Real Tigers by Mick Herron

Published by Soho Crime on January 19, 2016

Machiavellian office politics blend with the humorous side of espionage in the third Slough House novel. The slow horses are British spies who have been relegated to Slough House because they abused alcohol or drugs or had a gambling problem or just screwed up an assignment and are no longer trusted to run with the fast horses. They are minor league players in the intelligence community, relegated to meaningless tasks with the hope and expectation that they will become frustrated and quit. In Real Tigers, as in the first two novels in this series, the slow horses turn out to be surprisingly resourceful -- when they aren’t screwing up.

Catherine Standish, an efficient PA who has never been a field operative, is snatched off the street. Her fate seems to rest in the hands of slow horse River Cartwright, when the snatchers ask him to acquire and exchange a confidential file for Standish. But an equally pressing question is the fate of Slough House, and whether it can survive the machinations of Peter Judd, the devious new Home Secretary who has his sights set on the Prime Minister’s office. Two other political players complete a triangle of backstabbing as they follow devious plans to maneuver themselves into better positions.

Jackson Lamb, the spy in charge of Slough House, is rude, crude, and lewd. He is so repulsive as to be loveable -- or at least laugh-out-loud funny. His only redeeming feature is a rather selfish dedication to his subordinates -- selfish in the sense that he takes it personally if the enemy (or the British government, the two being difficult to distinguish at times) try to harm or kidnap them.

A droll sense of humor that manages to be at once understated and outrageous is one of the things I love about British writers. Mick Herron’s combination of dry wit and slapstick is perfect, while his ability to mix humor with action accomplishes the difficult task of making a thriller both exciting and funny. Real Tigers is just as good as the first two entries in this series.

RECOMMENDED

The Age of Reinvention by Karine Tuil

Published in France in 2013; published in translation by Atria Books on December 1, 2015

The Age of Reinvention is a novel of breadth and substance, marred by its failure to tell and resolve a convincing story. It focuses on the lives of two characters. One is driven by ambition. The other has little drive to realize his modest ambitions. In ironic ways, their lives follow opposing arcs -- one rises while the other falls, then falls while the other rises. From this they learn lessons about life. The lessons are true enough even if the story seems false.

Samuel Baron and Samir Tahar meet in law school in Paris during the mid-1980s. Baron is the abandoned son of Polish parents who was adopted by a French couple. Tahar is the charismatic son of Tunisian immigrants. Baron drops out of law school to become an underpaid social worker and an unpublished novelist. Despite his self-esteem issues, he manages to marry a beautiful woman named Nina.

Tahar, on the other hand, has opened the New York office of a French law firm and has become a highly successful celebrity lawyer. He has also married a beautiful woman named Ruth, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish client of his firm. To make this life possible, Tahar reinvented himself, fabricating a history that parallels Baron’s. Part of the deception involves the pretense of being Jewish because (he fears) confessing to his Muslim origins would bar his chance of employment in the Parisian legal community.

All of that happens early in the novel, before the central story begins. As the title implies, reinvention is one of the novel’s themes. In Tahar’s case, it is reinvention by deceit. The way people justify deceit and the pain they cause by being deceitful is a related theme.

Tahar and Baron are each pathetic in their own way, Baron because of his inability to deal with his failures, Tahar because of his inability to handle his success responsibly. They are both made pathetic by their shared love of Nina. The second part of the novel is devoted to that dynamic.

Yet Tahar is a virtuous character when compared to his half-brother. Karine Tuil uses the contrast to give depth to Tahar and to make him a little more likable, or at least a little less despicable. Like real people, all of the characters in The Age of Reinvention are a shifting mix of good and bad qualities. None are admirable. Still, as each character, at regular intervals, howls in pain, it is easy to sympathize with them. While all the characters might be a bit too tragically flawed, they are at least more interesting than the flawlessly virtuous characters that populate so many novels.

While The Age of Reinvention is well written, some of it reads like a well-written soap opera. An expository chapter about Samir’s half-brother follows a well-worn path. Women are almost secondary characters in the novel, yet in some ways -- not necessarily convincing ways, particularly with regard to Nina -- the story is about the liberation of women.

The Age of Reinvention is thought-provoking. Interesting discussions of identity politics and identity-paranoia are among its highlights. While I appreciated the novel on an intellectual level, it didn’t grab me on a gut level. I didn’t buy into the plot, which relies on a chain of unlikely events. The most unlikely is portrayal of Tahar as a highly compensated, New York “celebrity lawyer,” given that he handles the kinds of cases that rarely generate fees or make headlines. Perhaps I would have discounted my skepticism if the novel had drawn me into the characters’ lives, but they are too self-absorbed to care much about.

Footnotes in novels are usually an annoying distraction. That was my reaction to the footnotes in The Age of Reinvention, most of which provide an unnecessary sentence describing something about the lives of background characters who make a single appearance. I suppose I get the point -- even people in the background of our lives are important -- but I could have lived without the footnotes.

High quality prose makes the story an engaging read. Despite its melodramatic moments and unconvincing nature, it is nearly always interesting and the final chapter conveys a worthy message. For those reasons, I recommend the novel, but not with enthusiasm.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Shut Eye by Belinda Bauer

Published in Great Britian in 2015; published by Grove Press on January 12, 2016

DCI John Marvel might not live up to his name in all respects but he has an impressive ability to solve murders, thanks to hard work, determination, intuition, and attention to detail. On the other hand, even the colleagues who admire Marvel -- and there are only a handful -- agree that he is abrasive, rude, and generally unsuited to human interaction. That makes him a fun character, although a bad husband.

Marvel begins The Shut Eye by fretting about a cold case, a girl named Edie who went missing and is presumed dead. Soon he’s assigned to look for a missing dog, a project that does not make him happy.

In a closely related plotline, a boy named Danny has been missing for four months. The boy’s mother, Anna Buck, blames her husband for leaving the door unlocked and blames herself for not immediately noticing his absence. In Anna’s desperate desire to be reunited with Danny, she turns to a psychic, who made fruitless attempts to help the police recover Edie. The psychic purports to be a shut eye (a true psychic) as opposed to an open eye (a fraud) -- hence the novel’s title. Did I mention that the psychic specializes in communicating with lost dogs?

When Anna begins to have visions, Marvel isn’t sure what to believe. Anna’s mental health is shaky -- she is, in Marvel’s words, “mad as a bucket of frogs.” Can Marvel bring himself to rely on the paranormal instead of the real-world evidence that usually drives his investigations? Should the reader accept psychic phenomena at face value, or is there more to the story?

A couple of well-developed minor characters add depth to the story, including a Cambodian who fled his country to avoid shame and is living in England illegally. Also playing a significant role is a black female police officer who has been given a prominent position at the front desk so the police can show her off to the public, a decided waste of her intelligence and talent.

Belinda Bauer milks humor from the psychic and the missing dog, but also from Marvel, who suspects that his computer is being lazy when it can’t answer a question. Marvel has zero insight into why his wife is upset when he spreads autopsy photographs across the table during dinner. He’s the kind of guy who is likable in fiction even though you would dread knowing him in the real world.

Despite its undertones of humor, however, The Shut Eye is a serious crime novel. I don’t usually like stories that end as this one does -- I’m not sure it even makes sense -- but I’m giving The Shut Eye’s resolution a pass because it was, in a key respect, unexpectedly clever. I’m also recommending the novel because I enjoyed its suspense and liked the characters.

RECOMMENDED

The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo

First published in Finland in 2013; published in translation by Grove Press/Black Cat on January 5, 2016

The Core of the Sun mixes two themes, both involving a repressive Finnish government in an alternate Finland. The first theme addresses the limitation of individual freedom in the guise of promoting the social good (as the American government did during Prohibition). The second addresses the control of women by a male-dominated society. The result is an interesting, although occasionally heavy-handed, story that sometimes has a dated feel.

Government surveillance in this version of Finland is ubiquitous. Modern technologies like smartphones, available in decadent western countries, are outlawed in Finland. The government refuses health care to people who are judged to have lived unwholesome lives. Girls receive a limited education. They may not refuse an offer of marriage unless the suitor is a criminal or physically violent. This law protects the constitutional right of males to enjoy regular sexual activity and has a calming effect on society. Thus does female subjugation (restyled as “domestication”) promote social order.

The government “gender tests” children to specify their final gender. Then the government changes the child’s name and decides which girls can breed, selecting for traits that the government deems ideal (submissiveness, a desire to please, a youthful appearance, etc.), a process that serves as a form of genetic engineering. Social and cultural norms also shape approved female behavior, as do husbands who follow manuals that explain how to train a wife.

The testing and name change happened to Vanna (formerly Vera) shortly after her mother moved to Finland in the 1950s. Vanna was classified as a “femiwoman” or “eloi” (a name taken from H.G. Wells), but only because she sensed that she should play with the doll instead of her first choice, the fire truck. Vanna should probably be classified as a “neuterwoman” or “morlock,” a classification given to women who are excluded from the mating market. Pretending to be eloi when a woman is really a morlock constitutes the crime of gender fraud. On the other hand, Vanna’s sister Manna (formerly Mira) is a true eloi. Manna has been missing for some time, providing the story with an undercurrent of mystery.

If that background had been written in 1985, when Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale appeared, it would have seemed fresh and relevant. Now the premise seems derivative and comes a few decades too late to be taken seriously as a commentary upon gender oppression. The gender theme of The Core of the Sun might appeal to fans of dystopian fiction who are lingering in the past, but it won’t do much for readers who expect an innovative genre to be … innovative.

Fortunately, the second theme, and the story set against that background, is interesting, although very strange. Finland shuns “decadent democracies” that allow people to make their own health choices in favor of maximizing the power of the Health Authority. Cayenne peppers and other sources of capsaicin are illegal in Finland, along with alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis. The Health Authority classifies capsaicin as a nerve toxin and doesn’t want its citizens to develop a tolerance and seek hotter and hotter peppers. My brief internet research suggests that capsaicin raises endorphin levels and helps relieve the symptoms of opiate withdrawal, but outlawing jalapenos seems a little silly. It is, however, an interesting allegory for drug policies that limit the right to make choices about what drugs to take.

In 2016, Vanna is a capsaicin addict. Her friend Jare Valkinen (a “masco,” or masculine male) is a dealer. As an aggressive morlock disguised as a passive eloi, Vanna is in a position to feed her habit by helping Jare sell his peppers. Part of the plot centers on Vanna’s illicit activities. Another part focuses on the absence of Manna from Vanna’s life for reasons Vanna reveals in a series of letters that she writes but never sends. Another focuses on Gaian philosophy, which in this version of Finland has become focused on chili peppers (substituting Brother Chili for Mother Earth). Gaians are devoted to “bringing fire back to the people” – fire being chili peppers.

Some of the story is told from Jare’s point of view. The evolution of his thinking – his gravitation toward “decadence” as defined by the Finnish government -- is one of the book’s highlights.

I think The Core of the Sun is best read as a tribute to hot sauce. Abstract thinkers might view the story as a protest against governments that promote blandness because they know that bland people don’t ask much of their government. In the end, the manner by which Vanna discovers Manna’s fate is a bit silly, but it is true to the story, which demands a considerable suspension of disbelief from readers who doubt the power of the pepper. For all its flaws, however, I enjoyed the novel’s offbeat nature. I’m not sure it works as a cautionary tale, but it works as entertainment. Readers looking for more conventional dystopian fiction, however, might want to look elsewhere.

RECOMMENDED

Slade House by David Mitchell

Published by Random House on October 27, 2015

Too many horror novels are horribly dull. Moreover, horror fiction that isn’t well written (e.g., most vampire novels) can be excruciatingly awful. Slade House suffers from none of those faults. It is engaging, surprising, smart, and by the end, quite creepy.

Strange things happen in Slade Alley. A mansion, hidden on the other side of a small doorway in the middle of the alley, is difficult to find, perhaps because most of the time it isn’t there. The mansion is Slade House.

In the first of the novel’s five segments, Nathan Bishop’s mother takes him to Slade House. There he meets Norah Grayer and plays games with a kid who turns into a vicious dog -- unless Nathan imagined the whole thing. In the second segment, DI Gordon Edmonds (a lazy, racist representative of the Thames Valley Police), meets the mansion’s owner, Chloe Chetwynd, after traveling to Slade Alley to investigate a tip concerning the Bishops’ disappearance nine years earlier. Chloe denies any knowledge of Norah, leading the reader to wonder whether she is being deceitful, whether multiple mansions are hidden in Slade Alley, or whether there is some other answer to the mystery.

We learn something of what’s going on at the end of the second segment, before we move forward another nine years. This time a group of college kids decide to investigate the mysterious disappearances that seem to occur in Slade Alley every nine years. The segment is narrated by Sally Timms, whose sister, a journalist, turns up in the fourth segment.

The book’s structure makes the first four segments come across as linked short stories, each with its own cast of characters. Tying all the segments together is Fred Pink, who knows something about Slade House but, since he appears to be a raving lunatic, cannot get anyone to listen. The final segment again features a new character, but that segment twists the story in the direction of a satisfying conclusion.

Horror is a traditional vehicle for exploring themes of good versus evil. Slade House defines evil as the belief that it is fine to improve or extend one’s own life by taking the lives of others, a belief that is expressed in slogans like “might makes right,” uttered by “those who voluntarily amputate their consciences.” There is evil aplenty for the reader to enjoy in Slade House. The imaginative story, told in praiseworthy prose, is more often fun than frightening, but its best moments are at least mildly chilling.

RECOMMENDED