The Last Paladin by P.T. Deutermann

Published by St. Martin's Press on July 19, 2022

P.T. Deutermann writes novels about naval warfare during World War II. I’m a particular fan of his submarine stories. The Last Paladin is set on a destroyer escort rather than a submarine, but the shhip is tasked with sinking Japanese submarines. The story is loosely based on an actual ship.

Mariono de Tomasi relies on his Sicilian heritage to explain his single-minded quest for vengeance after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — an attack that nearly killed him and that took the lives of men under his command as Japanese airplanes strafed sailors who were swimming for their lives. Tomasi is the commanding officer of the USS Holland, a destroyer escort that is geared out for detecting and sinking submarines.

The CO’s executive officer is a bright young electrical engineer named Ephraim Enright. While Tomasi has experience, Enright is full of knowledge and good sense.

Having worked alongside the British to hunt German submarines in the Atlantic, the Holland is ordered to join the fleet in the Pacific. Tomasi’s arrival is delayed by circumstances beyond his control. The commodore running the show at Tulagi is displeased with Tomasi’s tardiness. The commodore is expecting 800 ships in the Pacific Fleet to show up and doesn’t have much use for the Holland. Tomasi receives ambiguous orders that amount to “get lost.” Tomasi decides to use his talent at hunting submarines to look for a rumored picket of Japanese subs that might be awaiting the arrival of the Pacific Fleet so that advance warning can be given to Japan.

Operating pretty much on its own, the Holland enjoys unprecedented success in locating and destroying Japanese submarines. The job almost feels too easy. Although the story moves quickly and is always interesting, the tension that Deutermann brings to his other novels is absent for much of The Last Paladin.

Deutermann redeems himself in the later chapters. The Holland is attacked by torpedoes and later by Japanese aircraft, giving the story the kind of suspense that makes me eager to read Deutermann’s novels.

Tomasi and Enright are a bit one-dimensional, but this isn’t a character driven novel. As was true in Deutermann’s last novel, the intense hatred and stereotyping of Japanese culture is discomforting. I recognize that people felt that way during the war, so Tomasi’s attitude is historically accurate even if it is cringeworthy. The stereotype of Sicilians as creatures of vengeance adds to the sense that Tomasi is not a particularly likable man. Still, he doesn’t pretend to be. And even unlikeable heroes can tell a good war story.

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The Pink Hotel by Liska Jacobs

Published by MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux on July 19, 2022

The Pink Hotel is a luxury hotel in Los Angeles. The color, location, and history suggest that it is the Beverly Hills Hotel. The manager points out locations in the hotel that were favored by Sinatra and Madonna and hundreds of other celebrities. Many of the hotel’s guests and residents are living lives of waste and leisure, having been born into money that they have not yet managed to squander, although they are doing their best.

The hotel is undergoing a renovation. Half the rooms are unavailable. The other half re in high demand, thank to wildfires that are threatening mansions in the hills. One of the bungalows is the permanent home of a survivor of five marriages, each new husband wealthier than the last. “They’re all dead now,” she explains. “Every single one. I’m all that’s left.” She relies on her pet monkey for companionship. Maybe that’s better than searching for a less reliable love.

The story is of a new marriage and its immediate disintegration. Keith Collins manages a small hotel and restaurant outside of San Francisco that has recently earned a Michelin star. Kit is a part-time waitress who fell in love with Keith. At Keith’s urging, she is studying to earn her certification as a sommelier. When Richard Beaumont and his bored wife Ilka visit the restaurant, Beaumont suggests that Keith might be the right material to work at his pink hotel. Keith and Kit are both gorgeous and Keith has the kind of superficial charm that plays well in LA. After Beaumont learns that Keith and Kit will be getting married, he offers them a deep honeymoon discount at his hotel and suggests that it would be worth Keith’s time to visit the place. The honeymoon offer is actually the idea of Beaumont’s wife, Ilka, who feels inspired by the couple’s young love. Once they are at the hotel, Ilka sets out to test whether their love is real — because, if it is not, then no love is real, including her own.

The guests and staff are amused by Keith and Kit. They clearly don’t belong among the elite. Keith has convinced himself that he belongs, but he feels a need to assure others that he recognizes Kit is “not cut from the same cloth as them.” He refers, for example, to her “hillbilly laugh.” Keith is clearly underselling Kit and Kit is not amused.

Since wildfires have left the hotel understaffed, Keith volunteers to perform various managerial tasks, expecting that his performance will lead to an assistant manager position at the hotel. Keith claims that he’s doing it for Kit, but Kit isn’t happy that she’s being ignored all day. For most of the novel, it isn’t clear whether Keith is even in the running for the assistant manager position. Beaumont might simply be using him as free labor in a time of crisis, or playing a prank on a middle class kid. Kit understands that he wants the job because of “the throbbing empty center of him, the void he tries to fill with expensive pretty things in the hope he will feel whole.” Kit would like Keith to make her feel whole, but he’s more obsessed with pretty things than his pretty wife.

Life at the hotel is frivolous. As Ilka observes near the novel’s end, “In this place, nothing real can survive.” Fires are devastating the hills surrounding Los Angeles, riots have broken out in the streets, but hotel guests are oblivious. They demand constant entertainment and endless supplies of Champaign and cocaine, anything to alleviate the boredom of wealth, to distract them from reality. Toxic twins have given their caracals the run of the hotel. The twins torment Marguerite, a spoiled teen who treats Kit like a new toy. Marguerite dresses up Kit in couture, changes her makeup and shows her off to her wealthy friends. By the end of the novel’s week-long timespan, the hotel has succumbed to the anarchy of its guests. Nothing real is surviving, but little about the lives of the hotel’s guests is real. In the end, they are no better than the protestors who riot outside the hotel, a class war fought without class or dignity on either side.

Love might be real but what is love in the Pink Hotel? “Love is a fantasy,” a hotel guest opines. Beaumont is having an affair with Coco, the hotel’s most competent employee who is nevertheless a glorified waitress. Since her husband is giving her no attention on their honeymoon, Kit is spending too much time with a hot construction worker. Keith reacts by responding to Ilka’s flirtation. This might be the stuff of soap opera, but it’s fun.

While mocking the wealthy is always a good time, the novel’s greater value lies in its dissection of the Collins’ marriage. Kit already feels like she has failed as a wife. She’s torn between love for her husband and a desire for the freedom she had before she became Mrs. Collins. When she tells Keith she doesn’t want to be a sommelier, that she might want to go back to school or become an artist, his response sends the message that he doesn’t believe she’s sufficiently smart or talented to make it in the world without his guidance. The honeymoon opens Kit’s eyes to the reality of her relationship. At the same time, Keith really does love Kit. He knows he should listen to her, knows that they should talk about their problems, knows what he should say to her. If Keith and Kit would just talk, their love might produce a middle ground that allows them to flourish independently and together. They both know that but the words never come.

The woman with five dead husbands might provide the key to the novel when she muses: “Learning how to be so filled with anger and hurt, sadness and fear — all the horrors life can throw at you, and still somehow offer love. Because how else could any of this work? Love despite the monster. Without it there’s nothing.” The novel ends without resolving the issues that are pulling the Collins' marriage apart, but exploring those issues in such a chaotic setting is sufficient. Engrossing events that cause multiple characters to melt down, just as the surrounding world is doing, make The Pink Hotel a bizarre but strangely compelling story.

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The Big Dark Sky by Dean Koontz

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Published by Thomas & Mercer on July 19, 2022

Dean Koontz returns to horror fiction (or something close to it) in The Big Dark Sky. It is a welcome change from his Jane Hawk thrillers. Koontz gives himself an amusing plug by having one of the characters rave about Jane Hawk (twice), but Koontz is at his best when his goal is to make the reader afraid to turn out the light after closing the book.

Birth defects left Jimmy Alvarez unable to speak until he was possessed by an entity he identifies as the Thing. Jimmy was the secret friend of Joanna “Jojo” Chase when she was young. She thought it was special that Jimmy only spoke to her. He was kind and gentle and seemed to control animals, plenty of which inhabit the woods in Montana where Jimmy and Joanna lived. As an adult, however, Joanna has forgotten that Jimmy ever existed.

The novel begins with exploding houses and other attempts, sometimes successful, to eliminate people on Xanthus Toller’s death list. The government views those deaths as a national security issue — not surprising, given the way they are accomplished.

Ganesh Patel is part of a group tasked with stopping Toller. Ganesh and Artimis Selene know Jimmy’s Thing as the Other. The Other controls electronics as well as animals, although it has a limited range. It has been watching humans and probing their minds for 4,000 years. It was eventually drawn to the dark philosophy of Asher Optime, a disciple of Toller’s Restoration Movement. The Movement advocates restoring the planet to its natural state by wiping out humankind. Optime is writing a manifesto about the benefits of human extinction. The true purpose of the manifesto is to glorify Optime, but the Other agrees with the Restoration Movement’s goal and might have the power to achieve it.

Koontz serves up a collection of characters who each bring something of value to the story. Joanna’s tragic childhood encased her in an “emotional cocoon.” Through dreams and phone calls, Joanna remembers Jimmy and understands that he is asking for her help. Joanna and Jimmy are easily the novel’s most sympathetic characters, the purest of heart.

Ganesh is a powerful government contractor who has the ear of the president. Artimis is his AI, who was programmed with a female personality matrix to avoid the male drive for conquest and power. The novel’s ending suggests that female personalities can be just as dangerous, albeit in a different way. Maybe Koontz will explore that thought in a sequel.

Wyatt Rider is a private detective. A billionaire who has been acquiring land in Montana hires Wyatt to investigate a phenomenon near his isolated Montana home that he perceives as supernatural. Wyatt enlists the help of a computer specialist named Kenny Deetle. Kenny’s new girlfriend, Leigh Ann Bruce, rides to the rescue with Kenny and Ganesh when Wyatt needs help.

Optime captures people and tenderizes them with terror before killing them to advance his Restoration project. Two of his recent captives are a smart kid named Colson Fielding and a resilient woman named Ophelia Poole. Both play an important role when the characters eventually come together in Montana for a confrontation with Optime and the Other. Resourceful children and smartass women are the kind of likeable characters readers expect from Koontz.

As have other writers, Koontz ties Carl Jung’s theory of collective unconsciousness to quantum mechanics and the notion that reality does not arrive at a fixed state until it is observed. While the notion that people manufacture reality is fascinating, Koontz’s attempt to relate the theory to the plot is awkward.

Physics aside, Koontz is a gifted storyteller. His skillful blend of swift action and sympathetic characterization assures that the reader will never lose focus. None of the padding that impaired the Jane Hawk novels burdens The Big Dark Sky. The story does not depend on the supernatural, but it straddles the line between science fiction and horror as Koontz sprinkles in the kind of chilling scenes that defined his reputation as a horror novelist. While the plot elements are overly familiar, Koontz waves them together in a way that almost makes the novel seem fresh.

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Locklands by Robert Jackson Bennett

Published by ‎ Del Rey on June 28, 2022

Locklands is the concluding novel of the Founders trilogy, following Foundryside and Shorefall. The central characters have established a new settlement called Giva that they enshroud in fog as they advance their war with Tevanne, trying to save as many people from conquest and slavery as they can. None of this will make much sense to readers who jump into Locklands without reading the first two novels.

Using the magic/technology of scriving, key characters are “twinned” with each other, sharing their thoughts as if they were inhabiting the same body. The same scriving allows multiple characters to join in something like a group chat. This might be the only way that people can truly understand each other and thus the only way to overcome mindless hate. Unfortunately, scriving only exists in fantasy.

We learn more in Locklands about the relationship between Clef and his son Crasedes, a father-son tragedy that departs from literary tradition by basin gtheir conflict on the desire to alter reality (although, in a less literal sense, that might be something that underlies most parental-child conflicts). Building on that foundation, Tevanne now wants to open a door into the substructure of reality, the boiler room holding the machinery that defines the reality we perceive. Tevanne’s plan is to force a reboot with the expectation that God will do it right the second time. Wiping out reality as a solution to humanity’s problems seems extreme, but Tevanne is one of the hierophants who shaped the current reality with scriving so he has a bit of a god complex.

The plot is an action/quest story that has central characters (led by Sancia, the first significant character we meet in the trilogy) venturing into battle to thwart Tevanne’s plan. The novel ends with an epic battle between Clef, Crasedes, and Tevanne. Other characters step into the battle as needed to secure a victory. Despite bogging down from time to time, the story reaches a satisfying conclusion.

Most central characters undergo a transformation over the course of the trilogy. Crasedes, who starts as more of a legend than an actual character, is given a meaningful role in Locklands, a role that has him seeking atonement. Clef starts the trilogy as a sentient but sleeping key, turns into a more substantial character who can’t remember much of his past, and regains those memories (for better or worse) in Locklands. Clef’s story is also one of atonement.

The need to sacrifice for the greater good is a constant theme in the trilogy. Several characters make sacrifices in Locklands: Beatrice, Sancia’s lover and partner, sacrifices the architecture of her relationship with Sancia; Sancia, who sacrificed some years from her life in the last novel, joins Clef in making a life-altering sacrifice that seems to have been destined since the first novel.

The grand lesson of this trilogy is that love conquers all — or more specifically, that we can’t fix the world by meddling with reality because “a better world can only be brought by what we give to one another, and nothing more.” A debatable proposition, but it’s fair to say that destroying reality and hoping God will build a better one isn’t a smart solution to humanity’s problems.

Characters have an annoying tendency to say “Oh no. Oh, no, no, no” every time they face adversity. The novel has too many hokey moments as characters embrace and profess their love before stepping into danger. The book is needlessly wordy, perhaps a hundred pages longer than it needs to be, but it does bring the trilogy to an exciting conclusion.

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The 6:20 Man by David Baldacci

Published by ‎ Grand Central Publishing on July 12, 2022

Travis Devine, former Army Ranger (because what thriller hero isn’t?), works in an entry-level finance job for the investment firm Cowl & Comely. Brad Cowl got a journalist fired for questioning his origin story. He claims to have built himself up from scratch after his parents squandered the family wealth, but he’s the squanderer. Yet he came into a boatload of money and became a Wall Street power player overnight. How did that happen?

Devine isn’t allowed on the 51st floor. Devine has little curiosity about the floor until Sara Ewes, a co-worker he once shagged (in violation of company shagging rules), is found dead in a company closet, having apparently hung herself. Of course, she was murdered. And of course, Devine is a suspect, in part because he stupidly evades disclosing his one-night stand with Sara. Nor does he tell the police about the mysterious, untraceable emails he receives that were sent by someone who had intimate knowledge of the crime. Why does Devine make these poor decisions? Only because the plot requires him to be kinda stupid.

In the time-honored tradition of thriller heroes, Devine decides to clear his name by finding the real killer. Not that he has much choice in the matter. A retired General recruits Devine to investigate his employer, assuring Devine’s compliance by threatening to expose a bad deed that he committed while he was still in the Army.

Devine’s investigation takes him to Sara’s parents (intolerant Christian missionaries from whom Sara was estranged); to co-worker Jenn Stamos, who seems particularly devastated by Sara’s death; and to Cowl’s live-in lover, Michelle, whose bikini-clad body he admires every morning when the 6:20 train passes Cowl’s swimming pool.

Devine lives outside of New York City in an apartment with three roommates. One is a Russian hacker. One is an entrepreneur who has started a dating site. One is a recent law school graduate. The reader will intuit that at least one of the roommates is not what he or she appears to be.

Much of the story — particularly a bizarre scheme to send messages with bikinis — is farfetched, but such is the way of the modern thriller. Still, some plot elements are clever and the story holds together. David Baldacci keeps surprises well hidden and plants enough false clues to prompt guesses whether characters are good guys or bad guys.

There is little depth to the characters, but tough guy protagonists aren’t known for their depth. Devine’s guilt about his military misconduct doesn’t suffice to make him interesting. Devine’s ability to outfight three attackers (he does that multiple times) substitutes for his absent personality, as is typical of tough guy thrillers. Yet gratuitous displays of toughness never dominate the plot. I consider that a plus; fans of gratuitous violence might disagree.

The story seems to set up Devine as the lead character in a new series, as if Baldacci isn’t juggling enough series protagonists without adding another tough guy to the mix. I recommend The 6:20 Man for the interesting story it tells, not because Devine stands out in the crowded world of thriller tough guy protagonists.

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