Last Days of the Condor by James Grady

Published by Forge Books on February 17, 2015

James Grady introduced the Condor in 1974. The Condor should be enjoying a quiet retirement but life as a thriller hero isn't that simple.

Homeland Security is keeping an eye on Vin, the heavily medicated man formerly known as Condor, a CIA agent put to pasture with a variety of stress-related mental health diagnoses. Although Vin's keepers see him as a "crazy old burnout," Vin correctly suspects that he's being followed by people who are not known to his keepers. One of the two agents tasked with checking up on Vin, Faye Dozier, believes his concerns have merit. The other doesn't give a hoot (although he uses a more colorful word than hoot).

Vin finds himself the object of a rather ingenious plot that plays out during the last three-quarters of the novel. The ultimate mystery -- who is trying to kill Condor? -- is brilliantly and chillingly resolved. Chilling, because what Grady imagines could well be real or could soon become the new reality of "homeland security."

Grady writes in an urgent style that wastes no words, yet his characterizations are surprisingly complete. Condor is the central character but Faye is equally important. She carries physical and emotional scars from an incident in which she messed up (which is why she's assigned to low level surveillance of has-been terrorists and crazy old burnouts). As you might expect of a spy, she has trust issues, but her impermissible involvement with a Congressional lawyer is helping her cope with them. Or not.

Last Days of the Condor is crafted with the assurance of a veteran writer who is at home with his characters and with the changing world. Grady plays with technology and data in ways that are mind-boggling. Apart from being an excellent action novel with a strong plot, Last Days of the Condor is smart, sophisticated, appropriately cynical, and utterly convincing. Last Days doesn't quite have the depth of the very best espionage novels but it works perfectly as a fast-moving thriller that is spiced with tradecraft. It provides an intelligent view of the intelligence game that is thoroughly entertaining.

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The Big Seven by Jim Harrison

Published by Grove Press on January 27, 2015

Sex and violence are frequent partners in fiction as in life. They are both improbably plentiful in the life of 66-year-old Sunderson, a retired police detective last seen in The Great Leader. Violence in particular is the theme of The Big Seven. Sunderson thinks violence should be the eighth deadly sin and blames its prevalence in the world's history, or more precisely his awareness of it, for making him "an alcoholic and a late-blooming sex maniac."

The book's first instance of violence follows Sunderson's impulsive plan to save his adopted daughter Mona, who has disappeared from Ann Arbor with a rock band that is headed for Paris. Later in the novel, Sunderson spends his time fishing and studying the Ames family, a "human junk pile" except for the female members, including the free-spirited Monica. Sunderson takes on another impulsive rescue mission concerning Monica while most of the Ames clan makes it their mission to kill Sunderson when they aren't killing each other. Elements of a murder mystery appear as Sunderson wonders why the trigger-happy family members are dropping dead from poison, although the "faux mystery" subtitle makes clear that this really isn't a mystery novel.

Sunderson is not a role model but he is a believable guy. He drinks too much. He lusts after young women, including his adopted daughter. He spies on naked women. He vows "to limit the amount of messiness" in his life but still sets a new "all-around record for sloppy behavior." He regularly engages in about half of the deadly sins.

Harrison's books typically wander, emphasizing the randomness of life. The Big Seven is no exception. While that might put off readers who prefer fiction that has a straightforward plot, Harrison's point is that life is rarely straightforward -- and how could it be, given that "the world is a madhouse"? I suspect that many older people, like Sunderson, are "puzzled by how in the sweep of life we end up where we do," tied in "peculiar knots that lack the clarity of our original intentions." We cannot "walk around the corner without tripping on a toad." In his unique way, Harrison reminds us that life's journey is an adventure, sometimes exciting, sometimes cruel, but almost always unexpected, even if you prefer to spend it fishing.

It takes time to adjust to Harrison's writing style but the time is well spent. He doesn't waste words. Even seemingly inconsequential sentences develop the reader's understanding of the story or a character or the human condition. Sunderson muses about life, death, the afterlife (acknowledging that he has "no talent for theology"), sex, the galaxy, and much else, including, of course, the deadly sins. Now and then his musings made me bust out a laugh.

I like Harrison's daring exploration of the American attitude toward relationships between old men and young women. In some cultures, age-gap relationships are common, accepted, and meaningful. Sunderson feels no guilt about the lust and affection he feels for a 19-year-old but he knows he will be judged (particularly by the ex-wife he still adores). Sunderson is old enough to be thinking about death and I can't blame him for wanting to think about pleasant ways to have a heart attack.

The Big Seven is less purposeful than Harrison's best fiction, including The Great Leader, although Harrison still crams more meaningful sentences into an average page than most writers produce in an entire novel. Sunderson complains that an Ames brother who is writing a crime novel created prose that "was absolutely devoid of any charm, one of the main reasons you read." Harrison writes with an abundance of charm and that's reason enough to recommend The Big Seven.

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For They Have Sown the Wind by Alessandro Perissinotto

First published in Italy in 2011; published in translation by Piemme on September 16, 2014

Fools always need an enemy to feel powerful. That is why they are always defining and deriding enemies, urging their exclusion from society. Such is the lesson of For They Have Sown the Wind, a novel that takes an unfortunate amount of time to make a meaningful point.

Di Stefano does not know whether his client, Giacomo Musso, is innocent or guilty of the crime for which he has been jailed. He gives Musso some photographs to jog his memory and asks Musso to write down what happened. Instead of getting to the point, Musso puts the pictures in chronological order and writes about each one. The result is a detailed historical account of Musso's relationship with his wife.

Musso, trained as a teacher but employed as a curator of children's exhibits in a science museum, met Shirin while he was working as a part-time bartender in Paris. Shirin was born in France to wealthy Iranian parents. Musso describes their life together, first in France and then in Italy. Musso's love of Shirin forces him to confront his view of modern Iran as a land of "nuclear power plants, weapons, and bloodthirsty scientists with long beards" rather than a country of ski lifts, cell phones, and television game shows.

Racial and religious hatred is the prevalent theme in Musso's account of his experience with Shirin in Italy and France. Although the novel's first half is slow-moving and dry, the story gains interest when Musso explains how, while teaching at a Catholic school in Italy, his marriage to Shirin became a serious career impediment. Religious persecution becomes even more apparent when the town's mayor seeks the exclusion of Shirin from the town's festival on the ground that a Muslim should not wear the town's traditional costumes or pollute its songs. Shirin's atheism makes her no less Islamic in the town's eyes.

In a pivotol scene, Shirin stands up for a Tunisian woman enjoying a beach who refuses to expose the amount of skin demanded by a local ordinance. Alessandro Perissinotto writes with extraordinary insight into the conflict between western feminists who oppose religious traditions that require women to hide their bodies and Muslim women who are comfortable with their cultural traditions and do not view them as instruments of oppression. The novel also engages in an interesting debate about the value of tradition versus the harms that traditions perpetuate.

As much as I found parts of the novel to be compelling, I was put off by an underlying story that struck me as forced and melodramatic. Shirin's evolving attitude toward her relationship with Musso (as opposed to her evolving sense of self) lacks the development needed to make it convincing. Worse than that, when the novel isn't brilliant, it drags. The crime around which the plot is organized is all but lost for most of the story. When it is finally revealed in the closing pages, I thought it was preposterous. The crime exists only to shock the reader in the novel's closing pages, but the motivation for the crime is unconvincing at best. I disliked about half of this novel but absolutely loved the parts that engaged me. My decision to recommend the novel with reservations is a compromise verdict.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Genome by Sergei Lukyanenko

First published in Russia in 1999; published in translation by Open Road Media on December 2, 2014

The Genome begins as Alex Romanov is discharged from a hospital on Quicksilver Pit. Alex is a master-pilot. He is also a genetically engineered "spesh" with a modified body and enhanced aptitudes and abilities. One of the modifications prevents him from experiencing love but that is offset by enhanced integrity, loyalty, and kindness. That's one of many interesting touches in this surprising novel.

Stuck on Quicksilver Pit after an accident that nearly killed him, Alex helps out a spesh named Kim O'Hara, a 14-year-old girl who is about to go through metamorphosis. Kim is carrying a stolen crystal, the contents of which are not immediately clear. She appears to be a fighter-spech but she also has a different set of spesh characteristics that are revealed about midway through the novel. Her true engineered nature is surprising and pretty cool.

Alex needs money. With an unbelievable stroke of luck he finds an unbelievably good job as a ship's captain -- unbelievable to Alex, who knows there must be a catch but doesn't know what it is. Sergei Lukyanenko writes some imaginative scenes about Alex bonding with his new ship, which becomes part of Alex (or Alex becomes part of the ship) when he interfaces with it. He also gives an original spin to the process of crew selection. The five crew members Alex selects (most have been genetically engineered for their jobs) give Lukyanenko the opportunity to mix together a number of conflicting personalities.

The universe Lukyanenko imagines is populated by alien races as well as humans who have colonized other worlds. A matched pair of politically important aliens are passengers on Alex's first voyage. This raises themes of racism and xenophobia that will be familiar to science fiction fans, but Lukyanenko handles them well. The morality of cloning is another familiar theme. One of Alex's crew considers herself a sworn enemy of the aliens and another hates clones, again creating the kind of conflicts that add interest to a story. By the novel's midpoint, something eventful has happened that turns The Genome into a whodunit. Solving the mystery (potentially with the help of a genetically engineered detective who calls himself Sherlock Holmes) may be the only way Alex can avert an interstellar war.

Lukyanenko adds a number of original and creative details that contribute to the story's sense of authenticity. I particularly liked the descriptions of piloting a ship. I'm not quite sure that I buy the logic used to expose the bad guy -- it isn't all that Holmesian -- but the story moves so quickly that it's easy to overlook its faults.

To a degree, The Genome endeavors to be an offbeat exploration of love. That aspect of the story is a bit heavy-handed, particularly at the end, but the novel never becomes a trashy sf romance. The Genome is also a philosophical exploration of free will and the morality of genetic programming that prevents the programmed from choosing a different kind of life. While none of those themes reveal fresh thinking, I give Lukyanenko credit for adding some meaningful thought to an entertaining mystery/space opera/action novel.

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The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins by Irvine Welsh

First published in Great Britain in 2014; published by Doubleday on February 3, 2015

Some books should probably come with a warning label. Consider yourself warned. When you read a novel by Irvine Welsh, you know you will encounter the F-word frequently. This one also stands out for its vividly detailed descriptions of sexual encounters that are (mostly) far from loving. If that puts you off, you should avoid The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins. For readers with fortitude, Welsh's latest caustic novel holds some rewards.

The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins is set in Miami Beach, where -- as Welsh paints it -- shallowness is a lifestyle and fitness is the primary measurement of worth. To be obese or unattractive is to be shunned in the nightclubs and on the beaches where the city's beautiful people hook up.

As the novel opens, fitness trainer Lucy Brennan takes out her aggression on a man who tries to shoot the pedestrian who just collided with her car. An artist, Lena Sorenson, films the encounter on her cellphone. The nation proclaims Lucy a hero, which leads to fifteen minutes of pseudo-fame that soon becomes notoriety. Fame of that sort -- the kind that creates a "crass, leveling, bizarre democracy" -- is one of the book's themes.

Most of the novel is told from Lucy's point of view. Lucy's voice is not entirely convincing -- she seems like a man's bisexual fantasy girlfriend. She is obsessed with sex. She is also self-absorbed and self-righteous. She goes out of her way to be offensive (particularly toward the obese) and I imagine that many readers will find her attitude so disagreeable that they will hate her and the book she rode in on. Fortunately, she's so over-the-top that it's fun to watch her self-destruct.

On the other hand, chubby Lena is a likable, sympathetic, and evolving character. She plays a secondary role in the novel's first half but slowly acquires a voice of her own, revealed in the latest Miami Beach trend of writing diary-like "Morning Pages." Lucy's overboard effort to change Lena's shape (and life) provides most of the novel's comedy but Lena's description of the events that added a hundred pounds to her frame gives the novel its weight (pardon the expression).

A reviewer lacking patience might give this book a typical Amazon 1-star review that reads "I read 30 pages before throwing it against the wall." I was tempted to set the book aside in its early chapters. The unlikable, offensive protagonist and the story's apparent pointlessness almost overcame my curiosity about the path the novel would follow. Fortunately, the bleeding dark humor kept me engaged until Lena begins to give the story its heart.

Welsh aptly terms Miami "a ghost town in the sun" while lovingly describing its sleaze. More importantly, the novel has much to say about shallow people who extoll their own virtues while judging others. Lena may not be physically fit or confident but she is a much better person than Lucy, a truth that Lucy, focused on her defining characteristic (fitness) to the exclusion of all others, is incapable of perceiving. As Lena discovers, people like Lucy who mistake domination for strength are usually "weak, vain, and scared."

At the same time, Welsh uses Lucy to make the point that people who use food or self-pity as a crutch would benefit from taking control of their lives. If Lucy and Lena could be merged -- not as Siamese twins but into a single, reasonably fit body -- the result would be a happy, well-adjusted person. I think the need for balance is the ultimate point of The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins.

The novel's closing act turns into a feel-good story, to a degree that feels like a cop-out designed to please readers. Still, the ending is clever. Sex Lives isn't a perfect novel but most of it is fun and it shows flashes of Welsh's unorthodox literary brilliance.

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