Those We Thought We Knew by David Joy

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on August 1, 2023

Detective Leah Green works for a small Sheriff’s Office in a mountain community. She’s investigating the murder of Toya Gardner. Toya was a black civil rights activist. She returned to her home to protest a statue honoring a Confederate officer. Green believes Toya’s murder is related to the beating of a sheriff’s deputy who was unofficially investigating the Klan.

Sheriff John Coggins is focused on the beating of his deputy and wants Green to handle Toya’s murder on her own. He says he views the beating and the murder as unrelated crimes. In truth, when Toya’s father was still alive, he was Coggins’ best friend. Coggins quarreled with Toya about her activism before she died and, now that she’s been murdered, he seems to be troubled by his emotions. Toya all but calls him a racist. Coggins doesn't believe her father saw him that way, although they never had a meaningful discussion about race. Staying sober has been a challenge during Coggins' forty years as Sheriff. After Toya’s death, it’s a challenge he’s losing.

Ernie Allison is the deputy who takes a beating. He arrested William Dean Cawthorne for public drunkenness. By the time Ernie arrived, Cawthorne had passed out in his car. Ernie searched the car and found a Klan robe. He also found a notebook that appeared to list Klan members. Some are in politics, some in law enforcement. Ernie didn’t seize the notebook, but when he went back to take another look at it, the notebook was gone. His awareness of the names in the notebook might explain why he was left for dead under a giant illuminated cross.

Figuring out who attacked Ernie isn’t difficult after Ernie regains consciousness and, despite his limited memory, provides a few clues. Cawthorne is the obvious suspect for Toya’s murder but crime fiction fans know that the obvious suspect rarely proves to be the killer. Other suspects include a college kid, an eccentric man who saw a snake in his house and won’t set foot inside it at night, a gun dealer who trades in unlawful firearms, and a “grumpy old cuss.” None of those suspects seem particularly promising, but who knows?

Much of the novel addresses the complexity of race relations. White characters who are not overtly racist nevertheless make familiar arguments about how Confederate statues reflect heritage. They claim (usually without actual knowledge) that their ancestors owned no slaves. They don’t feel responsible for the lingering impact of slavery and don’t recognize the racist symbolism that is inherent in Confederate memorials. They complain that activists “stir things up” and deny that they personally benefitted from slavery.

Toya and some other characters argue that many white people in modern America enjoy a privilege that has been denied to many black people, a privilege that represents the vestiges of slavery. They argue that their voices are not heard and that whites who defend Confederate memorials on the ground of tradition deliberately ignore the intent to perpetuate black subjugation that drove southern states to insurrection.

It’s heartening when a white character explains how he transcended the white supremacist atmosphere in which he was raised. He has learned that being proud of your heritage doesn’t mean embracing everything the heritage entails. The character argues that most of his peers never opened a book after they dropped out of school. They base their knowledge of history on an uncritical acceptance of whatever their fathers told them.

Characters on both sides of the debate feel that the other side isn’t listening, but the reality is that black people have had no choice but to listen to white perspectives since the Civil War ended. It is the “traditionalists” who have closed their minds to the truth about the tradition they defend. That some white people are awakening to the impact of racism on American society has caused frantic condemnations of by the likes of Fon DeSantis about people who are "woke,” as if listening to people with an open mind and learning from them is a bad thing. (I should make clear that this paragraph represents my editorializing. The novel doesn't mention DeSantis or even the word "woke.")

Notwithstanding the importance to society of conversations like those imagined in the novel, long lectures don’t necessarily lend themselves to good fiction. Too much pontification places a drag on crime novels. You either get it or you don’t. Readers who get it don’t need to wade through obvious lectures to reinforce their beliefs. Readers who don’t get it — well, how many of them actually read a novel that doesn’t have guns on the cover or the word Patriot in the title?

Those We Thought We Knew works best when it captures the pain of Toya’s mother and grandmother, both of whom feel a mix of pride at her bravery and regret that they didn’t talk her out of high-profile activism in a redneck community. A scene involving the grandmother’s response to redneck kids revving the diesel engine of a pickup to pollute a candlelight vigil for Toya is the novel’s high point.

The revelation of the killer’s identity isn’t much of a surprise, if only because it seems intended to further David Joy’s political point at the expense of creating a strong ending. Again, while I agree with the novel’s recognition that people who defend Confederate statues are not basing their opinions on reason or history, Joy’s determination to make the point that they are defending a tradition of racism interferes with his storytelling. The strengths of Those We Thought We Knew nevertheless outweigh my reservations about the way the story is told.

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Sun Damage by Sabine Durrant

First published in the UK in 2022; published by Harper Paperbacks on August 1, 2023

A moderately interesting protagonist in Sun Damage never quite overcomes the mediocrity of the plot. The novel sets up a promising thriller but falls short of delivering the promised thrills.

The story is narrated by a young woman named Ali. She has been grifting in a partnership with Sean Wheeler. They had a perfunctory sexual encounter but Sean has those with many women. He’s protective of her and is skilled at the art of the con. Ali stays with him because she wants to learn his tricks and craves his approval.

Before the story starts, Ali and Sean ran cons in Marrakesh and India. Now they’re in France, where they befriend Lulu Davies. Sean introduces Ali as his sister. Lulu is enjoying the Sainte-Cécile beaches before she begins a gig as a private chef for a family that has rented a house in Provence. Lulu has money and is rather improbably taking the chef gig to have something to do, although the house has a pool and the work is far from demanding. She prepared meals for a different family in the same house the year before.

After scamming a meal at Lulu’s expense, Sean decides to make a bigger score. He steals a speedboat so that he and Ali can spend a fun afternoon with Lulu. Sean casually mentions a plan to rent a boat for a trip to Corsica. Lulu wants to join them but Sean vetoes the idea because the boat he is renting would be too small. Lulu naturally offers to contribute to the cost of a bigger boat, opening the door for Sean to steal her money.

Before Sean can implement his scheme, Lulu tumbles to the fact that Ali is not his sister. They scuffle and Lulu hits her head but isn’t quite dead. To Ali’s dismay, Sean suffocates her to prevent her from ratting them out to the police. He tells Ali to go back to their hotel while he finds a good spot to throw her body overboard.

Ali grabs Lulu’s purse and returns to the hotel. Coincidentally, Ali has stolen their stash of cash from under Sean's nose. How she thought she would get away with the theft is unclear, but her indiscretion turns out to be prophetic. Horrified to discover that Sean is a killer, she takes the money and runs.

Since Ali has a strong resemblance to Lulu, she assumes Lulu’s identity. Knowing that Sean will come looking for her, she takes a bus to Provence and presents herself as Lulu the chef. With that setup, the anticipated thrills relate to Ali’s efforts to evade Sean and stay alive.

That Ali looks like Lulu is one coincidence too many. That Ali can pass herself off as a chef by buying and disguising TV dinners is hard to swallow. In any event, Ali spends a week hiding out with the family, learning about their mundane family drama (one of the kids fears she’s pregnant) and meeting their tedious guests.

The home renters work in the publishing industry and have invited an author to stay with them. Naturally, Ali instantly falls for the author, contributing predictable scenes that would be at home in a cheesy romance novel.

It is inevitable that Sean will eventually appear. Durrant does too little to create believable tension before that moment arrives. Most of the story consists of Ali fretting about her problems, some of which stem from a difficult childhood — the kind of childhood that is common to thriller protagonists who have followed a scofflaw's path.

While Ali is a passably interesting character, the supporting cast is assembled from stereotypes. The novel’s atmosphere focuses on tourist destinations. Location details read like they were gleaned from travel websites.

The plot benefits from a careful structure but the final act is underwhelming. Ali cleverly resolves her Sean problem with surprising ease. Will she be able to keep the author as her lover? I won’t tell but I really don’t need to. Most readers will predict the ending.

Sun Damage held my interest and generated occasional moments of mild dramatic tension. Those moments encouraged me to hope the plot might lead to a strong ending, but the novel is ultimately less than the sum of its parts.

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Mrs. Plansky's Revenge by Spencer Quinn

Published by Forge Books on July 25, 2023

When Peter Abrahams writes as Spencer Quinn, he’s usually writing in the voice of Chet, the large dog who stars in his Chet and Bernie detective novels. Readers who are familiar with that voice will recognize it in Quinn’s new novel about Loretta Plansky, a woman of 71 who doesn’t let age get in the way of accomplishing her goals. Unlike Chet, Loretta is not distracted by squirrels, but she often expresses her thoughts in the kind of language that Chet might use.

Loretta lives in Florida. She has enough money to overcome the downside of living in Florida, having retired after selling a successful company she operated with her husband. She is now a widow. While missing the man to whom she was entirely devoted, Loretta maintains a positive outlook by playing tennis at her club and staying in touch with her children.

Dinu Tiriac lives in Romania. At the direction of his Uncle Dragomir, Dinu is learning English so that he can scam Americans. Dinu calls American seniors, pretending to be a grandson. He spoofs the grandson’s phone number so the call seems legitimate on caller ID. He claims he was arrested for DUI and needs $9,000 to make bail and get his car back. He promises to repay the money when his bail is refunded at his court appearance, but the reality is that he gets the victim’s bank information and empties their account using a cash transfer app that can’t be traced. This is, by the way, an actual scam that (according to the FTC) all too often succeeds in defrauding seniors.

It works on Loretta, who is a soft touch when it comes to her children and grandkids. She gives her bank account number and password to Dinu (posing as her grandson Will). Since she uses the same password for everything, she soon finds that her bank account and investment account have both been drained of funds. Altogether, she loses more than $8 million.

Loretta might be in the early stages of dementia; she’s easily confused, her memory comes and goes. Perhaps these are just the usual outcomes of aging, given that Loretta is often quite sharp. She is sufficiently lucid to explain what happened to her banker and investment manager, and then to the FBI, none of whom offer much hope that she will get her money back. Mild dementia or not, once Loretta learns that her money was transferred to Romania, Loretta decides to travel there and get it back. Perhaps that decision is itself a symptom of irrationality, but Loretta is plucky.

Loretta’s fortitude makes her a wonderful character. She is old fashioned in the sense that she places a high value on good manners and kind behavior. She doesn’t want to bother her kids with her problems. Realizing she has lost everything, she quickly resolves to sell her jewelry and condo. To save money, she takes her father out of the expensive care facility he hates and has him live with her. She thinks she might take a job driving for Uber, since the CEO of the company she founded with her husband won’t employ anyone older than 65.

Dinu is less admirable but still likeable. At 16, he’s controlled by his bullying uncle and by his hormones. He hopes to impress a girl with his success but she is decidedly unimpressed that he is making money by scamming elderly victims. Unlike his uncle, Dinu has a conscience.

Events that drive the novel’s second half might be a bit too coincidental, but that contributes to the fun. Implausible plots don’t detract from novels that aren’t meant to be taken seriously. When the US Embassy’s cybercrime specialist offers little hope, Loretta conducts her own investigation with the help of a journalist. She isn’t quite an action hero, but she is remarkably spry and fearless as she wanders through hidden hallways, makes a dangerous descent from a window, and shows off the ability to operate a motorcycle — a skill that she learned when she was 19. It’s tough not to root for a kindly aging lady, especially when she is revitalized by romance.

I always enjoy the Chet and Bernie series. If Quinn writes more novels about Loretta, I suspect I will enjoy them almost as much.

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Urgent Matters by Paula Rodriguez

First published in Spain in 2021; published in translation by Pushkin Vertigo on July 25, 2023

Urgent Matters is Argentinian noir spiced with dark humor. Its focus is on the reaction of characters to urgent events that always seem to surprise them.

Hugo Lamadrid is a passenger on a train that crashes. He survives, although he wakes up surrounded by corpses. He’s holding a prayer card for the patron saint of urgent matters when rescuers arrive to cut open his carriage and hoist him to freedom.

The rescuers take Hugo to a hospital. He lost his phone and wallet in the crash so he’s relieved when he isn’t quickly identified. Hugo seizes an opportunity to escape from the hospital. He’s worried that his friend Beto might have talked to the police. Beto is worried that the police are coming for him.

Hugo committed a small, unintended crime. Small in Hugo’s eyes, but the police might have a different view, even in Argentina. Beto helped him clean up the mess. Hugo wants to protect Beto but Hugo is not a deep thinker. “He’s pure intuition and argumentative noise.”

At the crash scene, Detective Osvaldo Domínguez finds Hugo’s phone and reads a text from Marta Lacase asking if Hugo is okay. After Domínguez visits Marta, she and her daughter Evelyn pack their bags with cash and leave Buenos Aires. They make an unexpected visit to Marta’s sister Mónica and their mother Olga in Colon, where Mónica works as the slot manager at a casino. Each family member seems to view crime as a useful sideline, although they often keep the details of their criminal enterprises hidden from each other.

Different characters have different opinions about whether Hugo is alive or dead. Only a couple of characters have opinions that are based on facts. El Rifle is a television journalist who knows Hugo. He makes a national news story out of the authorities’ inability to say whether Hugo died in the train accident. Evelyn would also like to know whether her father is alive or dead. Olga is unhappy when she learns that Hugo didn’t die in the crash, but she doesn’t share that knowledge with Evelyn or with reporters who are camped on her doorstep, covering the prayer vigil for Hugo.

Third-person point of view jumps from character to character to tell the unfolding story. The plot loosely follows Domínguez as he tries to learn the truth about Hugo’s fate (a truth that doesn’t concern his superiors, who believe the publicity will be more favorable to them if they simply report that Hugo is dead). To the extent that the story resolves, it does so shortly after a roller coaster ride that Hugo and Beto share.

Roller coasters are a popular metaphor for life, one that Hugo cannot help but notice. “The momentum comes from the first fall. It’s the only one that matters. Everything that comes after it is downhill, even if you’re going up. If you go up a little, it’s so you fall with more force. You’re falling from the start.” Such is life, or at least Hugo’s life.

Olga’s bitterness adds comic relief, as do arguments about which prayers for Hugo will play well with the television audience. The prayer-givers are fickle; when neither Hugo nor his corpse turn up after a couple of days, they lose interest. If prayers go unanswered, maybe it’s time to pray for something else. The media’s fixation on a story about which they know nothing is another source of humor.

My favorite comic moments involve Mónica’s impressive collection of vibrators. Evelyn panics when she steals a cellphone that she hides in a vibrator box. Getting caught with the vibrator is somewhat preferable to getting caught with the stolen phone, despite the lectures she must endure about the damage a vibrator can cause to a virgin.

Urgent Matters is not the kind of crime story that builds tension with each plot twist. The plot is simple and linear; nearly all violence occurs offstage. Like prayer, crime and corruption are simply part of Argentinian life. Characters write their own fates and (like Donnie Brasco in the movie of the same name) they understand and accept without argument that their actions have inevitable consequences. The novel uses a crime plot to deliver grins and soft laughter rather than thrills. Because it does so effectively with sympathetic characters, Urgent Matters is a refreshing change from heavier fare.

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The Last Ranger by Peter Heller

Published by ‎ Knopf on July 25, 2023

Crime novels are usually set in urban environments, although there is no shortage of crime stories that take place in small towns and rural areas. The Last Ranger is set in a national park. It is more thriller than wilderness adventure, but the forest setting is just as important to the novel as its plot and characters. The novel is an homage to the outdoors, to predator and prey in the animal kingdom, a drama in which humans play an outsized role.

Ren Hopper is an enforcement ranger at Yellowstone. He’s a loner who enjoys nature, so the job is perfect for him. He has a handful of close friends and checks in with at least one of them on most days, but his days off are largely devoted to trout fishing. When he’s working, his job requires him to deal with idiots because idiots are everywhere, including idiots who get angry and point their guns at each other. America on vacation, Ren thinks.

Speaking of idiots, a subplot involves members of a social group/militia who (like too many people) believe public land should not be managed for the public benefit but should be available to every selfish person who wants to hunt or cut down trees or otherwise improve his own life to the detriment of everyone else. People who yak about freedom and imagined rights are often antisocial and irresponsible. The novel reflects that reality, but the militia subplot eventually fizzles out, perhaps because Peter Heller found no reason to clutter a straightforward novel with another storyline after he made his point. Or perhaps the subplot is setting up a sequel.

The main story concerns a biologist named Hilly. She is Ren’s neighbor (meaning her cabin in Yellowstone isn’t far from his) but, like Ren, she lives an isolated life. Wolves are her family. She studies them as a biologist, loves and protects them with the instincts of a mother.

Les Ingraham traps and kills wolves. He claims to limit his hunting and trapping to areas beyond the Yellowstone boundaries, but he’s clearly setting illegal wolf traps inside the park. Much of The Last Ranger reminds readers of the important role that wolves play in the ecosystem and why they deserve protection. Yes, wolves can be a nuisance to livestock owners who don’t build strong fences, but in an environment like Yellowstone, wolves contribute to forest management in ways that most of us never think about, indirectly affecting the course of rivers and the creation of wetlands.

Is Ingraham a bad man? Heller refuses to portray him as a stereotype. The novel presents a surprisingly balanced view of the character, leaving it to the reader to decide. When a conflict develops between Hilly and Ingraham, neither is unblemished. The difference between good and evil is often a question of how well people can manage their anger. Sometimes it’s a question of luck.

The conflict between Ingraham and Hilly drives the story, leading to a couple of low-key, high-tension scenes that are all the more powerful because Heller never tries to take the action over the top. While that conflict gives the novel its bones, Ren gives the story its heart. Heller develops the essential details of Ren’s life, allowing the reader to understand the torment that drives his isolation. Ren’s mother taught him to love fishing but Ren has ambiguous emotions about the role she played in a man’s death before she abandoned her family. Ren married a woman who had an incurable illness, a woman who died young and could not bear children. It’s easy to understand why Ren might be minimizing the risk of further pain.

Ren might be too complex for a job in law enforcement. On more than one occasion, Ren tells a wrongdoer how to avoid arrest. When Ren becomes the target of vague death threats, he feels guilty about having made an arrest that might have ruined a young man’s life. Given a chance to make amends for that arrest, he seizes the opportunity, subordinating his law enforcement role to compassion and understanding. Ren’s personality and his struggle to find and stay upon the path of decency make him a fascinating character. I hope he returns.

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