Payoff by Douglas Corleone

Published by Minotaur Books on August 19, 2014

A group of men kidnap Edgar Trenton's 15-year-old daughter, Olivia, despite the fruitless attempts of Edgar's wife to shoot the intruders. Edgar wires the $8.5 million ransom but his daughter remains missing. The talking heads on cable news immediately crucify Edgar, claiming he is hiding the money to keep it from the wife who planned to divorce him. That theory being their best chance of closing a case they cannot otherwise solve, the FBI arrests Edgar, but not before he calls in a favor owed by Simon Fisk, a former U.S. Marshal turned private investigator whose own daughter had been the victim of an unsolved kidnapping eleven years earlier. That crime was indirectly responsible for his wife's death. The resulting baggage is at the core of his Fisk's personality.

Fisk's search for Olivia takes him to the luxurious environs of Grand Cayman, to the slums of Costa Rica, to a drug lord in Columbia, and to Carnival on the streets of Caracas, all painted in colorful detail. The trail leads to dead ends and dead people, prompting the reader to wonder what sort of conspiracy is afoot. Clearly this is more than a simple kidnapping for ransom, but the reason for the kidnapping and the people involved in it come as a surprise -- or rather, a series of surprises.

Douglas Corleone has a realistic understanding of the horrendous failure the drug war has been, and the harm it has caused, in Columbia and elsewhere. This is not an overtly political novel -- it doesn't lecture -- but it is refreshingly honest in its portrayal of disastrous political policies that benefit monied interests while harming American taxpayers and nearly everyone except the drug producers in Columbia.

Fisk is a good character even if his tragic life is a little too tragic. It is a life concocted to manipulate the reader's emotions and to justify Fisk's obsession with finding abducted children. Fortunately, Fisk does not often become preachy or self-righteous, so that weakness in the novel is not particularly troubling.

The story moves at a suitable pace for an action thriller. Corleone's smooth prose never gets in the way of the story he tells. The plot is no less plausible than most modern thrillers (meaning it is barely plausible) but it is entertaining. Payoff is the kind of book that makes for diverting airplane reading on a long dull flight.

RECOMMENDED

Don't Look Back by Gregg Hurwitz

Published by St. Martin's Press on August 19, 2014

After Eve Hardaway's husband leaves her for another woman before they can take their anniversary vacation to Oaxaca, Eve decides to go by herself. Eve is in the Mexican jungle with a half dozen American tourists, the camp owners, and a man she encounters while rafting in the jungle. The man is practicing throwing his machete at a human silhouette. When Eve finds a lost camera near the man's dwelling, she realizes that the woman who owned the camera was the previous occupant of the hut in which Eve is staying. The camera contains pictures of the jungle man behaving forcefully with an indigenous woman.

When Eve learns that the camera owner never made it home, the group feels threatened. Their fears are discouraged by the camp owners, who worry that publicizing the psycho in the jungle might be bad for business -- not to mention Oaxaca's aversion to having a Natalie Holloway story in the foreign media.

The campers, including Eve, are largely a group of whiners, making it difficult to care what happens to them. It's also disappointing that the man with the machete is such a conventional villain. A long expository chapter in the middle of the novel explains his improbable journey from Pakistan to the Mexican jungle, where he now fights the "holy struggle" by abusing native women. As villains go, this semi-retired jihadist is a cartoon.

Don't Look Back could have been a tighter novel. Too many scenes are repetitive. Characters have the same arguments about their predicament, tell each other how bad their situation is, and waste time when they should be running. The evil guy gives them plenty of time to waste, and ample opportunity to escape, when he could have devoted his energy to the simple task of killing them all. All of that makes the last third of the novel less interesting than the set-up.

The natural threats of the jungle (crocodiles and sweeper ants and deadly plants and flooding downpours) are more believable (and more menacing) than the jihadist with the machete. An extended chase scene through the jungle at the end of the novel is more interesting than a typical chase scene through city streets, but my interest waned as the chase went on and on. The story's path is predictable -- it is too easy to guess which characters will die and which will be unexpectedly resourceful. Although Don't Look Book has some strong moments and moves briskly, I cannot recommend it with any enthusiasm.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Spark and the Drive by Wayne Harrison

Published by St. Martin's Press on July 15, 2014

The Spark and the Drive is a tribute to cars and to the mechanics who serve them. "Automobiles were like a great species among us, more vital and abiding than most people in our lives, yet only a handful of us fully understood their complicated language." It is also a book about damaged people who are trying to change their lives, or trying to change the lives of people they care about, sometimes doing more harm than good.

Justin is 17, living in Waterbury, Connecticut. He has spent the summer of 1986 working for the legendary Nick Campbell, who specializes in restoring, repairing, and improving muscle cars. A properly tuned engine provides Justin with the order and predictability that is missing from his life. A mechanic, to Justin, represents "the pure masculine blend of strength and intelligence." Justin would rather prove himself with grease and sweat than with a college degree. He works alongside Bobby Stango, a biker who is on parole and committed to sobriety despite spending most of his nonworking hours in biker bars. But repairing new cars requires diagnostic computers, not just wrenches, and the days of Nick's muscle car specialty shop may be numbered.

Justin all but worships Nick, but Nick has apparently lost his focus, forgetting simple steps (like tightening drain plugs) that lead to further repairs and unhappy customers. He's also messing up his relationship with his wife, Mary Ann, a relationship that has been rocky since the loss of their child. While Nick exemplifies the strong, silent male, his silence (a product of not knowing what to say unless he's talking about cars) is killing his marriage.

The novel's drama comes from three sources. The complex relationships between Mary Ann, Nick, and Justin is one. The second is a Corvette that a woman from Miami leaves with Nick before she disappears under suspicious circumstances. And the third is whether Nick's shop will survive. Nick hires a mechanic who understands computers in an effort to maintain the shop's relevance but the mechanic alienates Bobby while violating Justin's sense of who a mechanic should be. The man is arrogant and self-important, traits that speak to the "unmanly quality of his character."

For a book steeped in drag racing and motor oil, the prose is astonishingly strong. This is a well told story, dramatic without becoming melodramatic, populated with realistic characters created in grimy detail.

Car engines, the story tells us, might have become more efficient with the help of computers, but they represent stability because their fundamental elements -- fuel and air and spark -- never change. Perhaps people who love engines take comfort in that stability. People are always changing, often in unpredictable ways, and no shop manual tells us how to restore them when they lose their spark. As with engines, some people are worn out, seemingly beyond restoration. Yet as with engines, with patience and perseverance -- and the help of someone who cares -- even the worst damage can be repaired, although not always by means we might predict or desire. Perhaps we cannot be rebuilt -- damage changes us in fundamental ways -- but we can learn to function again. All of that is reflected in The Spark and the Drive, a book that readers (like me) who don't know a gasket from an O-ring can appreciate.

RECOMMENDED

The Hidden Girl by Louise Millar

Published by Atria on August 26, 2014

Will and Hannah leave their flat in London to move into a home in Suffolk. Buying the house was Hannah's idea, an attempt to impress the social worker who will decide whether they will be allowed to adopt. Will resents the daily two hour drive to work he will need to make but feels the need to placate his wife. Hannah is obsessed with fixing up the ancient house so that the social worker will deem it a perfect environment for raising a child. Will would like to have another beer or three. Each finds the other supremely irritating. Each wonders when the other became so needy. Unfortunately, they each need different things.

Hannah is eager to finish painting and decorating within two weeks, before the social worker arrives. After a long weekend, Will returns to his London job, leaving Hannah to carry on without him until evening. Things begin to happen that you might expect in an atmospheric novel about a creepy old house. A blizzard strands Will in London, leaving Hannah feeling isolated. Cell phone service disappears. The boiler goes out. Hannah sees an odd shape in the window. Footprints appear next to hers in the snow. Doors to certain rooms are locked and she has no keys. Gruff neighbors are less than welcoming. Things go bump in the night. Objects disappear and reappear. The refrigerator door keeps falling open. And so on. One early twist in The Hidden Girl is the mysterious donkey that shows up during a snowy night. I give Louise Millar props for the donkey; it's a nice touch.

As the plot develops, the reader wonders which of the eccentric neighbors will eventually threaten Hannah, or whether she is being haunted by a ghost. A young woman in the neighborhood, apparently mentally disabled, is a key character, although her importance does not become clear until the novel's second half. When Hannah witnesses troubling events and discusses them with certain neighbors, the inbred villagers turn against her, spreading lies that make Hannah seem even more demented than she manages to be on her own. Whether they will destroy everything Hannah is trying to achieve -- and more importantly, why the might be motivated to do so -- are the mysteries that build the novel's suspense.

Hannah is the central character, but her pettiness and unchecked anxiety often make her an unpleasant literary companion. She's unreasonably fickle, hating Will's sister for most of the novel until deciding they will be lifelong friends. It is easy to empathize with poor Will while wondering why he puts up with Hannah. Still, Hannah is a realistic character, just not a particularly likable one, although by the end Millar made me work up some sympathy for her. Hannah also demonstrates an understanding of her own obsessions and has the opportunity to improve before the novel ends. Will is less the novel's focus but he is also an easy character to believe.

As much as I disliked Hannah, I liked the story, primarily because I didn't know where it was going. Millar does a masterful job of creating a sense of foreboding without letting the reader know exactly what there is to fear. Millar manages a reasonably good balance between family drama and external threats to the family.While the novel has a "Can this marriage be saved?" theme, it is secondary to the suspenseful plot. The resolution is farfetched but plausible and, more importantly, creative.

RECOMMENDED

Echopraxia by Peter Watts

Published by Tor Books on August 26, 2014

Echopraxia takes place after Blindsight. Transhuman Bicamerals (hive-minded faith-based scientists who speak in tongues), engineered versions of zombies, and not-quite-human but controlled and confined vampires are among the many background characters. Don't grind your teeth -- this is not another dumb zombie/vampire novel.

The central character is baseline human Dan Brüks, a biologist and tenured professor who resists all the wiring and implants that most people take for granted. As Exchopraxia begins, Brüks is in the desert where he finds Bicamerals threatened by a not-so-controlled-or-confined vampire and her zombie helpers. Soon the Bicams and the vampire join forces (more or less) because they appear to have a common but unidentified enemy. An attack from an unknown source sends Brüks and the Bicams and the vampire and a baseline military officer and some other characters scrambling to a spaceship that is itself chased and attacked by the unknown enemy. Figuring out who (or what) is engineering the high tech attacks is one of the plot's three mysteries. The second involves a mysterious something -- the "Angels of the Asteroids" is the roughly translated name bestowed by the Bicams -- and its association with Icarus, a space station that acts as a conduit of unlimited solar energy. The third involves the abrupt disappearance of the Theseus, a spaceship that investigated mystery number two, on which the military officer's son was serving.

Peter Watts has a better than average prose style. I like the way he renders dialog in a character for whom language is too slow to keep pace with thought. Characters have carefully designed personalities. Brüks and the military officer are both carrying a bundle of guilt, a byproduct of being baseline humans who can't jettison inconvenient emotions. The plot moves quickly, particularly in the novel's second half, but it does not short-change character development or the refinement of themes (including the benefits and disadvantages of being human rather than transhuman) that are central to the story.

The novel's background is filled with ideas, some familiar and others fresh. Watts doesn't assume that readers are stupid and need their hands held. Concepts that don't seem to make much sense initially (like "smart paint") are eventually made clear, usually through context rather than direct explanation. Watts scores points with me for avoiding needless exposition.

While Echopraxia is science-heavy science fiction, Watts also scores points for recognizing and engaging the limits of science -- which is not to say that the novel prefers a religious approach to understanding phenomena, despite the importance of transhuman monks to the story. Watts understands that too many people have blind faith in the ability of either science or religion to supply correct answers to all questions when, given our relatively primitive evolutionary state, we don't even know what questions to ask. Watts provides an antidote to arrogance, a reminder that it is wrong to belittle others because their understanding of the universe (or of our tiny part of our single universe) differs from our own. Echopraxia makes a strong argument for the importance of keeping an open mind about ... well, everything ... because the odds are good that whatever we believe to be true is fundamentally wrong.

Apart from being intellectually engaging, Echopraxia tells an entertaining story. The combination of an intelligent background, a fun plot, important themes, and strong characters make Echopraxia a rewarding read.

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