The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock

Published by Doubleday on July 12, 2011

It is rare and wonderful to find a writer who combines the literary sensibility of character-driven fiction with the storytelling ability that shapes the best plot-driven fiction. Donald Ray Pollock is such a writer. I was enthused about the stories collected in his first book, Knockemstiff, and looked forward to reading his first novel. The Devil All the Time did not disappoint.

As was true in Knockemstiff, nearly all the characters in The Devil All the Time are ignorant, violent, and dirt poor. They solve problems with fists and guns. They are driven by sex but empty of love. For the most part, they are beyond redemption, particularly those who claim to serve a higher power. The characters are, at best, drifting through life; at worst, they are consciously evil.

The novel's title appears in nine-year-old Arvin Russell's thoughts: "As far back as he could remember, it seemed that his father had fought the Devil all the time." Willard Russell's battle isn't entirely successful; his intense prayer sessions at an altar of his own making do not shield him from excessive drink or violence. As the novel moves forward, it takes us back in time, gives us a glimpse of the events that shaped Willard's life, then zooms ahead to events that shape Arvin's. The novel detours to other stories: a sheriff and his sister both have homicidal tendencies, as does the sister's twisted husband; a man in a wheelchair and his preacher friend eke out a living in a carnival tent show before they're forced to leave; a clergyman has a taste for young girls. Eventually, as the separate lives weave together, we realize that all these characters are battling the Devil all the time.

A couple of chapters read like the self-contained short stories in Knockemstiff, but they integrate well with the rest of the novel. At times the characters seem too much like the bedeviled losers who populate other bleak novels (clergy members preying on the young is becoming a cliché even if it's never far removed from the headlines), but Pollock's best characters shine with the polish of originality. Pollock's writing is crisp. He includes sufficient detail to develop his characters and to set scenes without slowing the novel's pace.

This isn't a novel for readers who need to like the characters in order to like the book. This isn't a novel for readers who have an aversion to gruesome violence or bizarre sexual practices. For readers who appreciate an intense story filled with sharply drawn characters struggling with lives that seem destined for doom, this is an excellent novel.

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A Small Hotel by Robert Olen Butler

Published by Grove Press on August 6, 2011

On the day their divorce hearing is scheduled, Kelly Hays flees to a boutique hotel in the French Quarter of New Orleans while Michael Hays drives west of the city to a plantation called Oak Alley. Kelly brings bottles of Macallan and Percocet with her: an ominous combination of traveling companions. Michael brings Laurie Pruitt, the younger woman he has started seeing. Both destinations trigger memories; more than once, Kelly and Michael stayed together at the same small hotel (including the day they met) and at the plantation (where they got married).

Kelly passes her time in and near the hotel by telling herself a silent story, beginning with a flashback to the Mardis Gras celebration where she first met (and was rescued by) Michael. She reflects upon "how abiding and deep an early impression we can draw of another person from a single, unexamined incident." Eventually that story moves on to another man in her life. In the meantime, Michael and Laurie attend a period party where Michael tries to stay in the moment, a task to which he is unsuited.

Few readers will like Michael although many will recognize in him some of the men they know. The women in Michael's life, those closest to him -- his wife, his daughter, his girlfriend -- never know what Michael is thinking. Michael compartmentalizes his thoughts, the better to ignore those that arise from emotions. Laurie is trying to figure out Michael's "silences and hard edges," still believes she can, believes Kelly simply didn't know how to love him. Laurie is waiting for "the nothing that is so often there" to "become a nuanced something." The reader gets the sense that Laurie will, in that regard, be following a dead-end path that Kelly has already traveled. To use the phrase that has become so popular, Michael is not "in touch with his emotions." In that regard, Michael is more extreme than most men: he can't seem to express any emotion, no matter how obvious the need for expression becomes.

If this novel has a fault, it is that Michael's inability to say "I love you," even to his daughter, is difficult to believe. By taking Michael to an extreme, however, Robert Olen Butler illustrates a familiar divide between men and women: while Kelly and Laurie are waiting uncomfortably for Michael to say something, to express a feeling, Michael feels connected to them by their mutual silence. There are other moments involving other couples that reveal the different ways in which men and women think and perceive the world, but Kelly and Michael, independently remembering their shared lives, provide the sharpest examples of those differences.

That divide is one of the novel's strongest themes. The nature of manhood is another. We see a bit of Michael's life as a boy, enough to understand that Michael's father conditioned Michael to believe that emotional displays are unmanly. Perhaps it is trite that Kelly's father was emotionally unavailable and that Kelly is likely drawn to Michael for that reason, but sometimes trite is truth: women are often attracted to men who, consciously or not, remind them of their fathers, just as they are often attracted to "the strong silent type" until years of silence become oppressive.

As he explores these themes, Butler constructs sentences and paragraphs that move the narrative along like a locomotive gaining steam. There isn't much of a plot here -- you wouldn't call the events that have shaped your life a "plot" -- although Butler skillfully builds a sense of dread as the story unfolds. Two stories, really, seamlessly joined: one taking place in the present that has the reader worrying about Kelly alone in her hotel room with alcohol and pills, and the intertwined life stories that brought Michael and Kelly to this point. Butler condenses the life stories to their essence by focusing on those small defining moments in lives and relationships that become forever imprinted in memory. I'm not entirely satisfied with the ending -- it seems designed to appease readers -- but that's a small complaint, an authorial choice that I can accept.

The scenes describing the end of the marriage are beautifully written but painful to read. If you're looking for a book that is light and bright and cheery, look somewhere else. If you are willing to tackle an intense, insightful examination of two individuals, this is a rewarding novel.

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More Beer by Jakob Arjouni

 

First published in Germany in 1987; published in US by Melville House on June 7, 2011

There is more story in this short (176 page) novel than you'll find in most 400 page thrillers. That's because Jakob Arjouni doesn't waste words. Using language that is both efficient and precise, Arjouni manages to set evocative scenes, create convincing characters, and tell a story that is lively, meaningful, and entertaining.

The Ecological Front put an end to the pollution emitted from a chemical company's waste pipe by blowing it up. The four people involved deny responsibility for the contemporaneous shooting death of the company's owner, Friedrich Böllig. Böllig's death is fortunate news for the rival chemical companies that want to demonize the Greens but it also seems to benefit Böllig's young wife. The lawyer defending the four activists believes there was a fifth participant in the sabotage who might have been involved in the shooting but his clients won't betray their colleague. The lawyer hires private investigator Kemal Kayankaya to find the missing culprit. Spanning only three days, Kayankaya's investigation is impeded by violent hoodlums, corrupt (and equally violent) police officers, an unethical doctor, a reporter, and Böllig's family, among others. As Kayankaya continues to dig (in between incidents of getting his head bashed in), he discovers that the circumstances surrounding Böllig's death are ... complicated.

The story is entertaining but it is the main character that makes More Beer worth reading. Kayankaya is a Turk by birth and, despite having lived his entire life in Germany, he is regarded as an undesirable outsider. His fellow Germans expect him to be uncouth, sexist, and odoriferous. Instead, he's cantankerous, tenacious, and a bit philosophical. As the German-Turk version of the hard-drinking noir detective, Kayankaya is at once familiar and strange.

More Beer was first published in Germany in 1987. It is the second of four Kayankaya novels. Kayankaya meets a character in More Beer who shows up again in the next novel -- One Man, One Murder -- but Arjouni doesn't engage in the sort of novel-to-novel character development that makes it necessary to read the series in order. I don't think More Beer is quite as good as One Man, One Murder, but it's nonetheless a quick, engaging read. Readers who enjoy international mysteries and those who want to sample a different shade of noir should give Arjouni's Kayankaya novels a try.

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Iron House by John Hart

Published by Thomas Dunne Books on July 12, 2011

Iron House starts as the story of a man (Michael) who wants to leave the crime family in which he was raised after escaping from a brutal orphanage. Michael's desire to change his criminal life is motivated by his love of a woman (Elena) who doesn't know that he's a mob enforcer. Iron House later tells the story of Michael's attempt to defend the brother (Julian) he hasn't seen in years from the crime family's retaliation. Michael discovers that he must protect Julian from a different kind of harm when dead bodies are discovered on the estate of the senator who adopted Julian. The two stories eventually connect in unexpected ways.

John Hart strives to bring literary quality to his prose. Often he succeeds. Occasionally he reaches for metaphors that don't quite work, or has characters speaking with unnatural eloquence. I nonetheless regard Iron House as an unusually well written thriller. The plot is clever and, although it threatens to go over-the-top toward the end (as is the trend in thrillers), the story managed to stay within the realm of plausibility, if only barely.

While the story is surprisingly good, the characters lack depth. Michael is a garden-variety "killer with a heart." Elena's initial decision to rid herself of this monster is believable, but her later waffling is inconsistent with the limited personality that Hart gave her. The gangsters are stock gangsters and Julian, supposedly a brilliant author of children's books but deeply damaged, is a character we never get to know.

Iron House has other problems. A minor one: All the characters are convinced that if Julian is arrested (and the police are determined to arrest him for the dead bodies that are found on the senator's estate despite the complete absence of evidence against him), he will respond to an interrogation by making an incriminating statement. I can't believe Julian, at thirty-two, is so weak-willed that he can't remember to answer the first question with "I won't talk to you without a lawyer," at which time questioning must cease. And even if Julian is that weak-willed, the army of lawyers working for the senator would hang a sign around his neck invoking Julian's Fifth Amendment privilege. All the hand-wringing about Julian's impending arrest is nonsensical.

A more serious problem: I think John Hart cheated by trying to make the reader like (or at least empathize with) Michael. Hart repeatedly tells us that Michael was raised "to be better than the things he did" but that's dishonest. We are the things we do. Michael is a killer. Sure, we're told that he only killed other criminals, a caveat that Hart apparently added so readers wouldn't reject Michael out of hand, but by killing other criminals Michael was advancing the goals of his adopted crime family. Hart skates around Michael's true nature, does his best to make Michael seem like a decent man, probably because he knows that many readers dislike books if they don't like the characters. I think Iron House would have been just as good -- better, in fact -- if Michael's murderous past had been directly confronted and more openly displayed.

So: good plot, strong writing, weak characters, not entirely honest, and a few other problems but not so many as to destroy my appreciation of the story.

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Cold Glory by B. Kent Anderson

Published by Forge Books on October 11, 2011

B. Kent Anderson is a capable writer. He has a good sense of pace, his prose is clean, and he has a sharp eye for detail. It's unfortunate that he chose to write a formulaic thriller that rests on an implausible premise.

Cold Glory is the latest entry in the ever growing field of (for lack of a better term) historical conspiracy novels -- stories that imagine generations of people acting secretly and in concert for some nefarious purpose. The founders of the secret society at work in Cold Glory called themselves the Glory Warriors. The organization was born during the Civil War but continues to thrive in the present.

In the prologue, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee sign a three page document during a private meeting in Appomattox, shortly before Lee's public surrender to Grant. The rest of the novel takes place in the present, beginning with historian Nick Journey's discovery of buried documents in southern Oklahoma. Journey puzzles over a single page that refers to an additional clause to the peace treaty that ended the Civil War -- a clause that will take effect if the President, the Chief Justice, and the Speaker of the House are all removed from office by conspiratorial means. The document's second page, containing the text of that clause, is missing.

Following the formula of historical conspiracy novels, the two men who attempt to kill Journey so they can recover the document have an identifying mark -- in this case, they're wearing gold G.W. pins -- giving Journey a convenient clue to the existence of the secret organization. One might think that secret society hit men wouldn't wear the secret society insignia while doing their secret work, but that's the formula and Anderson follows it dutifully. True to the formula, the out-of-shape history professor must rely on his wits to survive until he can recover the missing pages and divine the document's meaning. In that endeavor he is assisted by Meg Tolman, a beautiful agent of a fictional federal law enforcement agency that opens a file on Journey despite the absence (at least initially) of any reason to believe the federal government would have jurisdiction over (or interest in) an attempted murder in Oklahoma.

None of this makes the slightest bit of sense. The novel asks us to accept that intelligent people, some of whom have a legal education, believe that a "treaty" signed by Grant and Lee would permit a group of unelected individuals to seize control of the government in the event of a specified crisis. You don't need a legal education to understand that treaties (even those that are ratified, which this one wasn't) do not supersede the Constitution. Even though the conspiracy's leader controls a television network that is widely viewed by the gullible and intends to use that network to convince the public that his seizure of power is legitimate, I can't believe that this guy would find even a handful of people in a position of influence who would agree that his treasonous scheme would enjoy public support. The novel's premise is just so silly that it undermined my willingness to suspend my disbelief.

Another problem: We never learn the size of the "invasion force" that will support the coup, but it would take a significant number of people to occupy the structures of government. Anderson doesn't explain why so many members of the Armed Forces, all of whom took an oath to protect the Constitution, would be willing to overthrow it.

Unfortunately, the sad plot isn't redeemed by interesting characters. Journey is given an autistic son for no other reason than to show us what a wonderful person Journey is -- unlike the son's mother, who wants to institutionalize him. The theme of "evil selfish mom doesn't love her autistic son as much as heroic self-sacrificing dad" is too obviously manipulative to succeed.

The story starts losing steam about two-thirds of the way to an anticlimactic ending. The last couple of chapters are a bit dull. There is some solid writing here, but it's wasted on an ill-considered plot and tedious characters.

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