Scorpion Deception by Andrew Kaplan

Published by Harper on May 28, 2013

Scorpion is an all-too-typical thriller hero. Trained in the Rangers and Delta Force (aren't they all?), an operative with the CIA before resigning (don't they all?), now "a freelance agent known only to certain top echelons within the intelligence community," Scorpion has the ability to fire his weapon unerringly while doing backflips and somersaults. That's almost as impressive as his ability to beat up five armed police officers while wearing handcuffs. Scorpion engages in the detailed and drooling discussions of weaponry and military technology that thriller writers use to establish their credentials. Every thriller with scenes in Africa must include a beautiful and idealistic female physician who beds the hero, and this one is no exception. There is, in fact, very little about this thriller that you haven't read before.

A group of bad guys bust into an American embassy, kill everyone in the building, and steal all the data from the computers. Apparently you can stick flash drives into some desktop computer in Switzerland and get every bit of classified information stored by the CIA, the NSA, and the DOD. Who knew? Scorpion, of course, is the only super-agent capable of finding out who the bad guys are, important information because Congress wants to declare war. I'm not sure it's possible for Congress to declare war on four guys in ski masks, but the CIA hopes to blame it on Iran, providing an excuse to bomb Tehran. The true villain is the Gardener, but who is the Gardener and for whom does he work? The plot -- and the safety of the world -- turns on Scorpion's search for answers to those questions.

Of course, from all the information in the computers, the bad guys immediately glean all there is to know about Scorpion and miraculously show up wherever he happens to be, but somehow they can't manage to kill him. That isn't surprising, but then, nothing about Scorpion Deception is surprising. The terrorists act like standard-issue terrorists. The female physician behaves like the standard brave-but-sexy idealistic doctor. Scorpion has the standard tough-guy-action-hero persona (aggressive, authoritarian, condescending) that, in too many thrillers, substitutes for an actual personality. For someone who attended Harvard and the Sorbonne, Scorpion doesn't seem especially bright. If you're looking for a multi-layered, nuanced protagonist, look elsewhere.

From predictable action scenes to the doctor Scorpion loves but doesn't want to endanger (and so of course he does), too much of Scorpion Deception is formulaic. A book that follows a formula can be good if the formula is good and if it's well executed, but Andrew Kaplan's execution is only so-so. Unbelievable dialog and a tendency toward melodrama make some parts of Scorpion Deception a chore to read, but most of the story is told in straightforward prose. When Kaplan uses common words or phrases in a foreign language, he immediately translates them (even when the meaning is obvious), apparently on the assumption that his readers are too dim to understand them. That gets to be annoying.

On a more positive note, the story that emerges in the novel's second half is moderately entertaining. It's too far over the top to allow full suspension of disbelief, but not outrageously so. The Gardener's identity is reasonably well concealed, lending a bit of mystery to the plot, although readers won't be shocked by the eventual unveiling. Unfortunately, the novel ends with a wildly unrealistic information dump that is intended (but fails) to cast the story in a different light.

Whatever merit the novel might have, there's little to distinguish Scorpion Deception from the blizzard of other action/spy novels that compete for the reader's attention. I wouldn't recommend this one to anyone other than a diehard fan of the series.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Wonder Bread Summer by Jessica Anya Blau

Published by Harper Perennial on May 28, 2013 

The Wonder Bread Summer is a light, amusing coming-of-age story set in the 1980s. Jessica Anya Blau's lean, breezy writing style makes the novel a quick and pleasant read, one that produces smiles and occasional outright laughter.

The child of a black-skinned, mixed race father and a half-Chinese mother, Allie is an unlikely redhead. She's had bad luck with parents (her mother left her to become the tambourine girl in a band, her father cares only about his restaurant) and with her only boyfriend (who borrowed her tuition money before breaking up with her). She has the insecurities that come from being twenty and not yet comfortable with her body or sure of her identity. Escaping from an obnoxious employer who has designs on her relative innocence and no intent to pay the wages he owes her (and whose side business is dealing drugs), Allie impulsively snatches his stash of cocaine on her way out the door.

So begins Allie's adventure in the unsheltered world, a series of mishaps that include a reunion with her mother's band, a date with a pornographer in a wheelchair (the story's only faltering step), and a happy encounter with Billy Idol. In the course of a relatively short time, she loses an old friend, gains new friends, rediscovers her dysfunctional parents, is amazed at the number of men she meets who want to show her their reproductive organs, and learns how difficult it is to hang onto a Wonder Bread bag full of uncut cocaine.

Allie has a knack for doing things that make her feel ashamed. It's an endearing quality. The theme here isn't so much "good girl turns bad" (as in Thelma & Louise) as it is "good girl makes inexplicably bad decisions." The story is barely believable but this is a comedy and a comedy doesn't need to be believable as long as it's funny. The story builds comic momentum as it zips along; the second half is much funnier than the first.

The protagonist in a coming-of-age novel generally discovers something about life. Allie should learn that life is better if you stop feeling sorry for yourself and clean up your own messes, but the novel's real lesson might be: revenge is sweet. It isn't a deep message, but it's satisfying. The same can be said for the novel as a whole.

RECOMMENDED

The Geneva Option by Adam LeBor

Published by Harper Paperbacks on May 28, 2013

Yael Azoulay, special envoy to crisis zones for the Secretary General of the United Nations, is in hot water after a memo she wrote, describing a sweetheart deal she negotiated with a genocidal African warlord, is leaked to the press. Because Yael is disgusted with a deal that provided a mass murderer with a suite in a five star hotel, and because she was the only person with access to the encrypted memo, she is assumed to be the source of the leak. At about the time the leak occurs, the Secretary General's aide is murdered. Yael discovers a conspiracy afoot within the UN's upper echelons and spends the rest of the novel trying to thwart it.

The Geneva Option's author, Adam LeBor, is a journalist whose nonfiction has focused on international banking and, at least in one case, on the UN. LeBor seems to have a working knowledge of the UN's internal politics. I don't know whether that knowledge, as presented here, is consistently accurate, but this is a work of fiction so that doesn't particularly matter to me. What does matter is the way in which LeBor incorporates that information into the text. LeBor's writing style is often dry. Descriptions of the UN and of world affairs read as if they were cribbed from encyclopedia entries or academic journals. It's difficult to maintain interest in a fact-filled narrative when the facts are presented in such lifeless language. It's equally difficult to form an attachment to a story that is told with such journalistic detachment.

Although there are times when LeBor seems to be using fiction to make a political statement, the far-fetched plot is at least moderately entertaining. The story, in fact, is the novel's main attraction, despite the drab way in which it is told. While character development is no worse than average for a thriller, it isn't easy to warm up to any of the characters. Other than Yael and a shadowy security guy named Joe-Don, nearly every character in The Geneva Option is either corrupt or, at best, ethically challenged, from UN officials to journalists. We're supposed to like Yael but her chilly, self-righteous nature is off-putting. She is troubled by a secret in her past that, when finally revealed, seems contrived. Perhaps we're supposed to like Sami Boustani, a New York Times reporter who is the novel's secondary focus, but LeBor gives the reader little reason to care about him. Joe-Don is too busy being enigmatic to generate sympathy. While I don't necessarily need to like the characters in order to like a book, it's always a benefit in a thriller to root for someone. No matter how often LeBor put Yael in a precarious situation, he didn't make me care what happened to her. That she turns into an improbable action hero at the novel's end did nothing to make her more memorable.

Dull characters and detached prose are serious flaws in a thriller that had the potential to stand out from the crowd.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

King of Cuba by Cristina García

Published by Scribner on May 21, 2013 

Most of the scenes in King of Cuba alternate between Havana and Miami, between the homes of two old men, Fidel Castro and Goyo Herrera. For reasons both personal and political, the eighty-six-year-old Herrera loathes Castro. Herrera's daughter Alina claims he is staying alive only so he can celebrate Castro's death. Herrera detests Alina's liberalism, particularly her opposition to the Cuban trade embargo. Herrera's sixty-year-old son, Goyito, is a hooligan and a drug addict. Herrera spends most of the novel recalling his unhappy past, including the woman whose life connects his with Castro's, as he indulges his revenge fantasies.

If Herrera is old and decrepit, Castro is equally so. No longer Cuba's head of state and unable to make a speech without fainting, Castro is also reduced to thoughts of his past, his legacy and fame, his sexual conquests, and the size of his pinga when he was in his prime. Herrera and Castro have more in common than they realize: they have spent their lives appreciating the company of women (including but not limited to their wives); they are disappointed in their sons and controlled by their daughters; they disregard the advice of their doctors and feel betrayed by their aging bodies. Both men are obsessed, Herrera with Castro and Castro with himself. Both are "besotted with the past."

Interspersed with the twin narratives devoted to Castro and Herrera are a series of jokes, stories, and commentaries (sometimes in the form of footnotes) from the perspectives of various Cubans and occasional tourists. Many of them create memorable snapshots of lives spent in a difficult, complex country. The late-blooming plot sends both characters to New York, where their fates finally converge.

King of Cuba captures a transitional moment in history. Christina García recognizes that the generation of exiles who shaped American political hostility toward Cuba has begun to fill Florida's graveyards, while their children are inclined to support a normalized relationship with America's island neighbor. At the same time, Cuba is slipping out of Fidel's tight grip. While acknowledging the ruthlessness of Castro's dictatorship (and routinely referring to Castro as "the tyrant" or "the despot"), King of Cuba does not take sides in the clash between Castro's revolution and America's foreign policy. The novel is set against a political background but it isn't a political novel. It is, instead, a novel about people and their tragicomic lives. García's light-hearted prose pokes fun both at the aging, fist-waving, ineffectual exiles and at Cuba's aging, fist-waving, ineffectual dictator. Both Herrera and Castro are faintly ridiculous in their declining years, left with little but uncontrollable emotions and memories, although "memory could be a plague sometimes, corroding one's soul with all that was lost and unforgotten."

García's lively, inventive prose makes this swiftly moving story a pleasure to read. She manages to make two entirely unlikable characters entertaining without resorting to cruel caricatures. King of Cuba is sweet and funny, and the story culminates in a wild display of irony.

RECOMMENDED

March Violets by Philip Kerr

First published in 1989

March Violets is the first in a series of novels featuring Bernhard Gunther, a former member of the Kripo, now a private investigator in Berlin. It is 1936 and Gunther, no fan of the National Socialists, is nostalgic for the carefree Berlin that existed before it began "wearing corsets laced so tight that it could hardly breathe."

After his daughter (Grete) and her husband (Paul Pfarr) are murdered, wealthy industrialist Hermann Six hires Gunther to recover jewelry that was stolen from their safe. Hermann's wife, a famous and beautiful actress, adds a complication to Bernie's life, as does Pfarr's cozy relationship with the Gestapo. Gunther's investigation leads him to a missing person: Gerhard von Greis, a businessman who happens to be a close friend of Hermann Goering. Naturally, Goering becomes a character in the story, while Heinrich Himmler lurks in the background.

Gunther's investigation of a crime turns into an investigation of multiple crimes, none of which seem to fit together. As Gunther observes, it's like putting together a jigsaw with pieces from two different puzzles. March Violets is a classic story of detection -- as Gunther puts it, "chain-making, manufacturing links." There are plenty of links for the reader to assemble while following Gunther's progress. Gunther learns much more than he's supposed to know, but as he wryly observes, "When you get a cat to catch the mice in your kitchen, you can't expect it to ignore the rats in the cellar." It all ties together in a credible way, concluding with a nifty plot twist, but it's actually the quality of the writing and the uncommon depth that Kerr brings to his characters that impress me more. Gunther is emblematic of the noir detective -- tough, cynical, incorruptible, and resentful of authority -- but he has the added interest of avoiding not just the temptation of crime but of the criminal government that has seduced or overpowered so many of his fellow countrymen.

Kerr's prose is evocative and atmospheric. His descriptions of imprisonment in Dachau are convincing and moving. Berlin in the 1930s lends ifself to noir, and Kerr perfectly captures the darkness that shrouded so much of the human spirit in that place and time. He even tosses in the controversial Berlin Olympics as a backdrop ("if ever there was to be a master-race, it was certainly not going to exclude someone like Jesse Owens"). His spot-on similes and metaphors are a joy to read. At times, he nearly rivals Raymond Chandler, the master of the noir metaphor. The novel's social commentary, coming as it does in retrospect, seems a little too obvious, but it doesn't get in the way of an enjoyable story that makes full use its setting.

RECOMMENDED