Righteous Prey by John Sandford

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on October 4, 2022

Righteous Prey is a Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers crossover novel. Davenport novels are usually a bit darker than Flowers novels. Righteous Prey is essentially a buddy novel that balances humor and darkness. Davenport and Flowers banter their way through the plot as they try to stop five killers who are targeting assholes. The reader might have trouble deciding whether to cheer for the killers or for the cops.

Five billionaires who became wealthy through bitcoin investments are bored. They meet Vivian Zhao at a bitcoin convention. Zhao persuades them that the country is full of assholes who need killing and that people with money and time on their hands are well positioned to kill them. Zhao doesn’t have money of her own but she’s full of anger, largely because she doesn’t have money of her own. She’s taking out her anger on assholes by organizing a group that identifies itself as The Five. Each killing is accompanied by a press release taking credit for making the world a better place, one asshole at a time.

Readers who condemn John Sandford for being liberal (Amazon “reviews” suggest that those readers are plentiful) might be happy to learn that the killers are liberals. They are, at least, fed up with conservative and/or racist assholes. One victim is a criminal who preys on elderly Asians. One is a corrupt Texas politician who rails against migrants. One operates a hedge fund that acquires businesses and fires their employees. One might as well be Alex Jones.

Sandford likes to play with the professional rivalries between the FBI, the federal Marshals, and state or local cops. The “real cops” view the FBI’s “Special Agents” as useless, a perception that Sandford borrows from the real world. In this novel as in many of Sandford’s, all law enforcers not named Davenport or Flowers are just getting in the way.

The novel makes a strong indictment of bump stocks (as did the shooter in the Las Vegas massacre), not that the NRA or Republican state attorneys general care about mass shootings. To a lesser extent (primarily through a brief televised appearance by the wives of Davenport and Flowers), the novel spotlights ghost guns and suppressors, contributors to gun violence that don’t seem to be on any national politician’s radar.

The plot’s lighter side focuses on banter about Flowers’ fledgling career as a thriller novelist. He is finishing his second novel and just signed a contract for a third. I enjoyed the Inside Baseball view of publishing — just enough information to offer a glimpse of writing as a profession without bogging down the story. The best advice Flowers gets is from another cop: “Don’t make your hero into superman. . . . You know, they’re in thirty-two gunfights in three days against a hundred terrorists and get a flesh wound in the shoulder.” That’s a pet peeve I share, although it’s even worse in movies than in novels.

Fortunately, Sandford limits the shootouts but still manages to keep the story in motion. Action doesn’t always need to consist of gunplay and fistfights, although there is a realistic gunfight at the novel’s end. Sandford is never afraid to have Lucas and/or Flowers sustain more than a flesh wound, but in the interest of avoiding spoilers, I won’t discuss the battle’s outcome. It suffices to say that this is a thriller with real thrills and that bullets fired rapidly with a bump stock have consequences.

There isn’t much to say about a Sandford novel. They’re always compulsively readable. This one is no exception. The Inside Baseball paragraphs about writing explain how to make a decent income writing thrillers. Not everyone can do it. Sandford deserves every penny he earns.

RECOMMENDED

Next in Line by Jeffrey Archer

Published by ‎ HarperCollins on September 27, 2022

One wonders how many novels Jeffrey Archer can milk from the career of William Warwick and his relentless battle against the nefarious criminal Miles Faulkner, as well as Faulkner’s unethical lawyer, Booth Watson. At least one more, apparently, as Next in Line leaves a plot thread dangling.

Princess Diana, the world’s favorite royal after the Queen grew to old to do anything interesting, is taking a break from Prince Charles. She’s yachting (and presumably canoodling) with a rich fellow when terrorists controlled by Gaddafi capture the yacht and take her captive. That’s a crime that differs from William Warwick’s usual fare. Perhaps Archer thought it was time to add some excitement to William’s drab life.

Now if Diana had actually been kidnapped, the world might have noticed, so this book might need to be viewed as an alternate history. In a brief statement at the end, Archer apologizes for making small changes in history while applauding himself for his meticulous research.

In any event, the kidnapping is a late addition to the plot. Most of the novel follows the usual path of a William Warwick story. William’s pretentious father is again prosecuting Faulkner, this time for the prison escape that occurred in Over My Dead Body. Watson tries to enrich himself by defrauding Faulkner and his client’s ex-wife Christina, who is once again playing tug-of-war with her ex-husband over his art collection. Unless it’s Christina’s art collection now — it’s difficult to keep track.

Inspector Ross Hogan takes a job as Diana’s personal protection officer, while William is assigned to an undercover job with Royal Protection (the British equivalent of America’s Secret Service, albeit charged with protecting royals rather than politicians). Warwick is investigating fraudulent claims for expense reimbursements submitted by the cops, which seems small potatoes compared to the money spent by British citizens to fund the royals. It is a big deal to William, however, who is absolute in his view that the police should never break the law — unless, of course, he’s kidnapping Faulkner in Spain and hauling him back to England without bothering to pursue an extradition. Like most people who make a show of their rectitude, William’s principles are flexible when it comes to William.

The story is a bit dull, if only because it seems like something series readers have encountered before — four times before when it comes to crimes involving Faulkner’s art collection. While the plot enlivens when the terrorists make their appearance, the terrorists are nearly as stupid as Bond villains. They discuss their plans within earshot of witnesses, not pausing to consider that the witnesses might have been planted by the police because they speak the terrorists’ language. They spare the life of a cop for no obvious reason other than Archer’s desire to avoid disappointing his readers by killing off a character they might care about.

Lengthy bits of the novel focus on two British obsessions: cricket and the correct protocol to follow when encountering a member of the royal family. British readers might find these bits of interest. I’ve read several novels that describe cricket matches and still can’t figure out how the match is scored, although I do like the customary break for tea in the middle of the game. Alan Lazard recently pretended to pour tea (or maybe a psychedelic drink) after scoring a touchdown for the Packers, but I can’t see impatient and uncivilized Americans tolerating a real tea break in any sport. On the other hand, some Americans do take an interest in royals, at least when they’re misbehaving. Archer portrays Diana as a misbehaving wife, although the world was willing to forgive Diana anything for enduring a marriage to the current king.

Maybe fans of royal scandals are a good audience for this book. I wouldn’t recommend the novel as a standalone because it is premised on so many events developed in the earlier novels. Readers who read the first four might as well read this one, but the last novel remains the best in the series, probably because it overcame the privileged stuffiness of the central characters.

RECOMMENDED

The Other Side of Night by Adam Hamdy

Published by Atria Books on October 11, 2022

The Other Side of Night seems to be a story of crime and failed romance until it completely jumps the track. In the end, it is an unsuccessful mixture of genres, borrowing the worst of each to create a complete mess.

David and Elizabeth Asha had a son named Elliot. David’s best friend (and Elliot’s godfather) was fellow physicist Ben Elmys. Harriet (“Harri”) Kealty was crazy in love with Ben before he ghosted her for reasons she does not understand. David apparently ghosted Elliot by jumping off a cliff. Ben adopts Elliot and then ghosts him.

Harri is a former cop. She was accused for no obvious reason of pushing someone into the path of a moving train. No evidence supported the accusation but somehow a vindictive superior orchestrated the loss of Harri’s employment. Since then, she has been drifting, although she saw herself being saved by her deep love of Ben.

The descriptions of Harri’s feelings are the stuff of cheesy romance fiction: “His eyes told her everything she needed to know. They gazed into hers as though nothing else existed and she was in his world.” Gak. “She felt a thrill of excitement as he took her hand.” She “wished they could stay in this moment forever.” Trite much? “This is what she’d been searching for. A soul to complete her.” Seriously?

Harri wonders whether bitterness might cause her to suspect that Ben had something to do with David’s death as well as the disappearance of Elizabeth’s cancerous corpse and the death of a cop who used to be Harri’s partner. Although she is no longer a cop, Harri can’t stop investigating any suspicion that pops into her mind. She wonders whether the cancer that killed Elizabeth could have deliberately induced. She wonders whether Ben might actually be Elliot’s father. At some point Harri tells a monstrous lie about Ben for no clear reason, yet the reader is meant to forgive and even root for her. I never found a reason to care about Harri.

After dabbling in cheesy romance and the themes of crime fiction, Adam Hamdy turns the novel into a science fiction story, substituting philosophical gibberish for a sophisticated explanation of its premise. Since that premise comes late in the novel, I won’t spoil it by ridiculing it, except to say that science fiction only works if it is based on science rather than gimmickry. Hamdy relies on his implausible gimmick to explain Elizabeth’s disappearing body and David’s disappearance from Elliott’s life. It is no surprise when David reveals that he has abandoned physics for poetry since his ability to explain physics amounts to “all the secrets of the universe are inside this snow globe, but you can’t possibly understand them.” How convenient.

Apart from the failed attempt to save a dying story with an injection of B-movie science, the most significant problem with The Other Side of Night is structural. Point of view shifts a few times, which is fine, but relatively late in the novel, we get: “Readers, Ben has his version of what happened, but I think it’s tainted by his role in events. . . . I think it is important that you hear the truth from me.” Huh? “Me” is the person telling the first-person story, so why is there suddenly an overarching narrator with the power to overrule the story told by other characters? The über-narrator offers an explanation I can only describe as lame.

The story is soaked in melodrama. Dead mama melodrama, dead wife melodrama, abandoned child melodrama, lost love melodrama, all seriously weepy stuff. Even the science fiction that explains the plot is melodramatic. Overwrought melodrama, cheesy romance, and implausible science fiction combine in a novel that can’t decide what it wants to be and never finds its footing.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Wehrwolf by Alma Katsu

Published by ‎ Amazon Original Stories on September 27, 2022

“The Wehrwolf” is a long short story but probably too short to be called a novella. The story is set in the German forest where the Brothers Grimm collected folklore to weave into their fairy tales. While the stories were later sanitized to appeal to the delicate sensibilities of city kids, Alma Katsu suggests that sturdy Germans of the forest were accustomed to seeing their children mauled in the woods and prepared their kids for the agony of life by terrorizing them with gruesome stories. Perhaps the Grimms unwittingly prepared Germans to accept Hitler and the Nazi Party.

Hans Sauer has returned from the front at the war’s end. Perhaps he is a deserter, although he claims he returned to protect his village from approaching allies. His return coincides with the gruesome death of a Roma in the woods, a man apparently torn apart by animals. Hans wants Uwe Fuchs to join his band of villagers in protecting the village. The Nazis have encouraged such local militias to defend the Homeland.

Uwe is uncertain about joining Hans, but he’s curious when Hans claims to have killed Russian soldiers. The bodies seem to have been attacked by animals. Uwe refuses to listen to the entreaties of his wife because he wears the pants in the family. The importance of marital equality, or maybe just "listen to your wife," might be one of the tale's intended lessons.

To be initiated into the band, Uwe is locked into a cellar with Jurgen Jäger, about whom dark stories are told. When Jurgen ties an old leather belt around his waist, he becomes a monster. A myth associates the belt with the devil, but to Uwe, it looks like an ordinary belt that might be found hanging in any barn. “A simple thing can turn you into a monster,” Uwe thinks, a thought that is presumably another of the story’s lessons. After Uwe is initiated, Hans can turn him into a werewolf simply by donning the belt.

Uwe’s disregard of his wife’s advice leads to an ending that is worthy of one of Grimm’s uncensored stories. Suffice it to say that Uwe learns and then teaches a lesson.

Like a fairy tale, the story invites the reader to draw obvious conclusions. While Uwe doesn’t want to accept the fact that he’s a monster, a reader might conclude that Uwe’s decision to join a militia to fight in support of a Nazi government is what makes him a monster. Not surprisingly, a willingness to kill Russian who are fighting Germany easily translates into a willingness to kill Germans who do not meet a standard of normalcy demanded by the werewolves. Apart from the irony of Aryan werewolves judging others for being abnormal, the story teaches another lesson: Those who give themselves the power to condemn others will inevitably misuse that power to enforce shared bigotry.

There are other lessons here about resisting the temptation of evil even if it makes us feel strong, the triumph of empathy over supremacy, and the immorality of vigilantism and unregulated militias. If this is a modern fairy tale, I’m not sure I would want a small child to read it, but it would have value for older kids and adults with weak minds who are attracted to authoritarian militias. I’m recommending it to everyone else for the polished prose.

RECOMMENDED

The Furrows by Namwali Serpell

Published by Hogarth on September 27, 2022

Cee watched her younger brother get caught in the furrows while swimming in the sea. She rescued Wayne (or at least his body) but nearly drowned, passing out on the beach. When she woke up, a man in a blue windbreaker drove her home, then disappeared. Cee had no idea what became of Wayne.

Cee was walking to school with Wayne when a car struck him. The driver was wearing a blue windbreaker. He carried Wayne home. Cee went to the bathroom but the man was gone by the time she finished. Cee had no idea what became of Wayne.

Cee was watching Wayne enjoy a ride on a carousel when he simply disappeared from his horse. Yes, a man with a blue windbreaker appears.

Cee is Cassandra Williams, the product of an interracial marriage. She narrates different versions of Wayne’s disappearance. Each story unfolds with dream-logic, details changing as the story progresses. Therapists have no success finding a useful memory, a failure that they attribute to a traumatic event that Cee must have buried. Yet from conversations with reliable sources, it seems that some of the details are true. Wayne disappeared. His body has never been found. Cee handed a blue windbreaker to her father. A pocket in the jacket apparently contained a clue to its owner.

As a young adult, Cee sees Wayne in crowds. She writes his name without realizing it. Cee is sure that Wayne died when was 7 and she was 12, but her mother is convinced that he is still alive. If he’s alive, she can’t blame Cee for killing him.

Cee’s mother has started a foundation called Vigil to support parents of missing children — parents who refuse to accept that their kids are probably dead. She is one of those grieving parents who has made a lucrative career for herself by exploiting tragedy. Perhaps that’s why she can’t admit that Wayne is gone; the media love the missing children of white mothers, but a dead black kid is just a statistic.

The Furrows is a novel of ambiguity. What happened to Wayne? Is he alive or dead? Did he disappear in each of the ways that Cee describes, perhaps in alternate realities? Is the young black man who took the name Wayne the real Wayne Williams and, if so, why do Cee and her parents fail to recognize him, despite the startling resemblance between Wayne’s father and the new Wayne? Why is the new Wayne following Cee and insinuating himself into her life?

A jarring change in the point of view occurs when the narrator shifts from Cee to the young man who calls himself Wayne. The new Wayne tells stories about being orphaned when his parents were murdered in bed, stories about life on the streets, stories about prison. Stories about going to school with a kid named Wayne.

The new Wayne’s mentor spouted glib theories about time that add to the novel’s ambiguity; in the realm of theoretical physics, time is ambiguous. The new Wayne seems to have alternate realities of his own; he sees himself on video stomping a victim during a fight but is sure he wasn’t there.

More interesting than the novel’s issues with time are its issues with race. Wayne’s white mother can’t accept his death, but his black father tells Cee “for us, death is everywhere.” When Cee’s mother accuses the new Wayne of stalking the family, it’s clear that the police will take her side to the detriment of the new Wayne.

Ambiguous novels sometimes fail to resonate with me. The Furrows had me scratching my head at times. I’m not sure what to make of the emphasis on time. I think Namwali Serpell tries to make a larger point about living in the moment, paying attention to life, but I’m not sure if that is her intent. I didn’t understand the ending at all. Still, the ambiguity prompted me to think about deeper meanings. This clearly isn’t the kind of ambiguity that signals an author who doesn’t know what she wants to say. Readers who give the novel a second reading (or a very close first reading) might unpack more of its secrets.

The story makes insightful points about the impact of race and class on grieving and socially acceptable responses to loss. Other readers might find other insights. In the end, some novels succeed because they make the reader feel (in the words of new Wayne) “a certain kind of way.” I’d put The Furrows into that category.

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