Little White Lies by Ace Atkins

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on May 2, 2017

The official title of this book is apparently Robert B. Parker's Little White Lies, but Parker has been dead for six years. Adding the names of dead authors to titles of books they didn't write is a questionable marketing gimmick and not one that reviewers need to promote.

Ace Atkins is a seasoned writer with a biting sense of humor. Little White Lies is his sixth Spenser novel, after the forty that Robert B. Parker wrote. Atkins captures Parker’s voice, which I think of as a more sophisticated Mickey Spillane.

A right-wing pundit who passes himself off to cable “news” programs as a former CIA agent has swindled Spenser’s latest client in a land deal. The client happens to be a patient of Spenser’s girlfriend. Spenser’s effort to track down the swindler leads him to an equally unsavory owner of a gun range. The two men seem to be working together to sell shady investments, while one or both of them may be making illegal sales of a different kind.

Spenser’s inability to abide a liar puts him at odds with the con man, and his effort to expose the scam takes up the first half of the novel. By the second half, he’s in Atlanta, dealing with gun nuts and a megachurch preacher, all of whom are engaged in swindles or worse. Of course, Spenser’s buddy Hawk has his back, often playing the straight man for Spenser’s sarcastic remarks as they explore Atlanta’s underbelly. Another buddy, Tedy Sapp, plays a similar role while adding some sexual orientation diversity to the cast of good guys.

Little White Lies is a classic detective story, with a few murders sprinkled among the other crimes that Spenser investigates. Between lunatics who think that Jesus carried an AR-15 and the cynical “preachers” who exploit their fears and prejudices, Spenser has his hands full.

Little White Lies isn’t particularly surprising or memorable, but those are not qualities I would expect to find in a franchise that has lasted this long. Little White Lies is a fun, quick read, an entertaining visit with familiar characters. It easily lives up to, but does not surpass, expectations.

RECOMMENDED

City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett

Published by Broadway Books on May 2, 2017

Epic fantasy almost always follows a well-established path. A heroic figure embarks on a quest to overcome a force of evil. I don’t read much modern epic fantasy because so much of it is predictable and boring. But whatever genre Robert Jackson Bennett chooses (he often straddles fantasy and science fiction), I read his work with great anticipation because he is never predictable.

City of Miracles is the third novel in an excellent trilogy. It seemed to me that the first novel was so good, there was no need for a second. I enjoyed it but I felt a bit let down because the characters and setting were no longer fresh and startling. Still, as soon as I started reading City of Miracles, I was swept up in the sense of wonder that enveloped me as I read City of Stairs. Part of that stems from the novel’s focus on Sigrud, one of Robert Bennett Jackson’s most complex characters and by far my favorite in the trilogy.

Shara Komayd has not been prime minister for ten years, but she still has enemies. City of Miracles opens with her assassination — the first of many surprising elements in story — the news of which deeply disturbs Sigrud. Naturally, he vows to find the killer. That leads him back into the quest established in the first novel and advanced in the second: to overcome the divine entities that pose a threat to humanity’s future.

There shouldn’t be many divine entities left after the first two novels, but it turns out that the divinities had children, and there are any number of those, although the most powerful of them wants to wipe out the rest and absorb their power, strengthening his ability to expand his realm (nighttime itself) until nothing is left that is warm and light and, well, alive.

Along the way, Sigrud fights the requisite battles that an epic hero must face, but the interesting thing about Sigrud is how he changes over the course of the trilogy. In part, the change is physical — something happened earlier in his life that (as the reader will have noticed in the last book) gives Sigrud an improbable ability to overcome divine obstacles — but he also changes emotionally as he struggles with his past, his pain, his dark nature, the death of his daughter, the death of Shara, his sense that he has never been free to define his own identity, and his uncertainty about the identity he would want to define if given a choice. Sigrud describes himself as “a man whose moments are little more than slit throats, and sorrow, and skulking in the dark.” He is an unlikely epic hero, but he is also selfless and duty-bound, a man whose means are at war with his ends. Bennett always creates strong characters, but the conflicted Sigrud is one of his best.

City of Miracles is an excellent action/adventure novel. On another level, it can be read as an allegory about the isolation of abandoned or abused or orphaned children, about the consequences of failing to provide them with stability and guidance. And it is a novel of epic themes:  the need to let go of grievances before they become all-consuming; the difference between justice and vengeance; the eternal struggle of the privileged few to control the masses; the desire to defeat time; the meaning of freedom and happiness; the remarkable ability of humans (and deities) to destroy just about anything that’s good.

By removing the story from the political quarrels that impair clarity of thought, science fiction and fantasy can use a world (or time) that is not our own to shed light on the failings and virtues of the world (or time) that is our own.  Bennett uses that opportunity to say something important about our world and our lives by directing our attention to a fictional world that is very different from, but significantly similar to, the world that humans are always trying so hard to destroy.

The first book in the trilogy was so good that I was almost sorry to see it continue. Having read the third book, I’m sorry to see it end.

RECOMMENDED

A Single Spy by William Christie

Published by St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books on April 25, 2017

“We gather information by many means, but a single spy in the right place and at the right moment may change the course of history.” With that encouragement, a 17-year-old Russian boy named Alexsi is sent to Germany, where it is envisioned that he will spend years rising to a position that will allow him to uncover great secrets for the benefit of the Soviet Union.

A Single Spy begins as Alexsi, struggling to survive, joins a group of Shahsavan tribesmen, nomads who roamed between Iran and Azerbaijan until the Soviet army began to do serious border patrol. Escaping a Soviet ambush in 1936, Alexsi, at the age of sixteen, is again on his own. Alexsi speaks Russian, German, and Farsi, among other languages, and is improbably literate, which makes him attractive to the NKVD. Like it or not, Alexsi becomes a spy.

Alexsi’s first task is to infiltrate a group that opposes Stalin. To do that, he must take advantage of a girl he knew in the orphanage where he spent part of his youth. That gives William Christie an opportunity to write scenes that flash back to the corrupt and inhumane setting of a Soviet orphanage. Other flashbacks illustrate Alexsi’s pre-orphanage years and explain how Alexsi later came to be living with Shahsavan tribesmen.

In the present, Alexsi serves the Soviets while pretending to serve the Germans in Berlin and Tehran, eventually stumbling onto a plot that may indeed change the course of history. While the plot might be a bit farfetched, that’s not unusual in modern thrillers, and Christie sold me on the story’s credibility.

Alexsi isn’t a complex character and some of the other characters are little more than stereotypes, but that’s common in a thriller that depends on plot more than characterization. The plot earns points for departing from the mold for most spy stories. It also earns points for being smart. Not brilliant, but smart.

The focus on a Russian from the Middle East who infiltrates the Germans during World War II is something I haven’t seen before, and I’m always happy to find a spy novel that isn’t just a variation of stories that the masters of espionage novels have already told. The story moves quickly, particularly in the action scenes that bring the novel to its finish. The themes of betrayal on which all spy fiction depends are sharply developed. Shortcomings of characterization notwithstanding, A Single Spy is a winning contribution to the genre of spy fiction.

RECOMMENDED

The Weight of Him by Ethel Rohan

Published by St. Martin's Press on February 14, 2017

The Weight of Him takes on two social issues: teen suicide and obesity. It doesn’t quite do justice to either of them, but the effort is sincere and well intended.

Billy and Tricia Brennan recently lost their 17-year-old son Michael to suicide. As Billy drifts through his days, awash in memories, he feels he is killing himself — “not nearly as swiftly or brutally as Michael, but killing himself just the same.”

Billy is morbidly obese (just topping 400 pounds) and finally feels a need to get serious about losing weight. More than that, he wants to turn his diet into a fundraiser and couple it with a march to call attention to the problem of teenage suicide. He wants people to sponsor his weight loss so he can donate the proceeds to a teen suicide hotline.

Tricia feels that a small Irish village is no place for a march (that’s just not the way they do things) and she doesn’t want the attention. Their three surviving children are split — their daughter fancies the idea, their rebellious son opposes it, and their other son is characteristically indifferent. Billy’s parents are against it — they think he’s glorifying obesity and suicide, when both should be a source of shame — as is the father of another teen suicide victim who doesn’t want to be reminded of his loss. Billy’s sister opposes the plan for the more practical reason that rapid weight loss (Billy wants to drop 200 pounds) isn’t healthy.

The silence that surrounds teen suicide (at least in Ireland), the refusal to engage the problem, is the novel’s strongest theme. The novel’s weakness is that it tries to do too much, loading several different family issues on top of the suicide and weight loss themes. The novel loses momentum when it veers away from Billy’s quest and addresses his mother’s illness or the swimming lessons he gives his son. Billy’s constant battle with self-doubt could also have been handled with more subtlety.

Parts of the novel are touching, as a reader would expect from a novel about loss. Ethel Rohan’s portrayal of the family’s emotions, particularly as they attend a coroner’s inquest, is convincing. Tricia is unsupportive to the point of cruelty, but that’s also convincing, given that most marriages don’t survive the loss of a child.

The novel suffers from redundancy (Billy, in particular, voices the same thoughts over and over, in much the same way) and it’s too determinedly “feel good” for my taste, although readers searching for a feel-good story will find one here. Teen suicide and obesity are both complex issues, but the story is a bit shallow. The Weight of Him earns my recommendation because the story’s strengths outweigh its weaknesses, and because it has something important to say, but I wouldn’t recommend the novel for anyone seeking a deep understanding of the issues it addresses.

RECOMMENDED

The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp

Published in Great Britain in 2016; published by Orbit on April 4, 2017

The Last Days of Jack Sparks is a fictional-presented-as-real exploration of the supernatural from the perspective of a skeptic (Jack Sparks), but it’s grounded in the philosophy of belief systems. A “combat magician” talks to Sparks about Robert Anton Wilson’s notion that people should neither believe nor disbelieve, whether the subject under consideration is science or religion or the supernatural, because belief destroys intelligence. The notion that it is arrogant to profess belief (or disbelief) in any version of reality when there is so much about the universe we don’t understand appeals to me, as does the novel.

Having made a career of writing about himself as he does things that are interesting, self-destructive, or both, Jack Sparks embarked on his fourth book, Jack Sparks and the Supernatural. A foreword by his brother reveals that it is his last book because Jack is dead. And it is the dead Jack Sparks’ book that is presented to the reader, along with his brother’s edits.

Having decided to write about the supernatural, Jack attends an exorcism in Italy. It’s spooky, but not as spooky as the video that suddenly shows up on his YouTube channel, even though he didn’t post it. The video, shot in a Blair Witch Project style, purports to show an aggressive, ghost-like being. There are also three demonic names spoken on the video … or are there?

The priest who performs the exorcism gives Jack a book that purports to describe Jack’s death, but Jack doesn’t read it because it seems like too much information. After a trip to Hong Kong to watch a couple of ghostbusters rid a houseboat of spirits, even more creepy things begin to happen to Jack. Much of the novel centers upon Jack’s transformation from skeptic to believer, although what he believes in and why are questions that the reader will ponder until the “truth” is revealed.

Editorial additions to the text, inserted by Jack’s brother, provide a counterpoint to Jack’s depiction of himself. To others, Jack was arrogant, self-indulgent, and more interested in keeping abreast of his social media presence than in having an actual conversation with a physically present person. At the same time, Jack’s obsession with YouTube and other social media outlets highlights the growing difficulty of distinguishing the real from the fake when nobody acts as a filter to authenticate news stories or videos.

I like the way the novel balances ambiguity with the conventions of horror. Is Jack really experiencing paranormal phenomena? Is there a rational explanation for the manifestations he witnesses? Or is Jack having ‘shroom flashbacks, hallucinations that might be related to the drugs he consumed while writing his last book? All of those explanations occur to Jack, but they don’t detract from the truly spooky descriptions of his encounters with ghosts or demons or psychic manifestations or whatever they might be.

The Last Days of Jack Sparks blends a horror story with a psychological thriller. The story’s theme, I think, is that there is a thin line between being possessed and self-possessed. There may always be demons within us that need to be exorcised, including our uncontrolled egos, our vanities and narcissistic tendencies.

Jack’s self-absorption is so extreme that it detracts from the story’s pleasure — although admittedly, you only need to watch the news to be deluged with stories that feature extremely self-absorbed people who, like Jack, believe they are above criticism. Still, the plot is carefully constructed, muddling together different theories of the paranormal in a way that leads to surprising revelations that resolve the story in a sensible way while leaving room for ambiguity and alternate explanations (such as those drawn by Jack’s brother). And the book does have its scary moments, which is really all a reader can ask from a horror novel.

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