notable for refusing to portray characters in a simplistic light. All people fall on a continuum of good to bad, often occupying shifting points along that continuum, and that is true of the characters in Spoils. A reader won’t necessarily sympathize with Abu al-Hool, but Brian van Reet makes it possible to understand his conflict, and to view him in a more positive light than terrorists who engage in jihad with no regard for the moral teachings of their religion. It is much easier to feel sympathy for other key characters, including a young boy who does the bidding of the jihadists and the American soldiers who, despite their imperfections, are fighting a senseless war not because they are evil, but because their president put them there.

The story is powerful, gritty, believable, and insightful. It establishes a vivid sense of place, portraying Iraq in multiple dimensions from a variety of senses. The voices that tell the story are genuine; the reader rarely  has the sense of an author lurking in the background, manipulating the scene or the characters. I haven’t seen any other novel that captures so well the swirling entanglement of good and bad in the American conflict with Iraq. As all war literature should do, Spoils illuminates that conflict in all its glorious idiocy.

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The Saboteur by Andrew Gross

Published by St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books on August 22, 2017

Kurt Nordstrum is part of the Norwegian resistance, or what remains of it in 1942. He crosses Lake Tinnsjo from Tinnoset to Mael, near the place where he grew up, because he has been asked to accompany Einar Skinnarland on a mission to smuggle microfilm to a Norwegian scientist in London. The microfilm concerns details of atomic bomb research that the Germans are conducting in Norway.

Carrying out the mission requires the men to hijack a Norwegian steamer and make their way past the German coastal command. After that, Nordstrum's mission is to sabotage the plant that is manufacturing the raw materials Germany needs to make an atomic bomb. And after that, Nordstrum’s role in the war is to recruit more spies in Norway, until he is given a final mission that will change the course of the war.

All of that is interesting, but it should be harrowing. Andrew Gross’ writing style is matter-of-fact, and at least until the novel’s ending, a bit dry. Still, if the story isn’t as riveting as it could have been, it does convey a sense of how weather plays a critical role in war in places like Norway, where people who are familiar with adverse conditions can turn them to their own advantage.

A love story appears near the end of the novel, although the characters hardly know each other long enough to feel any semblance of love. The novel’s characters have about as much development as they need. Nordstrum has a generic war hero’s personality and the other characters play equally generic roles.

The novel’s ending is melodramatic, although it will appeal to fans of the movie Titanic. I enjoyed The Saboteur more for its atmosphere and its setting in history than for the way the story is told. The novel has value precisely because it is based on actual events — and I enjoyed reading it for that reason — but the truth of history is more compelling that the predictable and melodramatic way in which the story is fictionalized.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Savage Country by Robert Olmstead

Published by Algonquin Books on September 26, 2017

Everything about Savage Country is stark:  its landscape, its language, its characters. Biblical imagery abounds, from a plague of locusts to kids named after apostles. The novel has an Old Testament feel with its brutal justice and harsh injustices as characters struggle to overcome sinful thoughts in a moral wilderness. Savage Country is a story of ambition and hubris, and stories with Old Testament themes rarely go well for people whose ambition is the pursuit of worldly goods. But New Testament virtues are also on display in Savage Country as characters strive to find their better selves by caring about the less fortunate.

Michael Coughlin is a British citizen who fought for the South in the Civil War. He travels to Kansas in 1873 to pay his dead brother’s mortgage. The payment saves the land from Whitechurch, who held the mortgage and planned to seize the farm. If not for Michael’s stern resolve, Whitechurch might not have accepted the payment. But Whitechurch does not easily let go of his desires, and his need for vengeance is one of the story's themes.

Michael’s brother had intended to mount a hunt for buffalo but died before the hunt could start. His brother’s wife, Elizabeth, intends to follow through on that plan, using the proceeds of the hunt to repay Michael and to meet her living expenses. Michael feels no choice but to accompany her since he cannot dissuade her from entering the savage country where the last buffalo herd roams.

The story details conflicts with man (white men versus Native Americans, white men versus black men, white men versus women of all heritages, bad men versus good men), but the greater part of the plot is driven by conflicts with nature (fire and floods, snow and wind, locusts and drought, buffalo and wolves). While the white men think they are the only ones entitled to make a living and resent the employment of black men (some things, it seems, never change), the greatest conflict is with disease in an era before antibiotics were available to save lives. And while literature professors teach that the three literary conflicts all involve man, Savage Country teaches that nature against nature (wolf versus buffalo, water versus stone) is a larger part of our planet’s story.

Michael plays his part in the decimation of the last remaining buffalo herd, and he does so with regret, knowing that he is stealing from nature, taking something precious from the land. It is the same regret he feels when he kills people, always in the belief that he has no realistic alternative. His choices are dictated more by expedience than morality: the death of buffalo allows humans to survive and prosper; a man in the wilderness who contracts rabies needs to be put down so that he does not imperil the lives of the healthy. It falls to Michael to deal out death because he can.

Robert Olmstead’s research resulted in a detailed description of the work that goes into assembling the scallywags, oxen, mules, wagons, provisions, and supplies required to mount an expedition for buffalo. His description of the buffalo hunt and subsequent skinning and butchering, the smells and sounds and sights, has a visceral impact. His description of a desolate, unforgiving, and savage land is vivid.

Savage Country tells an intense, powerful story that lives up to its title. Yet a strong horse and a loyal dog can provide comfort even in a savage land. People can take care of each other by banding together and forgetting their differences. That may not be enough to assure survival, but the Olmstead seems to be telling the reader that it is the only way for decent people to live.

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Safe by Ryan Gattis

Published by MCD/Farrar, Straus & Giroux on August 1, 2017

Like many good crime novels, Safe is about moral dilemmas. The story features two sympathetic characters, both skating between the right and the wrong side of the law, who steadily move toward a confrontation with each other while trying to do decide whether and how to do something decent with their lives, although for much different reasons.

A locksmith whose nickname is Ghost helps the DEA break into LA drug houses and opens any safes they find on the premises. Ghost has a need for money, although not for his own benefit, and decides that helping himself to cash in a safe will solve the problem. Of course, he trades one problem for another.

As a former addict and gang banger, Ghost has ample reason to regret much of his life. Thanks to the death of a woman named Rose, a woman who helped him find a reason to live before she died, Ghost has been living in pain for a long time. But a bad past has given him a good heart, and Ghost wants to make amends before he dies. Stealing from drug dealers (or, as the DEA might see it, stealing from the DEA) gives him the opportunity to do that. Ghost isn’t exactly Robin Hood but in his state of redemption, he’s a good, likable guy who is taking risks because he doesn’t have much to lose. He's kind of a Robin Hood from the the Hood.

The other key character, whose nickname is Glasses, works for a major drug dealer. His tendency toward decency is not so much a moral choice as an aversion to the violent methods his drug boss employs. But the novel’s strongest point is that there are different ways of being honorable, different paths to being good or bad, and life just isn’t as black and white for most people as the narrowest minds want it to be.

Ghost and Glasses both care about the people in their lives, which sets them apart from the novel’s more sociopathic characters. But none of the characters are truly evil — even the ones who do evil deeds live by a code that hints at moral principles — and that compassionate understanding of people whose lives have been shaped by unfortunate influences is one of the things I like about Safe.

Quite a bit of Safe (particularly when narrated by Glasses) is written in street prose, eloquent and creative in its own way. The plot is engaging but the depth of the characters sets Safe apart from most crime novels. Some aspects of the novel (including the disease that motivates Ghost to make the choices that drive the story) might be a little too convenient, but that didn’t stop me from appreciating the novel’s poignant moments. And the ending is such a gut punch that I would recommend the novel for the last few pages alone.

RECOMMENDED

Red Swan by Peter T. Deutermann

Published by St. Martin's Press on August 22, 2017

A new CIA operative, Melanie Sloan, is recruited to a mission that asks her to become intimate with the chief of China’s Ministry of Security Services. Preston Allender, a consulting psychiatrist for the CIA, has selected Melanie and one of his female associates trains her in the art of seduction. That sort of thing happens all the time in spy novels, but P.T. Deuterman makes the set-up seem credible … or credible enough that I happily bought into it for the sake of the story.

About a third of the way into the novel, a trap gets sprung and the story takes a twist, one I haven’t seen before in the many spy novels I’ve read. Kudos to Deutermann for his cleverness. But the story doesn’t stop twisting until it reaches its end. The consequences that follow from Allender’s scheme set up the remainder of the novel.

Red Swan also differs from most spy novels in the way that Allender’s scheme backfires, not because it is unsuccessful, but because it is so successful that it has political ramifications. Heads must roll and Allender’s head is most convenient. The political and bureaucratic aspect of the novel is sharper than most American spy novels manage to convey. But again, the reader sees only the tip of a political struggle that will gain depth at the plot moves forward, entangling the CIA’s director and its top two deputies, as well as a Congresswoman and a slew of American and Chinese spooks.

Allender is a character I would like to meet again. He’s known as Dragon Eyes because his yellow eyes are unusually intense, an attribute he put to good use as the CIA’s chief interrogator before his retirement. He also has a preternatural ability to anticipate what someone is about to say, a talent he uses to convince people that he can read their minds — and maybe he can, in a limited sense. An interrogation scene at the end of the novel is very cool. All of that makes Allender an interesting character without taking him too far over the top, as so many recent thrillers have done with their protagonists.

Red Swan is a fun novel. The plot kept me guessing about which purported were really good guys and which apparent bad guys were actually the enemy. That's what a spy novel should do. Low-key action keeps the story moving but I was engrossed by the puzzles that torment the key players. Deutermann writes in the confident voice of a seasoned author. If this is the start of a series, I look forward to the next installment.

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