Slow Boat by Hideo Furukawa

Published in Japan in 2003; published in translation by Pushkin Press on June 6, 2017

Slow Boat is a novella-length story of three loves, told by a man who recalls his past. Each love represents (at least in his mind) a failed attempt to leave Tokyo, either physically or metaphorically.

Slow Boat is almost existential in its depiction of a man who feels hopeless, powerless, and trapped in a heartless Tokyo. Three times, he has tried and failed to leave Tokyo. The first time he was in grade school, chasing after his girlfriend, whose parents were taking her away. The second time he was planning to join his new girlfriend at the airport. Both attempts ended violently. The third time he decided to leave metaphorically, leading to another new girlfriend and another disaster.

I’m not sure what to make of Slow Boat. It’s sort of a commentary on Japan over the course of the last few decades, but it’s also personal, a commentary on Japan as seen from the standpoint of a man (or boy) at various stages of his life, looking for a way out. Not a way out of Japan, necessarily, but a way out of the life for which he seems destined. Perhaps the narrator is simply coming to terms with his life, coming to accept that he is on a slow boat to nowhere. Or perhaps he is about to challenge fate. Part of the novel suggests that simply doing the best we can with what we have toward the people we love will have positive if unforseeable consequences, even if we do not stay with those people forever.

Fortunately, Hideo Furakawa includes an explanation of the book, which he calls a remix of Haruki Murakami’s story, “Slow Boat to China.” Familiarity with that story might help a reader appreciate Hideo Furakawa’s remix, but I haven’t read it so I can’t comment on that. I did appreciate the explanation of the novel’s surrealistic nature, which I found interesting but puzzling. Readers with a greater background in Japanese literature might get more out of Slow Boat than I did, but I liked it well enough to recommend it to readers who are up for a challenge.

RECOMMENDED

The Silent Corner by Dean Koontz

Published by Bantam on June 20, 2017

The first thing to know about The Silent Corner is that Dean Koontz doesn’t finish the story he begins. Fortunately, the story does not end with a cliffhanger, but the plot is not resolved. More Jane Hawk novels are on the horizon.

The second thing to know is that The Silent Corner, unlike many Koontz novels, has no supernatural element. It’s less a horror novel than a “vast evil conspiracy” novel of the sort that Ludlum used to write. Still, The Silent Corner feels like a Koontz thriller, not an imitation of a Ludlum thriller.

Jane Hawk is the recent widow of a Marine officer who killed himself. The suicide rate, like the murder rate, has been increasing, but without an apparent pattern. On leave from the FBI and off the grid, Jane is searching for a thread that connects the suicides. Jane is off the grid because she’s being chased by an unknown but well-financed enemy. Her life is complicated by the knowledge that she’s hidden her only son with a friend and cannot see him often, because the conspiratorial forces that want her to cease her inquiries have threatened them both.

The note that Hawk’s husband left implies that he felt a compulsion to die. Notes left by other unlikely suiciders suggest that they heard voices or suddenly envisioned a path to a better life despite having no religious beliefs. Hawk suspects that some outside force is compelling thousands of people to commit suicide.

Hawk enlists help in her search for the truth, including a famous actor and an aging veteran who runs a soup kitchen. She tangles with the ultra-rich who indulge their nefarious and demented fantasies. As a reader would expect of Koontz, all of those characters seem real.

Several parts of The Silent Corner don’t pass credibility scrutiny. Why is an FBI agent (as opposed to, for instance, the CDC) the lone person who seems to have noticed that people are committing suicide for no reason? Why do the conspirators think anyone will listen to her? Why is an exclusive and extremely illegal club for rich deviants designed in a way that all but ignores security? How does a conspiracy involving a stunning technological breakthrough have such an extensive reach while still remaining hidden? And why are such resourceful conspirators unable to find Jane’s kid, given the obvious place she picked to hide him? Suspension of disbelief is the key to enjoying a conspiracy thriller, but Koontz challenged my ability to do that.

The background of The Silent Corner pictures a nation that has grown increasingly angry, a nation in which assholes feel an entitlement to engage in rude behavior. Sounds depressingly like the real world, doesn't it? Yet Koontz always manages to portray the decency of those who have been dealt a losing hand. Characters who are poor, homeless, disabled, or victimized are kinder and more respectful of others than the humorless and self-impressed people who wield power, although a couple of wealthy characters are also good people.

The story moves quickly and the plot, while fanciful, never becomes convoluted. The Silent Corner doesn’t have the depth of Dean Koontz’ best work, but it left me looking forward to the next in the series, which is enough to make me recommend it.

RECOMMENDED

I Am Death by Chris Carter

First published in Great Britain in 2015; published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books on May 30, 2017

The serial killer who becomes Robert Hunter’s nemesis in I Am Death is a well-dressed con man who has the ability to set people at ease before he kills them. Fortunately for the real world, serial killers are extremely rare, but thriller writers love to invent them. And of course, the victims are all the sort of people readers like, although they aren’t given much substance beyond “young, attractive, good person.”

In other words, if you read thrillers regularly, you’ve read this one before. Brilliant serial killer leaves tantalizing clues, eventually directing one at the investigating detective. Unfortunately, Hunter misses the meaning of a fairly obvious clue for quite a long time, which is inconsistent with what we are told about his remarkable intelligence. But as we expect of our crime novel heroes, he redeems himself later.

Hunter’s investigation begins with a dead babysitter who was clearly tortured for several days before her body was found. It continues by following the formula of serial killer thrillers: the killer taunts the cops as he keeps killing, leaves clues because he considers himself smarter than the cops, and eventually … well, you know the rest.

There isn’t much subtlety in I Am Death. Bad parents are the worst parents imaginable. Torture killings involve exceptionally brutal torture (sensitive readers may not be able to handle some of the scenes in this book). And while bad people are really, really bad, good people are really, really good. In other words, they are boring and empty.

I don’t have a problem with Chris Carter’s prose. The story moves quickly because it’s written using the formula that some thriller writers love (short chapters, short paragraphs, the kind of book that readers consider a page-turner only because there is so little content on each page). I suppose I should give the ending credit for not being entirely predictable, but Carter only managed that by making the ending entirely contrived. I just didn’t believe much of anything about this novel, which is pretty typical of the serial killer novels that modern crime writers produce so obsessively. I Am Death is far from an awful novel, but it will entertain fans of fast-moving, unchallenging formula fiction more than it will appeal to readers looking for credible plots and substantial characters.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Shadow Man by Alan Drew

Published by Random House on May 23, 2017

Shadow Man is a crime novel, but like all good novels, its focus is on how people respond to the forces that shape their lives. Two plot threads intersect. One involves a serial killer, the reliable fall guy of crime fiction, but the killer is only a prop to keep the story moving as Alan Drew deals with the deeper human drama of broken relationships, parenthood, and child abuse. The other plot involves a school’s swim coach who has a history of sexually abusing vulnerable members of the swim team.

Most novels about serial killers and sexual abusers are superficial and melodramatic. They exploit the subject matter to induce outrage, but they rely on stereotypes rather than nuance. Shadow Man is more insightful in its grasp of human nature than most crime stories that address sexual abuse. In fact, it is more insightful than most crime novels, period. Shadow Man won’t appeal to readers looking for a dumbed-down, fast-moving thriller with a tough guy protagonist who fights eight men at a time, lovingly describes his guns, and has never entertained an unconventional thought or a moment of self-doubt. I enjoy books like that if they’re well written, but I always prefer to read a novel that takes the time to establish setting, atmosphere, and characters. Shadow Man does all of that while still delivering an engaging, multifaceted plot.

Ben Wade enforces the law in a planned community called Rancho Santa Elena, where in the mid-1980s, serious crime is virtually nonexistent. Ben lives at the edge of town with (sometimes) his daughter, in the cowboy ranch where he grew up, having returned after a stint with LAPD. Ben has a troubled relationship with his ex-wife and nearly everyone else in his life. He’s having difficulty adjusting to the fact that his daughter is growing up. Ben is a complex character who spends the novel wrestling with demons from his past as he tries to decide whether the time has come to reveal the secrets that have shaped his adulthood.

Ben is asked to assist with a body in nearby Mission Viejo, a death by strangulation, perhaps the latest victim of a serial killer. Before long, he’s investigating more deaths, some of which match the serial killer’s signature, although the death of a teenage boy, the son of migrant workers, is quite different. That one takes Ben back to his high school years, reawakening memories of a small town that is intolerant of anyone who doesn’t fit the bigoted standards of the community.

Shadow Man doesn’t deliver the artificial thrills of car chases and shootouts, but it does develop and hold a steady level of tension. The story moves quickly but not so quickly that important elements of atmosphere and characterization are neglected. Ben’s observations about rural California’s transition in the 1980s from cowboy country to gated communities contributes to a strong sense of time and place. The story stands out, however, for its portrayal of Ben’s troubled childhood and how those troubles have shaped the fears that plague him as an adult. Even minor characters wear their pain realistically as they struggle to cope with uncomfortable truths. The serial killer is almost a minor character, which I found refreshing, and he is developed in a way that avoids the common serial killer stereotypes. Not many writers do literary crime fiction well, but with Shadow Man, Alan Drew positions himself in that select group.

RECOMMENDED

Cold Welcome by Elizabeth Moon

Published by Del Rey on April 11, 2017

Cold Welcome isn’t much of a science fiction novel. It’s more of a conspiracy / survivalist / adventure novel that happens to be set on another world. Parts of the story are plodding. Some of it shows promise, only to disappoint with its failure to move in an interesting direction.

A family crisis forces Grand Admiral Ky Vatta to return to Slotter’s Key, where her great aunt is the Rector of Defense. The Vatta family is under attack, and Ky becomes wrapped up in the family drama when the shuttle she is taking to the surface of Slotter’s Key is sabotaged.

Ky leads the crash survivors to an inhospitable continent and eventually to a structure that seems to have been built by aliens (the kind of convenient aliens that make things humans can use) but more recently occupied by Vatta family enemies. The enemies account for the conspiracy theme, and Ky’s haphazard attempts to save the others from hypothermia and starvation account for the survivalist theme. The adventure theme … well, there’s not much to it.

We are frequently told that Ky is a capable leader, but you wouldn’t know it from reading the story. Ky is always talking about how much they need to do while never seeming to do anything. Her people are huddled in something like a shed, wondering when their food will run out, while two other structures are within easy walking distance, and Ky’s attitude is “we’ll have to investigate those next week, but right now we’re too busy making up sleeping schedules and melting snow for water.” Like they can’t take a look at the structures while the snow is melting? Ky struck me as being too inept to lead a Girl Scout troop, much less a space fleet.

In more than 200 days on the continent, almost nothing happens despite Ky’s whining about how busy everyone is. A moment of betrayal adds momentary interest, and pages addressing the lackluster attempts to locate Ky chew up a number of pages, but for the most part this is a novel of characters searching for something to do. And since the characters aren’t very interesting, neither is the novel.

NOT RECOMMENDED