Past the Shallows by Favel Parrett

First published in Australia; published by Washington Square Press on April 22, 2014

Miles works on his father's fishing boat, from which his father and another man dive for abalone off the coast of Tasmania. Miles hates the work, hates his life. His mother died in a car accident that Miles and his younger brother Harry survived. More recently, his grandfather died. His older brother Joe is building his own boat and intends to sail away to a better life. Miles wants to go to school but that plan is shattered when his father's helper is injured, forcing Miles to take his place on the boat. If he can't earn a living by fishing, he may be destined for the cannery, where most of his former classmates work.

The novel's focus divides between Miles and Harry. Joe plays only a peripheral role, as does a man named George who, despite his frightening appearance, befriends Harry and gives him a sense of how a father should behave. With Joe gone, Harry and Miles count on each other for the love that their father withholds, but they are young and they need more than each other.

Past the Shallows is a novel of terrible secrets and lost innocence. It is at times difficult to read. Some scenes are harrowing and others are shocking. For reasons that are not fully revealed until near the novel's end, Miles' father would easily win a trophy for World's Worst Dad. He is drunk and abusive but that's only half the story. This is a book that, years from now, I am likely to remember with a shudder.

Although in many ways depressing, the sadness of the story is partially offset by wonderful scenes of rural people doing what they can (even when it isn't much) to help each other. The characters in Past the Shallows are so convincing and the story is so intense and so honest that, depressing or not, it makes for compelling reading. Favel Parrett tells the story in crisp, quiet language that is evocative without ever overreaching or striking a false note. Past the Shallows is a book by a writer who is in firm control of her story, her characters, and her prose.

RECOMMENDED

The Eye by Bill Pronzini and John Lutz

First published in 1984; published digitally by Open Road Media on April 22, 2014

The Keeper of the Eye kills a drunken old man for committing the sin of rude behavior. He kills a gay man for committing the sin of being gay. He kills his third victim by mistake, but decides the man committed a sin worthy of death by having casual sex with Jennifer Crane. His fourth victim is a woman who is having an affair with an unemployed artist. The killings all occur on the same block. The killer, Lewis Collier, a/k/a the Keeper of Eye, is educated and articulate, but he has the deranged notion that he is the Lord's Avenger. The Eye sees everything and all that it sees is sinful. One of the novel's mysteries is how Collier sees and knows so much about the people on the block (as well as the undercover cops who are roaming about, hoping to find him).

Catching the serial killer is the job of Detective E.L. Oxman. He finds it hard to focus on the case after he meets Jennifer Crane, a woman on whom all men seem to focus. In the tradition of serial killer novels, Collier reveals himself to Oxman without revealing his identity, causing Oxman to worry that the Eye might have his eye on Jennifer Crane. Oxman's wife, on the other hand, is worried that Oxman might have his eye on another woman.

Although most of the novel is written in the third person, Collier tells his story in the first person as he dictates a recording of his thoughts. Bill Pronzini and John Lutz give Collier a distinct voice, educated and chilling, that imparts a creepier tone to his sections of the novel.

The attempt to catch a deranged killer is a familiar theme in crime fiction. This incarnation of that theme is particularly clever. The story winds its way to a twist at the end that I probably should have guessed but didn't. More importantly, The Eye distinguishes itself with its portrayal of the psychological impact of the murders on the intertwined lives of the block's residents. Relationships sour, friendships end, lives change. The disparate characters who live on the block -- including an aspiring actress who shoplifts jewelry to make ends meet, a burglar, a mentally disabled building superintendent who wants to be recognized for his winning streak at gin rummy, and a number of others -- are carefully drawn and generally sympathetic despite their faults, as is Oxman. The ensemble of credible neighborhood characters make The Eye stand out in the world of serial killer crime fiction.

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O, Africa! by Andrew Lewis Conn

Published by Hogarth on June 10, 2014

Micah and Izzy Grand are filmmakers in the silent age of Keaton and Chaplin. Their star is Harry Till, the appealing "everyman" of silent film comedy. Sadly for them, the age of silent movies is coming to an end. "Talkies" will soon be the rage, although the Grand brothers' producer assures them that talkies are just a fad.

The producer is clearly lacking business sense, which explains his studio's enormous debt. To recover his losses, the producer wants to send the Grands to Africa so they can film stock footage that the producer can lease to other studios. At the same time, two hoods to whom Micah owes a gambling debt dream up a "historical tragical" movie they call "O, Africa!" They are willing to forgive Micah's debt if he makes their movie. Izzy jumps at the chance to make a serious movie while Micah, who fears that they are incapable of making a serious film, is motivated to go to Africa by the need to avoid the potentially brutal consequences of his unpaid debt.

The Grand brothers are joined by their silent film star, a midget, the son of Micah's lover, and a couple of others as they journey to Africa. Apart from tribal leaders in Africa and the Grand brothers' entourage, other significant characters include Madam Queen Stephanie St. Clair, a Carribbean numbers runner who considers herself an investor in the film; Rose, Micah's African American lover; Rose's husband; Micah's wife; the brothers' financially troubled producer; and a variety of relatively benign criminals. All of the characters have the solidity of real people.

The movie the Grands plan to make initially involves the capture of slaves, a serious subject that Andrew Lewis Conn lightens with amusing images of the Grand bothers' interaction with villagers who don't know what to make of the odd people who enlist them as actors. When the brothers return from Africa, the question is whether their epic film will ever be made.

The promotional materials for O Africa! liken the novel to Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. It is similar in that it imagines children of immigrants in the first half of the twentieth century struggling to make their mark in a creative industry. Where Chabon's prose is an exercise in effortless elegance, however, Conn sometimes tries too hard. The resulting voice is occasionally strained. Not that Conn's prose is bad -- it is often quite good, just not uniformly excellent. Still, his writing is of a higher quality than most debut novelists manage.

The story features a litany of prejudices -- religion, race, sexual identity -- as if Conn was going through a checklist. Some of that comes across as forced. The novel's second half, including another trip to Africa, is less engaging than the first, and the ending is weak. There are nevertheless some excellent scenes in O, Africa!, scenes that would play well in a movie, whether silent or a talkie. In the end, the novel strives for a meaning it never quite attains. Its key themes -- filming the world changes it, the passage of time changes the world -- are underdeveloped. None of those flaws prevented me from enjoying O, Africa! The novel left me looking forward to Conn's next effort.

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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