Agnes by Peter Stamm

First published in German in 1998; first published in translation in the UK in 2000; published by Other Press on October 25, 2016

Agnes is narrated by a man whose name we never learn. The narrator is in the Chicago Public Library, researching a book about luxury trains, when he meets Agnes. They begin a daily ritual of hanging out together. Later, over dinner, Agnes starts to share her dislikes (eating) and phobias (death). After they begin sleeping together, Agnes shares some details of her antisocial past.

Agnes wants the narrator to write a story about her so that she’ll know what he thinks of her. The narrator complies, at first chronicling their past, but eventually writing about events that have not yet happened. Agnes dutifully fulfills the role that the book ascribes to her.

Of course, life can’t be scripted, which may be Peter Stamm’s point. Life follows a course we can’t predict and things do not always work out the way we plan. Rewriting a life isn’t as easy as rewriting a story.

Eventually, however, the narrator appears to be writing the life he would prefer rather than the life he’s living. I suppose we all do that, in a way, imaging a life that is different from the one we live, even if we don’t write down our imaginings. But again, writing an imagined life rather than living a real one may not be the best route to happiness.

The bleak ending is telegraphed at the novel’s beginning. Readers looking for a warm and fuzzy reading experience should stay far away from Stamm.

The characters in the last Stamm novel I read (Seven Years) were so self-absorbed that I didn’t enjoy reading about them. This novel (Stamm’s first) is better. The two characters are self-absorbed but the story is told in such an interesting way that my detachment from the characters didn’t bother me. The stark novel is a quick read — the story is deceptively simple — but it should be read slowly and with some care to give the mind time to unpeel its layers.

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Selection Day by Aravind Adiga

Published in the UK in 2016; published by Scribner on January 3, 2017

Selection Day seems to be a light comedy about a father, his two sons, and their passion for cricket until it becomes a more serious coming-of-age novel. I didn’t think much of the last Aravind Adiga novel I read, but I’m giving this one full marks.

Radha Krishna Kumar is the finest young batsmen in Mumbai, and his brother Manjunath is nearly as good. That, at least, is the opinion held by Parmod Sawant, the head cricket coach at an international school, although Pramod must defer to Tommy Sir, the best talent scout in India. Plans are afoot, not all of them legitimate, to invest in the two brothers, as Anand Mehta proposes to act as agent for (and owner of) the two cricketeers while pocketing the profit from their success.

The boys attained their lofty status thanks to their father, Mohan Kumar, a seller of chutney who has devoted his life to teaching the boys useless proverbs, correct posture, and the fundamentals of cricket. The boys, of course, resent their controlling father, in part because he caused their mother to flee. Cricket seems to be their only hope of a better life.

A rivalry between young Manju Kumar and his older brother develops as the novel progresses. But when Manju befriends another young cricket player, Javed Ansari, his thoughts turn to poetry and music and college and everything that is not cricket. Is he being led astray, or is being encouraged to find his true destiny? In the coming-of-age tradition, Manju finds himself pulled in several directions at once as he tries to decide how to live his life.

Many of the characters in Selection Day play familiar comedic roles — particularly the father, Tommy Sir, and Anand Mehta — and much the novel is quite funny. Comedy aside, the relationship between Javed (a Muslim) and Manju (a Hindu) explores serious questions involving religion, sexuality, and social status in India.

Adiga uses cricket to open a window into India’s problems, which he sees as corruption, prejudice, resistance to modernization, and a tendency toward self-delusion, among other issues (including literary offenses committed by Indian authors who meet the shallow demands of the reading public). At the same time, the book has universal appeal, revealing character traits (vulnerability, manipulation, self-aggrandizement, empathy) that are recognizable in all cultures.

Whether Manju makes the right choices in his life is, of course, something that only Manju can judge, but the end of the book gives the reader a peek at Manju’s young adulthood. That invites the reader to ponder how Manju’s life might have turned out if he gone in a different direction. The ending isn’t what I might have predicted and it is all the more satisfying for that reason.

I should add that this is not the first novel I’ve read in which cricket plays a dominant role, and I still don’t have the foggiest idea how the game is actually played. Fortunately, a reader doesn’t need to understand cricket to understand Selection Day. And for those who care, Adiga appended an amusing glossary of cricket terms.

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Death Squad by Don Pendleton

First published in 1969; published digitally by Open Road Media on October 11, 2016

Death Squad is the second novel in the Executioner series. Mack Bolan, having started his war against the mafia in War Against the Mafia, takes his show on the road. About three pages in, Bolan has arrived in LA, admired several women in bikinis, and killed three guys in a shootout. A couple pages later, three more are dead in a second shootout as Bolan gets an assist from his Vietnam buddy Zitka.

At that point, I stopped counting the bodies.

There’s a six-figure price on Bolan’s head (in 1969 dollars) so every thug with a gun wants a piece of him. Bolan decides if he’s going to fight a war, he needs an army. A small army, a band of ten brothers, all Vietnam veterans. Bolan recruits a demolition expert, a scout, a couple of snipers, a weapons expert, a “mass-death” expert (he’s good with artillery), an electronics expert, and other veterans who believed that “manhood’s highest expression” involved “a big gun and a twenty-power scope.” They are happy to join Bolan’s death squad since civilian life lacks excitement and the promise of easy money beckons.

Death Squad is the novel in which Bolan forms a relationship with LAPD Detective Carl Lyons, one of the cops who is charged with stopping his rampage. Lyons doesn’t like what Dolan is doing to his city, but respects Bolan’s code. Mafia killers are fair game, but civilians and cops are never Bolan’s targets. Lyons eventually becomes a key part of the series.

Death Squad gives the impression that Bolan will never again work as part of a team, although that changes later in the series (and in spin-offs). There isn’t much substance in Death Squad, but there are lots of explosions and gun battles and chase scenes. The pace is relentless. Unlike many modern thriller writers, Pendleton doesn’t waste words describing his favorite gun in loving detail. Nor does Pendleton waste words on the political rants that mar so many modern thrillers. Pendleton doesn’t waste words on anything.

Pendleton was developing a formula in the early Executioner books but Death Squad is too early in the series for it to seem formulaic. If you like violent novels about men with a mission taking on bad guys against impossible odds (and really, who doesn’t?), it’s hard to beat the early Executioner novel’s. They are among the classics of the genre.

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The Oslo Conspiracy by Asle Skredderberget

First published in Norway in 2013; published in translation by St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne Books on October 25, 2016

In 1977, an Italian naval ship sinks after an explosion. More than 20 years later, Ingrid Tollefsen is strangled in her hotel room in Rome. How those two events are related is the question that the reader is invited to ponder as The Oslo Conspiracy unfolds.

As a financial crimes investigator, Milo Cavalli doesn’t usually get involved in murder investigations, but the Italian police won’t release Ingrid’s body until Oslo sends a detective to Rome, and Milo, who has ties to Italy, happens to be available. Coincidentally — or not — Ingrid’s younger brother Tormod was killed in a school shooting in Oslo two years earlier.

Ingrid was employed in the pharmaceutical industry and Tormod had an ampoule of steroids in his hand when he died. Those facts lead Milo on an investigation of Ingrid’s uncooperative employer, a company that refuses to disclose the nature of her research projects. Milo also noses around gym rats who smuggle steroids and encounters a witness in Tormod’s case who is trying to avoid deportation from Norway.

Ingrid might also have been having an affair. All of that adds up to several potential but vague motives to do away with Ingrid. The reader follows Milo and he bounces around Oslo, Rome, and New York in pursuit of clues. The multiple plotlines are juggled with care. The story is moderately complex but not confusing. The plot didn’t captivate me, but it sustained my interest.

Milo has a girlfriend in Italy but he doesn’t want to give up his job in Oslo, even though he has enough wealth to live without working. Milo spends a good bit of time obsessing about other women (hey, he's Italian), which periodically sends him to confession (again,he's Italian), where he argues about morality with a priest. I suppose the relationship drama serves to give Milo some depth, but Milo’s relationship with his family members is more intriguing, given its tie-in to the novel’s plot elements.

The novel is interesting for many reasons, not least for its penetrating look at the pharmaceutical industry. Asle Skredderberget’s portrayal of Norway’s response to immigrants who overstay visas is timely, given the American debate about undocumented immigrants. The political dimensions of the story aren’t heavy-handed and they never get in the way of Skredderberget’s storytelling. The Oslo Conspiracy isn’t the most thrilling example of Scandinavian crime fiction I’ve encountered, but the story is credible and its leisurely pace allows the plot and characterizations to develop in a meaningful way.

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Bronx Requiem by John Clarkson

Published by St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books on November 8, 2016

Too many thrillers send the message that good prevails over evil because good guys are bigger and stronger and probably have Special Forces training. There’s a little of that in Bronx Requiem (two big, strong guys duke it out in a good vs. evil confrontation), but the more refreshing message is that good guys can beat bad guys by appealing to the decency in common people, by encouraging a community to stand up and fight back against its evil elements.

James Beck is released from prison after his conviction for killing a cop is eventually reversed on appeal. Beck made one true friend in prison, a righteous con named Paco Johnson. When it is finally Johnson’s turn to be released, Beck helps arrange Johnson’s parole. When things don’t go well for Paco in the real world, Beck pursues justice.

Paco has a daughter named Amelia. Things haven’t worked out well for Amelia, who finds herself wanting to kill Derrick Watkins, the pimp who controls her life with regular beatings. Other people are gunning for Watkins, literally and figuratively, including the police and, soon enough, Beck.

Police detective John Palmer doesn’t think a cop killer should ever be released from jail, even if the cop was killed in self-defense. He wants to send Beck back to prison and he’s willing to manipulate evidence and coerce witnesses to lie if that’s what it takes. But Palmer has a deeper connection to the story that becomes clear as the novel progresses.

The story pits Beck against the police, against gangs, and against the person he’s really after, although identifying that person requires some effort. John Clarkson introduces a variety of believable characters, most of whom walk along a path that has them doing bad things for good reasons. The plot is sufficiently complex to be interesting but not so complex as to be messy. The ending stirs the right emotions without becoming sappy, and the final chapter holds a nice surprise.

John Clarkson’s surefooted prose conveys the story without using clichés or calling attention to itself. He delivers enough action and suspense to keep the story moving at a brisk pace, but the story’s strength comes from characters who band together to help each other and to help the powerless triumph over the powerful.

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