Darke by Rick Gekoski

Published in Great Britain in 2017; published by Canongate Books on November 21, 2017

Darke is the kind of novel that starts out being one thing and ends up being something quite different. The ending puts the beginning in perspective by casting the protagonist in a penetrating light that removes him from the shadows and illuminates his interior.

James Darke is a former schoolmaster. Now he has arranged his life so that he will never need to leave his home. He can no longer bear the presence of other people, “even to dismiss them.” He has no use for their opinions or jokes. He is intolerant of any preference that diverges from his own (the notion that some people might prefer green tea to coffee is proof of their stupidity and perhaps their Green Party membership). James has had enough and is ready to say no mas to the world like a defeated fighter. The novel is his journal, the thoughts of a recluse who explains how he came to reject humanity.

James does not limit his disdain to ordinary people. In some of my favorite moments, he savages T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Yeats, “that blubbery piss-artist” Dylan Thomas, “that dreadful gasbag” Kahlil Gibran, and Philip Roth, whose characters “speechify” for paragraphs at a time while always sounding like Philip Roth. James has spent years trying to write a monograph about Dickens, a writer he decides is “slobbery” by the novel’s end. Yet as a teacher, James encouraged his students to read literature with an open mind, to consider multiple viewpoints with humility, to “allow them gracious entrance however strident or discordant some of them may sound,” so that “each of these voices will become a constituent part of who you become, an atom of growing being.” Good advice, but James has come to reject his own counsel, having decided that “nothing assuages the pain of being.” In fact, he hates wisdom, and is engaged in the British project of searching for its antidote.

As much as he fears admitting it, James also suffers from loneliness in his self-imposed isolation. Thus he finds himself discussing Dickens with Bronya, his Bulgarian cleaner, who startles him with insights that had never occurred to him. It seems the old dog is capable of learning new ideas, even if he would prefer not to. But will he repair his self-imposed exile from a pained and loving daughter?

How did James Darke become so dark? Much of his journal recounts his past, introducing the reader to the highs and (mostly) lows of his life. The reason for his morose withdrawal from society eventually becomes clear, and the description of the events leading to that point are intense and painful to read. Knowing how his past has shaped his present allows the reader to understand the emotional overload that underlies James’ escape from the world of the living.

Darke is deft in its transition from light comedy to dark comedy to tragedy. Some of James’ humor might be described as socially incorrect; his rant about female tennis players who grunt when they serve is priceless. James also has strong opinions about what a novel should be; he skips past descriptions of trees and searches for “human content,” characters who are passionate or ironic. Which is very much a description of Darke. This is a novel that closely observes people, not the quality of sunsets or the shimmer of a rainy sky.

The novel’s ending, which explains and addresses James’ rejection of his daughter, is powerful. Rick Gekoski sets aside the jokes in favor of a gut-wrenchingly honest examination of a man who was forced to make an impossible decision and then to find a way to live with its consequences. The ending makes it possible for the reader to reinterpret James. He still might not be likable, but he’s sympathetic, a flawed but caring human who is doing his best to confront adversity even if, in his own words, his best isn’t very good.

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The Book of Mirrors by E.O. Chirovici

Published in Great Britain in January 2017; published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books on February 21, 2017

A literary agent, Peter Katz, receives a partial manuscript of a nonfiction work describing the author’s experiences at Princeton in 1987. The manuscript concerns a young man named Richard Flynn who wants to be a writer and whose new roommate, an attractive young woman named Laura Baines, is studying psychology. Laura is apparently working on a secret project with Professor Joseph Wieder. Flynn gets a job cataloguing the professor’s library and promptly falls in love with Laura, but things take an odd turn when, shortly after Laura seems to pull away from both Wieder and Flynn, Wieder is murdered.

Katz is intrigued by the opening chapters and wants to read the entire manuscript, but contacting Flynn proves to be difficult, and it seems like a story to which Katz will never learn the ending. From the reader’s perspective, however, the story is just beginning. It continues with the introduction of John Keller, an unemployed writer/reporter who agrees to investigate Flynn’s story and to write a new version of the book if the original manuscript can’t be found.

Keller interviews sources and hears conflicting accounts of pretty much every fact that pertains to Flynn, Baines, Wieder, and various others who were involved with their lives. The stories are so dramatically different that Keller and the reader are challenged to determine who (if anyone) is telling the truth, what motivations they might have for lying, and (most importantly) who actually murdered Wieder.

The story is told from four perspectives: Katz, Flynn (who speaks through his partial manuscript), Keller, and Roy Freeman, a retired detective who worked on the unsolved murder. While each perspective is written in the same voice, the consistent voice arguably supports the continuity of the story. More importantly, the changing perspectives on the investigation keep the story fresh as the plot advances.

The plot has enough complexity to keep the reader guessing but never becomes convoluted. I like the way important aspects of the mystery are resolved while the reader is left wondering about others. The elusive nature of truth is the novel’s theme, and the plot illuminate the theme in clever ways.

The story does not bog down with unnecessary detail and the pace is appropriate to a literary mystery … quick enough to keep the reader interested, slow enough to give the reader time to chew on the conflicting versions of the facts. Characters have carefully defined personalities and E.O. Chirovici’s writing style is smooth. A Book of Mirrors is a solid mystery and the beginning of a promising career.

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The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells

First published in 1896

The Island of Dr Moreau is H.G. Wells’ novel about a mad scientist who takes the idea of anthropomorphizing animals to an extreme. It is a horror story, but it explores a number of philosophical questions as the horror unfolds.

Edward Prendick, a biologist, is near death when he is rescued from a lifeboat after being forced to abandon ship. When he recovers his senses, he finds himself on a schooner with a drunken captain, a doctor named Montgomery, a deformed man who attends the doctor, a caged puma, and an angry pack of muzzled dogs.

Montgomery, having been booted out of medical school in London, is on his way to an isolated island. Through no fault of his own, Prendick is booted off the ship, leaving him with no choice but to join Montgomery on the island.

The island, of course, is home to the mysterious Dr. Moreau. It’s probably impossible to spoil a story this old, but I won’t say much more about the plot, except to note that Prendick encounters creatures who are “human in shape, and yet human beings with the strangest air about them of some familiar animal. Each of these creatures, despite its human form, its rag of clothing, and the rough humanity of its bodily form, had woven into it, into its movements, into the expression of its countenance, into its whole presence, some now irresistible suggestion of a hog, a swinish taint, the unmistakable mark of the beast.”

That quotation gives you a sense of Wells’ prose style which, to readers raised on genre authors who write eight word sentences and three sentence paragraphs, might seem laborious. Perhaps it is, but it is a style uniquely Wells’ own.

Prendick discovers that human-like beasts on the island are (rather reluctantly) following a set of laws. Transgressions are enforced by punishment that is “sharp and sure.” But, just as the promise of swift punishment does little to deter criminal behavior or misbehaving children, threatening to punish beasts who eat the flesh of other animals (or humans) isn’t likely to change their nature. And like all systems of punishment-based law, the system does no good if those who violate the law are not caught.

Philosophical questions that the novel raises include the difference between man and beast and the justice of a system that forces the island’s inhabitants to live in fear of laws they do not understand. The novel could be viewed as an allegory of legal systems and particularly of religious law, where obedience is coerced by instilling fear of punishment by a higher power. It can also be seen as an indictment of totalitarian government, where the “sayer of the law” uses ruthless tactics to dictate obedience among the masses, who are viewed as incapable of governing themselves (or whose self-governance is feared). And the novel can be seen as a caution against attempts to replace the natural with the unnatural, perhaps a forerunner of the debate about genetic engineering. On a simpler level, while the novel isn’t very frightening when viewed as a horror story, it is an entertaining tale, made all the more interesting by convincing characters, both man and beast (and in-between).

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War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

First published in 1898

One of the characters in War of the Worlds talks about how people live their lives in fear. They buy insurance because they fear catastrophe. They work at jobs they hate because they fear a loss of security. They scurry home and stay indoors because they are afraid of the dark. On Sundays they fear the hereafter. They want only “safety in their one little miserable skedaddle through the world.” Now they have something real to fear -- Martians. Even after the invasion, some will be happy to be caught and caged, because to “submit to persecution and the will of the Lord” is easy, and what people really fear is thinking for themselves.

I think that little speech by a soldier in the second part of War of the Worlds highlights one of the novel’s best themes. You’re either content to be a rabbit in a cage or you have the will to take risks. The soldier thinks that most people can’t be saved from the Martians but most aren’t worth saving. Knowledge and ideas are worth saving, the sum of human accomplishment. With time and rescued knowledge, humankind will be able to fight the Martians (or so the soldier hopes), to stage a comeback after a devastating defeat. But is that realistic or is it folly? The book’s narrator calls the soldier a “strange undisciplined dreamer of great things,” but perhaps those are the people we should strive to be in time of crisis.

Focused myopically on their own lives, early twentieth century humans failed to appreciate that Martians might exist or that humans might have something Martians would desire: a healthy planet. Mars and the life it sustains are coming to an end. The Martians want Earth.

The narrator of War of the Worlds is curious when a cylindrical object crashes near his home. He’s still curious when the top unscrews and creatures with tentacles scramble into the crater that was created by their crashing vessel. He’s vexed when the creatures assemble a heat ray that systematically sets trees, buildings, and people on fire. Fortunately, the sweep of the heat ray is not extensive (hiding behind the nearest hill provides adequate protection) so the narrator assumes the military will make short work of the Martians. That assumption gives way to panic when more cylinders fall and mechanized tripods begin to wander about, deploying heat rays and poisonous black clouds to wipe out cities and their defenses.

As you probably know, the Martians kick human butt for most of the novel. War of the Worlds is about badly behaving Martians, but it is also about badly behaving humans. Running from the Martians, people trample each other, throw each other from escaping boats, take advantage of weakness, and generally put their own lives above everyone else’s. The narrator’s brother is an exception, and there are a few others, including the soldier mentioned at the beginning of this review, but Wells’ view of mankind as a whole is rather dim. The epilogue, on the other hand, suggests an optimistic vision of the future.

Most people who have not read The War of the Worlds probably know how it ends, but I won’t spoil it for those who don’t. I will say only that the ending is a testament not only to Wells’ vivid imagination, but to his understanding that human beings (and even Martians) are not necessarily the most powerful entities in this vast universe. It is only hubris that makes us (or Martians) believe we thrive and survive because we are superior. Wells makes clear that humility always defeats hubris. That is the other timeless theme that makes The War of the Worlds an enduring contribution to the history of literature.

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The Hanging Club by Tony Parsons

First published in the U.K. in 2016; published by Minotaur Books on November 1, 2016

“What’s wrong with a bit of revenge?” asks a curator at the Crime Museum who keeps track of the ropes that were used to hang shoplifters and more nefarious criminals before England did away with capital punishment. That’s also the question on the minds of Londoners as they watch bad guys being executed on YouTube.

In the prologue to The Hanging Club, a small group of men execute (by hanging) a Pakistani taxi driver who just finished a relatively light sentence for his role in a gang that sexually assaulted young girls. A video of the hanging, accompanied by the hashtag #bringitback, goes viral. A good share of London’s population believes that the cab driver had it coming.

DC Max Wolfe, who has a little girl of his own, is assigned to investigate the hanging. He’s soon investigating additional hangings, some of the victims less obviously deserving of public outrage — although it doesn’t take much to stir outrage, even in stoic England.

The theme of retribution also shows up in a couple of collateral plotlines. One involves a man who was beaten to death by two young men as a third recorded the crime on his phone. The assailants receive an improbably short sentence (hence the desire for retribution). The other involves a police detective whose son was blinded by thugs. Both plot threads seem forced — contrivances that advance the plot rather than realistic events.

Another subplot involves Wolfe’s childhood BFF who is now living on the street. The reader is asked to decide whether the friend is a good guy or a bad guy, or a mixture of both. That subplot is also a bit forced, but it serves to personalize the retribution theme for Wolfe. A final subplot involving Wolfe’s attraction to a deaf specialist in voice analysis adds moderate interest to the story.

Vigilantism is often the product of fear. Unfortunately, fear and vigilantism both destroy the bonds that hold a civilized society together. “It was as if nobody could be trusted any more, as if the world had gone insane, as if you never knew who might want to dance on your grave.” Those thoughts are in Wolfe's head as London anti-terrorist police refuse to take their boots off the back of his neck, even after he has identified himself as a Detective Constable, because they fear he might be a terrorist.

The world of thrillers makes heroes of vigilantes, but too few thrillers spotlight the hypocrisy of people who think murder is justifiable if murders are committed for the right reasons. The story invites readers to consider whether private retribution is acceptable when vigilantes are dissatisfied with the punishment imposed by the criminal justice system. A shocking number of people seem to believe that trials and due process are “politically correct” values that shouldn't apply to people they categorically dislike. Defenders of vigilantism used to form lynch mobs. How much progress society has made (British or American) is a question the book invites readers to ponder.

I’m not sure The Hanging Club tackles these issues with much depth, but it does explore both sides by demonstrating that the rule of law is what saves society from anarchy, while acknowledging that people become understandably frustrated when they feel that the rule of law has let them down. The story gives readers the chance to make up their own mind about whether lynch mobs have anything to do with justice. It also allows readers to appreciate the conflict that Wolfe feels as he upholds the law in the face of angry people who think he’s on the wrong side when he pursues vigilantes.

Apart from its interesting development of a timely social issue and a multifaceted protagonist, The Hanging Club delivers an entertaining action story that is peppered with intriguing conflict among key characters. The ending contains a nice surprise. This isn’t an “edge of my seat” thriller, but it’s worth reading both as an engaging story and as a novel that makes readers think about important questions.

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