Sidle Creek by Jolene McIlwain

Published by Melville House on May 16, 2023

The stories collected in Sidle Creek are joined by their setting — the fictional Sidle Creek in Appalachia. It is a place where townies keep their business to themselves, where women are routinely abused and men try to avoid deep thought about troubled lives.

The most powerful story is about a stripper who is raped, a dog that is shot, an unmarked grave in the woods, and a man who lacked the courage to stop any of it. Videos eventually surface showing several people of both genders being abused by hunters at a campsite. The story unfolds from multiple perspectives, each contribution building the reader’s understanding of what happened to two girls and how a town where secrets are kept reacted to rumored truths.

In my favorite story, the disappearance of a waitress causes paranoia among the restaurant’s male staff and customers (primarily miners and iron workers) as they wonder whether they are suspected of foul play. Customers are fond of red boots the waitresses wear and are willing to tolerate the restaurant’s gay owner because he hires pretty waitresses. The owner is haunted by the fear that he failed to keep an employee safe. The solution to the disappearance reveals that bad acts can be more sad than nefarious.

In the most poignant story, a man begins to “count random things to pilot his days” after he loses his wife. Living alone on wooded land, he has fallen in love with a doe that occasionally visits his property, an animal he feels an obsessive need to shield from death.

Another strong story revolves around a semi-literate man who breeds pit bulls for fighting. The man has an obsessive desire to be regarded as respectable, a condition he associates with wealth. He decides that having his boys fight each other in bare knuckled brawls is a step up from dog fighting. The story gives new meaning to the concept of unfit parenting.

Several stories highlight the theme of meanness that is ingrained in the characters. A man recalls his childhood, when his angry father dragged a steer behind his pickup truck to punish the steer for wandering away. A priest threatens boys with the paddle when they make “pizzle” the world of the day. A young man on a motorcycle watches a woman with a knife try to steal a baby from a pregnant woman.

Other stories focus on the sadness of desperate lives. An Amish carpenter’s wife tells him that the coffin he built for their son is too small, as if “she thought her love for him might expand his small body.” Sixth grade girls try to puzzle out the mysteries of pregnancy by observing a woman who had four miscarriages in the last seven years, but they instead learn to cope with fear of the unknown. A young woman finishes having sex with a man she can picture making a life with, but then knows she has to hop in her car “and drive far as I can get if I ever want to be anything that ain’t a few steps away from crazy.”

Some stories defy categorization. City council members want to learn the stories of a reclusive woman by condemning her house. A man learns from his Vietnamese wife how to read unfortunate future events from markings on eggs.

Several stories are snapshots of a time and place. Vignettes don’t appeal to me. I like stories to be full meals, or at least a main course, not a meager slice.

I appreciate the cumulative sense of atmosphere that the Winesburg, Ohio approach to storytelling creates. I also appreciate Jolene McIlwain’s ability to portray characters in a sympathetic light despite their limitations and flaws. She doesn’t stereotype or judge. Her prose is precise and fluid but never showy. The collected stories are uneven — the four I’ve highlighted struck me as occupying a higher level than the rest — but taken as a whole, they showcase McIlwain’s undeniable talent.

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Big Two-Hearted River by Ernest Hemingway

First published in 1925; published as a Centennial Edition by Mariner Books on May 9, 2023

I probably read this story in college. I know I read In Our Time, the collection that featured this and one other Nick Adams story. I remember the other Adams story but not this one. That doesn't surprise me, as I don’t recall much about my college years. I attribute that to my declining memory rather than collegiate substance abuse, but the two might be related.

The story is well regarded by Hemingway fans. It is probably beloved by the editors of Field & Stream. Sports Illustrated praised it as the greatest story about the outdoors in literary history. I have a guarded appreciation of Hemingway, but I’m more of a Faulkner guy. This centennial edition includes some beautifully detailed pen-and-ink sketches/engravings of fishing and camping scenes by Chris Wormell, as well as a “revelatory forward” by John MacLean, whose dad wrote A River Runs Through It.

The story is simple. Nick backpacks his way into the woods, makes camp, catches soot-covered grasshoppers to use as bait, and fishes for trout. Sometimes he wins, sometimes the trout wins. That’s the story.

Along the way, Nick reports on his state of mind. Hiking induces weariness that helps him sleep despite his troubled thoughts. We don’t know why he’s troubled but in the context of other Nick Adams stories, he’s probably fretting about a girl. Nick becomes happy, or at least content, as the tranquility of solitude eases his mind. When a large fish gets away, he centers himself in nature, sitting on a log with the sun at his back, and waits until the feeling of disappointment leaves. “It was all right now.”

The revelatory forward explains that Hemingway wrote the story at the age of 25 when he was a struggling writer in Paris following his ambulance driving years in Italy. MacLean notes that critics at the time (but not the “perceptive” ones who were mostly Hemingway’s friends) complained that nothing happens. Far be it from me to echo that same unperceptive complaint. Critics apparently argue about the meaning of the story’s metaphors (grasshoppers are soot-covered because of a fire that represents, well, something). My heretical thought is that Hemingway described what he saw and wasn't being metaphonrical at all. Who knows? MacLean suggests that the story is about a journey of the spirit. I’ll buy that.

I can’t deny Hemingway’s impact on American literature, even if I don’t fully appreciate it. This book might be a good gift for true Hemingway admirers and for outdoorsy types who like to wade into frigid streams to fish for trout when they could get a tasty grouper in a seafood restaurant. Yeah, I know, it isn’t the same. It’s a big two-hearted world with plenty of room for readers who like Hemingway and readers who wonder what all the fuss is about.

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A Line in the Sand by Kevin Powers

Published by Little, Brown and Company on May 16, 2023

A Line in the Sand is a thriller/mystery with war as a backstory, but it is also a story of loss and healing. The plot builds steam until it explodes in a series of action scenes, each more tense than the last. Yet the minor characters, more than the plot, make the story stand out.

Arman Bajalan was an interpreter in Iraq. His family was killed. He earned a visa to relocate to the US, but only after he witnessed a war crime committed by contractors, a nice name for mercenaries. He told a lieutenant who promised him protection. Now Bajalan works as a custodian in a motel, living a life of “ritual with no purpose he could recall.”

Bajalan discovers a man’s body on the beach where he regularly swims before starting his shift at the motel. A tattoo identifies the man’s affiliation with the Australian military. The people who killed the man likely believed he was looking for Bajalan. They wanted to find Bajalan first.

Detective Catherine Wheel and her partner Lamar Adams catch the case of the dead Australian. Since Bajalan is a witness, Wheel spends time learning his story. She soon suspects that he might be in danger. A series of killings over the course of the novel confirms those suspicions.

The contractors belonged to a company called Decision Tree. Trevor Graves, its CEO, is a corrupt power broker who is about to sign a contract with the government that is worth billions to his company. Congress is slow walking an investigation that might jeopardize that contract.

Sally Ewell, a reporter for a Virginia newspaper, is covering the congressional hearing. An anonymous source gives her a thumb drive with a note that invites her to a meeting at a train station. Sally brings her former lover, Carter West III (Trey to his buddies), who is also involved in the Decision Tree hearing as a congressional aide. Wheel, Lamar, and Bajalan are following a lead at the station. They all hook up and, in the course of events, realize the information on the thumb drive might relate to the danger that Bajalan faces. Trey contends that the thumb drive implicates national security.

Characters embark on separate journeys that eventually lead to a resolution. Wheel follows her instincts until her desire to confront Graves meets with serious pushback.

The plot is surprisingly tight, given the number of branches and subplots that Kevin Powers built into the story. Occasional shootouts and knifings add urgency to Wheel’s investigation. Good guys are sometimes difficult to separate from bad guys, but lives of good and bad are equally likely to end in violence. The key plot point, a conspiracy to cover up war crimes, is far from original, but Powers tells a story that never feels like a cliché.

Characterization is well above par for a thriller. Wheel doesn’t posture herself as the only police officer in the world who cares about victims, a tired approach to characterization that ruins too many police thrillers. Wheel’s concern for Bajalan and for people in general comes across as genuine. She digs herself a hole by digging into Graves (no pun intended) and, when she believes her career is down the toilet, she’s faced with the kind of moral issue that is common in thrillers: She can abandon the law she’s always upheld by imposing her own version of justice or she can let the guilty go unpunished. It is to Powers’ credit that he made such a stale idea seem convincing. I was particularly impressed by Wheel’s understanding that vigilantism comes with a price — not just to the vigilante, but to a society that allows individuals to pick and choose the laws they follow.

Supporting characters, including Sally’s father and the motel owner who employs Bajalan, play heroic roles. They are such fundamentally decent people that Powers forces the reader to worry about their fates. One of the most emotionally effective scenes involves two other characters who are collateral to the plot, a teenage hooker and a state trooper who helps her.

Death and the stupidity of war weigh heavily on the minds of characters who lost friends and family because Dick Cheney and his puppet president decided that Saddam had to go, a decision that not coincidentally enriched Cheney’s Halliburton. The politics of war and defense contracting are underplayed in the novel — Powers delivers a thriller, not a lecture — but that background strengthens the plot’s plausibility and enhances the sense of pain that pervades characters whose lives are forever diminished by wars that result from business decisions rather than moral choices.

Powell recognizes that pain is beyond our control. In the end, the novel suggests that we can respond to pain with hatred of those who cause it, a response that withers the soul, or we can choose not to hate. Again, that insight isn’t original, but the need to make that choice comes across as a genuine emotional reaction to painful circumstances. Even if the novel does nothing new, its effective repackaging of familiar elements earns A Line in the Sand a solid recommendation.

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Killing Me by Michelle Gagnon

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on May 16, 2023

Serial killer novels seem to be popular, despite the relative scarcity of real-world serial killers. Mass shooters are a more serious threat to society, but writers haven’t figured out how to turn them into interesting villains. They shoot, they get caught. No intrigue at all. Perhaps it is the scarcity of serial killers that makes them appealing to readers and writers.

There are enough serial killers in Killing Me to fill one of those cork board maps with colored pins that are connected by strings (or in this book, dental floss) to uncover patterns. Only one of the killers matters to the story, although the killer’s identity isn’t immediately clear.

The book begins with Amber Jamison painted blue, head shaved bald, and tied to a table. A serial killer is about to dismember her when Grace saves her. The map with all the pins belongs to Grace. She tracks serial killers but only because she’s chasing one in particular. She’s been chasing him for a long time. She’s obsessive about it. She’s obsessive about everything, including her diet and the unspoiled cleanliness of her home.

While Amber is grateful to be rescued, she has an attitude. Amber is Grace's opposite. Amber is messy. She enjoys fast food. It seems to Amber that Grace and the man she’s chasing are playing some sort of game with each other. Amber’s attitude isn’t improved when the suspected serial killer begins to stalk her. Amber is also worried that the FBI might be chasing her, given her checkered history as a con artist.

Amber ends up at a cheesy motel in Las Vegas before she realizes that she’s been manipulated to land at that destination. Amber doesn’t have friends before she arrives in Vegas, but she befriends the saucy motel owner and a hooker for whom Amber has the hots. The motel owner belongs to a group of women who make a hobby of investigating serial killers. Naturally, they’re thrilled to learn that Amber is being pursued by one. They’re less thrilled when they become targets.

The story is written in a breezy style that offsets its dark subject matter. Amber, Grace, and the man Grace is chasing all had difficult childhoods. The Vegas women are quirky and easy to like. Their feisty personalities add humor to the story.

The plot creates deliberate confusion about the serial killer’s true identity. The resolution doesn’t come as a shock, but the ambiguity worked by making me uncertain about how the novel might end. While the details that hold the plot together might not withstand close scrutiny (the odds of Amber journeying to exactly the right motel in Vegas, or in Vegas at all, nonwithstanding efforts to direct here there, are mighty slim), overthinking the story would cause its fun factor to evaporate.

The story moves quickly and the plot is sufficiently plausible to carry the reader to the story’s end. This isn’t the kind of book a reader will think much about after turning the last page. It’s fun while it lasts and that’s all that a beach read needs to be.

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Independence Square by Martin Cruz Smith

Published by Simon & Schuster on May 9, 2023

Arkady Renko is one of my favorite protagonists in the world of crime fiction. Renko has long struggled (with surprising success) to maintain his integrity in a corrupt land. In Independence Square, his indirect adversary is the most powerful man in Russia, if only because all corruption in Russia eventually pays its dues to Putin.

The story takes place shortly before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A Moscow racketeer who goes by the nickname Bronson wants to hire Renko to find Karina Abakov, his missing daughter. As a Moscow police detective, Renko knows his perilous career will be over if he is caught taking money from Bronson, but he agrees to help for free.

Karina was affiliated with a social movement called Forum for Democracy. When Renko asks if the movement is anti-government, the response he receives is “Isn’t everybody?” Whenever the group has a demonstration, motorcycle thugs known as the Werewolves break it up. The Werewolves are Putin’s version of the Hell’s Angels. How they know the Forum’s movements in advance is a mystery.

Renko has an adopted son named Zhenya who happens to know Karina. Zhenya knows Karina’s friend Elena better. Zhenya’s friend Alex is sweet on Karina, so Renko visits with Alex and Elena to see if either of them has a line on Karina’s current location. Alex apparently learns something about Karina and sends Renko pictures of three Russian authors as a coded clue. Before Renko can meet with him again, Alex is assassinated. Renko is assigned to investigate the death, giving him cover to poke into Karina's disappearance.

The story involves multiple loosely related assassinations. Renko’s search for Karina takes him to Kyev and Sevastopol, where some of those assassinations occur. The plot twists a couple of times and generates at least one genuine surprise. Fortunately, Martin Cruz Smith doesn’t follow the path of outrageous twists that are common to lesser thriller writers. The story never sacrifices plausibility to create suspense, but Smith does generate tension as the plot moves toward its conclusion. Independence Square isn’t as compelling as Smith’s best novels, but I am always captivated by the stories he tells.

Although the story precedes the invasion of Ukraine, it is timely. Renko views Putin’s Russia as “Stalin’s Great Terror updated for modern times, with disinformation, legal machinations, indiscriminate violence.” While Putin is a monster lurking just beyond the novel’s perimeter, much of the story focuses not on the forthcoming war but on Crimean Tartars, an ethic group that has been oppressed for centuries. Through a Tartar living in exile in Kyev, Smith offers a quick lesson in the group’s history before and after the most recent Russian occupation of Crimea.

Renko’s life changes a bit with every novel in the series. In Independence Square, Renko becomes involved with Elena just as Tatiana, the journalist who used to be his lover, crosses his path again. Tatiana is the woman he can’t forget. Her loss is one of the many events that has left Renko with a tortured soul. His discovery that he is in the early stages of Parkinson’s only adds to his sense of resignation. Whether resignation will be offset by hope and whether newfound hope will be shattered are always questions in Renko novels. Where Renko’s life will go next is a question I hope Smith will answer soon.

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