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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The Old Man by Thomas Perry

Published by Mysterious Press on January 3, 2017

The Old Man is sort of a Bonnie and Clyde story except that Bonnie isn’t a criminal and Clyde isn’t a bad guy. So more accurately, it’s a “two lovers on the run” story. But it’s also a Superman story, because the protagonist might be old, but he still fights like a superhero. A reader might need to adopt comic book expectations to enjoy The Old Man, because the plot and the main character are thoroughly unbelievable.

Before he retired, Dan Chase (one of several names the main character adopts during the novel) was a special ops guy who resigned from the military to carry out a boneheaded mission involving the clandestine delivery of cash to a group of insurgents near Benghazi. Predictably, the middleman to whom he delivered the money kept it. Nobody saw this coming? The government is prepared to write it off because $20 million is small change, so Chase steals it back using vaguely described techniques that apparently required super speed, invisibility, and the ability to leap tall walls in a single bound.

Thirty years later, the intelligence services that were willing to write off $20 million are still chasing Chase. Actually, the Libyans are trying to assassinate Chase and the American government is helping them. I find it difficult to believe that either the CIA or the Libyan bad guy still cared about Chase three decades later. The insurgents gained tenuous political power in Libya after Chase stole the money, but don’t they have more pressing problems to deal with than getting vengeance against Chase? And why is the U.S. helping the Libyans assassinate an American citizen, simply because an “important” Libyan wants the American government’s help? None of it makes any sense, but that’s the premise.

Chase starts the novel in Vermont with two dogs, a bugout bag, and a daughter the government doesn’t seem to know about. How the government can find Chase while remaining ignorant of his daughter’s whereabouts is another stunning impossibility that the reader is asked to accept.

A few dead Libyans later, Dan’s next attempt at a life has him shacking up with a woman and his dogs in a Chicago suburb. Of course, he has to run again, this time with his new girlfriend, who apparently doesn’t mind that he used her and put her life in danger. Seriously? It isn’t credible, but that’s the setup for the senior citizen version of this lovers-on-the-run story.

The girlfriend’s dialog seems like something a writer would put in a character’s mouth, not like anything a real person would say. The needlessly long story has several dead spots, including the tedious description of how to load and fire a gun that every thriller writer seems to think is essential to good storytelling. The girlfriend’s backstory is so contrived it’s just silly. A reader could skip several chapters of The Old Man without losing track of the plot.

The best character in the novel is Julian Carson, a conflicted young man in military intelligence who isn’t sure that helping Libyan assassins kill the old special ops guy is the best use of his time. He’s more interesting and believable than Chase, and he’s certainly more admirable than either Chase or his girlfriend.

The end of the book resolves too easily, but nothing is difficult for Superman. The ending, at least, isn’t as predictable as it might have been. I liked some of The Old Man. It held my interest, but there aren’t enough thrills in this thriller. Too much of the plot is forced and, with the exception of Julian Carson, I never warmed up to the characters.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Invoice by Jonas Karlsson

Published in Sweden in 2011; published in translation by Hogarth on July 12, 2016

If Kafka had a sense of humor, if he had been less dark and gloomy, he might have written The Invoice. The novel imagines a scenario in which irrational rules are imposed and people have no choice but to follow them without understanding why. But unlike Kafka’s Josef K, the bureaucrats in The Invoice are only too happy to explain his obligations to the novel’s narrator, although in terms he can’t possibly understand. Of course, every time the narrator meets with the bureaucrats, his efforts to make things better only worsen his predicament.

The Invoice is Jonas Karlsson’s latest contribution to the field of absurdist literature, following The Room. While The Room is darkly amusing, The Invoice is brightly amusing. It is a novel that reminds us to value all the small things that make us happy, notwithstanding the bureaucrats who make a mission of impeding joy.

The unnamed narrator of The Invoice receives a bill for 5.7 million kroner. He doesn’t know what the bill is for, but he is confident that he didn’t incur the debt. He also knows he doesn’t have 5.7 million kroner. After he gets a second bill, he calls the number on the invoice and after a long wait, speaks to a live person who tells him that he is being billed for the experiences that have made him happy. It seems as if Sweden has a happiness tax, although it’s actually being implemented worldwide. An interesting idea, although in the United States an anger tax would probably generate more revenue.

The narrator’s problem is that he isn’t angry often enough, and so has incurred a huge debt for the things (like sunshine) that make him happy. With a job in a video rental store and no girlfriend, it doesn’t seem as though he should have accrued such a large debt. He’s so desperate for female companionship, in fact, that he develops a crush on the administrator he keeps phoning to discuss his inability to pay the debt. One of the novel’s points, I think, is that it’s possible to make a connection with another person under even the most unlikely circumstances.

Like The Room, The Invoice pokes fun at cabined, bureaucratic thinking. But it also sends a life-affirming message. The narrator really doesn’t realize he’s happy, even denies that he’s happy, because he has chosen not to take advantage of opportunities to be happy. He is a slave to habitual behavior. He lacks the spontaneity to seize the moment. He goes with the flow. He envies people who have the ability to “look after themselves and sort things out.” Forced to think about his easy, uneventful life, he concludes “it’s pretty damn tragic.”

At the same time, it is exactly those traits that have caused his tax debt to mount. He doesn’t crave money. He doesn’t care that he has a dead-end job. He doesn’t worry that he has too few friends. He came through a break-up without feeling bad about himself. He’s content when he eats a combination of mint chocolate and raspberry ice cream, when he breathes in the mild summer air. To other Swedes, the narrator might seem dull and unambitious, but The Invoice seems to suggest that those traits are worth cultivating if they help us appreciate the joy of life’s simplest pleasures.

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