A Doubter's Almanac by Ethan Canin

Published by Random House on February 16, 2016

The first third of A Doubter’s Almanac tells the story of Milo Adret. The rest of the novel is a father-son story. The middle bounces around in time a bit, but it focuses on a key summer in Hans Andret’s early teen years, the last summer he will spend with his father. Hans is an adult with a family of his own in the last third. The heart of the novel involves the drama of being in the family of a broken genius, a man who cannot conform, who cannot stop dreaming, who cannot put his family’s needs ahead of his own. The significant question is whether the son is destined to follow the father’s path.

Milo has an unnaturally strong spatial sense (sort of a built-in GPS) and a natural affinity for math. As a child, Milo carves a chain out of wood just to prove that he can. With mediocre grades in humanities and social sciences, Milo ekes out a college degree and finds a career pumping gas before he is lured into graduate school at UC-Berkeley. With the help of a mentor, but primarily due to a drive he cannot define, he tackles one of the toughest problems in mathematics and wins a Fields Medal.

Everything Milo gains -- prestige, a professorship at Princeton, a family -- he will eventually place at risk, because he is a slave to his addictions and compulsions. There is always another challenge, and eventually one will come along that cannot be solved, or that a competitor will solve first. As Milo sums it up, mathematicians are defined by their understanding of their own ignorance. “Ignorance and wounded shrieking.” Whether Milo will be destroyed by his shrieking obsession to overcome ignorance is a question that the reader asks from the novel’s first page.

Hans and his sister Paulette inherit Milo’s spatial skills and intuitive understanding of mathematics. Hans uses that skill as one of the first mathematicians to revolutionize hedge fund trading. Hans also seems to inherit some of his father’s weaknesses. Like father like son? One of the most absorbing questions that faces the reader is whether and how Milo can break his father’s mold.

Every now and then a revelation comes along that requires the reader to rethink one of the characters. And every now and then characters pause to reevaluate themselves, to question their decisions and the direction of their lives, as most thinking people do. Like Milo, we ask ourselves what really matters. Probably we’ll never know, but those who spend their lives obsessing about a goal (whether it’s wealth or professional achievement or the solution to a mathematical puzzle) are likely to conclude in the end that they failed to pursue the things that matter.

An explosive scene -- a scene in which the family explodes -- about two-thirds of the way into the novel captures every family dynamic that underlies the story: love and hate; self-loathing projected to other family members; communication that vacillates between ineffective and all-too-effective; confrontation and avoidance; acceptance and rejection. It is an intense, gut-wrenching moment in a family’s life. And yet its aftermath is just as telling. The four members of this family may not understand each other at all, but in many ways, they understand each other perfectly.

Late in the novel a doctor says, “We never rightly understand the existence of another, do we?” I think that is the central point of A Doubter’s Almanac. The mind is a mystery and we are nothing but our minds. Whether we can comprehend our own existence is doubtful; truly understanding another person is beyond us. At best, we can accept and appreciate others. But the impossibility of complete knowledge does not stop us from learning more about others, about ourselves, about the world. We “grow wise in increments.”

Ethan Canin’s prose is elegant. He writes lovingly of the indefinable nature of time. He conveys the beauty of math to those of us who fought a losing battle with trigonometry. But it is the beauty of the mind, each so different from every other -- the beauty even (perhaps especially) of minds with eccentric wiring, even of the wasted ones -- that he captures so perfectly. “Beauty prefers truth,” Milo says. Canin quotes Descartes’ adage that a seeker of truth must doubt all things. A Doubter’s Almanac is rich with beauty and truth.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Amp'd by Ken Pisani

Published by St. Martin's Press on May 10, 2016

Amp’d isn’t an inspirational story about overcoming adversity. The protagonist isn’t Franklin Roosevelt or Stephen Hawking. When Aaron lost his left arm, he realized that people who have the ability to overcome the worst imaginable circumstances just make everyone else look bad. He’s constantly being told that he should learn from adversity, but he’s learned that what doesn’t kill you ruins you instead. Whether Aaron is realistic or self-pitying or both is for the reader to decide.

A traffic accident sends the middle-age, newly one-armed teacher home to live with his father. Although he would prefer to remain there, relieving pain with medical marijuana and Vicodin, he eventually gets a job counting endangered fish, which only requires one arm (or maybe none) if you can do it without counting on your fingers. The point of the job is to prove that the fish are not being harmed by a dam, whether or not that is true.

Aaron often tries to be funny and occasionally succeeds. After he gets drunk and finds himself with a tattoo the next morning, he comments on “the pretension of Chinese characters, which I’m pretty sure never mean what the tattoo artist says they mean but universally represent poor judgment.” His descriptions of Army Corps of Engineer silliness are also pretty funny. Other attempts at humor (a lot of puns and lists) are inconsistently amusing.

When a kid with cancer makes an appearance, I worried that the book was going to become weepy. Instead, that’s when the book’s humor begins to hit its stride. Aaron can’t feel quite so sorry for himself when he’s with Cancer Kid, who doesn’t feel sorry for himself at all unless grownups are making a big deal about his disease instead of treating him like a normal bratty kid.

Amp’d strings together some reasonably funny sentences and has some poignant moments, but it is a story about characters who are in search of a plot. To the extent that an actual story emerges, it has something to do with the anger that Aaron’s friend (another amputee) apparently feels toward the dam. Unfortunately, the novel is nearly over before the plot arrives and it fizzles out before the ending. Family drama also keeps the story moving forward, but it all feels a bit underdeveloped. There's nothing wrong with a novel being character-driven rather than plot-driven, but Amp'd feels like a novel that is trying to be both, wiith only limited success.

The "feel good" nature of the ending -- sweet but not too sugary -- suits the story, although encountering a predictable ending to an unpredictable story is bit disappointing. Still, I liked the evolution of Aaron’s character and I enjoyed the novel’s better moments enough to recommend it. Amp’d does just enough to overcome its flaws.

RECOMMENDED

The Searcher by Christopher Morgan Jones

Published by Penguin Press on March 22, 2016

Despite his name, Ike Hammer isn’t a classic tough guy who solves problems with his fists. Not that he wouldn’t like to, but the goons he encounters have guns and he knows better than to bring a fist to a gunfight. I like that element of realism in The Searcher.

Ike Hammer isn’t as famous as Mike Hammer but he’s in the same business. He is a private investigator who runs a respectable agency. His former partner, Ben Webster, is a crusader who wants results and doesn’t mind paying some bad guys to do bad things if they can help him achieve those results. The clash of business philosophies explains why Webster is a former partner.

The police suspect that Hammer did something in the course of business that should send him to prison. Hammer suspects that Webster did the thing for which Hammer is being blamed. Webster is missing, having traveled to the country of Georgia to attend a journalist’s funeral ... or at least that’s what he told his wife. Now Hammer needs to find him. When Hammer flies to Tbilisi to find Webster, Hammer is beaten by a mob and arrested for the crime of being an American. And so the story begins.

Hammer is in a tough position. He can rat out Webster or he can go to prison, unless a third option presents itself in Georgia. And so he goes on a quest that takes him into the mountains and across the Russian border. He meets some very good people, living simple and honorable lives in the mountains, and he meets some very bad people. He also forms a love interest because thriller heroes always have time to go to bed with beautiful women.

Hammer apparently didn’t go to thriller hero school, where unarmed thriller heroes learn how to disarm three or four heavily armed soldiers without breaking a sweat. Hammer is in good shape and not easily intimidated, but he knows he’s no match for someone who is holding a gun. Instead, Hammer spends most of the novel trying to bribe people, with a surprising lack of success. I appreciated the fact that Hammer spends most of the novel feeling helpless, even as he battles steep odds in his effort to save Webster.

Christopher Morgan Jones’ writing style sets The Searcher apart from thrillers that create the illusion of speed by using short paragraphs and short chapters. The pace is steady but the novel doesn’t race to a conclusion while neglecting character development or atmosphere. There are enough action scenes to generate excitement without bogging the story down in mindless fights and shootouts. Jones didn’t make me invest in any of the characters and the plot holds few surprises, but that didn’t prevent me from enjoying the story. For its realism and strong writing, I give The Searcher an unqualified recommendation.

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The Second Life of Nick Mason by Steve Hamilton

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on May 17, 2016

Nick Mason has been released from prison twenty years early but he isn’t free. For ten grand a month and a swank Lincoln Park residence in which to live, he is required to be on call. For what, he’s not sure, until he receives his first assignment. As you might expect, he wasn’t freed from prison so he could sell Girl Scout cookies.

Mason just wants to watch his daughter play soccer, which he must do at a distance because his ex-wife won’t let him back into their lives. That humanizes Mason a bit, which is good since he isn’t the world’s nicest guy. Readers who are so inclined can nevertheless cheer for him because his victims are bad guys.

It turns out that there are dirty cops in Chicago (who knew?) but one honest one, Detective Sandoval, wants to get at the guy who owns Mason, a prisoner named Cole. The dirty cops are protecting Cole but Sandoval is willing to use Mason and everyone else to bring down Cole. Mason, of course, is caught in the middle.

The dirty cops are the most interesting (and realistic) aspect of the story. Dirty cops always start out as cops who bend the rules in the belief that their actions are justified because they are putting away criminals. Once the police start to believe that they are above the law, it is a short road from arresting criminals to becoming a criminal. The novel illustrates that point convincingly.

Readers who enjoy stories about anti-heroes will find much to like in The Secret Life of Nick Mason. The story moves quickly, the plot doesn’t overreach, action scenes are credible, and the characters have believable personalities. I’m not sure the ending is as satisfying as I might have liked, but that’s because this is the first of a series and resolving the main storyline would have killed the series. Nevertheless, the moral quandaries Mason is facing make him more interesting than most thriller tough guys. He isn't deep but he isn't a typical tough guy idiot.

The Second Life of Nick Mason is a promising start to a series. I look forward to the next installment.

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Charcoal Joe by Walter Mosley

Published by Doubleday on June 14, 2016

Set in 1968, Charcoal Joe is the latest chapter in the story of Easy Rawlins. Continuing a theme that began in Rose Gold, Easy’s life seems like it’s getting better. He’s started a private detective agency with Tinsford “Whisper” Natly and Saul Lynx. Things are going well with his daughter Feather. He’s planning to make his life complete by marrying the woman he loves. But Easy’s life is never easy. The question that series fans will soon ask is whether Easy will again be enveloped by the darkness that defined his life in Blonde Faith and Little Green.

Aside from the personal drama that afflicts Easy’s life, the plot of Charcoal Joe involves a job that Easy is hired to do for a friend of his deadly friend Mouse. The friend, Charcoal Joe, wants Easy to investigate the murder of two men. A young physicist named Seymour Brathwaite has been convicted of the crime. Charcoal Joe wants Easy to prove Seymour’s innocence.

During the murder investigation, Easy learns that are large sum of money has gone missing, as have some diamonds. Several unsavory characters, ranging from gangsters to a police detective, would like to find the money.

Charcoal Joe returns a number of familiar series characters, including Fearless Jones, Mouse, and Jackson Blue. Easy has assembled a makeshift family, many of whom are of dubious character, but they all take care of each other, which makes them easy to like, if not admire. Feather serves as his anchor, but keeping a lover in his life is problematic. Easy learns something new about life from every encounter with another character, and so does the reader.

Easy’s observations of life are sharpened by the dangers and petty insults that black men must endure to survive in 1960s Los Angeles. His is a world of “dark skin, darker lives, and a slim chance of survival.” Yet it’s a changing world and Easy is hopeful that the future will be better, for the sake of Feather and other members of the next generation if not himself. Then as today, the changes are arriving at a snail’s pace, leaving Easy at once impatient and grateful.

If only for the brightness of his prose and the clarity of the images he evokes, Walter Mosley is always a joy to read. The plot of Charcoal Joe is intricate but never padded or confusing. But it is the depth of Mosley’s exploration of his characters that puts him in the top ranks of crime writers. Danger forces Mosley “to appreciate life; to understand its frailty, transience, and its incalculable value,” but the burden of history forces Mosley to understand himself, or at least to try.

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