True Believers by Kurt Andersen

Published by Random House on July 10, 2012

True Believers purports to be the memoir of Karen Hollander, bestselling author, law school dean, and former candidate for the Supreme Court who, as a child, obsessed about James Bond.  Hollander tells us all about the playful spy missions she and her friends undertook while building up to the terrible secret from 1968 that she means us to accept as true.  Hollander finally describes this troubling event about two-thirds of the way through the book, but I stopped caring long before the revelation arrived.

During the first half of the novel, Hollander is a preteen or young teen living largely within her own imagination.  Her secret crushes and James Bond fantasies make for less than compelling reading.  A 14-year-old white kid’s observations of the civil rights movement from her bedroom community in Chicago’s North Shore district are equally uninspiring, as are her predictable reactions to the world events (including the Kennedy assassination) she sees on television.  Shortly before the novel’s midway point, Hollander turns 17 and morphs into a female Holden Caulfield, condemning the phoniness of the world around her.  Unlike Holden, however, Hollander is driven by her growing political awareness.  Where Holden searched for truth by visiting a prostitute, Hollander joins the SDS.  You can probably surmise where the story goes from there.

Although the reader is asked to accept that True Believers is a memoir, it isn’t written like a memoir.  It is more the story of a person struggling to write a memoir rather than the finished product.  It certainly isn’t the kind of memoir a person like Hollander would actually publish.  Kurt Andersen’s failure to sell the premise, his failure to make the novel read like an actual memoir, is the novel’s biggest failing.

Apart from its credibility issues, much of True Believers is dull for the same reason that many actual memoirs are dull:  reading about someone who is obsessed with the triviality of her own life is a tedious experience.  The attempt to jimmy a love story into the plot adds nothing of interest.  I would call the last quarter of the novel anti-climactic but for the absence of any real climax.

Hollander has a tendency to over-intellectualize life.  She equates Disneyland and pornography and megachurches, all of which prove Americans are “adorable and ridiculous” in their desperation “to immerse in fantasy.”  She strives to wax eloquent about the need to embrace “the flotsam and jetsam of life.”  All of it strikes a false note.  Her contrasts between life in the 1960s and contemporary America struck me as artificial.

Andersen makes some worthy observations about the hysterical nature of modern news coverage and the nuttiness/hypocrisy of popular political dogma, but those notions are far from original.  To the extent that the novel tries to say something profound about snitching, it fails.  In fact, I was never quite sure what Andersen was trying to say.

True Believers might have worked as a short story, without the trappings of a memoir.  The bones of a reasonably good tale are buried within the novel.  Sadly, it takes too much effort to uncover those bones.  They are better left interred.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Chimera by T.C. McCarthy

Published by Orbit on July 31, 2012

The war is over (or so it appears) but Stanley Resnick is still fighting.  His job -- the only element of his life that brings him joy -- is to track down and destroy rogue Germlines, the genetically engineered female warriors who have chosen not to meet their scheduled deaths.  The Germlines are designed to spoil like rotting meat after two years, but Germlines are starting to appear who, long after their expiration date, show no signs of spoilage.  Of course, you know that if you read Germline, the first novel in the Subterrene War trilogy (if you haven’t read Germline, you should, both to give context to Chimera and because it is an excellent novel).

Resnick is assigned to track down Margaret, a Germline last seen in Exogene.  The hope is that Margaret will lead Resnick to Dr. Chen, who is suspected of deactivating the Germlines’ safety protocols, thus granting them continued life.  The hitch:  Margaret has become a religious icon in Thailand.  Together with her protégé Lucy, Margaret lives under the protection of the Thai government, while Catherine (who died in Exogene) has achieved a status akin to sainthood.  Resnick undertakes the assignment with the help of Jihoon Kim, a linguist and analyst whose former job involved keeping track of borderline psychopaths like Resnick.

Chimera sharpens the conflict between humans and the Germlines (who consider themselves closer to God than the nonbred) while adding another sort of soldier bred in tanks, this one a creation of the Chinese, an abomination that lives its life within an armored suit, an enemy of humans and Germlines alike.  Margaret, in turn, has created a group of followers called the Gra Jaai -- nonbred humans who nonetheless revere Catherine and learn “how to get closer to God through killing.”  Nothing could be less human than the Chinese genetics, yet Lucy wonders whether they have a soul, while Resnick can’t imagine that Lucy has one.  As was true of the first two novels, questions of religion and the meaning of life and death pervade the story.  Chimera adds a new question:  whether humanity (whatever we mean by that term) is really worth fighting for.

T.C. McCarthy is a master of characterization.  His readers will not be disappointed by his newest creation.  Resnick is so acclimated to combat that crazy is normal.  Resnick no longer fits safely within civilian society -- not that American society, with its complete lack of privacy, is a place he really wants to be.  Everything is a war to Resnick because war is all he knows.  He finds it easy to kill Germlines -- he is, in fact, addicted to it -- and his ever-present anger is easily displaced, making him a threat to pretty much everyone.  Still, McCarthy never settles for a simplistic characterization.  Resnick is thus torn by conflict:  he loves and hates war; he feels the need to protect and to abandon the son he didn’t father; his instinct is to kill Margaret yet he questions that desire as he comes to understand her.

McCarthy has given careful thought to the geopolitics of the messed up future he’s created.  There’s sort of an Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness feel to the story, with Margaret playing the role of Kurtz, right down to the corpses staked to poles in her jungle compound.  The jungle has a life and a madness of its own.  As always, McCarthy's combat imagery is vivid.  Battle scenes are tense; the combatants’ fear is palpable.  Throughout the novel, McCarthy’s prose is electrically charged.

Each novel in the trilogy has its own strengths.  Germline has the most poignant character.  Exogene has the best action.  Chimera reveals the big picture and raises serious philosophical questions.  I’m not sure which of the three I like best (there’s plenty of characterization, action, and philosophy in each), although I had the strongest emotional response to Germline.  I recommend them all, not just to fans of military science fiction but to any reader who appreciates good storytelling. 

RECOMMENDED

Murder in Mumbai by K.D. Calamur

Published digitally by Dutton Guilt Edged Mysteries on July 17, 2012

Murder in Mumbai is a police procedural -- or maybe a journalist procedural -- set in modern Mumbai.  Two men burglarizing an apartment find a body in a trunk.  Inexplicably, they decide to dispose of the body in a garbage dump rather than leaving it where they found it.  The dead woman was the CEO of a corporation.  Among the murder suspects are the woman’s unfaithful husband, a ruthless competitor, and a subordinate whose career benefitted from the woman’s death.

The best murder mysteries plant clues that give the reader a chance to solve the murder.  Krishnadev Calamur makes a clumsy attempt to do so, but given that the improbable motive for the murder isn’t revealed until the closing pages, a reader spotting the murderer will be relying on guesswork rather than detective skills.  Still, the straightforward plot is moderately interesting.

The same cannot be said of the novel’s characters.  The two central characters are stereotypes.  Inspector Vijay Gaikwad is the honest cop surrounded by corruption and bureaucracy.  Jay Ganesh is the fiercely dedicated crime reporter, a veteran print journalist who complains that the new kids at the paper don’t know how to write.  His investigation provides Gaikwad with the break he needs to solve the murder.   But for their enjoyment of chai tea and biscuits, the two characters might as well be Americans.  They are thin and unoriginal, lacking in personality.

Calamur strives to be profound in his observations of evolving Mumbai and insightful in his comments about human nature but rarely rises above the obvious.  Gaikwad’s supposed pride in the self-confidence of modern women in Mumbai seems more like the author’s commentary on a changing country than a realistic character trait.  On nearly every page, a character ponders Mumbai’s class distinctions, the ill-treatment of the poor by the wealthy, and the subordinate role traditionally played by Indian women -- points made so relentlessly through the course of the novel that they become wearisome. Passages that explain cultural and religious traditions read like excerpts from a travel guide.

Calamur’s prose is competent but lackluster, the sort of writing found in the middle pages of second-string newspapers.  Long strings of ponderous dialog carry much of the story.

Mystery fans with a special interest in India might be drawn to this story.  While it is far from awful, it fails to rise above the ordinary.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Fear Artist by Timothy Hallinan

Published by Soho Crime on July 17, 2012

Philip “Poke” Rafferty is an American travel writer who now resides in Bangkok with his Thai wife and adopted Thai daughter.  Poke is leaving a paint store -- he plans to paint his home while his wife and daughter are out of town -- when he collides with a running man.  A couple of gunshots later, the running man is dead in Poke’s arms, a laundry ticket is in Poke’s pocket, and the Thai version of Homeland Security is interrogating Poke about the man’s last words.  It doesn’t take long for Poke’s status to change from witness to suspect.  As Poke tries to avoid arrest (or worse), he conducts his own investigation within Bangkok’s shadowy world of former spies and current criminals.

Apart from Poke’s half-sister Ming Li (who shows up in Bangkok to lend Poke an assist) and Vladimir, a morbidly philosophical Russian, the novel’s most significant player is an unhappy spook named Murphy, a former operative in the CIA’s Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War.  Murphy is training his creepy young daughter, Treasure, to be a spy -- or a psychopath.  While Treasure is an interesting character who makes a less than convincing contribution to the plot, Ming Li enlivens the story with an irreverent teenage perspective.  Vladimir provides the novel’s comic relief, as does (in a small role) the despondent boyfriend of Poke’s goth daughter.  Each character has a quirky, believable personality.

This is Timothy Hallinan's fifth Poke Rafferty thriller.  When Hallinan introduces a character from an earlier novel, he includes a quick summary of the character’s relationship to Poke.  For that reason, it isn’t necessary to read the earlier novels before reading this one, but the several backstories are a bit distracting and might even be annoying to fans of the series who are familiar with all the characters.

The tightly constructed plot -- part mystery, part spy story -- is suspenseful and (if you forgive the coincidence of the running man giving the laundry ticket to Poke in his dying moments) credible, a rare combination in thrillerworld.  Unfortunately, to the extent that the story turns into “Phoenix Program participant needs to cover up atrocities in Vietnam so they won’t ruin his current career,” it is far from original.  The Thai angle gives it a fresh twist and figuring out the multiple betrayals is a challenge.  Betrayal is a constant theme to which even Poke is not immune.  Circumstances require Poke to betray a friend’s trust, a guilt-inducing event that creates sympathy for his character.

Although Hallinan is a skillful writer, particularly adept at pulling a reader’s emotional strings, he tells the story in the present tense, a technique that is mildly annoying.  The text is infused with a political point of view that disapproves of the bullying American tendency to act as a global police force (at least when it serves American interests).  Readers who believe that the victims of collateral damage are people, not collateral, will likely appreciate Hallinan’s viewpoint, but more hawkish readers might be put off by the novel’s politics.  In any event, The Fear Artist is far from a political diatribe.  It is first and foremost an entertaining, fast-moving tale of crime and deception in an exotic locale.

RECOMMENDED

Year Zero by Rob Reid

Published by Del Rey on July 10, 2012

The alien members of the Refined League share a superior aesthetic sense, at least when it comes to art, architecture, fashion, interior design, and stained glass -- everything, in fact, except music, the one realm in which humans rule.  Aliens who have unwittingly pirated Earth’s music have discovered (as have myriad American college students) that the Copyright Damages Improvement Act is “the most cynical, predatory, lopsided, and shamelessly money-grubbing copyright law” ever devised in the history of the universe.  They owe the music industry pretty much the net worth of every planet.  Unfortunately, the aliens’ solution to the problem is even more draconian than the law itself.  It’s up to a young copyright lawyer to save the world.

Making fun of lawyers is easy, particularly the self-serving lawyers who think you should pay a royalty every time you hum the theme from Welcome Back, Kotter.  As suggested in Year Zero, the scorched earth approach to music piracy benefits law firms while harming everyone else on the planet, including musicians.  The music industry and its pet politicians are equally tempting targets, as are reality tv shows, trendy Manhattan restaurants, and celebrities (or wannabes) who indulge the desire to live life publicly via Twitter and other social media organisms.  Rob Reid skewers them all.

The bottom line is that Year Zero is funny, although quite a few of its laughs derive from silliness.  The aliens have access to superheavy metals and, music lovers that they are, have given them names like metallicam.  The atmosphere of a planet is identical in composition to Drakkar Noir.  One alien species resembles a vacuum cleaner.  And so on.  The narrative also takes well-aimed shots at Microsoft (Reid is clearly a Mac user).

The text is riddled with footnotes.  Most of them are amusing but the more informative notes reveal hard truths about the music industry and its suicidal, thought-deprived executive decision-makers.  Reid’s incisive and insightful takes on music piracy are a must-read for anyone with an interest in the subject.

Year Zero has a definite political point of view.  Rabid fans of Orrin Hatch are unlikely to enjoy the novel.  Highly placed music industry executives and partners in law firms specializing in intellectual property are equally unlikely to enjoy its stinging criticism (associates in those firms, on the other hand, will probably get a kick out of its accurate depiction of young lawyers as fodder that fuels the money machine).  Readers who don’t make their living extorting ridiculous sums of money from college kids who download songs illegally are likely to appreciate the novel’s humor.  The story provokes more chuckles than belly laughs, but as light comedy, Year Zero worked for me.

RECOMMENDED