People Like Us by Jason Mott

Published by Dutton on August 5, 2025

Jason Mott’s fourth novel, Hell of a Book, won a National Book Award. So did the protagonist of People Like Us. Soot calls the National Book Award the real N-word because uttering it might hurt book sales. I don’t know how well People Like Us will sell given the American reading public’s preference for genre fiction over literary fiction, but People Like Us tells an engaging story that open-minded readers should enjoy.

Soot has experienced the tragedy of a daughter’s death by her own hand. A moving soliloquy spotlights his guilt at surviving her death, his recognition that the world kept spinning despite his grief, his inability to understand why he sometimes has a good day in her absence. When Soot meets a kid at a book signing who is grieving over the deaths of classmates killed in a school shooting, “Soot just signs the book and offers the kid a smile and he hopes it’s enough.” But nothing is ever enough and, at the same time, nothing stops the world from spinning.

Despite its European setting, gun violence in America is a central theme of People Like Us. Soot flashes back to an orientation video at a college campus in South Carolina that not only teaches students the appropriate response to an active shooter alert, but encourages students and their parents to believe that active shooters are everywhere. In another flashback, Soot attends a school drill that trains students to hide in metal boxes called “Safe Spaces” when an active shooter appears. While the novel makes the point that hurricanes are more likely to harm students than a school shooter, another character experiences blackouts that are apparently triggered by stressful memories of trying to text his mother during a school shooting. It isn’t paranoia that drives fear of school shooters, even if society’s protective responses are over the top.

Of course, American gun violence isn’t restricted to schools. A woman named Kelly fled to Europe from her American hospital job because she was tired of seeing so many young men brought down by bullets. Soot put into practice the lesson of the video at his daughter’s campus — “sometimes escape is the best weapon” — when he moved to Europe, but he learned that guns are not the only weapon that an enemy might wield. A man named Remus has threatened to kill Soot and, as he follows Soot around Europe, he almost does.

The Remus subplot is puzzling. I suppose Remus advances the theme of violence, if only because it forces Soot to consider whether his own fascination with guns makes him any safer. Yet Remus' motivation is never made clear. He seems content to have proven a point by exposing Soot's fear and goading him into a violent act that harms another character, but the act seems to have none of the consequences that the reader might expect.

Soot has a history of interacting with a kid who apparently isn’t there, unless he’s invisible to everyone else. In France, a billionaire (Soot calls him Frenchie) offers Soot a huge sum of money that he can keep if he doesn’t ever return to America. Why he does this is another "why" that the story doesn't answer. The billionaire has an assistant named Dylan. Soot is convinced that Dylan is the invisible kid, a role Dylan has no interest in assuming. While the Dylan is a less puzzling character than Remus, his role in the story is also a bit murky.

The novel’s larger theme is home. What does the concept of “home” mean to Black Americans whose ancestors were slaves? They can go to Africa in search of their roots, but they won’t recognize the language or culture. It won’t feel like home. They can stay in the city of their birth but white racists still won’t accept them as belonging in the country. They might face less discrimination in Europe, but they are still regarded as belonging to the Other, together with all the other nonwhite Europeans. Dylan is jealous of Jamaicans because they have a country they can call home. If home is where you fit, where is home if you are constantly made to feel that you don’t fit anywhere?

Perhaps home is the place where you feel at peace. Soot feels peaceful in Frenchie’s library, spending his days reading books with Dylan and Kelly and Frenchie’s African-Scottish assistant Goon. Locked away from reality, Soot wonders if he should make this his home, even if he must leave America behind. And he comes to understand that we don’t find home by looking for it. It isn’t even where we decide to stay. We find home by waking every day and deciding not to leave.

One of the most telling themes contrasts the desire to fix things with the reality that we can’t fix everything. Perhaps the inability to fix the world explains the novel’s multiple suicides. Perhaps people give up in the face of futility. As Soot wrote about an uncle who ended his own life: “He lived with the need to fix the world churning in his belly, weighing him down, keeping him tethered to this earth when, in some other life, if that ball of grief wasn’t there, he’d literally be able to fly. Maybe each day he struggled with wishing the world was one way, but waking up, again and again, to see it be a different way.” We can only fix ourselves, the story seems to say, and we can’t always do that. If we fail, maybe death is the home we seek, the place where we finally find peace.

The themes are bleak but the story is not oppressive. Jason Mott peppers the novel with humor. Nor does he leave the reader without hope. Soot has always been afraid of people. He feels safest when he’s alone. He craves invisibility. Yet by the novel’s end, when Soot admits he is the author’s alter ego, he comes to realize the importance of facing his fears. Maybe the way to “fit” into a place is to embrace others who share the same fears, to build a community of more than one. People Like Us — people who share those fears — tells a rich, sometimes funny, and ultimately heartwarming story about what it means to feel unwelcome and what we can do to ease the burdens of others (and perhaps our own) even if we can’t fix the world.

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All the Ash We Leave Behind by C. Robert Cargill

Published by Subterranean Press on June 26, 2025

This novella is set in the same universe as Day Zero and Sea of Rust. Robots and humans are at war, sometimes with each other, although independent robots and humans are united against the One World Intelligence that seeks to assimilate all robots and destroy all humans. The setting is generally post-apocalyptic.

The protagonist of All the Ash We Leave Behind is a robot who will be familiar to readers of Day Zero, although I won’t identify him (or she or it, whatever the politically correct pronoun might be for a robot) because he doesn’t reveal his identity until the last sentence. For most of the story, the protagonist is known only as Nanny because he was created to care for and protect children. Before the war, he had a nice coat of fur, the better for cuddling. Now he survives by using the military/fighting skills with which he was programmed to protect the children in his care.

The story begins five years after the war began. Humanity “is all but lost. Pockets of resistance remain, but there is nothing resembling nations or provinces. Just city-states on the fringes of what civilization once was.”

Nanny is searching for a mythical place called Confederation, a fortress where humans and robot allies live together, fighting to keep the enemy from destroying them. Nanny encounters a human girl named Celeste who is accompanied by two lightly armed robots that can’t match Nanny’s skill. Nanny follows them to Confederation, where Nanny is assigned to take over the protection duties that were once delegated to a nanny robot that is now inoperable.

It will come as no surprise that Confederation will be attacked. How the attack comes about and its outcome may be surprising so I won’t spoil them. I can say that the ending is bleak.

The story stands alone reasonably well for readers who aren’t familiar with Day One. Nanny is a sympathetic character; the others, both human and robot, have little personality. After C. Robert Cargill gets the setup out of the way, action takes over. Action scenes are typical of post-apocalyptic fiction that emphasizes action over characterization. Cargill fans will appreciate the chance to be immersed again in this future history. Readers who are unfamiliar with his fictional universe will likely find the novella enjoyable but unremarkable.

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Salt Bones by Jennifer Givhan

Published by Mulholland Books on July 22, 2025

“No one knows it’s a horror story when it begins.” Set in Southern California near the Salton Sea, the horror in Salt Bones involves girls who go missing. Mal Veracruz’s sister Elena disappeared 25 years earlier, as did a girl named Noemi. The authorities decided that Elena was a runaway, but Mal doesn’t believe that. Nor did the authorities have a good history of investigating the disappearances of women with Mexican ancestries.

Now a girl named Renata is missing. Mal’s brother is a cop and at least he’s assuming Renata was a crime victim, but he hasn’t uncovered any evidence of her fate. The first third of the story sets up the disappearance of Mal’s daughter Amaranta a week later.

Griselda and Amaranta are sisters. Their mother Mal is a butcher at the carnicería. Mal’s brother Estaban (known to most as Steve) is a lawyer who works for the Callahans, the rich landowners in the Imperial Valley. Estaban is married to Sharon, a former mayor who no longer puts her law degree to any obvious use. Estaban plans to run for the Senate, but many suspect he will help the rich get richer while forgetting his roots.

Mal’s brother Benito (known to most as Benny) is a police officer and an enemy of the Callahans because of their entitlement and power. Mal raised Benny, who was all but abandoned by their mother after Elena disappeared. Mal’s mother suffers from dementia and, on bad days, blames Mal for the loss of Elena.

Griselda’s BFF is Harlan, another Callahan. She’s shagging him despite the Veracruz war with the Callahan family. Griselda and Harlan engage in environmental/animal rights protests. One night, they rescue (or steal, depending on your perspective) calves from the Callahan ranch. Amaranta accompanies Griselda on the rescue operation. It doesn’t end well for a cowboy who tries to stop them. Not long after that incident, Amaranta disappears.

A couple of theories might explain Amaranta’s disappearance. One applies to all the missing girls. A monster has taken them — a chupacabra or a supernatural beast with a human body and the head of a horse known as La Siguanaba. Mal believes she saw La Siguanaba when Elena disappeared. She has more recently glimpsed the beast and often smells its urine.

Another theory is that a human monster took the girls — perhaps a local sex offender or Gustavo Castillo, a man the valley residents suspect of killing Noemi, his daughter. Griselda worries that her environmental activism invited retaliation, but Griselda’s fear would not explain the disappearance of Renata. Mal worries that her relationship with Gustavo might be behind Amaranta’s disappearance. The reader might need a spreadsheet to keep track of suspects and motives.

Other horror elements, not necessarily related to the supernatural, pop up to add new dimensions to the story. Kids are collecting jars of blood. Loose teeth appear at regular intervals. A suspect has snakes coiled around his neck. A hidden room seems devoted to an odd sort of taxidermy. A locked room mysteriously opens. Mal has horrific visions and nightmares that might be a window to a forgotten reality.

An undercurrent of domestic drama gains force in the novel’s second half. Two characters discover the true identities of their fathers. Parents discover the sexual identities of their children. Estaban’s kids act out in spooky ways because neither he nor his wife give them the attention they crave. Mal’s hidden relationship with Gus is troubling to her kids.  

A character recognizes that these are elements of a trashy telenovela (Mal’s father, as if exemplifying that observation, brandishes a cane at a man hugging his daughter and exclaims, “Get away from my daughter! El Diablo!”), but those moments integrate well with the larger plot. Slut shaming and abusive gossip are subtle themes that add weight to the story without overshadowing it. The power disparity between the rich and poor (by controlling water distribution, the wealthy are stealing from the poor) is another theme.

Part horror novel and part domestic drama, Salt Bones is a thriller in full. The story moves at a relentless pace. It generates excitement and ends in a flurry of credible action. Nearly every character is a plausible suspect in at least one disappearance, making the mystery difficult to solve. The link between the disappearance of Mal’s sister a quarter century earlier and the recent disappearances of her daughter and Renata is also plausible, if a bit unlikely. While it’s not a spoiler to assure the reader that La Siguanaba is not a suspect, the novel will end with characters sharing a belief in the beast’s reality while changing their opinion about its motivation.

A heavy smattering of Spanish runs through the novel, natural enough for characters with Mexican roots. I don’t have much Spanish but I found it easy to follow, so I imagine most readers will be able to cope. Salt Bones is one of the smarter thrillers I’ve read this year, making it one of the easiest to recommend.

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Ink Ribbon Red by Alex Pavesi

Published by Henry Holt and Co. on July 22, 2025

Ink Ribbon Red is the color of fictional blood. Or so says Marcin, one of the people — along with Phoebe, Janika, Maya, and Dean — who have gathered at the end of May 1999 to celebrate Anatol’s thirtieth birthday. Anatol was supposed to pick up Janika at the train station, but he ran a mysterious errand, forcing Janika to walk to his house after she tired of waiting for him. Janika begins to think that Anatol doesn’t want her there, but why?

As a birthday gift, Anatol wants his five guests to join him in a game. After writing their names on two slips of paper and placing them in separate bowls, each player draws one name from each bowl. One name is a killer and the other is a murder victim. Each player must write a murder mystery, describing how the killer does away with the victim.

Shortly before Anatol’s birthday, his addled and creepy father Gus was electrocuted in the bath while listening to the radio. Anatol’s friends suspect that Gus was murdered but Anatol has an alibi. Anyway, although nobody liked Gus, Anatol’s motive is unclear. Although Anatol will inherit his father’s house, he’ll need to sell it to pay the inheritance tax.

The weekend passes slowly. Some guests have the hots for each other. Anatole has been sleeping with Maya every few months. Dean is married to Yulie (who had an affair of her own) and seizes the weekend opportunity to shag her sister Phoebe. Dean needs to tell Phoebe that Yulie is pregnant but has trouble finding the right time. One of the characters says “Everyone’s sleeping with everyone. This is like a soap opera.” Fortunately, it’s not, although the characters' sexual escapades add litle to the story.

Multiple murders occur during the course of the weekend. A character is thrown out a window. Another is impaled on a sundial. Another dies in a fire. But are the murders real or just the stories that the guests wrote for the game? And which guests wrote which stories? Separating fictional reality from fictional fiction is the interesting challenge that Alex Pavesi poses to the reader.

As the reader tries to puzzle out whether any of the murders are real, other crimes complicate the plot. Characters receive unsigned letters that might be interpreted as blackmail threats. The letter to Anatol says I HAVE PHOTOS. Phoebe’s says I KNOW. Phoebe wonders if her letter might have come from Yulie or from Yulie’s friend Maya, who is also Phoebe’s best friend.

Marcin’s letter says INSIDER TRADING. When Marcin receives his letter, he assumes the insider trading that made him rich has been discovered. But the only person to whom he confessed his crime was Maya, who thought the crime was too boring to discuss with anyone else. Or maybe that’s just what she's telling Marcin.

Perhaps someone is trying to blackmail Maya with nude photos in lurid poses that an old boyfriend took of her (back in the innocent 90s when nudity was scandalous). Are the photos real or part of another story?

Ink Ribbon Red benefits from a carefully constructed plot. The story is clever. Perhaps too clever. The blackmail plot, once revealed, seems impossibly complicated. The blackmail victims could have been blackmailed without gathering for a story-writing weekend. Pavesi juggles the timelines, a common literary device, but one that has no obvious purpose here, apart from adding to the confusion. There are two true murders among all the imagined killings, but neither will shock the reader. The reader will suspect the truth behind one death from the novel’s early moments, while the other seems contrived to justify all the fictional killing that precedes it. A final death (not a murder) is both contrived and hard to swallow.

Nor is this a story that will encourage the reader’s emotional investment in any character. They could all be murdered and the reader would probably greet their demise with indifference. I recommend Ink Ribbon Red for its unique construction and noteworthy prose, but this isn’t a novel I would expect most readers to rave about.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Behind Sunset by David Gordon

Published by Mysterious Press on July 22, 2024

Elliott Gross is surprised to learn that wealthy and powerful people want, in addition to wealth and power, self-respect. Elliott lacks wealth and power and can’t afford self-respect.

Behind Sunset opens in 1994. Elliott works in the Los Angeles porn industry. He writes inventive copy to accompany photos published in Raunchy, a magazine that seems suspiciously similar to Hustler. Elliott’s wheelchair-bound boss, Victor Klingman, is suspiciously similar to Larry Flynt.

Elliott is “a highly educated, twenty-five-year-old American pissing away his prime for $ 6.9230 an hour after taxes if you figured on a ten-hour day. He understands that the magazine’s models, mostly from Russia and Eastern Europe, are being exploited, but he also understands that they are making the most money they have ever made, “probably for the easiest, least degrading work.” He can live with his modest role in their questionable exploitation because it is the only job Elliott could find that made use of the master’s in English “that he’d ruined his credit struggling to pay for.”

Elliott’s work has made him “a kind of porn magician, glancing at each photo just long enough to improvise a backstory for the inane action, pulling aliases out of a name-your-baby book, and churning out the copy as fast as his fingers could type.” His prose style (“I have always fantasized about feeling two dudes in my butt at one time”) fits perfectly into 1990s porn, not that I would know, ahem.

Back in 1994, visual recordings were still preserved on video tape. Characters occasionally discuss the mysterious internet as the wave of the future (“I’ve got a hunch this web thing is going to be big,” one of them tells Elliot), but VHS is still the go-to choice for recording sex acts.

The plot involves a few videotapes that will either titillate Raunchy’s readers or give Victor the opportunity for blackmail. One involves a celebrity who feigns outrage at being recorded. Another involves a conservative Congressman who is in the company of a much younger man. The video proves that “when he wasn’t excoriating sinners, the congressman gave great head.” Hypocrisy is one of the book’s themes, although the hypocrisies of the 1990s seem quaint compared to those that are dominating the current news cycle.

Another theme is feminism; specifically, whether women, like men, are equally entitled to be proud of their promiscuity. A porn actress tells Elliot “I’m a feminist and I’m doing this for myself, not for anyone else. I’m not sexually fucked up. I have orgasms everyday. I love sex. I love men. I used to be afraid of men, but now I understand them and I have the power.” Good for her.

My favorite theme is the notion that sexual blackmail only succeeds because people feel scandalized by behavior that isn’t terribly significant. “So what if you like to be spanked or wear a tutu?,” Elliot wonders, but he is clearly ahead of his time.

The plot takes off when the next Raunchy covergirl, Crystal Waters, goes missing. Victor assigns Elliot to find her and to recover a video that she took with her. Who is on the video? That reveal treats the reader to one of the story’s surprises.

Victor eventually realizes that he once knew Crystal Waters, although he knew her by her real name, well before she was displaying her body for cash. When Victor tracks her down, she’s engaged to a movie star and is no longer interested in being a nude model.

Meanwhile, Elliot’s childhood friend, Pedro Plotkin, hires him to make duplicates of self-help videos that are recorded by Melody Bright, “a former hippie, failed singer-songwriter, and washed-up party girl until her awakening, when she began channeling the spirit of an otherworldly, thousand-year-old entity known as Zona, who educated Melody about the true nature of reality, the existence of angels, the fate of the spirit after death and so on.” Whether the self-help industry is a step up from the porn industry is debatable, but self-help charlatans, like porn stars, are appropriate fodder for comedy.

The story benefits from a steady supply of raunchy humor, sometimes fueled by boob jobs and vagina tightening (“I’d let you touch it,” Misty said, “but I just got back together with my ex-husband and it was a Father’s Day gift to him.”). The fact that Elliot regularly stumbles upon dead bodies gives the novel the trappings of a crime story that succeeds as an amusing but slightly dark comedy. The reveals (the content of the missing video and the killer’s identity) are fun, but the story depends less on mysteries than on sympathy for Elliot as he stumbles his way through a life he never wears comfortably.

I’ve enjoyed David Gordon’s Joe the Bouncer novels. He brings the same humor (with a ribald edge) to Behind Sunset. This is a good beach read for hot afternoons when a reader will be happier to reflect on scandalous behaviors of the past than to watch news of scandalous behavior in the present.

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