Winter's Gifts by Ben Aaronovitch

First published in the UK in 2023; published in a deluxe edition by Subterranean Press on December 1, 2023

Winter’s Gifts is a good book for readers who miss the X Files. The supernatural/horror elements in this short novel (or long novella) are . . . wait for it . . . snow zombies. Don’t let that discourage you from reading the book. Being made largely of snow and trash, they bear little resemblance to ordinary zombies.

The novel is the most recent in Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London urban fantasy series. Winter’s Gifts features Kimberly Reynolds, who appeared in a couple of earlier novels in the series. Reynolds is an FBI agent who, like Mulder and Scully, handles cases for the FBI that have “unusual characteristics.”

A retired agent named Patrick Henderson contacted the Bureau and asked for a meeting in Eloise, Wisconsin to discuss such a case. Eloise is way up north, not far from the Apostle Islands. Reynolds must contend with a blizzard as she makes her way to the small town. She arrives just after a snow tornado destroys the town hall.

A neighbor tells Reynolds that she saw Henderson being dragged from his house by a shambling creature with antlers. The neighbor assumed she was dreaming and went back to bed. When Reynolds finds a mutilated deer, she wonders if Henderson was abducted by someone carrying a deer head. Her subsequent discovery of a human arm suggests that there is more to the case than animal mutilation.

Reynolds wonders whether the mystery that troubled Henderson ties into the Marsh expedition. Its explorers made camp in Eloise in 1843 before they disappeared. Reynolds finds the journal of a Canadian trapper in the local library that provides clues to the fate of the explorers. Reynolds suspects that wolf spirits may have been involved. Scott Walker, an ethnographer from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, helps Reynolds understand local legends and native history relating to supernatural creatures, leading Reynolds to suspect that a weaponized spirit may be preying on the community.

The other significant characters are the local librarian (Sadie Clarkson), a meteorologist (William Boyd), a little girl named Ashley, a grandmother named Ada Cole who owns the local hotel, and a missing hotel guest named Bunker. Some of the characters are magicians/wizards/witches. Some characters who aren’t practitioners of magic are knowledgeable about the supernatural. Bunker seems to have been compiling information about Henderson, Walker, and Clarkson for a mysterious purpose. Reynolds needs to decide whether she can trust characters who dabble in magic.

A couple of Native Americans join the cast in the novel’s second half. One of them is probably a supernatural being, although he’s not a snow zombie.

The explanation of the snow zombies involves desecration of the environment. The spirits are bothered by people who litter. Well, who isn’t? By definition, supernatural story elements don’t need to be rational, so the novel’s sketchy explanation of snow monsters is probably as good as any.

Aaronovitch keeps the story moving, adding elements of mild horror to an investigation of unusual circumstances before hastening the pace with chases through the snow and across the ice. While the story isn’t particularly frightening, the characters are entertaining. Reynolds develops a romantic attachment that might be more accurately described as a lustful attachment, although the G-rated narrative suggests that Reynolds hasn’t cast aside her religious upbringing to embrace the joys of hedonism.

While I’m not generally a fan of urban fantasy, I’ve found Aaronovitch to be one of its better practitioners. Readers who are fond of urban fantasy should be pleased with this latest entry in the Rivers of London series.

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Scorpio by Marko Kloos

Published by ‎ 47North on January 1, 2024

Scorpio is a novel in Marko Kloos’s Frontlines universe. There are, I think, eight Frontlines novels. Scorpio begins a new series called Frontlines: Evolution.

Humans colonized and terraformed various worlds and were getting along just fine fighting with other humans until aliens known as Lankies appeared. Scorpio is a planet that was being terraformed when Lankies showed up and began stomping on people. Most colonists died but about 150 are still alive, eight years after the Lankies arrived.

The surviving humans clustered in an underground facility. It isn’t easy to venture outside because the Lankies are reversing the terraforming, reducing oxygen and increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The survivors nevertheless take occasional trips to the remnants of their other settlements to scavenge for rechargeable batteries and lemon bars and whatever else they can find.

When Alexandra (“Alex”) Archer traveled to Scorpio with her family, she was too young to form memories of the voyage. Now she’s 21. The first two-thirds of the novel follows Alex and a group of soldiers and civilians on a scavenging trip. Alex is a civilian, but she’s attached to the military because she has trained and handles a military dog who alerts when Lankies are coming close.

The scavenging trip is the stuff of traditional military science fiction. Colonists who were assigned to the military operate cannons and handheld weapons to take out attacking Lankies. The scavenging seems to be going well until it isn’t. The scenes that depict the shit hitting the fan are intense.

The novel’s last third follows Alex after she returns to Earth. This is an interesting approach to military sf, as Alex’s story (after she leaves Scorpio) has little to do with military action. She gets into a tussle with some muggers and shows her moxie, but the deeper story involves Alex’s poor adjustment to a life in which she doesn’t feel a sense of purpose, a life in a place where she doesn’t belong.

I assume Alex will be the star of the Frontlines: Evolution series. She’s a likable character. Kloos’s prose is smooth and straightforward. He clearly admires the military, but he doesn’t go overboard with praise of heroism and brotherhood. I prefer anti-military science fiction, but I give Kloos credit for being a good storyteller. Military sf fans who are looking for a new series to follow, as well as current Kloos fans, might want to give Scorpio a try.

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Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

First published in the UK in 2023; published by Grove Atlantic on December 22, 2023

Prophet Song is a dystopian tale of an authoritarian Irish government that makes drastic changes in the lives of Dubliners after a far-right political party is voted into office. Irish citizens naively believe they still have rights, but rights are useless when an unchecked government disregards them.

Larry Stack is the deputy general secretary of the Teachers Union of Ireland. The garda accuse him of acting against the interests of the state by (in Stack’s view) engaging in peaceful industrial action to better the working conditions of teachers. Workers who organize and demand better wages are branded as communists by the far right political party that controls the government. The Garda treat a peaceful march for workers’ rights as a riot. The Garda begin to snatch up union leaders pursuant to newly enacted emergency powers. They place Larry in detention. They arrest journalists. They impose curfews. As time goes on, the government takes control of the media and cuts off access to foreign news.

Larry and his wife Eilish have four kids. Eilish must do her best to hold the family together until Larry returns. But will he return? She wants her oldest son Mark to leave the country so he will not be conscripted into national service, but the government won’t renew the family’s passports. Her plan to smuggle Mark into Northern Ireland is foiled when he refuses to run away from the fight against tyranny.

After Mark disappears, Eilish’s daughter tells her they should all leave the country, but Eilish’s father is developing dementia and she doesn’t know who will take care of him. A sister who lives in Canada tells her that “history is a silent record of people who did not know when to leave.”

When an insurrection takes root, the reader sees it from Eilish’s limited perspective. It is a topic of conversation among people standing in line at the grocer, the subject of newspaper articles she skims. Her attention is focused on more personal issues. She loses her job when her son is branded a traitor. Her younger son blames her for his father’s disappearance. The butcher refuses to serve her because Mark’s name has been published in a list of traitors.

The focus on Eilish gives the novel its power. As the novel moves forward, Eilish finds herself in the middle of a civil war that she can’t wrap her head around. She doesn’t want to abandon her life. She can’t grasp the reality that she can never have that life back. Her house is literally in the middle of a war zone; a newly constructed checkpoint prevents her from traveling on her street. Bombs are falling; mortars are exploding; her roof is collapsing. When rebels seize the street, their curfew and restrictions are just as bad as the government’s, leaving Eilish to tell a curfew enforcer that her son didn’t fight to replace a government with “more of the same.”

The last stages of the story move with the pace of a thriller as Eilish undertakes a journey to freedom. The novel invites the reader to ask what freedom means and what price is worth paying for it. Like other refugees, Eilish regards freedom as an abstract concept that is secondary to the struggle to keep her children alive. While Eilish once believed in free will, she now understands that she has lost the ability to make meaningful choices. Her options are dictated by men with guns.

I don’t think I’ve read another novel that brought home quite so forcefully the experience of civilians who struggle to live in a war zone. Eilish’s constant fear, her desperate attempts to keep her children safe, her self-recriminations for not bringing them out of the country (even at the risk of leaving her husband and father behind) while there was still an opportunity for safe travel, all invite sympathy and understanding, not just for Eilish but for anyone whose life has been disrupted by war.

Scenes that might be familiar — a parent whose mind is slipping away, a child who hurls vile insults at a parent in response to stressful moments — are devoid of the melodrama that a lesser writer might invoke. Paul Lynch strips the scenes to their essence, underplaying the drama to achieve a greater sense of realism.

Prophet Song isn’t overly difficult to read, although long blocks of text without paragraph breaks might be unappealing to some readers. (Read the Amazon reviews of Jonathan Franzen’s novels and you’ll learn that some readers don’t know how to use bookmarks when a writer refuses to make reading easy for them.) The story is so engaging that empathic readers — even those with limited attention spans — should be able to stick with it. Those who do will be rewarded, just as Lynch was rewarded with a well-deserved Booker Prize.

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The Dyatlov Pass Mystery by Cédric Mayen and Jandro González

First published in France in 2023; published in translation by Europe Comics on December 27, 2023

The Dyatlov Pass Mystery is a graphic retelling of events that have no satisfactory explanation. In early February 1959, ten experienced hikers went to Mount Otorten in the Urals. Two were women. Nine hikers vanished, including their leader, Igor Dyatlov. Only Yuri Yudin returned. Prosecutor Lev Ivanov is assigned to solve the mystery, although it is clear that the KGB is in charge.

Yudin has a back injury that prevents him from continuing with the other members of the expedition. He accompanies the hikers as far as an abandoned mine, the first stop in their trek. Yudin searches the mine for minerals, then returns to the university with their driver.

Ivanov brings Yudin and some KGB agents to the place where Yudin last saw the hikers. They follow a path and find the place where the missing hikers camped. Their tent appears to have been cut open from the inside. They left their boots and other gear in the tent. Did something frighten the hikers?

The searchers begin to find bodies. Some are mutilated. Others died of hypothermia. There are burns and blast marks on nearby trees. Some bodies show signs of radiation exposure. Did military tests contribute to the deaths? Did the hikers encounter aliens with powerful weapons? The military won’t let Ivanov conduct a proper investigation. He wonders if the army is covering up the truth. Ivanov can only conclude that the hikers encountered a “sudden overwhelming force” that he cannot explain.

Ivanov poses questions that can’t be answered with certainty. What caused the hikers to cut a hole in their tent and abandon their boots and gear in below-freezing weather? Why did they split into three groups? Why did some hikers suffer broken bones (as if they had been in a traffic accident) while others did not? Why did some suffer from radiation burns while others did not?

The graphic novel alternates an imagined version of Ivanov’s investigation with an imagined version of the hikers’ journey, up to the point where they made their final camp. The story explores the possibility of jealousy (seven men and only two women) and conflict, but it doesn’t venture a guess as to the cause of the nine deaths.

After the story finishes, a lengthy narrative brings together facts and theories that proffer solutions to the mystery. The most promising solutions involve geotechnical engineering and equations, coupled with a certain amount of speculation. I’ll leave it to scientists to evaluate the theories. Military shenanigans and aliens are more interesting, but the current prevailing theory might be more plausible.

The graphic novel, on the other hand, I can evaluate as a fan of graphic literature. The story is detailed and compelling. It made me feel cold. It captured the frustration of an investigator who can’t find the truth and the fear of people who are confronted with a crisis. To my untrained eye, the art isn’t anything special but it helps tell the story, which is what art should accomplish in a graphic novel.

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The Final Curtain by Keigo Higashino

Published in Japan in 2014; published in translation by ‎ Minotaur Books on December 12, 2023

In The Final Curtain, the play’s the thing. The play in question, The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, was first performed in Japan in 1703. Saying that it holds the key to the mystery probably won’t spoil anything for American readers, although it might provide a clue to readers who are more familiar than I am with the history of Japanese theater. In any event, the mystery extends well beyond the play.

Keigo Higashino is the current master of Japanese mystery novels. His plots are intricate but credible. Embedded in the plot of The Final Curtain are troubled relationships between a father and daughter and between a mother and son. As is often the case, the affected children are too young to understand the difficult lives of their parents.

The novel begins with the story of Yuriko Tajima, a woman who finds a job in a small-town bar and stays there for years. She confides to the bar’s owner that she failed as a wife and mother. Perhaps she has found her niche as a waitress/hostess.

Yuriko befriends a customer named Shunichi Watabe. The nature of their relationship is a bit of a mystery to the bar’s owner. When Yuriko is found dead in her apartment, the authorities decide she had a heart attack. Her employer takes possession of her ashes. Watabe gives the bar owner the information she needs to track down Yuriko’s son, to whom the ashes rightly belong. Her son turns out to be Kyoichiro Kaga, the police detective who stars in a series of novels. The Final Curtain is the most recent, both in the original series and in translation.

Kaga isn’t much interested in the mother who walked out on him, but he is dutiful and so agrees to pick up the ashes. When he goes through his mother’s possessions, he finds a note that lists twelve Tokyo bridges, each written next to a month of the year. He doesn’t think much about it. Life moves on.

About ten years later, a woman’s body is found in a Tokyo apartment. Michiko Oshitani was strangled to death. Neither the cleaning company that employed her nor her parents know why she came to Tokyo. The apartment’s tenant, Matsuo Koshikawa, has gone missing.

Detective Shuhei Matsumiya is tasked with investigating the murder. He wonders if the murder is linked to the murder of a man who died by strangulation before his body was set on fire. The murders took place a few kilometers apart but within days of each other.

Michiko managed client relations for her employer. Matsumiya decides to interview all the businesses where Michiko had recent contacts before she traveled to Tokyo. At a retirement home, Matsumiya learns that Michiko believed she recognized an older resident as the mother of Hiromi Asai. The woman insisted that Michiko was wrong, but Hiromi lives in Tokyo, which might have given Michiko a reason to travel there.

Hiromi Asai seems to have had a tragic life. Her mother, Atsuko, felt deceived by the matchmaker who set her up with Tadao Asai. Atsuko remedied the bad marriage by walking away from her family while Hiromi was still in junior high school. As Matsumiya follows the trail of clues, he learns that Tadao jumped from a tall building, leaving Hiromi to be raised in an orphanage. Yet Hiromi Asai went on to become Hiromi Kadokura, an actress and a successful theater director in Tokyo.

When Matsumiya relates all of this to Kaga, who happens to be his cousin, he mentions a calendar on the wall of Koshikawa’s apartment. On each month, someone had written the same of a bridge. Kaga realizes the bridges and months match the note he found in his mother’s possessions.

From those roots, the mystery blossoms. It is a story of assumed identities, missing persons, and a dubious relationship between a teacher and student. Kaga is forced to confront and reconsider unpleasant memories of his childhood as he learns the truth about Michiko’s decision to leave her husband.

Kaga methodically assembles clues as he pieces together the relationship between the two strangulation victims and his mother’s possession of a list of bridges. As is customary in Japanese mysteries, the eventual solution to each puzzle makes sense. And unlike too many American crime novels, Higashino’s plot does not depend on an abundance of unlikely coincidences.

Kaga’s troubled childhood has been a collateral issue in earlier novels. This one brings the issue into focus while helping Kaga come to terms with it. Higashino always makes the drama of human existence important to the story without allowing it to overshadow the mystery. Crime novel fans who prefer the purity of a murder mystery to mindless action and shootouts might want to fill their shelves with Higashino’s novels.

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