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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Pariah by Dan Fesperman

Published by Knopf on July 22, 2025

Pariah is built upon the kind of plot that intrigued Hitchcock. A person with no particular connection to international intrigue becomes embroiled in a spy story that threatens his life. Dan Fesperson gives the plot a new spin by making the protagonist something of a loser who does his best spying while drunk.

Hal Knight is not exactly Al Franken, but he’s a comedian/actor who got elected to Congress before he lost his seat because of untoward behavior. While Franken was railroaded over relatively benign conduct that was far too trivial to warrant the loss of his job, Hal engaged in the kind of sexual harassment on a movie set (including the brief exposure of his reproductive organ) that gets people fired.

Hal is hiding in a small island in the Caribbean when the novel begins. He hasn’t checked social media and isn’t aware that he’s been invited by tweet to visit Bolrovia, a small nation that was once part of the Soviet Union. Its dictator, Nikolai Horvatz, is a fan of Hal’s trashy movies — the kind that depend on jiggling breasts to supplement the laughs. Hal has no desire to bring more attention to himself, but a team of CIA agents convince him that he will be serving the nation by accepting the offer and doing a bit of snooping. The CIA has few agents on the ground in Bolrovia because the head of Horvatz’s security service, Branko Sarič, has eliminated most of them.

The CIA knows that Horvatz is up to something nefarious but they aren’t sure what. Hal’s assignment is to keep his eyes open and report what he sees. The chance to serve his country might rehabilitate his image when the public learns of it and, in any event, Hal agrees because he has nothing better to do. Knowing that his phone and computer will be monitored, agents give Hal a notebook with instructions for dropping off his reports in exchange for blank replacement pages.

In Bolrovia, Pavel Lukov is assigned to mind Hal. Lukov has no great love for Horvatz and even less for his boss Sarič, so the reader might feel sorry for him when Hal evades him for enough time to drop off his reports. It seems likely that innocent Lukov will be blamed when events take a wrong turn.

Hal also meets some Americans in Bolrovia who might be involved with Horvatz’s nefarious scheme. Fesperson hides the nature of the scheme for most of the novel so I won’t reveal it. I can say that it is credible and, for a welcome change, doesn’t involve nuclear bombs.

Hal is in over his head, as he demonstrates when he drunkenly sends a message to his ex that he hopes Sarič won’t understand. As the reader might expect, Hal’s mission goes tits up after he learns about Horvatz’s secret plan. At that point, Pariah turns into an action novel as Hal (with the help of CIA agents who go rogue rather than abandoning their asset) scrambles to escape from Bolrovia. Shootouts ensue. Hal’s focus is on not getting shot but he does manage to contribute to the action.

The reader will likely hope that Hal learns something from his disgraced exit from Congress and his foolishly heroic escapades in Bolrovia. One of the novel’s best moments occurs when Hal, delivering a standup comedy performance for Horvatz, embarrasses the dictator in a way that goes over his head. By the time anyone has the nerve to tell Horvatz that he has been made the butt of a joke, Hal is eluding Sarič’s goons and running for his tragically wasted life.

The other memorable moment involves Lukov’s decision to deliver Hal to Sarič or to betray his leader and put his life at risk by helping Hal escape. A good moral dilemma is an essential ingredient of top-notch spy fiction. While Hal’s  actions are driven by self-interest or intoxication, Lukov needs to decide whether he is prepared to make the sacrifices that accompany resistance to a dictator. Fesperman allows the reader to feel all the arbitrary violence that dictators depend upon to control their populations.

Making the protagonist a comedian allows Fesperman to introduce humor into the plot, but comedy is not the novel’s focus. Instead, the life-changing decisions forced upon Hal and Lukov add substance and heart to the story. Fesperman achieves a workable balance of humor and pathos without sacrificing the thrills that spy novel fans crave.

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American Mythology by Giano Cromley

Published by Doubleday on July 15, 2025

There have been many Bigfoot novels, primarily in the horror genre. Some are blended with comedy. At least a couple combine Bigfoot with zombies because what’s a horror novel without a zombie?  I don’t know of any Bigfoot novels that are particularly noteworthy. Devolution by Max Brooks (better known for World War Z) is reportedly the best of them. Perhaps it will be supplanted by American Mythology, a novel that doesn’t inspire much fear but at least tells an entertaining story. And the story is zombie-free, which I mark as a plus.

A book with a green leather cover holds the story together. It first appears in a Montana trapping camp in the 1850s. One by one, the campers disappear. Their disappearances are recorded in the same notebook used to record the pelts of animals the men have captured. One of the men reports seeing a creature that is “large, hair-covered, walking upright like a man.”

The book is left behind, where it is discovered by miners in 1911 and again at a logging camp in the 1930s. In both cases, people record their own impressions in the book. In both cases, people in the camp begin to disappear.

The various camps were located near Ramsey Lake, named after a cartographer who insisted that the lake should be omitted from all maps of the area. One of the cartographer’s descendants came across the book while taking his son Jute to visit the lake. Jute’s father tells him that the lake is a “thin place,” where the boundary between dimensions can be crossed. Jute thinks he sees Bigfoot on that trip, then discovers that his dad has written I hear the voice. It’s beginning. Can’t fight it anymore. in the book. His dad became crankier and disappeared when Jute was sixteen.

Jute is now an adult. Jute and his best friend, Vergil Barnes, are the only members of the Basic Bigfoot Society. They differ in their belief about the nature of Bigfoot. Vergil is an aper who subscribed to the relict hominoid theory (Bigfoot evolved as something between an ape and human) while Jute belongs to the Woo camp (Bigfoot is an interdimensional being). They have occasionally undertaken local expeditions in search of Bigfoot, but mostly they conduct meetings in the local bar. Vergil has an uncurable disease that will soon kill him, although he has concealed that truth from Jute.

Dr. Marcus Bernard is a professor of evolutionary biology who has earned modest fame by arguing for the existence of Bigfoot. For reasons involving a reduced need for extra income and a desire to retore his academic integrity, he renounces his former view that Bigfoot is an actual creature. His conversion to reality-based thinking doesn’t sit well when he announces it at a Bigfoot conference. As he explains, “Bigfoot people don’t like being confronted with reality.”

In a scene marked by remarkable and unlikely coincidence, Bernard stumbles upon the bar where Vergil and Jute are meeting while he’s searching for a hospital to treat his bleeding foot. For reasons of his own, Bernard agrees to join a new expedition in search of Jute’s dimly recalled Ramsey Lake as Bigfoot’s possible home. The location is marked on a hand-drawn map that Jute finds in his mailbox. Who drew and delivered the map? That question is part of the mystery.

Vicky Xu, a film student, wants to make a documentary as a college project. She worms her way into the expedition after finding the leatherbound book in Jute’s collection of Bigfoot evidence. Vergil’s daughter Rye rounds out the group.

The main plot concerns the expedition, peppered with disclosures about Vergil’s illness that manage not to be melodramatic. Giano Cromley draws out the suspense for so long that a reader might wonder if the Bigfoot mystery will ever be solved. The first four-fifths tease the reader with improbable occurrences — a character sees an unusually large man with antlers growing from his head; a character hears her dead mother calling to her — in addition to various animalistic howls and roars, campsite disturbances, a watchful crow, little stick men left for the characters to find, and other horror movie staples.

When the reveal finally arrives — well, I won’t spoil it. Like many quest stories, the reader will realize that it's more about the journey than the destination. Maybe there’s a Bigfoot, maybe there’s not. Cromley comes up with something that approaches a happy ending, again under circumstances so improbable that my willingness to suspend disbelief was tested, but the characters probably deserve a happy ending, so who am I to begrudge them one?

On a more positive note, the characters are all reasonably likable and the story moves quickly. Cromley is a capable storyteller. American Mythology makes good points about the ease with which people latch onto fanciful notions (mythical creatures in this case, but conspiracy theories are another example) when reason and evidence might lead them in a more rational direction. I appreciated the recognition that academics sometimes sacrifice their honor for the dollars that come from being a contrarian pundit. Still, the story’s purpose is to entertain rather than to lecture, and it achieves that goal by asking readers to set aside reason for the sake of being entertained by the possibility that myths might be real after all.

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Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie

Published by Doubleday on July 8, 2025

Bring the House Down explores several themes. Infidelity in marriage is one: why it happens and how couples talk about it (or don’t). A related theme is how we become the people we become.

Another theme is the concept of using another person. When is it unethical? When is it not so bad? Does it matter whether the other person agrees to be used? What disclosures should be made before the using commences? Does being used justify revenge?

A less important theme is the artist’s need to be admired. For some artists, there is no other purpose for the creation of art. “Everyone desperate for people to like what they’ve made. We’re all still children, wanting our parents to look at the picture we’ve drawn. We never grow out of that feeling.” To an extent, the theme broadens into the need most people feel to be liked or desired or appreciated. And it branches into a theme about the reviewer’s purpose.

The novel’s two primary characters are reviewers. Alex Lyons is in his early thirties. Alex is a theater reviewer for an esteemed London newspaper. His mother was a prominent actress but his own career in theater ended when his first audition exposed his lack of talent.

Women fall for Alex and he takes advantage of their infatuation to grow his body count. Alex “recently resolved to stop sleeping with women under the age of twenty-four after one of them told him he looked like ‘such a softboi, but old,’ and it was like being insulted in an entirely different language.”

Alex travels to an arts festival in Edenborough with Sophie Rigden, a junior writer on the paper’s culture desk. Sophie reviews art projects that aren’t sufficiently important to be assigned to a senior reviewer. The paper has booked Alex and Sophie into the same multi-bedroom flat it always leases for the festival, inertia explaining why the flat is so large despite the paper having reduced the number of reviewers it sends.

Alex attends a one-person performance by Hayley Sinclair, a self-important performer who thinks that delivering a monolog about global warming is art. Alex writes his usual scathing review. After emailing it to his editor, he goes to a bar, where he encounters Hayley. She’s an attractive woman in her mid-twenties and a bit buzzed from the mix of performance and alcohol, so he takes her back to the flat and shags her.

The next morning, despite Sophie’s attempt to hide it from her, Hayley she sees the review, connects it (with Sophie’s inadvertent help) to Alex, and departs in a state of unhappiness. Alex is untroubled by her angry exit. As Sophie explains, Alex expects this “to become a good war story to tell our colleagues back in the newsroom in London.”

Alex should know it’s rude to shag a person you’ve just condemned in a review, at least without making full disclosure of your identity and what you’ve written before the shagging commences, but allowing the wrong head to do the thinking is a common male fault. In fact, Alex believes that what he did was wrong but not that wrong, given that she wanted to have sex with him and enjoyed the experience.

Karma strikes when Hayley changes the name of her show to The Alex Lyons Experience and turns it into a confessional about, yes, her experience with Alex. She reads the review aloud and inserts her editorial opinions about the reviewer who used her for sex after disrespecting her artistic message.

Hayley’s call upon theatergoers to spread her story goes viral. By coincidence, the last woman Alex dated, another actress, is in Edenborough. Alex didn’t review her show but included it in a year-end listing of the year’s ten worst plays just before he ghosted her. The actress attends Hayley’s performance, tells Hayley about her experience with Alex, and the one-woman show becomes a two-woman gripe session.

Women who are moved by Hayley’s show give her “me too” feedback “about being assaulted, raped, their birth traumas, their childhood abuse,” events are have nothing to do with the poor review that Alex gave Haley. Alex is an insensitive cad, but he didn’t force Haley to do anything against her will. It might have been more ethical to tell her that he had just written an unfavorable review of her performance, but it wouldn’t be fair to say he had sex with her under false pretenses. When they finished and she poured out her insecurities to him, he held her and made comforting noises about how he was sure the show would be a hit. That was a lie, but was he wrong to reassure her? If she didn’t take the time to learn anything about Alex before shagging him, is he to blame that she felt wounded when she read his review? That different readers will answer that question in different ways speaks to Charlotte Runcie’s success in crafting a story that examines misogyny in more depth, with more nuance, and from more perspectives, than novels typically manage.

The irony is that Hayley becomes successful by picking the right man to sleep with — hardly the road to fame that a feminist should want to take. She goes on to make The Alex Lyons Experience a nightly event. Her fifteen minutes of fame earns her interviews that bring her version of art to a wider audience — success she never would have achieved by keeping her pants on.

During her new show, Hayley proclaims “Alex Lyons isn’t just one guy. He’s every guy. He symbolises this whole business, this whole rotten media that keeps us down and stops us from making art that reaches people.” That’s a lot to put on Alex, who didn’t stop Haley from doing anything.

The rest of the novel follows Alex’s decline (the paper isn’t entirely pleased with the adverse publicity) and Sophie’s commensurate rise. As pennance, Alex is assigned to interview Hayley (the paper undoubtedly hopes he might bring himself to apologize during the interview) but he can’t bring herself to do it, so the task falls to Sophie. This leads to a climactic scene in which Sophie finally confronts Alex, who weakly defends himself before dramatic circumstances bring their very public discussion to a halt.

The novel fills in details of Sophie’s backstory, including her troubled relationship with her husband, who is caring for their son (a job that seems to make Sophie envious) while she is in Edenborough. I give Runcie credit for making clear that Sophie and her husband each have legitimate grievances about the other. Their largest problem is that they haven’t taken the time to listen to each other. Alex also has a recent ex who, although one of many, surfaces to play a role in Sophie’s revenge tour.

Portraying complex issues from multiple perspectives while reserving judgment is the novel’s strength. Hayley seems a bit artificial to me, although I admit that I don’t know any twenty-something artists who take themselves too seriously, so perhaps the novel is an accurate portrayal of the type. In any event, Bring the House Down tells an engaging story and raises interesting questions about interpersonal relations, including gendered differences in attitudes about mindless shagging, that are worth pondering.

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Happy Independence Day!