Injustice by Lee Goodman

Published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books on September 15, 2015

I started out disliking Injustice because I could not warm up to Nick Davis, the protagonist. By the end of the story I still disliked Nick Davis, but I thought the novel was okay. Its biggest flaw, other than an unlikable protagonist, is that it relies on a chain of improbable coincidences. I don’t mind a coincidence or two -- in real life, they happen all the time -- but too many coincidences are difficult to bear.

Nick Davis is a federal prosecutor who displays all the humorless self-righteousness, pettiness, and narrow-mindedness that characterizes the worst of the breed. He is overly impressed with himself and with his “mission of excising moral disease from the population of free citizens,” a phrase that had me choking with laughter. Isn’t hubris a moral disease? He also seems incapable of recognizing his own hypocrisy, given the number of times he vows to commit perjury to protect his family. At least he has the virtue of realizing that he’s irritating, particularly to Tina, his wife.

Someone in Davis’ extended family is murdered and one of his subordinates, who also happens to have been living with that family member, becomes a suspect. Davis sticks his nose into the investigation, which I could believe, then he rides around with FBI agents and waves his Glock around, which seems like a conflict of interest for a prosecutor since he might turn himself into a witness against the bad guys he’s being paid to prosecute. In fact, Davis is always charging around, leading the cops in the field, which is something a prosecutor just doesn’t do. That’s one of the reasons this novel didn’t ring true. There are a bunch of smaller reasons, like calling the security in a federal trial “guards” when a federal prosecutor would call them “marshals” and concluding that a prisoner who won’t talk to cops about an ex-cellmate must feel intimidated by the cellmate when most prisoners refuse on principle to cooperate with the police unless they’re being rewarded for it.

Meanwhile, as Davis and the reader try to figure out whether Davis’ subordinate is innocent or guilty, Davis is half-heartedly investigating a federal crime that involves a corporate conspiracy to bribe politicians. It is a rule in modern crime fiction that if a protagonist is working on two separate and apparently unrelated cases, the cases will eventually connect. The question is how they will connect and whether the connection will make sense, or whether it will seem strained as the writer juggles too many coincidences to keep the plot moving. The latter is the case here.

On a more positive note, courtroom scenes are lively and the novel moves at a good pace. Lee Goodman’s prose is stronger than most thriller writers manage. My interest in the story grew as the novel progressed and continued until the last chapters, when a final coincidence -- one that seemed just too contrived -- left me rolling my eyes. Still, while the contrivance has been used before in thrillers, it is given a creative twist in Injustice. On the other hand, the very last scene is too far over-the-top. Despite my reservations, I recommend the novel for its engaging plot.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

In the Distance, and Ahead in Time by George Zebrowski

First published in 2002; published digitally by Open Road Media on May 19, 2015

The need for balance is a theme that dominates this collection. The stories set in the near future emphasize the need to balance progress against its environmental consequences. Stories set in a more distant time emphasize the need to balance imagination and reality.

The stories tend to be cautionary but they generally avoid becoming preachy. To some extent, they use familiar themes of science fiction to address questions of philosophy. Some of the stories feature recurring characters. Others are set in different points of the same unfolding future that provided the setting for the novel Macrolife. An introduction explains where the stories fit into George Zebrowski’s development as a writer.

The collection was first published in 2002. It contains stories written between 1970 and 1996.

Five bleak stories are set in the near future:

“The Water Sculptor” - Two friends, orbiting the Earth in space stations, contemplate the nature of art and the future of mankind.

“Parks of Rest and Sculpture” - A man who is about to make a life among the stars mourns an ecologically devastated Earth that is on the verge of being abandoned by its population.

“Assassins in Air” - In the battle between man and machine (specifically, pollution-generating cars), it isn’t clear who will win.

“The Soft Terrible Music” - In a post-plague world, a man goes to great lengths to conceal a crime, but concealing his feelings of guilt is a more difficult task.

“The Sea of Evening” - When Artificial Intelligence is finally developed, will alien civilizations finally think that mankind merits contact?

Three stories are set in a more distant time:

“Heathen God” - An imprisoned alien explains the creation of humanity and gives a priest a new mission in life. This is probably Zebrowski’s signature short story, having been anthologized as a Nebula-nominee.

“Wayside World” - On a distant Earth colony that has lost the old knowledge, a man wanders from library to library until he is given new knowledge by people who have come to rebuild the colony -- but is the data in their computers the kind of knowledge that will restore a civilization?

“In the Distance, and Ahead in Time” - Colonists are given the chance to leave a world before they have a catastrophic impact upon the development of its native species. The story illustrates two differing philosophies: humans have no right to interfere with the natural development of life on other planets vs. humans have the right to compete with other life forms for supremacy.

The last two are set in the far future:

“Transfigured Mind” - People live long lives, then change and live different lives. They see life as a game and self-consciousness as a painful experience that is best avoided. They choose not to remember the past. An outsider asks whether experiencing a more tangible reality would be more fruitful, but the search for new knowledge does not interest the humans who dwell on Earth.

“Between the Winds” - Set in the same future as “Transfigured Mind,” the remaining inhabitants of an Earth that is coming back to life are living a Matrix-like existence. The story again explores whether it is better to live in virtual reality or actual reality.

“Transfigured Mind” makes a self-conscious effort to be literary. Like “Between the Winds,” it doesn’t hold up as well as the other stories, perhaps because other writers have taken the notion of virtual reality to loftier heights. Still, this is a strong collection by one of the genre’s more philosophical writers.

RECOMMENDED

The Complete Crime Stories by James M. Cain

Published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road on May 26, 2015

James M. Cain wrote in an era when real men slapped women around because that’s what real men did. Of course, it was also an era in which women slapped men who insulted them and who, motivated by profit or jealousy, murdered men while pretending to be their victims. And an era in which middle-aged men proposed to sixteen-year-old girls after being acquainted with them for five minutes -- to be followed, presumably, by a lifetime of slapping each other. At least that’s the world that Cain portrayed in these stories.

Most of the stories are relatively short but one of my favorites is relatively long. “Career in C-Major” deals with a “roughneck” contractor in the depression era and the woes he experiences after marrying a socialite who blames him for ruining her chance to become an opera singer. With the help of another singer, the husband devises a scheme to put his cold-hearted wife in her place. It’s an unusual love story about a man who falls in love -- with himself (or, at least, with his own voice) and with a woman whose identity comes as a surprise. “Career in C-Major” is the most substantial and most interesting story in the volume, but it doesn’t have a thing to do with crime.

Several other entries in this collection of crime stories are not crime stories, which might disappoint readers who want the book to live up to its title. They are nevertheless excellent stories. “Coal Black” is about a miner and a sixteen-year-old girl who get lost in a mine that the miner believes to be haunted (a superstition compounded by the bad luck of finding a female in a mine). Another story of two people thrown together in a dangerous environment, “The Girl in the Storm,” goes in a completely different direction.

“The Birthday Party” is an amusing story about an insecure, boastful boy who is embarrassed by his attempt to deceive a girl. “Mommy’s a Barfly,” one of the best titles in the history of short stories, is about a soldier, his wife, their little girl, and an eventful evening in a bar. “The Taking of Montfaucon” is a war story about a soldier who might have been awarded a medal if he hadn’t gotten lost.

The most compelling crime story (and my other favorite in the collection) is “The Money and the Woman.” A bank officer wonders if he’s been played for a sucker by a teller’s wife, but as the story unfolded, I kept changing my mind about whether the woman was an innocent victim or a con artist. The ending carries a nice surprise and the entire story builds suspense and intrigue.

Most of the other crime stories are also quite good. Without quite forming the intent to do so, a hobo named Lucky kills a railroad detective, then obsesses about all the ways in which he might get caught. “Dead Man” tells how Lucky deals with his sense of guilt. “Brush Fire” tells of a man who saves another man’s life, and then wishes he hadn’t.

Written in the style of a semi-literate narrator and steeped in the vernacular of its time, “The Baby in the Icebox” is a story of ironic justice involving a man who has no luck taming tigers, including his wife. A semi-literate narrator surfaces again in “Pastorale,” the story of a man who feels the need to confess his crime.

A miscommunication caused by a failure to distinguish one accent from another subjects a man to a hotel scam in “Two O’Clock Blonde.” A prison break and the chance to start a new life lead to an ironic ending in “Joy Ride to Glory.” A “Cigarette Girl” needs help with a gambling issue, and of course the guitar player who helps her immediately decides to marry her.

The collection includes three stories that fall below the standard set by the others. “Pay-Off Girl” is an uninspired story about rescuing a woman in trouble and giving her a better life. “The Robbery” is a nothing story about a man who confronts a neighbor he suspects of burglarizing his apartment. Set in Mexico, “Death on the Beach” is sort of a tragic (but not entirely believable) love story that revolves around a little boy who swims too far from shore. Other than those three, however, this is a strong collection that showcases Cain's mastery of the short story.

RECOMMENDED

The Lightning Stones by Jack du Brul

Published by Doubleday on August 11, 2015

Philip Mercer is typical of the modern thriller hero. He has a doctorate, is a former science advisor to the president, has connections all over Washington and the world, and plays action hero in his spare time. Women throw themselves at him and Mercer is so determined to prove he is a “real man” I had the sense that he is hiding some insecurity about his true inclinations. Seriously, does anyone in the current century still feel the need to make fun of “man purses”? In any event, Jack Du Brul gives Mercer more machismo than personality, making him a fairly dull action hero.

Mercer is a geologist who happens to be in a mine shaft that is invaded by a group of commandos who kill a bunch of scientists, including Mercer’s mentor, before making off with a mysterious object. Since they commit this crime in a pitch-black environment, why do they need to “kill all the witnesses”? Only to give Mercer an excuse to get in on the action. Despite a chase involving a front-end loader (a standard prop in thriller movies), Mercer can’t prevent the killers’ escape. Naturally, he swears to get revenge, because that’s what geologists do.

Du Brul’s prose isn’t bad, although it would have been improved by stronger editing. Too many clunky passages and phrases like “harsh and unforgiving land” and “hail of lead” and “a riot of hot lead” and “lead filled the air” get in the way of Du Brul’s storytelling.

Mercer postures himself as the voice of reason on the issue of climate change, all the while belittling anyone who takes the issue seriously. To advance his argument, which amounts to a contention that there’s no need to regard global warming as a problem or to take action in response to it, Mercer sets up strawman arguments and knocks them down. That’s a lot easier and a lot less honest than having characters engage in a serious discussion. Mercer’s oft-repeated claim that scientists are incapable of projecting future trends from historic data made me wonder how he ever managed to serve as a presidential science adviser (unless he served a president who wasn’t interested in science). Nobody claims that predictions of climate change can be made with precision but to say that they can’t be made at all is just foolish.

It’s also a little baffling that Mercer (who isn’t a climate scientist) repeatedly expounds the myth that global warming has inexplicably “paused,” a claim that was debunked by an NOAA study that was recently published in Science. Mercer’s willingness to overlook facts that don’t support his agenda, coupled with his consistent portrayal of environmentalists as “freaks” and terrorists, betrays a political agenda that overshadows the novel’s dramatic content.

I don’t care one way or another about the political opinions expressed by fictional characters (even the fanciful declaration that Herbert Hoover “remains one of the most respected presidents this nation ever produced”), but when a writer feels the need to use fiction to advance a political agenda, it diminishes my interest in the novel. And when an author’s character derides others for using science to “push an agenda” while the author is using a novel to do exactly that, it diminishes my respect for the author -- particularly when the author distorts facts to achieve that end.

To be fair, one or two action scenes generate a fair amount of excitement. When the story wasn’t diverging from the plot to lecture the reader, it held my interest. If there had been more action and less pontification, I might have given this novel a guarded recommendation, although even if Mercer kept his political opinions to himself, I would still be troubled by the fact that he is such a shallow, self-impressed character.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Time Loves a Hero by Allen Steele

First published as Chronospace in 2001; published digitally by Open Road Media on May 19, 2015

Time Loves a Hero was originally published as Chronospace. In the introduction to this edition, Allen Steele explains that Time Loves a Hero was his original title, and that the title change was made by an editor who thought it would attract fans of Oceanspace, his previous novel. Frankly, I think Chronospace is a better title but Steele doesn’t, so there you have it.

One of the pleasures of Time Loves a Hero is that a central character is a lifelong science fiction fan, which gives him a chance to mention stories and authors and magazines that will evoke a sense of nostalgia in readers who are lifelong science fiction fans. Gregory Benford is even a character in the novel, although in a unique way (about which, I will say no more).

The central character, at least in the chapters that take place in 1998, is Zach Murphy, sometimes known as David Murphy. In the chapters that take place 300+ years later, the central characters are time travelers (chrononauts) who are studying the Hindenburg disaster by taking the places of two passengers who died in the explosion. As all devoted sf readers know, the risk of time travel is that history will be changed by seemingly inconsequential actions. The potential creation of a time paradox and the ensuing creation of new or alternative timelines becomes the novel’s focus.

Since Murphy begins the novel as a NASA astrophysicist and is suddenly working as a paranormal researcher, apparently without noticing the transition, it is clear to the reader that something has happened to Murphy's time stream. We learn what happened, at least in broad terms, in the novel’s second half.

The story is engaging and fun, although it takes a left turn at some point in a way that makes the resolution a bit too easy. Actually, things are left unresolved to a large extent, which is the novel’s only real disappointment. Time travel novels are always a little disappointing (unless Connie Willis writes them) because the paradox is difficult to address in a convincingly, but Steele handles it well enough to make Time Loves a Hero one of the better efforts in the time travel branch of science fiction.

RECOMMENDED