The South Lawn Plot by Ray O'Hanlon

Published by GemmaMedia on March 11, 2011

As I began reading The South Lawn Plot, I thought: Not another thriller involving hidden Vatican secrets! It is and it isn't. The plotting of the priesthood underlies the story but many other storylines are layered on top of it. The South Lawn Plot has elements of a spy novel, a mystery, a political drama, and an historical thriller with a bit of romance thrown in for flavor. Ray O'Hanlon juggles so many storylines that keeping track of them all is a dizzying experience.

The primary storyline starts with two dead priests: one hanging from a bridge, the other fallen from a cliff. London tabloid reporter Nick Bailey doesn't think the deaths are a coincidence -- not when the hanging is so similar to Roberto Calvino's, who apparently killed himself in 1982 after his bank became known for its murky dealings with the Vatican. When an archbishop joins the priests in death, Bailey suspects he's chasing a story that could yield the biggest scoop of his career.

Alternating with Bailey's story is John Falsham's conspiracy in the early 1600's to force England to ally itself with Spain and the Catholic Church, a continuation of the plot to kill King James that led to Guy Fawkes' execution. Mixed in with (and eventually dwarfing) those two stories is an apparent assassination plot that targets two political figures from both sides of the Atlantic. Providing the backdrop for the modern day story are bank robbing freedom fighters in Ireland and a potential military conflict between China and Taiwan that might draw the world into a nuclear war.

That should be enough for three novels but Ray O'Hanlon manages to bring the disparate stories together with reasonable success. It might all be an illusion; I'm still puzzling over how (and whether) it all fits together. If it all makes sense, it does so just barely, but thrillers don't need to make perfect sense as long as they thrill, and O'Hanlon delivers plenty of intrigue and some nice action scenes. More importantly, the quality of O'Hanlon's prose is above par for the genre, making the novel a joy to read. His beautifully descriptive writing has true literary flair, and his main characters have well-developed personalities.

Characters are, however, the novel's greatest problem. There are just too many of them. There are dozens of characters in this book, ranging from ambassadors to priests, from secret service agents to industrialists, from a king to an African rebel leader. More than three-quarters of the way through the story, new characters continue to be introduced. In fact, a significant actor makes his first appearance in one of the final chapters. It's all a bit too much; the pace begins to drag in the middle chapters and while the novel is never boring, the loss of energy attributable to the growing multitude of characters is noticeable.

Finally, the ending is clever but not as explosive as the set-up seemed to promise. The outcome doesn't seem like quite the big deal that the book makes it out to be, but that might be due to my American perspective which is relatively indifferent to British royalty. There's also too much "here's what happened" exposition at the end, in contrast to the livelier writing that characterizes the novel's earlier chapters. Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading The South Lawn Plot despite its flaws.

RECOMMENDED

Rodin's Debutante by Ward Just

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on March 1, 2011

I give this unusual, meandering novel credit: I had no idea where it was going yet it held my interest throughout its circuitous journey. More than that, it made me think. What starts as a story about a wealthy rogue at the end of the Nineteenth Century segues into a World War II-era story about a young man who invigorates a prep school football team before he begins collegiate life and pursues an interest in sculpture. The story takes seamless detours into tales of small town violence (a vicious assault upon a female student) and big city violence (a mugging on Chicago's South Side) while exploring questions of perspective and memory. Tying together the stories of the rogue and the intellectual are a boarding school, a cathouse, and a bust sculpted by Rodin.

Rodin's Debutante focuses on two characters. Tommy Ogden, the son of a wealthy railroad baron, has no need to work and so indulges his passions: hunting, sketching, and sleeping with the women provided by the "social club" that leases him a space for his engagements. To the dismay of his wife, Ogden converts their estate into a boarding school for boys who can't fit in elsewhere. The bulk of the novel follows Lee Goodell, the son of a small town judge, who attends Ogden Hall before pursuing an intellectual and artistic life at the University of Chicago and in Chicago's Hyde Park. Like Rodin, Goodell becomes a sculptor. Two episodes of violence are central to the story: the vicious assault of a girl who is Goodell's classmate before he attends Ogden Hall and Goodell's own mugging years later. The two attacks have very different consequences for the two lives ... and that, I think, is one of the novel's points: you never know how your life will turn out. You may or may not be able to shape your future; you may or may not be able to remember your past -- and you may or may not want to do either one.

Although most of the novel is narrated in the third person, Goodell tells his story in the first person in a couple of segments, a jarring shift in point of view that at first puzzled me. This may have been one more way for Ward Just to illustrate the importance of perspective, an issue that lies at the novel's heart. Sometimes perspectives differ and the truth of the matter is hard to know: A headmaster believes that people learn only from their defeats, while Ogden thinks that defeat teaches nothing: it "stays with you and becomes the expected thing."

The differing perspective of urban and rural America is one of the novel's most intriguing themes (small town America, according to one of the novel's voices, provides the country with armies while urban America provides governance) but the larger theme is how people view similar events in different ways, and how the truth, whatever it might be, often remains concealed -- just as the hidden interior of a sculpted stone may never be entirely revealed. At the same time, some perspectives in the novel parallel each other, leading to the same result for different reasons: the small town leaders don't want to publicize the assault of the school girl while residents of the South Side Chicago neighborhood want to keep a lid on Goodell's mugging. In each case, the community believes that airing the truth will lead to harm (the loss of a sense of communal safety in the small town, retributive police action in Chicago). From their perspectives, it is the community that stands to suffer the greatest harm from the crime, not the victim. Of course, the victims see it much differently.

While these ideas make the novel well worth reading and thinking about, the book might not appeal to readers looking for a conventional plot-driven story. Ward Just tells the story in a nonlinear style, resulting in the meandering feeling I mentioned; events trigger memories of other events, stories beget more stories. That didn't bother me but I suspect some readers will be put off by it. A more significant criticism to me is the novel's tone. I rarely felt an emotional connection, either positive or negative, to the characters. I don't necessarily need to like the characters to enjoy a novel, but I want the novel to make me feel something, and about all I felt while reading Rodin's Debutante was curiosity about what might happen next and admiration for Just's writing style. There's little dramatic tension; conflict, when it comes, is usually low key, often described in a voice so detached as to drain it of vitality. A couple of scenes involving Lee and a mugger and one involving Lee and the assault victim are exceptions, as is a wonderfully written scene in which young Lee overhears his father meeting with town leaders in the aftermath of the girl's assault. If the novel had reached that level of intensity more often, I would give it five stars and recommend it highly. I recommend it nonetheless, but for different reasons: the sureness of the writing style and the ideas it explores.

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The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady by Elizabeth Stuckey-French

Published by Doubleday on February 8, 2011

Comedy, like so many things, is a matter of taste: some people laugh at slapstick, some at dry wit, some at cross-dressing British comedians. Not everyone will find The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady funny. My sense of humor must mirror Elizabeth Stuckey-French's because I found myself smiling, chuckling, and often laughing out loud at her quirky characters and offbeat plot.

Its title notwithstanding, the novel is less about revenge than it is about a family dynamic -- yes, it's yet another story about a dysfunctional family. Ava (who loves Elvis and flirts with the notion of being the next America's Top Model) and Otis (who is trying to build a nuclear reactor in the tool shed) both have Asperger's syndrome. Their neurotic and depressed mother, Caroline, is nearly always in a foul mood, in part because she's approaching fifty and feels her best years (such as they were) are behind her. Caroline's husband, Vic, obsesses about hurricanes. Vic has detached himself from the family and has more than a passing interest in the parson's sister. Caroline's father, Wilson Spriggs, is a retired physician who suffers from Alzheimer's; having outlived his wife, he lives with Caroline's family. Only the middle child, Suzi, seems to meet societal expectations of normalcy (she's bright, beautiful, and popular), yet she gets herself into deeper trouble than her less advantaged siblings. While all of this sounds like the foundation for a tragedy rather than a comedy, laughter (as they say) is the best medicine, and Stuckey-French finds ample opportunity to inject humor into the family members' woeful lives.

The radioactive lady to whom the title refers is Marylou, who in 1953 became an unknowing participant in a government-financed experiment. While visiting a clinic for prenatal care, Marylou was given a drink containing radioactive isotopes as part of a study overseen by Dr. Spriggs. She attributes her daughter's death from childhood cancer to the radioactive liquid. It is for this that Marylou has vowed revenge and, having found Spriggs in Florida fifty-three years later, she plans to kill him -- or at least to disrupt the lives of his family members. I know, it still doesn't sound funny, but dark comedy is necessarily about dark subjects.

The main characters are recognizable (maybe even as members of our families) without becoming stereotypes. Some of the minor characters (like the lecherous pastor and his goth daughter) are a bit more formulaic, but they nonetheless seem real. The story moves quickly, reflecting a writing style that is comedic rather than literary. Despite its dark side, an underlying sweetness shines through. The novel teaches familiar but nonetheless worthwhile lessons: (1) vengeance, like radioactive particles, can spread in unexpected ways, touching innocent people and causing unforeseen effects; (2) forgiveness heals more effectively than revenge; (3) even if you can't be perfectly happy, perhaps you can be happy enough; and (4) we're all weird in our own ways. Sometimes the weirdness has a label: autistic, obsessive, neurotic. Other times it doesn't. "Some of us," Stuckey-French writes, "are more 'typical' than others, that's all."

Whether you read this novel for laughs or for its lighthearted life lessons, you're likely to be satisfied -- assuming your sense of humor is tickled by the story I've described. If it's not, this probably isn't the novel for you.

RECOMMENDED

The Diviner's Tale by Bradford Morrow

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on January 20, 2011

Bradford Morrow is an excellent writer, one whose style I greatly admire. In The Diviner's Tale, he brings a literary sensibility to what is essentially a genre novel ... although defining the genre is difficult. The Diviner's Tale is story of the supernatural that has elements of a thriller and the flavor of a family saga. Unfortunately, as much as I enjoyed Morrow's prose, I couldn't get excited about the story. The key problem, I think, is that the story is told in the first person by a narrator who has such a depressed, lackadaisical attitude toward life that her indifference rubs off on the reader.

Cassandra inherits the familial talent for divining, but when she foresees her brother's death, her father (without judgment) proclaims her a witch. Years later, Cassandra begins to doubt her own mind when, while walking a field in search of hidden water, she finds a dead girl hanging from a tree -- only to discover, when returning with the sheriff, that the body has vanished (and with it, all evidence of its existence). A series of creepy events unfold; Cassandra sees ominous people who could be real or imagined, living or dead, while receiving warnings (decidedly real) that she doesn't understand. She tries to hide for awhile, but how does one hide from visions (if that's what they are)? Eventually (roughly at the novel's midpoint) she decides to investigate. Several chapters later, the story evolves into a deeper mystery concerning missing children. While that development breathed some needed life into the story, it left me wondering why it took more than two hundred pages for that essential slice of drama to manifest itself.

Divining becomes a metaphor for seeing things that others can't -- not just underground water or dead people but troubled souls and hidden truths. One of the book's goals, I think, is to illustrate something that Cassandra says about her family: "All we had ever been were stories, and saying ourselves, unveiling our stories, was the best, the only, chance at divining ourselves." As Cassandra reflects upon her life, she discusses the sort of difficulties that regularly arise in lives both real and fictional -- illness and loss, abuse, uncertain relationships and unexpected pregnancy -- problems so familiar that Morrow's treatment of them here feels stale, as if we've heard it all before. Moreover, as the book begins to alternate Cassandra's unhappy memories with her problematic present, the memories tend to dominate the narrative -- an unfortunate choice on Morrow's part, since the present threat is much more intriguing than Cassandra's bleak past.

Ultimately, I found the story interesting but not compelling. The mystery that finally emerges isn't very mysterious. Some of the interaction between Cassandra and her children seemed forced, the dialog inauthentic. Despite the fact that Cassandra tells her story in the first person, it seems cold and distant, as if she is describing emotions she didn't actually feel. That made it difficult to connect with the narrative. Still, while I was less than captivated by the story, I found it easy to keep reading. Morrow's writing style kept my eyes moving from sentence to sentence, caught up in the graceful flow of words. The novel's doesn't have the kind of plot twist ending that thrillers and mysteries often deliver; that just isn't the kind of novel Morrow wanted to write. That's fine, but the lackluster ending didn't help the novel. This isn't a bad effort, but it's not my favorite Morrow.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino

Published by Minotaur on February 1, 2011

The Devotion of Suspect X is a different kind of crime novel. It isn't a whodunit: we learn in the opening pages that Yasuko kills her ex-husband, Togashi. Nor is the manner or motive of the killing a mystery: Togashi's aggressive behavior toward Yasuko and her daughter, and Yasuko's strangulation of Togashi with her daughter's assistance, are vividly described. For much of the novel, The Devotion of Suspect X seems like a police procedural combined with a detective story. The role of private detective is played by a physicist, Yukawa, who happens to be a good friend of the investigating police officer, Kusanagi. Yukawa also happens to be an old classmate of Yasuko's neighbor, a mathematician named Ishigami, who assisted Yasuko in the aftermath of the killing. Initially, the mystery surrounds the body that turns up days later -- with a pulped face and charred fingertips -- and whether Ishigami's scheme to keep the police from proving Yasuko's complicity will be successful. Yet about two-thirds of the way through the novel, the plot takes a sharp turn, and a new mystery emerges: Why is Suspect X doing something so completely unexpected?

I enjoyed The Devotion of Suspect X. Keigo Higashino's writing style (or perhaps the translator's) is straightforward; the prose doesn't soar but neither does it distract. The novel is tightly constructed; there's nothing in it that doesn't need to be there. Yasuko is a remarkably bland character (given that she's a killer) but the Buddha-like Ishigami and his friend Yukawa are interesting and their battle of wits brings the story to life. Ishigami's interaction with Kusanagi (another bland character) is less interesting but it serves to advance the plot.

The Devotion of Suspect X isn't a spectacular work of literature but it tells a good story. The plot unfolds rapidly and surprisingly. There is, ultimately, a mystery to unravel, and its solution completely floored me -- yet the author played fair: all the clues were there. The last couple of pages are a bit disappointing in that one of the characters behaves too predictably (probably the result of the author's desire to keep readers happy), but that gripe didn't overcome my generally positive feelings about the book.

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