My Dirty California by Jason Mosberg

Published by Simon & Schuster on August 30, 2022

My Dirty California that does not comfortably fit into a single genre. It seems to be a crime novel about multiple murders and a missing person or two until a character shows up who believes in the simulation hypothesis. She wants to leave her reality and cross into another, adding an element of science fiction to the story. Yet the character who believes in the simulation hypothesis might be mentally disturbed, so the story might be more psychological drama than science fiction. The murder mystery begins to intertwine with other crimes, although some time passes before the nature of those crimes becomes clear. Ultimately, the story reads like a thriller that moves forward on multiple fronts. Maybe it’s best not to worry about giving My Dirty California a label.

After being absent for a decade, Marty Morrel travels from California to Pennsylvania and walks back into the lives of his brother and father. Soon after he reappears, someone kills Marty and his father. Marty’s brother Jody is too late to save them, but he briefly chases the killer, a man he can only identify by the disparate lengths of the man’s legs. As he dies, Marty says something to Jody that sounds like “De Nada.”

During their brief time together before the murders, Marty told Jody that he had been documenting his experiences in videos he posted to a website he called My Dirty California. Some of the novel reads like a detective story as Jody tries to piece together clues buried in Marty’s videos that might explain his death.

Before his brother’s body is in the ground, Jody drives to California in search of the killer. Jody learns that Marty wandered and charmed, finding opportunities for short-term work everywhere he went. Marty met Renata while playing pick-up soccer. Renata told Marty she had been invited to a place called Pandora’s House, a haunted house that seems much larger on the inside than it does on the outside. Marty was supposed to see her again the next day but Renata disappeared.

Some of the novel follows Renata, including her backstory as a migrant who came across the border unlawfully and her strange adventures after visiting Pandora’s House. Jason Mosberg plants doubt about the true nature of Renata’s experiences is his effort to straddle the line between genres.

The last key character is Pen(elope), a documentary maker whose embrace of UFOs and the simulation hypothesis makes producers wary of working with her. Pen might be a nutcase but she might be right. The simulation hypothesis suggests that the reality in which we exist is actually a computer simulation. Elon Musk is an advocate of the simulation hypothesis, which might be a reason to reject it, but the idea does have some appeal. Whenever something happens that we can’t explain, a possible explanation is that the anomaly is a glitch in the computer program.

Pen not only identifies glitches, she believes that the glitches represent breaches in the simulated reality that allow travel between different simulations. Pandora’s House is, in her view, such a breach. Pen also attributes her father’s disappearance to his travel into a different simulation.

To make a documentary about the simulation hypothesis that nobody wants to produce, Pen hits on the idea of disguising her premise in a documentary about Marty’s disappearance. She thinks he went through a breach (he mentions Pandora’s House in a couple of videos), but she needs to investigate his California experience to advance the documentary. Her investigation coincides with Jody’s.

The story would be complex even without Pen and Renata. For much of the novel, the reader wonders whether Marty was killed because he was a bad guy. One of the people who knew Marty described him as “a free spirit trapped in a cage.” The bars of his cage were constructed from a moral code, making it unlikely that Marty was evil, although he may have found himself in the company of evil people. That ambiguity is one of many plot points that hold the reader’s interest.

The story is driven by linkage. One character links to another who links to a third who links to two more. Jody leads to Pen who leads to Tiphony and her imprisoned husband Mike who leads to the criminal at the center of the story. Marty’s blog leads Jody to Shiloh; Shiloh leads Pen to Nicole. Renata’s experience in Pandora’s House leads her to Coral. All of these characters play significant roles in a carefully constructed but free-wheeling story.

My Dirty California is marketed as a literary thriller. In the post-modernist literary world, it isn’t cool to leave a reader feeling satisfied with a story. Nor is it cool to allow a reader to become lost in a story. Post-modernism strips illusions away and prevents readers from using fiction to escape reality. All of that falls by the wayside in a novel that suggests reality as we perceive it might itself be an illusion. Even without the simulation hypothesis, there is no hint of post-modernism in My Dirty California. It is literary in the sense of being well-written, not in the tendency of literary fiction to emphasize characterization to the exclusion of plot. The novel is an exercise in traditional storytelling, the kind that recognizes the primacy of plot but doesn’t short-change character development or atmosphere.

With one exception, the ending ties up loose ends in a way that will please readers who feel an attachment to the surviving characters. The exception is Mosberg’s decision to let the reader’s imagination write an ending (or a continuation of the story) for one of the principal characters. My Dirty California might be a good choice for readers who embrace old-fashioned storytelling while remaining open to new ideas.

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Face by Joma West

Published by Tordotcom on August 2, 2022

Face is a heavy-handed examination of superficiality. The novel imagines a society in which the upper classes are obsessed with how they are seen by others and thus with the image (or “face”) they project to the world. People make choices about “coupling” (sex-free attachments) based on what their potential partner adds to their face. Style has triumphed over substance. Individuals turn their lives into a brand to help them climb the ladder. They learn to project the correct facial expression (usually blandness, sometimes a cutting sideways glance) rather than honest emotions. Joma West may have done her research for this novel by watching high school girls interact.

Tam schemes to couple with Reyna because her father, Schuyler Burroughs, has more face than anyone. Schuyler’s friends Tonia and Eduardo decide to choose a baby because their face has become static and the right baby will help them move up in the social hierarchy (the “ladder”). Yet Reyna argues that styles change too rapidly to warrant investing in a child. By the time it grows into its features, it might be out of date.

For reasons the story doesn’t satisfactorily explain, touching is a social taboo. The burden of procreation has been assigned to designers that manufacture babies who are calculated to enhance the parents’ face. The working class, including servants of the upper class, are known as “menials.” They begin as “beaker babies” who are engineered to lack inquisitive or creative minds. Menials degrade after reaching the age of 25 (a concept that might be drawn from the replicants in Blade Runner). Menial farms train them to be deferential servants and to avoid unnecessary behaviors, including eye contact and masturbation. Like people on the ladder, they confess misbehavior to confessors in Virtual Reality (the “In”).

Reyna’s sister Naomi receives confessions of menials as part of a school project. Without mentioning her by name, the Menial Jake confesses that he wants to look directly at Madeline, Schuyler’s wife, and have a conversation with her. A loose plot eventually emerges, but West focuses more on world building than on telling an engaging story.

The novel suggests that humanity’s enduring attempt to exercise control over others, whether through slavery or ownership of menials, is rooted in fear. The concept of face is an extension of the need to control others, albeit in a more subtle way — by manipulating what people think by showing them a face and making it difficult to see beyond that mask. The ladder that members of the upper class climb is a road to power and the acquisition of power is all about controlling those who have less. That’s a good concept for a story, but the concept is delivered in expository lectures to make sure that even dim-witted readers will understand it.

Each chapter is told from a character’s perspective. Some scenes are repeated (dialog is repeated word-for-word), changed only by the perspective of the character to whom the chapter belongs. Since the characters aren’t all that different from each other, the technique results in more redundancy than insight. The reader learns what happened in the scene after the first point-of-view character departed, but that could have been accomplished through conventional storytelling without all the wasted words.

It is difficult to relate to Face because key premises make little sense. It isn’t clear whether the story is set on a future Earth or (more likely) on an alternative Earth, but the notion that humans would have an aversion to touching requires some explanation. Sex and the desire for touch are innate drives. How is it possible to be human, even an alternative human, without those drives? Much of the world that West built exists not because a such a world would have any reason to evolve, but because West needed to create elements that would allow her to skewer superficial and controlling people. Some of the differences between our reality and the novel’s reality can be chalked up to genetic manipulation, but what can a novel about a completely different reality tell us about ours? Not as much as West intended.

Satires of the status obsessed are common. Some of them are enjoyable. Had Face illustrated the impact of social media likes on social status by creating a near-future that is closer to current reality, the story’s lessons about superficiality might have resonated. By adding designer babies and humans grown to be slaves, West created a story that has too little relevance to create an emotional impact. I appreciated West’s fluid prose and enjoyed some aspects of the detailed world she built, but the story is less than the sum of its parts.

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Traitor's Dance by Jeff Abbott

Published by Grand Central Publishing on August 23, 2022

The Sam Capra novels have grown stronger as the series has progressed. Traitor’s Dance is one of the best entries. While Traitor’s Dance can be read as a stand-alone novel, series fans will benefit from the context that earlier novels provide. This one takes place several years after the story that developed in the first five books.

Marcus Bolt is an American traitor, a spy who defected to Russia. The CIA gets word that Bolt has eluded his Russian minders. They think he might try to reenter the US, despite his knowledge that the American intelligence community would be happy to shoot him on sight. Bolt has an estranged wife and daughter in Miami. The CIA thinks Bolt might want to contact them, although they both blame Bolt for his son’s suicide, a death his son deemed preferable to living as the son of a traitor.

Sam works as a “fixer” for an ultra-secret branch of the CIA. He is tasked with keeping an eye on Bolt’s daughter Amanda and with capturing or killing Bolt if he tries to contact her.

Sam relates to Amanda. Having been married to a woman who betrayed the interests of the US by advancing the cause of a criminal organization with terrorist ties, Sam understands what it means to have a traitor in the family. He has been keeping his wife’s true nature a secret from his son Daniel, but Daniel is beginning to realize that stories he has been told about his mother don’t add up. When he is contacted by a woman who claims to be his aunt, he willingly listens to her stories about his mother. The woman, of course, has ulterior motives, as Daniel discovers when he is kidnapped.

Abbott creates atmosphere with Miami’s population of Russians in Sunny Isles Beach, also known as Little Moscow. Russian oligarchs with luxury condos and their need for money laundering services play a key role in the story.

Jeff Abbott assembles a large cast to tell this story. While it is built on the framework of Bolt's potential return to the US and the reaction of various governments and criminals to Bolt's actions, much of the tension surrounds Sam’s attempt to Daniel from pain.

Family relationships are central to the plot. One of the characters is convinced that Bolt was framed and that Bolt can prove the innocence of his father, who embezzled money from the CIA. A British spy believes her husband was killed by one of the characters. Questions arise about the true identities of the fathers of two key characters. Family relationships tie into the theme of betrayal, a theme that binds many of the characters. Betrayal of a spouse or child is similar in many ways to betrayal of a government, a point that characters make repeatedly.

The plot is tight despite its many moving parts. The story moves quickly despite its attention to detail. The novel closes a chapter in Sam’s life but it appears to open a couple of others. New novels will be welcomed by readers who waited six years to find out what is happening in Sam’s life.

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The Ninth Month by James Patterson and Richard DiLallo

Published by Grand Central Publishing on August 23, 2022

James Patterson tells The Ninth Month in alternating sections devoted to the past and present until the two stories converge. The past unfolds over the months of a woman’s pregnancy. The present follows the woman’s friends and a couple of police officers who look for clues to the pregnant woman’s disappearance.

Emily Atkinson, an attractive woman of 32, parties hard, screws up her marketing job, and has multiple heart attacks caused by mixing drugs with booze. When she realizes she is pregnant by one of a few possible men, she wonders whether she should stop drinking and give birth, slow down her drinking and terminate the pregnancy, or postpone any decision until her brain cells are fueled by more martinis. A pregnant nurse named Betsey befriends her and tries to help her make responsible choices.

Betsey becomes concerned when Emily suddenly disappears. Betsey’s concern is heightened by two facts. First, another pregnant woman in Emily’s neighborhood, who is about the same age and worked in the same industry, was murdered. Second, Emily thought she was being followed before she disappeared. At the same time, Emily’s perceptions are clouded by alcohol. Perhaps her stalker is a product of her drunken imagination.

The story in the present centers on Betsey’s attempt to motivate two police detectives to look for Emily. The male detectives has a history with Emily, which makes him a suspect. A number of other men have a history with Emily or intersect with her life, including a drug dealer, a bartender, a television writer, and her former boss.

Plot development is deliberate, but the novel is not slow moving. The chapters set in the past grow Emily’s character. Stories about a struggle with sobriety are common and familiar, but this one is more effective than most. Emily is great at her marketing job but being fired because she’s a drunk doesn’t change her life because she comes from money and doesn’t need to work. Whether her pregnancy will motivate her to stop drinking — whether anything make her change her identity as a party girl — is more suspenseful than the threat she might face from her stalker.

The theme of a pregnant woman who contemplates an abortion before she bonds with her fetus has been done to death. Emily’s detailed characterization is wasted on the trite notion that women always turn themselves into responsible mothers if they choose not to end a pregnancy. Frankly, Emily has probably done so much damage to her fetus that giving birth is a questionable decision.

Parts of the plot come across as contrived. The stalker's reveal is not entirely surprising, although it does incorporate a moderately clever twist. The ending seems like the product of lazy writing. The Ninth Month is not terribly successful at building or sustaining suspense (Patterson didn’t bring his A-game effort in that regard), but its portrait of a woman struggling to get her life together is both engaging and convincing.

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Fox Creek by William Kent Krueger

Published by ‎ Atria Books on August 23, 2022

The theft of natural resources from Native people is the dominant theme of Fox Creek, but much of the story is a suspenseful wilderness adventure. The novel is the latest in the long-running Cork O’Connor series.

Cork is flipping burgers at his northern Minnesota restaurant, trying to live a peaceful life but still helping people with private investigations. A man who identifies himself as Louis Morriseau asks Cork to help him find his missing wife. Morriseau suspects that Dolores is fooling around with Henry Meloux. Morriseau clearly doesn’t understand that Henry is literally one hundred years old. And while he’s still energetic and might indeed have lead in his aging pencil, Henry is a medicine man and spiritual guide who is more interested in healing people than shagging them.

Cork’s wife Rainy is related to Henry. It doesn’t take Cork long to find Dolores, who has come to Henry is search of guidance. Nor does it take Cork long to learn that the man who contacted him is not Lou Morriseau. It is Lou (the real one) who has gone missing. Lou is a real estate lawyer who has been spending time in Canada for reasons that he hasn’t explained to Dolores.

Cork eventually makes it his mission to help Dolores. He’s joined in that effort by his son Stephen, Rainy, Henry, Lou’s brother Anton and his sister Belle, and various Natives who rally to the cause when needed.

Lou’s disappearance apparently has something to do with a hand-drawn map that bears the word KILLCATIE. Stephen and Belle are tasked with digging into that cryptic clue. The wilderness adventure begins when Henry and Rainy disappear with Dolores. Henry is an unparalleled woodsman, but he’s pursued by a Native tracker of nearly equal skill named LeLoup, who is accompanied by a couple of less skilled killers. As LeLoup tracks Henry’s group, Cork tracks LeLoup.

The story offers a satisfying resolution to the mystery of KILLCATIE, a mystery based on the credible premise that white people are again trying to enrich themselves by depriving Natives of resources. The wilderness adventure is enhanced by vivid descriptions of the Boundary Waters and the perils of staying alive in snowy woods, even when trackers aren’t pursuing with rifles.

The adventure turns into an interesting spiritual journey for some of its participants, although it affects them in different ways. That journey could have been hokey, but William Kent Krueger makes it seem authentic. Krueger is too respectful of Native people to leave the impression that he’s using Native beliefs as a prop. The story ends on a note of hope, in the sense that it suggests that it is never too late to set a life on its correct path. This is always an interesting series, and Fox Creek lives up to Krueger’s high standard.

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