The Fell by Sarah Moss

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on March 1, 2022

At its heart, The Fell is a meditation on the effects of social isolation. Those effects have been exacerbated for some during the pandemic, but loneliness can strike even when isolation is not encouraged by health policies. The story morphs into a wilderness rescue, but the plight of the victim creates little tension. The primary focus is on the thoughts of the central characters: an injured woman, her young son, their neighbor, and a member of the search-and-rescue team.

Anxiety pervades the characters in The Fell. They live in or near the mountains and moors on the outskirts of Greater Manchester in the County of Derbyshire. They are enduring pandemic quarantine rules that trap them in their homes. People are allowed outside only for essential purposes. The police use drones to record and shame people who engage in recreational walking. The central character views the quarantine in the broader context of history, a reminder that “the authorities have never liked to have commoners walking the land instead of getting and selling.”

When life in quarantine becomes too much for Kate, she takes a walk in the fells. (I had to look this up, but “fell walking” in Northern England refers to walking in hills and high land.) Whether the walk is illegal (Kate seems to think so) or only strongly discouraged by government policy (as another part of the book seems to suggest), Kate and her son both believe she should have stayed inside. That becomes obvious to the reader when, quarantine notwithstanding, Kate falls in the failing light and breaks her leg.

Kate is Matt’s mum. He’s alone in house, worried at his mother’s absence. Matt is afraid his mum will be arrested for breaking quarantine. He knows he’s not allowed outside during the quarantine but he visits their neighbor Alice, who won’t let him in but calls the mountain rescue service. All the officials who talk to Matt stay outside or speak to him via telephone with a masked number, which seems improbably cruel given that the kid is home alone with no support system.

Like Kate, Alice spends her quarantine fretting. She thinks about death and cancer and worries about her children. She thinks about Mark, with whom she shared 45 years of life. Alice is the most opinionated character, although the characters all share attitudes of gloom. “Social distancing,” Alice thinks, “whoever came up with that, there’s not much that’s less social than acting as if everyone’s unclean and dangerous, though the problem of course is that they are, or at least some of them and there’s no way of knowing.” She also complains that the pandemic has infected language by turning “distance” into a verb.

Alice thinks rude thoughts about doctors who blame patients for socializing and acquiring COVID. Aren’t patients always putting themselves at risk (she asks herself) by deciding to drive or play sports or sleep with the wrong person or carry a big pile of laundry up the stairs? “Alice thinks, let us give thanks for our pure blind luck as well as our warm beds and safe houses, though the problem with giving thanks for your own luck is that you’re also giving thanks that the misfortune landed on someone else.”

Rob is a first responder. He rescues people who have gone missing on the mountain. Rob’s daughter Ellie is with him for the weekend. She isn’t happy when his job requires him to leave her to search for Kate. Rob, on the other hand, enjoys doing some good by volunteering for the mountain rescue team. He decided to be self-employed so he wouldn’t have to put up with employers who gripe that volunteers refuse to work overtime so they can be available for rescues when needed.

The Fell is a character-driven novel that is undisturbed by a plot. Kate’s disappearance is simply an excuse for the reader to tune into the characters’ internal monologues. After her fall, Kate’s mind wanders as she tries to summon the strength to crawl through the heath. Perhaps she is entering a state of delirium as she converses with a raven. Some of her thoughts turn out to be lyrics from Celtic folk music (I had to google odd-sounding sentences to discover that). It is a reasonable place for Kate’s mind to go, given that she dabbled with folk singing before she met Paul, her ex-husband, a meeting about which she is now ambivalent, as she is about much of her life.

There is something to be said for a novel that recognizes both the public health necessity of a quarantine during a pandemic and the emotional necessity of escaping confinement that is imposed by outside forces. The characters whine about their circumstances a bit too much, but doesn’t everyone? They at least do so in amusingly droll prose. While The Fell might not appeal to readers who require a more substantive plot than “woman goes missing and people worry about her,” this short novel is worth reading for Sarah Moss’ observational take on the depressing nature of life in the midst of a pandemic.

RECOMMENDED

The Silent Sisters by Robert Dugoni

Published by Thomas & Mercer on February 22, 2022

The Silent Sisters is the third novel to feature Charles Jenkins, a retired CIA agent who returned to the agency to carry out a mission in Russia. The novels are all premised on a traitor’s betrayal of seven women in Russia who have served as spies for America. The traitor made Russia aware of their existence but not of each woman’s identity. When Russia discovers their identities, the women die. Jenkins has been tasked with rescuing the survivors before Russia can identify them.

As a tall black man, Jenkins is far from inconspicuous when he enters Russia. Since he was exposed as a CIA agent in the first novel, his ability to pull off a rescue in the second novel strained credibility. In The Silent Sisters, the CIA has given Jenkins a disguise kit that lets him pass as a shorter white man, among other costume changes. That all seems a bit Mission: Impossible, but I willingly suspended by disbelief as the story moved forward. The Silent Sisters is easily the best of the three novels.

Jenkins’ mission is to rescue Maria Kulivoka, the last of the Seven Sisters who is still living in Russia. Maria works for a director of the FSB, Dmitry Sokalov, her unwitting source of classified information. Maria does sexual favors for Sokalov to stay in his good graces, including favors that disgust her. The favors combine with alcohol to make Sokalov forget that he’s revealing classified information. Maria is in a dangerous position not only because she is spying for America, but because Sokalov might be tempted to kill her to keep their affair from being known to his powerful father-in-law.

Early in the story, Jenkins goes into a Russian bar for a beer and a meal. He intervenes when a thug beats a prostitute. Events lead to the thug getting shot, although not by Jenkins. The thug turns out to be the son of a crime boss, making Jenkins marked for death by Putin (thanks to his successful missions in earlier novels) and by a criminal organization.

The shooting is investigated by Arkhip Mishkin, an honest and sympathetic character who is approaching retirement. Mishkin doesn’t want to leave a case unsolved before he retires. To that end, he also wants to find Jenkins, if only to ask him for his version of the thug’s killing.

Strong women had played a significant role in this series. Their strength is fueled by their will to survive. Spies who betray their countries risk daily exposure, so it isn’t surprising that Maria is tough. She achieves that toughness by bottling up the rage she feels toward Sokalov and her disgust with herself. As a crime boss who ascended to the throne when her father was murdered, Yekaterina Velikaya must also play a role to survive. Neither woman can allow her true personality to emerge, if one even exists at this point. Maria nevertheless softens a bit during a long train ride toward potential freedom, when she has long platonic chats with a man that show her a side of life she has been missing.

As always, the plot moves quickly and generates reasonable suspense. Jenkins is your basic aging spy who would rather be bonding with his kids than doing his patriotic duty in Russia. Maria and Mishkin and even Yakaterina are more complex characters. They give the story its heart, elevating The Silent Sisters above a standard action novel.

RECOMMENDED

Sierra Six by Mark Greaney

Published by ‎ Berkley on February 15, 2022

Most Gray Man novels are pretty good. Some are really good. Sierra Six is on another level. It’s the best Gray Man novel I’ve read, in part because it humanizes Court Gentry. Or, at least, it proves that Gentry was once human.

Gentry’s life has changed over the course of the series. Once he was a CIA lone-wolf operative, essentially an assassin. Then he became part of a CIA paramilitary team. Then he was chased by the CIA and marked for assassination. He became a mercenary before he made an uneasy alliance with the CIA. He’s still a mercenary as Sierra Six opens and the fickle CIA wants him dead again.

The story follows two branches, one in the present, one twelve years in the past. In the present, Gentry has been hired through the dark web to plant microphones outside the Turkish embassy in Algeria. He assumes he’s been hired by the Indian government for a mission that India can deny if it goes haywire. The mission goes haywire after Gentry sees a man he thought had died twelve years earlier. Gentry ignores the mission for which he was hired in favor of his own mission: to kill the dead man.

Gentry’s revised mission goes haywire when the man he wants to kill, Murad Khan, eludes him and orchestrates the capture of his handler, a woman named Priya. Gentry adds freeing Priya to his to-do list, along with killing Khan. (Yes, there is a scene in which Gentry screams the name Khan. Yes, I immediately pictured William Shatner as Gentry. Yes, that makes me an aging nerd.)

To achieve his goal, Gentry needs to ask his former boss, Matt Hanley, for information. Hanley, a character who will be familiar to series readers, has been relegated to Palau as punishment for his friendship with Gentry. Another CIA character who will be familiar to readers, Suzanne Brewer, is now in charge of killing Gentry, but that ongoing storyline is only collateral to the main action.

Hanley’s information leads Gentry to a retired CIA station chief named Ted Appleton who is now living in Mumbai. Appleton is initially a character of ambiguous loyalty as Mark Greaney makes the reader guess whether he’s on Gentry’s side.

The story that takes place in the past explains Gentry’s animosity toward Khan. It also explains how Gentry transitioned from being a solitary assassin to a member of Sierra Golf, a CIA paramilitary team. That team and its leader, Zack Hightower, will be familiar to series fans from earlier books. The story explains Gentry’s training and early missions before Gentry tackles Khan’s plan to detonate dirty bombs at US military bases in Afghanistan.

Both stories are filled with action. The earlier story’s action culminates in a helicopter chases, which is a refreshing change from most thriller chase scenes. A helicopter piloted by Gentry chases down three other helicopters flying toward three different destinations while his paramilitary team tries to shoot them out of the sky before they can deliver their deadly cargo. Is that even possible? Probably not, but unlikely action scenes never stop me from enjoying James Bond movies.

The story set in the present culminates with Gentry trying to prevent Khan’s detonation of another dirty bomb, this one in Mumbai. Among other improbabilities, Gentry has to climb a crane and leap into a partially constructed building during a monsoon. We ask a lot from our action heroes, don’t we?

While working with Sierra Golf, Gentry finds himself attracted to a bright analyst in Afghanistan named Julie who, like Gentry, lacks social skills (she freely admits she’s somewhere on the spectrum). In the present, Gentry bonds a bit with Priya. Gentry’s intense desire to protect both women, and in particular his emotional response to Julie, gives Gentry the heart that makes it possible for empathic readers to connect with him. Unlike Hightower, who measures his morality by whether he kills more bad people than good people, Gentry (at least during his early days with Sierra Golf) has reservations about that moral equation.

Mark Greaney generally avoids overt political discussions, or at least he avoids having politics intrude on Gentry’s life apart from the scolding Gentry receives when he tries not to kill the innocent. Gentry is usually too busy avoiding death to give much thought to philosophical questions.

I appreciated the character development we see in Sierra Six and, of course, I enjoyed the nonstop action in the parallel stories. Action novel fans who haven’t read any of the Gray Man novels can easily read Sierra Six as a standalone. As an adrenaline rush, it’s one of the best high-octane stories I’ve read in recent memory.

RECOMMENDED

The Berlin Exchange by Joseph Kanon

Published by Scribner on February 22, 2022

The Berlin Exchange gives readers a different take on the spy thriller. The protagonist is a failed spy, an American physicist who passed secrets to the Russians while America was developing the atomic bomb. He served about ten years in a British prison before a prisoner exchange sent him to East Germany, reuniting him with his ex-wife and son. The novel begins with the exchange as the tense steps across the border are followed by gunfire and a crashed ambulance.

Martin Keller taught physics in Germany. When he met Sabine at a party, she told him she was a Communist “in her head,” but not openly because the Nazis did not tolerate Communists. She also told him that she wanted to leave Germany before a war started and that an American would be positioned to make that happen. Martin married her, brought her to America, and — like Sabine — became a spy for ideological reasons. He believed that America’s quest to be the sole nation with nuclear weapons would hinder the cause of world peace.

Martin got caught while he was in England. To maintain her cover, Sabine denounced and divorced him, then returned to the country that had become East Germany, where she took up residence. She married Kurt Thiele, a lawyer who arranges prisoner exchanges with the help of a priest and some black marketeers. Thiele raised Martin’s son Peter as is own, although Peter has always known Martin is his father. At Sabine’s request, Kurt arranges the prisoner exchange that brings Martin to East Germany, a place Martin views as little better than the prison in which he had been serving time.

Peter plays a starring role in an East German television show that is a propaganda vehicle for East Germany’s brand of communism. Peter has been raised in an environment of propaganda and views his father as a hero for betraying the West. Peter believes what he has been taught — communism is fairness, everyone in East Germany has everything they need. Given the status of Peter and his father, Peter has it better than most, making it easier to swallow the lie.

Against that background, a plot unfolds. Martin has abandoned his ideological respect for communism because of how it is practiced in Russia and East Germany. He doesn’t like the oppressive society that he has been forced to join. He doesn’t like the return of his former Russian handler to his life or the expectation that he will spy on a friend and former colleague. He doesn’t like Kurt. But he cares about Sabine (despite having good reason to hate her) and he loves his son. The story follows Martin as he masterminds a plan to save Peter, Sabine, and himself.

Joseph Kanon doesn’t try to make Martin particularly likeable, but he does craft Martin as a decent man who earns the reader’s sympathy. Martin is trying to make the best of an impossible situation and is willing to take risks to overcome his mistakes. His relationship with Sabine is complicated but he doesn’t let anger prevent him from doing the right thing.

Martin’s plan is complex and clever, designed to stay a step ahead of his adversaries, but the story always feels real. Kanon sets up a meticulous plot but doesn’t bog it down in unnecessary detail. Every scene has a purpose, setting up a suspenseful ending that could have a variety of outcomes. Until the final pages arrived, I had no idea how the book would end.

Kanon writes some of the smartest thrillers on the market, and some of the best suspense novels that are set in post-war, Cold War era. The Berlin Exchange meets the high bar that Kanon has set for novels in that genre.

RECOMMENDED

The Selfless Act of Breathing by JJ Bola

Published by Atria Books on February 15, 2022

“You ever wish that you could die … but without all the dying?” Michael Kabongo needs a therapist but he speaks that question to a prostitute, who wisely tells him she’s not a therapist. Prostitutes and bartenders are fated to listen to their customers’ woes. In any event, Michael tells the reader that he doesn’t want to die but to “cease to exist, disappear, be invisible, every trace of your life, even the memories of you in other people’s hearts and minds, all gone.” That can’t happen so Michael’s only alternative is to end his life, perhaps by jumping off a cliff. The novel follows Michael as he works to spend all his money before he dies because, well, he can’t take it with him.

In chapters that tell us the backstory, we learn that Michael grew up poor and black in London. His family traveled to England from the Congo to avoid a war when he was a child. For reasons Michael does not understand, his father returned to the Congo and died during Michael’s childhood.

When he decides to die, he is teaching eighth grade. I suspect most eighth grade teachers feel the same way. In London, Michael has few friends. One is Sandra, the co-worker Michael calls his “work wife.” Another is Jalil. Part of the story follows Jalil’s response to his father’s insistence that it is time for Jalil to marry. That subplot doesn’t amount to much, but it gives Michael the chance to advise Jalil that he “can’t just go around letting life happen to you,” advice that Michael realizes he’s not following.

When Michael decides that he no longer desires to live, he has about $9,000 in the bank. He travels to San Francisco (a city where it’s easy to spend money), visits City Lights bookstore (again, an easy place to spend money, but always worth it), meets a young woman named Sara, treats her to a weekend in LA, and eventually travels to New York where a friendly taxi driver takes him to a strip club. There Michael meets a friendly prostitute named Belle. At the end of each chapter or after significant events, we see Michael’s remaining funds. The money disappears quickly — perhaps a bit too quickly as Michael ponders reasons to extend his end-of-life adventure.

About a quarter of the way into The Selfless Act of Breathing, Michael explains the history and cause of his fixation on his own death. That history includes a failed relationship, mixed results as he tries to reach self-destructive students, his displeasure with his mother’s marital plans, and conflicted emotions about a co-worker whose beating he witnessed. He also spends significant time describing his classic symptoms of depression.

The path that the novel will follow seems obvious once Michael meets Belle. The discuss their different views of life — he’s a fatalist, she doesn’t believe anything was “meant to be”; he’s almost a nihilist, she seems more like a Buddhist — and their discussion might provide the kind of spark that would make Michael rethink his life. Will the stripper redeem the jaded Londoner? Fortunately, the novel isn’t quite as predictable as a Netflix romance.

Still, the story is filled with clichés, from the prostitute with a heart of gold to a homeless man who quotes philosophers about the purpose of suffering. Collateral characters occasionally deliver trite affirmances about the importance of persevering and overcoming obstacles. The sermonizing in the final pages is a bit much. In addition, JJ Bola failed to win my emotional investment in Michael, who sometimes comes across as a self-pitying whiner whose problems are, on the whole, considerably less than he would have experienced in the Congo. I understand that depression causes people to fixate on their troubles and possibly develop a suicidal ideation that others cannot understand, but that reality didn’t make me root for Michael as a reader is clearly meant to do. I just didn’t care whether he kills himself. I was more interested in the entertaining moments provided by Michael’s spending spree.

The story proceeds at a good pace. Some of the scenes are unexpected. At least one aspect of the ending comes as a surprise. Another aspect is darkly ambiguous, unless I’m imagining an ambiguity that Bola did not intend. The Selfless Act of Breathing has its faults, but it is not a failure. Readers who appreciate clichés about the purpose of life might even find it inspiring.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS