Traitor by Stephen Daisley

First published in Australia in 2010; published by New York Review of Books on March 18, 2014

Traitor is the powerful story of a man's life before and after he makes the fateful decision suggested by the book's title. It is also a fiercely honest character study told in spare prose that is often exquisite.

Traitor begins with Sergeant David Monroe awakening on a hospital barge near Lemnos in 1915. He escaped death on that occasion but, 50 years later in New Zealand, he is approaching a natural death. Reviewing the files of potential subversives as a national security precaution (New Zealand is about to commit troops to the Vietnam War), the police question Monroe about his desertion from the military in 1915 and the assistance he gave to an escaping prisoner of war on Lemnos. Initially sentenced to death for treason (a sentence the Australians, who had the only rifles, refused to carry out), Monroe served out the war as a stretcher bearer before receiving a full pardon. Since then, he has been a shepherd, living alone, rarely speaking to anyone but his horse and his dog. Yet the interrogation opens a floodgate of memories.

The memories force frequent time shifts in the novel from the present to scattered moments in the past. Some pre-war memories are of his parents. Some post-war memories are of a woman named Sarah, whose son died in David's arms during the war. Some memories are of Sarah's daughter, in later post-war years. The most important memories are of David's time during the war with Mahmoud and their conversations about life and fate and free will, about right and wrong, religion and faith. They tell each other stories and try to find their meanings. Ultimately, Mahmoud helps David find meaning in a life that is surrounded by death. "You are God," Mahmoud tells David. "We are all gods." Stephen Daisley leaves it to the reader to work out the meaning behind Mahmoud's philosophy.

The first time David sees Mahmoud, he is stunned to find a Turk who speaks perfect English trying to save the life of a fallen Australian. The next time he sees Mahmoud, they are both in a field hospital in Lemnos. Mahmoud and his devotion to Islam make an impression on David and the two enemies begin to treat each other as friends. The degree to which David is mentally stable is not always clear, but it is clear that the ordinary and extraordinary suffering he endures in the war has taken its toll on him. It is also clear that, while Mahmoud is regarded by David's nation as an enemy, he is also David's salvation. "You are the cure within the pain," Mahmoud tells him. "The loyalty in betrayal."

Daisley sets this atmospheric novel in its time by having David read the headlines on the newspapers that line his cottage walls. The technique reminds us that history is both momentous (war) and trivial (rummage sales). It also reinforces the image of David as an isolated man who is bombarded by unstoppable memories. "To remember is the way into purgatory and perhaps too, the way out," David tells Sarah, and that is Traitor's defining lesson. At its heart, Traitor is a story about healing.

David tells Sarah she is "encased in the prison of your grief" and while that description applies just as well to David, the story offers the hope of redemption. Traitor is written in a somber tone, sometimes in fragmented sentences that represent the nature of memory and thought. The reliability of some of David's story is questionable (his memories of Sarah, in particular, are inconsistent) but there is fundamental truth in David's story even if his memories are inaccurate. This is a sad story but the sadness is not oppressive.

In addition to its fine prose and close study of its primary characters, Traitor is worth reading for its recognition that core values of human decency and the ability to connect with another person transcend nationality and religion and the politics of the moment. Yet the story reminds us that values come with a price. The only thing worse than being true to your values is having none. It is possible to question the decisions David makes in the confusion and agony of war, but Daisley also makes it possible to understand and accept David without judgment, and to care about him.

RECOMMENDED

Rescue Mode by Ben Bova and Les Johnson

Published by Baen Books on June 3, 2014

Rescue Mode is the latest installment in Ben Bova's ongoing obsession with Mars. One of the characters even argues that Mars is proof of God's existence. Seriously? In Bova's previous novel, Mars, Inc., a mission to Mars was privately financed. Rescue Mode has NASA spearheading the mission with assistance from other countries. Bova dresses up the novel with one or two ideas that are trendy in current science fiction (3D printers make an appearance) but at its heart, Rescue Mode, like Mars Inc., is another tired novel that could have been written in the 1950s.

Mars Inc. focused on the preparation for a flight to Mars while Rescue Mode focuses on the flight itself. In both novels, things go wrong and adversity must be overcome. Other themes from Mars Inc. are reprised here: virtual reality journalism; debates about the benefits of a crewed space missions; the advantages (and political difficulties) of nuclear propulsion; the role of politics in crew selection; the power of science to bond Americans and Russians (Bova doesn't seem to have noticed that commerce has been doing that since the end of the Cold War); and the argument that "rockets make our country strong."

Still, the co-written Rescue Mode is different from Mars, Inc., but not necessarily better. The need to overcome adversity in Rescue Mode takes on a larger role (you might have guessed that from the novel's title) than it did in Mars Inc. and it gives the novel some exciting moments. Not half as many or half as exciting as Andy Weir's The Martian, a similar "overcoming adversity during a mission to Mars" novel that avoids Rescue Mode's stale political debates about the costs and benefits of crewed spaceflight and whether NASA's budget should be cut (a theme more deserving of editorials than modern sf novels). In fact, while everyone in Weir's book was concerned about getting an imperiled astronaut home safely, a fair number of characters in Rescue Mode are more concerned about the space program, which Bova imagines as the critical issue that will drive a presidential campaign. The evil senator who wants to cut NASA's budget was a staple of sf 50 years ago, but Bova seems incapable of moving past those caricatures. The cartoonish ferocity with which the senator opposes crewed space flight (as if that will be the most important political issue in 2035) is laughable.

The central character in Mars, Inc. at least had a personality. No character in Rescue Mode is remotely interesting. A relationship blossoms between two astronauts but it is the kind of "I care about you too much to jump into bed with you" relationship that was common in 1950s sf. If I thought I were going to die in a hobbled spacecraft on the way to Mars, I'd be having all the sex I could get, but maybe that's just me. In any event, the attempts to inject romance into the story produce more schmaltz than honest emotion. Other attempts at characterization are geared toward creating sympathy (one astronaut is a recent widower, another has cancer) but those attempts fail to endow the characters with actual personalities. Dialog among the astronauts often sounds like the ship is crewed by octogenarians.

To give Rescue Mode whatever credit it is due, its predictable plot is stronger than the predictable plot in Mars, Inc. The story moves quickly and the methods the astronauts devise to get themselves out of various predicaments are clever (although some, including "lets grow potatoes," echo Weir's novel). The political machinations in the novel's last quarter, however, are not believable, and they betray a lack of understanding of the president's ability to spend the federal budget in ways that Congress has not expressly authorized. Rescue Mode is not an awful novel, and in the 1950s it would have been regarded as a good novel, but its dated feeling and dull characters weaken its appeal.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Midnight in Europe by Alan Furst

Published by Random House on June 3, 2014

Midnight in Europe takes place in 1937-38. The clash between right and left is tearing Europe apart, particularly in Spain. Cristián Ferrar, a Barcelona-born lawyer working for an American firm in Paris, is recruited to help the Republicans in Spain acquire arms to use in the war against Franco and the Nationalists. He is taking the place of a man who was murdered in Madrid after traveling there at the request of an agent he was controlling.

Assisting Max de Lyon, Ferrar works to acquire arms to smuggle into Spain, a mission that takes him to Poland, where the train carrying his munitions is hijacked, and to Odessa, where he schemes to steal anti-aircraft ammunition from a naval base without incurring Stalin's wrath. In addition to his clandestine activities, Ferrar does some lawyering as he seeks to resolve a family dispute involving dogs and a French holding company that owns a bank in Budapest. He also pursues romance with a Spanish marquesa. The romance eventually contributes to the intrigue. The same cannot be said of the family quarrel.

Intrigue is an element that Alan Furst always delivers, along with strong characters, yet most of his novels deliver more tension than this one. Furst's books always appeal to the intellect -- their settings and backgrounds are vivid and carefully researched -- but his best books build a palpable sense of foreboding. Midnight in Europe failed to give me the "edge of my seat" feeling that I've had while reading Furst's better work. Perhaps Ferrar, the central character, is too rarely in harm's way. A scene near the end -- one of the best in the book -- places Ferrar in a dangerous situation, but everything after that is an anticlimax. Even Ferrar's relationship with the marquesa is written with such emotional detachment that the intrigue surrounding the affair is subdued. Furst failed to convince me that Ferrar was committed to his nation's struggle (despite his actions on the Republic's behalf) or that he cared about much of anything. That makes it difficult to care about Ferrar.

Despite my reservations about Midnight in Europe, there is much about it that I liked. The plot is tight, the story is credible, the pace is steady, and the prose is lively. While I would have preferred a story with more intensity, Furst's depiction of Europe in the years before World War II is reason enough to admire the novel.

  

RECOMMENDED

Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Out of the Ashes by Dick Couch and Steve Pieczenik

Published by St. Martin's Griffin on May 20, 2014

Early in his career, when he was still at his best, Tom Clancy wrote carefully researched, credible thrillers. Clancy co-created the Op-Center series but Jeff Rovin wrote the novels that appeared between 1995 and 2005. Although Clancy died in 2013, his name appears in the largest font on the cover of of Out of Ashes, while the names of the actual authors appear in the smallest font. If not for the Clancy name, I suspect few people would buy this lackluster book.

The Op-Center uses the same notion as Brad Taylor's Taskforce novels -- a covert unit operates with the knowledge of the president but without congressional authority, doing what it needs to do to protect the country. The difference is that Taylor's books are smart, lively, and nuanced while Out of Ashes is dull, half-baked, and preposterous.

Out of Ashes is a strikingly unimaginative story that begins with a Kuwaiti blowing up football stadiums. How he manages to carry out his coordinared attacks is glossed over, probably because the authors couldn't think up a way to make it work. How does the Kuwaiti "hack" into the PA systems of nine football stadiums to play chaos-inducing recordings at the same moment? Where does he get enough C4 to blow up four stadiums and why does nobody notice when he places it in position? We never learn the answers because the writers have none.

In any event, the president decides it is time to get the Op-Center back in business, a task that occupies the first quarter of the novel. After many "earnest discussions" which consist of characters telling each other how great they are, Chase Williams is chosen to head the revived Op-Center. His brilliant idea is to hire computer geeks to do intelligence analysis (gee, why didn't NSA think of that?). The second quarter of the novel introduces more characters and laboriously sets up the meager plot. The plot involves an obvious ploy by a Saudi prince to provoke the U.S into attacking Syria -- so obvious it's difficult to think anyone would be duped by it.

Every time a new character is introduced, we get dry biographical details that might appear on a job application. The authors are also quite concerned that we know the brand name of every article of clothing worn by American characters. Educational backgrounds and choice of clothing designers is apparently a substitute for character development, as the characters (most of whom favor Brooks Brothers) have not the slightest hint of a personality. Characters spend a lot of time telling each other things they already know, a weak writing technique that educates the reader at the expense of realistic dialog.

The terrorists who supposedly provided a justification for reconstituting the Op-Center are gone before a quarter of the novel has passed, and the Op-Center does nothing substantive for the rest of the book, making me wonder why a novel about the anti-terrorist Op-Center had so little to do with the Op-Center or with terrorism. Apparently realizing that they had written a scattered novel that isn't about anything, the authors make a belated attempt to introduce a new terrorist threat with a brand new character late in the novel. That plot thread is even sillier than the story that precedes it. Again, how the terrorist manages to acquire the things he needs to carry out his planned attack is never explained, and how the geeks tumble to the plot is explained only by the assurance that they have outstanding "system parameters."

The novel is heavy on jargon and military procedure but light on credibility. The first geek hired by Op-Center to analyze intelligence immediately figures out who is responsible for the stadium bombings. How he does this and why no one else could do it is never explained. How operatives of a Saudi prince manage to blackmail a key employee of a defense contractor to obtain security codes to a Global Hawk surveillance aircraft also goes unexplained, and we are never told why his American employer doesn't notice his comings and goings in Saudi Arabia. Just about every character in the military is portrayed as incompetent or unprofessional, from a ship's captain who disregards blindingly obvious evidence of his misjudgment to a helicopter pilot who decides to make an illegal detour over foreign air space because her friend thinks it would be a good idea. The novel's abrupt ending (Out of Ashes is apparently intended only to set up future books in the series) is just ridiculous.

A few action scenes add a spark of life to an otherwise boring story that primarily focuses on tiresome conversations among wooden characters. There are too few action scenes to redeem the novel as a whole. Terrorists manage to kill a lot of Americans during the course of the novel but story generates about as much emotion as a cricket match stirs in boxing fans. I'm sure this novel will sell since it has Tom Clancy's name on it, but I'm not sure that very many readers will be happy to have wasted their time and money on it.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Cold Song by Linn Ullmann

Published by Other Press on April 8, 2014

Jon Dreyer is a blocked writer living in Oslo but summering in a house called Mailund. He is married to Siri Brodal, who has hired a girl named Milla to look after their two daughters, Alma and Liv. At thirteen, Alma has done some babysitting of her own for a boy named Simen who lives nearby. Siri's mother, Jenny Brodal, owns Mailund, where Siri grew up. Siri's second restaurant is nearby in the seaside community.

The Dreyer-Brodals are a dysfunctional family on steroids, a family falling apart. Early in the story, the reader knows that Jenny has a dark history, that Siri feels responsible for a drowning that occurred during her childhood, that Jon is working his way through all of the deadly sins instead of writing, and that Alma is mean and spiteful. We know that Jenny's friend Irma, a large woman who plays the role of caretaker, is unpleasant and controlling. We know little about Milla, except that she seems to crave Jon's attention. We know that the family's disobedient dog is "every dog's revenge on mankind." Welcome to Norway, land of the terminally depressed.

As The Cold Song opens, a celebration of Jenny's 75th birthday is about to take place. Jenny, who would prefer not to attend, is preparing for the event by breaking 20 years of sobriety. The story reveals snapshots of that day, then backs away to fill in scenes from the past and from the future. The reader knows, because it is one of the novel's first scenes, that two years after the party, Simen will find Milla's body buried beneath a tree. What the reader does not know is how or why Milla died. That becomes the mystery that drives the story.

Much of the novel is a history of the characters' relationships, illuminated by key scenes. Their feelings for each other are complex and always changing. We see who they are and who they pretend to be. We watch them in the present as they try to cope with their pasts. We experience Jon's untethered existence and Siri's irrational anger. As the marriage of Jon and Siri curdles, as their daughter becomes distant and uncontrollable, we feel their frustration and resignation. The story is deeply introspective, taking the reader into the depths of Jon's mind and, to a lesser extent, into the minds of other characters.

Many readers dislike books about unlikable characters. Those readers should probably avoid The Cold Song, as should readers who are looking for life-affirming stories. The characters are compelling but you would not want them as friends. Few of the characters (including Milla's parents after her death) behave admirably. Still, The Cold Song sheds light on personalities that are familiar to us all, and on characteristics that (hopefully to a lesser extent) we all share.

The Cold Song is not by any means a conventional mystery novel but it doesn't pretend to be an Agatha Christie or a thriller. This is a story about how events shape people. The last quarter of the novel isn't as tight as the first three-quarters -- it doesn't advance as briskly -- and the ambiguous ending comes as an anti-climax given the prolonged setup, although the last couple of paragraphs offer a glimpse of redemption and healing that is missing from the rest of the narrative. The reader is required to fill in some gaps (or is left wondering about certain events) but that is the nature of life. Linn Ullman dissects the lives of her characters in prose that is is as sharp and sparkling as crystalline ice. That is reason enough to read this disturbing, insightful novel.

RECOMMENDED