Lions by Bonnie Nadzam

Published by Grove/Black Cat on July 5, 2016

A jokester put a “living ghost town” sign on the highway, pointing to Lions, a small town in eastern Colorado. The sign attracts some tourists to the local diner, but as jokes go, this one is uncomfortably close to the truth. Lions is a place where big stories are told, where legends build, but in the end, there is only the bleak reality of entropy.

John Walker is a welder in Lions. His son, Gordon, has only one friend his age, a girl named Leigh who wants nothing more than to leave. Lions is a dying town of wind and dust that can no longer support the welding business that Gordon is destined to inherit. The people who haven’t left Lions are hanging on, but the town has no future. When Gordon disappears for several days, the town residents wonder if he’s gone for good. While he’s gone, something happens in Lions -- a place where nothing ever happens.

The novel might be seen as Gordon’s coming of age story. Will he stay in Lions, consigned to a dead-end fate, or will he make his way in the world? It could also be seen as Leigh’s coming of age story, her struggle with people who are determined to hold her back. Unlike Gordon, Leigh yearns for something new and different, but nearly everyone in her life tells her that “there’s nowhere to go,” that she’ll eventually get over her belief that life can be better than it is in Lions.

But Lions is also a story of death -- not just the death of a few characters (either before or during the unfolding story), but the death of a town. Each new death seems to inspire another resident to think about leaving Lions. But a few are determined to stay, because home is where roots are planted, even if the roots are desperate for water. Or because a choice, once made, must be honored. Or because death has already claimed the living. They are dead inside. Life in Lions has killed their aspirations and joy.

In the end, Lions is a book about people who think about their lives -- their pasts and futures and where they are right now. It is not a particularly dramatic book -- although it has moments of quiet drama -- but is filled with contemplative characters and elegant prose. The ending is ambiguous, but life often keeps us guessing about what will happen next.

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In the Presence of Enemies by William J. Coughlin

First published in 1989; published digitally by Endeavour Press on July 18, 2016

In the Presence of Enemies departs from traditional legal thrillers by focusing not on a criminal lawyer but on a trusts and estates lawyer. As a general rule, wills and probate are about as boring as the law can get, but William J. Coughlin manages to combine family drama with law firm drama to tell an entertaining tale.

Jake Martin is a fifth year associate at a prestigious Detroit law firm. He will either make partner soon or be tossed out to look for new, less lucrative employment. Two other associates are vying for the coveted partnership slot.

The partners ask Jake, a trusts and estates lawyer, to join the team that will handle the probate of a rich client who just died. The firm fears that the relatives of Augustus Daren will challenge his will. Perhaps not coincidentally, the other two associates who want to make partner are also on the team.

Daren controlled a powerful Detroit bank until he had a stroke. After that, Elizabeth, his wife, called most of the shots. Claude deSalle, the bank’s president, also in the control of Daren, isn’t sorry to see him go because he wants to merge the bank with a powerful German bank, something Daren would not have allowed. Claude is shocked, however, to learn that Elizabeth has been given the right to vote all of Daren’s shares in the bank. That news is also upsetting to Daren’s two children by two previous wives.

With that setup, the plot follows the Machiavellian moves of bankers and lawyers, and of Darren’s widow and children, as they fight for control of the bank. Jake is a bit innocent and naïve compared to nearly everyone else in the book, but he finds himself fighting against a hidden enemy (a circumstance that gives the novel its title).

The “hidden enemy” is perhaps too obvious. Few readers will have difficulty guessing why so many roadblocks are placed in Jake’s way as he fights for his client. The novel’s eventual outcome might also be criticized for its predictability. Yet those weaknesses are easily overcome by the novel’s strengths. The plot is credible and engaging. Characters are realistic and the lawyers on both sides of the case are easy to like. The trial scenes are full of the “inside baseball” discussions of strategies and tactics that make legal thrillers fun to read. Fans of the genre are likely to be pleased that this 1989 novel is now available in a digital format.

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Best. State. Ever. by Dave Barry

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on September 6, 2016

Dave Barry set about rehabilitating (or destroying, if that’s even possible) the image of Florida, which is perceived (in Barry's words) as “being a subtropical festival of stupid.” To make his point, Barry chronicles a number of events (some of which actually happened) in which Floridians did things that were stupid, or at least weird. Those events have made Florida “the Joke State,” the state everyone loves to mock. Barry took on this project because Florida’s critics live in states that are equally mockable, a fact he proves by defining the shortcomings of a good number of states, particularly Illinois and New York.

To extoll the good things about Florida, Barry drove around and wrote about the things he found, most of which are pretty stupid, although (as Barry sees it) in a good way. After introductory chapters that I thought were hilarious, the bulk of the book rates only as amusing on the Dave Barry laugh-o-meter.

Highlights of the book include: a politically correct tribute to Miami’s smoking hot women (not that, as an evolved male who does not objectify women, he would ever notice them); a critique of senior line dancers at The Villages, a retirement community that celebrates its lack of diversity; an incursion into LIV, an outrageously expensive Miami nightclub; and bar-hopping in Key West, a city that is renowned for its Jimmy Buffet clones and naked people who should leave their clothes on.

Extended discussions of sketchy tourist attractions (skunk apes, the Weeki Wachi underwater theater, concrete dinosaurs, Spongeorama, Gatorland, and the spiritualist community of Cassadaga) are less funny, if only because so much time is devoted to narrating things that Barry saw, rather than mocking them. Or perhaps he’s just too nice, and too genuinely appreciative of kitsch, to give ripoff roadside attractions the skewering they have earned. Still, he does mock the Cassadaga spiritualists, making that one of the better parts of the book. I also enjoyed his celebration of manliness during a visit to Lock & Load, where visitors get to shoot machineguns, an activity that has sensibly been declared illegal in nearly every other non-military context.

This isn’t as funny as vintage Dave Barry, but it’s still funny. It’s even funnier if you’ve traveled in Florida and can attest to the wisdom of Barry’s observations.

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An Obvious Fact by Craig Johnson

Published by Viking on September 13, 2016

Walt Longmire hardly ever stays home any more. This time he’s (mostly) in Hulett, Wyoming. His friend Henry Standing Bear is participating in a motorcycle rally — challenging himself in a hill climb competition — when he’s not quoting Sherlock Holmes. Meanwhile, Longmire is looking into a motorcycle accident (the young rider is in a coma) that may not have been an accident.

Bear is challenged in another way when his ex-lover Lola (after whom he named a motorcycle) prevails upon him to help investigate the accident. Eventually Longmire’s undersheriff, Vic Moretti, shows up, having returned from the (so far) fruitless investigation of her brother’s death (an event that occurred in Dry Bones which, like all the Longmire novels, is worth reading before starting on this one).

Longmire makes it all the way to page 113 before he says “Boy howdy,” but quite a lot takes place before he says it. And quite a lot more follows in this eventful novel. Craig Johnson doesn’t fill pages with meaningless action scenes (a pivotal bar fight, for instance, takes place off stage, leaving Longmire to describe the aftermath) but the pace is never slow and the story is never dull. The primary plot involves Longmire’s effort to understand why the motorcyclist was run off the road (and who did it), but a number of entertaining subplots branch off from that story.

Potential villains include a D-list celebrity who once starred in a reality TV show about motorcycle repair, a couple of inept vehicle thieves who continually cross Longmire’s path, an entire motorcycle gang, and Lola. As always, Johnson gives supporting characters (not just the regulars) enough personality to make them seem real.

The trademark dry wit and trivia expertise that Johnson bestows on Longmire always keeps the story light, although this one is lighter than most. For instance, Johnson pokes gentle fun at the enormous waste of tax dollars involved whenever the federal government gives local police departments things (like mine-resistant military vehicles) that they don’t need.

An Obvious Fact serves up a nice helping of what series fans have come to expect -- easy entertainment with familiar characters and a spry plot. It does little to delve into the dark events of the last novel, but I imagine Johnson will explore that plot thread in the next book or two. I would consider An Obvious Fact to be an average novel in the series, but boy howdy, that makes it pretty darn good.

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Titanborn by Rhett C. Bruno

Published by Random House/Hydra on June 21, 2016

Titanborn is set in 2334, 300 years after a meteorite crippled Earth, raising sea levels and cooling temperatures and leaving an unpleasant environment for the few survivors. Malcolm Graves works for Pervinio Corporation as a collector. He settles disputes, usually by getting rid of the person causing the dispute. Malcolm has survived in his job longer than most collectors. His investigation of a bombing sends him to Old Russia and then to Titan.

Soon after the story begins, Malcolm is saddled with a partner named Zhaff, a Cogent from Titan. A Cogent is a human who has been bred to have the characteristics of an android, whatever that means. Zhaff wears a fancy monocle and other high-tech gadgetry, but the details of his “breeding” and special abilities are never made entirely clear. Zhaff is young and ultra-competent which, of course, makes Malcolm feel old and insecure. Malcolm eventually discovers a secret about Zhaff that, like the rest of the novel, feels contrived.

Titanborn is essentially an action novel that adds a bit of family drama in an attempt to give it substance. Malcolm has an adopted daughter (sort of) who doesn’t want to follow in the old man’s footsteps. The circumstances involving Malcolm’s daughter (and to a lesser extent, those involving Zhaff’s father) are meant to add human interest to the story. They don’t. The action is predictable and the family drama is … well, I’ll say it again … contrived.

Malcolm is supposed to be an aging noir antihero who is also a good guy. He unerringly shoots people in the shoulder or knocks them out with a single blow to the head unless he decides to kill them. On the whole, his personality is standard for a novel of this sort. Like the plot, Malcolm just isn’t very interesting.

Rhett C. Bruno’s prose isn’t awful, but too many passages have a first draft quality. Bruno doesn’t have the kind of style that makes me believe a second or third draft would improve the narrative. Dialog sounds like it is spoken by teenagers, even when the character is a senior citizen. The prose is too dependent on clichés.

So, we have a science fiction action novel that doesn’t separate itself from the pack in terms of plot, characters, or prose. A science fiction action novel junkie might like it because it moves quickly and includes familiar science fiction trappings. Readers looking for more substance or an innovative story will need to look elsewhere.

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