Only Superhuman by Christopher L. Bennett

Published by Tor Books on October 16, 2012 

Superheroes endure in the imagination because they speak to our desire to empower the powerless, to be inspired by the iconic. Superheroes in science fiction have gained new life by the trendy notion of transhumanism, the use of technology to enhance human abilities. The current breed of supermen aren't born on Krypton; they're genetically or mechanically engineered. While paying tribute to comic book superheroes of the twentieth century (particularly a certain webspinner who likes to talk about the responsibility that comes with power), Christopher Bennett's Only Superhuman transforms the costumed superhero into a plausible (if unlikely) inhabitant of the future.

The novel opens in 2017. The hero upon whom the story focuses is a Troubleshooter named Emerald Blair, a/k/a the Green Blaze. Bennett gives her a melodramatic origin story (a tradition for superheroes) and sets up a background in which most transhumans hail from the asteroid belt, genetic engineering having met with disfavor on Earth. The Troubleshooters are a union of uniformed vigilantes who strive for justice, except when they don't. The Troubleshooters are only one of a number of competing transhuman groups. The most significant of the others are the Vanguardians and the Neogaians (human/animal hybrids who oppose restrictions on human enhancement that deny humanity "its right to evolve"). The Vanguard is most prominently represented in the novel by Eliot Thorne and his daughter Psyche, a woman with genetically enhanced empathy and an engineered ability to manipulate others.  A helpful appendix identifies the different groups that have taken up residence in the various asteroid belts.

While the story has its share of battles between costumed characters, the plot is driven by political treachery. Emerald must decide whether the leaders of the Troubleshooters are using improper means to achieve the wrong ends and eventually comes to question her long-standing assumptions about the group's righteousness. Should she ally herself instead with the Vanguardians, the organization her father abandoned and where her relatives still dwell? Emerald improbably blames her father for her mother's death, and what she learns with the Vanguard requires her to confront that anger.

As you might guess from this synopsis, much of the story is too obvious to succeed as good storytelling. The reader knows that Emerald will learn Valuable Lessons and will resolve her feelings about her father. At the same time, the heart of the story -- the betrayals and political intrigue -- is reasonably strong. Only Superhuman also showcases an interesting debate about the ethics of genetic enhancement, the possibility of saving and improving lives versus the use of babies as guinea pigs. More of that and fewer obvious life lessons would have made this a better novel.

The story's pace is uneven, in part because too much of the writing is expository and in part because it is so filled with relationships and betrayals that a reader might need to diagram them to make sense of it. Too much anguished conversation interrupts the story's flow. All the superhero sex becomes a bit tedious (the Green Blaze is easily aroused and Psyche, who uses sex as a weapon, has a full arsenal). Emerald's histrionics are tiresome. The novel keeps going long after it should end as the various characters engage in extended talk therapy with each other. In short, some good ideas and likable characters kept me reading, but a tighter, less predictable story would have earned a stronger recommendation.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

One for the Books by Joe Queenan

Published by Viking on October 25, 2012

Joe Queenan is a columnist/journalist/writer/reviewer.  He describes his regular work as “ridiculing nincompoops and scoundrels.”  To some extent, One for the Books is a collection of funny, book-related stories that do exactly that.  He ridicules the inept security guards who detained his bag in a library, the luncheons he has attended to honor writers because “they are still breathing,” and the book store employees who treat him like dirt because he isn’t searching for their favored titles.  More significantly, One for the Books offers an amusing glimpse at the life of a dedicated reader.  The last few paragraphs in particular are a wonderful tribute to reading.

Although reading has collateral benefits, Queenan is convinced that most book lovers read books “to escape to a more exciting, more rewarding world,” a proposition with which I completely agree.  Queenan reads every day and would read more if he could.  He reads enduring literature and he reads trash (although less of the latter as he ages).  He sometimes reads “the types of books that thirtyish women devour at private swim clubs, often to the dismay of their drowning children,” but only years after they have lost their trendy bestseller status.  He forms relationships with his books and often prefers their company to the bozos he knows.

Queenan is equally fervent about the books he has read and those he refuses to read, ever.  He names names.  Yet, for all the titles that Queenan drops (typically several on every page), this isn’t a work of literary criticism.  He may or may not mention what the book is about or his impressions of it, but when he does, he rarely employs more than a few words.  One for the Books is about Queenan’s experiences as a reader and feelings about reading more than it is about the books he has read.

Queenan is something of a book snob and he makes no effort to disguise his snobbery.  Rather, he revels in it.  He expresses his opinions forcefully, in the manner of a curmudgeon.  Books about businessmen and politicians “are interchangeably awful.”  Detective novels are “piffle.”  He would rather have his “eyelids gnawed on by famished gerbils than join a book club.”  He ridicules the questions prepared for book clubs that can be found in the backs of books and on websites, and contributes (mockingly) a few of his own.  He does not want friends to loan him books and cannot understand “how one human being could ask another human being to read Look Homeward, Angel and then expect to remain on speaking terms.”  He doesn’t like to discuss books with people who don’t love serious literature because they always set the conversational agenda, which tends to focus on current bestsellers, but he enjoys pulling a book from his shelves and reading “striking passages to baffled dimwits who have turned up at my house.” Although he frequents a variety of bookstores and finds some of them alluring, he is acerbic in his description of their employees (particularly the “Irony Boys”).  He complains about readers “upon whom the gift of literacy may have been wasted.”  He thinks book critics are “mostly servile muttonheads” while blurb writers are “liars and sycophants.”  He refuses to read books about the Yankees and their “slimy fans” or books written by Yankees fans (Salman Rushdie included).  He will not read books with ugly covers.  He does not read digital editions because they make reading “rote and mechanical,” stripped of its “transcendent component.”  He is no friend of the Kindle.

Although we’re often on the same page (so to speak), about equally often I disagree with Queenan’s opinions.  This is, after all, a guy who cavalierly dismisses two of my favorite novels, Catcher in the Rye and Catch-22.  His decisions about books he will not read are often capricious.  That’s fine.  Agreement with Queenan is irrelevant because he writes with such passion and conviction and humor that it is impossible not to be entertained, and occasionally moved, by his words.  Besides, as Queenan points out, people who care about books are willing to get into knife fights to defend their beliefs.  I appreciate that he cares so much, even if I might sometimes be inclined to tangle with him using sharp blades.

Other than a long list of books ranging from The Iliad to the obscure, is there anything Queenan actually likes?  Shockingly enough, he claims to admire Amazon book reviews, at least the snide ones written by courageous reviewers who hide behind the bushes, fire their muskets and run away.  He even offers (mockingly) a few Amazon reviews of his own.  They are hilarious.

Queenan would hate this review because I have nothing nasty to say about his book.  My only complaints about One for the Books are (1) its haphazard organization and corresponding (albeit occasional) tendency toward redundancy, and (2) a chapter that is largely devoted to the visits he has made to towns and homes and graves of dead writers bogs down in stream-of-consciousness triviality.  Otherwise, I have to say sorry, Joe, but I really enjoyed your book.  Fortunately, someone else will come along and trash it, providing him with the kind of review he admires.

RECOMMENDED

The Dark Winter by David Mark

Published by Blue Rider Press on October 25, 2012

Some novels about serial killers challenge the reader to discover the pattern that links the murderers.  The Dark Winter is not one of those.  The pattern will become clear to the reader about a third of the way through the novel.  The police, who are a touch slow to see the obvious, figure it out by the novel’s midway point.  The more challenging puzzles are the killer’s identity and motivation.

Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy of the Humberside Police responds to a scream that turns out to be the last sound made by an adolescent girl named Daphne before she is hacked to death with a machete.  Born in Sierra Leone, Daphne was adopted after her parents became victims of genocide.  McAvoy would like to lead the investigation but he is instead assigned to tell Barbara Stein-Collinson that her brother Fred has been found dead in a lifeboat off the coast of Iceland.  Fred Stein had survived the sinking of a trawler at the same location more than thirty years earlier -- one of four that sank during the Black Winter -- and Fred had returned at the request of a documentarian to lay a wreath in the water to honor the dead.  Although Barbara believes that Fred committed suicide, we know from the novel’s prologue that Fred was knocked unconscious and thrown into the lifeboat.

Fans of crime novels will immediately suspect that the two killings are related.  The link will be clear to the savvy reader when a third killing occurs, and McAvoy eventually figures it out.  The real question is the killer’s identity.  The answer, of course, depends upon unlocking the killer’s motivation for following the pattern.  In that regard, the resolution of the mystery is at least plausible (by thriller standards, anyway) and modestly clever.  The novel’s conclusion, however, is a contrived attempt to add a final “thrill.”  It doesn’t detract from the story that precedes it but it doesn’t deliver the payoff that David Mark must have intended.

Mark writes fast moving prose.  Short sentences.  Omits pronouns.  When he isn’t doing that, he’s actually a decent wordsmith with some literary flair.  I’d like to see more of that in the next book.  It’s more appealing than strings of two word sentences.

Although this is Mark’s debut novel, McAvoy comes with the sort of baggage that most series protagonists accumulate over the course of a half dozen books.  His face and career are scarred by an incident that took place many months earlier.  Although he is mildly obsessive, a bit neurotic, and harbors an unhealthy passion for his job, he has the orderly mind of an accountant -- a trait that has condemned him to a desk job, managing databases.  He is therefore an unhappy cop, one who is burdened with the self-doubt that victimization can instill.

Half the story -- the better half -- focuses on McAvoy’s conflict with police officers who are more keen on making an arrest than on finding the guilty party.  McAvoy, who is also burdened with a conscience, wants the job done right, statistics be damned.  This makes him an interesting character, someone I’d welcome meeting again.

RECOMMENDED

The Alamut Ambush by Anthony Price

First published in 1971; published digitally by The Murder Room on September 6, 2012 

The Alamut Ambush is the second in a series of spy novels that began with The Labyrinth Makers. David Audley is the thread that connects each novel, but he is not always the central character. Audley plays an important part in The Alamut Ambush but most of the legwork is done by Hugh Roskill, RAF Squadron Leader turned intelligence operative. Jack Butler, who stars in some of the later novels, plays a less significant role in this one.

While characterization is Anthony Price's strength, The Alamut Ambush benefits from an intriguing plot. A car bomb explodes, killing the technician who was trying to disarm it. The bomb was apparently intended for David Llewelyn, the man who got Audley kicked out of the Middle Eastern group, and against whom Audley still bears a deep resentment. Audley was the brains of the group, an expert on the Middle East with a strong network of contacts, particularly in Israel. When Roskill and Butler seek Audley's help in finding the bomber, he rejects their overtures, apparently miffed that the bomber did not succeed in killing Llewelyn. Before long, however, Roskill works out the truth -- the real target of the bomb wasn't Llewelyn at all -- and Audley can't resist the cat-and-mouse work of catching the killer.

Roskill is on more-than-friendly terms with Isobel Ryle, wife of Sir John Ryle, a relationship that makes him less than comfortable when he investigates the Ryle Foundation, an organization that develops educational resources in the Middle East but seems to be providing assistance to terrorists. Roskill is also drawn into interviews with two people who could have orchestrated the assassination: an Israeli and an Egyptian. Shockingly, each of the two men go to great pains to absolve the other, further deepening the mystery, while pointing to a rogue assassin whose clandestine organization has always been assumed to be mythical. Roskill fumbles his way along, always feeling that he's the wrong man for the job, but motivated by the sense that he is partially responsible for the death of the technician, who Roskill recommended for the job.

The Alamut Ambush blends the intrigue of Middle Eastern politics with a detective story as Roskill tries to piece the puzzle together. What he finally learns shocks him while nearly leading to his death. Audley, as always, is two steps ahead of everyone else, pursuing his own agenda while nominally working for his nation's benefit. Although Roskill receives more attention, Audley is the novel's star character. He's supremely hard-headed, devoted to ignoring ignorable rules to prove that he's "a gentleman rather than a player," yet he's also petulant, particularly when he's on the losing side of a turf war. A flawed genius, Audley is a more fully rounded character than those commonly found in spy fiction.

While there are moments of violence in The Alamut Ambush, particularly in the final, tense scenes, this is a novel of intellect rather than action. Price's interest in history, particularly medieval Arab history, informs the story. The conflicting interests in Middle Eastern politics are fairly represented, and although the novel was written in 1971, too little has changed to make it feel dated. The Alamut Ambush is a largely forgotten novel that should be a rewarding discovery for fans of spy fiction.

RECOMMENDED

A Cold Red Sunrise by Stuart M. Kaminsky

First published in 1988; published digitally by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Media on October 16, 2012

Stuart Kaminsky's death in 2009 brought an end to the career of a prolific and talented crime writer. His novels about Porfiry Rostnikov might be his finest work. Known to his colleagues as "the Washtub" because of his stature, Rostinikov is a pragmatic, persistent, apolitical cop whose bum leg does little to hamper his investigations.

Commissar Illya Rutkin is dispatched to a small village in Siberia to investigate the death of a dissident's child. He is about to wrap up the case when a large creature drives an icicle through his eye, killing him. Rostnikov, recently demoted to the MVD Bureau of Special Projects after clashing too often with the KGB, is charged with investigating the death, perhaps as a prelude to his own exile to Siberia. Both the KGB and the Procurator General are keeping an eye on him, documenting any mistakes he might make.

Although the local police officer theorizes that Rutkin was killed by a bear, a happy theory that would have no political ramifications and require no actual police work, bears do not stab people with icicles. A witness to the crime believes Rutkin was murdered by a snow demon sent by an Evenk shaman, an equally unlikely explanation.  Rostnikov's methodical investigation, his dogged questioning of the village residents, gives The Cold Red Sunrise the flavor of a Russian police procedural combined with a murder mystery.

A couple of subplots play out in interesting ways. The primary mystery follows surprising paths and resolves satisfactorily. An episode involving the shaman is a bit too mystical for my taste, but it doesn't detract significantly from the story's overall effectiveness.

Kaminsky adds humor to the novel with Rostnikov's humorless, grim-faced assistant and with another investigator who, back in Moscow, is assigned to work undercover as an ice cream vendor. Whether they play large or small roles, Kaminsky invests all of his characters with full lives. Rostnikov's strength as an investigator is that he seems instantly to understand everyone he meets. His weakness as a human being is that he doesn't understand himself. He is an engaging, sympathetic character with greater depth than is typical of fictional police detectives.

The short novel offers a wealth of information about Siberia, including a brief but fascinating account of its turbulent history. The hardship of Soviet existence -- both in a Moscow dependent upon black market vegetables and a Siberia that is defined by frigidity and isolation -- is a theme that establishes the book's atmosphere. The role of dissidents in Soviet life and restrictions of civil liberties are equally strong themes. A third theme is integrity, which Rostnikov and his dour-faced assistant have in abundance despite the political corruption that surrounds them. For all of that, for the entertaining story it tells, and for its cast of characters, A Cold Red Sunrise is a worthy addition to the mystery reader's shelf.

RECOMMENDED