Little White Lies by Cole Riley

Published by Strebor Books on November 26, 2013

Despite its surprising publication in the "Zane Presents" series, Little White Lies is not a tawdry romance novel. It is a story about young black men: their burdens and aspirations; their varying responses to a highly sexualized culture; the hostility they encounter when confronted by police officers who view them as hoodlums because of their skin color; the unfocused rage that permeates inner city communities. Racial struggles, defined by generational differences, furnish a theme that dominates the story. Class differences and their impact on criminal prosecutions furnish another theme, as does the intersection of race and politics. As is often true in good fiction, those large themes are illuminated in a smaller, personal story. To some extent, Little White Lies reads like a modern version of, or a tribute to, Native Son (an impression that is reinforced when Richard Wright is quoted toward the novel's end), but it's missing Wright's finesse.

Melvin is a high school basketball player in Brooklyn with athletic scholarship potential. His demanding father is a self-defined hustler. His mother is wise and well-meaning but frustrated. Melvin's brother Danny suffers from depression, an anxiety disorder, and drug abuse. Melvin's male friends tend to get shot, sometimes by thugs, sometimes by the police. The females in his class intimidate him with their aggressive sexuality and his girlfriend is a manipulative, self-centered tease. Thinking with the wrong head, Melvin makes a poor decision, then follows it with another, potentially life-destroying decision by putting himself in the wrong place with the wrong people. The novel's second half deals with Melvin's unfair treatment as he's chewed up by the criminal justice system and by a politician who wants to exploit Melvin to gain points with white voters.

Little White Lies is told from Melvin's perspective in a natural voice that is free from literary pretension. The story's depiction of inner-city policing is disturbingly realistic although trial scenes are not. Some of the characters, white and black, are a bit over-the-top in their stereotyped thinking and pronouncements, but so are some real people. Still, this isn't a nuanced story. The novel works best when Melvin is playing the role of Raskolnikov, wrestling with guilt, trying to understand his actions. The events that occur in the novel's second half aren't entirely believable and that lack of credibility mars the story, but I enjoyed it notwithstanding its substitution of simplistic melodrama for convincing plot development. While the story seems true at its core, too many scenes of Melvin's trial and its aftermath are exaggerated beyond belief. The character of Melvin makes Little White Lies worth reading, but Native Son this isn't, despite the strength of its main character.

Depictions of sexual conduct (and misconduct) are quite graphic, not lurid or pornographic and certainly true to the story, but timid readers should stand warned of the novel's R-rating.

RECOMMENDED

The Unwritten by Mike Carey

Published by Vertigo on September 24, 2013

The Unwritten is an outgrowth of a comic book series of the same name. While it serves as an origin story for the comic book's protagonist, the reader need not be familiar with the comic book series to enjoy this volume as a stand-alone graphic novel.

This incarnation of The Unwritten is a story of creation or conception, of an author giving birth to a story. The story is about Tommy Taylor, the son of two powerful mages who, as a baby, floated away in a basket from the sinking ship on which his parents died. The baby is swallowed by a whale and delivered to a village where a wizard lives. The wizard names the baby Tommy and, for much of his young life, raises him in ignorance of his heritage. Tommy discovers the nature of his parents at about the time his parents’ enemy (a vampire, of course) discovers Tommy. The vampire wants whatever was on the ship. At the same time, he wants something from Tommy that Tommy doesn’t have … or does he?

Not coincidentally (or so he comes to believe), the author of Tommy’s story unexpectedly fathers a son of his own. Naturally, he names the baby Tommy, but as his wife descends into a well of depression, the author finds that he’s better at parenting a fictional child than a real one. But is there, in the end, any difference between the real and the fictional Tommy?

The Unwritten is an ambitious story that, after a slow start, grew on me until I became fully absorbed. That’s largely due to the quality of the storytelling. In addition to some swashbuckling fantasy, there are a couple of unconventional family dramas here, and a nice lesson about the possibility of being special even if you aren’t gifted. Although it’s possible to anticipate much of what happens to the fictional Tommy in the second half, the story is still satisfying, while the deeper story (involving the “real” Tommy) charts a more surprising course.

RECOMMENDED

The Plague Forge by Jason M. Hough

Published by Del Rey on September 24, 2013

As the final novel in the Dire Earth trilogy, The Plague Forge promised to solve the central mystery that animated the first and second books: Why did aliens build space elevators on Earth, turn most humans into subhumans (except for those protected an aura emitted by alien gadgetry), and scatter objects around the globe that were meant to be plugged into an alien spaceship like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle? The Plague Forge does indeed answer those questions -- apart from some annoying gaps in the explanation -- although the reader must wade through a lot of repetitive action scenes before an expository information dump in the final pages reveals the aliens' purpose. The answers are disappointing, and in some respects absurd, but most disappointing of all is that they seem to set up another series of books that will probably feature more mindless action scenes with little substantive content.

The characters are the strength of the series. They aren't particularly deep but they have well-defined personalities and undergo credible changes as the story develops. Although Skylar is the chief protagonist, several of the supporting characters are equally important, and in some respects are easier to care about. Some turn into unlikely heroes, furthering a theme that heroism is often a function of desperate circumstances. That's the aspect of The Plague Forge (and the series) that I liked best.

Post-apocalyptic political struggles are well conceived, giving rise to the kind of characters who are fun to despise. The seeds of political intrigue that were planted in the first two books bear fruit here. Some other interesting ideas underlie the series, but they are too often buried in scenes of people hitting and shooting each other. There are only so many times our heroes can do battle with subhumans or bad humans before the battles become tiresome. The entire series could (and should) have been whittled down to a single book, yet it would still be a book with a disappointing expository ending that isn't an ending at all. The Dire Earth novels have some merit, but if there are more to come, I doubt I'll devote any time to them.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Sins of the Flesh by Colleen McCullough

Published by Simon & Schuster on November 12, 2013

A serial killer starves his victims before removing their testicles. Police Lieutenant Abe Goldberg's search for the killer takes him to the world of small town theater (which, in the Holloman, Connecticut of 1969, is surprisingly elaborate). Meanwhile, Sergeant Delia Carstairs is occupied with the Shadow Women, six missing women -- one disappearance each year for six years -- who rented apartments around the first of the year, lived isolated lives, then disappeared in late June, leaving behind a few articles of cheap clothing and a studio portrait. That investigation segues into the department's oldest open missing persons investigation (involving a female doctor who disappeared in 1925), which the star of the series, Carmine Delmonico, undertakes to solve.

Delia's new friends, Ivy Ramsbottom and Jessica Wainfleet, are given starring roles. Jessica is the director of an institute for the criminally insane who is famed for curing the raging psychopath Walter Jenkins. As an author should, Colleen McCullough devotes considerable time to character development. While Delia tends to be stuffy, judgmental, pretentious and dull, Carmine and Jessica are just pretentious and Abe is just dull. Fortunately, some of the supporting characters are more colorful. Nearly all of the characters, however, are so eloquent in their conversations (even when talking to themselves) as to detract from the novel's credibility. The characters are not necessarily inauthentic, but the dialog is. They speak with the same voice ... an annoying voice that often borders on the ridiculous. They are so determinedly chipper and witty and chummy and erudite that I wanted to strangle them every time they spoke -- and they are a loquacious bunch. The exceptions consist of absurdly stereotyped members of the underclass who speak a "ghetto" patois of the sort wildly imagined by someone who has never been exposed to that side of life.

McCullough's prose is generally fluid, which makes it surprising that occasional sentences are remarkably awkward while others smack of a forced attempt at literary excellence. Some aspects of the story are just whacky (Jenkins draws a bath for Jessica, finds her asleep in the tub, picks her up, towels her off, and carries her to her bed, all without waking her; Jenkins, as a trusted trustee in addition to bathtub filler notwithstanding his status as an insane serial killer, has been given access to all the confidential files of his fellow patients; Jenkins is allowed to help build the security system that confines him; Jenkins not only uses the hospital machine shop without supervision, he somehow has the technical expertise to build a complex device). Nothing about Jenkins' situation is credible -- an unfortunate lapse, since he plays such a key role as the plot develops.

Notwithstanding its flaws, the story has some entertainment value. One of the two investigations holds a few surprises even if some aspects of the plot eventually descend into silliness. Much of the novel is a celebration of female friendships, but the characters celebrate by having endless gossipy conversations, adding to the novel's tedium. Had the writing style (and particularly the dialog) been less irritating, this would have been a better book. As it stands, the novel's weaknesses offset the (mostly) appealing nature of its farfetched plot.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Black Flag by Brad Taylor and Blood Brothers by James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell

The trend of offering a short story in digital format to promote an upcoming series novel (a excerpt of which is packaged with the short story) creates buzz for the novel and a bit of extra income -- or so writers and their publishers hope. Two stories that follow that trend are reviewed here.

"Black Flag" by Brad Taylor

Published by Dutton on November 19, 2013

Avast, me bucko! Arrrr! No, it isn't Talk Like a Pirate Day, but "Black Flag" put me in the mood. The latest Taskforce story is about ... you guessed it ... pirates. Unlikely though it seems, Knuckles commits his team members to help search for Blackbeard's treasure. Of course, the treasure hunters who want to hire the business that the Taskforce uses as a cover are not your ordinary adventurers who spend their time diving for doubloons.

"Black Flag" promotes The Polaris Protocol, the fifth novel in Brad Taylor's Taskforce series. Taylor's short stories have steadily improved, and "Black Flag" is the most imaginative of the ones he's produced. There isn't much that's new here in terms of character development, but that's to be expected in a between-novels story. There is, however, plenty of action, the pirate theme lends itself to some tongue-in-cheek fun, and (as is typical of Taylor) the story is smart and fast-moving.

RECOMMENDED

"Blood Brothers" by James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell

Published ditigally by William Morrow Impulse on October 22, 2013

"Blood Brothers" is part of the Order of the Sanguines series, which began with The Blood Gospel. It promotes the second book in the series, Innocent Blood.

Arthur Crane finds an orchid in his apartment and flashes back to 1968 when, as a reporter in Great Britain who traveled to San Francisco to write about the death of a British folksinger, he saw a poster bearing the picture of Christian, a relative who was almost like a brother as Arthur was growing up. He didn't find Christian that day, but he did learn that the folksinger's killer left an orchid on his body. A pattern soon developed -- the victim receives an orchid in the morning and is killed twelve hours later, another orchid left on the body -- leading Arthur to dub the murderer The Orchid Killer. Arthur knew things weren't going well for him when he found an orchid on his typewriter. The story moves on from there until Arthur returns to the present and his second orchid.

Some aspects of "Blood Brothers" are unoriginal, including the inevitable "secret order buried deep within the Catholic Church," and Rollins/Cantrell are not subtle in their character development. Still, the story moves quickly, the setting is described in convincing detail, and action scenes are more plausible than is common in thrillers (at least if you discount the fang-like teeth that both good guys and bad guys are sporting). I liked "Blood Brothers" enough to recommend it to the legions of James Rollins fans but I wouldn't recommend it to readers who are anxious to find something new and different. Nothing in the story convinced me that the world needs another series of books about an ancient secret society.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS