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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A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding by Jackie Copleton

First published in Great Britain; published by Penguin Books on December 1, 2015

A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding is a surprisingly affecting story about love, loss, regret, and redemption in Japan before and after World War II. Much of the story takes place in the aftermath of the Nagasaki bombing. Two unconventional love stories (one a forbidden love, the other an arranged marriage) are told in letters and journals from the past. The central character in the present has lost everyone she loved until someone surfaces in her life who may or may not be her lost grandson.

Haunted by the death of her daughter Yuko in Nagasaki, Amaterasu Takahashi does not believe the scarred man who appears at her door is really her grandson Hideo. Amaterasu moved to the United States with her husband in the 1950s. Even before her husband died, Amaterasu lived a deliberately isolated life, refusing to learn English, sheltering herself from the loss of daughter and grandson, wanting no connection to people who were not her own. It is also her way of coping with the guilt that comes from her belief that she could have saved Hideo, and perhaps Yuko.

A key to Amaterasu's sense of guilt is Yuko’s first lover, a physician named Sato who cannot escape the memories of his experiences in China. At different times and for different reasons, Sato is haunted by the loss of Yuko. There is more to Sato’s story, as we learn in the novel’s second half.

Amaterasu decides that she can only understand the present (and the sudden appearance of a man who claims to be Hideo) by breaking her vow never to read Yuko’s diaries. The diaries reveal Yuko’s life to the reader and to Yuko’s mother. Amaterasu knew some of the details, and in fact credits herself for saving Yuko from “the folly of romance.” But reading about Yuko’s life from Yuko’s perspective brings fresh insight and pain as it triggers memories of Amaterasu’s young life.

There is, in fact, a good bit of pain in this novel. Jackie Copleton’s description of pikadon, the bombing of Nagasaki, is intense and painfully sad. Scenes depicting Japanese atrocities visited upon Chinese civilians (particularly the use of living patients for surgical training) are difficult to read. Yuko and her mother both know the pain of impossible romance.

At the same time, the novel is very much a story of rebirth, with regard both to the characters and Nagasaki itself. It is a story of change and forgiveness and making peace with the past, on both an individual and a global level.

In elegant prose, A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding tells a dramatic story of loss that occasionally borders upon, but never descends into, melodrama. Each chapter begins with a definition/explanation of a Japanese word that is important to Japanese culture. Many of those concepts illuminate not just the story of Japan, but the stories of Amaterasu and Yuko. It is a fitting device that helps the reader better understand the characters and the culture into which they were born.

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The Steel Kiss by Jeffery Deaver

Published by Grand Central Publishing on March 8, 2016

I’m happy to report that Jeffery Deaver has returned to form with The Steel Kiss. Or maybe I just like Lincoln Rhyme more than Kathryn Dance, the lead character in Deaver’s last (and thoroughly forgettable) novel.

Without the assistance of Lincoln Rhyme, who is teaching forensic science in lieu of employment with NYPD, Amelia Sachs is trying to catch a suspect who killed someone with a ball peen hammer. The villain is, of course, a serial killer. He resorts to hammers only of necessity. His weapon of choice is a controller that operates “smart” products -- ovens, microwaves, and any other product that can be told what to do via an internet connection. His targets appear to be conspicuous consumers, although the reader (like Rhyme) is challenged to identify the rationale that underlies his choice of victims. His manner of killing is inventive, as is his personality, which makes him one of the more imaginative villains Deaver has concocted.

As usual, Sachs plays a central role in the novel, and the return of her ex-con ex-boyfriend, who may or may not be innocent, adds some zest to the story. A young woman in a wheelchair is turning her attention to forensic evidence, giving Rhyme a new friend, but is she in competition with Sachs? Other familiar characters round out the cast, including Lon Sellitto and Mel Cooper.

I appreciate Rhyme’s stand-offish personality, which seems natural for a character with his intellectual gifts. It’s certainly a refreshing change from the self-aggrandizing chatter of other fictional forensic experts, who can’t stop trying to gain the reader’s approval with constant reminders that they care so much more about crime victims than anyone else in the world possibly could. Rhyme cares about evidence and where the evidence leads him, which is exactly how a forensic scientist should be, even if it makes him seem callous. Sympathy impairs objectivity, which is why so many fictional forensic examiners strike the wrong note.

Like most thrillers, some parts of the novel are hard to believe. When Sachs rushes into a burning building to save evidence -- not knowing what the evidence might be or how she will recognize it -- I had my doubts about the story’s credibility. But it’s a good scene, which made it easy to suspend my disbelief.

Some plot twists and surprises await the reader near the end of the novel. One of the surprises is a bit of a cheat -- Rhyme knows facts that Deaver conceals from the reader -- but I’m giving Deaver a pass for that. Other parts of the novel also use misdirection, but the facts concealed from the reader are unknown to the investigators, so that didn’t strike me as cheating. A final surprise at the end isn’t very convincing at all, but I suppose it was necessary to set up the next novel.

The subplot involving Sachs’ ex-boyfriend is a bit forced. A subplot that relates to Rhyme’s decision to resign from NYPD is more interesting. On the whole, The Steel Kiss is a solid entry in the Lincoln Rhyme series and a welcome return to form for Deaver.

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The Hunt for Vulcan by Thomas Levenson

Published by Random House on November 3, 2015

Despite the title, The Hunt for Vulcan is not about the search for Mr. Spock’s home planet. It is, as Thomas Levenson explains, “a cautionary tale: it’s so damn easy to see what one wants or expects to find.” That is just as true for scientists as it is for everyone else.

Vulcan is the name given to a planet that never existed. Levenson traces its origin to theories of celestial motion that Robert Halley and Isaac Newton rather stunningly worked out using, I suppose, quill pens and infant telescopes. After praising Newton and Halley, Levenson tells of subsequent scientists who took up Newton’s quest to construct a mathematical model that would account for the behavior of every object in the universe. Newly discovered objects (Uranus and its wobbly orbit) as well as newly discovered phenomena (Jupiter apparently speeding up in its orbit, Saturn apparently slowing down) inspired refinements of Newton’s model of gravitation. Not all of them were accurate, but Uranus’ wobble led to the discovery of Neptune.

The next scientist who receives extended discussion is tobacco engineer-turned-astronomer Le Verrier. Having predicted Nepture’s discovery in order to account for Uranus’ wobble, Le Verrier concluded that another celestial body would account for Mercury’s precession. That “planet” came to be known as Vulcan. Its existence was widely accepted not only because Le Verrier endorsed it, but because a credible amateur astronomer believed he observed it.

Scientists bent over backwards to believe that Vulcan existed because, without it, something seemed to be amiss in Newton’s theory of gravity. Rather than committing an act of scientific heresy by suggesting that Newton was wrong, scientists embraced Vulcan, and even calculated its orbit, despite the troubling absence of Vulcan from the visible sky. Leave it to Albert Einstein to pop their Newtonian bubble and explain Mercury’s wobble in a way that did not rely on a fictitious planet.

The story of Vulcan is the story of how (some) scientists invent facts to fit observed phenomena into accepted theories to which they steadfastly cling. As Levenson notes, an empirical fact that “refuses to conform to the demands of a theory invalidates that theory, and requires the construction of a new one.” Yet scientists have often found it easier to construct new facts than to abandoned cherished theories -- hence the construction of Vulcan, a planet or group of asteroids (perhaps concealed by the sun’s glare) that must exist if scientists were to keep faith with Newton.

The book is also a tribute to great minds and, by extension, to open minds that are willing to search for new theories when flaws in the old ones become apparent. Yet despite Levenson’s veneration of great minds, he reveals great character flaws (most notably, great egos) that bedevil the best and the brightest ... with the possible exception of Einstein, who seems like a genuinely nice guy. In addition to setting the time and place in each chapter, Levenson scatters interesting biographical facts about the scientists who advanced the understanding of celestial mechanics. (Edison’s contribution to the story consists primarily of shooting a stuffed jackrabbit on a hunting trip.) Perhaps the book strays too far off course when, near the end, it discusses the politics of scientists in World War I, but a little padding is a forgivable sin in a book this short.

When scientists are the intended audience of science writers, I can’t keep up with jargon and math. When a book is so dumbed down that it assumes all nonscientists dropped out of school after seventh grade, I get bored and/or irritated. It always pleases me to find a science writer who uses engaging prose that allows me to grasp (albeit incompletely) concepts about which I know little. Levenson is one of those writers. He writes with passion about the tense joy of observing an eclipse. He is equally passionate about the history of science. That passion, combined with his clarity of expression, makes The Hunt for Vulcan a valuable read for those of us who don’t have degrees in physics. It is even more valuable as a reminder that ideas, once proven wrong, need to be replaced with better ideas.

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