Condor in the Stacks by James Grady and The Little Men by Megan Abbott

MysteriousPress.com is publishing (in digital form) a series of stand-alone stories by popular crime authors in which books, bookstores, libraries, or manuscripts play a central role.  I don't usually review individual short stories, but I'm making an exception for the Bibliomysteries series because the concept is interesting and the authors are well known.

"Condor in the Stacks" by James Grady was published digitally on February 23, 2016.

Condor fans know from reading Last Days of the Condor that the Condor, sometimes known as Vin, was heavily medicated and given a (supposedly) safe and undemanding job at the Library of Congress, sorting books into bins for reshelving and recycling. Vin thinks pretty much all books should be saved. That attitude makes him well suited for the Bibliomysteries series.

Vin tries to kick back his sedation long enough to help a library employee named Kim who thinks she is being stalked. Meanwhile, he tries to solve the puzzle of why he packed seven coffins full of books for recycling but nine coffins are being hauled away.

The plot is beyond far-fetched and it isn’t fully developed. I'm not sure it even makes sense. Still, it entertained me. I liked the story, but not nearly as much as I liked the last Condor novel, which had a depth of character and intricacy of plot that can be difficult to achieve in a short story. I probably would not recommend this story to readers who did not read and enjoy Last Days of the Condor.

The text of the story mentions or alludes to about a dozen authors. James Grady acknowledges them at the end, which is helpful for readers who recognize, but can’t quite place, an allusion. I am one of the readers who benefitted from reading the acknowledgements.

Judging from Amazon reviews, some readers are turned off by Grady’s writing style, which is far from conventional. Odd punctuation, sentence fragments, and stream of consciousness sometimes take over the narrative. The frenzied, off-kilter style reflects Vin’s shaky mental status. I like it for that reason but I realize that it puts off readers who are looking for straight-forward prose. If you are one of those, be warned that this might not be the story for you.

RECOMMENDED

"The Little Men" by Megan Abbott was published digitally on September 15, 2015

In 1953, Penny went to Hollywood to pursue her dream of fame. Like most wannabe actresses, she found a less satisfying life that the one she pursued. At night, she consoles herself with the books that came with a surprisingly affordable bungalow that she rents in the canyon. Her neighbors soon reveal that the rent is affordable because nobody wants to rent the bungalow where the bookseller killed himself. Or did he?

This is a story of bad dreams and spooky nocturnal noises and shadows on the walls. A mystery with the flavor of a horror story. Like Psycho, the story asks the reader to divine the secrets of a spooky place. Are the horrors that Penny experiences real or imagined?

A well-crafted story, “Little Men” creates a visceral atmosphere and gives flesh to its characters. The story resolves with a couple of unexpected twists. Most of the stories in this series have been quite good, and this one is no exception.

RECOMMENDED

Youngblood by Matt Gallagher

Published by Atria Books/Simon & Schuster  on February 2, 2016

Youngblood is not a conventional war story. It is a war story for people who appreciate Yeats, who think beyond clichés about duty.

Told in the first person by Lt. Jack Porter, Youngblood takes place after the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. The time is post-Surge. Porter’s platoon conducts joint missions with the Iraqi military, surveys neighborhoods to ask how often they have electricity, and tries to gather intelligence while dodging IEDs during endless patrols.

Porter is stuck with a sergeant who has earned a reputation among Iraqis for killing civilians. The sergeant’s attitude, which only makes Porter’s job more difficult, motivates Porter to get the sergeant out of his platoon.

The plot has Porter trying to figure out which intelligence sources are telling the truth, a difficult task in an environment where truth is flexible and all sources (American and Iraqi) are unreliable. Usually the plot in a war novel takes place against the background of war, but the plot almost recedes into the background in Youngblood. This is more the story of a soldier’s life than a novel with a strong plot. Eventually, however, the story focuses on Porter’s attempt to help the mother of two children who helped his platoon, and on Porter’s conflict with the sergeant.

The story emphasizes the failure of America’s stated mission to “win the hearts and minds” of Iraqis, in conflict with a strategy of “let’s show them who’s boss.” Thoughtless destruction and the killing of innocents, based on rumor or conjecture or whim or mistake, made it impossible to win anything but hatred. Americans put their boots on the ground and their lives at risk to accomplish little of value to American interests. Getting soldiers home alive eventually becomes Porter’s only purpose.

Porter is a likable character He has a nuanced view of the impossible situation that the occupation of Iraq created for the occupiers and the occupied. He doesn’t stereotype Arabs. He sympathizes with the families of the innocent Iraqis who are killed and with the soldiers who killed them. He questions why higher officers accept intelligence reports that are clearly unfounded. He is, in short, smart and compassionate. I also like Porter’s analysis of the military’s cliques -- fobbits versus infantry versus Rangers, each group viewing the others with a degree of contempt, and everyone hating the officers who give orders from safe locations without regard to their consequences.

Matt Gallagher brings a refreshing complexity to Porter’s character. Porter’s brother, to whom he turns for advice, won the Silver Star, but behaves like a jerk while spouting self-serving clichés about leadership and duty that gloss over the moral concerns that trouble Porter. It’s easy to justify bad acts when you call yourself one of the “good guys,” a realization that, to Porter, makes “leadership” seem like a bad joke. Much of the novel’s strength comes from Porter’s struggle to recognize that his brother’s commitment to “moral courage” is too simplistic to be a useful guidepost in a complex world.

Gallagher’s writing style is sometimes a little clunky -- his metaphors don’t always work -- but for the most part his prose flows smoothly. He creates moments of genuine tension without relying on melodrama. The story builds slowly but by the end, it is quite powerful. That makes Youngblood one of the better contributions to the literature of Middle East war.

RECOMMENDED

Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand

Published digitally by Open Road Media on July 14, 2015

Wylding Hall is sort of a gentle horror story, if that’s possible. What kind of horror? Demons? Ghosts? Witches? Monsters? All I will say is that this is neither a zombie novel nor a “space aliens who look like lizards” novel. Which is fine because the world has too many of those already.

Wylding Hall combines a supernatural/horror novel with a band story. The band (Windhollow Faire) became famous after their Wylding Hall album but it was once a bunch of kids playing folk songs in London pubs for fun. We learn early on from Lesley, the American singer who joined the band as Arianna’s replacement, that Arianna, after being replaced, fell to her death from guitar player Julian’s window. The producer decided the band should recover from her death by spending the summer in the country recording their second album at Wylding Hall, an old Tudor full of strange rooms, surrounded by spooky woods. In retrospect, it is one of the most influential albums in the history of progressive folk, or so the producer claims.

The novel is told in the form of a documentary. Band members, the producer, and occasional outsiders talk to a documentarian about the summer that the Wylding Hall album was made (and, to a lesser extent, about the backgrounds of the band members).

During the first half of Wylding Hall, characters mention, without actually describing, an event that occurred during the band’s stay. They also make references to dead birds, the disembodied voice of a child singing, an occasional apparition, warnings from a local farmer to stay out of the woods, and other foreshadowing of a horror to come. But most of the time, the characters are talking about themselves, their relationships, and the process of making music. It is in the second half that something unexpected and unexplained occurs.

I called this a gentle horror novel because no people are torn to shreds, or turned inside out, or have their blood sucked out. If violence is what you want, Wylding Hall will probably bore you. If you’re looking for a good band story, the kind of story that allows relationships to develop among people who are forced by circumstances to spend a lot of time together, you’ll probably like Wylding Hall. I don’t know that the supernatural element adds much -- it isn’t particularly frightening -- but it does provide the glue that holds the story together.

RECOMMENDED

Graveyard by William C. Dietz

Published by Ace on January 26, 2016

Graveyard is the third novel in the Mutant Files series.

When the body of a mutant who died from a botched face transplant is dumped near a church, Det. Cassandra Lee gets the call. She investigates that case while continuing her efforts (detailed in the first two novels) to track down the serial killer called Bonebreaker, who may be hiding in a mutant graveyard (hence the title). But first she has to rescue the mayor, who has taken shelter from shells that the Aztec navy is firing into Los Angeles as long-delayed payback for the Mexican-American War. The Aztecs have also landed mutant troops in California and Texas. Between the criminal gangs, the heavily armed civilian population, and the Aztecs, Lee doesn’t know who will be shooting at her next.

Lee is in a relationship with a psychologist named Kane, although the relationship is threatened when, after unlikely murder charges are brought against Kane (a street shooting in self-defense), Lee learns that Kane was accused of murder once before. The victim was Kane’s wife, prompting Lee to ask, “What wife?”

The bones of a good novel are present in Graveyard, but they are never given flesh. None of the plot threads have any emotional heft. The Aztecs exist as a backdrop to create action scenes but they do little to advance the novel. The Bonebreaker is a stock serial killer. He lacks depth and, as serial killers go, he isn’t very interesting. Neither the improbable political scandal that drives the plot nor Lee’s domestic drama are well-developed. They both just fizzle out.

If you’re a fan of dialog like “We need to get the killer off the street, pronto!” you might like William Dietz’ prose style. The novel has the feel of having been rushed to completion.

Dietz is a competent writer. The story is coherent and some aspects of the background are interesting. Unfortunately, the novel as a whole is not sufficiently interesting to earn my recommendation.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The God's Eye View by Barry Eisler

Published by Thomas & Mercer on February 2, 2016

In the wake of the Snowden revelations, The God’s Eye View serves up a timely story about an NSA director with a god complex who uses a vast and secret network of surveillance technology to spy on anyone he deems a security threat -- including Americans and particularly reporters and bloggers who pose a threat to his own job security. The NSA surveillance systems are so compartmentalized that, as was his intent, only the director understands the big picture. He looks forward to the day when parents can be manipulated into implanting microchips in their children as an anti-kidnapping device, enabling the NSA to track everyone who receives the chip. And like all government officials who want to spy on Americans, he justifies his actions with the belief that the only people who want privacy are those who are up to no good.

The title refers to an NSA intelligence gathering program that is even more extensive (and illegal) than Snowden’s revelations. When a leak of information concerning that program leads to an extreme response, an NSA analyst becomes concerned that the agency is taking it upon itself to dispose of inconvenient Americans.

Barry Eisler has fun describing how unelected government officials make decisions that are not theirs to make, then sell the public on those decisions by manipulating the media. He understands how easy it is for government officials to seduce the media and how buzz words like “national security” can be used to conceal nefarious intentions.

A couple of strong characters are the key to the novel’s success. Eisler creates a ruthless killer who happens to be deaf, gives him a detailed background, and humanizes him in a way that makes him sympathetic (if you ignore the fact that he’s a ruthless killer). Of course, Eisler honed the craft of humanizing assassins in his John Rain novels, and he puts that talent to good use here. The NSA director and his second assassin are so vile as to be cartoonish, but the female analyst and her deaf son are, if not deep, at least recognizable as real people. The conflicts that the analyst and the deaf killer both feel between loyalty to an employer and loyalty to the truth give the novel its heart.

The story follows an unsurprising course leading to a resolution that is largely predictable. Still, the story would probably have been disappointing if it had not resolved as expected. There are times when Eisler’s prose feels a bit rushed, but most of the time his writing style is fine.

Eisler appends a number of sources for those who want more information about the government's abuses of surveillance as well as its abuses of people who make internal complaints about illegal surveillance. It’s a little late in the day for a book like this to be lauded as a cautionary tale, but it is always good to read novels that stand as a counterpoint to simplistic novels that view privacy as a quaint notion that just gets in the way of slaughtering terrorists.

RECOMMENDED