Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux/MCD on May 24, 2022

Before she changed her name, Laurel Turner was raped at a party hosted by her rapist, who was both a well-known businessman and her wealthy husband’s business partner. Years later, he became a powerful politician. As we have learned from #MeToo, powerful men have a long history of sexually abusing women without consequence.

After dumping her unsupportive husband, Laurel changed her name to Ariel Pryce and bought a bookstore in a small town where she raised her son. She eventually married John Wright, a younger man who earned a good living doing something related to finance.

The story begins in Lisbon. Wright is there on a business trip and has taken Ariel with him, something he never did before. He goes out for coffee in the morning while Ariel is still sleeping and is kidnapped as he leaves the hotel. When she discovers he is missing, Ariel spends a frantic day talking to the police and the American Embassy, where she attracts the attention of the CIA. Ariel receives a ransom demand for more money than she has, forcing her to seek help from the one person she never wanted to see again — a person who is forced to help because Ariel is positioned to ruin his life if he doesn’t.

Nobody is quite sure whether to believe Ariel, as kidnappings in Lisbon are rare and Wright does not seem like an obvious kidnap victim. The CIA doesn’t know what to make of Wright’s sister, who recently traveled to Lisbon from her home in Morocco. The reader will probably be equally puzzled by events that don’t quite add up. That’s part of the fun in a novel that invites the reader to guess the truth about the characters’ motivations.

While the novel’s focus is on Ariel, other notable characters include Lisbon police officers, a CIA agent in Lisbon who keeps an eye on potential threats to national security, a lawyer pal of Ariel, and a newspaper reporter. Ariel is the only character who is presented in full, but characterization of supporting players is adequate for a plot-driven novel.

The story explores a couple of social issues, particularly the use of nondisclosure agreements to conceal evidence of sexual abuse. The tendency of the public to judge others based on evidence-free media posts — and their feeling of entitlement to confront those they judge — is a lesser theme, but one that is certainly timely.

A reader might guess the truth behind Wright’s kidnapping, or at least some of it, but a substantial part of the ending is likely to come as a surprise. Chris Pavone develops the clever plot with skill, keeps the first two-thirds of the story in rapid motion, and conveys Ariel’s sense of anxous urgency as she deals with characters from whom she needs help. Pavone also conveys the consequences of the kidnapping plot on Ariel’s life, creating sympathy and support for Ariel that extends beyond her victimization. The novel loses some energy in its later stages, but Ariel’s ability to take charge of her life makes it easy to cheer for her until the story reaches its satisfying conclusion.

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Tracy Flick Can't Win by Tom Perrotta

Published by Scribner on June 7, 2022

Tracy Flick, the protagonist in Tom Perrotta’s Election, did not grow up to be president because life does not always cooperate with ambition. She is an assistant principal at Green Meadow High School. Thanks to a weekend affair, she has a daughter named Sophie. Tracy is dating an older orthopedic surgeon who is starting to become a bit clingy.

Tracy’s goal is to project the image that she is competent and trustworthy so that she will be elevated to the principal’s job when Jack Weede retires. Tracy worries that she reeks of Eau de Loser, having failed to win the principal’s job at three other schools.

Weede will be retiring soon to travel to with his cancer survivor wife, much to the dismay of Front Desk Diane, the secretary at the front desk who used to shag Weede in his office. School board member Kyle Dorfman tells Tracy that she’s a shoe-in for the job, but Tracy knows that nothing in life is certain.

Tom Perrotta’s novels are driven by amusing characters. Thanks to a one-hit-wonder app, Dorfman, unlike most residents of Green Meadow, has money. That explains his presence on the school board. He easily convinced the board to let him fund a Green Meadow Hall of Fame. The first candidate (other than Dorfman himself) is Vito Falcone, a school bully who was the school’s only notable athlete, having played a couple of years in the NFL. Choosing a jock, Tracy thinks, is “the most obvious and depressing choice in the world,” but she’s not about to make waves. As part of his twelve-step program, Vito is apologizing to all the people he harmed. It’s a long list.

Other nominees for membership include a student who died in Vietnam, a student who prevailed in a sandwich eating contest, and a successful car salesman. The committee rules out the only other noteworthy jock because he got charged with a crime for fighting a white cop who didn’t want a black guy dating his sister.

One of the members of the committee to choose Hall of Fame inductees is a student named Lily Chu. She has a relationship with someone named Clem who uses “they” as an identifying pronoun. Lily needs to keep them from meeting her conservative parents, who think Clem is a girl named Amelia.

Ultimately, Tracy’s story, like Vito’s, is one of “squandered promise” — their best years were their high school years, with so much potential ahead, all unrealized. That would be (and has been) a strong premise for a deeper novel, but Tracy Flick Can't Win isn't a novel that attempts serious depth.

The loose plot that holds the characters together is Tracy’s quest to become a principal. Tracy’s life history is one of being stabbed in the back by people she trusted. Whether that will happen again seems to be the question that drives the plot until it doesn’t. Perrotta splinters off a number of apparent subplots that remain undeveloped or exist for no reason, never becoming subplots at all.

The story and characters are sufficently entertaining to earn my recommendation, although the recommendation comes with some warnings, including the frustration of a splitered plot. More importantly, the novel takes a surprisingly dark turn at the end (surprising for a Perrotta novel, anyway), perhaps as a reminder that high schools these days can be dark places. Given the lightness of the story until that point, the ending is a bit too jarring to be satisfying. Had its antededents been explored in greater depth, the ending might have a success. An epilog attempts to reassure the reader that Tracy Flick Can't Win is more light than dark, but the epilog seems to be tacked on to please readers. At least Perrotta avoided the sin of predictability.

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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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