Deadly Valentines by Jeffrey Gusfield

Published by Chicago Review Press on April 1, 2012

Deadly Valentines takes its name from Chicago's St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, the bloody conclusion of which is described in the book's prologue. While Deadly Valentines tells the story of Vincent Gebardi, a/k/a "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn, a charming gangster who almost certainly planned and may have participated in that gruesome event, it does so within the broader context of crime and politics in Chicago during the 1920s.

Deadly Valentines is divided into three parts. The first chronicles Vincenzo Gibaldi's life from his arrival in Ellis Island as a Sicilian immigrant in 1906 at the age of four through his family's move to Chicago during the era of Prohibition. As he grows up in Brooklyn, he is instilled with Sicilian values which, according to Jeffrey Gusfield, center upon the necessity of revenge, obedience to a code of honor, and keeping your mouth shut. By the age of sixteen he is calling himself Vincent Gebardi. Later he adopts the Irish-sounding name Jack McGurn to give his boxing career a boost. He gets a different sort of boost when his boxing is noticed by Al Capone, who employs him to guard shipments of bootleg liquor. On a parallel track Gusfield describes the wild and rebellious young life of Louise Rolfe in Chicago.

Part two begins with the murder of McGurn's stepfather, who unwisely competed against the Genna crime family in the distribution of illicit alcohol. Gusfield then shifts the focus away from McGurn to set the stage for Chicago's gang wars, beginning with the burgeoning rivalry between Capone and Dean O'Banion. McGurn returns to center stage in 1926 when he orchestrates a series of murders that Capone has sanctioned. As odies pile up on the streets of Chicago, McGurn moves up to a leadership position in Capone's organization. In 1928, Gebardi hooks up with Louise in a merger of two unstoppable egos.

Part three, appropriately entitled "Massacre," addresses the St. Valentine's Day killings and their aftermath. Impetuous prosecutors look like boobs after predicting with certainty their ability to convict McGurn. Federal prosecutors do only a little better, obtaining a short-lived, absurd conviction of a Mann Act violation -- a conviction justly overturned by the Supreme Court. With Capone in prison for tax evasion and facing constant harassment by police, prosecutors, and rival gangsters, McGurn decides it is time to focus on his golf game. Organized crime is transitioning from bootlegging to gambling and racketeering and McGurn's influence and health begin a steady decline that culminates in a violent death.

Deadly Valentines captures the colorful culture and rapidly changing attitudes of the Roaring Twenties. Gusfield writes in some detail about the growth of jazz and the live performances that (together with the free flowing hooch) made Chicago a swinging town. The hypocrisy of Chicago's news media and the corruption of Chicago's police, politicians, and judiciary are recurring themes. Another is public tolerance, and even a degree of admiration, for celebrity gangsters who, at least, could be counted on to keep the local speakeasy stocked with safe alcohol. Still another is the lust for publicity displayed by the few Chicago police officers who aren't on the take, a desire that causes them to arrest McGurn repeatedly on bogus charges. My favorite theme concerns the eagerness of police and politicians to destroy civil liberties when they can't solve crime by conventional means.

Although Gusfield tells McGurn's story in lively prose, his sentences are occasionally awkward and the writing becomes less polished as the book progresses. Some of the information he provides is redundant. The text is well documented with copious endnotes but the writing doesn't have a heavy, academic feel. There is abundant drama in McGurn's life and Gusfield allows it to shine through in his narrative. He is perhaps too judgmental about Louise's sexual freedom (girls just wanted to have fun even before Cyndi Lauper wrote their anthem); Louise's alleged "hedonism" seems perfectly ordinary when compared to the 90210 crowd of modern times. In addition to being a "gold digger" and a "boozy barfly," Louise is, in Gusfield's view, "morally bankrupt," a harsher judgment than he ever visits upon serial killer McGurn. Why Gusfield reserved his invective for Louise is puzzling. On the other hand, he properly condemns the bluenose view (popular at the time) that blames jazz and other "race music" for the demise of female virtue. On the whole, despite my qualms about Gusfield's treatment of Louise and occasional lapses in his writing style, I would recommend Deadly Valentines to "true crime" fans and to anyone interested in an convincing portrait of a celebrated gangster.

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The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel

Published by Unbridled Books on May 1, 2012

Returning to his hometown in Florida to report a story despite his susceptibility to heatstroke, journalist Gavin Sasaki learns from his sister Eileen that a ten-year-old girl, Chloe Montgomery, may be his daughter. Chloe looks like a younger Eileen and has the last name of Gavin's former girlfriend. Gavin hasn't seen Anna Montgomery since she dropped out of high school, when Gavin was in a jazz quartet with Anna's sister, Sasha. Rattled by the discovery and under the gun to produce good stories or perish in the next round of newsroom layoffs, Gavin begins to play roulette with his career by fabricating sources and quotations.

Meanwhile, a third member of Gavin's former jazz combo, Daniel Smith, is in Utah negotiating with a meth dealer to pay a large debt. Daniel is now a Florida cop. The novel's opening scene lets the reader know that the debt is somehow related to Anna, but its exact nature remains a mystery until much of the story has been told. The final member, piano and sax player Jack Baranovsky, is still in Florida, making a contribution to the story as a pill addict who knows more about Anna's situation -- and his own involvement in it -- than he's prepared to tell Gavin.

Why is Anna on the run? Why does everyone but Gavin seem to know that she was pregnant when she left school? Why is her baby turning up in Florida ten years later? How does acclaimed jazz guitarist Liam Deval fit into Anna's plight? These are the absorbing questions that kept me reading. The novel fills in the backstory as it progresses. Eventually the pieces fit together tightly, leaving the reader to worry about the present danger that occupies the last third of the novel.

Unlike many modern stories of suspense, The Lola Quartet doesn't stretch the bounds of credibility with an outlandish plot. Everything that happens seems real, and that credibility heightens the novel's tension. The characters are equally realistic: they gamble, they use drugs, they ignore inconvenient truths, they betray friends. Their well-developed personalities, complete with failings and flaws, add to the story's authenticity.

The novel's fault is that it builds toward a climax that seems anti-climactic. The real action occurs offstage, perhaps because it is too predictable to make it worth describing. A bit of added drama near the end focuses on a character who has played a minor role until that point; it seems oddly out of place. On the other hand, I wouldn't categorize this novel as a traditional thriller. It is more a story of guilty secrets, of relationships that evolved over time, a novel of characters who are overtaken by events they feel powerless to control. Still, the storyline wraps up too neatly. Given the hardships the characters have endured, it is difficult to accept that their lives work out so well by the end of the novel. The characters are not unscarred, their lives do not suddenly become idyllic, but -- despite Gavin's hand-wringing and moralizing at the end -- the characters resolve their problems more easily than I would have expected.

Despite my mild disappointment with the novel's ending, I admired the characterizations and enjoyed Emily St. John Mandel's fluid writing. The Lola Quartet isn't everything it tries to be but it is nonetheless an entertaining, well-written story.

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Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

First serialized in Russian in 1971; published in tarnslation by Chicago Review Press on May 1, 2012

Soviet science fiction tended to be dark and surreal and ironic, a response to the oppressive environment in which it was born. Roadside Picnic, written by the Strugastky brothers in 1971, is no exception.

When aliens visited Earth, stopping briefly for (some speculate) a roadside picnic, they left their detritus behind in an area now known as the Zone. Surrounded by a wall and guarded by police, the Zone is accessible only to scientists and other employees of the Institute, including the explorers for alien artifacts who have been dubbed stalkers. A stalker who enters the Zone looking for alien treasure -- either as an employee of the Institute or to smuggle out items at night -- is always at risk: pockets of accelerated gravity, hell slime, and death lamps pose a constant threat. Apart from causing mutations in stalkers and their children, contact with the Zone leads to other anomalies, including animated corpses and -- for those who move away -- a tendency to attract accidents and natural disasters.

Red Schuhart is a stalker until, having seen enough friends die, he quits. After fathering a furry daughter, Schuhart returns to his old ways, dodging the police outside the Zone and death inside. He knows that stalkers who continue to push their luck end up dead, but when a final prize is dangled before him -- the mythical Golden Sphere that is said to grant wishes -- Schuhart cannot resist one last journey into the Zone.

Why does Schuhart risk his life as a stalker? Because self-reliance is all that has ever saved him from oblivion. He has always wanted to be his own boss, free from the slavery he associates with reporting to an employer. He considers himself an animal, riffraff, but he has never sold his soul, and that is the source of his strength. Perhaps the Zone represents the black market -- the illegal and dangerous entrepreneurship, full of hidden hazards -- that was often the only path to upward mobility in the Soviet Union. Perhaps the Institute that seeks to control the artifacts removed from the Zone represents the Soviet government and its belief that power should reside in a central authority. Or perhaps this is just a good, apolitical story that happens to have been authored by Soviet writers. The novel's last words are unmistakably political, but they can also be read as a manifesto in support of intellectual freedom.

Roadside Picnic contains some interesting (but far from original) conversations about the nature of intelligence. It ends on a similar note, as Schuhart ponders his own intelligence, his own humanity, almost challenging the departed aliens to understand what it means to be human. Roadside Picnic is a philosophical novel as much as it is an action story, and it therefore isn't surprising that the ending is ambiguous, albeit powerful. This is a seminal work of Soviet science fiction, but it has much to offer sf fans the world over.

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Getaway by Lisa Brackmann

Published by Soho Press on May 1, 2012

On vacation in Puerto Vallarta, Michelle has a few margaritas and takes a good-looking guy named Daniel to bed.  Later that night, two men climb through her window and smack Daniel in the head with the butt of a pistol.  When Michelle later tracks down Daniel, she discovers the head of a pig, covered in flies, on his coffee table.  Things go downhill for Michelle from there.  Someone plants drugs in her purse.  Her passport is missing.  And Gary, the charming American who gets her out of jail, seems to know everything about her -- and wants her to keep an eye on Daniel, a request she is in no position to refuse.

Who is Daniel?  Responding to Gary’s threats and inducements, Michelle tries to find out more about the charming but cagey charter pilot.  But who is Gary?  The most interesting aspect of the novel is Michelle’s confusion.  She learns that dangerous people are looking for Daniel -- the kind of people who leave bodies in their wake -- but she doesn’t know whether that makes Daniel a good guy or a bad guy.  Nor does she know whether Gary is one of the dangerous people.  She wants to trust Daniel because he makes her feel good in bed, but all the evidence suggests he’s a drug smuggler or worse.  The inability to decide whether she should trust Daniel or Gary, or neither of them, leaves Michelle feeling helpless, a pawn in a game she doesn’t understand.  Empathy for Michelle sustains the novel’s dramatic tension, although her helplessness eventually becomes Getaway’s most significant problem.

While Getaway is a reasonably effective thriller, it isn’t as strong as it might have been.  Despite the growing body count that surrounds Michelle, I never felt the sense of apprehension that the best thrillers deliver.  I think the problem lies in Lisa Brackmann’s construction of the main character.  Michelle is timid, dependent, remarkably uninformed about world events, and prone to making bad decisions -- the antithesis of characters like Lisbeth Salander or Vanessa Michael Munroe.  I felt a growing sense of annoyance at her inability to take control of her situation.  The wait for Michelle to show some initiative and exhibit her resourcefulness is a long one.  I was also disappointed by an ending that holds no real surprises.

Brackmann writes punchy sentences and short paragraphs, a technique that contributes to the novel’s quick pace.  Her prose style is plain but effective.  Getaway isn’t a bad reading experience -- it’s the sort of book that would make time pass quickly on an airplane -- but I wouldn’t expect it to make anyone’s list of the year’s best thrillers. 

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Midnight in Peking by Paul French

Published by Penguin on April 24, 2012

The mutilated corpse of a foreigner found at the base of Fox Tower on January 8, 1937 posed a special problem for Peking police. The victim was a free-spirited young woman named Pamela Werner. When Pamela wasn't attending school in Tientsin, she lived in Peking with her adoptive father, Edward Werner, a scholar and former British consul. She had been beaten to death and then dumped at Fox Tower. Multiple wounds were inflicted post-mortem in an apparent attempt to dismember the body. Sections of her skin and some of her organs had been removed.

The task of investigating the crime fell to Han Shih-ching, with the assistance of Detective Chief Inspector Richard Dennis, who headed the police in the British Concession in Tientsin. Dennis delved into Edward Werner's troubled past, learning of the problems he caused in his various diplomatic postings before he got sacked, a history suggestive of mental instability. Gossip -- the favorite sport of the expat community -- suggested that death and tragedy were Werner's constant companions, including the suspicious death of his wife.

A little more than a third of the narrative has passed by before a promising suspect emerges, but if solving the crime were that easy there would be no story to tell -- at least not a story filled with drama and intrigue. Fortunately for the reader (less so for Han and Dennis), the British government increased its efforts to impede Dennis' investigation, suggesting that a cover-up, if not a full-blown conspiracy, was afoot. Brits Behaving Badly becomes a subtext, as does the concept of "saving face," a characteristic often associated with Asians but quite applicable to the British living and working in China. Racial bigotry also played a role in the British government's insistence that the investigation should focus on Chinese rather than foreign residents.

The investigation took place as Peking prepared for invasion by the Japanese. As in any complex investigation, Dennis and Han pursued a number of false leads. The investigation brought them into contact with foreign residents of Peking who indulged in (to put it delicately) unusual recreational activities, suspicious but not necessarily related to Pamela's murder.

A little more than halfway through the narrative, Dennis finally receives information that provides a credible solution to the mystery while pointing to a suspect who is beyond the law's reach. At that point, however, Peking is virtually under siege by the Japanese and Pamela's disappearance is all but forgotten. Dennis is recalled to Tientsin, the official investigation is closed, and it falls to Werner to use his own resources to discover the truth about his daughter's death. He pursues that goal relentlessly over the course of several years.

Midnight in Peking reads like a well-paced murder mystery, but it is ultimately a tale of corruption, not just within the Peking police but, more startlingly, within the British government, whose officials valued the façade of British civility more than the truth. The narrative proceeds at a steady pace and is enlivened by insightful examinations of the principle players. Paul French provides the reader with enough background facts to add flavor but not so many as to bog down the narrative in needless detail. The text is well-documented in a series of endnotes. It seems likely that, for the sake of good story telling, French re-creates some scenes and conversations in greater detail than the historical record allows, but the book suggests no reason to believe that he has plays fast and loose with historical fact. His attempt to tie the "fox spirit" into the story -- representing a woman who beguiles and betrays -- is colorful but a bit weak. Still, Midnight in Peking is a fascinating look at a forgotten moment in a distant land, an unsolved murder that "slipped from history" despite the compelling evidence of guilt that Werner finally assembled, and that French faithfully reproduces.

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