Green Hell by Ken Bruen

Published by Mysterious Press on July 7, 2015

I'm a fan of Ken Bruen's no-frills writing style, with its frequent references to pop culture, its creative use of foul language, and its striking visual arrangement of words on the page. Some pages consist of quotations from excellent crime novels and American television shows, broken into lines that reveal their poetry. Bruen takes on critics who complain that his books are for "people who don't read" by having a bartender opine, "How [censored] insulting is that to readers?"

Bruen knows that good writing can be found in movies and television shows and popular crime novels, not just in Nobel Prize winning fiction. Bruen's own crime fiction is a prime example. Descriptions of people and places are vivid, pointed, and mercifully short. Dialog is snappy. (My favorite snatch of dialog in Green Hell is this:

"I have a Kindle."
"And may God forgive you.")

The bartender suggests that the pop culture references "ground the story in stuff I know" but there's really no need for Bruen to defend himself. The quotations and lists are necessary amusements. They balance the pervasive darkness to which his characters are exposed, the unfairness that they were born to endure.

In Green Hell, an American named Boru Kennedy puts aside his dissertation on Beckett to write about Jack Taylor, the man who saved him from young thugs who were about to "kick the [censored] be-Jaysus out of this bollix." Taylor is well known to Bruen's fans as the former Guard who tries to steer his way through a crime-filled Galway that he typically perceives through an alcoholic and pill induced haze. Kennedy, fascinated with Taylor's combination of roguish charm and full throttle violence, decides to interview the people who know Taylor best, none of whom hold him in high regard. A former colleague who describes Taylor as "a spit in the Face" once thought that the light shone stronger in Taylor than the darkness. That person now thinks that Taylor has embraced the ugliness and brutality of life. Others are less kind.

Part I, which covers more than the first half of Green Hell, is Boru's take on Jack. In Part II ("Jack's Back"), Jack is again the narrative voice. But since the voice is always Bruen's, the change is one of perspective rather than style. Taylor's perspective is bleak. That the story takes place at Christmas only contributes to Taylor's grim mood. Part II also introduces a character who is even more messed up than is normal for the series. I suspect she will resurface in later installments.

Apart from its biographical content -- the latest installment in the story of Jack -- a plot occasionally surfaces, having to do with a woman Boru starts dating and an academic who physically abuses his female students. The plot takes a sharp turn and finally comes into focus in Part II. It soon becomes clear why the story's perspective has changed.

Green Hell didn't pick me up and throw me down a flight of stairs like some of Bruen's novels, although it delivered Bruen's characteristic knockout punch at the end. This is a worthy installment in Jack Taylor's life. The greatest joy in reading these novels lies in knowing (knock on wood) that my life will never be as bad as Jack's.

RECOMMENDED

The Truth and Other Lies by Sascha Arango

Published in Germany in 2014; published in translation by Atria Books on June 23, 2015

Henry Hayden engages in "sporadic acts of goodness" that he regards "as mere interruptions to human wickedness, and that inescapably lead to punishment." He is driven to destroy the things he loves, but only those things, and not entirely without regret. His complexity is the best thing about The Truth and Other Lies.

For the first quarter of the novel, I wasn't sure what kind of story I was reading. Then, in a pivotal and quite unexpected scene, it became clear why this is billed as a crime novel. The crime initially seems to be one of impulse but also one of mistake -- a crime gone wrong. Later, with about a quarter of the novel remaining, the story's true nature comes into focus. The Truth and Other Lies is less a crime novel and more a slow unveiling of a criminal.

But what kind of criminal is Henry? Known to the world as a bestselling author, Henry has been having a longstanding affair with Betty, his editor. Henry has kept the affair a secret from his wife, Martha, although Betty's pregnancy is making secrecy a problem. Henry has also kept a secret from Betty that is known only to Martha. Henry's trouble's mount as the story progresses but Henry tends to shape his own fate, so it isn't surprising that (as he observes late in the novel) fate is inevitably kind to him.

Henry has a secretive past in which he made an enemy, although Henry is oblivious to the enemy's existence for most of the novel. That character, like others in The Truth and Other Lies, is dangled before the reader in a tantalizing tease, then disappears as the story's focus returns to Henry. Seemingly forgotten characters return at key moments as the plot follows its carefully charted course. The mystery of Henry's past begins to play a critical role about midway through the story.

While The Truth and Other Lies is an engaging crime story, it is also a well-crafted psychological portrait of a self-centered man who suffers from a lack of empathy. Is he a psychopath or merely an opportunist? Does he have no conscience or does he simply lack impulse control? Is he detached from reality? What forces have shaped him? The police detective who hunts Henry wants to learn the truth about him but that, according to Henry, is the detective's fundamental mistake. "There's no truth in me," Henry says. "The truth has been eaten up by the fish, the truth has been burnt up in the furnace, the truth is ashes."

It is just as difficult for the reader to know Henry as it is for the detective. That isn't surprising because Henry has concealed his true self from everyone, just as Sascha Arango hides it from the reader. "We have to love Henry without knowing him" laments one of the women in Henry's life. No reader will love Henry but his complexity makes him a fascinating protagonist.

The story is good, if less interesting than Henry. It generates suspense but this isn't "edge of my seat" reading. Arango's prose is fluid, the ending is clever, and the entire novel is infused with dark wry wit.

RECOMMENDED

Snow Wolf by Glenn Meade

First published in 1995; published in trade paperback by Howard Books (Simon & Shuster) on May 19, 2015

Jakob Massey died in 1953 while working for the CIA. His son William was told that Jakob committed suicide. Decades later, William finds hidden documents referring to an operation called Snow Wolf that cast doubt on the date, place, and circumstances of his father's death. William travels to Russia in the hope of learning the truth. He hears the story from Anna Khorev, a woman who blamed Stalin for her father's execution, her mother's suicide, and the ugly turns her life took as she entered adulthood.

Without giving anything away, I can safely say that Snow Wolf incorporates the ingredients of a fast-moving thriller. A fellow named Alex Slanski (a former OSS assassin who used the code name Wolf) is dropped into Russia by parachute. He has a mission. Anna goes along as his cover but is not told the details of his mission. Of course, half the Russian army chases Slanski and Anna through Estonia and Russia as they try to evade capture and carry out their mission. Those scenes are all fast-moving and credible.

A key player in the novel's second half is a KGB major named Lukin, personally charged by Lavrentiy Beria with finding Slanski and Anna. Lukin is a surprisingly admirable character, given the nature of his employment. Beria keeps a secret from Lukin that Lukin and reader discover late in the story. Another plot twist involves a decision by President Eisenhower to abort Slanski's mission after it is already underway. That decision sends Jakob Massey to Russia.

Snow Wolf is all about plot. The characterizations are nothing special. The writing is surprisingly tight given the novel's length. Although we learn the ultimate fates of Massey and Anna (as well as the mission's outcome) in the novel's early pages, Snow Wolf manages to generate a satisfying amount of suspense. Most of the intrigue involves Slanski and Lukin as they work toward their respective goals.

Some aspects of the story are not entirely convincing but I found it easy to suspend disbelief for the sake of enjoying a good story. The novel's core surprises are plausible and its internal logic is consistent. The ending -- Slanski's completion of his mission -- is a bit too easy, which is the novel's greatest weakness. This is nevertheless a strong, fast-moving thriller.

RECOMMENDED

Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds

Published by Tachyon Publications on June 9, 2015

After a capture, an escape, and a blackout, Scurelya Shunde finds herself on a transport ship that is adrift in space. Shunde is a soldier. Others who have been cocooned in the ship are fellow soldiers, enemy soldiers, war criminals, civilians, and crew. Now they have awakened to a reality they do not quite understand.

The ship has apparently been adrift for a long time. For reasons that the ship's occupants do not immediately understand, the world they are orbiting, once thriving, is now empty. Nor do any beacons respond. They appear to be alone. Worse, the ship's memory is decaying. In a thousand days, all of human history will be lost.

What should they do?

A couple of other plot threads develop the story. One involves an intruder who boarded the ship before its occupants woke up. The other involves a war criminal who tortured Shunde with a slow bullet before she escaped. Soldiers carry a more benign slow bullet in their bodies that contain their service record and other biographical information.

Alastair Reynolds addresses a number of interesting ideas in this story. One has to do with how information should be preserved when much of the accumulated knowledge of mankind is about to be lost. Another has to do with the value of redemption, or even the possibility of redemption, as an alternative to punishment. Lesser themes concern the nature of individual identity and what should be done about religious conflict in a confined society.

Slow Bullets will probably disappoint fans who want everything a favorite author writes to be just like their favorite novels by that author. Fans sometimes have little patience for writers who stretch, explore, or depart from their own formulas. This isn't a Revelation Space novel -- it isn't even a novel, but a novella length story. It isn't action-filled. If you approach Slow Bullets with an open mind, however, those are not sensible reasons to dislike the work. While the characters in Slow Bullets do not the depth that a longer story would permit, the ideas are intriguing and the length of the story is perfect for the development of those ideas.

RECOMMENDED

Invasion of Privacy by Christopher Reich

Published by Doubleday on June 16, 2015

Invasion of Privacy is an old-fashioned conspiracy thriller that is updated with modern technology. In the past, the bad guys had to break into the good guy's home to manually erase answering machine messages or steal compromising photographs. These days, they remotely erase text messages and photographs from smart phones.

Joe Grant is an FBI agent who specializes in electronic surveillance. He is in Austin, working on Operation Semaphore, which has something to do with a wealthy and somewhat batty CEO named Ian Prince and a supercomputer called Titan. As the operation goes sideways during a meeting with an informant, Joe manages to call his wife, Mary, and leaves her a message that the FBI would prefer she didn't have. Why he leaves a cryptic voicemail for Mary instead of, for example, calling someone with a gun who might be able to help him is something I never quite understood.

When the message disappears from her phone, Mary understands that she can't trust the FBI. She is one of two individuals who want to get past the FBI's cover-up. The other is a drunken ex-journalist named Tank. The drunk who manages to pull himself together long enough to do battle against the forces of evil is a stock character in Thrillerworld. Tank is likable but far from unique.

Every family in Thrillerworld has a kid who happens to a superhacker. Mary's daughter Jessie fills that role in Invasion of Privacy. She is such a trite addition to the story that she's really a subtraction from it. Her contribution (apart from teenage angst) consists of jetting off to a hacker's convention to engage in activities that are both predictable and impossible to believe.

Too much of Invasion of Privacy has the familiarity of a thriller written on autopilot. Christopher Reich made his reputation as an author of complex financial thrillers, but Invasion of Privacy only gives a passing nod to the world of finance while focusing on chase scenes, high-tech surveillance, stereotypical hackers, and more chase scenes.

In addition, too much of Invasion of Privacy is contrived. The cryptic message Joe leaves for Mary is so cryptic that he could not possibly have expected Mary to figure it out -- except she does because otherwise, the plot would grind to a halt. No FBI agent would take valuable evidence of a criminal investigation home and leave it in a "gadget box" but Joe does because if he didn't, the plot would grind to a halt.

Here's what's really shocking: I enjoyed reading Invasion of Privacy even while I was rolling my eyes. The ending is something of an anti-climax but it's reasonably satisfying. The story moves quickly which, given its lack of depth or complexity, is a good thing. The characters are shallow but likable. Invasion of Privacy is an undemanding, predictable novel but it's fun. Still, I expected more from Reich.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS