Manner of Death by Robin Cook

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on December 5, 2023

Many of the Robin Cook novels I’ve read have hinged on plots of doubtful plausibility. Manner of Death is the least plausible among them.

The novel is one of many featuring medical examiner Jack Stapleton and his wife, Laurie Montgomery, who is New York City’s chief medical examiner. Much of the story (and the most interesting part) involves a young resident named Ryan Sullivan who is doing a rotation in the morgue, observing and assisting with autopsies. Sullivan doesn’t like the smell and would rather be performing work for which he feels more suited.

Sullivan shies away from one of the autopsies because it involves a suicide. Sullivan’s father committed suicide and Sullivan tried to kill himself when he was young. He was adopted by a doctor who is now a big shot, which explains his rise from unfortunate circumstances to a medical residency.

Although he doesn’t like autopsies, Sullivan becomes intrigued by the forensic evidence that drives decisions to classify deaths as suicides or murders staged as suicides. Montgomery makes him aware of several recent cases in which medical legal investigators alerted the medical examiners to red flags that might be indicative of homicide. All of the cases were eventually ruled to be suicides, in part because the police pressure the investigators to classify the death as a suicide because homicides are a lot of extra work.

Sullivan persuades Montgomery to excuse him from autopsies for a bit while he searches for commonalities in the cases. Sullivan interviews various investigators and witnesses to search for a common thread. He finds several. All of the victims were executives in large corporations, were reasonably young, and had recently had medical examinations that were paid for by their employers.

Without revealing any surprises, I think I can safely reveal that two related medical centers are scamming patients. One center makes a doubtful diagnosis and then sends the patient to the other center for unnecessary but expensive full body scans. The owner of the centers is losing money and doesn’t want to give refunds to disgruntled patients.

As is common to Stapleton novels, one of the central characters is imperiled as the novel nears its conclusion. That gives the novel its obligatory action, but it also means that the books in the series are acquiring a predicable sameness.

My complaint about the plot centers on the motive for the staged suicides. Hiring mercenaries from a security firm to commit murders seems like it would be more expensive (and much riskier) than simply settling claims of patients who decide they have been defrauded. And since the patients' employers are paying the bill, I doubt they would actually kick up much of a fuss.

A complaint that is common to all of Cook’s novels concerns the dialog. It’s awful. Maybe medical examiners in the real world speak to each other as if they were automatons (although AI speaks as naturally as humans these days). Attempts to make the characters sound human come across as artificial. And all characters, including non-doctors, speak in the same tedious voice. A doctor might say “irrespective of its efficacy” but would a cop?

Sullivan’s quest is reasonably interesting. He is a tedious young man but he’s still the novel’s saving grace. Given the leaden dialog and doubtful plot, I can’t give a full recommendation to Manner of Death, but hardcore fans of medical thrillers and of the forensic analysis surrounding death might enjoy it more than I did.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Fourth Rule by Jeff Lindsay

Published by Dutton on December 5, 2023

Riley Wolfe is insufferably proud of himself for being the world’s best thief. He’s also pleased with his performance as an escape artist and his mastery of parkour. His ego was so irritating in his inaugural novel that I didn’t finish it. I didn’t see the second one, but I tried the third. Jeff Lindsay toned down Riley’s boasting in that one, allowing a reasonably good story to develop.

Riley starts the fourth installment in the series by bragging that he stole the Irish Crown jewels from the Canadian wilderness lair of a collector known only as the Cobra. A couple of months later, while fighting boredom and looking for something new to brag about, he begins to plan the theft of the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum in London.

As he ponders the heist, Riley wanders into an art museum to admire paintings by Otto Dix. He bumps into a woman named Caitlin O’Brian and they make a connection over drinks and dinner before she vanishes. She later shows up at his door, shags him, and pouts a bit before he’s bragging about being the world’s greatest thief. Of course, not talking about thievery with strangers is one of the rules of being the world’s greatest thief, but she shagged him so she’s not really a stranger, right?

Anyway, Caitlin wins Riley’s confidence by stealing the Dix painting that he was admiring. How she does this is never explained and Riley, who can’t get his mind of shagging, neglects to ask. Naturally, he agrees to let her help him steal the Rosetta Stone.

The plan to steal the rock is far from a work of genius and it succeeds only because people at the British Museum are too dense to do their jobs. Frank Delgado, the FBI agent who is Riley’s nemesis, is dispatched to London to help the British police respond to a confidential tip that Riley plans to make off with the Museum’s most treasured possession. When Frank asks folks at the Museum whether anything unusual has happened recently, they fail to connect the most unusual event in their tenure to the planned theft. Riley struck me as being more lucky than smart.

Things go awry after the theft and Riley needs to rescue Caitlan, who has apparently been captured by the Cobra. Riley belatedly tumbles onto a secret and needs to rescue himself. A seasoned crime novel fan will guess the novel’s big surprise long before it arrives. That Riley didn’t recognize the obvious also undercuts his self-promoted reputation as a criminal genius. Maybe he needs to get laid more often so his sex-deprived brain doesn’t ignore warning signs that could not be bigger or brighter.

Setting aside the plot’s eye-rolling lack of credibility and the novel’s annoying protagonist, Lindsay delivers a fast-moving plot with a pleasing series of chases, fights, and escapes. I particularly enjoyed various thrashings of Riley, who quite deserves the punishment. While I am a bigger fan of the third Riley Wolfe novel than the fourth, I can recommend it to fans of action novels.

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Alice Sadie Celine by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

Published by Simon & Schuster on November 28, 2023

Alice, Sadie, and Celine is a study of the three women who lend their names to the novel’s title. Celine McKeogh is a “decorated feminist” who teaches gender studies at Berkeley. Her daughter Sadie learned to hate Celine during her childhood because so many people hate Celine that hating her made Sadie feel normal. Celine is angry at Sadie because Sadie isn’t angry at men. “Well, you should be,” Celine assures her daughter. Sadie is too busy being angry at her mother to spare any time for men, apart from a recently acquired boyfriend who needs some alterations (“shorten the sincerity and let out the sex appeal”). But Sadie at 23 is still a virgin and uncertain that she can rid herself of that affliction.

Sadie’s best childhood friend was and remains Alice, although a rift has separated them ever since Alice moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. Alice is back in San Francisco to act in a community playhouse version of A Winter’s Tale. The venue is unimpressive but Alice notes with pride that the acting company received four stars on Yelp. Perhaps because she made a promise to spend the weekend with her boyfriend or perhaps because she is angry at Alice, Sadie sends Celine in her stead to watch Alice’s performance on opening night.

Celine is unhappy to be drafted into service but Celine is unhappy about everything. Although she has never taken Alice seriously, Celine is overcome by a sudden onrush of lust when she sees Alice playing the role of Hermione in tight jeans. Celine makes a move on Alice, who is too stunned to resist. Soon embraced by lustful desires of her own, Alice begins a clandestine relationship with Celine. Will it be a friendship destroyer when Sadie learns the truth?

Backstories follow, developing the childhoods of Sadie and Alice and the adulthood of Celine. It is easy to understand why Alice and Sadie bonded as kids. Alice had minimal interaction with her own mother and envied Sadie for having a mother who fought with her constantly. Alice grew up in a comfortable home but she “felt the house like a snake feels the fraying skin — shiny scales gone lusterless, old iridescence — that it is past time to molt.”

Sadie envies Alice for knowing “so much about men. You’re a man whisperer.” Sadie is a planner but because life interferes with plans, Sadie “lived a life of fictive imaginings.” In the present, we learn how Sadie’s plan to lose her virginity goes awry, probably because she read her mother’s first book and believes that sex with males is always coercive, notwithstanding her decision to date the least coercive guy imaginable.

Alice is “generous and kind, agreeable, pretty, adored by all.” But does she have any substance? It isn’t surprising that after her lust abates, Celine realizes she has allowed herself to become “madly infatuated with a nobody.”

Celine is the most interesting character. At 44, her academic career is stuck. Her early work has suffered from the plague of widespread acceptance. Ideas that were once radical have become mainstream, robbing her of her relevance. In middle age, Celine cannot even scandalize her own daughter. Celine has responded to her circumstances by developing “a remarkable ability to sniff out happiness and stifle it like a fire extinguisher.” It’s no wonder that she’s widely disliked by all, although she does have a certain charm that shines through her self-centered demeanor.

The novel takes a long jump into the future as it winds up the story, featuring the child of a main character. We learn that the main characters learned some lessons. Good for them. The child, on the other hand, is judgmental and still has much to learn. Maybe the point of jumping ahead (which otherwise baffled me a bit) is to demonstrate that each new generation has a lot to learn before it is qualified to judge members of the previous generation. Or perhaps the point is to show that some adults still need to grow up, regardless of age.

Sara Blakley-Cartwright’s story is amusing because her characters adhere closely to stereotypes. Celine is a caricature of a woman who became an influential feminist in an era where feminist scholarship was trying to establish its relevance in academia and who cannot easily cope with the loss of attention she experienced when gender studies moved beyond her early contribution.

Celine’s relationship with Sadie is anchored in the stereotype of mother-daughter relationships involving mothers who want to be admired more than loved by their daughters and stunted daughters who, fighting to reject maternal advice they may have already internalized, want to be accepted more than guided by their mothers. Alice represents the stereotype of a pretty girl who aspires to be an actress and, having given little thought to her life, is surprised but unprepared when she encounters new ideas and experiences.

I don’t know if the story intends to satirize porn, but sex with a best friend’s MILF, coupled with a lesbian twist, seems to merge multiple Pornhub categories. Perhaps the story is meant to titillate, although (unlike Pornhub) the sex is far from graphic. The plot doesn’t amount to much —a disappointment to readers who can’t live without a thrilling plot — but it is a reliable vehicle to ferry the characters through the novel. Blakley-Cartwright’s observant prose exposes the characters’ foibles and pokes good-natured fun at the social groups they represent. Alice Sadie Celine is an easy book to enjoy.

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The Loneliness of the Abyss by Dimitris Vanellis and Nikolas Kourtis

First published in Greece in 2022; published in translation by Europe Comics on November 29, 2023

A legend holds that Alexander, after slaying the Great Serpent who stood guard over the Eternal Waters, brought a bottle of the water to Babylon, where he planned to achieve immortality. His sister thought the bottle contained ordinary water. She drank it and became immortal, much to Alexander’s displeasure. The girl begged the gods never to let her see her brother die. They granted her wish by changing her into a gorgon. In that form, she roams the seas, asking passing ships whether Alexander is still alive and crushing those that admit his death.

The Loneliness of the Abyss extends the legend and brings it to a conclusion. The graphic story begins with a cargo ship that has lost power, surrounded by mist in a still and silent sea. The crew waits and broods for days before a giant woman rises from the sea. The crew member she snatches does not know the legend, so he fails to assure her that King Alexander still lives. She crushes him between her fingers, then capsizes the ship and tears it apart. All of this is captured in a few balloons of dialog and lovely drawings of the gorgon, the sea, and destruction.

The story adds to the Alexandrian legend when the narrator falls overboard. Instead of drowning like his shipmates, the narrator occupies a bubble of air at the bottom of the sea. The gorgon is there. He hears her thoughts. She explains that she spared him because he bears a strong resemblance to Alexander.

The narrator finds it in his interest to deceive the gorgon, so he tells her of the wonders of Babylon under Alexander’s immortal rule. The gorgon believes him but accosts more sailors to gain additional knowledge, then sinks their ships when they “lie” by asserting that Alexander is no longer king. Caught in the abyss, the narrator grows old and becomes lost in his own invented tales of Babylon. He takes drastic action at the end, after he is reminded of the life he once lived.

The art is well suited to the story. The sister looks more like a mermaid than a traditional gorgon (a deliberate choice to reflect the Greek take on gorgons, the artist explains). The coloring is a misty gray above the sea’s surface, deep blue with an occasional wash of green below. Human characters are drawn with photo-realism (perhaps assisted by some form of photoshopping?). The gorgon is either beautiful or demonic, depending on whether she is being told a pleasant lie or the unwelcome truth. In short, the art is striking and the story is cool.

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Iwo, 26 Charlie by P.T. Deutermann

Published by ‎ St. Martin's Press on November 28, 2023

P.T. ‎Deutermann’s recent novels have been working their way through the Pacific War. This one showcases the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. The protagonist is Lee Bishop, a naval lieutenant assigned to a destroyer. His job is to communicate with spotters on the island and to translate the coordinates they provide into firing solutions. Being the military, information provided by spotters goes through layers of bureaucracy before orders to fire are finally given. The delay endangers Marines who need immediate support. Bishop comes up with a plan to replace multiple competing grids with a single grid. The plan will streamline the process and save American lives.

Unfortunately for Bishop, he is sent to Iwo Jima to explain and test his plan. He’s given the job of a spotter, a job that most Marines don’t survive for more than 24 hours before a sniper puts an end to their spotting. Three Marines who have become known as the Goon Squad are assigned to keep him alive. Bishop is a mere naval lieutenant and not a Marine, but they bond anyway. Bonding becomes easier after they repeatedly save each other’s lives.

Bishop proves that his idea is effective. It’s so effective that he’s repeatedly sent into the field on new missions. He saves countless lives by calling in strikes on Japanese positions, devising ways to get the right shells to land on the right targets.

The missions are harrowing. Nobody writes combat scenes with more voltage than Deutermann. If it is improbable that one man can do as much damage as Bishop causes, Deutermann sold me on believing in the possibility of unlikely heroism.

It’s amusing that Bishop reviles the Japanese because they use sneaky tactics and fight to the death as he finds sneaky ways to outfight the Japanese and praises Marines for fighting to the death. Such is the logic of war. I can’t fault Deutermann for portraying that logic as it appears to combatants.

Apart from holding widely shared opinions (like other soldiers and sailors in Deutermann’s recent novels, Bishop hates everything about the Japanese), Bishop doesn’t have much of a personality. He’s dutiful and friendly and brave, but he isn’t developed with the same depth as the protagonists in some of Deutermann’s other novels. To the extent that his personality comes through, Bishop reveals it in an epilog when we learn that he has not gotten over the trauma he endured on Iwo Jima. The epilog is genuinely moving. It also takes an honest look at the difficult cost-benefit value of crippling three divisions of Marines to capture a single island.

Even if Bishop is a bit bland, this novel doesn’t need to rely on characterization for its success. Deutermann excels at bringing the reader into a battlefield. The carnage of war, the relentless fear that an attack is imminent, the hope of survival, the odor of fuel and sweat and decaying bodies (and sulfur in the case of Iwo Jima), the deafening noise of artillery, all contribute to growing tension as the reader follows Bishop and hopes that, against all odds, he will complete his missions and survive intact. I don’t go out of my way to read war novels, but I am never disappointed by P.T. Deutermann’s stories about World War II.

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