Masaryk Station by David Downing

Published by Soho Crime on June 18, 2013

Masaryk Station appeals to the intellect but not to the heart. David Downing's writing lacks passion and the story is only moderately suspenseful. The plot is nonetheless intriguing and the background is skillfully rendered.

John Russell is an American journalist, but that's a cover for a rather complicated life. He's married to Effi, a German movie star. He also works for the Army's Counter Intelligence Corps, currently (1948) assigned to Berlin. For the moment, however, he's on loan to Trieste, serving as an interpreter for the flood of Russians seeking to defect. He's also running errands for the CIA. He uses his free time to poke into a ratline operated by Catholic priests for the benefit of (among others) the Americans who pay by the head for each refugee smuggled out of Eastern Europe. When they aren't working for pay, the priests are saving the skins of Croatian fascists and fugitive Nazis, an embarrassing fact that Russell would like to expose. Russell's other secret is that he's a double agent who reports to Soviet intelligence.

During the course of the novel, the CIA sends Russell to Udine, Belgrade, and Prague. None of his missions go well, but since Russell doesn't seem to like any of his employers, he's content simply to stay alive -- a tricky proposition given the multiple attempts that are made on his life. Russell's real agenda is to get out from under the thumb of his Russian and American employers.

A less interesting storyline follows Effi in Berlin as she wrestles with career choices (including pressure from the Soviets to act in a movie being filmed in Moscow), assists a mother who hopes to reunite with her daughter in Prague, and becomes embroiled in the mystery surrounding an actress' death. Also in Berlin, Gerhard Ströhm, a liaison between Russia and Germany, engages in a series of academic discussions about socialism, capitalism, and communism that are a tad dry. More interesting are the efforts Russia is making (and that Ströhm must help orchestrate) to disrupt American activities in Berlin.

Masaryk Station is a pleasantly meandering novel, but not a particularly suspenseful one. One disadvantage (to the reader) of Russell's status as a double agent is that, when captured by either side, he can extricate himself from trouble by saying "Hey, I work for you guys." It's hard to worry about a spy who carries a "get out of jail free" card. Although Downing delivers a satisfying amount of action, I never had the sense of danger that the best espionage novels deliver. I also found it difficult to believe that the Americans and British failed to notice that Russell is a double agent, given events in the novel that practically scream out his betrayal.

Perhaps because I haven't read the earlier novels in the series, I didn't feel I ever got a handle on what makes Russell tick. He's clearly a man with a conscience and I appreciated that aspect of his character development, but I never understood why I should care about him. I spent much of the novel wondering about his motivation to act on Russia's behalf until Downing finally alluded to it. I suppose that's my own fault for beginning with the last book in a series so I don't hold that against Downing, but I wonder if I might have enjoyed this novel more if I had read the others first. In any event, I didn't find myself fully engaged with Russell's plight.

Still, I appreciated the novel's historical setting and the atmosphere that Downing creates. I also admired Downing's ability to craft an intelligent plot even if I didn't feel particularly connected to it. On the whole, Masaryk Station is a reasonably enjoyable novel, but I would recommend that readers avoid my mistake and start with the first book in the series.

RECOMMENDED

Downfall by Jeff Abbott

Published by Grand Central Publishing on July 16, 2013

As the result of events in the first two Sam Capra novels, former CIA agent and current bar owner Capra is running errands of a questionable nature for a woman named Mila on behalf of the Round Table.  His new assignment is to identify the person who poisoned Round Table member Dalton Monroe.  Before he can make any progress, he’s fighting for his life against a Russian who chased a woman into his San Francisco bar.

Capra’s larger problem is a bad guy named John Belias.  When Belias isn’t training soccer moms to be assassins, he’s busy “hacking people” as if they were computers, plugging them into a network of powerful people that he’s assembled.  As is typical of modern thrillers, the network extends into the highest levels of business and government.  Conspiracy theorists should love the Capra novels.

One of the soccer mom assassins is Janice Keene.  Diana, Janice’s daughter, initially knows nothing about her mother’s double life.  She learns the truth from a hidden video that brings both Diane and Belias into Capra’s world.  Belias wants the video.  He also wants Capra -- but, it seems, so do some other mysterious, unidentified conspirators.  The plot jumps off from that starting block.

Downfall’s strengths are the pace, the action, and the clever (albeit farfetched) plot.  If the story borders on the preposterous, it at least has the merit of being less preposterous than the first two novels in the series.  Apart from a couple of small plot holes (or at least small points that didn’t make sense to me), the story is one I could swallow, and it culminates in a reveal that, if not entirely surprising, is satisfying.  Downfall’s downside is that too many chases and fight scenes are indistinguishable from those found in other thrillers.

I’m not sure Janice’s secret career or her motivation for pursuing it are entirely believable.  Other characters who apparently live normal (albeit unusually successful) lives turn out to be part-time, stone cold killers, and I found that difficult to accept.  I snickered a bit at the Faustian references to Belias, a character who is a bit over-the-top, but in a way that makes him cool, like Bond villains are cool.  In any event, I had no trouble letting those reservations slide for the sake of enjoying a good story.

There are aspects of Sam Capra -- particularly his sarcasm -- that make him an appealing character.  He becomes a bit tedious, however, when he tells us again and again that he loves his son and craves a normal life.  The same is true of Janice, who repeatedly reminds us of her love for her daughter and her devotion to Belias, as if saying it over and over will cause the reader to accept Janice’s weak motivation for behaving in sinister ways.  I give Jeff Abbott credit, however, for developing the personalities of two soccer mom assassins in uncommon depth.

I give also give Abbott credit for moving the series forward.  Downfall sends Capra’s story in a new direction, and key events late in the novel assure that the direction will change again.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to read this installment of the Capra saga given the silly setup in the first two novels, but Downfall left me looking forward to the next book.

RECOMMENDED

The Best of Connie Willis by Connie Willis

Published by Del Rey on July 9, 2013

I'm a fan of the "Best of" series, but how does an editor pick the best of a writer who won eleven Hugos and seven Nebulas, among other awards? Some writers are better at drama than comedy, some are better at comedy, but rare is the writer who is equally adept at both. Connie Willis is one of the rare ones. Her range of talent -- her ability to write hilarious stories alongside stories that are sad and moving -- is on full display in this anthology.

Willis excels at time travel stories, making "Fire Watch" a welcome addition to the volume. History student Bartholomew doesn't know why he's been sent to London during World War II, but he suspects he's there to keep St. Paul's Cathedral from burning down. Willis' time travel stories are often quite funny but this one is both an ironic tale of paranoia and a sad reminder that the real lessons to be learned from history are often concealed. "Fire Watch" won both the Hugo and the Nebula in 1983 and it's my favorite serious story in the anthology. A close runner-up, "The Last of the Winnebagos" (1988 Nebula, 1989 Hugo) -- a story about guilt and forgiveness that combines a mystery with a commentary on the loss of privacy -- imagines a sad world in which all the dogs have died.

The other serious stories are: "A Letter from the Clearys" (1983 Nebula), in which a letter written before the nuclear war reminds a family of everything they've lost. A visitor to London notices a cold winds and smells death and decay at several tube stations in "The Winds of Marble Arch" (2000 Hugo), but when he investigates the phenomenon, he comes to understand some sad truths about life.

The funniest story (I'm still laughing) is "The Soul Selects Her Own Society," a sendup of doctoral students written as a scholarly paper arguing (rather convincingly) that Emily Dickinson was visited by Martian poets. It won a well-deserved Hugo in 1997. A close second is "All Seated on the Ground" (2008 Hugo) which asks the amusing question: What if aliens visit Earth but make no attempt to communicate and only respond to one stimulus ... Christmas carols?

The other funny stories are: Attending a convention "At the Rialto" (1990 Nebula), a physicist comes to realize that the randomness inherent in quantum physics makes perfect sense in Hollywood, where chaos theory reigns supreme and the uncertainty principle is a way of life -- particularly in a hotel where nothing can be predicted. A woman who visits Egypt with her husband and two other couples experiences "Death on the Nile" (1994 Hugo) -- that is, she wonders whether she's actually on the journey to the afterworld described in The Book of the Dead. In "Inside Job" (2006 Hugo), a skeptic is prepared to expose a spelling-challenged spiritualist who channels "Isus" until the spiritualist appears to channel the greatest skeptic of all. "Even the Queen" (1993 Hugo and Nebula) turns the concept of women's liberation upside down as a family debates a young woman's decision not to free herself from menstruation.

Each story is followed by an afterword in which Willis talks about the story. The volume ends with three entertaining speeches that Willis prepared. Fans of science fiction are probably familiar with Willis, but any fan of short stories, and for that matter, any fan of good writing, should enjoy this volume.

RECOMMENDED

The Widow's Strike by Brad Taylor

Published by Dutton on July 16, 2013

When writers churn out novels with the speed that Brad Taylor has been adding to the Pike Logan series, there's usually a noticeable decline in quality from book to book. Surprisingly, Taylor's books are getting better. The Widow's Strike might be the best of them. It's exciting, intelligent, action-filled, and fast-moving. The story is plausible. The characters continue to evolve. They're forced to make tough decisions, the sort of decisions that have emotional consequences, and Taylor never makes the mistake of posturing his characters as robotic superhumans who are unaffected by their work. They aren't infallible, they second-guess their decisions, they have regrets. Taylor's ability to humanize his action heroes sets him apart from many other authors working in the same genre.

On loan to a Taskforce team that isn't his own, Knuckles has managed to get himself jailed in Thailand, a situation that Pike soon remedies. Since Pike and his team are already in Thailand, they're given a mission in Bangkok. The Taskforce target this time is General Malik Musavi of Iran's Qud Force. Although the Taskforce isn't certain what he's up to, the reader knows he's trying to obtain a mutated version of bird flu (the infamous H5N1 virus) to use as a biological weapon. That's been done before, but Taylor twists the story enough to make a familiar plot seem reasonably fresh.

A connecting plot thread concerns a Chechen suicide bomber. Pike and his team chase down clues that are spread across Thailand, Hong Kong, and Singapore before returning to the United States. Back home, a civilian member of the Taskforce's oversight council needs some oversight of his own.

As always, I'm impressed by Taylor's ability to get into the minds of Pike's enemies, to portray them as reasoning human beings rather than stereotypes of evil. And as he has in other novels, Taylor goes out of his way to expose the dull-witted intolerance of certain Americans who view foreign affairs in simplistic terms. But here, too, Taylor avoids stereotyping, taking care to point out that not all Americans are xenophobes or religious bigots.

The Widow's Strike follows the formula that drove the earlier Pike Logan novels: Pike's Taskforce team is sent on a mission with strict orders not to interfere with the target or do anything conspicuous; Pike decides the orders aren't useful and disregards them in favor of action; Pike's team prevents a worldwide catastrophe. It's a reliable formula, and while it might get old at some point, Taylor uses here with predictable but fun results.

RECOMMENDED

The Disappearance by J.F. Freedman

First published in 1998; published digitally by Open Road Media on May 28, 2013

The Disappearance is a low octane novel. Although J.F. Freedman assembled the elements that characterize strong legal thrillers -- a troubled lawyer, a shocking crime, a dramatic trial -- dull moments and lackluster writing detract from the reading experience.

Fourteen-year-old Emma Lancaster is apparently abducted from her bedroom. A year after the discovery of her dead body (and the corresponding discovery that Emma was pregnant), an up-and-coming news anchor, Joe Allison, is arrested for her murder. The arrest comes after a police officer stops Allison on suspicion of drunk driving, searches Allison's glove compartment, and finds Emma's key chain. The officer's remarkable ability to associate the key chain with a girl who had been missing for a year is extraordinarily unlikely, but it forms the basis for Allison's arrest and prosecution.

Even less likely is Allison's inability to find a high quality lawyer willing to defend him, supposedly because the victim's father (who owns the television station that employs Allison) has too much clout in Santa Barbara. Given the plethora of excellent Los Angeles lawyers who would be climbing over each other to take a high profile case like this one, the premise is mildly ridiculous, but it gives Freedman the excuse to introduce outcast lawyer Luke Garrison, who reluctantly agrees to take the case.

Although he's annoyingly self-righteous, Luke is a more intriguing character than legal thrillers typically generate. Formerly the hot-shot district attorney in Santa Barbara (and still fond of the moralizing speeches that district attorneys make during political campaigns), Luke left Santa Barbara after he discovered that he had prosecuted and caused the execution of an innocent man. He still has demons to exorcise, and returning to Santa Barbara to defend Allison seems like the place to start. Complicating his life is the fact that someone is trying to kill him.

Unfortunately, a strong premise and an intriguing character aren't enough to make a thriller thrilling. Although The Disappearance isn't a particularly long novel, some lengthy scenes are made all the lengthier by their tedium. Luke is overwhelmed by the importance of the trial, and by the fourth or fifth description of Luke's anxiety, I was ready to say, "I got it. Move on." Too much of the novel is redundant: Luke ponders the same evidence, over and over (yes, that's what lawyers do, but it doesn't make for exciting reading); Luke thinks about his past and questions the choices he made; Luke frets about his relationship with his girlfriend. Endlessly.

More significantly, during the first two-thirds of the novel, The Disappearance fails to exploit the drama that inheres in crime and uncertain accusations. Much of the story reads like nonfiction, the work of a true crime journalist reporting the facts with an air of detachment. The emotional responses that strong legal thrillers generate are largely absent from this one. Fortunately, those problems lessen once the trial is underway. Courtroom scenes are tense. The "inside baseball" of trial procedure is handled well, as are the politics of prosecution. Freeman understands the fear that trial judges have of following the law if that means excluding evidence of guilt from a trial, because the voting public would rather have judges disregard the law if the law compels results that the public doesn't like.

While the novel's ultimate resolution is satisfying, some aspects of the story --particularly Allison's actions on the night Emma disappears -- are completely implausible. The buildup about the strength of the case against Allison is laughable. There are no witnesses to the killing, no DNA. The physical evidence that ties Allison to the disappearance (none of which the real killer would likely have kept) isn't nearly enough to assure a "slam dunk" conviction, despite Luke's repeated assurances to the contrary. There might have been better evidence if used condoms had been tested for DNA, but the failure to do so isn't explained, or even noticed. While emotions and theatrics are common enough in courtrooms, the lawyers are given to tantrums that struck me as unrealistic.

Although I like the story more than its execution -- it never delivers the suspense that Freeman intended -- on balance, The Disappearance is a novel I would guardedly recommend to fans of legal thrillers. There are enough entertaining moments in the far-fetched plot to make it worthwhile, but not enough to make it memorable.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS