Escape the Night by Richard North Patterson

First published in 1983; published digitally by Open Road Media on November 25, 2014

Notable for its intricacy of plotting and depth of characterization, Escape the Night interweaves the lives of a number of characters while building a tight story. I liked it more than some of Richard North Patterson's recent fiction.

The backdrop to Escape the Night is a publishing dynasty. Peter Carey's grandfather, John "Black Jack" Carey, co-founded the firm. He built the business with ruthless efficiency. When Peter was a child, his father, Charles, and his uncle, Philip, competed for its control. Missing from the equation, and from Peter's life, is his mother. The novel begins with Allie Carey giving birth to a baby she does not want. It moves forward a few years to reveal Allie's strained relationship with Charles, whose relationship with his father and brother is equally strained. The brothers are divided in their response to HUAC's demands that they not publish "subversive" books, while a HUAC investigator takes Charles' defiance personally.

Peter is nearly 30 when the story resumes. He has nightmares that he doesn't understand. Nor does he understand why he lost the memories of his childhood. Peter is poised to take control of the publishing company just as a wealthy businessman named Clayton Barth is attempting to acquire it. The genesis of Barth's interest in the business lies in John Carey's past. Peter and his uncle Philip become locked in a conflict that centers on Barth's bid for ownership.

Patterson takes his time to build characters and suspense. During the first half of the novel, it is clear that something will threaten one or more of the central characters, but the source of the threat is not immediately apparent. Will this be a novel of brother against brother? Overzealous law enforcement agent against innocent victim? Aggrieved descendent seeking revenge for sins committed against a father? As possibilities unfold, Patterson holds the reader's attention with an intricate family drama that avoids melodrama. Still more questions arise: Why does Peter hate Philip with so much passion? What memories has Peter suppressed?

Patterson also builds tension with the setting -- a menacing city, violent posters, lurking strangers. Danger seems to be everywhere, leaving the reader to wonder where it will strike. Patterson fashions some truly warped characters, including a former CIA assassin, the HUAC investigator, and Clayton Barth, but they are all convincingly nuanced. He also creates sympathetic, troubled characters, including Charles' secret lover and that woman's brother, a therapist who is haunted by his mother's suicide, by his friendship with Charles, and by his interpretation of Peter's nightmares.

Escape the Night is written in a cinematic style, with jump cuts and multiple images flashing through Peter's mind. Some of that (particularly all the one sentence paragraphs) is overdone. Multiple murders, framed suspects, and a desperate man in a tightening noose give the plot a Hitchcockian feel. The plot becomes a bit too convoluted at the end, demanding that the reader accept too many improbabilities at one time, and the climax is too obvious, but those flaws diminished my enjoyment of the story by only a small degree.

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Back Blast by Mark Greaney

Published by Berkley on February 16, 2016

As the Director of Clandestine Services, Denny Carmichael is “the top spy at CIA.” He’s also the most powerful person in the agency, more powerful than his boss, or for that matter, anyone else in the intelligence community. That power gives him the ability to pursue his own intelligence agenda without worrying about the laws that should constrain his conduct.

Court Gentry, a former asset who has been given the ridiculous code name “Violator” and the slightly less ridiculous nickname “Gray Man,” has an understandable grudge against Carmichael. For years, the CIA has tried to kill him. Now he’s back in the United States to find out why. Back Blast is the fifth and possibly last of a series that follows the Gray Man's exploits.

Everyone is petrified because they fear this “one man killing machine” is probably targeting Carmichael. Despite their panic, the CIA don’t want to bring in the FBI or any of the thousands of the law enforcement agents who can legally act within the nation’s borders. But the CIA does bring in a dozen elite members of the military, allegedly with presidential authorization to engage in domestic law enforcement, because the Violator is a real badass. Unbeknownst to the rest of the intelligence community, Carmichael wants Gentry to be killed rather than captured, and so he covertly arranges for Saudi intelligence agents to go on a search-and-kill mission in downtown D.C. to terminate Gentry. It seems like Carmichael is the one who should be called the Violator, given all the laws he violates in the name of protecting the CIA (and his own career).

The setup to Back Blast is so preposterous that I feared I would be unable to suspend my disbelief and enjoy the story. That fear lasted about ten minutes. Preposterous setup or not, the novel is captivating. Carmichael wants Gentry dead, Gentry wants to know why, and the reader hangs in the middle, wondering what’s going on while watching the body count rise.

Still, when Gentry parachutes onto a roof, knocks out one guard with an uppercut, forces another to drop his weapon by shooting him in the arm, and uses his suppressed .22 handgun to shoot a gun out of a third guard’s hand, all while nursing a rib injury, I had to guffaw. The scene would be great in a movie, but a novel gives the reader a chance to reflect upon how implausible Gentry’s heroics become. Gentry can hit any target while aiming on the fly, but teams of professional shooters can’t manage to hit Gentry. The makes it difficult to take the story seriously, although this kind of spy novel isn't meant to be taken as seriously more thought-provoking works.

The story mixes ordinary action scenes with a few that are more creative (I particularly liked one that takes place inside a McDonald's). Key characters include a crime beat reporter and a national security reporter who begin to connect the threads of all the D.C. killings, a CIA analyst whose job is to assess domestic threats against the CIA, and a CIA assassin who wants a chance to take out Gentry despite his belief that Gentry is the good guy. None of the characters are deep but they are deep enough to carry an action novel.

The ending neatly resolves the mystery that plagues Gentry through the course of the novel. The ending is marred by the wholly unbelievable notion that a Washington Post reporter would decline to write a story about the massive crimes that Carmichael commits, including multiple domestic murders, because telling the truth might “harm the CIA.” Mark Greaney seems to believe that exposing governmental misconduct in an intelligence agency is a bad thing because Congress might respond by cutting the agency's budget. That's unlikely to happen but even if it did, democracies can't function if the illegal acts of government officials are concealed from the public. Weaking a democracy is a greater sin than weakening the CIA. Reporters understand that. Back Blast’s suggestion that a respected reporter would decline to report a Pulitzer-worthy story about outrageous governmental misconduct is beyond fantasy, and if he thinks that would be a good outcome, Greaney is delusional. Still, despite the number of times I had difficulty suspending my disbelief in the story, Back Blast is a ton of fun. It earns my recommendation on that basis.

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Arkwright by Allen Steele

Published by Tor Books on March 1, 2016

I’ve never read a science fiction novel quite like Arkwright. It is a generational saga, but unlike most generational sagas, which follow a family from a century or two in the past to the present, this one follows a family from the past to the future.

Dying quietly in his own bed, Nathan Arkwright’s last words as his heart fails are “Forward the Legion.” Arkwright, creator of the Galaxy Patrol, was one of the most famous sf authors of the twentieth century. His granddaughter, Kate, barely knew him, but decides to attend his funeral, mostly to cheese off her mother. There she meets the other members of the Legion of Tomorrow.

From talking to the Legion members, Kate learns about her family history. The first part of Arkwright, in fact, reads more like a family drama/soap opera than a science fiction story. But part of that history belongs to Nathan Arkwright. In his prime, he was one of a select group of sf writers who imagined a future of space exploration and first contact. In the 1990s, he realized that fans wanted to read about cyberspace rather than outer space. His Galaxy Patrol books still sold (largely due to the success of Star Wars movies) but he no longer felt relevant. As a visionary who put his beliefs ahead of his personal wealth, Arkwright decided to use his Galaxy Patrol royalties to cement his relevance to the future of humanity.

The first part of Arkwright is great fun for science fiction fans. Fred Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, and other notable sf writers of that era make cameo appearances. Snippets of science fiction history inspire part of the plot. Fans of the genre who are familiar with the giants of the past will get a kick out of seeing the legends as characters in Allen Steele’s novel.

The next several sections follow new generations of the Arkwright family as they give effect to Nathan’s vision: to seed another planet with human life. Readers who think that science fiction should follow the stereotypes of science fiction (and those who refuse to read anything other than science fiction) will probably be turned off by Steele’s reliance on family drama to carry the novel’s middle sections. I wouldn’t say the succession of family dramas in the middle chapters are entirely successful -- they are certainly less compelling than the beginning -- but I found the characters to be reasonably interesting, if a bit shallow.

The last section takes place several generations in the future when, as has often been true in history, a group of humans have allowed religious dogma to supplant science and reason. I won’t talk about what happens, but I will say that the novel’s conclusion circles back as a tribute to the science fiction visionaries of the past. That makes Arkwright a satisfying read, at least for readers (like me) who grew up reading optimistic novels of the future, novels that viewed humans as capable of overcoming their narrow prejudices and shortsightedness, novels that viewed science and exploration as the path to a better tomorrow.

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The Destructives by Matthew De Abaitua

Published by Angry Robot on March 1, 2016

The Destructives is one of the better novels I’ve seen from Angry Robot. The story is set against a detailed background that blends creative imagination with intelligent prediction to arrive at a credible future. From designer drugs to shopping malls that double as asylums, from obsessive data tracking to floating offshore habitats for the wealthy, the future depicted here is a credible offshoot of current trends.

The story involves emergences, self-aware beings that emerged from computer technology. They consider themselves to be natural, rather than artificial, intelligences, although they debate whether they are a product of evolution or technology. Things were very bad for humans during a period called the Seizure that followed the emergences’ entry into human society. To avoid further difficulties, humans and emergences agreed not to collaborate. The emergences took up residence in colonies that closely orbit the sun. The emergence known as Dr Easy, however, has undertaken a research mission on Earth. His research requires him to make a recording of Theodore Drown’s life, the better to understand -- and keep an eye on -- humanity.

Theodore specializes in pre-Seizure restoration. He is summoned to the dark side of the moon, working on a project that has recreated a home as it existed in 2020, shortly before the Seizure. There he studies a quantified family -- a family that recorded its daily environment in holographic detail, charting activities and health and moods (because really, you don’t know whether you’re happy or sad until your computer confirms your emotions). In 2020, people still considered themselves to be users of technology rather than the other way around.

Since nearly all pre-Seizure data has been erased, Theodore is excited to find a trove of data concerning the quantified family. The project is hidden underground for reasons that gradually become apparent to Theodore. It turns out to represent a vital moment in history.

The plot eventually has Theodore starting a business called the Destructives. The business brings him into contact with people who are pursuing goals that appear to be contrary to the interests of the emergences and, for that matter, most humans. Meanwhile, the Destructives undertakes its own project, one that again might be contrary to the wishes of the emergences. Eventually the story moves to one of Jupiter’s moons and its surprising inhabitants.

There is quite a bit of cultural commentary in The Destructives, the commentary coming from the perspective of observers who are studying culture after its destruction. One of my favorite thoughts refers to the ease with which people, without sensing the irony, use mass-produced products to express their individuality. The commentary alone makes the novel worth reading.

The story becomes needlessly murky and meandering after the action moves to Europa, although it continues to score imagination points. The ending, on the other hand, circles around in a surprising way to tie the novel together. While I liked the novel’s first half more than the second, the book as a whole is considerably more thought-provoking than typical Angry Robot fare.

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A Covenant with Death by Stephen Becker

First published in 1964; published by Open Road Media on January 12, 2016

A Covenant with Death stands as one of the finest fictional explorations of the nature of justice in the history of American literature. It is a passionate story of justice gone wrong, a reminder of the consequences that follow when people are too eager (as they often are) to sit in judgment.

The covenant in the title is that between government and the governed. The governed consent to be bound by the law; the government agrees to impose the law justly. A Covenant with Death is the story of a judge who must decide how to act when the covenant is broken by both the government and the governed.

Louise Talbot was murdered in Soledad City in 1923. Forty years later, Old Judge Lewis, who was then Young Judge Lewis, provides the voice that explains the events that followed her death. Ben Lewis is an entertaining narrator who peppers the story with recollections of the town’s hypocrisies, conflicts, and idiosyncrasies. Lewis has an insightful mother of Mexican heritage and employs a Native American clerk, none of which seems to trouble town residents as much as it does outsiders, particularly outsiders who want to enforce Prohibition, an effort that Judge Lewis does his best to thwart.

Louise’s husband Bryan is indicted for her murder on scant but scandalous evidence. Without wasting time, Stephen Becker moves the novel to Bryan Talbot’s trial. “All the normal hostilities of an American town” come to a halt as town residents focus their hostility on Talbot. He is the common enemy who brings solidarity to the town and makes everyone feel virtuous by comparison.

Theatrics are often my favorite part of a courtroom drama, and Talbot’s defense attorney, a sly man named Parmalee, is a master showman. But trial scenes appear only in the novel’s first half, surrounded by Lewis’ attempts to understand his feelings for a woman named Rosemary and for another named Rafaela. Since his feelings are dominated by lust, they are not difficult to understand, but whether they might also involve love, or why they do not, and whether Lewis is careless with the affections of both women, are more perplexing questions.

The last half of the novel, the half that gives the novel its heart, begins in the aftermath of the trial. It begins with a shock, followed by another. If forces young Judge Lewis to make the most difficult decision of his career, a decision for which the law provides no clear guidance. He must look elsewhere to make a decision, beginning with himself, because “if you have to judge, judge yourself first.”

A Covenant with Death might be described as a parable of judging. What does it mean to sit in judgment of another person? How does a judge do that? How can the law and justice be balanced when they are not entirely aligned? Many novels have tried to answer those questions, but few have done so as successfully as A Covenant with Death.

Elegant prose makes A Covenant with Death stand out in the crowded world of courtroom thrillers. Lewis describes Soledad City, a southwestern town of “oily modernity” with a “gritty past,” in sufficient detail to give it life. His running commentary on “human foolishness” is amusing; his condemnation of people who do not have “the heart to walk naked on a sunny day” is wise; and his humane understanding of the difference between law and justice is inspiring.

Lewis is a good man who recognizes his faults and understands the need for humility. He is a good man whose behavior is not always exemplary but he knows that and struggles to be a better man. He knows that the law is made by full bellies, but that the world is crowded with empty bellies, “each with its pair of beseeching hands and pleading eyes.” If real judges all shared the humane values and deep understanding of the human condition that drive the fictional Judge Lewis, our judicial system would more consistently serve the needs of the governed.

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