The Destructives by Matthew De Abaitua

Published by Angry Robot on March 1, 2016

The Destructives is one of the better novels I’ve seen from Angry Robot. The story is set against a detailed background that blends creative imagination with intelligent prediction to arrive at a credible future. From designer drugs to shopping malls that double as asylums, from obsessive data tracking to floating offshore habitats for the wealthy, the future depicted here is a credible offshoot of current trends.

The story involves emergences, self-aware beings that emerged from computer technology. They consider themselves to be natural, rather than artificial, intelligences, although they debate whether they are a product of evolution or technology. Things were very bad for humans during a period called the Seizure that followed the emergences’ entry into human society. To avoid further difficulties, humans and emergences agreed not to collaborate. The emergences took up residence in colonies that closely orbit the sun. The emergence known as Dr Easy, however, has undertaken a research mission on Earth. His research requires him to make a recording of Theodore Drown’s life, the better to understand -- and keep an eye on -- humanity.

Theodore specializes in pre-Seizure restoration. He is summoned to the dark side of the moon, working on a project that has recreated a home as it existed in 2020, shortly before the Seizure. There he studies a quantified family -- a family that recorded its daily environment in holographic detail, charting activities and health and moods (because really, you don’t know whether you’re happy or sad until your computer confirms your emotions). In 2020, people still considered themselves to be users of technology rather than the other way around.

Since nearly all pre-Seizure data has been erased, Theodore is excited to find a trove of data concerning the quantified family. The project is hidden underground for reasons that gradually become apparent to Theodore. It turns out to represent a vital moment in history.

The plot eventually has Theodore starting a business called the Destructives. The business brings him into contact with people who are pursuing goals that appear to be contrary to the interests of the emergences and, for that matter, most humans. Meanwhile, the Destructives undertakes its own project, one that again might be contrary to the wishes of the emergences. Eventually the story moves to one of Jupiter’s moons and its surprising inhabitants.

There is quite a bit of cultural commentary in The Destructives, the commentary coming from the perspective of observers who are studying culture after its destruction. One of my favorite thoughts refers to the ease with which people, without sensing the irony, use mass-produced products to express their individuality. The commentary alone makes the novel worth reading.

The story becomes needlessly murky and meandering after the action moves to Europa, although it continues to score imagination points. The ending, on the other hand, circles around in a surprising way to tie the novel together. While I liked the novel’s first half more than the second, the book as a whole is considerably more thought-provoking than typical Angry Robot fare.

RECOMMENDED

A Covenant with Death by Stephen Becker

First published in 1964; published by Open Road Media on January 12, 2016

A Covenant with Death stands as one of the finest fictional explorations of the nature of justice in the history of American literature. It is a passionate story of justice gone wrong, a reminder of the consequences that follow when people are too eager (as they often are) to sit in judgment.

The covenant in the title is that between government and the governed. The governed consent to be bound by the law; the government agrees to impose the law justly. A Covenant with Death is the story of a judge who must decide how to act when the covenant is broken by both the government and the governed.

Louise Talbot was murdered in Soledad City in 1923. Forty years later, Old Judge Lewis, who was then Young Judge Lewis, provides the voice that explains the events that followed her death. Ben Lewis is an entertaining narrator who peppers the story with recollections of the town’s hypocrisies, conflicts, and idiosyncrasies. Lewis has an insightful mother of Mexican heritage and employs a Native American clerk, none of which seems to trouble town residents as much as it does outsiders, particularly outsiders who want to enforce Prohibition, an effort that Judge Lewis does his best to thwart.

Louise’s husband Bryan is indicted for her murder on scant but scandalous evidence. Without wasting time, Stephen Becker moves the novel to Bryan Talbot’s trial. “All the normal hostilities of an American town” come to a halt as town residents focus their hostility on Talbot. He is the common enemy who brings solidarity to the town and makes everyone feel virtuous by comparison.

Theatrics are often my favorite part of a courtroom drama, and Talbot’s defense attorney, a sly man named Parmalee, is a master showman. But trial scenes appear only in the novel’s first half, surrounded by Lewis’ attempts to understand his feelings for a woman named Rosemary and for another named Rafaela. Since his feelings are dominated by lust, they are not difficult to understand, but whether they might also involve love, or why they do not, and whether Lewis is careless with the affections of both women, are more perplexing questions.

The last half of the novel, the half that gives the novel its heart, begins in the aftermath of the trial. It begins with a shock, followed by another. If forces young Judge Lewis to make the most difficult decision of his career, a decision for which the law provides no clear guidance. He must look elsewhere to make a decision, beginning with himself, because “if you have to judge, judge yourself first.”

A Covenant with Death might be described as a parable of judging. What does it mean to sit in judgment of another person? How does a judge do that? How can the law and justice be balanced when they are not entirely aligned? Many novels have tried to answer those questions, but few have done so as successfully as A Covenant with Death.

Elegant prose makes A Covenant with Death stand out in the crowded world of courtroom thrillers. Lewis describes Soledad City, a southwestern town of “oily modernity” with a “gritty past,” in sufficient detail to give it life. His running commentary on “human foolishness” is amusing; his condemnation of people who do not have “the heart to walk naked on a sunny day” is wise; and his humane understanding of the difference between law and justice is inspiring.

Lewis is a good man who recognizes his faults and understands the need for humility. He is a good man whose behavior is not always exemplary but he knows that and struggles to be a better man. He knows that the law is made by full bellies, but that the world is crowded with empty bellies, “each with its pair of beseeching hands and pleading eyes.” If real judges all shared the humane values and deep understanding of the human condition that drive the fictional Judge Lewis, our judicial system would more consistently serve the needs of the governed.

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The Other Side of Silence by Philip Kerr

Published by Putnam on March 29, 2016

Living in the beautiful French Riviera, Bernie Gunther is almost paradoxically suicidal, but he’s bored and he misses being a cop in Berlin. Working as a concierge, Gunther is using the name Walter Wolf to conceal his past as an SS officer. The year is 1956. Gunther meets, beds, and falls in love with a writer who says she has been commissioned to write a biography of Somerset Maugham. To her apparent good fortune, Gunther’s passion for bridge brings him within the small circle of local friends maintained by Maugham, although Maugham intends to use Gunther for purposes other than filling the fourth seat at the bridge table.

Maugham is being blackmailed. Maugham’s embarrassment involves a sexual indiscretion with a well-known Russian double agent during an era in which the British espionage agencies were overflowing with Russian spies. The blackmail threat has been delivered by someone Gunther happens to know, giving him a chance to reflect upon the past. The reader is therefore treated to stories from 1938, when Gunther was working as a private detective in Berlin, and 1944, when he was an SS lieutenant (having been demoted after an unfortunate incident with Goebbels).

I never read Philip Kerr’s novels expecting scintillating prose, although The Other Side of Silence is a bit more graceful than some of Kerr’s work. Rather, I read them in the expectation that Kerr will deliver a strong plot and even stronger characters. The Other Side of Silence did not disappoint me on either front. The plot is clever, inviting the reader to guess which characters are betrayers and which are betrayed. The intricacy of the plot is worthy of the real-life deviousness of the Russian double agents with whom the story intersects.

Gunther continues to be one of my favorite characters in crime fiction. I admire the complexity with which he is crafted. The point of all the Gunther novels is that principles are easy to live by when they come without a cost. When the choice is between a principle and survival, or between a principle and the torture and murder of the people you love, principles are not so easy to follow. Gunther’s life is an illustration of the tension between survival and principle. The Other Side of Silence does not add new facets to Gunther’s character but it sharpens those with which fans of the series will be familiar. The novel’s other characters -- particularly Maugham -- are also given rich and believable personalities. The characters and the intriguing plot make The Other Side of Silence a welcome entry in the Gunther series.

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Hap and Leonard by Joe R. Lansdale

Published by Tachyon Publications on March 1, 2016

Joe Lansdale has written eight or nine novels featuring the characters Hap Collins and Leonard Pine. Hap provides the narrative voice. He's sort of an East Texas liberal who has been on a long and unsuccessful quest to find himself. His buddy, Leonard Pine, is a black, gay conservative who has anger management issues. Whether Hap and Leonard have a knack for finding trouble or whether trouble finds them is a question they often ponder.

Hap and Leonard are now appearing in a series on Sundance TV. Apparently the episodes can be streamed online. I haven't done that yet due to my lousy internet service but I'll get around to it eventually. I assume that this collection of Hap and Leonard short stories was released in anticipation of the Sundance show.

A couple of the short stories in the volume are billed as novellas. I’m not sure they’re long enough to qualify as novellas rather than long short stories. The entire volume is relatively short, but most of the stories are entertaining, as you would expect from Joe Lansdale.

The first long story is “Hyenas.” A young man looking for someone to help him prevent his brother from committing a robbery has the misfortune of meeting the wrong guys before he finds Hap and Leonard. A couple of violent confrontations later and the problem is solved. This is a fun, straightforward story that is enlivened by Lansdale’s trademark wit.

“Veil’s Visit” is co-authored with Andrew Vachss. The story blends Vachss’ trademark darkness with Lansdale’s trademark humor. The darkness (involving kids, another Vachss trademark) comes at the beginning but the story becomes cheerier as it progresses. Veil is a lawyer and an old friend of Hap. He travels to Texas to help out Leonard, who is charged with burning down a crack house. Again. The trial is a masterpiece of wit and theatrics. It’s also deliciously funny.

“Death by Chili” is a very short story that was written as a promotional giveaway. Leonard solves the mystery of how a person died. The chili recipe at the end is more amusing than the story.

“Dead Aim” is the best story in the collection. Hap and Leonard are asked to help out a woman whose husband is threatening her. That problem takes a couple of twists before turning into a bunch of new problems … the kind that Hap and Leonard like to solve with an axe handle, a few bullets, and nonstop banter.

In “The Boy Who Became Invisible,” Hap recalls an incident from his childhood. This is a very short, very serious story, quite unlike the other entries. Also from his younger days, Hap explains how he got to know Leonard in “Not Our Kind.” The story features some of the usual Hap and Leonard banter, but its subject matter -- racism and homophobia -- give it a serious edge.

“Bent Twig” is a fairly predictable story about Hap’s efforts to find the drug-addled daughter of his girlfriend, who regularly gets into trouble and disappears. The plot gains some zip toward the end, and the snappy dialog and amusing moments that characterize Hap and Leonard stories make it worth reading.

Rounding out the collection is Lansdale’s brief interview of Hap and Leonard. It comes across as filler. Lansdale also devotes a few pages to explaining how and when he penned the various Hap and Leonard novels and stories.

On the whole, this collection is something that Hap and Leonard fans (or, more generally, Lansdale fans) will appreciate. It doesn’t consistently showcase Lansdale at his best, but “Hyenas” and “Dead Aim” are worth the price of the volume.

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Thirst by Benjamin Warner

Published by Bloomsbury USA on April 12, 2016

Thirst is not necessarily a post-apocalyptic novel, although it has features in common with one. An undefined ecological crisis has occurred, but not necessarily an apocalypse. Electricity is out. Cars are piling up at intersections where traffic lights have gone dark. The police are not responding. The internet is down. So are all the cellphone networks. No water comes from faucets. The creek is dry.

Ed Gardner takes a walkabout, looking for his wife Laura. He sees kids selling water for $30 a bottle. He meets someone who tells him about a fire on the Potomac. Soon his neighbors are fleeing, hoping that the city will have emergency water supplies or medical assistance that is unavailable in his suburban home. Ed and Laura try to tough it out with another couple, but the stress of dehydration and the need to survive take their toll on the Gardners and the neighbors who await the arrival of first responders.

Thirst is not one of those ghastly prepper/survivalist novels, for which I am grateful. Protagonists don't run around gloating about how superior they are to the rest of the human race because they hoarded water and filled bugout bags with stale chocolate bars and kept their guns well oiled. Rather, Thirst is a novel about a neighborhood that reacts -- not very well -- to a crisis, with a focus on the Gardners. The breakdown of social order, the conflict between the instinct to survive and the desire to help others, is well-illustrated, although I’m not sure the story offers anything that hasn’t been explored many times in post-apocalyptic fiction.

Thirst tells such a convincing story that I ended every reading session by downing a bottle of water. At the same time, I’m a bit disappointed that the cause of the water loss is never made clear. Nor is it clear why help is delayed for so long. Is this just a forgotten neighborhood or is the whole nation experiencing an overwhelming crisis? Apparently Benjamin Warner wanted all of that to be a mystery, but I couldn’t help wondering whether he simply lacked the imagination to concoct a plausible explanation for the scenario he envisioned.

The ending is a bit ambiguous, as are some scenes that could be delusions produced by Ed’s water-deprived mind. Still, Warner’s prose is lively and his descriptions of a rapidly deteriorating society are vivid. I liked Thirst for the quality of the writing, for the characters, and for some memorable scenes. Thirst is, in fact, one of those novels where the whole is less than the sum of its excellent parts. Still, I liked Thirst well enough to recommend it, particularly to readers who are more interested in reactions to a crisis that the cause of the crisis.

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