Back From the Dead by Peter Leonard

First published in the UK in 2013; published by The Story Plant on January 22, 2013 

Back From the Dead is a sequel to Voices of the Dead. The sequel is a better book, but that's small praise given the first novel's mediocrity.

Back From the Dead begins shortly after Voices of the Dead ends. Gerhard Braun wants to find Ernst Hess, although Braun has less interest in Hess than in artwork that Hess possesses. Braun hires Albin Zeller to track Hess down. The task should be impossible since Hess died at the end of the last novel, but given the title of this novel, it is no surprise to learn that Hess isn't dead after all. His improbable survival goes largely unexplained, one of many ways in which the novel strains credulity.

Hess is still a cartoon villain and an empty shell of a character. The notion that this celebrated political figure, who is also a wanted war criminal, can go jetting around the world, entering and leaving Germany undetected -- largely due to the happy coincidence that he's a dead ringer for someone whose passport he steals -- is just impossible to swallow. Of course, Hess wants to kill Harry Levin, the star of the last novel. Harry is becoming romantically entangled with Colette, the German reporter he met in that book. Before Harry can get too comfortable with Colette, however, Zeller kidnaps her from Harry's home. Harry rescues her, only to see her captured again. What passes for a plot is Harry's ongoing effort to keep Colette out of Hess' clutches and avoid death while Hess tries to recover artwork stolen by the Nazis so he can fund a new life. That Hess feels it necessary to risk his life and freedom to seek revenge against Harry instead of disappearing to some safe sanctuary is too absurd to merit belief.

As he did in the first novel, Leonard relies on stereotypes rather than giving his secondary characters authentic personalities. In this book, Columbians have oily hair and wear white suits, two characters from Tennessee are redneck hillbillies, and the black characters are criminals. Although Leonard reprises drug dealer Cordell Sims from Voices of the Dead, he at least tones down the offensive nature of his African American stereotyping.

If there is a point to Back From the Dead, I couldn't find it. It hardly seems worthwhile to bring back such a lackluster character as Harry Levin. The novel adds no depth to his shallow character. The story is a rehash of the first novel. There's a fair amount of action but none of it is compelling.

On a more positive note, the story is coherent, even if it lacks substance. Peter Leonard is no longer mimicking his father's writing style (there's only one Elmore Leonard and it isn't Peter). Leonard's decision to craft complete sentences improves the flow of his narrative, making Back From the Dead an easy, quick read. There just isn't much reason to read it.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Good Kids by Benjamin Nugent

Published by Scribner on January 29, 2013 

A son measures himself against his father, intent on avoiding mistakes that he inevitably repeats. Benjamin Nugent gives that classic theme a postmodern spin in Good Kids, a novel that encourages the reader to guess how far the apple will fall from the parental tree.

Good Kids begins in 1994. Josh and Kadijah bond after they witness Josh's father kissing Kadijah's mother in an organic food store. The forbidden knowledge provokes the growth of "a conspiratorial feeling" and kindles a romantic spark. Josh's dad, Linus, a professor of political science, sees himself as a virtuous person, steeped in the values of the 1960s. Josh considers his dad's infidelity to be less than virtuous and makes a vow (initiated by Kadijah) never to follow in those footsteps. The reader knows, of course, that whether Josh keeps that vow will be the novel's central question.

Linus often talks about the new life he intends to build, a life devoted to writing serious essays, but always seems to be pulled in different directions, none of which involve Josh, who realizes that his dad is "just not that into me." Josh moves to New York, hoping the city will transform him into a rock musician or, failing that, allow him to "construct a shell so complex and subtle and bewitching that people more sure of themselves ... would mistake me as one of their own and take me in, showing me by example how to be like them." To avoid being trapped in an unsatisfying career like his dad, Josh joins a band and chases his dream to California. The band provides him with a sense of family, with predictable results.

Ten years pass in a blur before the story again comes into focus. When Josh meets Julie on a blind date, they converse with irony-laden, sparkling wit. I often find dialog of that nature to be irritating, probably because I'm jealous given that my own attempts at first date banter are less than scintillating, but Nugent managed to persuade me that his characters are adept conversationalists. The evolution of Josh's domestic life with Julie slows the story until Kadijah resurfaces. As Josh interacts with Julie, Julie's family, his own mother and sister, and Kadijah, he begins to reconsider his anti-Linus lifestyle.

To the extent that Good Kids explores generational and class differences, the story substitutes humor for depth. Linus and Josh's mother (who mixes Jung with Buddhism) are exaggerated stereotypes of the aging hippie, but that's what makes them amusing. A mild conflict between Julie's conservative, financially successful parents and Josh's sister (an idealistic social worker) inspires Julie to make a televised joke about welfare mothers, giving Josh a reason to resent Julie. While the scene moves the story forward, Nugent never penetrates the superficial veneer of his secondary characters. This isn't a serious flaw since the novel is really about Josh alone, but it's disappointing that Nugent gives Josh such a shallow supporting cast.

Consumed with postmodernist irony and ennui, Josh floats through the story without experiencing more than forty-five minutes of intense emotion. He is so detached from the family drama that surrounds him as to render it undramatic. I got the sense that, as a failed rock musician, Josh is just too cool to be anything other than an observer, as if participating in life and feeling its effects has become passé. Josh's aloof nature makes it difficult to connect to his experiences.

On the other hand, Nugent told Josh's story with stylistic flair and with enough humor to satisfy me. I'm tempted to label Good Kids as fluffy and predictable, but those adjectives are too harsh given my positive reaction to the novel as a whole. Josh and Kadijah are interesting contrasts, Josh begins to learn how to "walk through adulthood" (although I'm not sure he actually learns how to live it), and the story, like Josh, drifts pleasantly, if a bit aimlessly.

RECOMMENDED

The Antagonist by Lynn Coady

Published in Canada in 2011; published by Knopf on January 22, 2013

The Antagonist is based on an intriguing premise: How would you react if you recognized yourself as a character in a book that someone you know has authored? "There he was, the character I knew to be me, lumbering in and out of scenes, and I'd be outraged when he was like me, -- because that was stealing, -- and outraged when he wasn't, -- because that was lying."

The Antagonist is written as a series of autobiographical emails from Rank to Adam. Unhappy that Adam's novel depicts him as an "innate criminal" -- Adam, according to Rank, is "vampiring the good and the real out of people's lives" -- Rank, approaching forty, decides to tell his own story, in which Adam plays a prominent and unflattering role.

Rank's story starts with Gord, his embittered father, who, as a matter of pride, unwisely invested in an Icy Dream franchise instead of a Java Joe's. Gord's efforts to make a living are hampered by his desire to banish punks (i.e., teenagers) from the restaurant. Rank's father has anger management issues, unlike his mother, who died when Rank was sixteen and remains perfect in his memory. The circumstances of that death, revealed late in the novel, have a profound impact on Rank, and he is particularly enraged that Adam's novel reduced his mother to nothingness with an off-handed comment about her death.

After Rank has a growth spurt at fourteen, most people regard him both as a man and a thug, while his father delightfully assigns him to work as a bouncer at Icy Dream. Based on a punch to the face that leaves a punk brain damaged, Rank finds himself in juvenile court -- and Adam finds a character he can paint as a criminal. That act of violence becomes a defining moment in Rank's life -- he can't read T.S. Eliot without being reminded of it -- making it easy to understand why Rank is upset to see it glorified in Adam's novel.

Much of The Antagonist is about Rank's relationship with three friends (including Adam) during his college years. Adam and his dope smoking friends, the reader suspects, become Rank's replacement for hockey (a scholarship sport until he walked away from it), his connection to something larger, and Adam becomes his silent confidante, always listening but never sharing. Of course, confiding in Adam is what produces the series of emails that Rank spews forth after he reads Adam's book.

Telling his story gives Rank a chance to explore his first serious romance and to search for his former girlfriend (who was, at the time, a devout evangelist) on Facebook. It gives him the opportunity to better understand his self-centered friend Kyle, as well as Rank's acerbic father, for whom he is now caring. It makes him come to terms with the unintended consequences of two violent events in his life, with his mother's death, and with his own mortality. Finally, having blown off steam, it gives him a chance to consider whether Adam's book is, in the grand scheme of things, all that meaningful.

The Antagonist has some features of a coming-of-age novel, although the moral growth and character changes that are so much a part of that genre are muted. To the extent that Rank changes, it is in reaction to the process of reflection as he authors his emails. Maybe it would be best to describe The Antagonist as a coming-of-age-in-middle-age novel, although what Rank experiences is more catharsis than maturation.

However the novel might be categorized, it is a sensitive and insightful examination of what it means to a child in an adult's body, a person who is instantly regarded as a brawler because he looks like one, a kid who never has to grow up because, from the age of fourteen, he's living in an adult body and is treated accordingly. Lynn Coady explores the role that expectations play in shaping a young adult's life, and the difficult road a young adult must follow if he chooses to resist those expectations.

The Antagonist is written in energetic prose that reflects Rank's desire to unleash his anger and frustration. It's a powerful story but one that is rich with humor and compassion.

RECOMMENDED

The Magician's Wife by James M. Cain

First published in 1965; published digitally by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Media on January 15, 2013

The Magician's Wife was first published in 1965. Taking it on its own terms, without comparison to James M. Cain's classic hard-boiled fiction of the 1930s and 1940s, it is a flawed but entertaining crime story.

Clay Lockwood is an executive working for a large meat distributor. He begins an affair with Sally Alexis, who trains the waitresses at a popular restaurant chain. Sally is married to a magician. After two hours in bed that must have been amazing, Clay wants to spend the rest of his life with Sally. Yet Sally won't get a divorce while her husband's wealthy father lives, because she fears her father-in-law would punish her by disinheriting her son. Adding some zest to the story is the magician's bosomy assistant, a sparkplug named Buster who makes passes at Clay when she isn't pursuing the magician and pretty much every other successful man she meets.

Before long Sally's mother, Grace, enters the story, and Clay briefly turns his amorous attention toward her. Soon thereafter, entirely too coincidentally, Clay meets the magician, a vain chap he instantly dislikes. Still, having met the guy, Clay feels he can no longer be a weasel. He wants Sally to confront the magician and divorce him, a plan Sally promptly rejects because there's not enough money in it. For Sally to really make out, both her father-in-law and her husband need to die. You can see where this is going, right? Actually, a reader won't know exactly where the story is going because the plot takes some unexpected turns.

I never quite believe stories in which a guy not only falls in love with a woman on their first night together but insists they get married -- unless the guy is a desperate loser, which Clay isn't. Neither did I believe that any man in Clay's position would fall in love with Sally. Apart from being scheming and greedy, she's more than a little crazy, as she demonstrates when she destroys Clay's apartment and hacks his artwork to pieces during a lover's quarrel. Maybe if Clay had known this nutcase more than a short time I could understand his feelings for her, but Cain didn't sell me on the relationship. Any sane man would have been horrified every time he had a conversation with her.

I also had trouble believing that Clay broke up with the woman he loved and the next night was hitting on her mother. In fact, Clay repeatedly bounces from Sally to Grace and back, apparently happy to settle for either one of them. And then there's Buster, who rates an enjoyable kiss. I mean, I know guys are dogs, but come on! If Clay's behavior isn't quite admirable, it at least has the virtue of being amusing. It's even more amusing that he proposes to women he hardly knows as casually as if he were ordering a steak from a menu.

Although the novel was written in 1965, the courtroom scenes have the sort of drama that is common to crime novels of the 1940s and 1950s. The defense lawyer argues his case and cross-examines with rhetorical flourishes that give the story its best moments. The novel bristles with tension in the last few chapters, although the ending is something of a let down.

Clay is always telling himself to get on with his life while making one decision after another that undermines that desire. That's a common failing and Cain illustrates it convincingly. Notwithstanding my inability to believe some aspects of Clay's character, I found it easy to sympathize with him, despite his less-than-exemplary conduct during much of the novel. Only a good writer can pull that off. I recommend The Magician's Wife to crime fiction fans for that reason, and for the novel's entertaining moments, despite its flaws.

RECOMMENDED

Revolution 19 by Gregg Rosenblum

Published by HarperTeen on January 8, 2013 

So in 2051 there's a robot revolution, with all the military robots turning against the humans who once controlled them. A robot apocalypse ensues, the surviving humans who are not held captive take refuge in the woods, and the story follows from that unoriginal premise. Fourteen years later, Kevin and Nick and Cass, along with their survivalist parents, are living in a Freepost, hiding from the bots. Their Freepost is the nineteenth either mistakenly or deliberately branded as revolutionary (hence the title), leading to a robot attack. The kids escape but their parents and some of their friends are captured.

The plot eventually follows the plucky kids as the sneak into the city to rescue their parents from the killer robots. The city is filled with forgotten technology like elevators and Segways (which is pretty much already a forgotten technology). They meet a plucky city kid named Lexi, who also happens to be pretty, and she decides to help them because Nick, having knocked down a surveillance bot in a David vs. Goliath moment, has become a rock star among city kids. Apart from the need to add a predictable romantic angle to the story, that's presumably why Lexi likes Nick so much (she clearly couldn't be attracted to his mind).

To be fair, Revolution 19 is less a robot apocalypse novel than it is a novel about the aftermath of the robot revolution. The robots have a benevolent purpose, so rather than enslaving humans, they give humans microchip implants and send them to reeducation classes where the humans learn to be peaceful and obedient -- sort of Nineteen Eighty-Four with robots playing the role of Big Brother. How benevolence squares with the slaughter of humans before reeducation began or with the execution of humans who don't respond to reeducation is never explained, probably because it can't be. You'd think robots would have a better sense of logic, but logic would just get in the way of the plot.

The kids are plucky but not very bright. Kevin's idiocy causes the robots to discover his Freehold, but he arguably didn't know what he was doing. Once in the city, Nick knowingly does some blindingly stupid things. Kevin and Cass decide that attending a bot-patrolled school would be better than hiding in a basement, despite the absence of any possible reward that would offset the risk of being caught. So are three monstrously stupid kids really smart enough to defeat an entire army of revolutionary robots? They don't actually save the world, but the story sets up a sequel in which they probably will.

Gregg Rosenblum deserves credit for dealing with technology intelligently, something that isn't always present in YA science fiction. Rosenblum deserves no credit for making life inside the city improbably easy for our intrepid heroes. They need chips to avoid capture, so -- happy fortune! -- Lexi knows a doctor who can implant chips that -- happy fortune! -- are supplied by a tech-wise kid whose reeducation apparently didn't work very well. Our heroes want to attend school so -- happy fortune! -- the tech-wise kid is able to hack into the school computer and fabricate school records for them. The bots are ridiculously easy to defeat in combat -- one of the kids even manages to beat up a bot -- which makes one wonder why adults couldn't successfully mount a counter-revolution before the three plucky kids give it a try.

To be fair, this is young adult fiction, so perhaps it is meant to be formulaic and unchallenging. It isn't the kind of high quality young adult fiction that Robert Heinlein used to write -- the kind that adults can still enjoy more than half a century after it first appeared -- but Rosenblum's writing style is fluid and the main characters are likable despite their density. While a young reader's reaction to Revolution 19 might therefore be more favorable than mine, I'd recommend that young readers with an interest in robots search out some old Asimov stories. They're easy reading but they're also about intelligent people (and intelligent robots) who behave in intelligent ways.

NOT RECOMMENDED