Notes on a Murder by B.P. Walter

Published by HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter on November 23, 2023

The reader learns two important facts in the early pages of Notes on a Murder. First, twenty years earlier, Oliver drugged a man, rolled his body into a rug, and dumped him into the sea. Second, the man is alive.

In the present, while Oliver is at a wellness center taking a break from his pill addiction, Oliver sees Aaistair, the man he thought he murdered. Intercut with scenes from the present, Oliver narrates a backstory that explains his relationship with Alastair. Oliver is telling this story to Alastair, which seems odd to me since Alastair doesn’t need to be told things he already knows. “It turned out that you were an orphan,” Oliver says. Alastair knows he’s an orphan. Why is Oliver telling him that? Making Alastair the audience of Oliver’s narration struck me as a poor choice.

Oliver met Alastair in Greece, where Oliver was spending the summer with his parents and brother. Alastair picked up Oliver at a bar and they went off to Alastair’s hostel to have sex. Over the course of the summer, Oliver falls in love with Alastair and begins to plan a life with him. Alastair professes similar feelings in a casual way that suggests Alastair is merely having a summer fling.

Oliver might be into Alastair because they are so much alike — both intelligent, handsome blondes who have similar interests. When Alastair suggests that Oliver is essentially having sex with himself, he may be revealing the truth of Oliver’s narcissistic personality.

Oliver and his brother Douglas were concerned that their father was behaving strangely during their stay in Greece. They happened upon their father while he was having a business lunch with Argento and Nita, Argento’s hired companion. Oliver’s father was always secretive about his business dealings and was unhappy that his sons saw him with Argento. We eventually see a snippet of Argento’s relationship with Oliver’s father, but B.P. Walter frustrates the reader by failing to explain how, and to what extent, Oliver’s father was mixed up with Argento.

Douglas is quite taken with Nita when she brings his family a fruit basket. When Oliver and Alastair run into Argento on the beach, he invites them to visit him for dinner at his villa on a nearby island. They make return visits, sometimes with Douglas in tow, fueling Douglas'desire to shag Nita, a desire that is heightened by her habit of swimming in the nude.

Oliver witnesses a murder during his first visit. On repeated visits, he realizes that Argento is a serial killer who believes his victims deserve to die. As the story progresses, Oliver and Alastair each become witnesses to more deaths. Argento works to transform the young men, to persuade them to kill as he has, to take justice into their own hands.

Notes on a Murder is an interesting story told in fluid prose. My inability to buy into the premise prevents me from giving it a full recommendation. The ease with which Oliver decides that murder is justified, simply because Argento tells him that his victims were horrible people (sometimes supported by video evidence), might explain why Oliver felt justified in making his unsuccessful attempt to kill Alastair, but their prompt bonding after Alastair returns from the dead struck me as unlikely.

Argento’s willingness to let strangers in on his secret hobby is beyond unlikely. Walter offers no satisfactory explanation of Alastair’s ability to get away with serial killings. The novel’s ending is no more probable than the plot that precedes it. And since no significant character has any moral compass, I found it difficult to care about the decisions they made. While well written and interesting, the story has too many weaknesses to earn a full recommendation.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Day by Michael Cunningham

Published by Random House on November 14, 2023

Day is a novel of family drama and personal failures. Characters behave selfishly, a common trait that commonly destroys relationships. The story takes place at the height of the pandemic. Ambulances race down Brooklyn streets as sirens interrupt conversations. The children of two key characters live in fear of opening a window. The virus will have a significant impact on their family before the novel ends, for which the kids will blame themselves.

Robbie Byrne can’t find an affordable apartment in New York City on the salary he earns as a sixth-grade teacher. His sister Isabel owns a Brooklyn brownstone and he’s been renting the attic rooms from her. Isabel’s son and daughter are growing too old to share a bedroom, so Robbie needs to find a new place to live. Isabel’s husband Dan will miss his daily presence. Robbie and Dan are attracted to each other, although only Robbie is openly gay.

Robbie and Isabel have invented a fellow named Wolfe who chronicles his life on Instagram, adding life-affirming captions to pictures of nature or cabins that Wolfe might want to buy, to the delight of followers who presumably believe in his corporeal existence. Wolfe sometimes posts pictures that were clearly taken in a different season, but his followers don’t seem to notice or care. Such is Instagram. This is one of the novel’s more interesting inventions, although I think it might have been plumbed in greater depth.

As Robbie packs and discards his belongings, he is reminded of his past. Michael Cunningham uses that device to acquaint the reader with Robbie’s backstory: a photo of a college lover who was going through a “gay phase”; a scarf gifted by an older lover; acceptance letters into medical schools that Robbie decided not to attend. A boarding pass reminds him of a death. Everything reminds him of Adam.

Dan is a musician who had the usual rock star problems without the success of being a rock star. He played in bars but never had much of a following. By going to rehab and becoming a househusband, Dan transformed himself into “an affable, harmless man.” Isabel appreciates the change but no longer finds him interesting. That seems ridiculously unfair to Dan but relationships are often characterized by unfair judgments. When does it become too late to save a marriage that has never been terrible? Isobel isn’t sure of the answer even as she comes to suspect the marriage has already failed.

To his credit, Dan does not allow Isabel’s negativity to prevent him from writing songs again. He posts them online while dreaming of a comeback. Robbie is the only person in the household who listens to his music with approval.

Dan and Isabel have two children. Violet believes she sees ghosts (or shadows representing spirits). Perhaps she does. Perhaps she confuses imagination with reality. Violet acts as a reminder that the deaths of relatives are experienced as a family, not just as individual losses. Ultimately, the presence of a little girl who sees dead people detracts from the story more than it adds insight. And honestly, I’m just annoyed by child characters who say things, even unwittingly, that demonstrate wisdom beyond their years. Still, I appreciated Violet's insistence on wearing a yellow dress that no longer fits, despite her mother's belief that yellow just isn't her color, because it was a gift from a character who is no longer living.

Dan’s brother Garth is a sculptor who can’t get his work into a gallery. Garth has a baby with Chess Mullins. Chess teaches literature to snobby students who argue that classics written by white people aren’t worth reading. Chess doesn’t want a man in her life and regards herself as the baby’s only parent. Chess wants Garth to be “mildly fatherly” two days a week but otherwise to mind his own business. Whether they love each other is a question to which neither can supply a satisfying answer.

Garth is a bit needy and Chess is a bit cruel to him. She believes cruelty is necessary because “Garth, like most men, can only deposit his needs at her feet” and ask what she’s going to do about them. Ouch! She believes Garth means well but isn’t up to the task of being a father. Her judgment seems unfair since she’s given him no chance to be a father. In the novel’s late stages, however, Garth’s greatest need is to be a father. He feels “a low howl of loss,” a sense of being diminished, as Chess’ actions make it increasingly difficult for him to be more meaningful than a visiting uncle in his son’s life.

All of this adds up to a typical domestic drama, albeit one that benefits from unusually strong prose. The story makes abrupt transitions, moving to a different place and time as if Cunningham decided “that’s all you need to know about this chapter in the characters’ lives, now it’s time to move on.” I suppose most novels do that, but the transitions seem unusually jarring in Day. By the middle of the novel, Robbie is suddenly in Iceland while everyone in New York is sheltering in their homes. How or why he ended up there is a bit of a mystery. In the next chapter, off-scene pandemic events have made permanent changes to the Byrne family. The transition has caused an attitudinal change in Isabel’s children and in adult characters who “can’t embrace the world the way we once did.”

As is the custom with family dramas, the novel ends with the characters pondering their futures. Most of them have survived the pandemic and their relationship turmoil. The point seems to be that life goes on for everyone who doesn’t die.

I appreciated the fullness of the characters’ creation. I can’t say that I was all that interested in how their lives might progress or that I was sad to reach the book’s end. Still, the characters and their attempts to cope with failure are interesting and their stories are told in confident prose. That’s enough to earn a mild recommendation, or perhaps a stronger one for devoted fans of domestic drama.

RECOMMENDED

Treacle Walker by Alan Garner

First published in the UK in 2021; published by Scribner on November 14, 2023

Alan Garner has a long history of incorporating mythology into his stories. Garner draws on those roots and more modern sources, including a World War II era comic book, to conjure a delightful story about an aging man who might be the modern version of a wizard and a young boy who might become his successor.

Treacle sells rags and bones (ragbone) from his pony cart. Joe Coppock trades his old pajamas and a lamb’s shoulder blade for the opportunity to pick anything from Treacle’s treasure chest. He picks an old pot that seems to be the only treasure with no value. Treacle also gives Joe a stone.

Treacle tells Joe that he makes people better: “I heal all things; save jealousy.” Joe wears a patch over his good eye to force his lazy eye to become more industrious. Following Treacle’s directions, Joe dips the stone in water and his name appears in silver letters. Soon he finds that his vision has changed. His lazy eye is still lazy but each eye gives him different view. One perceives the world as Joe believes it to be while the other sees things (and people) Joe cannot otherwise see. The differing views place Joe in a “flustication” (apparently, a state of confused excitement that is similar to intoxication).

When Joe gets lost in a bog, he meets Thin Amren, who needs to live in the bog so he won’t dry out. When he sleeps, Thin Amren dreams existence into reality. Joe is only lost because he hasn’t learned how to separate the realities he sees through each eye. Thin Amren explains that Joe is gifted with the glamourie. When he sees through his good eye, he can easily spot his house; when he uses the lazy eye, the bog is everywhere. Perhaps the lazy eye allows him to see into the distant past or the far future or both at once.

The other notable characters come to life from the 1940s UK comic Knockout, including Stonehenge Kit the Ancient Brit. The story hints at Wonderland as Joe runs through mirrors. Joe’s adventures also reminded me of Little Nemo in Slumberland in their dependence on dream logic.

The story might be read as a coming-of-age novel, in that Joe comes to realize that his life has changed and that change should be embraced, not feared. When Joe abandons his old life at the novel's end (his parents are never in sight so he gives no thought to missing them), he seems to be riding off to meet his destiny.

Fans of playful language might want to put Treacle Walker on top of their reading lists. Treacle uses words that don’t seem quite real to my American ear, although they mostly are. In British slang, “taradiddle” means a petty lie or pretentious nonsense. “Macaronics” refers to words from one language used in the context of a different language. “Nomines” seems to be a Yorkshire word for “children’s chants.” Garner uses “hurlothrumbo” as a reference to the supernatural (the word derives from a “nonsense play” of the same name that Samuel Johnson published in 1729). Unless you have an unusually extensive vocabulary and knowledge of British culture, you should keep Google handy to enjoy the full meaning of Treacle’s diatribes. I also love his description of a hammock as “a lot of holes tied with string.”

During his long life, Garner has written books for children and adults. Children would probably enjoy Treacle Walker — they might identify with Joe when he sobs “I’m only little, I’m only little” — but this is a novel for grownups who haven’t lost their wonder at the world. The novel is short and, in its brevity, confounds the reader with more ideas than most authors can manage in a trilogy. While I’m not sure the ideas entirely make sense to reality-grounded adults, I’m recommending the book for its inventive prose and for a story that will make perfect sense to children and to adults who recall how the power of imagination helps children make sense of the world around them.

RECOMMENDED

The Cliff House by Chris Brookmyre

Published in the UK in 2022; published by Penzler Publishing/Scarlet on November 7, 2023

Jen Dunne’s first husband (a bent cop named Jason) has been gone for ten years, presumed dead for the last three. Jen isn’t sure she trusts her soon-to-be-second husband, Zaki Hussain, but after the first one she’s not sure she trusts any man.

Jen has a pre-wedding hen weekend on a private island in Scotland with a group of friends and Zaki’s sister Samira, who is happy to get away from her newborn twins. Of the other hens, Michelle Cassidy is a famous singer who fronted the band Cassidy before she went off on her own. Now she’s dealing with the unwanted posting of her sex tape to the internet. Helena was Michelle’s guitarist before the band broke up, creating bad blood between Helena and Michelle. Now Helena is a music teacher.

Kennedy is Jen’s tennis (and de facto life) coach. She was a professional tennis player when she was young, but pictures of her at that age seem to be nonexistent. Nicolette (who thinks her husband is having an affair) plays tennis with Jen and spreads antivax conspiracy theories. Beattie is Jen’s former sister-in-law. Beattie has never been able to accept Jen’s claim that Jason was a criminal and believes that Jen is responsible for his disappearance. Lauren isn’t a guest but she owns the island home that Jen rented and wants to make sure the women don’t trash it.

The only male at the party is a hot Spanish chef. Someone cuts his throat in the kitchen while the women are busy getting drunk and sniping at each other. The island has no cell service and the landline isn’t working. The house has wifi but all messaging and email apps have been blocked. The boat that is their only way off the island has disappeared.

My initial thought was: one of these women is the killer. Followed by: the killer is going to pick off the rest of the women one by one. After having those thoughts, I hoped Chris Brookyre wouldn’t follow such an obvious formula. While I was pleased that Brookmyre went in a different direction, the story needed more murder victims. Nearly every character is too annoying to live.

One of the women disappears. The remaining women are provided with a new messaging app that transmits instructions from someone using the name The Reaper. The Reaper has is holding the missing woman as a hostage. The Reaper wants one of the women to confess her sin and threatens to kill the hostage f the confession is withheld. That’s at least a modest twist on the usual slasher plot.

The women have a collective abundance of sins, but they aren’t sure which one the Reaper has in mind. They don't have time to screw around because the hostage has been planted on a block of ice with a noose around her neck. Maybe she’ll slip off the ice and die immediately. On the other hand, it takes ice some time to melt in Scotland. The uncertain timeline for the hostage’s demise seems a bit silly, but it gives the women time to scamper around the island while engaging in endless conversations.

The women decide to search for the hostage in teams of two. Jen and Beattie don’t get along so naturally they team up. Michelle and Helena don’t get along so naturally they team up. The teams make so sense, but they work as contrivances to set up dramatic disclosures about the characters’ respective sins that advance the plot only because the plot consists largely of dramatic disclosures. The anguish the characters feel about their past misadventures and their hand-wringing confessions takes up entirely too much of the novel’s word count.

Domestic drama permeates the novel. A husband threatens to kill the kids if a wife leaves him. A husband’s “coercive control” of his wife amounts to serial rape. A character confesses to having an affair with another character’s husband. A character’s alcoholic mother was unable to care for her. A character gives up a baby for adoption. More than one character is jealous of the success that other characters have achieved. The excess of drama eventually gives way to melodramatic confrontations that end with melodramatic expressions of forgiveness and regret. The ease of proclamations like “I forgive you” and “I missed you” are unconvincing after a character has spent a lifetime saying “I hate you” and “I will never forgive you.”

The story creates interest more than suspense. The reveal — who is the Reaper? — depends on another contrivance. It isn't surprising because contrived surprises are the norm in this novel. The plot wrap up is too tidy. By the end, the reader is meant to love characters who seemed hateful in the early pages, but I wasn’t ready to join them in a group hug.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Future by Naomi Alderman

Published by Simon & Schuster on November 7, 2023

In the infancy of their companies, tech entrepreneurs improved our lives with devices and apps that we now regard as indispensable. After the entrepreneurs became billionaires, they arguably did more harm than good. They stole our data, used AI to deceive us, and invented ways to control our behavior. Nobody likes tech billionaires.

The Future takes place in the near future, maybe a couple of decades from now. Its focus is on tech billionaires and their need for control. The über-wealthy characters believe they are in the best position to survive whatever catastrophe will be the tipping point that ends most life on Earth. They find survival assistance in software called AUGR that predicts catastrophes and plots the best strategy to stay alive.

Martha Eikhorn has access to AUGR. When she gives it to her lover, Lai Zhen, AUGR saves Lai from an assassin’s attack in the novel’s best action scene. Martha grew up as a fundamentalist who learned survival skills to prepare for the end of days. Martha’s story of using her skills during an encounter with a starving bear is mesmerizing.

Martha works for Lenk Sketlish, founder of a social media empire. Albert Dabrowski founded Medlar, a tech giant that manufactures phones and laptops. Ellen Bywater, a genius at corporate takeovers rather than tech, forced Dabrowkski out of his company. Zimri Nommik founded Anvil, which seems a lot like Amazon, before he built AnvilChat and AnvilParty to “snap up everything in his all-consuming maw.” He became the richest person on Earth by using data harvesting methods to manipulate advertising clicks.

The tech billionaires don’t care if the world ends as long as they inherit the post-apocalyptic landscape. To that end, they have created large animal habitats that are kept free of humans. They claim they are protecting plant and animal species, but they have established hidden bunkers inside the habitats where they plan to ride out the apocalypse. They are counting on AUGR to give them time to fly to their bunkers before the rest of the world knows that the shit has hit the fan.

The billionaires are counterbalanced by characters who would like to save the world rather than saving their own skins. Martha and Lai are among the good guys. Ellen’s child Badger Bywater is fed up with their (Badger’s preferred pronoun) mother’s contribution to the planet’s destruction. Zimri’s wife Selah has a similar view about her husband. A couple of additional characters who believe that tech, like nature, should benefit the common good round out the cast..

A clever plot has the bad guys and at least one good guy scurrying for hidden shelters when AUGR announces that the world is ending. One of the good guys compromises one of the hidden shelters in another strong action scene. The plot misleads in a good way, taking the reader on a journey to an unexpected destination

The novel ends on a surprisingly positive note. It turns out that responsible people, when given a bit of power, can improve the world for everyone. You just need to get the three worst ones out of the way. The unfortunate reality is that there are way more than three people leading the planet toward its destruction and most of them work in industries (like oil and munitions) other than tech. And the reality has always been that power corrupts responsible people soon after they acquire it. Still, it’s nice to imagine a better reality. In any event, the last few pages acknowledge the reality that political and religious extremists will always stand as barriers to progress.

The novel incorporates discussions of philosophy, including a series of blog posts about Lot and Sodom that interpret Genesis as a blueprint for survivalists. Those posts are a springboard for thoughts about hunters versus agriculturalists, urban versus country living, civilization versus individualism, symbolic expression versus the world unfiltered. The story might go a bit overboard with its discussion of Fox and Rabbit stories told by the founder of the fundamentalist religion from which Martha escaped, but I give Naomi Alderman credit for exploring broad ideas that most creators of apocalyptic survivalist fiction (and truly ghastly prepper fiction) avoid. But then, this isn’t really a post-apocalyptic or prepper novel. The market is saturated with those. Alderman was wise to tinker around the edges of the concept without writing another one.

I’ve read a few novels in recent years that imagine fictional versions of tech giants who create companies like Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon. This is a smarter story than most. Whether the reader agrees with any of the philosophical discussion is less important than the fact that the novel tells an engaging story while trying to say something worthwhile about the relationship between the present and the future.

RECOMMENDED