The Match by Harlan Coben

Published by Grand Central Publishing on March 15, 2022

The Match uses reality TV as its hook. The story imagines a show that is a cross between The Bachelor and Survivor, a show apparently inspired by Pat Benatar’s classic song, “Love Is a Battlefield.”

Peter Bennett was a popular participant in the show. He wooed and conquered Jenn Cassidy. They became a popular reality TV couple. Their fame led to endorsement deals and countless freebies. Accusations that Peter roofied and slept with his Jenn’s sister put an end to his marriage and to his TV popularity. Sexually assaulting your in-laws doesn’t earn “likes.” Peter disappeared after his followers chose not to believe his denials. All of that is an interesting background, particularly for reality TV fans who understand that reality TV is completely divorced from reality.

At some point, Peter contacted Wilde through a DNA-match site. Peter and Wilde both submitted DNA samples to the site, which determined that they are close relatives. Wilde, a character Harlan Coben premiered in The Boy in the Woods, was apparently left in the woods as a small child. He has no memory of how he got there. He’s never explored his ancestry but people who are close to him have repeatedly nagged him to figure out how he came to be abandoned and how he survived. Peter’s message — a message that Wilde didn’t see because for months he was off on a frolic of his own — suggests that Peter is in trouble and needs Wilde’s help.

In addition to reality TV, the story is driven by the theme of cyberbullying. Peter is a natural target of trolls who feel justified targeting anyone they decide to dislike. Coben adds a twist to that theme by imagining a vigilante group of hackers called Boomerang. Boomerang punishes trolls and online bullies, sometimes by doxing them. Boomerang members do not know the identities of the other members. When the members notice that some of the trolls they took action against have been murdered, Boomerang enters crisis mode.

Coben usually constructs decent plots. The Match is one of his better efforts. Its about as credible as the plots of most modern thrillers (not very) but multiple killings and multiple clues about the killer keep Wilde (and the reader) guessing.  The ending is a bit contrived but Wilde at least finds a plausible answer to a key question about his origin.

While Coben isn’t a great prose stylist, his limitations are less noticeable in The Match than in some of his other books. He gives his characters snappy dialog and keeps the plot moving. Wilde is an unsurprising character. He raised himself in the woods, so he prefers to be alone unless he’s having sex. That’s an easy personality to image but it such a limited personality that characterization isn’t a draw for the Wilde novels. That begins to change at the end of novel, so the next book (if another one is coming) might broaden Wilde's horizons. My preference would be for Coben to write another Myron Bolitar novel, but I can’t bend the man to my will, so we’ll just have to see what he does next.

RECOMMENDED

The Dickens Boy by Thomas Keneally

Published in Australia in 2020; published by Atria Books on March 8, 2022

The Dickens Boy is Edward “Plorn” Dickens, Charles Dickens’ youngest son. Having shown no talent for anything beyond cricket, and having failed to confess to his famous father that he never managed to read any of the great man’s novels, Plorn feels both guilt and relief when his father sends him to Australia, a country in which Plorn's brother Alfred already resides. Plorn hopes he can apply himself in a new land and become the kind of man his father might admire.

Plorn quickly discovers that Australians venerate his father just as much as the British. Some have memorized long passages from their favorite Dickens novels. Still, Plorn rejects the employment that was arranged for him on the ground that the employer asks too many dishonorable questions about his father’s dalliance with Plorn’s aunt. The employer to which Plorn next applies, Momba Station in New South Wales, becomes the “place that concentrated the forces of his soul.”

Plorn has experiences he could not have imagined in his father’s sheltering embrace. He is shocked when a man tries to kiss him, but his refusal is polite. He gets high on a substance provided by an Aboriginal friend. His first pleasurable reading experience comes when Dandy Darnell gives him a manuscript in the hope that Plorn’s father will publish it. When Dandy writes of his attraction to his aunt (who has been mistreated by her husband), his writing may be autobiographical. Plorn is coming into his own understanding of sexual desire (15-year-old Constance Desailley is often on his mind) and it is probably for that reason that Dandy’s innuendo-free writing speaks to him. Plorn cannot muster interest in the socially acceptable poetic and indirect descriptions of sexual attraction that are favored by his father’s generation. He is quite taken, however, by Dandy’s references to Blake’s argument that men and women both require “the lineaments of Gratified Desire.”

It is a matter of history and thus not a spoiler that Charles Dickens died while Plorn was still a teenage resident of Australia. The novel takes place before and in the immediate aftermath of that death. In his acknowledgements, Thomas Keneally notes that history does not reveal how Plorn learned of his father’s death. Unfettered by history, Keneally invents a brilliant scene that involves the notorious bushranger Frank Pearson, a/k/a Captain Starlight. Perhaps for good reason, Keneally imagines Plorn undergoing the standard denial stage of death. “The resurrection of Christ was easier to believe in than the death of Charles Dickens.”

Historians seem to regard Plorn, like nearly all of the Dickens children, as a failure. The novel’s sympathetic portrayal imagines Plorn as a person who, living in his father’s constant shadow but lacking his father’s gifts, does his best to live up to his father’s expectations. Keneally imagines that Plorn’s love for and devotion to his father was fierce. Regardless of his successes and failures, Plorn’s steadfast defense of his father makes him an admirable character. The novel ends while Plorn is still young, well before he enters politics and succumbs to debt. Yet it ends on a sad note, perhaps to foreshadow the life that was to follow.

The atmosphere of cricket matches and wool shearing, emus and kangaroos, is vivid. One of the novel’s themes is prejudice against the native “darks,” a prejudice not shared at Momba Station and that Plorn instantly rejects. An open-minded priest who befriends and lives among the Aboriginals plays a modest role in the story. He is indirectly responsible for the coming-of-age moment that causes Plorn to realize that he “had been fatuous trying to grow up into manhood in a measured way.”

One of the delights of reading The Dickens Boy is the discussion of Charles Dickens’ novels and stories, including some passages that characters recite from memory. Dickens’ melodramatic plots are disfavored in the post-modern world, but I still regard him as one of the best storytellers in the history of literature — and certainly one of the best creators of memorable characters. Trollope dismissed Dickens as “Mr. Popular Sentiment,” an insult that (in the novel) Alfred holds against Trollope’s son, who has been relegated to Australia like the Dickens boys.

Alfred parses his father’s work for clues about his father’s views of Australia, a topic that likely of particular interest to Keneally and to Australian readers of Dickens' work. Is Australia a land of convicts or a land where criminals have the opportunity to remake themselves? In his books, Alfred observes, Dickens sends criminals and prostitutes and stupid people to Australia. Does that mean Dickens thought Alfred and Plorn were stupid? The boys have differing opinions, but they aren’t certain of the truth. They also disagree, to an extent, about their father’s moral character. Plorn reads one of his his father’s essays to reaffirm his belief that Charles Dickens was generous in his love for the lowliest members of society (although Plorn hasn’t yet encountered Uriah Heep). One of the novel’s burning questions is whether Plorn will ever read David Copperfield, a question that had me thinking, “Just read it and ask yourself whether you recognize something of your father’s life in its pages.”

Keneally avoids Dickensian melodrama but writes with sentiment about Dickens and his influence upon Australians. Keneally is a skilled storyteller in his own right. The story loses some of its voltage after Plorn’s father dies — eulogies and memories slow the story’s pace as it limps to a conclusion — but the novel as a whole is engrossing.

RECOMMENDED

Ogres by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Published by Rebellion/Solaris on March 15, 2022

Adrian Tchaikovsky blurs the boundary between science fiction and fantasy by providing scientific explanations of the traditional fantasy themes. In Elder Race, a colony of people who had lost their knowledge of science regarded a man who possessed advanced technology as a sorcerer. In Ogres, when humanity was on the brink of an environmental apocalypse, genetic engineering changed the order of things. Now humans serve masters they regard as ogres — large, strong, and powerful, meat eaters who travel in trains and cars, who rule smaller, inferior, vegetarian humans.

The ogres call humans “Economics” for reasons involving Economic Measures that, in the distant past, favored the ruling class. The Economics don’t understand science and have forgotten their history. They don’t know why meat makes them sick. They view ogres as a different species entirely — a species that Economics exist to serve. Or so they’ve been told by the ogres.

Exactly how the ogres came to exist is a secret that Tchaikovsky reveals early in the novel’s second half. The answer is one that astute readers will probably suspect well before it arrives. A later reveal explains why there are so few humans in such a vast world.

Torquell is a young, unusually large and strong Economic with an independent, mischievous spirit. Torquell enjoys certain privileges as the son of the head servant of an important Master in his village, but he likes to hang out in the forest with Roben and his merry band of outlaws. The story gets started when Torquell loses his temper and defies the Masters. When Torquell realizes the severity of his punishment, he reacts in feral anger. Having no choice but to flee the consequences of his action, Torquell embarks on an adventure that leads him to Baroness Isadora, an ogress who makes him into an entertaining pet. Torquell learns to ask questions and devours volumes of history that help him understand his place in the world.

The story recounts a few years in Torquell’s young life as he discovers his place in the world. Ogres might be seen as an allegory of revolution, the story of an oppressed class that is inspired to rise up against its oppressors. Faced with a choice of working for masters or succumbing to death by poverty, it only takes one person to ask: What if there is a third way? The story eventually confronts Torquell with a moral dilemma (the kind leaders often face in time of crisis) between making a pragmatic compromise that improves life for some humans while leaving the rest enslaved or risking an idealistic path that could either free or destroy all humans. The novel’s ending takes a twist that suggests the choice is illusory, that some moral choices have only one answer.

There are echoes of Ukrainian resistance in some of the scenes, although that could not have been Tchaikovsky’s intent unless he keeps his crystal ball well polished. The ogres have superior technology and firepower; the Economics have heart, although (unlike Ukrainians) their testosterone supply has been limited by genetic engineering.

Tchaikovsky illustrates the axiom that history is written by the victors. History books portray Economics who resisted genetic modification as selfish and wasteful. Ogre historians conveniently omit mention of how genetic modification has served the interests of the ogres. I doubt that Tchaikovsky had this is mind, but there is a clear parallel here with the movement in southern states to ban teaching the reality of white subjugation of black people and the institutionalization of racism that followed.

Another timely theme is the ease with which leaders control followers by feeding them lies. Keeping followers uneducated and dependent on their leaders is essential both to ogres and to certain ogrish leaders in the world we inhabit.

A third theme that resonates is the ability of the ruling class to dismiss what their ancestors did as an unpleasantry that’s not relevant to the present because what’s done is done. Why should the generations that benefitted from their ancestors’ actions take any responsibility for actions that they did not personally take? The answer is obvious to non-ogres who still suffer the generational effects of distant horrors.

Ogres is a novella that Tchaikovsky cut to the bone. Not a word is wasted. If I have a quarrel with Ogres, it is that Tchaikovsky wrote it in the second person (a narrator tells Torquell’s story to Torquell). Second person is almost always a distracting point of view, although the choice makes some sense when we learn the narrator’s identity and the circumstances under which the story is told. Setting that aside, I appreciate Tchaikovsky for writing a brand of smart science fiction that is unlike anything else on the market. He never fails to entertain, but he always manages to illuminate social issues by removing them from a familiar context.

RECOMMENDED

Hideout by Louisa Luna

Published by Doubleday on March 8, 2022

The third Alice Vega novel cements the protagonist as a driven action hero who is unhindered by any internal restraint on her violent tendencies. Vega is interesting in part because she is a borderline sociopath, in part because she is likely somewhere “on the spectrum” (Vega has little use for social interaction), and in part because she recognizes those tendencies and gives some thought to whether they serve her well.

Anton Fohl hires Vega to find Zeb “Wrong Way” Williams, a kicker who played football for Cal. Instead of kicking a winning field goal in a rivalry game, Williams famously pushed the holder out of the way, grabbed the ball, and ran the wrong way, through the wrong end zone and out of the stadium, never to be seen (verifiably) again. That was in 1984. Fohl’s wife Carmen is an heiress who used to date Williams. She was hurt when he disappeared. For reasons of his own, Fohl wants Vega to locate Williams. Finding missing persons is her thing. She’s rather single-minded in her pursuit.

Years earlier, another private detective traced William to a small town in Oregon, where his photograph was taken with some other people. Vega begins her search in the Oregon town. Her key witness is a waitress who knew and had an argument with Williams before he disappeared from the town. Many of the people Vega interviews seem evasive, making it clear that at least one powerful person in the town is keeping a secret.

Vega’s investigation is sidetracked by her encounters with white supremacists who think she should mind her own business and leave their town alone. Using a white supremacy network, they make trouble for Vega’s father and her friend (and occasional lover and business partner) Max Caplan. The trouble impairs her relationship with Caplan, an event that deeply disturbs Caplan while causing Vega to make a decision she regrets.

For a chunk of the novel, the white supremacy subplot overshadows the missing person story. The aftermath of the trouble that the supremacists make with Caplan and Vega’s father highlight Vega’s difficulty expressing herself to the people she loves (or relating to them on any emotional level). She expresses herself more eloquently by breaking kneecaps and doing other nasty things to the white supremacists.

After Vega clears away obstacles, she gets the search back on track, figures out the town’s hidden secrets, and finds an answer to the mystery she was asked to solve. The plot’s resolution is both surprising and satisfying.

Like the earlier Vega novels, Hideout moves at a good pace, balancing credible action scenes with relentless detection. Vega doesn’t have time for small talk or rest breaks. Those personality quirks keep the plot in constant motion. Readers won’t have warm and fuzzy feelings about Vega, but it is easy to sympathize with her as she struggles to move forward without pushing away the people she cares about. Readers might have warm (if not fuzzy) feelings for Caplan, simply because he’s a decent man who loves his daughter and is tormented by his love for Vega. Characterization combines with a smart action/detective plot to make Hideout a good choice for crime novel fans who enjoy reading about tough, intelligent female protagonists.

RECOMMENDED

Eleutheria by Allegro Hyde

Published by Knopf Doubleday/Vintage on March 8, 2022

Eleutheria is a near-future or alternative-present novel about a wannabe activist who joins a community that plans to counter rising environmental damage. The eco-crisis has coincided with (or been accelerated by) authoritarian rule across the US and Europe and with ethnocentric isolationism that caused Scandanavian countries to seal their borders and withdraw from the EU.

The story envisions a watershed political change based on a utopian society that, like other fictional utopias, is populated by a small and nondiverse group of like-minded individuals. Successful small-scale utopias tend to go off track when they try to replicate their success in a larger community of people who have sharply different political opinions. That reality is one that Eleutheria never satisfactorily confronts. Nor is it clear why pragmatic solutions to climate change (alternative energy sources, biofuel, and making shoes from plastic harvested from the ocean) need to be showcased on a Carribean island to gain widespread acceptance.

Willa Marks begins her idealistic journey of environmental activism by reading an unpublished manuscript that she’s not supposed to have. The author of Living the Solution, Roy Adams, advocates setting aside all personal pleasures and goals for the sake of absolute devotion to the cause of saving the environment. Inspired by Adams, Willa travels to Eleutheria, an island in the Bahamas, where Adams’ crewmembers have established an eco-friendly community called Camp Hope in the expectation of launching an eco-conscious project that will change the world. The details of the project are vague, as is Willa.

Since Willa was not invited to Eleutheria, she is not welcomed by Adams’ crew of ecowarriors until she gains Adams’ acceptance. That apparently happens after Willa suffers sunstroke while paddling around in the sea as she searches for Adams. Perhaps Adams decides to accept Willa because she is plucky. More likely, he accepts her because she worships him as a visionary. Nobody seems to notice that, as idealistic visionaries go, Adams seems a bit shady, although that will be obvious to the reader.

As Willa goes back and forth about her commitment to the cause, Adams adds new recruits in the form of rebellious teen offspring of wealthy parents. The story eventually takes an unexpected but welcome turn before reaching a bizarre and unbelievable climax.

Willa’s backstory portrays her as a young woman raised by drug addled survivalist parents in their self-inflicted cocoon of fear of outside world. Willa made terrariums that serve as a symbol for her youthful interest in protecting the environment, although they also seem to be symbolic of her need to protect herself. Willa later stayed with cousins who photographed her in designer clothes, hiding the price tags so they could return the clothing. That’s apparently symbolic of consumerism. Willa educated herself by sneaking into lectures at Harvard while hanging out with self-styled radicals called Freegans who regarded shoplifting as social activism. With little evidence, the Freegans adopted the belief that it only takes 3% of the world’s population to effect massive cultural change, a belief that Willa accepts as a verity before she begins her eco-adventure.

Willa began to hang out with Sylvia, a Harvard lecturer who became Willa’s first lover. How Sylvia came to possess the copy of Living the Solution that changed Willa’s life is a question that Willa does not ponder until late in the novel. While the truth is no doubt intended as a shocking reveal, it limps into the story as an anticlimax. A clash between Sylvia’s sophisticated political views and Willa’s naïve idealism fuels the novel’s relationship drama.

Eleutheria isn’t a long novel, but it feels padded. At one point, Allegra Hyde lists various things that can turn into projectiles in a storm. At another, she reproduces bits of climate change trivia that Adams’ crew members write down on pieces of construction paper. Occasional passages that describe the history and colonization of Eleutheria add nothing to the story. The plot too often bogs down when a good trimming of the word count would have produced a tighter, more evenly paced novel.

Hyde’s prose is often keen, but some of her images fail to make their intended impact. “Fear is a slimy sensation; it oozes into your limbs like a chilled eel.” How, exactly, does an eel get into your limbs? And what is the difference between a chilled and an unchilled eel, apart from the need to refrigerate eels that will eventually be used in sushi?

I had difficulty taking Eleutheria seriously, in part because it isn’t clear to me what point Hyde intended to make. Social activists can be silly and irrelevant and easily manipulated? True, but serious activists balance their idealism with a perceptive sense of the achievable. World governments show a trend toward redefining activism as leftist terrorism? Yeah, but the novel’s focus is not on the dystopian consequences of authoritarian rule. Self-styled visionaries often turn out to be frauds? Well duh. People are imperfect? Double duh, although that one seems to come as a revelation to Willa.

Hyde chose easy targets, from survivalists to gullible idealists, but exposing the obvious does too little to enlighten. Still, I appreciate Willa’s sentiment that “without a vision of a better world, it was despair all the way down.” John Lennon’s “Imagine” made that argument more simply and poignantly than Eleutheria.

The novel does make a couple of salient points, beyond the obvious truth that climate change, left unchecked, will eventually destroy most human life. One point is that the corporate elite won’t acknowledge the problem until the financial ruin caused by climate change exceeds the financial gain of running businesses that are based on carbon emissions. Another is that corporate media are great at reporting disasters — events that last a single news cycle — and not so great at reporting solutions that need to be explained and reexplained before they seep into the public consciousness. Despite its glimpses of thoughtful storytelling, the story is too muddled to serve as an effective cautionary tale and too detached to work as engaging fiction.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS