Poison Pill by Glenn Kaplan

Published by Forge Books on October 22, 2013

The title of Poison Pill has a double meaning. It's the name given to a strategy to prevent hostile takeovers of corporations -- in this case, a pharmaceutical company -- but its literal meaning is also applicable. Someone is poisoning the company's leading product (a headache remedy) in order to destroy the company's value.

In chapter two, Peter Katz tells his mother all about the safe room in the basement of his father's Greenwich house. The savvy reader knows that, like Chekov's gun hanging on the wall, the safe room will reappear near the end of the novel. Peter's mother, Emma, is an executive at Percival & Baxter, a pharmaceutical company. His father, Emma's ex-husband Josh, is planning a hostile takeover of Percival & Baxter for his client, a mysterious Russian named Viktor Volkov whose reason for wanting control of the company is far-fetched but amusing. Viktor, hoping to create a dynasty in London, wants his daughter Tanya to breed with the little brother of the woman Viktor plans to marry, thus merging his wealth with the brother's title and producing the heirs he can no longer manufacture. Tanya wouldn't mind breeding but she has her own ideas about an appropriate sperm donor.

In many ways, young Peter is the most interesting character in the novel. He's caught in the middle of a war between his hotshot parents. His father wants to use him to influence his mother while his mother is poisoning his thoughts about his father. Peter and Tanya both belong to the Kroesus Club, an exclusive group of teens and young adults, the children of wealthy parents from around the world, a group that Peter generally despises. Peter is peripheral to the central story for much of the novel but he stars in an interesting subplot of his own. He is a believable character, although perhaps a bit more grounded and likeable than most teenage offspring of wealthy parents.

The other characters, like the plot, are well-conceived, although you wouldn't want to hang out with most of them. Family dramas pepper the novel and they turn out to be related to each other in unexpected ways. Scenes of domestic discord between well-paid Emma and her struggling artist second husband are dull and some of the scenes involving Emma and Josh approach melodrama, but there aren't many of those.

An interesting theme in Poison Pill is the ongoing debate about hostile takeovers. Josh sees himself as creating shareholder value while Emma sees him as destroying good companies. Greed is a related theme and while the lesson is obvious (greed isn't good), it is nonetheless satisfying. Those themes animate the thriller in a fairly conventional way. The story races to an unconvincing ending (Emma displays intuition that borders on ESP) that wraps up the story a little too neatly, but the novel as a whole is better than its disappointing climax.

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The Ipcress File by Len Deighton

First published in 1962

The nameless hero of Len Deighton's early novels (known in the movie versions as Harry Palmer, The Ipcress File alludes only to the name Harry) is constantly fretting about his expense account and quarreling over back pay. He's a spy who doesn't appreciate being treated as a civil servant. His irreverent attitude pervades the early novels, which have a much lighter tone than Deighton's later, more substantial work.

Although The Ipcress File (1962) is the first of the Harry novels, it seems less dated than Billion Dollar Brain (1966). Harry is diverted from his current project -- tracking the elusive Jay -- to visit an atoll with other members of the British and American intelligence communities. Harry is blamed for an act of sabotage, accused of being a Hungarian double agent, imprisoned and tortured, all the while wondering about the identity of the real traitor, the person who set him up. Of course, the intricate (if convoluted) plot eventually works its way back to the evil Jay, adding more problems to Harry's beleaguered life.

To call the brainwashing scheme that underlies the plot of The Ipcress File farfetched would be to understate, but the novel is enjoyable despite the demand it makes on the reader to suspend disbelief. Had the tone been less tongue-in-cheek, the unlikely scheme would have been a more serious flaw, but the plot isn't meant to be taken seriously. The Ipcress File is a fun, energetic blend of intellect and action. The characters are the kind of well-educated Brits who can quote Milton from memory. Dialog is snappy and Harry has a dry, understated sense of humor that makes him a pleasure to know. Taken in the right spirit, The Ipcress File is a successful, if not particularly memorable, spy novel. Readers looking for serious spy novels by a talented author in his prime should investigate Deighton's Bernard Samson books.

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The Sound and the Furry by Spencer Quinn

Published by Atria Books on September 10, 2013

Chet continues his literal-minded (and dog-minded) commentary on life in The Sound and the Furry. Chet doesn’t like thunderstorms but he loves to ride in boats. He can’t understand why birds are so unfriendly. He doesn’t recommend grubs, edible though they are, but a roast beef sandwich is a tasty meal.

Ralph, the only member of the Boutette family who isn’t behind bars or on electronic monitoring, is missing. For reasons that Bernie understands better than Chet, Bernie agrees to find him. Chet knows it’s the right thing to do because Bernie always does the right thing. The new adventure takes Chet and Bernie to New Orleans, where they encounter a shrimp heist (Chet is fond of shrimp), an oil spill, and a family feud. The plot is more complex than some of the Chet and Bernie novels, meaning that much of what’s happening is going over Chet’s head. But, as Chet likes to remind us, he brings other things to the table. Figuring things out is Bernie’s game.

Of course, the plot of a Chet and Bernie is always secondary to Chet’s canine commentary. The breezy nature of the Chet and Bernie novels makes them easy to read. The bad guys are generally affable. Most of them even like Chet, so they can’t be all bad. This is nonetheless a more harrowing adventure than most for Chet. A couple of bad guys who aren’t dog-friendly give Chet a hard time, adding some tension to the story, as does an alligator. Fortunately, nothing can change Chet’s upbeat nature. Bernie is also part of the story, and he’s again getting himself into trouble with girlfriend Suzie for reasons that Chet (and sometimes Bernie) can’t understand, but Chet is the reason these novels are worth reading.

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Parasite by Mira Grant

Published by Orbit on October 29, 2013

Parasite is hard to categorize -- and that's a good thing. It has elements of a corporate conspiracy thriller, a biotech thriller, a creepy science fiction/horror novel, and a mystery. It combines a low-key love story with an offbeat family drama. At its heart, Parasite is an "aliens take over human bodies" story, a staple of bad science fiction, but with the refreshing twist that parasites are substituted for aliens. Parasite will teach you more about tapeworms and other parasites than you might want to know, but it tells an innovative story and builds tension without resorting to car chases and explosions.

Sally Mitchell, brain dead and on the verge of having her organs harvested, opens her eyes. She awakens in a blank state, her brain wiped of its memories. Sally has been given a new life by virtue of a genetically engineered tapeworm called the SymboGen Intestinal Bodyguard. Six years later, she's relatively normal, but very different from the person she doesn't remember being before her accident. Sally copes with being reeducated, studied, and psychoanalyzed, while living in fear that SymboGen will stop paying her medical expenses if she isn't an appropriate guinea pig.

Sally's life becomes even complex with the outbreak of an apparent disease that turns people into dangerous shambling sleepwalkers. My initial reaction to this was "oh geez, Mira Grant found a way to add zombies to the story." Fortunately -- since the world really doesn't need another zombie novel -- Parasite takes off in a wild and unexpected direction. The mystery of Sally's true nature is telegraphed so often that the reveal isn't much of a surprise, but that doesn't detract from the story. Other revelations at the novel's end are more surprising, and they whet interest in the next installment.

Sally, her boyfriend Nathan, and the other principle characters are realistic, including Sally's parents, who provide fruitful family drama by being less than ideal role models. One of the characters is completely daft in a dangerously amusing way. Dogs play a critical role in the story, providing further evidence for my theory that every novel is made better by the inclusion of a dog -- particularly when a writer portrays them as sympathetically as does Grant. (Grant is also sympathetic to tapeworms, but I'll let that pass ... so to speak.)

Parasite delivers a crash course in parasitology but, by using fascinating examples of parasitic behavior, it never becomes boring. This is one of the better biotech thrillers I've encountered. I don't know whether it's credible, but Grant convinced me that it could happen, and that allowed me to enjoy the well-crafted story.

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Dinner at Deviant's Palace by Tim Powers

First published in 1985; published digitally by Open Road Media on July 30, 2013

"Deprogramming" -- kidnapping someone who has supposedly been brainwashed by a religious cult and coercing their abandonment of the cult's belief system -- was in the public mind during the 1970s. Tim Powers (one of the most underrated writers of speculative fiction) grabbed hold of the concept in his 1985 classic Dinner at Deviant's Palace, incorporating it into a story of a post-apocalyptic future. In his introduction to the Open Roads edition, Powers explains the novel's interpretation of the Orpheus myth (a connection I would have missed if Powers hadn't explained it).

Dinner at Deviant's Palace is a science fiction novel with elements of fantasy. You can always expect the unexpected in a Powers novel, and this one adds a strange creature called a hemogoblin to the standard description of America-turned-wasteland. The novel was written long before the current obsession with post-apocalyptic vampires, and the hemogoblin isn't a vampire in the traditional sense, but blood does play a central role in the imaginative plot. Powers is an exceptional storyteller who often adds horrific elements to the stories he tells, usually to shed light on some horrifying aspect of the present, but no matter the plot device, his true subject has always been human nature.

It's been a hundred years since the age of electricity, and California as it once existed is long gone. The calendar is based on a deck of cards, brandy is used as currency, and residual radiation renders some places off limits. Trash men run loose -- not quite human, not quite robot, a little like a talking vacuum cleaner mated with a barbeque grill -- and the San Berdoo army is threatening to invade Ellay.

Gregorio Rivas is a musician, but he used to perform redemptions. At one point he was a Jaybird, then he rescued people from the Jaybirds. The Jaybirds worship Jaybush (the name's similarity to Jesus is no coincidence), an entity described at one point as an "interstellar limpet eel." The Jaybird sacrament, if taken repeatedly, erodes the mind -- or maybe it opens the mind -- but Rivas is still sharp. Now he sings and plays the pelican and wants nothing to do with the man who wants to pay him a huge sum of money to perform a redemption. But when he learns that the girl under Jaybird control is Urania Barrows, the girl he once loved, he has no choice but to bring her back. Before Rivas became a Jaybird, he spent some time in the depraved city on the outskirts of Ellay known as Venice (home of the Deviant's Palace). It is to Venice he returns in his search for Urania, although he fears she has been taken to the Holy City of Irvine.

On its surface, Dinner at Deviant's Palace is the story of Rivas' attempt to save Urania, but it's really a story about a different kind of salvation. Rivas has become self-centered and self-indulgent, enjoying the fruits of a well-paid life. During his quest for Urania, he rediscovers his empathy for others. Yet empathy can be crippling when survival depends on dispassionate strength. Rivas faces a choice between regaining his confidence but sacrificing his new-found empathy, or remaining a caring person, however weak and uncertain that makes him. Powers also explores the nature of obsession -- with religion, with love, with distorted memories.

Trying to understand exactly what's happening in Dinner at Deviant's Palace sometimes poses a challenge, but by the end, the novel makes sense ... more or less. Its internal logic is consistent even if it isn't always easily understood. Complex characters and a fun story with a serious theme make the novel worth the effort.

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