Renée by Ludovic Debeurme

First published in France in 2011; published in translation Top Shelf Productions on February 23, 2016

Renée is a graphic novel with the feel of a sketchbook. The art is minimalist, as is the text. Backgrounds are nearly nonexistent. Some pages are blank. When words appear, they often make an arc across the page. Sometimes the words are intended as dialog, sometimes they are narrative monologue spoken by an unseen character, and sometimes the origin of the words is unclear. Frequently, wordless sequences of five or ten sketches end up with characters curling up into balls.

Renée is a sequel to the author’s Lucille. The characters who appear in Renée are trapped in depressive states, often with good reason. Arthur, who killed Lucille’s attempted rapist in the first novel, is in prison, sharing a cell with Eddie, who accidentally caused the death of a fisherman with whom he was fighting. The others are figuratively imprisoned by the lives they have made for themselves. Renée is seeing Pierre, a married man twice her age who can’t choose between the two women. Lucille is living in a claustrophobic relationship with her mother, a woman she loves and hates in equally stifling degrees.

After Eddie gains his freedom (and, thanks to Arthur’s decency, finds a place to live), Arthur gets a new cellmate who is suspected of being a child molester. The experience changes Arthur and (for reasons I won’t reveal here) eventually causes Lucille and Renée to meet and bond.

The story has surprising depth, given the minimalist nature of the storytelling. Some of the scenes are surrealistic, including a scene in which people crawl out of the cuts that Renée has made in her arms. In a dream sequence, Arthur grows wings and, as an insect, flies out of prison to nest comfortably in Lucille’s hair. Characters enlarge or shrink or parts of their bodies change or they morph into embodiments of ugliness. I’m sure there’s a fair amount of symbolism here that I’m not quite grasping, although I suspect the illustrations stray into the territory of fantasy to express how the characters are feeling at the moment.

Some of Ludovic Debeurme’s illustrations are grotesque but none should be particularly upsetting to readers who are not easily upset. The text, on the other hand, describes events that include rape and incest, topics that might be disturbing to sensitive readers. Those events are not gratuitous; they are necessary to understand the states of mind and stages of life that the characters experience.

The beginning of Renée is confusing. The story is not always told in linear time and recognizing characters can be a challenge, given how their appearances change. The story requires the reader’s effort but by the end, everything falls into place. The ending is left open, with two characters sailing away in search of more answers, or to start another chapter in their lives. Perhaps the intent is for another volume to continue the story, but the ending may simply be meant to remind readers that our own stories never end until we die -- there is always something new, something unexpected, perhaps even something pleasant, awaiting our discovery.

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Flashpoint by Lynn Hightower

First published in 1995; published digitally by Open Road Media on October 27, 2015

A man burns to death in a car. His body is found handcuffed to the steering wheel. Evidence suggests that the killer is a woman. The police nickname the killer “Flash.” Sonora Blair and Sam Delarosa of the Cincinnati police lead the investigation.

Most of the novel’s focus is on Sonora. She is a reasonably well developed character, with two kids, a dead ex-husband, and a thing for the brother of the murder victim. Unfortunately for Sonora, the killer also has a thing for the murder victim’s brother, creating an interesting rivalry between killer and cop.

As Sonora learns more about the killer, so does the reader. Lynn Hightower doesn’t waste time with nonsensical profiling or lengthy character biographies that cause so many thrillers to drag. We learn enough about the killer to make her interesting and credible -- she isn’t a novice at the murder game -- while maintaining a sense of intrigue about the killer’s motivation as the investigation advances.

A brisk pace and clear prose make this an easy story to read. Some of the scenes are chilling. My only objection to the story is that a lone killer manages to cause a fair amount of mayhem under the noses of cops who, budget problems notwithstanding, would certainly make a stronger effort to protect the family members of a fellow officer. In fact, the killer wanders all over Cincinnati, going to obvious places, and the police can’t seem to be bothered to keep an eye out for her.

I didn’t buy much of the ending, which again depends upon remarkably incompetent police work so that Sonora can have some alone time with the killer. What I do like about Flashpoint is its steady pace, its decent characterization, and its surprisingly strong prose. The plot is the novel’s weakness, but the Flashpoint is enjoyable for its strengths.

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Quantum Night by Robert J. Sawyer

Published by Ace on March 1, 2016

If you could turn the world’s psychopaths into non-psychopaths, but only by turning a much smaller number of people with a conscience into psychopaths, would you do it? What if doing so might prevent a global war? That’s the moral dilemma that animates Quantum Night.

I generally like Robert Sawyer’s novels, and I suspect that my political views are similar to his. But Quantum Night is, in part, a political science fiction novel that is sometimes too silly to take seriously. I won’t spoil the plot by discussing the political events that take place, but I will say that I just didn’t buy most of them, perhaps because Sawyer (ever a pimp for Canada) tries to give his nation a central role in the political world. Some of the novel’s political events are just eye-rolling (perhaps Sawyer has been watching Fox News and taking it seriously), but science fiction demands a suspension of disbelief so let’s put that aside.

The novel’s other, deeper aspect involves speculation about the quantum nature of consciousness. That speculation is at least interesting, but I wasn’t quite able to suspend my disbelief in either the premise or the way the characters behaved.

Quantum Night posits that there are three kinds of people in the world. One group consists of philosophical zombies. They have no inner voice to chat with and therefore aren’t “truly conscious.” They are easily led or misled. Instead of being guided by a conscience, they decide how to behave based on social cues. They account for Germany’s Hitler followers, Canada’s hockey hooligans, and disastrous election outcomes in the United States.

The second group are psychopaths. They carry on an interior monologue but they have no conscience. The third group are conscious with a conscience. They have an inner voice, engage in interior debates, and allow a mixture of empathy and reason to guide their actions. Since the ratio from the first group to the second and third is 4:2:1, philosophical zombies and psychopaths greatly outnumber conscious people with a conscience.

Of course, nearly everyone who reads the novel will think “I’m one of the conscious with a conscience” and many (delighted to know that they are special) will happily believe that there are twice as many psychopaths and four times as many zombies, but I just don’t think that’s true. Yeah, there are a lot of empty heads in the world, but to ascribe their trend-following behavior to a lack of consciousness rather than intellectual dullness doesn’t seem to me to be consistent with the real world. And having worked with and for a good number of bad people over the years, I have to think that Sawyer’s premise vastly overestimates the number of true psychopaths in the world, even giving the term a broad definition. Sawyer talks a bit about Robert Hare, who makes a good living by seeing psychopaths behind every bush, but even by Hare’s dubious standards, I don’t think psychopaths are as prevalent as the book suggests.

But let’s put all that (in addition to the politics) aside and get to the meat of the novel, which involves the moral dilemma I mentioned above. During and shortly after he is cross-examined in court, James Marchuk, a psychology professor who is an expert in psychopathy, discovers he has a six-month gap in his memory. It turns out he was a test subject in a neuropsychology experiment as an undergrad. Marchuk discovers that a classmate, who was also a test subject, has been in a coma ever since. Marchuk sets about recovering his lost memories of a time during which he wasn’t the kind, generous, and humanistic vegan that he has since become. Therein lies the plot.

The utilitarian philosophy that underlies Marchuk’s behavior and the novel’s moral dilemma (borrowed from Kant or Mr. Spock, as you prefer) -- “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” -- suffers from the problem that people rarely agree about the “needs” that should be served or how that can best be done. Sawyer gives scant attention to that issue. Marchuk’s proposed solution to the prevalence of psychopathy is, in my mind, morally unsound and uncloaks the weakness of his utilitarian philosophy. His proposal might serve the needs of the many but only by doing harm to a smaller but still huge number of others, without their knowledge or consent. What could possibly give Marchuk the right to do that other than his own belief that he’s right?

That, at least, gives the reader something to chew on, and that makes Quantum Night worth reading, even if I didn’t buy into the premise. Sawyer is always easy to read, even if his attempts at humor are a bit lame. Sawyer is probably just too nice to do humor with the kind of edge that provokes a belly laugh. Of Sawyer’s books that touch on consciousness, I would rate FlashForward well ahead of Quantum Night, but I enjoyed Quantum Night enough to recommend it, despite my unsuccessful attempts to suspend my disbelief.

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Cambodia Noir by Nick Seeley

Published by Scribner on March 16, 2016

Will Keller is a news photographer working in Cambodia. He would have a better market for his work if he went to Iraq, but he’s had enough of war.

When the police bust a drug house that appears to be operated by the military, Keller is there. he hears umors that the police discovered a huge stash of Burmese heroin, enough to make Keller’s veins twitch. The poor guy has been getting by on cocaine and meth and beer and pot.

The plot takes shape when a young Japanese woman hires Keller to find her sister. The missing sister was working for a reporter -- Keller’s friend, to the extent that he has any -- as an intern. She was apparently poking around a story involving heroin and corrupt customs agents. When another reporter is brutally killed, Keller wonders whether there’s a connection. When Keller learns that there is more to the young woman than first appearances revealed, he wonders what he’s gotten himself into. As does the reader.

Character development is at least average for a story of this nature. A couple of the secondary characters are sympathetic but, in true noir fashion, most are walking both sides of the line between good and evil, unless they are entirely on the dark side. Keller is a typical antihero, driven to risk his life by something he doesn’t quite understand. A sense of justice? Burning curiosity? A death wish? Probably all of those, but Nick Seeley leaves it to the reader to understand what motivates Keller, since Keller can’t figure it out for himself. His motivation for many things (including the years he has spent trying to escape from his thoughts) probably has something to do with a key event in his life, revealed in the last pages.

Noir plots are often convoluted but it is possible to follow this one without taking notes. Unlike some noir novels, the story is reasonably coherent and most of the loose ends are knotted off. The darkness of Cambodia, the tragic protagonist, and phrases like “inconspicuous as a gunshot wound on a wedding dress” give the book its noir appeal. There are moments of violence and torture and kinkiness but they are not exceptionally graphic. The story moves quickly without sacrificing atmospheric detail. Intensity and power build nicely as the plot nears its climax. The ending is reasonably strong if not entirely surprising. I recommend Cambodia Noir to noir fans for its solid prose, convincing atmosphere, and entertaining plot.

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Only Love Can Break Your Heart by Ed Tarkington

Published by Algonquin on January 5, 2016

I thought only Kazuo Ishiguro could get away with attaching sappy titles to good books, but Ed Tarkington does it with Only Love Can Break Your Heart. On the other hand, Neil Young gave the same sappy title to a great song. Tarkington writes a suitable tribute to Young in an early chapter, the source of the borrowed title as well as the name (Cinnamon Girl) given to a key character.

The novel is set in a rural town in Virginia. It follows the interaction of the Askew family and two other prominent small town families as seen from the standpoint of Richard Askew, known to his half-brother Paul as Rocky. The novel begins when Richard is seven years old. The first pivotal event in his life occurs when Paul is shot in the leg by Brad Culver while Richard and Paul are trespassing on the Culver property. That incident brings Paul’s lush of a mother back to the Askew household, creating the first of multiple triangles (Paul’s mother, Richard’s mother, the boys’ father) that play out during the novel’s course. It also instigates an odd friendship between Brad Culver and Richard’s father.

Richard looks up to Paul, who -- if not quite a juvenile delinquent -- at least qualifies as a troublemaker, a bad boy with James Dean charm. Paul disappears for a while and the story becomes one of small town drama as the three families -- the Askews, the Culvers, and the Bowmans -- intersect. Leigh Bowman (daughter of a judge), Brad’s son Charles, and Paul create one of the novel’s triangles, while Richard has a fling with Charles’ sister Patricia, who provides Richard’s adolescent introduction to the joy and heartache of adult relationships.

The story eventually adds a murder mystery to the plot. The novel’s drama finds parallels in a school play, Equus, in which Richard has the starring role. Yet the story is ultimately about the many facets of love. Richard observes of his father, “Despite his many flaws and failings, the Old Man was never afraid to love, even when it broke his heart.” All of the central characters are touched by love in some way; nearly all experience heartbreak, which seems to be love’s most likely outcome.

It’s fair to call the novel Richard’s coming of age story, but Richard almost makes himself a secondary character, as most of the drama swirls around Paul, Leigh, and the Culver family. The story’s lesson, borrowed from Equus (“Every soul is itself”), is that every person has his or her own unique nature that survives both praise and scorn.

Tarkington’s taut prose is smooth and evocative. Tarkington avoids the language of melodrama while telling a melodramatic story. While Paul doesn’t always seem genuine (he’s awfully nice for a bad boy), the characters in general are adequately developed. The murder is a bit contrived. This isn’t a perfect novel, but there is much about it to admire, including its perspectives on individuality and love.

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