The Dead Lands by Benjamin Percy

Published by Grand Central Publishing on April 14, 2015

In style and content, The Dead Lands strikes me as something Robert Jackson Bennett might have written. It is a mixture of science fiction and fantasy and steampunk and horror. It combines action and philosophy. It gives attention to character development without sacrificing plot. The prose reaches a level that is a notch or two above typical genre fiction. While the novel is not quite up to Bennett's level, it is considerably better than most of the abysmal writing that characterizes the current craze of post-apocalyptic fiction.

The world has changed since a pandemic combined with nuclear meltdowns to wipe out pretty much everyone before producing mutated species. The Mississippi riverbed is dry. Spiders and bats are even creepier than they used to be. The last human survivors (or so they believe) live in the Sanctuary, formerly known as St. Louis. It is an ordered society, with laws and farms and hospitals. Ordered but despotic; the mayor has made it a capital offense to criticize the mayor. Outside the walls, in the Dead Lands, there are only nightmares. Simon, a young thief who lives in the streets, watches as his father is marched beyond the walls and chained to a stone altar. Simon knows how to leave the walls but he is too late to save his father from the creatures that live in the woods.

In addition to Simon, the residents of the Sanctuary we meet include Lewis Meriwether, a cranky old guy who curates a museum and keeps track of other people's business with his mechanical owl. Mina Clark is among the few residents who thinks it would be better to die free, beyond the walls, than to die in service of the Sanctuary (although voicing that opinion would be to invite chaining to the altar). Her half-brother York is a juggler. When a little girl named Gawea rides up to the gate on a horse, the residents of Sanctuary know they are not alone.

Mysteriously, Gawea is bearing a letter for Lewis, telling him that he is not the only gifted person in the world. His gift is a form of telekinesis. Gawea's power has something to do with the birds and the bees, but not in a romantic sense. Anyway, Lewis and Clark go on a journey across America, chased by a man named Colter, heading toward a man named Aran Burr. Lewis leaves behind a teenage girl named Ella, charging her with taking care of the museum, one of many subversive tasks she undertakes with Simon's help.

Stories within stories unfold as Lewis and Clark make their journey -- their own stories, those of people they meet, and those of the people left behind in Sanctuary. Stories of adventure, enslavement, and survival. Humans are capable of wonderful things, Lewis opines, but more often they excel at ruin. The reader encounters plenty of that in The Dead Lands. Still, the story conveys a message of hope.

The underlying basis for all of this (the pandemic and the effects of untended nuclear plants) is explained only in a cursory fashion, which might be the novel's biggest fault. The cause of the apocalypse and the mutations are not very convincing, but that's common in post-apocalyptic fiction. At least, to my great relief, there are no zombies in this world.

The novel is self-contained but revelations at the end imply that further adventures are forthcoming. I suspect they will be worth reading. The Dead Lands will probably be too slow for readers addicted to zombie fiction, but readers who appreciate literary value should give it a try.

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Housebreaking by Dan Pope

Published by Simon & Schuster on May 12, 2015

A troubled marriage, a rebellious child, extramarital sex, a workplace fling. All of those are ingredients of a standard domestic drama, but Housebreaking is more inventive than the norm. It spins off in directions I did not anticipate. The title has a couple of distinct meanings but the book is largely about a family that, while intact, is clearly broken.

The story introduces Andrew and Audrey Martin-Murray as they are house shopping in Wintonbury, a Hartford suburb. While Andrew can't understand how their family of three could possibly live in a 2,000 square foot home, Audrey is charmed by a dilapidated old house that has yet to be torn down in a neighborhood of McMansions. She is less charmed by a husband who is rarely home and with whom she has little in common. Her daughter Emily might be even harder to deal with than her husband. Their ways of coping with the loss of Emily's brother (a death that precedes the opening of the novel) are quite different.

Down the street, Benjamin Mandelbaum is, at the age of 44, back in the house where he grew up, having moved in with Leonard, his father, after separating from his wife in their 24th year of marriage. Benjamin, who spends most of his time trying to figure out what he wants, is linked to Audrey by the high school crush he once had on her.

The first section of the novel focuses on the Mandelbaums. The rest of the story provides an x-ray view of the interiors of Audrey, Andrew, and Emily. Each section of the novel reveals certain pivotal moments from the perspective of each family member. There is little overlap, however, since each character has his or her own story -- stories that are vastly different, reflecting lives lived apart from the family unit. Each family member has an ugly secret and each lives in fear that the other family members will discover that secret. They all have reason to feel guilty but they are all too self-absorbed to notice the guilty feelings that the other family members manifest. This is ultimately a story about family members who create tragedy by never being there for each other.

I love the life that Dan Pope breathes into his characters. The genius of this novel is its ability to create sympathy for badly behaving characters who aren't at all sympathetic. Small sections of the novel (primarily Emily's conversations with her dead brother) seem obvious and manipulative compared to the rest and I was disappointed that more was not made of Benjamin's father, given his early prominence. The story leaves much unresolved, but life is always unresolved until we die, so -- despite my curiosity about the outcome of Andrew's life -- the story's unfinished nature did not trouble me greatly.

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Archie in the Crosshairs by Robert Goldsborough

Published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Media on March 10, 2015

Archie in the Crosshairs is a Nero Wolfe novel. Someone is threatening to kill Archie (and even fired an errant shot in his direction) which puts a crimp in Archie's nightlife. More bullets are fired at Archie when he isn't busy flirting with every attractive female who enters the story. Meanwhile, Nero Wolfe takes on the case of a young woman who is being blackmailed over a dalliance she had during a trip to Florence -- one she would prefer to keep a secret from her fiancé and family.

Of course, Nero's job is to do the thinking, puzzling out the mystery of Archie's assailant and a couple of murders that occur during the course of the novel while unmasking the blackmailer. Archie does the legwork, interviews the woman's family members and a friend, then reports his findings to Wolfe, who (in classic detective fashion) calls for everyone to be assembled at his home so he can reveal the answer to the mystery. The time he spends dealing with those issues only mildly intrudes upon his orchid tending, gourmet dining, and beer guzzling, but any intrusion on those life-pursuits makes Nero unhappy.

I liked the complex entwined mysteries (some characters aptly call the blackmail plot convoluted). The novel is a worthy emulation of Rex Stout. That's both good and bad. The formality of the characters' dialog and what passes for banter strikes me as artificial (as it did in the Rex Stout books), even given the era in which the novel is set. All of the minor characters make their routine appearances and play their routine parts in ways that seem formulaic. Still, the story is good, even if it doesn't hit the heights of the best Rex Stout novels.

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Hand Drawn Jokes for Smart Attractive People by Matthew Diffee

Published by Scribner on May 26, 2015

Matthew Diffey's cartoons are regularly published in the New Yorker. Hand Drawn Jokes for Smart Attractive People might be described as a book of cartoons mixed with stand-up comedy. In fact, Diffey tells us that in terms of stand-up comedy, he is just like Chris Rock, except that Rock owns a mansion and Diffy owns some really nice pencils.

Narrative comedy introduces each chapter. The chapters collect (mostly) single-panel cartoons that will appeal to smart, attractive people (like you). Each chapter addresses a particular category of people: doctors, lumberjacks, pet owners, people in relationships, old people, people with tattoos, etc. Diffey sometimes mixes in multiple-panel cartoons and occasionally graces the bottom of a page with a sketch of someone delivering a one-liner.

My favorite cartoon: a seedy looking guy says to a florist "I want some flowers that say, `Here, have some friggin' flowers'." First runner up: a doorman says to a hooker, "And will he know what this is regarding?" Other highlights include an interview with a pretentious potato chip critic and a two page guide that will help you identify the religion that is best for you. But really, there are too many outstanding cartoons and jokes in this book to make it easy to single out any part of it. It's all pretty funny.

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Radiant Angel by Nelson DeMille

Published by Grand Central Publishing on May 26, 2015

Colonel Vasily Petrov of the SVR receives a coded message instructing him to carry out his mission. John Corey, now working as a federal contract agent with the Diplomatic Surveillance Group, is assigned to watch Petrov. Corey and the DSG know Petrov is with the SVR but they don't know what nefarious purpose has caused him to masquerade as a diplomat. Corey is conducting surveillance with Tess, who claims to be a trainee with aspirations of joining the FBI. Corey isn't quite certain that her claim is truthful. He also has trust issues concerning his wife, which turns into a minor subplot as the story nears its conclusion.

Corey has an irreverent attitude that makes him a fun character. He holds some grudges against the CIA over a nasty incident in Yemen. He has more than a few grudges against Islamic terrorists but he's convinced that Russia continues to pose a greater security threat (an opinion that doesn't sit well with the State Department, politicians, or most of the intelligence community). Of course, following the universal law of thriller fiction, Corey is right and everyone else is wrong.

The first third of Radiant Angel, setting up the puzzle of what Petrov might be up to, is quite good. The next section, in which the focus shifts to Petrov, some Russian thugs, and a horde of hookers, is standard thriller fare. It moves quickly but the Russians are fairly dull and they're up to the same brand of mischief that has characterized Russian thriller villains for the last half century. The final third brings Corey and Tess back into the picture and the fun resumes.

Nelson DeMille kicked the rust off of a reliable formula and put it back in action, creating an unimaginative story that nevertheless conveys a sense of realism. DeMille has an undeniable gift for generating excitement, but Radiant Angel feels like a story I have read many times before. I give it high marks for "fun factor" but a low score for originality.

DeMille writes with a good deal of wit. Dialog is particularly enjoyable. Corey is an easy character to like. Those factors and the novel's excitement are all good reasons to enjoy the story, which I did. Still, Radiant Angel's staleness and its predictable ending prevent me from placing it on the top shelf of thriller fiction.

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