The Prisoner by Thomas M. Disch

First published in 1967

Puzzling over their differing memories of their lives before arriving in the Village, Lorna (or is her name Liora?) asks: "What is real? Who am I? Do I wake or dream?" Those questions are at the heart of The Prisoner: both the original television series and Thomas Disch's novelization of the cult classic.

The television series can be viewed as anti-authoritarian, as a tribute to individuality and free thought, as an existential exercise in futility, as a statement about the nature of liberty and as a condemnation of secrecy and bureaucracy. It can be seen as a fable or an allegory. The great and maddening beauty of The Prisoner is that the audience was never given definitive answers: the location of the Village, the identities of the Village masters, the information the prisoner possessed and the reason for his resignation as a clandestine agent, whether the prisoner finally escaped ... we'll never know, and that's exactly what Patrick McGoohan wanted. (You don't have to believe me about this; you can read McGoohan's interview in The Prisoner: A Televisionary Masterpiece, a coffee table book that also includes a detailed episode guide.) Thomas Disch's novel captures the spirit of the television series, if not its scope.

That the book is a novelization of the show seems to have escaped some of the reviewers who gripe that the novel is too much like the show. What did they expect from a novelization? To be fair, the novel is not a scene by scene replay of the television series: it begins differently; the location of the prisoner's capture is altered; the prisoner's escape attempts in the first and second episodes are carried out more ingeniously in the novel; the woman who (supposedly) escapes in the second episode is replaced by an entirely new character in the book, a love interest who appears early in the novel. There are enough differences to make the novel fresh and appealing to the show's fans while remaining true to McGoohan's vision. And of course, with only 242 pages, the novel cannot cover all 17 episodes of the show; it wisely makes no attempt to do so.

Some reviewers complain that that the book doesn't answer the questions left unanswered by the series. Why would it? This is, again, a novelization of the series (it says so on the back cover). Why would the novel destroy the careful ambiguity of the original?

My only complaint is that a 242 page novel can't do justice to the television series. As I said, Disch captured the spirit but not the scope of the original work. The novel is nonetheless well worth reading, for fans of the show and for those who have never seen it.

RECOMMENDED

Final Notice by Joe Gores

Published by Random House in 1973

Reading a DKA novel is like spending a few days shadowing a repo man to learn the ropes of the repossession business, except that it's more fun (and less dangerous). In a DKA novel, you know that you'll meet interesting characters, encounter plenty of action, and exercise your brain as you try to solve whatever puzzle Joe Gores has in store for you.

Final Notice takes place six months after Dead Skip. In that novel, Bart Heslip was hospitalized after being hit with a sap outside the DKA offices. Final Notice gets off to a similar start as Ed Dorsey is hospitalized after being beaten by two thugs outside the DKA offices. The beating seems to be tied to the repossession of a Cadillac belonging to an aging beauty named Chandra, whose delinquent payments are suddenly and mysteriously made good. Thanks to Heslip's intervention, one of the thugs who beat Dorsey is captured and identified as a mob henchman. DKA's founder, Dan Kearny, makes it his business to find out why Dorsey was beaten, and solves a couple of murders along the way.

The plot of Final Notice isn't quite as ingenious as that of Dead Skip, but it ties together nicely at the end. The pace is swift and the process of detection is fascinating. Characters come to life, particularly Giselle, a DKA employee whose ill-advised affair with a banker is a central focus of the story. Gores' prose is tight and suitably hard-boiled without becoming a parody. It's unfortunate this novel is out of print. Seek it out if you like first rate detective fiction.

RECOMMENDED

Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock

Published by Doubleday on March 18, 2008

This marvelous story collection is Winesburg, Ohio for those who live at the fringes of civilized society. It showcases the residents of Knockemstiff, Ohio, some of whom appear in more than one story. If you like stories about gritty people whose actions are motivated by raw emotion rather than rational thought, people with few redeeming qualities, poor self-esteem, bad manners, and little hope, this is the collection for you.

Two things make these stories work. First, the writing is of the highest quality: sharp, poignant, and honest. Second, the stories are character-driven and plot-driven at the same time, a rare blend in literary fiction. The stories are actually about something beyond the characters. Things happen, interesting and sometimes shocking things, as the stories progress from a clear beginning to a clear ending. For instance: **Semi-Spoiler Alert** A young draft evader who lives in the hills comes across a brother and sister having sex, kills the brother and rapes the sister before returning to hiding. A bodybuilder takes steroids at the insistence of his father who wants to recapture his glory days by living vicariously through his son (the son, of course, comes to no good end). Two kids steal a dealer's supply of pills with fantastic plans about selling them and starting a new life, but end up using all the pills. These are a few examples of the tragic and depressing but realistic life stories depicted in Knockemstiff. **End of Spoiler**

Make no mistake: the characters in Knockemstiff represent the underbelly of America. They are seedy, violent, uncouth, racist, uneducated, vulgar, and more than a little creepy. If you don't like a story unless you like the characters, you won't like this book. If stories don't appeal to you unless they are morally uplifting, you won't like this book. But make no mistake also: the characters in Knockemstiff are as real as dirt. Pollock perfectly captures the rage and hopelessness and bewilderment that infuses people who society has left behind. If you appreciate good writing for its own sake, if you think damaged people can be just as interesting as virtuous people in the hands of a fine writer, if you value the insight that comes from intense examination of the darker aspects of the human soul, Knockemstiff is a book you will appreciate and think about and remember.

RECOMMENDED

Death Throes by Clive Egleton

First published in 1994

True to the form established in the first two Peter Ashton novels (Hostile Intent and A Killing in Moscow), Death Throes begins with a death. A Russian using the name Valentin has contacted SIS and asked to meet with Ashton in Bulgaria. Ashton goes to Sofia to meet Valentin's contact, only to find him dead in his apartment. Ashton is soon taken prisoner by the KGB and interrogated about Valentin. Escaping and returning to London, Ashton finds himself caught between Valentin, who wants to sell secrets in exchange for money, and some members of the SIS who want to use him as a pawn to uncover Valentin's identity. The plot takes Ashton to Estonia for another meeting with Valentin (but is it the same Valentin?) and to Berlin, where a related story unfolds concerning a former KGB hit man who assassinates a neo-Nazi leader.

Intricate plotting is Egleton's strength. The story in Death Throes sometimes seems a bit convoluted -- I often found myself reviewing earlier chapters to refresh my memory concerning the many characters who come and go as the plot develops -- but it all comes together by the novel's end. The downside to this novel is Egleton's writing style, which is sometimes less than graceful. In addition, Egleton has a tendency to bombard the reader with information that isn't particularly useful, like the price SIS paid for a safehouse before the market fell. And while I understand the need to provide background information from past novels so that this one can stand alone (which it does), Egleton sometimes overdoes it. Do we really need to learn (again) that Harriet (Ashton's love interest) obtained "a good upper second in Geography at Birmingham University" before taking the various positions that led to her current employment with SIS?

Perhaps as a result of the digressions about educational backgrounds and job histories and real estate markets, Death Throes does not move with the same pace as the earlier novels (despite a few well written action scenes), and it suffers from the same occasional clunky prose that troubled me in Hostile Intent. There is also less development of Ashton's character in Death Throes than there was in A Killing in Moscow, although more attention is paid to Harriet and to Ashton's relationship with her. All told, I liked Death Throes, but not as much as Hostile Intent and certainly not as much as A Killing in Moscow.

RECOMMENDED

The Prince of Bagram Prison by Alex Carr

Published by Random House Trade Paperbacks on March 11, 2008

Jamal, a 15 year old detainee at Bagram, agrees to inform for the CIA and is relocated to Spain, where his handler, Harry Comfort, is close to retirement. Harry's successor pushes Jamal for information and Jamal responds by inventing a story about seeing a man from Bagram in Madrid. This sets off a flurry of killings. Jamal's Army interrogator, Kat, is sent to Casablanca with an ex-CIA chief to find Jamal after he disappears. The CIA wants to kill Jamal and Kat doesn't want that to happen. There's a whole lot more going on, involving a dead detainee and a coverup of nefarious American shenanigans, but describing it here would risk spoiling the surprises.

Although this is an intelligent, crisply written thriller that creates a strong sense of place, the motivations for the various actions taken by the characters aren't always clear and the plot at times gets a bit muddled. Kat is a reasonably full character but most of the others (particularly the males) are stock military/spook types. A romantic entanglement felt out of place, as if it had been added to move the plot along--it didn't feel real. The facts that are being covered up seemed a little far-fetched and the ending seemed contrived. In short, I liked the writing style more than the story or the characters. I'm encouraged to try her other novels (the author, Jenny Siler, wrote this one under a pen name). The Prince of Bagram Prison is a worthy effort that comes close to succeeding as a solid novel, but doesn't quite get there.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS