Under the Eye of God by Jerome Charyn

Published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road on October 30, 2012 

I'm not sure what Under the Eye of God is meant to be. Is it a thriller that doesn't thrill? A political satire that isn't funny? A melodrama that lacks emotion? The novel attempts to be many things and doesn't succeed at any of them. The meandering story is eventful, but it is ultimately a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Isaac Sidel, the immensely popular gun-toting mayor of New York, is running for vice president in 1988. The scandal-ridden presidential candidate is Michael Storm. Sidel is wildly popular with the electorate, largely because he carries a Glock and regularly shoots people with it, and is largely responsible for Storm's victory. The incumbent president, perhaps an even bigger scoundrel than Storm, decides to frame Sidel as a pedophile (an accusation made possible only because Sidel is inexplicably traveling on a campaign bus with Storm's immensely popular twelve-year-old girl), thus nullifying the party's best asset. Sidel tumbles to the plot only because the president's astrologer abandons him after he punches her in the nose. We learn all of this in a preposterous first chapter that ends with Sidel tackling an apparent assassin because the four screamingly incompetent Secret Service agents charged with protecting him are too far away to act.

Later in the novel we learn that the astrologer isn't who she seems to be, that various would-be assassins aren't who they seem to be, and that a glamorous woman named Inez -- who becomes the most recent of Sidel's varied love interests -- is really Trudy Winckleman. Trudy is the modern incarnation of the orginal Inez, a woman who captivated gangster Arnold Rothstein in the 1920s. Rothstein was the mentor of David Pearl who, in turn, became Sidel's mentor. By 1988, Pearl owns a good chunk of New York City and has unsettling plans for the Bronx. A conflict naturally ensues between Pearl and Sidel.

The disjointed plot careens like a go-kart with no brakes driven by a blind gorilla. It makes jarring departures from present to past, from place to place and event to event, moving in such a frenetic, haphazard fashion that the reader has no opportunity to settle in and enjoy the ride. Every time it seems like Jerome Charyn might be ready to tell a coherent story, a new tangent emerges to send the plot skidding off in another direction. Each chapter addresses a fresh scandal, resulting in a disturbing discontinuity. The binding thread is a scheme that comes to Sidel's attention when he sees the Army Corps of Engineers stumbling around in the Bronx, but the scheme receives only sporadic attention and even if it were believable, it wouldn't be interesting. With so much going on, it is surprising that the story is so often dull.

At its best, Under the Eye of God reads like an ode to New York City, particularly its architecture. Charyn writes lovingly of the Ansonia, home of such luminaries as Enrico Caruso and Babe Ruth. Of course, Sidel can't enter the Ansonia without shooting someone with his Glock. Maybe Sidel is supposed to be modeled upon Rudy "Look at Me, I'm Tough on Crime" Giuliani, but even Rudy left the actual killing to the NYPD.

As political satire, Under the Eye of God is hopeless. Every political character in the novel is corrupt except, of course, for the straight-shooting Sidel. Satire this heavy-handed is too predictable to be funny. The novel fails as a love story because it's impossible to care whether Sidel will fulfill his fickle romantic ambitions. As a crime novel, the story is a bust. Crime permeates the novel but none of it can be taken seriously. The story fails to create the slightest bit of dramatic tension. With no humor, no believable drama, and no characters worth caring about, Under the Eye of God doesn't deserve to fall under the eye of any reader.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Assholes: A Theory by Aaron James

Published by Doubleday on October 30, 2012 

Aaron James took a break from the philosopher's customary search for the meaning of life to ponder a more burning question: What does it mean to be an asshole? I have the sense that James wrote Assholes so he could share his complaints about surfers who behave like assholes, particularly Brazilians. Whatever his motivation, and despite his earnest attempt to subject assholes to scholarly thought, much of Assholes is enjoyable simply because the topic is so appealing. Everyone, after all, has an opinion about assholes.

Assholes consistently cut in line, interrupt, and engage in name-calling. They do not play well with others (in James' language, they are not fully cooperative members of society). Many (perhaps most) people occasionally behave like an asshole without becoming an asshole. As a theory of the asshole, James posits that an asshole is a person who enjoys "special advantages in interpersonal relations out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people." Although I think "asshole" is pretty much self-defining, in the sense of "I know one when I see one," I like James' definition. I think it's a definition rather than a theory, but I'm probably just quibbling about semantics (which is pretty much the philosopher's job description, making it a battle I can't win). Whether it is a theory or a definition, after he finishes parsing it, James politely suggests that it is up to the reader to decide whether to agree with it. James is plainly no asshole.

James tells us that assholes are morally repugnant but not truly evil. If you're interested in standard philosophical discussions of moral behavior and moral responsibility with references to the likes of Aristotle, Kant, and Buber, you'll find them here. Those of us who needed strong coffee to make it through our philosophy classes are probably hoping for something more fun than a rehash of Martin Buber in a book titled Assholes. We're looking for the author to name names. Happily, James does so (although not without some preliminary hand-wringing about whether calling out assholes is something only an asshole would do). From Simon Cowell to Mel Gibson, from Donald Trump to Steve Jobs, from Ann Coulter to Bill O'Reilly, James finds assholes in every walk of life. James even suggests that book reviewers can be assholes (oh my!) although he does so in the context of academia.

Consistent with his definitional/taxonomic approach, James classifies assholes by type, including the boorish asshole (Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore), the smug asshole (Richard Dawkins, Larry Summers), the asshole boss (Naomi Campbell), the presidential asshole (Hugo Chavez), the reckless asshole (Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld), the self-aggrandizing asshole (Ralph Nader), the cable news asshole (Neil Cavuto, Keith Olbermann), and the delusional asshole (Kanye West, Wall Street bankers).

James' approach to categorization lends itself to party games. You can make up categories James overlooked, like the sports asshole (George Steinbrenner, Michael Vick), or you can add names to the categories he's invented. Don't worry, there are plenty more assholes identified in the book -- the names I've cherry-picked are illustrative only -- as well as some categories I haven't mentioned, but you'll easily think of more. The book is short and the world is filled with assholes.

Returning to the realm of philosophy, James considers whether assholes are morally responsible for being assholes, which leads to a discussion of whether assholes have free will. James' conclusion is at odds with the answer you would get from a neuroscientist like Bruce Hood, but whether you blame assholes or accept that they can't help being who they are, you're still stuck with them. James reasons that assholes are generally male because they are shaped by the culture of gender, although I think he puts too fine a point on it when he draws subtle distinctions between assholes and bitches. I also think he's a bit naive when he argues that, for cultural reasons, American men are more likely to be assholes than Japanese men, a proposition with which many Southeast Asians (not to mention the surviving residents of Nanking) would disagree.

James includes a chapter on how to manage assholes (short version: you really can't, but you can try to make yourself feel good) and a chapter that suggests how capitalist societies (which encourage the sense of entitlement on which assholes thrive) can deteriorate when the asshole ethic takes root (short version: greed isn't good, Gordon Gecko notwithstanding). The concluding chapter tells us how to find a peaceful life in a world full of assholes (short version: reconcile yourself to the things you cannot change while hoping for a better world). These chapters give James a chance to apply the thoughts of Plato and St. Augustine and the Stoics and Rousseau and even Jesus to the topic of assholes. Heavy thinkers will probably enjoy those discussions. Lightweight thinkers, like me, will enjoy the name naming while looking forward to the party games the book inspires.

RECOMMENDED

The Devil Doesn't Want Me by Eric Beetner

Published by Penguin as a "Dutton Guilt Edged Mystery" on October 23, 2012

Lars is a hit man, and with two exceptions, a successful one. One was a recent bloodbath in Vegas and the other is Mitchell "Mitch the Snitch" Kenney, who for seventeen years has been evading Lars, hiding in a witness protection program somewhere in the southwest. Lars has been practicing yoga and chasing down leads but has never managed to find Mitch. Now Lars is being forced into retirement, replaced by a kid named Trent who expects to find and kill Mitch within a few days. As the plot unfolds, the question isn't whether someone will kill Mitch but whether Lars will kill Trent before Trent can kill Lars.

Large quantities of blood splatter across the pages as the story develops, but this isn't a novel of mindless action. Not that the story lacks pace -- it moves like a racehorse -- but it is characterization, not action, that makes the novel stand out. Lars has lost the motivation that shaped his murderous career. He feels old. That doesn't make him unique in the annals of crime literature, but it makes him more interesting than the typical killer. With the perspective of age and an outmoded, Old School sense of virtue, Lars realizes that he's ready for retirement, yet he feels a duty to protect a sixteen-year-old girl who, through no fault of her own, becomes a target of Trent's men. Can Lars get his stone cold killer mojo back before it's too late?

Dialog is sharp and snappy (I particularly liked "A puppy with a squeak toy is more dangerous than you, kid"). The story is peppered with humor, much of it provided by Lars' befuddlement with the sixteen-year-old who becomes his road trip partner. Also contributing to the humor are Trent, who can't get anything right, a rivalry between Lars' ailing boss and the son who can't wait for dad to die so he can take over the mob, and a group of FBI agents who would prefer to do anything but work. Even minor characters are memorable, sketched with a deft hand.

The road trip ends with a clever twist that leads to a wild ending. Although Eric Beetner had me before the novel even began by writing an Author's Note that talks about his love for his dog, it is his ability as a storyteller that kept me fully engaged.

RECOMMENDED

Accelerated by Bronwen Hruska

Published by Pegasus on October 2, 2012 

Accelerated is a novel in search of an identity. The first half is a cross between a character-driven literary novel and a cheesy soap opera. The second half tries to be a thriller, while the overall theme suggests that Accelerated is a message novel. While some aspects of the novel work reasonably well, none of its ambitions are fully realized.

Sean Benning beats himself up because he's not Wonder Dad. He doesn't take his third grade son Toby to Sight Training or to Occupational Therapy to improve his pencil grip. He can't pay for Toby's pricey private school, the sort of place that caters to the overprivileged, but his in-laws are picking up the tab, a circumstance that (like most of his circumstances) leaves Sean feeling humiliated. The school thinks Toby should be medicated because he engages in the sort of "distracting" behavior that is common among boys, but Sean initially resists the idea of turning his son into a drugged zombie.

For no apparent reason other than the need to drive the storyline, Toby's mother, Ellie, has disappeared for three months, occasionally phoning in her regrets. She resurfaces with a desire to take Toby over his Christmas break, which would give Sean the time he desperately needs to prepare for an art show that he scored on the basis of a mere three pieces. Ellie later proves to be such a self-absorbed ninny that it's impossible to take her seriously.

Parts of Accelerated hint at Bronwen Hruska's talent. Sean's concern for his son and struggle with parenting feels authentic. Hruska effectively conveys Sean's anxiety as he talks to Toby about the death of another student, as well as Sean's sense of frustration when he deals with school administrators and mental health providers who seem rather glib in their desire to pin labels on Toby.

Other aspects of the novel don't work at all. Hruska strives for biting humor and sweet sentiment but the story she tells is too obvious to reach those goals. Sean's attendance at a party where Bill Clinton hits on Toby's third grade teacher is laughable, while Sean's inevitable relationship with the teacher is predictable. A happy ending is forced, clearly created to appease readers who like happy endings.

Much of the story surrounds Sean's belief that Toby's school pushes healthy kids to take unnecessary medication and then covers up the disastrous results. In its implicit condemnation of school administrators and drugs like Ritalin, the plot becomes heavy-handed. I have no problem with the notion that normal childish behavior is misdiagnosed as ADHD and that schools have a vested interest in medicating boys as a control mechanism. I do have a problem with hinging a thriller plot on the proposition that drugs like Ritalin routinely cause heart problems in healthy children, that schools push for medication of every male student despite ensuing health problems, that they tell parents the problems are caused by peanut allergies or bee stings, and that parents are too blind and cardiologists too incompetent to recognize the truth. By flirting with hysteria, the plot loses its integrity.

Before Accelerated spins out of control, it features a reasonably balanced debate about the merits and pitfalls of medicating kids. That theme could have been the foundation for a serious novel. By turning the story into a mundane thriller, Hruska cheapened an important debate, wasted her carefully constructed characters, and impaired the novel's credibility. Despite its merits, the novel never recovers from those flaws.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

First published in 1956

There are more ideas in The Stars My Destination -- profound ideas about human potential -- than you're likely to find collectively in the next dozen novels you read. The Stars My Destination begins as a tale of obsession and vengeance. The protagonist is an anti-hero, not the sort of person for whom a reader would normally root, but he is sympathetic compared to most of the novel's other characters, including a powerful corporate executive who makes Gordon Gecko seem like a mischievous boy. In Alfred Bester's future, people have acquired the ability to teleport over long distances, the colonized planets are at war with each other, and cities are filled with people who belong in carnival sideshows. But that's all window dressing for Bester's deeper exploration of a man who is "nothing but hatred and revenge," an Ahab of the twenty-fourth century chasing his own version of a white whale, a spaceship called Vorga. Ultimately, The Stars My Destination is a novel about the limits of idealism, the meaning of justice, the nature of power, and the transcendental ability of the human species to overcome its self-imposed limitations.

Gulliver Foyle, a common man who lacks ambition, a brute raised in the gutter school and "among the least valuable alive," is a crew member on the Nomad when it is attacked during the war between the inner and outer (colonized) planets of Earth's solar system. Foyle, the only member of the Nomad to survive, lives for months in an airtight tool locker not much bigger than a coffin. On his way to madness, he becomes obsessed with a rhyme that ends: "Deep space is my dwelling place/And death's my destination." When a ship called the Vorga ignores his distress signal, Foyle makes it his mission to repair the Nomad's engines so he can track down and destroy the Vorga. He manages to get himself to the asteroid belt (populated by descendants of stranded scientists who tattoo a grotesque tiger-design on Foyle's face) before he makes his way back to Earth. Once there, however, he's captured by employees of Presteign, CEO of the company that owns the Vorga. Presteign wants to know where to find the Nomad and its valuable cargo, a weapon that could shift the balance of power in the interstellar war. Foyle's captivity brings him into contact with Jisbella McQueen, with whom he falls in love -- but love is a small emotion compared his consuming hatred of the Vorga. He later falls in love with Presteign's daughter Olivia, who sees the world in infrared. But love is a cruel emotion, particularly when it clouds the overwhelming desire for vengeance.

New and strange twists appear regularly as the story progresses. Foyle creates the ability to move at accelerated speed. An entity called The Burning Man pops up from time to time, a fiery creature who looks like Foyle. While Foyle wonders if The Burning Man is his guardian angel, a more creative and satisfying explanation for the entity eventually comes to light. After a series of adventures that lead Foyle back to the Nomad, Foyle reinvents himself, becoming Fourmyle of Ceres, an illusionist and circus master whose clout matches Presteign's own. Foyle uses and abuses telepaths in his attempt to track down the person who ordered the Vorga to ignore the Nomad's distress call. The truth, when he finally learns it, shocks him.

Bester gives the uneducated Foyle a unique dialect that is a joy to read. Bester's vivid prose is well-suited to the story, but the novel was ahead of its time in its unconventional use of font placement, creating pictures with fonts to emphasize the confusion that besets Foyle's mind.

The Stars My Destination is a seminal work of science fiction that succeeds on a number of levels. It is a rollicking adventure story and an imaginative tale of the future, but it is more fundamentally a psychological exploration of a troubled soul in need of redemption. It is a cautionary tale about the arrogance of leadership and the virtue of restoring power to the people. Finally, it is a touching story about acceptance and self-determination and the possibility of achieving greatness. To achieve his ends, Gully Foyle must remake himself, and that is where the novel's genius lies. Foyle is no Ahab, incapable of change, consumed by a hatred that will eventually destroy him. Foyle's obsession motivates him to acquire knowledge and strength to serve his need for vengeance, but once he has those new resources, he begins to see the world anew -- as does the reader. Foyle recognizes that he is a freak, but so what? "Life is a freak. That's its hope and glory." We're all freaks, but we all have the ability to become something glorious.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED