Last Acts by Alexander Sammartino

Published by Scribner on January 23, 2024

Last Acts is built on dark humor. Some of the humor derives from unlikely sources. Drug addition isn’t funny. Neither are school shootings. Everyone survives the shooting in Last Acts (the headlines speak of Mass Survival rather than Mass Murder) because the gun was too big for the shooter to handle. He fell down sobbing without managing to kill anyone.

Sobbing is a common experience in Last Acts. So many events in life promote tears. Look at the same events from a different perspective, however, and they might promote laughter. Drug addiction isn’t funny but people in rehab might be. School shootings aren’t funny but a survivor who forms a support group for victims of Mass Survival might give readers a reason to laugh. Marketing isn’t funny but, well, sure it is. How perspective influences attitude is an important theme of Last Acts.

The transition from loser to winner is another of the novel’s themes. It’s a transition that should make people happy, but are winners always happy? They might have been happier when they were losers. Change is the only constant. A loser who becomes a winner will probably become a loser again. But whether the person is really a loser is, again, a matter of perspective. A character named Felicia illustrates the point: “She was happy with her life, more or less. Sometimes the wind hit her and she felt certain she would sob. But more frequent were the days when she walked around smiling, confident that she would never die.”

The novel’s most important characters are Rizzo and his son Nick. Rizzo’s first name is David but he’s known to all as Rizzo. Rizzo has a gun shop in a strip mall that was developed by Buford Bellum, a serial entrepreneur who is at heart a con artist. Rizzo had a history of being fired from sales jobs until he believed Buford’s pitch that buying into the “business park” would guarantee his success. Instead, Rizzo has crushing debt, a store full of guns, and few customers willing to venture into the lonely mall to buy them.

The possibility of an afterlife is the only thing that mitigates Rizzo’s fear of death. When Nick dies from a drug overdose and is brought back to life, Rizzo’s hopes are dashed by Nick’s report that he experienced nothing after he died. Rizzo is terrified by the thought that his miserable life is all he will ever have.

Nick is a heroin addict. He needs drug treatment but, when Rizzo takes him to the most affordable treatment center, his credit cards are declined. Unsurprisingly, the center refuses Rizzo’s request to “just keep him for a for a few days” while Rizzo tries to find the money.

Nick goes to work in Rizzo’s failing gun shop, hoping to prove to his father than he is done screwing up his life. He tries to make a commercial for his father’s store, promoting sales by promising to donate some of their revenues to drug addiction treatment. Nick’s ad libs (“at Rizzo’s Firearms, we are shooting addiction dead”) cause multiple reshoots, but the commercial they eventually produce goes viral, bringing success and more opportunities to screw up. Life is a series of ups and downs. Nick and Rizzo both make the transition from loser to winner before they fall again.

Rizzo’s downfall occurs when he is held responsible (unjustly in the collective view of his gun-happy customers) for the failed school shooting. Nick’s production of the commercial for his father’s store seems to give birth to a career as a marketing consultant until he teams up with Buford Bellum. Neither father nor son can get ahead for long.

Nick and Rizzo love each other, albeit grudgingly. They would like to trust each other, but trust must be earned and neither parent nor child is capable of exercising sound judgment. Their comical mishaps promote guilty laughter (it isn’t nice, after all, to laugh at another’s misfortune). The story develops poignancy from the willingness of father and son to maintain a relationship despite their inevitable disappointment with each other. They can work through their issues because they know they’ll always have each other.

In the tradition of modern (or postmodern or whatever they are these days) novels, Last Acts ends abruptly, in the middle of an important development. That will annoy some readers. I’ve almost gotten used to it. Maybe Alexander Sammartino will write a sequel that explains the next chapters of his characters’ lives. He probably won’t, but I hope he does.

RECOMMENDED

Hero by Thomas Perry

Published by Mysterious Press on January 16, 2024

The setup to Hero is simple. Justine Poole (the name she adopted for work) is a bodyguard employed by a private security company in Los Angeles. Most of her clients are celebrities. While protecting an aging celebrity couple from a home invasion, she fights off five armed burglars and kills two of them. Painting her as a hero, the media would like to make Justine a short-term celebrity. Unfortunately for Justine, the man who employed the home invaders wants to send a message. He hires a skilled assassin to kill Justine.

It seems improbable to me that a criminal who hires flunkies to carry out home invasions would worry about adverse publicity when some of his flunkies are killed by a security guard. I wasn’t persuaded that the boss would worry that his reputation would be impaired because his flunkies screwed up. Still, the premise is necessary to set the action in motion and it’s no more improbable than the setups of most modern thrillers.

For reasons beyond her control, Justine is fired from her job. Her former colleagues are forbidden from contacting her. The assassin kills a couple of people she knows while trying to kill her. Justine can’t reach out to friends for help without endangering them.

The criminal mastermind orchestrates an unlikely public relations campaign that make the police unwilling to help Justine, even when they know a killer is pursuing her. Consequently, Justine must rely on her wits and training to elude a killer who seems to anticipate her every move.

Most of the novel consists of chases through buildings and streets in LA. They aren’t particularly original but they’re fun. Who doesn’t love a chase scene?

Justine manipulates a guy into giving her a short-term place to stay. The guy tries to manipulate her for reasons of his own. The novel seems to foreshadow Justine falling in love with him but, if that’s going to happen, it will happen after the story ends. I appreciated Thomas Perry’s decision not to let a cheesy romance get in the way of chases and shootouts.

Perry’s prose is efficient, the story moves quickly, and while Justine doesn’t have much of a personality, she doesn’t need one. She just needs to keep her wits about her long enough to survive. Hero is an unremarkable thriller, but it is entertaining. Maybe January isn’t the right month for a beach read, but thriller fans who can’t wait for summer won’t be disappointed if they read it now.

RECOMMENDED

Ilium by Lea Carpenter

Published by Knopf on January 16, 2024

Many thrillers, particularly spy novels, attempt a slow build to a startling climax, only to disappoint. Ilium succeeds. While spy novels often depict espionage as a dirty business, few illustrate its big-picture futility as effectively as Ilium.

Edouard and Dasha worked together in Russian intelligence before they entered into a marriage of convenience. Dasha was a widow. She wanted a father for her daughter Nikki and Edouard was happy to have a daughter. In any event, Edouard’s boss told him he needed a wife, so Edouard chose one who happened to be nearby. It was easy for Dasha to say yes. Edouard’s father was one of Russia’s original oligarchs, so Edouard could offer Dasha and Nikki a very comfortable life.

Two weeks after they married, Edouard was in bed with Sophie in Beirut. He promised her a family but neglected to mention Dasha and Nikki. Sophie gave him a son named Felix but suffered a tragic end that sets the story in motion. Edouard worships Felix but Dasha views him as a reminder of Edouard’s infidelity.

Before he became a spy for the Russian government, Edouard had a successful career in the military. Although Edouard is getting old, he is such a successful spy that the CIA, Mossad, and MI6 track his every move. The intelligence agencies are after revenge. Russia may agree that Edouard’s personal vendetta has gone too far.

The central character of Ilium is an unnamed woman from London who tells her part of the story in the first person. In her early years, the narrator was empty and vulnerable, making her the perfect target for recruitment as an intelligence asset. At a party, she met a successful American named Marcus. She was 21 and he was in his early 50s. To her surprise — because she is convinced that she is not special in any way — Marcus married her. The marriage will not last long because Marcus is dying — a fact he chooses not to disclose until after their wedding. When Marcus tells her, he reveals his other life-changing secret.

Marcus wants the narrator to perform a task. Her job is simple: infiltrate and listen. Her cover identity as a fledgling art dealer is a bit more complex. The narrator tackles the job with enthusiasm because she would do anything for Marcus. She’s excited to do anything at all to enliven a life that, before Marcus, was without color or purpose.

Marcus introduces the narrator to a Lebanese man named Raja, a man who — like Marcus — is not what he appears to be. Raja creates a pretext that allows the narrator to visit Edouard’s home in Cap Ferret. Raja only wants her to learn whether Edouard is there. Since he is not, Raja arranges her return on a new pretext. This time she stays for a bit and gets to know the family. Felix, in particular, bonds with her, perhaps because he feels unloved by his stepmother and stepsister. The narrator’s task remains the same: determine whether Edouard is there and, if so, when he will be leaving.

The reader and the narrator will intuit that Raja will use the narrator’s information in a way that will not be good for Edouard. While there is little reason to feel compassion for Edouard (or for his wife and stepdaughter), he is kind to the narrator, perhaps because of her resemblance to Sophie. The reader will likely share the narrator’s fear that Felix’s life is about to be upended.

We learn in the novel’s closing pages that Edouard must be removed from the game because a mistake gave birth to a reprisal that fueled the desire for revenge. The games never end. “All the wars which were really just one war, the targeting and developing of assets, the unending plays for power and redemption, self-loathing gradually obliterated by pride in the mission, good work, ‘the long game’.”

I appreciated the precision of Lea Carpenter’s insightful prose and the elegant style in which the story is told. Here’s an example that merges insight and elegance: “War endures by design. The history of war is a history of romance and mission, of malice slapping the wrist of good intent. The history of war is a history of action, reaction, repeat. War is tragedy, and tragedy, as Aristotle knew, is a game of subtraction, a game of loss.”

The Iliad and The Odyssey provide a recurring backdrop to the story. The narrator has no education beyond high school, but she is exposed to various interpretations of Homer’s epic works as the novel unfolds. Carpenter returns to Homer at the end of the story when she argues that Priam and Achilles provide an example of men who are able to set aside their lust for war and vengeance and discover, through conversation, that they share the experience of loss, that revenge never satisfies. That lesson is ably taught in a novel that goes beyond the cloak-and-dagger trappings of spy novels to explore deeper questions about conflicts between nations and the forces that shape lives.

RECOMMENDED

Cold Victory by Karl Marlantes

Published by Grove Press on January 9, 2024

Set at the end of World War II, Cold Victory combines a spy thriller with an outdoor adventure. The story’s darkness is offset by the theme of friendship between people of countries that are antagonistic to each other. The world could use more such friendships.

When Lt. Colonel Arnie Koski was assigned to act as a military attaché, Louise became more than an army wife. She became the wife of a spy. Newly arrived in Finland in 1946 (Koski is of Finnish ancestry and fluent in the language), Louise’s job is to help Arnie make social connections that might yield useful intelligence.

Arnie isn’t a cloak-and-dagger spy. His job is to look at roads and bridges and make logistic calculations about supply routes and troop movements in case war breaks out with Russia. While Germany has been defeated, peace treaties are still being negotiated. Russia views Finland as a threat because it sided with Germany during the war. Finland justly views Russia as a threat because Russia seized some of its land. Finland allied with Germany to get its land back, making an enemy of Russia, only to lose the land again (and a bit more). The historical view of Finns who hate Russians and aren’t that fond of Americans (who did too little, in their view, to help their cause) is fascinating.

Near the end of the fighting, Arnie was an Army major who performed reconnaissance in Finland. He came across Russian troops on the other side of a bridge and struck up a friendship with Mikhail Bobrov, a Russian officer. In the present, Arnie meets Mikhail again at a party for diplomats. Both soldiers have been promoted. Arnie and Mikhail get drunk and make a plan to race each other on skis. The race will take ten days.

Mikhail is married to Natalya. Louise and Natalya slowly become friends, their commonalities overcoming their political differences. They volunteer to help an orphanage that is operated by one of Arnie’s relatives. The orphanage needs financial help more than two bodies. Louise comes up with a plan to sell raffle tickets to raise money for the orphanage. The winner will be the person who come closest to predicting the difference in time it will take for Arnie and Mikhail to complete the race. Unfortunately, Louise is from Oklahoma and has no clue about international relations. Her plan to publicize a secret race sets in motion a potential disaster.

The race is an exciting story of courage, sacrifice, and the power of friendship. At the same time, the novel is grim in its depiction of Russia under Stalin and Beria. I give Karl Marlantes credit for having the courage to avoid the kind of shallow ending that is meant only to please readers. The world doesn’t always offer happy endings. Readers who insist upon one will probably want to avoid Cold Victory, although the story does end on an upbeat moment. Readers who appreciate well-told stories that address the world as it exists, stories of good people who exercise bad judgment and face the consequences of their actions, will find much to like in the novel’s strong characters, growing tension, and difficult moral choices.

RECOMMENDED

Termush by Sven Holm

First published in Denmark in 1967; published in translation by Faber & Faber in the UK in 1969; published by ‎Farar, Straus & Giroux (FSG Originals) on January 9, 2024

Termush was “rediscovered” by Faber editors who dug through the Faber vaults to find forgotten novels that might deserve to be regarded as classics. Faber released it in the UK in 2023 as part of its “Faber editions” series.

Termush is the name of a remote hotel on an unidentified ocean. The narrator paid a substantial sum for a guaranteed spot in the hotel as a shelter from catastrophe. His lodging includes access to underground shelters, stored provisions, uncontaminated water, and security against outsiders. The hotel’s luxury yacht is berthed nearby, providing egress if life in the hotel becomes unsustainable.

We aren’t given the details, but a disaster (presumably a nuclear war) gave the wealthy guests reason to check into the hotel. The guests are finally free to venture outside, subject to radiation warnings that send them scurrying back to the shelters. There is little to see; vegetation has gone up in flames, birds are dying.

The novel is intentionally surreal in its depiction of hotel guests as largely undisturbed by disasters that don’t immediately affect them. Perhaps the world outside their walls has nearly come to an end, but they are still able to order dinner from a full menu. The guests display little curiosity about the world’s fate. Occasionally returning to underground shelters when the wind brings too much radiation to the hotel grounds is inconvenient, but most guests are content to follow the directions of hotel management.

The hotel staff is sending out reconnaissance parties to look for inhabitable areas, but their radioed reports are censored before reaching the guests. The narrator opposes the censorship; he wants to know what is left of the world. Management isn’t sure the guests can handle the truth. Most guests seem to feel the same way. If the news is bleak, they don’t want to know.

The narrator understands when a guest who can no longer tolerate “this closed compartment cut off from the world” flees from “the game of make-believe that nothing had happened.” Eventually, a few more follow the path of freedom, leading hotel management to act more like jailers than servants. Perhaps an insurrection is coming.

When survivors appear in search of food and medical care, the hotel guests consider whether it is appropriate to be charitable. The survivors come bearing news of the outside world, which is a good thing, but the outsiders didn’t pay a fee for the hotel’s protection, as did the guests. The guests quickly vote on rules that allow a few survivors at a time to enter the hotel for food and water, but only for one night. This leads to a discussion about the perils of democratic decision-making.

Nor do some guests want their reconnaissance teams to be helping survivors. That’s not the job they’re paid to do, after all (payment presumably meaning continued access to the hotel and its resources), so most guests feel the team members should set their humanity aside and do what they’re told. Termush illustrates the divide between ruling class and working class with more flair than Marx.

The narrator develops an intimate friendship with a woman named Maria, but she is an enigma. She never seems to speak, communicating by expressions that convey her emotions. “She keeps close to me, follows me almost stride for stride, as if this were an order.” I was left wondering whether Maria actually exists.

Much of the time, the narrator seems to be in the dark about the world he now inhabits. Hotel management attributes a guard’s injured arm to being “careless with a hand grenade.” Why does hotel security have hand grenades and what did the careless guard intend to do with his? They later morph from “security” to “soldiers” in ways and for reasons that the narrator does not explain. Eventually, the hotel seems to be under siege, but by whom? The narrator refers to “the strangers” and “our adversaries,” later designating them as “the enemy,” but seems to have no clue about their identity. Nor does he seem to care. The narrator is so detached, so free from opinions, that the story’s moral questions are left unfiltered. Should the hotel help outsiders? Should hotel “soldiers” kill them? Readers are free to make of these issues what they will.

The story’s surreal atmosphere is illustrated by the final sentence: “Outside the sea is still; there is no darkness and no light.” Without darkness or light, what kind of reality exists? The novel’s ambiguities might explain why the Faber editors regarded Termush as a potential classic. The story could be set in any country, in any time. While the guests are sheltering against drifting clouds of radiation, any other apocalyptic event could as easily be substituted. The story resonates because of its focus on group responses to crisis and how those responses may be a function of social class.

RECOMMENDED