The Double Agent by William Christie

Published by Minotaur Books on November 15, 2022

The Double Agent is a spy thriller that begins in Teheran in 1943. Alexsi Smirnov, a Russian intelligence officer who infiltrated the German army, is warning Churchill of a plot to end his life. That story is told in A Single Spy.

Churchill’s bright idea is to reward Alexsi for saving his life by sending him back to Germany as a British agent. Having betrayed the Russians, Smirnov is certain that he won’t last long in Berlin. Alexsi’s attempt to escape from the British embassy and make his way out of Tehran is foiled, leading Alexsi to agree to spy for Britain, but on his own terms.

Alexsi wants to pose as a signals officer, preferably in Paris, an affable location from which he will be well positioned to escape when Germany loses the war. The British like the idea but send him to Italy, where he gamely takes over the signals operation at a German base. In addition to supervising soldiers who search for clandestine radios operated by partisans and spies, Alexsi is in charge of encoding and decoding messages to the local German command. He uses his position to send coded messages to British intelligence, passing on tidbits about German plans and troop positions in Italy.

The SS officer in charge of the base is happy to have someone of Alexsi’s coding skill and organizational talents. The officer decides to use Alexsi to spy on an Italian princess who is helping the partisans and who has the ear of the Pope. While Alexsi has fun in her bed, the new assignment adds another level of risk to his life as a spy. He dodges Russians, suspicious SS officers, angry Italians, and an unpredictable princess as the war in Europe comes to a close.

The Double Agent offers a nice mix of tradecraft and action. Alexsi doesn’t pretend to be James Bond, but he’s good with a knife. In most instances, he manages to avoid violence by outwitting his adversary. He has a moral code that, while flexible, prevents him from helping the SS commit atrocities against innocent Italians as reprisal for a partisan attack upon SS soldiers.

Alexsi doesn’t have much of a personality beyond his desire to stay alive and his refusal to participate in bloodbaths, but that’s all the personality he needs in a novel that is about survival rather than political idealism. Fans of A Single Spy will probably enjoy the sequel. The novels are similar in style. The second novel is sufficiently independent of the first that a reader will not miss much by reading The Double Agent without first reading A Single Spy.

RECOMMENDED

Paperback Jack by Loren D. Estleman

Published by Forge Books on November 15, 2022

Paperback Jack is a tribute to the writers who published their original creations in paperback (as opposed to writers whose books appeared in hardcover before they were republished in paperback) when paperbacks were first being widely distributed. As Loren D. Estleman tells the story, pulp fiction magazines that were popular before the war gave way to paperback originals in the post-war years. Many pulp writers made the transition to paperbacks because that’s where the money was. New writers also seized the opportunity of mass readership that paperbacks made available.

Estleman cites his sources for the history of paperback publishing in a Recommended Reading section at the end of the novel. He also gives a shout out to writers like David Goodis, John D. MacDonald, Harlan Ellison, Donald Hamilton, and Leigh Brackett, important and gifted writers who primarily published their original novels and story collections in paperback. He left Philip K. Dick off the list, but I’ll forgive him. Dozens and dozens of outstanding writers wrote paperback originals during the post-war years.

History lessons aside, Paperback Jack is a work of fiction. Before the Second World War, Jacob Heppleman wrote stories when he wasn't working in his day job. He sold a few, then wrote a crime novel that was serialized over five issues of a pulp magazine. The novel caught the attention of an agent who persauded Heppleman to retain his services.

Heppleman is drafted before his agent can sell his novel. He comes home to an America that has abandoned the pulp market. Preferring the life of a writer to a job that made him listen to a boss, Heppleman tries to buy a slick portable typewriter from a pawnshop owner. When Heppleman attempts to negotiate a better price, the shop owner insults his war service. That night, Heppleman gets drunk, tosses a brick through the shop window, and steals the typewriter.

Heppleman writes a war novel and tracks down his old agent, who tells him that the public has had enough of war. Paperback crime novels with lurid covers (as well as westerns with lurid covers and comic books with lurid covers) are the new rage. Heppleman is skeptical until he learns that while he was overseas, the agent sold his crime novel to a paperback publisher for a hefty sum.

The publisher is focused on brand identity rather than literary quality. Heppleman has reservations about writing books that will be marketed with lurid covers, but he needs to make a living so he signs a book contract. He pitches a novel about a reformed fence. To gather accurate background information, Heppleman gains an introduction to an actual fence who expects a share of the profits (including movie royalties) if the book does well.

The publisher changes Heppleman’s name to Jack Holly, has the company’s best artist paint a lurid cover, and Heppleman is on a reluctant road to success. The plot takes Heppleman through his writing career, a courtship and marriage, a friendship with a gay cover artist, testimony before a congressional committee that puts on a show at the expense of comic books and paperbacks with lurid covers, and a conflict with the fence. The novel’s ending flashes forward to give Heppleman a chance to be grateful for an industry that allowed him to make a living.

Estleman always writes with economy and purpose. As his publisher says of Heppleman, Estleman is incapable of writing a bad sentence. He’s the kind of prolific writer whose books would have been published as paperback originals in the 1950s, although his work began in the 1980s and Paperback Jack is currently published in hardcover. I wouldn’t call the cover of Paperback Jack lurid (it’s missing blood and a dead body while the busty blonde only bares her shoulders), but it does suggest a tame version of a cover from the golden age of paperback originals.

Heppleman struggles to maintain his independence and decency while respecting the practical advice of his wife, who understands that raising a child requires at least a modest income. Heppleman, his wife, and the artist are all likable characters. The story is entertaining, but its true value lies in Estleman’s reminder that the post-war explosion of paperback originals made an important contribution to the history of American literature.

RECOMMENDED

Neom by Lavie Tidhar

Published by Tachyon Publications on November 9, 2022

Can robots have religion? A robot messiah known as the Golden Man parts the Red Sea in Neom, a sea that is polluted by the remains of smart matter. Other robots, built for war, follow the Golden Man. But will they destroy the city of Neom in the same way they turned New Punt to dust centuries earlier?

Neom is an actual place. The brainchild of a Saudi prince, Neom is a smart city (it’s advertised as a “cognitive city”) north of the Red Sea and east of Egypt in northeastern Saudi Arabia. Neom is also a science fiction novel set in the distant future. Part of the novel takes place in Neom.

The future Neom is in the same location, but it is now “a mammoth metropolitan area.” The Central Station spaceport near Tel Aviv is a short flight from Neom. Central Station is the title of Lavie Tidhar’s 2017 novel that begins the future history he continues here.

The spaceport ties Neom to the inhabited solar system. Wars have been fought. Some of the detritus of war, including talking jackals and machines that are either sentient or pretending to be, roam the desert outside of Neom. They have nothing else to do.

Residents of Neom are either privileged by wealth or serving the privileged. Mariam grew up in Neom and never left. Like other poor people in Neom, she takes on all the work she can find. She cleans the homes of rich people. Hiring a human cleaner is a status symbol, a step up from using a general-purpose household robot.

Among her other jobs, Mariam sells flowers. She sells a rose to an old robot who becomes one of the novel’s central characters. The robot had a name at one point, but it refuses to share that name with humans. The robot was constructed as a humanoid war machine but was repurposed before it gained the freedom of obsolescence.

Tidhar works seamless backstories into the novel without disturbing its flow with obvious exposition. We learn about the robot’s travels to other worlds, its interaction with other robots, and its knowledge of war and terrorartists.

Mariam also works for Mukhtar’s Bazaar of Rare and Exotic Machines. Mukhtar sometimes makes business deals of questionable legality, but the law is loosely enforced in Neom. Nasir, a law enforcement officer in Neom, spends most of his time writing tickets for littering and admiring Mariam.

Saleh is a child who managed to escape when his father was frozen in time, forever dying in an explosion that was manufactured by a terrorartist using a time-dilation bomb, “the final installation of a mad artist who took delight in destruction and death.” Saleh and his father used a portable generator to protect themselves as they scavenged the site for artifacts. Something went wrong, leaving Saleh to fend for himself. Saleh joins a caravan and makes his way to Neom, where he interacts with Mukhtar and Mariam (and eventually with the robot) as he tries to raise money to book passage to Mars, where he hopes to begin a new life.

Much of the plot surrounds the old robot’s quest to restore to life the Golden Man. The Golden Man has a heart (power source) and something the robot regards as a soul. The nature of the soul and of the Golden Man is a bit ambiguous. These are mysteries the reader is meant to ponder. I was enchanted by the story and happily mystified by its unanswered questions.

Whether robots can have a soul depends on whether souls exist and, if so, what they are and whether they are confined to humans. When fighting robots have no war to fight, they are left to wonder about their purpose. What do they do when they are too old or outdated to serve humans? One became a toilet on a spacecraft for two centuries to better understand bodily function. Some formed a monastery so they could try to understand God, to divine a purpose for their continued existence.

All of this — and much more that I haven’t touched upon — is fascinating. It draws from familiar themes of science fiction without dwelling on them, then peppers the story with new and creative ideas. The novel is short but eventful, always in motion but not driven by action. Perhaps because of its emphasis on robots, but primarily because it is such a quiet novel, Neom reminded me of Clifford D. Simak’s groundbreaking science fiction. Just as Neom is a cognitive city, Neom is a cognitive novel — a story to think about and, in the end, to appreciate as an innovative work in a genre that is too often stagnant.

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Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson

Published by Ecco on November 8, 2022

The nature and consequences of art are the focal points of Now Is Not the Time to Panic. An act of artistic creation changes lives, including the life of its creators.

Frances Budge, known to all as Frankie, is a wife and mother when she tells the story of the summer she met Benjamin Ezekiel Brown, known for the summer as Zeke. Frankie was sixteen, living in Coalfield with her mother and hell-raising triplet brothers. Zeke’s mother moved from Memphis to Coalfield to stay with Zeke’s grandmother after his father took up with another woman. Frankie and Zeke bonded over their status as the children of cheaters and their interest in artistic expression. Frankie wanted to be a writer. Zeke liked to draw and planned to go to art school.

Frankie tells the story to the reader because Mazzie Brower, an art critic, has discovered the role that Frankie played in the Coalfield Panic of 1996. Mazzie has only uncovered part of the story but she plans to write what she knows. Frankie will need to decide how much of the full story she is willing to reveal to a national audience.

Frankie and Zeke decided to spend the summer making art. Frankie remembered a copy machine that her brothers stole and stashed in their garage. The two teens decided to make and distribute a letter-size poster. Frankie wrote two sentences: The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us. Zeke added drawings of shacks with collapsing roofs and beds occupied by children in twisted sheets. Two giant hands with withered fingers almost grasp the children but the hands are suspended in motion, never quite able to touch them. Frankie and Zeke each contributed drops of blood to the poster, drops that looked like stars when the poster was copied. They made hundreds of copies and surreptitiously hung them on walls, telephone poles, and bulletin boards. They vowed to keep their roles as creators a secret. They wanted to observe the public reaction, if any, to their art without sullying the reaction by revealing themselves.

Frankie had no idea what the sentence meant when she wrote it. Zeke didn’t know what the drawing meant. True art, the novel suggests, comes from the heart or soul, not just from the mind. That’s why it doesn’t always turn out to be what the artist envisioned.

The story also suggests that what art means to the artist may be less significant than what it means to its audience. A local reporter, who happens to be dating Frankie’s mother, believes the posters are nefarious. His reporting is fueled by a preacher who imagines the posters originated with a satanic cult. Within a few weeks, the mysterious posters have gained national attention. Kids in other cities are making and hanging their own versions of the posters. As they do when they recognize something that speaks to them, people arrive at interpretations of the words and art that are relevant to their own lives, interpretations that never consciously occurred to Frankie or Zeke.

Events get out of hand in Coalfield when a couple of kids who were screwing in the woods claim they were kidnapped by the satanic cult to explain why they didn’t come home. Fat old men get beered up and patrol the streets with guns. Tragedies ensue on a couple of fronts, leading to national headlines about the Coalfield Panic. Frankie and Zeke feel vaguely responsible for the unintended consequences of their art, although Zeke is mostly worried about going to jail.

Apart from its commentary on the unexpected forces that art can unleash, Now Is Not the Time to Panic is remarkable for its insightful portrayal of two lost kids, each damaged by a cheating father, who are drawn to each other yet terrified of the prospect of having sex. They can kiss for hours, but they channel their sexual energy into art. “We’d kissed and our prudish brains couldn’t handle it, so we invented some mantra that would unlock the mysteries of the universe.”  Zeke shows signs of a manic-depressive disorder. Frankie has a fear of intimacy, yet her larger fear is that she’ll lose Zeke when the summer ends.

Frankie and Zeke have the kind of relationship that cannot last but is perfect for its moment, a relationship that can never be forgotten, that defines part of the life that follows. As they are making the poster, Frankie has the sense that she “would trace my whole life back to this moment, my finger bleeding, this boy’s beautiful and messed-up mouth on mine, a work of art between us. I knew it would probably fuck me up. And that was fine.” Near the novel’s end, as Frankie thinks about speaking to Mazzie Brower, we learn how the poster has affected the next decades of Frankie’s and Zeke’s lives.

Kevin Wilson tells the story in understated prose that is perfect for a novel that undersells its drama. Wilson proves that prose doesn’t need to be flashy and a story doesn’t need to be histrionic to be spellbinding. In a series of carefully crafted scenes during a single summer and a few additional days in the present, Wilson delivers more intensity and insight than most writers manage with twice as many words.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty

Published by Ace on October 4, 2022

After aliens made First Contact with humans, they allowed three humans to visit Station Eternity. One is Adrian Casserly-Berry, the ambassador from Earth, chosen not by humans but by the aliens. He happened to be the first human they met.

The second is Mallory Viridian, who doesn’t want anything to do with other humans because people tend to die in her presence. Why Mallory is a murder magnet is explained late in the novel. The explanation isn’t particularly convincing, but it is better than offering no explanation for a series of amazing coincidences. After all, the willingness to suspend disbelief in unlikely explanations is a condition that science fiction demands of its readers.

The third is Alexander “Xan” Morgan, a former member of the military who was assigned to mortuary duty. Xan has claimed asylum on the station, where he was apparently taken by accident after he either killed someone or avoided being killed. The military believes he went AWOL and various parts of the government want him back or dead.

Several alien species inhabit the station. Members of a prominent species appear to be made from rock. Others look like they are covered with bark. Some resemble wasps. They all consider themselves superior to humans and they’re probably right. The station is sentient, as are the alien shuttles, but the station needs to be in a symbiotic relationship with a member of a different species to function. An alien named Ren has bonded with the station. The station loses its mind when Ren is murdered.

Fortuitously, Mallory’s talent is the intuitive investigation of murders. Since so many murders occur when she is nearby, the talent comes in handy. Her distaste for being around murder victims and their killers explains why she prefers a nearly human-free station to life on Earth. Unfortunately for her but to the reader’s benefit, other humans arrive on a shuttle during a moment of crisis. Some of them are connected to the humans who are already on the station.

Mallory’s aunt Kathy is one of the station newcomers. She’s hoping to bring Mallory home. The reader knows that Mallory isn’t going anywhere until she solves Ren’s murder.

Calliope Oh is ex-military, having briefly served with Xan. They share a shameful secret. Oh is a civilian because her approach to military service was more creative than the military could stomach. She’s recruited as a military contractor for a mission that involves Xan.

Xan’s brother Phineas is a gay trans rapper who performs as Salty Fatts. He’s recruited to accompany Oh, but he needs to talk to Xan anyway about Xan’s recent inheritance.

Lovely Brown played the violin until she lost a finger in a knife fight. Her grandmother wins a trip for two to the space station. She brings Lovely in the hope that alien technology will restore the missing finger, although she also has an ulterior motive for making the trip.

During the first half of the novel, the story pauses frequently to tell the reader the backstory of every significant human character. It is fortunate that the backstories are interesting because the plot doesn’t really get underway until the backstories have all been established. Once it starts rolling, it combines action with so many seemingly random events that readers might need a flowchart to keep track of the plot and the relationships between the characters.

While the human characters are well developed, the aliens are standard fare. Life on Earth is largely neglected, apart from some references to fear of aliens. The plot includes so many twists and turns that the reader might become lost. On several occasions, I asked myself “why did that happen?” Maybe those questions were answered by the novel’s end, but I asked the question too many times to be certain that the story resolved my uncertainties.

Although I did not solve the murder mystery, I stopped trying long before the reveal. In fact, I often forgot that a murder mystery was driving the plot. The story entertains despite its maddening lack of focus. The characters kept me engaged even when I felt in danger of losing the plot.

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