Ryder: American Treasure by Nick Pengelley

Published by Alibi on January 20, 2015

At the conclusion of the first novel in this series, Israel signed a previously unknown peace treaty negotiated by Lawrence of Arabia, causing the formation of a new state called The Holy Land that combines Israel with Palestine. One of the plot threads in the second Ryder novel, American Treasure, follows a conspiracy to undo the peace.

The primary plot thread sends our archeologist heroine, Ayesha Ryder, on another journey to uncover the past. An American presidential candidate wants Ayesha to recover artifacts that the British stole from Washington during the War of 1812. Her search might lead to the discovery of a letter hidden by James Madison. The plot requires the reader to believe that Madison's letter would affect the outcome of the election (his ancestor is also running for president) when any reasonably astute politician understands that most voters don't care about anything that happened more than five years ago. The risks that Madison's ancestor takes to suppress the letter far outweigh the benefit of keeping it hidden.

Meanwhile, America's Secretary of State is engaging in some between the sheets diplomacy with the British Prime Minister, unaware that the CIA is following her. The soft core descriptions of the two women in bed fail to enliven a subplot that is just silly. The PM, in fact, would like to get it on with Ayesha, but Ayesha is "at the mercy of her desires," which involve a journalist who triggers her lust. All of the sex in this novel is pretty cheesy and a serious distraction from a plot that is slow to develop.

Eventually Ryder is framed for a crime and accused of terrorism (in reality, she is a reformed terrorist), notwithstanding the adoration she receives from royalty, politicians, academics, and lusty journalists. The rest of the story involves Ryder's effort to clear her name while pursuing the stolen artifacts, the missing letter, and the Ark of the Covenant.

As in the first novel, Ryder solves improbable riddle-like clues too easily. The reason for the chain of clues is never quite clear. Perhaps the person who left them, peering into the future, wanted to give Ryder something to think about other than sex. Actions scenes are fairly standard for a thriller. Ryder, of course, can quickly dispatch two or three attackers at a time. The various attacks and death traps from which she escapes are also too easy. The story just doesn't generate the suspense for which it strives.

The first novel was over-the-top but fun. The plot in this novel is also over-the-top but the behavior of the characters is way over-the-top to the point of silliness. The coincidence that drives the ending is preposterous. The novel is still fun but the first novel convinced me to suspend my disbelief. This one never did.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Rekjavik Nights by Arnaldur Indriðason

Published in Iceland in 2012; published in translation by Minotaur Books on April 21, 2015

Arnaldur Indriðason wrote a series of novels about Iceland's Inspector Erlendur. Not all of them have been translated into English. He began the series in 1997 and concluded it in 2010, but reprised the character in a new series that focuses on the young Erlendur, before he became an inspector. Rekjavik Nights is the second in the new series.

Kids discover a dead body in a pond. Hannibal, a homeless alcoholic, apparently drowned by accident, but the pond is so shallow that an accidental drowning is vaguely suspicious. A year later, the Reykjavik police have discovered no evidence of wrongdoing, not that they are giving a high priority to a vagrant's death. Erlendur, who encountered Hannibal on his beat from time to time, is troubled by the death, having brushed off Hannibal's complaint that someone tried to set fire to the cellar in which he had been staying.

As a junior traffic officer, Erlendur spends most of his time with domestic disturbances, bar fights, drunk drivers, and traffic accidents. He is not yet a detective but, due to a family tragedy, he has a special interest in cases involving missing persons. Having little else to do (life in Reykjavik seems boring, or maybe it's just Erlendur), he begins to investigate Hannibal's death. Eventually he stumbles upon a tenuous link between Hannibal and a missing woman.

Erlendur is in a relationship of sorts, and it may be time to move it to the next level, or not. That bit of domestic drama adds little to a decidedly undramatic plot. There's no suspense here and the mystery is no better than average. We are given a choice of three of four suspects, misdirection is employed, and the killer is revealed. The reveal is not much of a surprise.

The story moves quickly and Indriðason's translated prose is serviceable, but the characters and plot are just a little dull. Indridason doesn't bring Reykjavik or the characters alive. Fans of the original series might be happy to see the character in his younger days. I am new to Erlendur and would not, on the strength of this novel, go out of my way to read another, but the original series might well be better.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Justice Done by Jan Burke

Published digitally by Pocket Star on September 15, 2014

Justice Done is the fifth of six short collections of Jan Burke's crime stories. Although the collection is uneven, the stories are representative of Burke's unusual and engaging approach to crime fiction.

Boniface "Bunny" Slye, a shell-shocked veteran of the First World War, stars in "The Quarry," a murder mystery narrated by his friend Dr. Max Tyndale. They are sort of a Holmes/Watson duo who are featured in other stories by Burke. The story is reasonably entertaining although it goes on a bit too long.

A party on the Queen Mary provides the setting for "Miscalculation." A nerdy girl named Sarah confronts the mystery of a death that occurred two generations earlier, when the Queen Mary was used as a troop carrier during World War II. The story is unconvincing and its ending is disappointingly uneventful.

"Two Bits" is a quiet story of a boy who was kidnapped while his brother roamed through a store in a strange town with the shiny new quarter the kidnappers gave him. Not a conventional crime story, "Two Bits" is an affecting examination of the crime's impact on the brother who was duped.

Written from the perspective of a man living in horse-and-carriage days, "An Unsuspected Condition of the Heart" tells of a man who married for money, whose in-laws openly plot each other's murders, and whose new wife finds herself in an unhappy situation. The story fits within the book's title and reveals the charm with which Burke often writes.

RECOMMENDED

Whispering Shadows by Jan-Philipp Sendker

First published in German in 2007; published in translation by Atria on April 14, 2015

I liked The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, although I had reservations about the novel's late stages. Readers who loved that 2002  novel will probably like Jan-Philipp Sendker's 2007 novel less. While both books explore the intersection of the East and West, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats is fundamentally a love story. Whispering Shadows is more a novel of international intrigue, although a love story lurks within its pages. I think Whispering Shadows is a superior novel, but readers looking for another Art of Hearing Heartbeats might be disappointed.

Paul Leibovitz is the son of a Jewish father and a German mother, but only in Asia does he feel at home. The death of his son in Hong Kong turns Paul into a hermit. Three years after that death, Paul, now divorced, has an ambiguous interest in a woman named Christine but he resists the notion of having a girlfriend or, for that matter, a life. He prefers to brood for fear that moving on will cause him to lose his memories of his son.

On a rare trip from his home on Lamma Island to the island of Hong Kong, Paul meets Elizabeth Owen. Paul has little interest in her problems but when she tells him that her adult son has disappeared in China, he agrees to contact a friend named Zhang in the Shenzhen police who might be able to help. Christine, who has a deep distrust of Chinese officials based on a family tragedy, urges Paul not to become involved. The discovery of a violent death in Shenzhen sucks Paul into a quagmire. He doesn't want to get involved, but destiny or karma intercedes when Zhang asks for his help ... or perhaps Paul realizes that the time has come to start making choices.

Eventually the novel shifts to the perspectives of other characters. One is Victor Tang, a Chinese entrepreneur who has benefitted from the intersection of criminality and capitalism. Another is Richard Owen, who objected on grounds of patriotism to his son's plan to close the family's manufacturing plant in Wisconsin in favor of manufacturing in China. The final primary character is Zhang. He is a familiar character in fiction, the honest cop who opposes corruption, although as a Buddhist in China he doesn't fit the "cop novel" stereotype.

All of the characters are realistic, in part because their behavior is often less than ideal. To a degree, they are all selfish and self-absorbed. For good reason, Zhang is fearful to the point of paralysis. Having rejected the childhood lies his country told him about the benefits of shared sacrifice, Tang craves power. Richard is jealous of his son. Christine is controlling while Paul has walled himself off from emotion and human contact. They are all wrestling with their pasts and, in the case of the Chinese characters, with the impact of Mao's China on their pasts. Part of the novel's intrigue comes from wondering whether the characters will overcome those issues.

America's progression from Buy American to Fire Americans, and the notion that the American Dream is now (in altered form) the Chinese Dream, are among the novel's most interesting themes. Another important theme is the inability of people who grow up in a free nation to understand how oppression and the hunger for freedom shapes behavior. Still another is whether truth exists as an objective fact or whether truth is what people with power decide it should be. The cousin of truth is trust. Can we trust those who conceal the truth? Does the answer depend on the reason for hiding the truth? Finally, the novel explores the theme of bravery. Doing the right in the face of risk is an act of bravery, but is it also an act of stupidity if it will destroy your life without preventing evil from being done?

As he did in The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, Jan-Philipp Sendker writes of passion with honesty and intensity, from physical and emotional perspectives. He gives key characters a variety of interesting conflicts. Whispering Shadows fails to generate much suspense and the plot did not grab me on an emotional level, but the interaction of the characters creates dramatic tension. The story moves forward at a comfortable pace and reaches a satisfying conclusion.

RECOMMENDED

Losing Faith by Adam Mitzner

Published by Gallery Books on April 14, 2015

Aaron Littman heads a high powered New York law firm. He is surprised when he is asked to take on the criminal defense of Nicolai Garkov, who is charged with securities and bank fraud and suspected of terrorism. Garkov's trial, just a month away, has been reassigned to Judge Faith Nichols. Neither Littman nor Nichols want anything to do with Garkov's case, but Garkov knows how to get what he wants. Littman finds himself with a Hobson's choice: refuse Garkov and lose his career or do Garkov's bidding and risk losing much more.

What begins as a simple blackmail story takes an ominous turn about a third of the way through the novel and an even sharper turn at the midway point. Losing Faith addresses a murder accusation, the usual focus of courtroom dramas, and challenges the reader to guess who committed the murder. It does those things quite well.

Losing Faith paints a bleak but accurate picture of life for lawyers in large corporate firms ... if you can call it a life. Adam Mitzner is spot on about the willingness (indeed, eagerness) of large corporate law firms to put profits ahead of principles. The novel's political dynamics (Faith has a shot at a Supreme Court nomination but only if Garkov is convicted and sentenced to the max) reflect a jaded view, but it is also a realistic view of how the career path of a judge is influenced by politics and grandstanding more than the judge's fidelity to the law.

The novel also offers bleak but accurate insights into how the criminal justice system railroads innocent people. It includes a fair amount of the "inside baseball" that makes a courtroom drama credible, all of it presented from a knowledgeable perspective. It accurately depicts how prosecutors can use the immense power of the government to coerce witnesses into giving testimony that will help secure a conviction. Not that, by the novel's end, the defense lawyers come across as any more ethical than the prosecutors. Most courtroom dramas paint either prosecutors or defense attorneys as knights in shining armor, but Losing Faith exposes the ugly truth that in many instances, both sides care only about winning and are willing to sacrifice their integrity to achieve that goal.

The courtroom scenes are riveting and the underlying mystery is a good one. My only significant objection is that the murder accusation is based on evidence that is not only circumstantial but weak -- so weak that I doubt a prosecutor would have based an indictment on it. While the story depends upon readers believing the government had a strong case, the prosecution's case seemed quite doubtful to me. That's a small complaint, however, and one that did not impair my overall enjoyment of the story.

If the reveal of the murderer at the novel's end is not entirely unexpected, Losing Faith has the virtue of being a novel that never overreaches. Too many courtroom dramas (and mysteries in general) rely on preposterous endings to achieve the element of surprise, but Losing Faith never produces an eye-rolling moment. While not quite on the level of Presumed Innocent (still the gold standard of courtroom dramas), Losing Faith tells a credible, satisfying, attention-grabbing story with flawed (and thus realistic) characters who are nevertheless sympathetic.

RECOMMENDED