Sparring Partners by John Grisham

Published by Doubleday on May 31, 2022

Sparring Partners collects three novellas. None have courtroom scenes, so readers looking for legal thrillers rather than human interest stories will probably be disappointed.

The best entry, buried in the middle, is closer in length to a short story. “Strawberry Moon” plays to John Grisham’s strength by exposing the injustice of putting people to death. The story follows the last hours in the life of Cody Wallace, who committed a series of burglaries with his brother when they were both teens. The last burglary went south and his brother died in a shootout with the homeowners. Cody didn’t have a gun or fire a shot but he was convicted and sentenced to death for murder. Southern states love their executions, so the governor isn’t going to save Cody. The story’s last pages, as a sympathetic guard gives Cody one last look at a strawberry moon, is consistent with Grisham’s best work.

The first novella, “Homecoming,” features recurring character Jake Brigance, the protagonist of Grisham’s most celebrated novel, A Time to Kill. Jake is scratching out a living as a lawyer in Ford County, but his role in the story is to scope out the trouble that his friend Mack Stafford might face if Stafford returns to Mississippi. Stafford forged signatures and made off with client funds, crimes that might have gone undetected. He wants to reconnect with his daughters but doesn’t know whether the coast is clear. Jake and Stafford’s bombastic lawyer do the legwork that allows Stafford to meet with his older daughter. The story leaves Stafford’s future unsettled while raising interesting questions about whether Stafford should bite the bullet if that’s what it takes to keep his daughter in his life. Otherwise, the story is only mildly interesting.

The title novella is “Sparring Partners.” A St. Louis personal injury lawyer, Rusty Malloy, has lost his knack for winning large verdicts. He just lost his fifth trial in a row. His firm is in debt. Thanks to a partnership agreement that their father insisted upon before he was disbarred and sent to prison. Rusty and his brother Kirk are stuck in the practice despite their mutual hatred. Despite not being a partner, Diantha Bradshaw manages the firm and provides the only bridge between the brothers. The relationship between the brothers becomes nastier than usual when their father schemes to get out of prison early, while the brothers scheme to profit from his continuing incarceration. Only Diantha is smart enough to find a way to avoid the worst consequences of the Malloy family’s implosion.

“Sparring Partners” is notable for its inside look at how law firms owned by family members operate, how lawyers might be tempted by the dark side of money, and how cases of financial fraud are built. The plot is straightforward, holding no surprises despite its intrigue. The characters are unlikable. Even Diantha is driven by self-interest more than integrity or respect for the law. The story doesn’t evoke an emotional response, although it does have something useful to say about the ugly intersection of money, politics, and law firms.

John Grisham will never win awards for his prose style, but he has a knack for stripping a story down to its essence and keeping it moving. I’m not a huge Grisham fan — I’d rather read legal thrillers by Scott Turow or John Lescroart — but he excels at offering an insider’s perspective on the dysfunction of the legal system.

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Beyond the Breach by Ed Brisson (writer) and Damian Couceiro (artist)

Published by Aftershock Comics on May 17, 2022

Beyond the Breach is a graphic novel in five chapters, representing the five issues of the comic book of the same name in which the story first appeared. Ed Brisson tries to add human interest to a humans vs monsters story by giving soap opera lives to the humans. The monsters, on the other hand, have typical monster personalities, in that eating humans seems to be their only interest.

Vanessa’s husband Tristan was shagging her sister while Vanessa was in the hospital watching her mother die. That seems like the beginning of a bad drama, but in just a couple of pages Vanessa, while celebrating her freedom on a road trip, is involved in a multi-car crash instigated by monsters that eat the accident victims. Vanessa is remarkably unscathed. Brave woman that she is, Vanessa saves a kid named Dougie who is trapped in one of the wrecked vehicles before the monsters turn him into lunch. A friendly critter called Kai who resembles a walking bat isn’t much help but at least he’s not trying to eat humans. Kai would be the family dog if dogs could climb trees.

A fellow named Samuel who looks suspiciously like a wizard rides into the story on the back of a giant turtle. Samuel doesn’t know anything about California. Vanessa doesn’t know why a collision and a plane crash and hungry monsters have not attracted the attention of the authorities. Nor does she understand why the monsters come in various shapes and sizes, when alien invasion movies pretty much stick to a single species.

How did this happen? The vague explanation has something to do with interdimensional portals that seem to stick open when Samuel runs through them, dragging monsters in his wake. The reader is not encouraged to give the plot much thought.

Alien law enforcement is on the trail of Samuel. Is he a good wizardy guy or a bad wizardy guy? It seems he’s some of both. Vanessa explores Samuel’s character as they take a road trip to Ohio on the turtle's back. Vanessa wants to help out Dougie, who is now an orphan, but taking a turtle ride to Ohio in the midst of a monster invasion doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Vanessa is a bit of a twit. Vanessa hated her life before she met Samuel and hates it even more after monsters show up, but she proves herself to be plucky and a good friend to children and wizards and little bat creatures and giant turtles. None of that makes her particularly likeable, but at least she doesn’t have the double-D boobs that comic artists seem to admire so much.

Is Beyond the Breach worth reading? It’s about average for science fiction graphic novels that place a heavy emphasis on monsters. The art is a fashionable graphic novel style that’s too sketchy for my taste; human faces are optional, although all the bumpy and gooey parts of monsters are rendered with great care.

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City of Orange by David Yoon

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on May 24, 2022

The protagonist in David Yoon’s City of Orange lives in a bivouac under a bridge in a post-apocalyptic world. He eventually learns that his name is Adam Chung, but as the story opens Adam doesn’t remember his name or what caused the apocalypse or where all the people went. Snippets of memory return to him as the novel progresses, including memories of a wife and child, but he isn’t ready to remember their names and doesn’t know if he will ever be ready.

Adam meets an old man who answers every question with the word “berries.” He meets an 8-year-old kid named Clay who gives him some information from a child’s innocent perspective. Most of the time, the protagonist talks to crows and imagines them holding up their end of the conversation. He also carries on internal conversations with Byron, a pre-apocalyptic friend whose humor and advice the protagonist appreciates, even if Byron isn’t actually there.

Adam doesn’t know how he came to be living under a bridge. He’s afraid to explore, afraid of what he might find. He’s discovered one dead body and doesn’t want to repeat that experience, but his larger fear is of discovering more of his lost past. Adam’s scavenging is therefore limited, although Clay seems to have an ample supply of goods that Adam believes to be scarce: canned food, soap, medicine. Clay’s home even seems to have electricity, presumably from solar cells. Adam thinks he should meet Clay’s mom but doesn’t want to spook her. Maybe Adam just isn’t ready to rejoin the company of adults. Or maybe he isn’t ready to recognize the truth about the world he now inhabits.

Regardless of what the novel initially seems to be about, City of Orange is a novel of grief and the pain of loss. The subject matter is dark, but the story is seasoned with light moments to keep it from becoming oppressive. Adam’s backstory is tragic and moving while the story of Adam’s unsettling present is crafted to hold the reader’s attention until its true nature becomes clear.

Yoon weaves social commentary into the background without turning the larger story into a polemic. A white guy doesn’t understand why a Korean American is offended to be addressed as Charlie. The internet feeds a lust for videos that end in gory death. Toxic comments on the video of a fatal traffic accident capture the modern need to revel in rudeness.

City of Orange is a post-apocalyptic story, but the apocalypse isn’t one a reader might expect. Whether events quality as apocalyptic might be a matter of perspective. Yoon’s novel is, in part, a reminder of the need to live in the present, to appreciate what we have before it’s lost. But the novel is also a reminder that, although it takes time to process and accept tragedy, moving forward is both possible and essential.

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Every Cloak Rolled in Blood by James Lee Burke

Published by ‎ Simon & Schuster on May 24, 2022

Aaron Holland Broussard is part of the Holland family that James Lee Burke has chronicled in a dozen novels. Broussard is also Burke’s alter ego. At 85, it isn’t surprising that Burke uses Broussard as a way to reflect on his life, on the mystery of existence, and on loss.

Broussard is an 85-year-old novelist who, like Burke, lives with the pain of a daughter’s death. Burke explains in a letter to the reader that his daughter died of natural causes in 2020. Broussard feels he is being “boiled alive” by “psychoneurotic anxiety and agitated depression.” Broussard’s daughter died but is still at his side, appearing to warn him of dangers arising in both the corporeal and spirit world.

Broussard lives alone, although prolific writers who are surrounded by family spend much of their life alone in the act of creation. How much of Broussard is really Burke is unknowable to anyone who doesn’t know Burke. Nor does it matter. The novel is not a biography; it succeeds or fails as a matter of literary merit.

Broussard has evolved during his long life. He feels shame for supporting Strom Thurmond’s election and for cheering American pilots who gunned down civilians fleeing their village during the Korean War. Yet he was never part of a mob — not a Klansman, not a waver of Confederate flags, not a bigot. He believes heroism should walk with humility, that bravery follows kindness. He is a decent man who regrets his mistakes.

The story begins with a young man painting a swastika on Broussard’s barn. At various times, Broussard confronts or tries to reason with or help the boy and the father who poisoned him. The story involves drug dealing and buried gold on a reservation, a couple of gruesome murders, ineffective cops, and an unfortunate woman who wants to make a movie with Broussard. While some of the story is reality-based, a good bit of the novel asks the reader to believe (or at least accept that Broussard believes) that spirits of the dead are trying to influence us with evil or save us from ourselves. Broussard, on the other hand, wonders if he might be delusional, forced by grief to see things that aren’t there. A reader might wonder if that’s true, but that does not appear to be the conclusion that Burke invites.

Every Cloak Rolled in Blood succeeds despite its reliance on the supernatural themes crime writers often use to address the existence of evil. Broussard explains that the “great mystery for me has always been the presence of evil in the human breast.” On several occasions, Broussard encounters Major Eugene Baker, the officer who ordered his cavalry troops to massacre peaceful members of the Blackfoot tribe as they slept. A state trooper named Ruby Spotted Horse has a cellar that is a “conduit into a cavernous world that has never been plumbed,” a place where Baker’s spirit resides, among others who have the power to “come back upon the living.”

I’m not a fan of supernatural themes — the supernatural seems too easy as an explanation of evil, a copout that allows humanity to avoid responsibility for inhumane behavior — although I forgive Burke and other accomplished writers for evoking evil spirits. Burke’s prose makes forgiveness easy, particularly when he offers other insights into the human condition. Examples:

“I do not enjoy my role as an old man in a nation that has little use for antiquity and even less for those who value it.”

“I hate the violent history of the Holland family, and I hate the martial mentality of those who love wars but never go to them.”

“When you lose your kid, the best you can hope for is a scar rather than an open wound.”

 “I would like to claim power and personal direction over my life. But not a day goes by that I do not experience a reminder of an event that left me at the mercy of strangers.”

“The United States prides itself on the freedom of the individual, but we are still a Puritan nation and obsessed with sex.”

Burke’s letter to the reader describes Every Cloak Rolled in Blood as an “attempt to capture part of mankind’s trek across a barren waste into modern times.” Modern times include “the recalcitrant and the unteachable” who refuse to wear masks during a pandemic because the selfishness of cultural grievance is more important to them than public health. Those grievances include being the butt of jokes told by the “Hollywood friends” of liberals on Saturday Night Live, a grievance that fails to consider what they have done to earn mockery. The trek includes a long history of violence and bigotry and oppression. Burke writes movingly about Native Americans who were slaughtered and brutalized by white soldiers who, instead of being tried for war crimes, were lauded as heroes.

Burke describes Montana landscapes with religious awe and views his characters through the focused lens of compassion. The novel is, in some sense, a howl of pain, notable more for the emotions it evokes than the plot. But it is also a reminder that we must always struggle to understand our place in the universe, to be a barrier against the historic march of evil, to be strong but polite, open but on guard, emotional but not helpless or hopeless.

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Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Published by Orbit on May 3, 2022

The crew of the Vulture God returns in Eyes of the Void, the second book of the Final Architecture trilogy. The first novel built the future in which the novel is set. This one expands the reader’s understanding of the universe while advancing (albeit slowly) the fight between the Architects and the various human and nonhuman species who are fleeing the Architects’ grand design.

At the end of the first novel, the Architects took a break, perhaps in response to contact made by Idris Telemmier, one the original humans who was designed to stay awake while navigating through unspace. Now the Architects are back, redesigning worlds in an apparent desire for a different aesthetic. The redesigns are unfortunately fatal to all life on the planet, as they involve pulling some of the planet’s core to its surface.

In the first novel, the Architects did not bother worlds that had artifacts of the Originators. Soon after Eyes of the Void commences, the Architects are carefully removing artifacts from a world that has been colonized by the Divine Essiel, leaders of a religious cult who make an improbable promise of protection from the Architects to those who build and occupy a “great new temple.” Idris happens to be on that world for a time, but various individuals from multiple species would like to capture him for their own purposes.

Idris is the novel’s most interesting character, if only because he has been forced into a life he never wanted. Having been given the extraordinary but painful ability to see into unspace without being driven mad, Idris feels compelled to use that power for the greater good while satisfying his own fear-driven curiosity about the true nature of unspace and its inhabitants. That curiosity will be at least partially satisfied by the novel’s end.

The remaining crew of the Vulture God spend most of the novel trying to rescue each other. They hope to snatch Idris from the Divine Essiel’s planet before it is destroyed. They hope to snatch Kris Almier, their knife-wielding lawyer, from the clutches of the Uskaro family, residents of a prosperous colony world. They need to rescue one of the characters a second time. Solace, one of the warrior-angels known as the Parthenon, does much of the rescuing. Solace’s character, having been developed in the first novel, undergoes little change in the second. Kris and Idris are the most interesting characters in this installment.

The Naeromanthi are one of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s most interesting creations. Realizing that living on a planet made them vulnerable to the Architects, the Naeromanthi built and filled huge arks and dispersed them throughout the galaxy. The quickly lost the cultural referents that come with planetary attachment and developed into a nomadic culture, scavenging whatever they can find from other planets and ships. It occurs to some humans that they should follow a similar path.

Eyes of the Void is wordy. Descriptions of unspace and Idris’ reaction to it are often redundant. Padding is not an issue I’ve noticed in Tchaikovsky’s other work. It is, however, an issue in the second novel of many sf trilogies. Still, the novel serves its purpose as a bridge between a fascinating first novel and the promise of an equally fascinating conclusion.

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