The Unknown Soldier by Gerald Seymour

First published in Great Britain in 2004; published by Overlook Trade Paperback on March 28, 2006

Gerald Seymour is one of my favorite writers of espionage fiction. Toiling in the shadow of John Le Carré, Seymour's work is largely overlooked by the American audience. Seymour doesn't have quite the stylistic grace of Le Carré, but he is -- at his best -- nearly Le Carré's equal as a storyteller. While The Unknown Soldier isn't Seymour's best work (Home Run remains my favorite), the novel features some of Seymour's most intriguing characters.

Seymour structures the plot as a series of interlocking storylines, each following a set of characters that, for most of the novel, lack any connection to the others. The key character, known both as Caleb and Abu Khaleb, has managed to talk his way out of Guantanamo by adopting the identity of an innocent cab driver. For reasons that don't become apparent until the final chapters, Caleb is making his way across the Earth's largest sand desert, the Empty Quarter in the Arabian Peninsula. Sparsely populated by camels and itinerant Bedouin tribesmen, the Empty Quarter serves as a hiding place for Caleb's al Qaeda masters. A good part of the novel describes the arduous journey Caleb makes across the forbidding terrain and the conflicts that arise between the untrusting terrorists who accompany him.

Other characters include Beth Jenkins, a lonely geologist working at the Shaybah oil extraction plant; Samuel "Bart" Bartholomew, a disgraced physician who works in Riyadh, where his income depends upon the information about his patients that he provides to British intelligence officer Eddie Wroughton; Juan Gonsalves, Wroughton's American counterpart; Jed Dietrich, a Guantanamo interrogator working for the DIA;, and Marty and Lizzy-Jo, the pilot and sensor operator of a Predator that prowls the windy skies above the Empty Quarter. Each character comes fully alive. Their individual stories are more interesting than the slowly unfolding explanation for Caleb's trek across the desert.

As is characteristic of Seymour's novels, The Unknown Soldier is solidly plotted. Dramatic tension builds as the characters, carrying out their own missions and agendas, end up working at cross-purposes. Thriller fans looking for fast action, gunplay, and heroes who save the world from evil fanatics might be bored by The Unknown Soldier, as well as Seymour's other novels. This is a novel of intrigue and intellect rather than daring exploits.

Readers who want a clear, unambiguous ending in which the good guys defeat the bad guys should probably never read a Seymour novel, particularly not this one. I didn't mind the unresolved nature of the story's conclusion but I don't think it had quite the punch that Seymour intended. Perhaps there have been so many novels about terrorism in recent years that I've become jaded, but the open-ended, supposedly ominous ending didn't resonate with me. For that reason, I thought The Unknown Soldier was worth reading for its characters, less so for its story.

RECOMMENDED

Mercury's Rise by Ann Parker

Published by Poisoned Pen Press on November 1, 2011

Mercury's Rise is the third novel in Ann Parker's Silver Rush mystery series. The story takes place in Colorado. Ann Parker provides enough period detail to create a convincing 1880 background, although I can't say I was enthralled by her detailed descriptions of the garments worn by her female characters (readers with a stronger interest in the history of women's fashion might react differently). In any event, as she makes clear in an author's note, Parker's research about Colorado in 1880 was thorough.

Mercury's Rise starts with a death, then fills in the back story. Inez Stannert and her friend Susan Carothers are taking a coach from Leadville to Manitou (a city known for its mineral springs and favored by patients suffering from consumption). Inez is traveling to Manitou to meet her sister, Harmony, who has been caring for Inez's son, William, for the last year. Another passenger, Edward Pace, has an apparent heart attack and dies, shortly after drinking one of the tonics the irascible Dr. Prochazka had prescribed for Edward's wife, Kirsten Pace. Kirsten suspects foul play, leading Inez to investigate. The mystery deepens when other targets of homicidal mischief begin to appear.

Inez is a strong, independent woman in a time and place that has little regard for the concept of gender equality. Inez is a saloon keeper in Leadville; her taste for whiskey is met with disapproval in the more genteel environs of Manitou, and her role as a business owner is viewed with suspicion by the men who surround her. Inez is more than a little distressed at the sudden reappearance of Mark, the husband she had intended to divorce on the ground of abandonment. Mark has an explanation for his disappearance but Inez doesn't know whether to believe him. Mercury's Rise gives equal attention to Inez's domestic problems and to the mystery Inez investigates.

Although Parker's prose is competent, her pace is slowed by redundancy as characters tell other characters facts that the reader already knows. For my taste, there's a bit too much soap opera in Inez's relationships with Mark and with her meddling Aunt Agnes. The mystery, on the other hand, is intriguing, even if the culprit's identity isn't difficult to guess. The motivation for the crimes is credible. Parker appears to have done her research into nineteenth century medicine and divorce law. Parker integrates an interesting discussion of medical science's developing understanding of the cause of tuberculosis into the plot. A twist on the domestic subplot in the final chapters, after the murder mystery is resolved, is less interesting and not very convincing. The story of Inez and Mark continues long after the murder is solved -- too long to sustain my interest. In short, I liked the mystery; the soap opera, not so much.  

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Harbor by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Published in Sweden in 2008; published in translation by Thomas Dunne Books on October 11, 2011

The Earth and its creatures consist mostly of water. When water gets its evil on, it is a formidable and dangerous element. Even without a supernatural infestation, oceans (particularly at night) are frightening to behold. In Harbor, John Ajvide Lindqvist imagines the waters of the ocean as a diabolical force.

In 2004, a little girl named Maja disappears while visiting a lighthouse with her parents, Anders and Cecelia. Her disappearance on the small, isolated island of Domarö is impossible to explain. When Anders returns to the island a couple of years later, a series of eerie events suggest that Maja is trying to contact him. Anders later learns that Maja is not the first island resident to have disappeared, and that the island harbors secrets from generations past.

Anders is one primary character; another is Simon, an aging magician and escape artist who has lived on Domarö for years. In 1996, Simon pledges himself to a Spiritus, a dark little creature that resembles a centipede. When Simon drools on the Spiritus, he gains some of its life force; holding the Spiritus in his hand empowers Simon. Despite Simon's connection to the island, its life-long residents have kept a secret from him: the secret of the sea. It is the secret that animates the novel and that Anders must eventually understand if he is to make sense of Maja's disappearance.

As the plot develops, John Ajvide Lindqvist surrounds his characters with menacing images: a cardboard cutout of an ice cream man seems vaguely sinister; the wind-swept sea conveys a feeling of dread; the distant growl of a moped signals danger. Even swans are best avoided on Domarö. This is artful storytelling.

Unfortunately the images of horror are more interesting than the actual horror. The problem, I think, is that there are just too many different manifestations of evil: the dead return to life in ghost-like fashion, the living are possessed in zombie-like fashion, a malevolent force dwells in the deep ... the riot of horror themes becomes a bit much, particularly with the addition of the Spiritus. While the Spiritus is the most imaginative of the supernatural forces at play in Harbor, its existence (and the role it plays at the novel's end) is almost too convenient. Having voiced that small complaint, however, I must give Lindqvist credit for tying it all together at the novel's end.

Harbor works best as a novel of psychological horror -- the horror not just of losing a child, but of a parent's realization that he never really knew his child. As a tale of supernatural horror, the novel is creative but not particularly frightening. The lengthy story is nonetheless entertaining. There are stories within stories in this unusual novel: stories of smuggling and stagecraft and love and Nordic adventure. Often the stories provide background, explaining, for instance, why two kids who went missing came to be treated as island outcasts and how Anders' father died. The stories of individuals confronting fears and hardships in an isolated environment showcase Lindqvist at his best, and provide sufficient reason to read Harbor.

RECOMMENDED

The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje

Published by Knopf on October 4, 2011

At the age of eleven, Michael boards an ocean liner bound for England. With his friends Cassius and Ramadhin, he explores the ship and befriends eccentric passengers: Mr. Fonseka, a literature teacher from Colombo who displays the "serenity and certainty" Michael has observed "only among those who have the armor of books close by"; Mr. Daniels, who has transformed a section of the hold into an exotic garden; the musician and blues fan Max Mazappa; an Australian girl who greets the dawn by roller skating fiercely around the deck; Miss Lasqueti, a woman with a surprising, hidden background who is traveling with dozens of pigeons; a hearing impaired Singhalese girl named Asuntha, and others. "Simply by being in their midst," the boys are learning about adults, including those assigned to sit with them at the low-status Cat's Table, situated at the opposite end of the dining room from the Captain's Table. Michael's other lessons include his first fleeting experience with love and desire, as well as a taste of European racism, both subtle and (particularly in the case of the ship's captain) overt.

Two other passengers Michael knows only by sight. Sir Hector de Silva, a wealthy but ill passenger in Emperor Class accommodations, has bad luck with dogs, perhaps because a spell was cast upon him. At the opposite end of the social spectrum is a prisoner, rumored to be a murderer, whose midnight strolls on the deck -- closely guarded and in chains -- the concealed boys observe with fascination.

Michael Ondaatje keeps all these characters in motion like a master juggler. They are a fascinating bunch, and Ondaatje weaves them in and out of the narrative while maintaining a perfectly balanced pace: not so quick that the story whizzes by without time to appreciate its nuances; not so deliberate as to lose its energetic force.

At its midway point, the novel skips ahead from the 1953 voyage to events that occur twenty years later in Michael's life, events that trigger memories of the friends with whom he bonded on that formative journey. Although the writing in that section is exceptionally strong and quite moving, it has an out-of-joint feel, particularly when the flash forward ends and the voyage resumes. Subsequent interruptions to tell the reader of future events are shorter and more seamlessly integrated into the narrative. Eventually those passages become essential to the story; they complete it. Ondaatje writes: "Over the years, confusing fragments, lost corners of stories, have a clearer meaning when seen in a new light, a different place." The perspective that Michael gains with time, after reconnecting with individuals he met on the voyage, permits him (and thus the reader) to reinterpret events that occurred on the ocean -- particularly a moment of drama that becomes the story's nucleus, and that Michael can only understand fully many years later. For that reason, although The Cat's Table could be viewed as a coming of age novel, I think Ondaatje is suggesting that we spend our lifetimes coming of age -- that is, acquiring the wisdom and perspective of adulthood.

There is a restrained, graceful elegance to Ondaatje's prose that every now and then made me stop, blink, and reread a beautifully composed sentence or paragraph. He writes with affection of dogs and artists, of the needy and of those who give selflessly of themselves. This is a marvelously humane novel that works on a number of levels, but most of all, it is a joy to read.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Gone, No Forwarding by Joe Gores

Published by Random House in 1978

It's a shame that Joe Gores' novels about the Dan Kearney Agency -- known collectively as the "DKA Files" -- are no longer in print. Gores packed more story and characterization into his two hundred page novels than most writers can manage with a five hundred page blockbuster. It's also a shame that Gores died this year, taking with him the funny, grouchy, sly, opinionated, and utterly convincing characters who repossessed cars, solved mysteries, and muddled through life while working for DKA.

Gone, No Forwarding is the third novel in the series. It has all the plot twists a reader of the first two will have come to expect. This one has less to do with repossessing cars than with Kearney's license to practice his craft. Someone has complained that Kearney's staff failed to honor an agreement to hold a payment in trust pending a judicial determination of the lender's entitlement to it. The employee who supposedly breached the agreement died an unexpected but natural death, leaving Kearney scrambling for a witness who can contradict the story told by the person who made the payment. Kearney dispatches his top employees (with whom readers of the first two novels will be familiar) to find people who may have been working in the office when the payment was made. Those folks have since moved on to other jobs (one is a hooker) and other locations, making the task of finding them a challenge.

While there is a modest amount of violence in Gone, No Forwarding, the emphasis is on the process of detection rather than shootouts and thrills. The characters, as usual, are trying to balance their personal problems with the demands that Kearney makes upon them. The nefarious motive that underlies the threat to Kearney's license relates back to an event that occurred in an earlier novel, but it isn't necessary to read the earlier one to understand this one. As the DKA employees track down witnesses and piece together facts, the mystery is resolved in a way that is both surprising and satisfying. But as much fun as the plot and characters provide, the great joy of a DKA novel is Gores' tight prose, his ability to set a scene, to capture a personality, to create atmosphere, in just a few carefully chosen words. Gone, No Forwarding isn't the best novel in the series, but like the others, it is a joy to read.

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