Fox Is Framed by Lachlan Smith

Published by Mysterious Press on April 7, 2015

The family saga that began in Bear Is Broken and Lion Plays Rough continues in Fox Is Framed. We learned in the first two novels that Lawrence Maxwell was wrongfully convicted of killing the mother of his two sons. He may or may not be guilty but the prosecution concealed evidence that might have created a reasonable doubt about his guilt.

Like Lawrence, Leo and Ted Maxwell are both lawyers. At the beginning of Fox is Framed, they win the release of their father on bail. Ted is convinced of his father's innocence but a head wound that Ted received in an earlier novel has shattered his career. Leo continues to feel conflicted about his father even though his father's prison inmate connections may provide a steady supply of clients. In any event, the prosecution decides to take Lawrence to trial again and a new lawyer is appointed to represent him.

When a prosecution witness dies, Lawrence becomes a suspect in that murder, as well. The reader's challenge (and Leo's) is to figure out whether Lawrence had anything to do with the new murder and, if not, to discover the true culprit. Leo knows that proving Lawrence's innocence of the second murder might be the key to an acquittal on the first murder charge, since the prosecution's other evidence of his guilt is scant. Like Leo, however, the reader wonders whether Leo's father might have been the killer in both instances.

Lachlan Smith is at his best when the scenes turn to courtroom drama. He deftly conveys the tension and unpredictability of criminal trials, the risks and rewards of cross-examination, the gambling on strategies that either work or backfire. The novel loses some of its punch when it turns from courtroom drama to family drama but it never descends into melodrama. The novel's ending sets up more family drama in the future, which is unfortunate. I'd like to see this series move in a new direction. Apart from that, the ending leaves certain questions unresolved, which is a cheap setup to force curious readers to continue with the series. That's something I would have done anyway, given my admiration of Smith's ability to craft strong courtroom scenes.

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Before He Finds Her by Michael Kardos

Published by Mysterious Press on February 3, 2015

An elderly reporter, nearing death, blogs about the unsolved murder that has obsessed him -- unsolved in the sense that Ramsey Miller, who killed his wife and fled with his daughter, has never been apprehended. Of Ramsey's guilt and the daughter's death, the reporter is certain.

Melanie hates the isolation that defines her life, but living in witness protection means no internet, no travel, and no real friends. Melanie lives with her aunt and uncle and is, of course, hiding from Ramsey.

Early chapters of Before He Finds Her alternate between the past and present. The chapters in the past follow Ramsey, who believes he is just awakening to the beauty of life but is actually awakening to madness, embodied in his belief in an impending apocalypse he attributes to the "orbital axis." Ramsey's childhood is depicted more realistically and sympathetically than most thrillers manage.

As the novel moves forward, Melanie, being young and foolish, decides she needs to find Ramsey before he finds her. Michael Kardos never quite sold me on that motivation. In any event, to further her quest, Melanie meets with the blogger. Her investigation proceeds in an unexpected direction. More than that I will not say.

Most of the first half of Before He Finds Her reads more like a human interest story than a suspense novel. I would not say that the second half is more suspenseful but it reads more like a thriller. None of the surprising revelations are particularly surprising, which is the novel's greatest weakness.

While I was reading the first half, I found it difficult to suspend disbelief in certain aspects of the story that just didn't seem plausible. To my relief, Kardos deals with those in the second half. That cemented my interest. The story is plausible (a plus in the modern era of implausible thrillers). Even if the ending is telegraphed at an early point, eroding the excitement and shock value that thriller fans crave, I enjoyed the characters and the storytelling.

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The Last Word by Hanif Kureishi

Published in Great Britain in 2014; published by Scribner on March 10, 2015

Witty observations about human nature are Hanif Kureishi's specialty. In The Last Word, he turns his attention to the dying craft of writing literature at a time when there are "more writers than readers. ... The only books people read were diet books, cookbooks, or exercise books. People didn't want to improve the world, they only wanted better bodies." There isn't much of a story in The Last Word, but Kureishi improves the world by adding a few laughs. While there is more wit than substance in The Last Word, I found the novel worth reading for its ample supply of amusing sentences.

Harry Johnson has been commissioned to write a biography of Mamoon Azam. Mamoon, one of the first dark-skinned Indians to make a splash in the literary world, is Rushdie-like in his stature and opinions. The publisher envisions a controversial biography with a "hot, moody photo" of Mamoon on the cover that will stimulate sales of his books -- "long family novels set in colonial India" -- which are critically acclaimed but mostly ignored by a general reading public that views them as too intellectual.

Mamoon's current wife, Liana Luccioni, insists that the biography must not damage Mamoon's reputation, exactly the opposite of the book Harry's publisher wants him to write. To an extent, The Last Word is a biting commentary on celebrity biographies, which dish dirt to titillate rather than illuminate. Contrary to Liana's belief that readers want "upliftment, to learn the path of greatness so they can follow down it," Harry's publisher believes that readers want icons to be trashed so they can consider themselves the icon's equal.

Mamoon, on the other hand, has no desire to be peeled "as you would an onion." Serious writers are out of fashion, says Mamoon. Now, "no sooner has someone been sodomized by a close relative than they think they can write a memoir." Although Harry believes readers will understand that "sexuality makes fools of everyone," Mamoon resists being made fashionable through the exposure of a past that (if the gossip is to be believed) was exciting and provocative if selfish and cruel. While Mamoon accuses biographers of envying the sex lives of the subjects they trash, he also denies that his life was filled with sexual escapades ("even Philip Larkin had more sex"). Mamoon does, however, appreciate the idea of biography as fiction, since fiction often yields truths that haphazard reality cannot so easily convey.

Although written as a comedy, The Last Word contains some serious thoughts. It is ultimately a novel about the meaning and making of art. Should art stand alone, divorced from its context or creator, freed from "banal and simplistic correlations" between art and the artist's experiences? Is art merely a seduction? To be taken seriously, must artists display passion by crossing boundaries that are denied to most of us? The notion of how love should fit into one's life provides a related theme (for what is love if not art?) that becomes more prominent toward the novel's end. The novel has broad elements of a love story but doesn't try to be one (or perhaps it tries and fails). The assessment of a life in the final years (art as the continuous rewriting of memory) also gives Kureishi a chance to express serious thoughts about reflection and atonement. Still, The Last Word is too fluffy to be regarded as a serious novel.

I suspect that many readers will dislike the novel because they dislike nearly every character but, in a comedy that exposes the weaknesses and foibles of the human spirit, likability seems unimportant. The Last Word is not a long novel but it suffers from a surprising amount of redundancy. Some of that results from seeing Mamoon through various eyes but some of it is repetition that serves no apparent end. To the extent that there is a plot involving Harry and the various women in his life, it's silly and insubstantial. To the extent that the plot focuses on a writer writing about a writer, the story's best moment is a clever plot twist near the end. The Last Word is not as profound as Kureishi wanted it to be, but it gave me enough chuckles to be satisfying.

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Soil by Jamie Kornegay

Published by Simon & Schuster on March 10, 2015

Jay Mize, a young soil scientist in Mississippi who is too aggressive in his advocacy of sustainable farming methods, loses his job with the local Farm Service Agency. Jay (mockingly known as "Compost Man") is a closet survivalist who believes he needs to make his family self-sustaining. An epiphany sends Jay chasing a dream of soil-free farming. Some people are better off not having epiphanies and Jay is one of them.

Shortly after his farmland floods and his wife, Sandy, returns to the city with their son, Jay finds a dead body in a newly formed lake that was once his field. Allowing paranoia to get the better of him -- paranoia that is perhaps inspired by the county's reaction to his notorious grandfather -- Jay decides that notifying Deputy Shoals, who came by two weeks earlier in search of a missing person, would be exactly the wrong thing to do.

Shoals is the novel's other key character. He is making it his mission to take every reasonably attractive female he meets to bed ... or, more likely, to the backseat of his Mustang. He would like to add Sandy to his list of conquests. Shoals, whose vigorous sex drive is combined with the maturity level of a twelve-year-old, adds comic relief to a novel that is often darkly humorous. Soil also derives a fair amount of humor from Jay's whacky doomsday theories -- "what if someone sets loose a fleet of self-replicating nanorobots?" -- the kinds of scenarios that hardcore survivalists secretly hope for so they can get some use out of their bug-out bags.

Most of the novel focuses on the consequences of Jay's unending supply of bad decisions. It is difficult to know whether Jay is stupid or noble in his unwillingness to accept defeat. Clearly he is a bit unhinged. Despite being a scientist, his life is an "equation without logic, or else the logic of nature, which he hardly understood." I imagine some readers will dislike Soil because they dislike Jay, who displays few admirable qualities. I found him to be a sympathetic character notwithstanding his insanely poor judgment and questionable mental health. Even Shoals is easy to understand and forgive, if not to admire. Neither of the central characters have a bad heart despite their bad behavior. It is, of course, easiest to sympathize with Sandy, who has to cope with Jay and Shoals while trying to do what's best for her son.

While I wouldn't classify Soil as a thriller, Jamie Kornegay creates an atmosphere of mild tension from beginning to end. The story moves quickly but Kornegay doesn't skimp on characterization. Even minor characters (most of whom belong in the deep woods where they live) are easy to visualize. I didn't quite buy the ending, which seems a bit too easy. In hindsight, I'm not sure I buy any of Jay's actions, but Kornegay convinced me of their reality as I was reading and that's all that matters. In the end, Kornegay tells an original and entertaining story in pleasing prose, which is more than most authors manage.

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The Alphabet House by Jussi Adler-Olsen

Published by Dutton on February 24, 2015

In a departure from the Department Q police procedurals that Jussi Alder-Olsen usually writes, The Alphabet House combines a war story with a modern crime thriller. At the same time, it does not fit within either genre. The Alphabet House is more a psychological novel, an in-depth exploration of two personalities. For the most part, I enjoyed reading it. I appreciated the thought that went into it. I admired the writing style. I just didn't buy it.

Bryan and James, a pilot British pilot and navigator, are shot down behind enemy lines. Fleeing from pursuers, they board a passing hospital train full of wounded SS officers. They assume the guise of unconscious patients in a car that is mysteriously crowded with comatose officers who do not appear to be wounded. They wind up in a hospital ward, known as the Alphabet House, where their survival depends upon passing themselves off as shell-shocked Nazi officers.

Bryan and James are not the only patients faking mental illness. A long stretch of the book deals with German malingerers who make trouble for James. Why they do so is never quite clear and, while this section of the book is not dull, I'm not sure its contribution to the story justifies the number of words that are devoted to it. The malingerers do add to the action in a tense scene at the end of Part One.

Part Two begins in 1972. Bryan is now a grumpy specialist in gastric diseases and sports medicine. The plot takes Bryan back to Germany in search of a past from which he has not fully recovered. His impersonation of an SS officer during the war comes back to haunt him.

The Alphabet House is interesting but not particularly exciting or emotionally engaging. Its length works against it. The book could easily have been condensed. Two guys lying in bed thinking "I hope we don't get caught" is less than thrilling even with an occasional break the monotony. Only the beginning and the end of Part One generate any tension. Part Two is better, particularly toward the end, but the actions of the German malingers (particularly in Part Two) almost always struck me as contrived, if not abysmally stupid. I just didn't buy the story that Adler-Olsen eventually got around to telling. The narrative drags on long after the climax and some of the last chapters add little of value. I did, however, like the way the story finally ends. The ending has the virtue of honesty.

The quality of Adler-Olsen's prose and the interesting characters he crafted kept me reading. Still, I formed no emotional connection with the characters, in part because I didn't buy into their reality (particularly James) any more than I believed the German malingerers were real. None of that stopped me from wondering what would happen next.

The story is not quite like anything else I've read, so Adler-Olsen scores points for originality. If this had been a shorter, tighter novel with characters who behaved in ways I could accept, I would give it a stronger recommendation. As it stands, I'm not sorry I read it, but I'm disappointed that it did not realize its potential to be an outstanding novel.

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