The Bear by Claire Cameron

Published by Little, Brown and Company on February 11, 2014

The Bear was inspired by an actual event that occurred on Bates Island in Algonquin Park, Ontario. A bear attacked and killed two adult campers. In Claire Cameron's version of the story, the adults are camping with two children. Told from the point of view of one of the two kids, Anna Whyte, The Bear is a poignant and startling novel.

Writing from a child's perspective is no easy task. Childlike prose will rarely hold an adult reader's interest while eloquent prose seems artificial when it comes from a child. The trick, deftly executed here, is to show the reader an adult world from a child's eyes, assembling the simple language that a child would use in ungrammatically interesting sentences that reflect the imagination and confusion of a child's existence. In Anna's mind, a cooler named Coleman is her friend, an octopus helps her battle armies of fish, a bear is a big black dog, and how her father's tennis shoe ended up on a big chunk of meat is a puzzle.

The first section of The Bear is written with horrifying realism, making a compelling story all the more intense. The beauty of the story is that an adult reader, who understands what is happening, is more disturbed than Anna, who is too young to appreciate the gruesome and terrifying reality that surrounds her. Immaturity makes children vulnerable but it also protects them emotionally. Anna's immaturity, in turn, protects the reader from gut-wrenching descriptions of loss and pain.

The problem with opening a novel with such intensity is that once the reader's fear dissipates, the rest of the novel feels anticlimactic. There is, in fact, a lull in the middle section of The Bear. While the prose continues to capture a child's perspective, it is a less interesting account of two lost kids.

The novel's final section is stronger. It offers additional insight into a child's world, as a therapist who has no understanding of how Anna is processing reality is determined to help her work through feelings she doesn't have, perhaps doing more harm than good. The sadness inherent in the story as a whole is offset by the humor in Anna's relationship with her brother Stick and by the simple joy Anna experiences when hugging her teddy bear or playing with a neighbor's dog. While it is clear that, as Anna gets older and begins to understand her memories in a different way, her experience on the island will always trouble her, it is also clear that children are resilient and adaptive. At the same time, the epilog (set 20 years later) is both sweet and a little heartbreaking. The Bear isn't always an easy novel to read but it is a novel worth reading.

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Runner by Patrick Lee

Published by Minotaur Books on February 18, 2014

A girl named Rachel is running from six armed men and it is Sam Dryden's bad luck (or maybe it's not) to be walking on the boardwalk near his beach home, in a position to rescue her. Rachel can't remember why she's running, but Martin Gaul -- the kind of omnipotent bad guy often found in Thrillerworld, who can make a phone call and gain instant access to top secret military satellites -- knows that Rachel will eventually recover her memory. He wants her dead before that happens. Farfetched? Yes, but not nearly as farfetched as the reason Rachel is on the run.

Runner is a conspiracy thriller with some science fiction elements. Its internal logic is consistent and, if you're willing to suspend disbelief (as science fiction demands), it is more plausible than many conspiracy thrillers. This one twists the formula a bit by pitting two defense contractors against each other. Rachel is caught in the middle.

As its title implies, pace is the key to The Runner. The novel is fun and easy to read because it moves so quickly. That's essential because if the action stopped to take a breath, the reader might be put off by how unlikely the story is. There isn't much character development (Dryden is a clone of dozens of other ultra-competent heroes with military/clandestine training) and to the extent that Rachel was given a personality, I didn't quite believe it. The story won't prompt deep thoughts, but this isn't that kind of book. As fast moving entertainment, it succeeds. The ending is predictable but it's the ending I wanted, so that's nothing to complain about.

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All I Have in this World by Michael Parker

Published by Algonquin Books on March 25, 2014

The literary device that binds the characters in All I Have in this World is a Buick Electra. The reader first encounters it at an assembly plant in 1983. A year later, the first black car salesman hired by a Cleveland dealership sells it to a math teacher. Subsequent owners include a doctor in Kansas whose son drives it to Austin and a rancher's widow. Slices from the life of each car owner (as well as an assembly plant worker and the used car dealer who sells it last) are dispersed throughout the novel. The book's structure -- the use of the Buick to tie together lives of disparate people who share universal traits -- is part of its appeal.

Twenty years after it drives off the Cleveland lot, the Buick ends up in Pinto Canyon, Texas, where it brings together Maria and Marcus, the novel's principle characters, each of whom is embroiled in a family drama. Although the novel bounces around in time, it begins in 1994, when 17-year-old Maria enters adulthood in the wake of a tragic experience (for which she is unfairly blamed) that solidifies her desire to leave Pinto Canyon. She does not come back for her father's funeral but returns to Pinto Canyon in 2004. Her mother, with whom she has rarely had contact, has inherited a motel and claims she is too tired to run it by herself -- a claim that Maria credits, given that her mother took care of her dying husband and her dying lover before finding herself alone.

Marcus, having discovered that there is no profit in founding a nonprofit educational center dedicated to flytraps and having lost the land he owned jointly with his sister, packs everything he owns into a pickup truck and drives until he reaches Pinto Canyon, where his truck is stolen while he's hiking near the Mexican border. From then on he is (Maria thinks) trying to find "a way to live his life with somewhat less shame."

In part, All I Have in this World is about people who try to get back the things they once had -- love, family, self-respect -- but never the Buick, although it does help Marcus and Maria recover some things they were missing. In part, the story is about the need to put the past in the past, and the difficulty of reconciling the past with the present. Maria knows she did the right thing at seventeen but still has trouble living with it, while Marcus, knowing he did the wrong thing in his recent past, has the same problem. In part, the novel is about the difficulty of forgiveness (choosing not to forgive makes the world smaller and easier to understand) and of learning to live without it. And in part, the novel is about the difficulty of sharing (a car, a life, a lover).

As you might expect, the novel's larger theme is reflected in its title. Nearly everything Marcus owned is lost. Maria's losses are less tangible but just as real. All they have in the world isn't much. But the point of All I Have in this World, as seen in the story of Maria and Marcus and in some of the lives of the Buick owners, is that making a list of your losses is not the best way to measure what you have in this world. That isn't a new idea but it is illustrated here in an engaging story that avoids moving in an obvious direction. The story combines subtle humor with low-key drama and treats the reader to a convincing portrayal of damaged characters who are looking for a way to live with less shame.

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Missing You by Harlan Coben

Published by Dutton on March 18, 2014

Detective Katarina (Kat) Donovan's friend Stacey signs Kat up for an online dating service and who should come up as the perfect match but Kat's former fiancé Jeff Raynes, who is now a widower and raising a child. Well, after all, it's been 18 years since Jeff left her and disappeared so it's not surprising that his life has changed. It is surprising (and ultimately farfetched) that Jeff's picture surfaces during Kat's search, but I can accept one farfetched coincidence for the sake of a good story. Kat experiences considerable anguish over the course of the novel for having a foolish heart (she just can't get over Jeff's tender kisses), a trait that defines Kat's personality and makes her the least interesting character in the novel. Fortunately, Harlan Coben builds greater interest into the bad guys and some of the collateral characters, including Kat's cross-dressing homeless yoga instructor and a female victim who (unlike Kat) doesn't depend upon old boyfriends or an NYPD badge when she needs to muster strength.

The missing boyfriend storyline soon merges with the story of a missing mother. The young man who asks Kat to find his mother has rather improbably located her through her dating profile after concluding that Jeff Raynes is responsible for his mother's disappearance. That setup leads to the twinned mysteries that drive the plot: what happened to the missing mother and where has Raynes been for the last 18 years?

As if that isn't enough drama for one thriller, hit man Monte Leburne is dying of cancer and still refuses to tell Kat who hired him to murder her father. The truth about her father's death (and life) is a secondary mystery that provides occasional diversions from the primary plot. Both the primary and secondary storylines are clever, twisting familiar themes (the danger of online dating, a child's discovery of a parent's hidden past) to make them seem reasonably fresh. The revelation concerning Kat's father's secret is plausible if a bit contrived (I can imagine Coben thinking "What do I need to do to shock my readers?") but is written with sensitivity and compassion.

To the extent that Missing You tries to work as a romance involving the torch that Kat has carried for Raynes, I didn't buy it, in part because that aspect of the story is notable for its cheesiness. In the end, the cheesy romance is tolerable because the rest of the novel works quite well. The pace is suitably brisk and the villains are suitably villainous without becoming over-the-top caricatures of evil. Coben creates satisfying tension near the novel's end that builds to an exciting climax. The mystery surrounding the person responsible for Kat's father's murder reaches a satisfying resolution. In short, while I wasn't thrilled with every aspect of this thriller, it engaged me, surprised me, and made me care about the characters.

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The Janson Option by Paul Garrison

Published by Grand Central Publishing on March 18, 2014

The largest name on the cover of The Janson Option is Jason Bourne even though this is not a Bourne novel. The second largest name is Robert Ludlum even though Ludlum has been dead for more than a decade. The Ludlum factory continues to churn out novels, however, and by the time we reach the bottom of the cover, we learn that Paul Garrison wrote this one. He did a capable job. Unlike recent Bourne novels, The Janson Option does not seem like a hastily written factory-produced thriller.

The Janson Option follows The Janson Directive, which was published a year after Ludlum's death. Paul Janson is a former clandestine government assassin who founded something called Phoenix, which is sort of a rehab center for former government killers. Janson funds Phoenix by handling corporate security assignments. The Janson Option begins with Paul Janson and Jessica Kincaid smuggling the son of a dictator out of his country in North Africa. A year later, Kingsman Helms, who runs the oil division of a ruthless and powerful global corporation, hires Janson to rescue his wife from Somali pirates. Helms needs some rescuing himself after Camorra hit men start shooting at him. The explanation for that apparent coincidence is more credible than the explanations thrillers typically muster.

In fact, The Janson Option as a whole is more believable than many thrillers, including some of Ludlum's. It is carefully plotted without becoming convoluted and it contains at least one satisfying surprise. While Janson and his partner/lover Kincaid are standard thriller heroes, their adversaries (American corporate executives and warring Somalis) are more interesting than typical thriller villains. The international settings have an authentic feel. There is enough action to enliven the story without becoming a mindless novel of shootouts and fistfight. While there is nothing truly exceptional about The Janson Option, it is a fun and fast-moving escapist thriller.

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