The Runaway by Nick Petrie

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on January 18, 2022

Peter Ash thrillers always give a fresh twist to a reliable formula. The formula involves an action hero (Reacher is probably the prime example) who roams around, either searching for or stumbling upon wrongs to right. Some action heroes have a sidekick or two (Ash has a friend named Lewis) and some have a significant other (Ash is married to a woman named June) while others roam in solitude, but they all have a loner’s personality: independent, uncomfortable in a crowd, happiest when working out their aggression by laying waste to bad guys. They have generally been damaged by life (Ash suffers from PTSD, not an unusual condition for action heroes who are part of this formula).

At an early stage in The Runaway, Ash stumbles upon a woman named Helene. She took over her mother’s waitressing job at a rural gas station in Montana. Her employer, a deputy sheriff, allowed Helene to live in a trailer in exchange for her labor. The deputy has made plain his intent to rape her when she turns eighteen. She has sex with a transient who is working a temporary job in the area, but he leaves her behind when he moves on to his next job. When a good-looking and charming stranger stops at the gas station for a bite to eat, she empties the cash register and persuades the man to take him with her.

Roy Wiley turns out to be a burglar and a serial killer. With a gang of three, he burglarizes summer homes in Colorado and high-end residences in a nine-state area. By the time Helene figures out that Roy is a criminal, she’s married to him. By the time she figures out he’s a killer, she’s pregnant. When she announces her desire to end their relationship, her pregnancy is the only thing that keeps her alive. She knows she’s trapped and she knows Roy will kill her when he does the math and figures out that the baby isn’t his.

Helene is making a desperate and unsuccessful attempt to flee when Ash finds her. The rescue is short-lived. Roy and his gang chase Ash and reclaim Helene. The story follows Ash’s effort to track down Helene, sometimes with the assistance of Lewis and June and a tough woman named Bobbie who gets dragged into the plot when Ash tries to steal her truck.

Bobbie is a strong, sympathetic character who, like Helene, has been wronged more than once in her life and has learned to survive. Helene is a complex character who does what she needs to do to survive. Nick Petrie invites the reader to consider the moral question of just how much leeway a victim like Helene should be given when she harms others to save herself. Helene isn’t necessarily a bad person but she certainly isn’t the best person she could be. She’s far from helpless but she’s also far from innocent. How readers might react to her is up to the reader. Petrie deserves props for creating that kind of ambiguity in a crime victim.

While the plot has familiar elements, it isn’t a typical “serial killer kidnaps an innocent victim” story. The plot takes interesting detours as Ash tries to catch up with Roy, while the characterization of Helene helps the novel stand apart from typical serial killer stories. The swift pace is suitable to an action novel, but the story transcends action. This is a smart novel about people in difficult situations making hard choices.

RECOMMENDED

Quantum of Nightmares by Charles Stross

Published by ‎ Tordotcom on January 11, 2022

The latest Laundry Files novel departs from the usual theme of metahuman intelligence officers saving England from demonic threats. The three interwoven plot threads involve a nanny who has been tasked with kidnapping the four bratty kids of parents who are attending a summit for state-licensed superheroes, a sorceress who discovers that she inherited her boss’ cult after she made her boss disappear, and a supermarket that saves labor costs by animating employees made from meat.

The nanny is Mary MacCandless, who does not appreciate being mistaken for Mary Poppins. Mary’s purse holds far more than it should, including a variety of weapons, but the four kids have powers of their own (one controls plants, another brings toys to life) and are more than a match for Mary. It seems you can’t take metahuman children anywhere, at least if you don’t want the place you visit to be destroyed.

The sorceress is Eve, the executive assistant of Rupert de Montfort Bigge. Eve discovers after making Rupert disappear that she is the heir to his financial empire. Rupert owns an island in the Channel Islands, where he was leading a cult that gains power through human sacrifice. By using an email service from the afterlife, Rupert has instructed his acolytes to sacrifice four metahuman kids. The kids, of course, are Mary’s kidnap victims, although she didn’t realize when she took the job that human sacrifice was on the table. To her credit, that knowledge gives Mary some moral qualms. It’s one thing to kidnap but a much different thing to disembowel.

Eve’s brother Imp has the ability to push people toward decisions that Imp wants them to make. He leads a gang of metahuman criminals, although they spend most of their time playing video games. Eve invites Imp to the island, where they discover the sinister details of Rupert’s cult. Eve also discovers Rupert’s plan to buy a store called Flavrsmart, where a butcher has just been fired for having sex with an effigy he assembled from meat. He’s good at his job, but there are some work rule violations that HR just can’t overlook.

Much of the plot revolves around Flavrsmart’s participation in a “compulsory remedial work placement scheme for persistently non-entrepreneurial dependents — ‘useless eaters’ as the Prime Minister calls them.” The employees are given a mask to wear that projects a computer-generated face and interacts with customers, leaving the employees with nothing to do but stand and walk. The store is taking the government’s concept to a higher level by replacing living employees with dead ones — or just sacks of meat that have shaped into human form (“meat puppets”).

As always, Charles Stross pokes fun at Thatcherism and the conservative tendency toward authoritarianism. Still, Quantum of Nightmares is less political than some Laundry Files novels. It’s also funnier than most. While there is always a degree of playfulness in Laundry Files stories, some take supernatural threats to the planet more seriously than others. Stross added superheroes to the Laundry Files universe several years ago. Their appearance typically signals a lighter approach to his storytelling. This one takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to its over-the-top material.

My favorite Laundry Files novels feature Bob Howard. Most of those novels accept the absurdities of the Laundry Files universe at face value and work as well-told action/adventure stories. Quantum of Nightmares is nevertheless so carefully plotted, so goofily gruesome, and so filled with amusing characters that I have to recommend it. The novel is so far outside the mainstream for the series that readers should be able to understand and enjoy it as a standalone, even if they haven’t read any previous Laundry Files novel.

RECOMMENDED

A Thousand Steps by T. Jefferson Parker

Published by Forge Books on January 11, 2022

A Thousand Steps is an interesting but frustrating novel. I couldn’t quite lose myself in its setting or plot, notwithstanding that both are a bit offbeat, because neither are quite convincing.

The setting is Laguna Beach in 1968. Timothy Leary is one of the characters, although he is more a caricature than a character. Various gurus, artists, hippies, cops, bikers, and high school kids also populate the novel. I suppose that Leary and Be-Ins and acid tripping might be how people remember Laguna Beach today, but there was clearly more to the city than T. Jefferson Parker acknowledges.

In addition to the flower children, acid consumers, and obligatory criminals, the story features Matt Anthony, who is 16-going-on-40. Matt has a paper route and is always hungry. Matt’s brother is nearing the end of his tour in Vietnam. Working as a waitress, his mother barely makes enough to pay their rent. Strait-laced Matt tends to judge his weed-smoking mother harshly, particularly after she graduates to weed laced with opium. Oddly, he is less judgmental of his father, a former cop who bailed on the family and is gone for years at a time. Since Matt’s mother stayed around and raised him, you’d think Matt would cut her more slack than he gives his dad.

The novel opens with the discovery of Bonnie Stratmeyer’s body on the beach. She’s a couple years older than Matt, about the same age as Matt’s sister Jasmine. Bonnie has been missing for a few weeks. Shortly after Bonnie’s body appears, Jasmine disappears. Jasmine just turned eighteen. She fights with their mother, making it possible that she’s just asserting her independence and getting away from home, but it soon becomes clear to Matt that she has been abducted. The police are less certain, although the police don’t seem to have much interest in any crime that isn’t related to drugs and hippies. That seems about right, given the time and location.

Apart from rampant drug use, Matt is exposed to a variety of sketchy behavior, from hippies stealing his wallet to a biker gang stealing his wallet, from vaguely pornographic photo shoots to constant invitations to smoke weed. Smoking up might be good for Matt. He’s a perfect patsy, which is why he’s chosen to commit various crimes that he doesn’t know he’s committing, even though the reader will want to shake him and acquaint him with reality. He’s annoyingly uptight, even when his wallet isn’t being stolen. The portrayal of hippies and drugs in Laguna Beach is largely negative, although Parker balances the karma with an equally negative portrayal of the police.

The police and Matt’s father are the kind of “Love It or Leave It” flag wavers who can’t say the word “hippy” without adding the word “scum.” They exemplify the narrow-minded version of conservatism and selective patriotism that was abundant during the Vietnam War and is little changed today. Matt idolizes his brother who has gone to war (fair enough) but he doesn’t grow sufficiently during the course of the novel to recognize that the war was a mistake, that advocating peace and love isn’t necessarily a bad use of one’s time, or that his dad is a bully. Matt’s father returns from his six-year absence both to find Jasmine and to “put the sinful world back right,” which might include taking out hippies, Asians, and anyone who opposes the Vietnam War, including Walter Cronkite. Matt’s dad insists that Matt own a gun because without one he’s not a man. In fact, Matt must buy that gun from his dad because that’s “the Anthony way.” Matt clearly comes from a messed-up family but he shows little ability to stand up to his father or to recognize the harm that his father continues to cause.

Conversations that Matt has with Timothy Leary and Swami Om seem unlikely. Since Matt clearly isn’t part of their scene, I doubt that anyone in that scene would pay him much attention. Beyond that, the entire plot is unlikely. The identity of Jasmine’s kidnappers and the reason for the kidnapping is just silly. The story spends too much time on Matt’s paper route and on the various chores that are making him big and strong, although there are a couple of fun scenes in which Matt gets to first and second base with his female friends. Apart from the almost-sex and action scenes that lack credibility, the story is a little dull. On the other hand, Parker’s prose is sharp and his characterization of Matt as a kid who is ready to come of age but never quite does is convincing. Balancing aspects of the novel I liked against those that troubled me, I can’t give A Thousand Steps an unqualified recommendation, but I wouldn’t tell anyone not to read it.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

BOX 88 by Charles Cumming

Published in Great Britain in 2020; published by Mysterious Press on January 11, 2022

Lachlan Kite works for an off-the-books organization created by intelligence agents from the US and the UK. The organization, known as BOX 88, hasn’t been authorized by either government. Few people know that it exists, although key CIA and MI6 agents divert their agency funds to BOX 88.

Kite was born and raised in Scotland, where his parents operated a hotel. When his father died, his mother sent him to Alford, a boarding school for the elite that Kite attended on a scholarship. Kite got into the requisite amount of boarding school trouble, usually in the company of his friend Xavier Bonnard, the son of an elite father. A “beak” (teacher) at Alford named Billy Peele spotted Kite’s potential for intelligence work and recruited him into BOX 88. Kite’s friendship with Xavier positioned him for a special assignment before he started college.

The story begins with Kite attending Xavier’s funeral. He meets a woman who has a flawed cover story. Kite correctly assumes that the woman is with MI5 and that she’s investigating BOX 88. Kite also meets an Iranian who claims to have been a friend of Xavier. Kite is inclined to believe the Iranian until he’s kidnapped and interrogated. The kidnapper questions Kite about his first mission. Kite weaves a story while denying that he was a spy when he visited the vacation home of Xavier’s family in France. As Kite answers or dodges questions, he recalls his childhood, recruitment, and efforts to gather intelligence on an Iranian guest of Xavier’s father, Luc Bonnard. He also recalls the passion he felt for Martha Raine.

Most spy novels are about betrayal. Kite feels that he is betraying his friendship with Xavier by taking advantage of the friendship to spy on Luc Bonnard’s Iranian friend. He feels that he is at least indirectly spying on Xavier’s family, a feeling that intensifies as Kite’s mission continues. In the present, Kite comes to feel that he has been betraying his wife by concealing the truth about his occupation, particularly after the kidnapper tries to gain leverage over Kite by threatening to kill his wife.

Charles Cumming balances action and characterization as the novel switches between Kite’s captivity in the present and his intelligence gathering as a teen. Both the scenes in Kite’s teen years and in the present build suspense. Aspects of the ending come as a surprise.

BOX 88 is apparently an origin story, the first in a series of books that will feature Kite and his clandestine organization. I hope that’s true. Cumming’s spy novels have generally been enjoyable if a bit uneven. BOX 88 is one of his best.

RECOMMENDED

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

Published by ‎ Simon & Schuster on January 4, 2022

The School for Good Mothers projects all the flaws of the child protective services system into a future that demands the complete subjugation of mothers to the state’s authority. That’s easy to imagine, given the ease with which children are snatched away from parents based on the mere suspicion that they might be at risk. Removing children from their parents is sometimes necessary to protect them, but it is traumatic for children and devastating for innocent parents. There are almost always better ways to protect kids who are not being subjected to clear physical abuse.

Rather than tackling that issue in a realistic novel, Jessamine Chan writes about an “experimental” program that threatens parents with termination of their parental rights unless they complete a one-year program. During that year, they raise blue robotic dolls that are programmed to behave like children. Social workers micromanage the parents’ behavior with their dolls as well as their personal behavior when they aren’t with their dolls. The parents are held in captivity and are under constant surveillance. They are given a monthly Facetime call with their real kids but social workers are quick to remove that privilege when parents fail to meet the social workers’ impossible expectations.

Frida Liu is a recently divorced American-born Chinese woman whose former husband Gust is living with a woman named Suzanne. Frida misses Gust and still sleeps with him from time to time. They share custody of their young daughter Harriet, each parenting her for half the week.

Frida is feeling pressured by the demands placed on her at work. She decides to leave Frida at home while she runs to the office to pick up papers. She answers emails while she’s there, loses track of time, and doesn’t return home for a couple of hours. Frida’s cries from her crib somehow attract the attention of the police. Harriet is removed from Frida’s custody and given to Gust.

Nothing Frida has done would remotely jeopardize her parental rights, but social workers threaten to have those rights terminated unless she completes the experimental program. Nobody in the outside world is permitted to know what goes on in the program. In the real world, any competent lawyer would tell the social workers where they can shove their program, but Frida’s lawyer tells her that she risks losing Harriet unless he complies. That advice parallels the reality that lawyers commonly advise parents to play along with social workers for fear that the social workers will otherwise abuse the enormous power they wield over families.

The story follows Frida as she raises her blue doll with other mothers and their daughters inside an electrified fence. Apart from teaching mothers the importance of being a helicopter parent, the school teaches mothers how to hug their children (not to long, not too short), how to change the blue liquid that fuels the blue kids, how to avoid activities (like chatting with adults or having sex) that distract from parenting. Instructors teach mothers that they should never shame their children while shaming the mothers at every opportunity. “I am a bad mother,” the mothers must chant, “but I am learning to be better.”

Men are also sent to classes, but not much is expected of fathers. They don’t lose phone privileges with their children. They don’t have talk circles in which they are required to analyze and confess their selfishness and bad parenting. The mothers are clearly being trained to be stay-at-home moms because, in the view of their instructors, devoting their entire lives to raising their children is the only purpose they should desire. The goal of ideal parenting, it seems to Frida, is to give no thought to your own needs while always displaying the kind of serenity one might feel after a lobotomy.

In its heavy-handed way, the novel illustrates important points. Children are too often made to suffer in the interest of protecting them. Limiting a parent’s time with a child does not promote healthy relationships between parents and children. Observing parents and children in artificial settings offers little insight into the parent-child dynamic. Constantly drumming into a parent’s head that they are a bad parent will likely turn them into a bad parent. Assuming that all parents should interact with children in exactly the same way, regardless of culture or personality, reflects arrogance rather than reality. Social workers often do what is best for the social worker rather than the family. Social workers can be vindictive and retaliatory when parents question their pronouncements about proper parenting. Parents are often made to jump through a seemingly endless series of hopes before they can regain custody of a child who has been removed from the home, and it often seems that the parents have been set up to fail.

The legal system gives enormous power to social workers. Many judges are too deferential to child protective services workers, but the Supreme Court has recognized that parents have a constitutionally protected interest in parenting their children. It is fairly easy to remove kids from a home, but it isn’t easy to terminate parental rights. The kind of nonsense that Frida endures in the program would not be tolerated by any judge, and certainly not by any appellate court. There is a place in literature for cautionary tales, but The School for Good Mothers isn’t 1984 or The Handmaid’s Tale. Reducing a problem to absurdities isn’t an effective way to sound an alarm. If spotlighting a flawed system was Chan’s intent, a novel that took an honest look at how the current system traumatizes children and parents would have been more effective.

I admired Chan’s writing style. Some passages are quite poignant. Frida’s sense of loss when she’s deprived of time with her daughter is palpable. Other passages, including women who spend most of their waking hours trying to figure out how to have sex with each other, with guards, or with visiting male parents, are just silly. The blue dolls are bizarre. The novel alternates between being a light-hearted “band camp” story and a serious tale of abused parents. The lack of a consistent tone makes it difficult to take The School for Good Mothers seriously, while the ending undermines much of the preceding story and makes the reader question whether Frida really is putting her own interests ahead of Harriet’s. Despite its merits, the book is too muddled to earn an unqualified recommendation.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS