Hunters in the Dark by Lawrence Osborne

Published in Great Britain in 2015; published by Crown Publishing/Hogarth on January 12, 2016

Hunters in the dark are hunting for happiness or advantage. They are in the dark because they don’t know exactly what they are hunting.

Robert Grieve, a British teacher on his summer vacation, crosses the border from Thailand to Cambodia and has a run of luck in a casino. His luck changes when he meets an American named Simon Beauchamp. Robert ignores his driver’s warning to decline Simon’s invitation to stay at his home. Suffice it to say that Robert experiences a life-changing event, or at least he chooses to respond to the event by changing his life.

After making his way to Phnom Penh, Robert takes a job tutoring a physician’s daughter in English. To get the gig, he adopts a new identity and tells a series of elaborate lies. The temptation to disappear into a new life, at least for a while, seems impossible to resist. Thus Robert becomes a hunter in the dark.

People who drift through life often drift into trouble, or at least that’s a standard message that thrillers deliver. The plot follows Robert as he drifts from one problem to another, ultimately caused by identity confusion that he brings upon himself. Unlike the reader, he usually seems oblivious to lurking dangers. His only goal is to live an unexamined life. The reader experiences tension on Robert’s behalf as events begin to shape a future that looks bleak for the aimless teacher.

Additional characters are slowly introduced during the first half, each experiencing or contributing to the novel’s undercurrent of misfortune. Acts of violence and corruption tie the story threads together. Characters generally have a believable balance of good and bad. Like real people, some are mostly good, others are mostly bad, but none are purely one or the other.

The descriptions of Phnom Penh, with its varied Asian foods, motodops and tuk tuks, give the novel a rich atmosphere. Cambodian characters provide the reader with snippets of the country’s history which, like all histories, has its share of ugly moments. I love the perspectives of the Cambodian characters who have little use for crusading westerners (particularly Hollywood actresses who pose for the cameras while making impassioned speeches about child slavery before returning to their yachts). However well-intentioned they might be, they have little understanding of the culture and zero opportunity to influence it by a few days of posturing, a comfortable break from the extravagance of their western lives.

Hunters in the Dark is ultimately a story of karma. Although “what goes around, comes around” for many of the characters, the plot is not predictable. It is easy to believe despite its improbability, and Robert, although clueless, is easy to care about.

RECOMMENDED

Supernotes by Agent Kasper and Luigi Carletti

Published in Italy in 2014; published in translation by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday on January 12, 2016

Since Supernotes is based on a true story, it doesn’t have all the twists and turns and action and suspense that a traditional spy novel delivers. Real life just isn’t as exciting as fiction. On the other hand, if the story is more-or-less true, an intriguing series of events can be a good substitute for an action-packed plot. Unfortunately, Supernotes delivers too little intrigue while telling a story that isn’t entirely convincing.

Kasper is an Italian, although his father was born in Memphis and much of his family lives in St. Louis. He is a former member of Italy’s national police who became an airline pilot and did some shady consulting work for the national police. The work involved playing an undercover role in large drug deals and money laundering operations. According to the Italian government, he has “a right-wing past and dangerous friends.” In Cambodia, he owned a bar with a former CIA agent and engaged in vaguely-described contract espionage.

We learn of Kasper’s history in flashbacks. The story begins with a Cambodian official warning Kasper and the former CIA agent to leave Phnom Penh. Kasper makes it as far as the Thai border, where he is arrested.

The story focuses on Kasper’s detention. Americans who identify themselves as Homeland Security and FBI agents play a dark role. Kasper’s mother and girlfriend have enlisted the help of Italian lawyer named Barbara Belli, who tries to win Kasper’s release. A variety of other people also drop in on the imprisoned Kasper, who is apparently being kept alive only because his mother pays bribes on his behalf.

One problem with writing a novel from a single character’s perspective, at least when the book is based on that character’s real world experience, is the question of credibility. The reader must believe that Kasper is telling the truth and, if he is, that his perception of reality is accurate. Kasper isn’t the kind of person I would trust under the best of circumstances, and given the temptation to use this book to repair his reputation, I have little reason to believe that it is entirely honest.

Even if Kasper is telling his story in good faith, I suspect that other players would have quite a different perspective on the events that Kasper describes. Supernotes would probably be a fascinating work of nonfiction if written by an objective outsider who interviewed, not just Kasper, but all the relevant people in his life. As it stands, we have only Kasper’s word that he was “disavowed” while acting as an undercover agent for the Italian police, that Americans offered to secure his release from prison for nefarious reasons, and that he was acting in anyone’s interest other than his own when he tried to get his hands on more than a hundred million dollars in supernotes.

The story bobs and weaves around the topic of supernotes -- the book’s title and presumably its intended theme -- but only as it nears its end do supernotes play any significant role in the plot. Maybe China and North Korea really are flooding Asia with undetectable counterfeit American currency. Maybe Kasper’s theory about who is really backing the counterfeit money machine (a doubtful conspiracy theory that has been around for several years) is correct. But Kasper’s assertion that he was imprisoned because he “knew too much” about supernotes strikes me as being just a little too convenient.

This is a work of fiction so the story doesn’t need to be true, but it does need to be believable. Some of the book -- the brutality in Prey Sar prison, political corruption in Cambodia, the money extorted from Kasper’s family -- is easy to believe. It is Kasper, casting himself in a heroic role, I doubted. Fictional characters are credible when they show their warts, but the character of Kasper is ambiguous. We are told that Kasper was “investigated” for certain crimes, but did he commit them? We are told that as a young man, he sympathized with fascism, but did he sympathize with right wing terrorists? Kasper isn’t telling. Kasper blames his problems on a host of people other than himself, but are they really to blame? Kasper rejects his portrayal as a radical “loose cannon” by the press, but maybe the press got it right and Kasper is using the book to rewrite his legacy. Who knows?

Some parts of the novel -- primarily flashbacks that take place outside of the prison setting -- are quite good. A scene in Zurich evokes the kind of tension that a spy novel fan expects. Most of the story, however, is less than riveting. The final chapters make an obvious but unsuccessful attempt to create suspense. Again, I might excuse those failings that if the story had the feel of reality, but Supernotes didn’t persuade me to view Kasper as either a hero or a victim, despite his intense desire to play both roles.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Finches of Mars by Brian W. Aldiss

First published in the UK in 2012; published by Open Road Media on August 4, 2015

Finches of Mars is a political novel of the future. North America is dealing with war and terror and a depressed economy. Settlements on Mars, while funded by the United Universities, occupy six politically segregated towers (representing the West, China, other parts of Asia, Russia, Scandinavia, and at least some of the Middle East).

The colonization of Mars has not gone well. Babies are not born alive on Mars, except for the one that came out looking like an uncooked turkey. No colonist expects to return to Earth alive (those who have tried have rarely survived the trip), so finding a way to perpetuate life on Mars has acquired some urgency. The unwillingness of UU to commit additional funding or to provide adequate food supplies is a cause of concern for the new Martians. Debates rage about whether sending the best and the brightest to Mars is a bad idea when Earth needs them more desperately. Some believe that only outcasts are being sent to Mars.

All of this provides an interesting background for a novel that doesn’t have much of a plot. Dull characters experience random conflicts that fail to cohere into anything meaningful. I got the sense that in the novel’s second half, Brian Aldiss literally lost the plot.

Despite the novel’s promising setting, I found it difficult to sustain interest as I worked my way toward the ending. Even when characters are talking about sex (which they do frequently), their discussions are dull. Making sex dull is no easy task, but if this is (as I assume it must be) a novel of ideas, Aldiss managed to take the edge off of a number of ideas that he would have presented in a livelier fashion earlier in his career. The story comes across as a self-indulgent string of thoughts that are written for the author’s own amusement, not to entertain an audience.

The last twenty pages or so manage to recapture the plot in a surprising way. The ending doesn’t quite redeem the novel but it did make me glad that I did not abandon the novel before it concluded. Out of respect for Aldiss’ shining career, I would like to recommend this, but I would recommend instead that readers who are new to Aldiss start with something he wrote in his younger days. Non-Stop is one of my favorites.

NOT RECOMMENDED

License to Quill by Jacopo della Quercia

Published by St. Martin's Griffin on December 15, 2015

License to Quill attempts to cross a James Bond spoof with a historical thriller. It doesn’t succeed in being either. To succeed as a Bond spoof, it needed to be brasher and bolder. It underplays the spoof and leaves us with historical fiction that is marred by the insertion of a Bond parody. A better novel in concept than in execution, License to Quill has some entertainment value even if it never quite gels.

With Christopher Marlowe condemned to die, William Shakespeare assumes Marlowe’s role as a British spy. This brings Shakespeare into contact with Guy Fawkes and Robert Catesby, who want Shakespeare to write a play that is set in Scotland and includes three witches. Shortly thereafter, Shakespeare is given an assignment as a Double-O operative. He is armed with gadgetry and ravens by Francis Bacon, who plays the role of Q.

As Marlowe slinks about on errands of espionage in Italy, Shakespeare frets about witches and Fawkes in England. Jacopo della Quercia tosses quite a bit of historical fact in with his historical fiction, including The Gunpowder Plot, which lies at the heart of the novel. To prove that the facts are factual, he peppers the text with footnotes, citing original sources. This seems unnecessary -- this is a novel, after all -- and it gives the image of authorial insecurity (“I researched this really really well, just look at all my sources”). As I usually do in a work of fiction, I found the footnotes distracting. They’re also an odd contrast to the silliness of the story as a whole.

Shakespeare and Marlowe have little personality, which seems odd for a well-researched book, given that both playwrights were overflowing with personality. In the hands of other writers, Guy Fawkes has been a complex, multifaceted character, but della Quercia has carved him from wood. Francis Bacon has no more personality than the ravens he controls. This should really have been a livelier novel than the author managed to make it.

The novel’s humor is flat, while the drama inspires too little tension. I didn’t buy Fawkes’ attempt to use Shakespeare as a propagandist, although that aspect of the plot is less outlandish than envisioning Shakespeare as 007. While it is serviceable, the prose is hardly Shakespearean. The plot has some fun moments but I’m not sure that License to Quill will entirely please fans of spy fiction, fans of comedy, or fans of historical fiction.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Citadel by Stephen Hunter

Published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road on January 19, 2016

Citadel is a light war/adventure/spy story with an emphasis on light. It is part of the Bibliomysteries series of mystery/suspense stories that feature books or libraries as a part of the plot. Other entries in the series have been short stories, but Citadel is longer, although certainly not long enough to be classified as a novel. It is probably fair to call it a novella.

In 1943, Basil St. Florian, a British Army captain, agrees to volunteer for a dangerous assignment. His quest is to recover a rare manuscript from Occupied France. The manuscript is a copy; the original resides in a library at Cambridge. The Cambridge manuscript is thought to be a “code book” that allows the Soviets to send messages to a spy in Britain.

Photographing the original in Cambridge is impossible but, rather implausibly, an easier job might be made of photographing a copy in occupied Paris, where it is under the guard of the Germans. That becomes St. Florian’s mission. If he is unsuccessful, the war is likely to be prolonged on the Russian front because, without additional proof that only the code can provide, Stalin will not believe that the British have uncovered Hitler’s plot to deal a sharp blow to the Russians.

St. Florian has the kind of droll wit that suits the era in which the story is set. He would make a good 1940s movie star. He meets adversity with breezy charm.

Citadel is too light to generate true suspense. The action climax left me scratching my head and asking “Why did that happen?” followed by a scene that had me asking “How could that possibly happen?” But Stephen Hunter doesn’t ask the reader to take the story seriously, so I guess believing it doesn’t matter so much. The post-action conclusion, in which the meaning of the code is pondered, is moderately clever, if a bit anti-climactic.

RECOMMENDED