The Big Sheep by Robert Kroese

Published by Thomas Dunne Books on June 28, 2016

A biotech company hires a phenomenological inquisitor (a fancy title for a private detective) named Erasmus Keane to help it find a missing sheep. Keane works with the novel’s narrator, Blake Fowler, who is Watson to Keane’s Sherlock. In addition to the sheep (science fiction’s traditional farm animal), a beautiful television star named Priya Mistry wants to hire Keane because she thinks someone is trying to kill her. But soon there seem to be multiple Priya Mistrys and they aren’t all on the same page.

The novel takes place post-Collapse. A portion of Los Angeles exists as an underground, off-the-books community known as the Disincorporated Zone. Yes, Compton is part of it. City officials decided that walling it off would be easier than restoring it to order, which is fine with most of the DZ residents, and with Keane, who had something to do with its creation.

The story is built on the separation of a person from a persona. Owning a person is illegal but owning a persona, at least in the future imagined here, is not. The characters debate the morality of that arrangement; readers can decide for themselves. From the standpoint of Keane and Fowler, the larger question is how a person and her persona can be duplicated with any degree of precision. The solution to that problem is convoluted but clever.

Since the story of chasing a sheep around futuristic Los Angeles is told with tongue-in-cheek, its implausibility didn’t bother me. The story is amusing and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. Lively prose, fast-paced action, and quirky characters add to the story’s charm. The Big Sheep isn’t a deep book, but it is a fun book.

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The Emerald Lie by Ken Bruen

Published by Mysterious Press (Grove/Atlantic) on August 30, 2016

At some point in The Emerald Lie, a character says, “I’m going to write a crime novel channeling David Foster Wallace, blend in the rules of grammar, have a broken-down PI, an enigmatic femme fatale, and oh, for the punters, a lovable scamp, as in the dog, not the PI.” Which pretty well sums up The Emerald Lie.

The Emerald Lie begins not long after Green Hell ends. Jack Taylor has made a lifestyle of devastation. In The Emerald Lie, he is trying to live quietly, taking his new dog for walks, enjoying his whiskey without a chaser of violence.

The father of a young woman who was brutally killed, apparently by someone who films torture porn, wants Jack to help him avenge the death. Jack has had enough of vengeance to know it makes nothing better, but he has a hard time saying no. His troubles continue when Emily, the crazed killer Ken Bruen introduced in Green Hell, returns to his life.

A second plotline involves a serial killer who selects his victims based on their grammatical errors. That’s a killer for whom I can root. The media call him The Grammarian. Making fun of a lethal grammar enforcer is probably Bruen’s way of thumbing his nose at critics who deplore his addiction to sentence fragments and unorthodox paragraph structures. Ridge, a character from past novels whose friendship with Jack often gives way to hatred, is investigating the killings.

Bruen always riddles his work with reference to popular culture. I give him credit for having the courage to say that some of the best American writing in the last couple of decades has come from television writers (Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, and even, bless him, Battlestar Galactica), although he also praises some excellent crime novelists. In Green Hell, Bruen said that references to popular culture allow readers to connect to an author’s work. I would connect to Bruen anyway, on the strength of his honest characterizations of troubled people, but I also love the steady flow of song lyrics, movie references, and quotations from gifted genre writers who lack snob appeal.

As for Jack: “Desperation is its own beacon and I seemed to attract the worst and the worthless” pretty much sums up where he is in life. He carries so much guilt it is no surprise that he walks with a limp. Jack spends much of the novel reflecting on his tortured past, so readers who are familiar with the series might have more context in which to appreciate this novel than newcomers. Fortunately, Jack’s biting wit and pointed commentary on the surrounding world provides humor that balances the darkness of his life. Of course, Jack’s understanding of the world helps the reader understand Jack, which makes it possible to sympathize with a guy who has trashed his life and who continues to make sorrowful choices.

The plot in The Emerald Lie might not be as powerful as those Bruen crafted in some other novels in the series, but Bruen is always a joy to read. Clever prose, strong characterizations, and pointed observations more than make up for a meandering story, albeit one that works its way to a surprising finish. This is a book that Jack Taylor fans cannot miss. For others, I would suggest starting at the beginning and reading the novels in sequence, as Jack’s evolution from book to book is what makes this series one of the best in crime fiction.

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God's Pocket by Pete Dexter

Published in 1983

God’s Pocket isn’t as strong as Paris Trout. That isn’t surprising, since God’s Pocket was Pete Dexter’s debut novel. It is nevertheless a strong start to Dexter’s career as an award-winning author.

The novel begins with the death of Leon Hubbard. The police are told that the death was accidental but the reader and a handful of witnesses know that to be untrue. Over the next few days, the residents of God’s Pocket, a working class area in South Philadelphia, talk about what a great young man Leon was. Nothing could be less true, but it doesn’t pay to speak ill of the dead -- particularly in God’s Pocket, where everyone sticks together.

Leon’s step-father, Mickey, knows that Leon was a worthless psychopath. Leon must do his best to appease Leon’s mother while figuring out way to pay for the funeral -- gambling on the horses is one possibility, trying to get paid for his most recent truck hijacking is another. Nothing works out very well for Mickey or for his friend Bird, who is in financial trouble of his own due to a misunderstanding with the mob. Things aren’t much better for the undertaker who won’t bury Leon without payment in advance.

The novel’s other key character is a newspaper columnist, the celebrated voice of the common man, who hasn’t believed a word he’s written in at least ten years. He’s supposed to be writing about Leon’s death but he’s more inclined to woo Leon’s mother, who appreciates the attention even if it’s coming during what should be a time of mourning. The columnist and Leon’s mother are both coming unglued in their own ways.

Dexter gives the residents of God’s Pocket a believable group identity. They look out for each other even as they gossip about each other. They are suspicious of outsiders; they rarely leave God’s Pocket except for work; they feel downtrodden and misunderstood as they divide their time between the two neighborhood bars. Attention to local detail adds to the book’s authenticity.

Leon’s death and its true cause weave in and out of the plot, but the story is largely Mickey’s. The plot moves in unexpected directions but it always manages to be convincing. Several moments of dark humor lighten the mood. Perhaps too much attention is given to the columnist (a natural inclination for Dexter, who was himself a columnist) and not enough to the character who is most centrally involved in Leon’s death, but since that story is entertaining from beginning to end, I really can’t fault it.

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In the Name of the Queen by John MacRae

Published by Endeavour Press on June 27, 2016

In the Name of the Queen has a 2016 copyright, although it appears to have been first published in Great Britain in 2012. In any event, unlike some of the novels that Endeavour Press has resurrected, this one is of fairly recent vintage.

Mike Farrah is in military intelligence. His father is Lebanese and he speaks Arabic fluently. He is recruited by MI6 to impersonate a Jordanian billionaire, the son of a man who has long been dead.

The mission requires Farrah to seduce a Saudi woman whose father is a banker. In fact, he is suspected of being al Qaeda’s banker. Farrah’s minders hope he can help them locate the banker so that he can be snatched by the CIA, which does the dirty work for MI6.

After a good bit of training (including instruction in the art of seduction), Farrah goes to Cairo where he assumes his undercover identity. The beautiful woman is also living in Cairo because she cannot tolerate the intolerance of Saudi Arabia, and is particularly unwilling to be treated as inferior because of her gender. The woman’s brother, on the other hand, has more extreme views and considers everyone in Cairo -- particularly Farrah -- to be decadent and unworthy of his sister’s attention. That, of course, leads to a clash between Farrah and the brother.

Some aspects of In the Name of the Queen are predictable, but the novel also takes a couple of unexpected twists. Farrah learns that he cannot trust anyone -- particularly Mossad, a devious agency that is as dangerous as the enemy he is trying to battle. All good espionage novels are about betrayal, and the question in this one is whether Farrah will betray the beautiful woman and her father before he is betrayed by the people who are supposedly on his side.

Sex scenes tend to be cheesy (“quivering manhood”) and awkward (“exploded in a hot explosion”) as John MacRae proves himself to be one of those British authors to whom the prose of sex does not come naturally. I’m not quite sure I understood Farrah’s motivation for certain actions he takes as the story reaches its climax, and I was unhappy with a couple of unanswered questions that dangle at the novel’s end.

On the other hand, the story is good, the pace is steady, and action scenes are both credible and exciting. The plot does not overreach, which sets In the Name of the Queen apart from most modern thrillers. Characters have a reasonable amount of depth. In the Name of the Queen isn’t in the top tier of spy fiction, but fans of the genre should enjoy it.

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The Innocents by Ace Atkins

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on July 12, 2016

Quinn Colson is back in Tibbehah County, where he was voted out of office as sheriff. After doing some contract police training in Afghanistan, Quinn has returned to keep an eye on his addled dad. Lillie Virgil is the sheriff now. Read The Redeemers if you want to know more about the background, but The Innocents can be appreciated without reading earlier installments in the series.

Since the last novel ended, the local “titty bar” has acquired a new owner. One plot thread begins with an underage pole dancer who wants to acquire enough money to get away from her judgmental father. Another involves current and former high school football players who are in trouble with the law and the beloved coach who is the state’s three-time High School Coach of the Year. Eventually the plot coalesces around a murder mystery that Quinn and Lillie are called upon to solve. The murder is particularly gruesome, but that seems to be the way people die in Tibbehah County.

I love the background details in these novels. Church and high school football are the most important things in town although most people only pretend to care about church. Quinn’s mother loves to listen to Elvis’ last concert just to have a good cry. Sheriffs and other elected officials who actually do their jobs can count on losing the next election.

I also love the realism of Ace Atkins’ characters. From immigrants who feel they are being kicked around (sometimes justly, sometimes not) to rednecks who cling to bigotry as a mark of strong character to well-educated people who are made to feel unwelcome, the background characters represent the mix of people who live in poor southern counties.

The Innocents isn’t particularly suspenseful and the plot isn’t particularly surprising, but the story moves quickly, action scenes are exciting, and (in contrast to most modern thrillers) the story never stretches the boundaries of credibility. I would recommend The Innocents for those reasons alone, but I particularly recommend the series to readers who are looking for complex characters who struggle with their lives as they evolve from book to book.

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