Time Out by Michael Marshall Smith

Published by Subterranean Press on April 1, 2024

Time Out begins as a typical Last Man on Earth Story. It evolves into the story of a man who is forced to reflect on the content of his character.

The narrator wakes up on the morning after Christmas to discover that his wife and daughter are missing. He assumes they went for a walk. Then he notices that the internet isn’t working. Neither is the television. When he decides to look for his wife, he sees no other people. No cars are in motion. There are no airplanes in the sky. When he knocks on doors, nobody answers.

Within a day, animals have also disappeared. Yet things are different from day to day. When he breaks the glass in a door so he can enter a hardware store, the broken glass has been replaced when he visits the store on the following day.

Perhaps there has been a biblical rapture, but surely people exist who are less worthy of salvation than the narrator. Where are they? The narrator can’t understand why the electricity is still on and the water is still flowing, but cellphone service and the internet aren’t working. I was wondering that myself, but it turns out not to matter. This isn’t the kind of science fiction that’s supported by science, which makes it more of a fantasy, or perhaps a thought experiment.

As the narrator contemplates the new present, his thoughts turn to the past. He wonders whether he has been a selfish a-hole, too often absorbed in his own thoughts, too often unwilling to compromise with his wife and daughter. He knows he did something that could harm his marriage and, by looking at his wife’s cellphone, he knows his wife learned about it. Maybe none of this matters if he is the only person left on the planet, but it matters to the narrator, as it should. And that is perhaps the novella’s point. A time out — a period during which we are forced to reflect on our lives and consider how the absence of people we care about might make us feel — would benefit us all. The story makes that point in a scenario that is interesting and engaging.

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Extinction by Douglas Preston

Published by Forge Books on April 23, 2024

The Jurassic Park franchise suggests that the public has an insatiable appetite for stories centered around the revival of extinct species. Extinction imagines a Colorado park called Erebus that differs from Jurassic Park — as the reader is frequently reminded — because the mammoths and other de-extincted species have been genetically modified to eliminate aggressive tendencies. Yeah, what could go wrong?

Rather than giving the reader a Jurassic Park rip-off, Douglas Preston takes the story in a different direction. A newlywed couple is camping in the park at a discrete distance from their wilderness guide. The guide investigates a noise and discovers a large pool of blood where the couple had been camping. The volume of blood and the short time that elapsed before the bodies disappeared suggests that the bodies were decapitated.

Frankie Cash is a senior detective with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. She’s charged with leading the CSI team to investigate the disappearance and presumed murder of the honeymooning couple. The newlywed husband’s father is a rich old guy who harasses Cash about finding his son (or his son’s killer) while engaging in boneheaded acts that only obstruct her progress.

Cash conducts a murder investigation that overlaps a wilderness adventure. She suspects that the killers are members of a cannibalistic cult, while Erebus wants to blame the crime on environmentalists. That the killers are armed with spears and knives does suggest a cult, perhaps one that is headed by the QAnon Shaman.

The head of security at Erebus seems to be misdirecting Cash, steering her away from an abandoned mine that might be at the heart of the mystery. What is he trying to hide? The answer is farfetched (as is the way of the modern thriller) but nevertheless entertaining.

Cash is in conflict with a boss who wants all the glory if she succeeds and none of the blame if she fails to catch the bad guys. This is a standard storyline, but it at least invites the reader to warm up to Cash, who is otherwise a bit bland. The story’s action scenes are suitable to a thriller.

Preston is a seasoned author (he takes the opportunity to have a character praise the Preston & Childs novel he’s reading) who can probably construct a novel like this one while he’s clipping his toenails. Extinction isn’t special but it isn’t a waste of the reader’s time. Frankie Cash is not a memorable protagonist and the story didn’t excite me, but the plot moves quickly and the key revelation (what is Erebus trying to hide from the public?) is genuinely surprising, although the surprise is largely dictated by its implausibility.

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The Unlikely Affair of the Crawling Razor by Joe R. Lansdale

Published by Subterranean Press on April 1, 2024

Edgar Allen Poe is credited with creating the first fictional detective. Some years ago, Joe Lansdale contributed to a collection of new stories about Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin. Lansdale brings Dupin back in the novella-length The Unlikely Affair of the Crawling Razor.

A young man named Julien has been investigating the catacombs in Paris. A series of gruesome murders has coincided with his investigation. Pieces of one victim’s body were scattered in the catacombs. A disemboweled victim was found on the doorstep of Julien’s sister Aline. Fortunately for Aline, Julien has paid a tavern owner to lock her inside her room at night. Unfortunately for Aline, Julien has disappeared. She visits Dupin in the hope that the famous solver of mysteries can find her brother.

The story takes on an air of the macabre when the tavern owner explains how he was chased by a demonic entity on his last visit to lock Aline’s door. Julien has a collection of books that describe portals to supernatural dimensions. He seems to have made a particular study of the Lord of the Razor (who happens to be an early Lansdale creation). If one of the Razor’s sharp instruments causes someone to bleed, the Lord of the Razor enters that person’s soul.

Dupin and his assistant (the story’s nameless narrator) embark on a search for Julien that takes them on a couple of trips to the catacombs. Bones and skulls and rats provide an appropriate setting for a confrontation with a demon.

Lansdale is a versatile writer. He dabbles in crime, humor, science fiction, and westerns, often mixing genres in original ways, but he is also one of the better horror storytellers in the business. The Bottoms is one of the most frightening books I’ve read. This novella is a bit too conventional to be truly scary, but the Lord of the Razor is sufficiently creepy to inspire a few chills.

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The Bin Laden Plot by Rick Campbell

Published by St. Martin's Press on April 23, 2024

I love submarine novels. I don’t know why. I just do. When Rick Campbell writes scenes on submarines, I am tense and fully alert, as if I am anticipating the need to dodge a torpedo. When he writes scenes that take place on land, my response is more ho-hum.

In The Bin Laden Plot, Campbell tries to spice the story with political intrigue that is completely over the top (meaning it is fairly routine by modern thriller standards). The idea of a “rogue U.S. organization covering its tracks, operating outside the law, willing to murder anyone who threatens to expose what they’ve done” is just another Tuesday in Thrillerworld. A bit more original is the premise that Osama bin Laden might have been taken prisoner rather than being killed. Anything can be true in Thrillerworld, so I decided to roll with it until Campbell got me back into a submarine.

Many of the protagonists, including Director of CIA Christine O’Connor and action hero Jake Harrison, have appeared in Campbell’s earlier novels. Another returning character is the mysterious Khalila, who is working for the CIA despite the fact that nobody trusts her, probably because she makes a habit of killling her partners. This novel reveals Khalila’s true identity which — no shock here — is over the top. Intelligence agencies make unintelligent decisions all the time, but bringing Khalili into the fold is too incompetent to pass as credible.

Central to the story is Brenda Verbeck, the Secretary of the Navy. Her brother made a secret deal to sell certain goods to Iran that violate American law. Verbeck learned about the deal from communications intercepted by a clandestine program that she oversees. To protect her brother, Verbeck has arranged to kill everyone who has knowledge of the communication. Over the top much? Oh, we aren’t even close to the pinnacle yet.

Verbeck also has to destroy a data archive that holds the communication, which involves destroying a small autonomous submarine and a rather larger one. She tasks Capt. Murray Wilson with destroying the subs. Wilson commands a submarine that has appeared in earlier novels in this series. Oddly, when Verbeck orders him to destroy submarines with the flimsiest pretext, Wilson obediently says yes without asking deeper questions about the necessity of sinking them. I guess following orders is more important than questioning bizarre orders.

I learned something from this novel that I probably would have learned by paying attention to the real world. I didn’t know that the military buried bin Laden’s body at sea, supposedly to prevent it from becoming a shrine to his followers. That was a convenient ruse if bin Laden was captured alive. Campbell has given conspiracy enthusiasts something new to get excited about, although I suppose they were blogging about it years ago.

The rest of the plot is standard. Iran is doing evil things. Russia is helping. America saves the day with torpedoes and manages to avoid political ramifications that, in the real world, would probably lead to war.

Harrison is a standard action hero, meaning one who is devoid of personality. He had a thing once with Christine but she kept putting him off so he married someone else. Christine regrets her decision. Harrison doesn’t. Campbell pushes that subplot forward in an unexpected way and promises to resolve it in the next book. I’m looking forward to it for the submarines, not for the romance story.

The ending features a typical villain who can’t stop boasting about his vengeful genius as he holds multiple people hostage. If bad guys would just shut up and be bad, they’d be a lot more successful. Still, I give Campbell credit for not forcing a happy ending.

For action fans, a prolonged fight scene near the novel’s end is a payoff that’s worth the wait. The submarine warfare scenes that usually enthrall me are a bit perfunctory, but the story moves quickly and — for readers who are willing to tolerate unlikely plots — it achieves a reasonable level of excitement.

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Nothing But the Bones by Brian Panowich

Published by Minotaur Books on April 16, 2024

Nothing But the Bones builds its plot from a diverse range of crimes and criminals. A central character controls the crime in a mountainous Georgia county but extends his reach into other parts of the country. A more sophisticated criminal, complete with a British accent and a proper education, is based in Jacksonville. Also in Jacksonville is a criminal who traffics in young people. A wealthy televangelist (again from Georgia) is a criminal by definition.

Embedded in the crime plot is a love story. Whether the love story will appeal to readers depends on how they will react to a plot twist. How they will react likely depends upon which side of a cultural divide they inhabit. Since the love story depends on a surprise that shouldn’t be spoiled, I’ll focus on the crime story.

Before he acquired the name Nails, Nelson McKenna was a large, shy kid with a deformed hand. Bullies thought Nelson was mentally challenged (although that wasn’t the phrase they used to describe him), but he suffers from a disability that makes it difficult for him to place his thoughts into words. Two girls intervened when Nelson was being bullied because they knew Nelson to be a nice guy. When the bully turned on one of the girls, Nelson decided it was time to fight back. Unfortunately, he didn’t know when to stop fighting.

Clayton Burroughs watched it all happen. He regarded Nelson as a friend so he called his Deddy to clean up the mess. That turned out to be a bad decision. Nelson acquired the name Nails from Gareth Burroughs and became Gareth’s enforcer. Gareth controls everything in the mountains and local law enforcement knows not to mess with him.

At a later point in his life, Nails has acquired a reputation for violence. He’s hanging out in a bar when a girl named Dallas flirts with him. A couple of tough guys assault Dallas and Nails intervenes to protect her. Again, Nails doesn’t know when to stop and again, Gareth Burroughs needs to clean up a mess. He sends Nails to Jacksonville but the likelihood is that he’s heading to his own funeral. Without being invited, Dallas joins him for the trip.

Nails bonds with Dallas as they make their way to Jacksonville. More crimes follow, including a theft of money from Nails, a gas station robbery, and the kidnapping of Dallas. Clayton defies his father by traveling to Jacksonville to rescue his friend. Violence ensues.

We’re told that Nails is a fan of old pulp novels, the kind that can be read quickly: “Short bursts of simple words. Short chapters that got to the point.” Brian Panowich adopts that style for Nothing But the Bones. He doesn’t try to write with self-conscious literary flair. He doesn’t mess around with devices like time shifts or changing points of view. He tells a straightforward, linear story with carefully chosen but unassuming prose. He writes with the gritty darkness of the best pulp writers. Unlike most pulp fiction, however, Panowich obviously took his time, editing and rewriting to avoid the clunkiness of pulp writers who had to churn out a high volume of words each month to pay the rent.

Nails and Clayton have a moral center that makes them likable. Clayton’s confrontation with his father adds tension to the story, as do Nails’ efforts to rescue people in distress. A section of the novel that functions as an epilogue forces a happy ending that seems out of place and isn’t nearly as believable as the rest of the story. Fans of happy endings will want to read the whole book; fans of realism might want to skip the ending.

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