What Doesn't Kill Her by Max Allan Collins

Published by Thomas & Mercer on September 17, 2013

While it is written with Max Allan Collins' usual flair, What Doesn't Kill Her is a fairly ordinary revenge novel. It begins with the rape of a teenage girl and the murder of her family members (including her gay brother) by a man who rants about punishing sin and reestablishing God's natural order. The killer leaves Jordan Rivera alive because he wants her to tell his story. Ten years later, Jordan is in a mental health facility. To make sure she does not satisfy the killer's desire, Jordan has not uttered a word since her rape. That changes when she sees on the news that a family was murdered after a teenage girl in the family took another girl to the prom as her date. Are the crimes connected? Jordan intends to find out.

Cleveland Detective Mark Pryor thinks he sees a pattern in certain family murders -- killings from which one family member is spared -- but neither his boss nor the FBI agrees that the killings are related. Coincidentally, Pryor had a high school crush on Jordan before her family was murdered.

Some aspects of What Doesn't Kill Her are less than convincing -- Jordan's development as a superstar street fighter, the speculation by members of a support group that their families were all (perhaps) victimized by the same killer, Pryor's certainty that he sees a pattern in killings that are apparently unrelated -- but the plot is never so outlandish as to kill enjoyment of the story. The romance that develops (or rekindles) between Pryor and Jordan is cheesy and contrived. A plot element that is so obviously manipulative makes it difficult to invest fully in the characters. Not that I would have invested in Jordan anyway, given her one-dimensional identity as She Who Will Avenge.

The killer's present identity is well concealed until Collins drops some obvious clues several pages before the reveal. The ending is inevitable and thus predictable -- this is a revenge novel, after all -- but the path Collins follows to get there builds some tension. Collins always writes with a good sense of pace. While this isn't one of his better novels, it isn't bad. I liked it enough to recommend it (particularly to fans of revenge novels), but I wouldn't put it high on my list of recommended thrillers.

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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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