Viral by Jim Lilliefors

Published by Soho Press on April 10, 2012

Every thriller set in Africa must, it seems, include in its cast a tough-minded female doctor doing humanitarian work. In Viral, that role is played by Sandra Oku. She watches dozens of villagers die during the course of a morning, victims of a mysterious and fast-acting respiratory disease. As the disease spreads through the village and to surrounding farms, Sandra realizes that this is the threat of which her cousin, the journalist Paul Bahdru, had warned her, albeit in vague terms. Days after that conversation, Bahdru is scheduled to meet with private intelligence analyst Charles Mallory. As Charles waits for Bahdru to appear, a package is delivered to Charles containing Bahdru's head. When Charles fails to keep a telephonic appointment with his brother Jon (having hinted that he will provide Jon with a big story for Jon's weekly news publication), Jon goes to Africa in search of Charles, who in turn wants Jon to be witness to a tragic story that needs to be told. Another witness is, of course, Sandra Oku. There weren't supposed to be any witnesses, she tells Jon, so it isn't surprising when witnesses start to die.

And so the stage is set for the reader to guess at the exact nature of the threat -- a revelation that comes a little more than halfway through -- and to guess how Jon and Charles will defeat the bad guys. They are the main characters; Sandra and many other characters weave in and out of the story's fabric but play secondary parts. This isn't a medical thriller; we hear some familiar information about how a virus might be created and defeated, but the focus is on the two brothers, not on doctors or microbiologists.

Much of the story has a familiar feel. It differs in key respects from spreading-virus novels like Outbreak, from bioterrorism novels like The Cobra Event, and from corporate conspiracy novels like Contagion, but Viral blends in elements of each. It also echoes classic Ludlum thrillers in which the people who can help the hero die before they get the chance. The apparent goal of the bad guys' scheme is one I haven't seen in other thrillers, although thriller writers like to employ misdirection. In this case, it's a temptation that should have been resisted. What seems like an unusual and inventive story turns into one that is all too ordinary. Even before that plot twist appeared, the story had such a derivative feel that I couldn't get excited about it. The story cruises to a predictable but entertaining conclusion, although the last quarter of the novel is longer than it needs to be.

The best subplot involves manipulation of the media. I particularly liked the comparison of news stories to viruses that spread out of control. Cryptology fans will enjoy the ciphers that Jon must puzzle out. I thought his ability to do so was a bit of a stretch, and I was never convinced that Charles wouldn't have simply called Jon rather than playing cipher games, but most modern thrillers ask the reader to suspend disbelief for the sake of a good story. In that regard, the most difficult thing to accept is that Jon can pass for an African by wearing dark brown make-up while he labors all day under the hot sun.

Neither the good guys nor the bad guys have unique personalities; they are wooden creations that exist only to drive the plot. James Lilliefors' writing style is clean and competent and most of the novel moves quickly. Parts of the novel work quite well, but the attempt to reconceive it in the final chapters falls flat, in part because too much chitchat stalls the story's momentum. An attempt to jump-start the action again in the final pages was welcome but belated. In short, this is a likeable but flawed thriller.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

August is a Wicked Month by Edna O'Brien

First published in 1965; published in digital format by Open Road Media on April 3, 2012

Ellen Sage (an Irish woman living in London) has been separated from George for two years. Their son shuttles between their homes. George is taking their son on a camping trip. Although Ellen turns down George's invitation to accompany them because there will be "nothing to fill the hours of treachery between them," she is having difficulty adjusting to life without him. A week later a man shows up at Ellen's door complaining about his mistress. Although Ellen has met the man only once, they spend the day (and then the night) together. As she longs for him in the ensuing days, she thinks it was wicked of him "to renew her life for an evening when she had resigned herself to being almost dead." In a desperate mood, Ellen buys "freedom clothes" and travels to France in search of men who will provide temporary respites from her frustration. Despite her "humiliation in the presence of perfectly formed people" and her indifference to the Mediterranean's beauty, she soon finds herself in the company of an American actor and his entourage. The story takes off from there.

August is a Wicked Month provides an insightful look at a woman who is learning (or relearning) how to live her life. Cycling between ecstasy and joylessness, Ellen struggles to reclaim a sense of purpose, of dignity and freedom. It is a cliché to say that she is finding herself but Ellen is clearly on a quest for self-discovery. Of course, at the end of such journeys we don't always like what we discover.

To a surprising extent, Ellen is sexually adventurous (surprising only because this 1965 novel takes place at a time when attitudes about casual sex were still evolving, when -- as Ellen notes -- female chastity was still the ideal), perhaps because she feels a need for the intimacy that disappeared from her life even before her separation. To her dismay, her adventures are mostly flops. When Ellen proclaims August to be "the wicked month," she is being ironic, "thinking of her own pathetic struggles toward wickedness."

"Sage means wise or something like that" Ellen says of her name, and while it's true that Ellen gains some wisdom during the month of August, her insights are not entirely positive. They are, in fact, rather depressing, although Ellen does learn (in a painful way) to see beyond her illusions. Readers who like sunshiny stories with happy endings should avoid this novel. A tragic (perhaps wicked in a different sense) event toward the end of the novel forces a further reassessment of Ellen's life. Although that aspect of the novel veers toward strangeness, it also acts as a reminder that people grieve and heal in different ways. At the very least, it feels authentic; Ellen is an odd but entirely believable person.

Edna O'Brien's prose ranges from light and melodic to dark and dense. She shapes sentences that are unusual but memorable. On several occasions the narrative jumps to a different place or time without making an obvious transition, a jarring technique that causes unnecessary confusion. In most other respects, I admired O'Brien's writing style. O'Brien provides enough detail to establish the scene and flesh out the characters but exercises enough restraint to avoid stating the obvious. The characters are both funny and sad, the story both amusing and disheartening. In that regard, the story reflects the joy and pain of life as focused through a lens that spotlights a lonely woman cast adrift. It isn't always easy to read a story like that, but August is a Wicked Month ultimately rewards the effort.

RECOMMENDED

Tumblin' Dice by John McFetridge

Published by ECW Press on January 25, 2012

The High, a Canadian band that has been around since the 1970s, is back on tour, playing Indian casinos and similar venues with the likes of Grand Funk Railroad and the Doobie Brothers. Ritchie Stone (lead guitar) is getting it on with Emma (business manager) while Cliff Moore (singer) has sex with as many soccer mom groupies as he can find. Dale (drummer) brings his wife of thirty years with him on the tour bus. So far this sounds like a typical road band story, but here's the twist: Barry Nemeth (bass) picks up extra cash by stealing equipment and instruments from other bands and selling them to the loan sharks who haunt the casinos. Soon Cliff and Barry begin to rob the sharks at gunpoint, a fun hobby until an unfortunate incident prompts Cliff to swear he will never do it again. But then the opportunity arises for a final score, one that is motivated by as much by revenge as much as the chance to walk away with serious money.

Other characters making significant contributions to the plot include the band's shady ex-manager, a horny drug cop who wants to be a homicide cop, various other members of the Canadian and American law enforcement communities, an ex-stripper who is the de facto business manager of the Saints of Hell motorcycle gang, and of course a hooker -- because what would a casino novel be without a hooker? One plot thread concerns the motorcycle gang's plan to move in on the Mafia-type gangsters who control a casino; another follows the investigation of a Pakistani girl's killing by a family member.

Rock fans will appreciate all the nostalgic references to bands and musicians, including a funny riff on various recording artists who died violently, the subject of Cliff's musing while he's locked in a trunk after a robbery gone wrong. The High supposedly played or partied with everybody back in the day, from Chuck Berry to Keith Richards. All the name dropping is fun, particularly if you're old enough to remember the older bands (or a younger fan of classic rock).

Tumblin' Dice rips along at the frantic pace of a high energy rock song. There's a certain stream of consciousness quality to John McFetridge's prose, marked by sentence fragments, run-on sentences, and haphazard use of quotation marks. It's the kind of style that often irritates me, but I got used to it quickly and actually started to enjoy it. Dialog tends to channel writers like Elmore Leonard, a style that is rarely mimicked successfully, but McFetridge handles it well.

The plot is a bit convoluted. It occasionally meanders. I'm not quite sure why the plot thread involving the Pakistani is part of the novel; it contributes little of value. Major characters (particularly cops) drop out of sight before the story concludes. Yet what I admired about Tumblin' Dice wasn't so much the crime story (although I like its surprising and amusing resolution) as the band story, the fact that four guys finally get it together in late middle age and figure out at the end of their musical careers how to be the kind of band they always wanted to be, how to make music that has the audience screaming and dancing in the aisles, how to have fun performing together. That theme, combined with solid characters, makes Tumblin' Dice an enjoyable reading experience.

RECOMMENDED

Instruction Manual for Swallowing by Adam Marek

First published in Great Britain in 2007; published by ECW Press on April 1, 2012

Adam Marek's best stories explore the oddness of life, or perhaps the odd ways that people live their lives. Many of the stories might be characterized as science fiction or fantasy or horror or alternate reality, but in the end, they defy conventional categorization. The stories are sui generis.

Some of the stories in Instruction Manual for Swallowing reminded me of Monty Python sketches. "The Forty-Litre Monkey" is about a pet shop owner who competes to raise the world's largest monkey (as measured by volume). A man's attempt to have an affair is disrupted by an adverse reaction to sushi (or guilt) in "Sushi Plate Epiphany." In the strange future imagined in "Robot Wasps," terrorists hack advertising zeppelins to make them display anti-government messages while a man does battle with the robot wasps that have taken over his garden. In "The Thorn," a child's grandparents struggle to pull a stubborn thorn from a boy's foot, only to discover that it isn't a thorn at all. The narrator in "Instruction Manual for Swallowing" gets in touch with his inner-self: the guy who runs his autonomic nervous system, who happens to look just like Busta Rhymes, is none too happy with the narrator's self-abuse.

In the absence of any better way to categorize the remaining stories, I'll lump them together according to my impressions of them:

Grotesque: Told from the father's point of view, "Belly Full of Rain" is the story of a woman who, pregnant with 37 fetuses, enlists the help of an "expert" to help her achieve the medically impossible by giving birth to all of them. A carnivorous centipede saves a man from a bear trap in "The Centipede's Wife," but haunting guilt about its past prevents the centipede from devouring the man.

Morbid: In "Jumping Jennifer," college girls are unsympathetic to the student they've nicknamed "Barbie" after she falls (or is pushed) from her dorm room window. A cat alerts two young people to an older man's unbecoming fate in "Ipods for Cats."

Bizarre: "Testicular Cancer vs. the Behemoth" asks which is worse: learning that you have an advanced case of testicular cancer or discovering that your family and friends are preoccupied with the Godzilla-type monster that is tearing up the city. "Boiling the Toad" is about a man who comes to fear the painful sex games his girlfriend wants to play. An art exhibit comes alive (with deadly intent) in "A Gilbert and George Talibanimation." Zombies with voracious appetites need a credit card to eat at the restaurant staffed by "Meaty's Boys"-- but what exactly are they eating?

Mysterious: A man meets a teenage girl he images to be the incarnation of his infant daughter in "Cuckoo."

Marek writes in a deceptively simple style that enhances the reader's ability to accept his wild imaginings as if they are ordinary events faithfully reported by a reliable narrator. In other words, Marek makes the extraordinary seem ordinary, perhaps because his characters are ordinary people who view zombies (for instance) in the same way we might view bad drivers:  irritating but commonplace.  I didn't like all of these stories equally, but I liked them all. 

RECOMMENDED

House of the Hunted by Mark Mills

Published by Random House on April 3, 2012

House of the Hunted begins in midstream, as if it were the sequel to a novel that had already set up the plot and established the characters.  It is 1919 in Petrograd.  As Irina Bibikov is surreptitiously released from prison, Tom Nash, who orchestrated her escape and is the father of her unborn child, flees from Cheka patrols.  Little by little, Mark Mills fills in the backstory.  We learn that Nash was working for the British Foreign Office until, after barely escaping from Petrograd during the Russian Revolution, he joined the SIS to better his chances of assisting the woman he loves.  His attempt to spirit Irina out of the country goes disastrously wrong; Nash has been betrayed and is lucky to make a second escape from Russia.

After that tense beginning, the story flashes forward to 1935.  It again begins in mid-stride, introducing new characters in a new setting (Toulon, France) as if they were already familiar to the reader.  The focus nonetheless remains on Nash, who is haunted by his failure to rescue Irina.  Despite his retirement from a life of danger, Nash becomes the target of an assassination attempt.  Even worse, he suspects he has been betrayed by one of his friends.  At that point the novel blends suspense and mystery as Nash tries to figure out who wants him dead and why.  The threat forces Nash to look back upon his life, giving the reader an abbreviated view of the events that shaped him, including some ugly childhood memories.

The characters in House of the Hunted are all erudite, well-educated and often artistic.  They make impossibly witty dinner conversation while consuming bottle after bottle of fine wine.  They are nonetheless a believable mix of Russians, Americans, Germans, French, and British, the sort of folk who might have summered (or lived) in a charming harbor town in the south of France between the two world wars.  Nash’s relationship with a goddaughter who is blossoming into adulthood adds an interesting dimension to Nash’s character as he tries to decide what to do about their changing relationship.

This isn’t a novel of jaw-dropping developments, and in that low-key sense House of the Hunted is more credible than many espionage thrillers.  Several small interpersonal dramas substitute for blockbuster international intrigue, although those dramas give birth to intrigues of their own.  There is nonetheless a significant surprise at the end, as well as a smaller one, neither of which I anticipated.  This is a novel without loose ends; all the storylines are carefully knotted together as the story reaches its climax.

Mills’ prose is as smooth as the cognac the characters love to drink.  He tells a smart, engaging tale.  While I felt emotionally detached from Nash and the other characters (maybe I’m just not a cognac kind of guy), I appreciated the skillful storytelling and enjoyed the unexpected plot developments.  The final chapter sets up the possibility of a sequel that I would love to read.  Nash is a worthy heir to James Bond, sophistication and grit without all the flash and gadgetry.

RECOMMENDED