Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

Published by ‎ Scribner on September 3, 2024

Rachel Kushner devoted Creation Lake to the creation of a female character who refuses to regret the dubious path she has chosen. The character uses the name Sadie Smith, a name she will discard by the novel’s end. Sadie has made a career of working undercover. While she is schooled in deceit, she is reasonably honest with the reader about her checkered life. Sadie isn’t someone who much cares what you think of her.

Sadie’s backstory includes an aborted career working for the FBI. She infiltrated organizations of drug dealers but her later focus was on environmental/political activists. Federal authorities brand activists as “terrorists” if they do anything to disrupt business or government operations. Sadie understands but is indifferent to the reality that her job is more about generating good press for the FBI than about fighting actual terrorism.

To the extent that Sadie fights crime, she does so by using her looks and breasts to win the trust of men. During her final mission as a government agent, her supervisor pressured her to find (or, saying the silent part out loud, to manufacture) evidence that an animal rights group was planning to commit violent acts of sabotage. Sadie convinced a young man that he would have a chance with her if he proved his commitment by taking direct action in support of their cause. Following Sadie's instructions, he purchased fertilizer to make a bomb and delivered it to a woman who was the FBI’s real target.

To the surprise of everyone, a jury accepted the boy’s entrapment defense. His embarrassing acquittal deprived the FBI of a chance to claim a victory in the war against terrorism. Professing to be shocked that one of their agents would entrap an innocent person, the FBI fired Sadie, sending her into the more lucrative world of private clandestine employment.

The entrapped activists would like to sue Sadie but haven’t yet discovered her true identity. Near the novel’s end, Sadie becomes concerned that the FBI might reveal that information to make her a scapegoat. If she regrets setting up an innocent boy for a potentially lengthy prison sentence, her regret is based on her loss of employment and future consequences that she might face. She appears to feel no guilt, having convinced herself that she had “no choice but to plant the idea of violence in the boy’s head, since he was doing a poor job of coming to it on his own.”

Now Sadie is pretending to be the girlfriend of Lucien Dubois. She is staying in his (otherwise empty) family house in the Guyenne Valley, a rural area in southwestern France where the commune of Le Moulin is located. The Moulinards are environmental activists who, like most activists, are well-meaning but generally ineffectual. Their most urgent concern is that industry wants to divert water for its own uses without regard to the impact that loss of water will have on local farmers.

Sadie has been hired to keep tabs on the Moulinards by unseen interests with a hidden agenda. She soon manages to insinuate herself into the organization.

Some of the novel’s interest lies in its depiction of squabbling activists who might agree about broad goals while disagreeing about the means of achieving them. Some activists view violence as a tool while others reject it. Some believe capitalism will collapse on its own while others want to precipitate a worker’s revolution. Whether their actions advance or undermine their cause is unclear, although taking action seems to be less important to most of them than the intellectual exercise of debating the purpose and methodology of activism.

Sadie’s employers have outfitted her with technology that allows her to read email exchanges between Bruno Lacombe and Le Moulin’s leader, Pascal Balmy. Sadie believes that Bruno, as Pascal’s mentor, would want to guide Pascal’s strategy for hindering industrial development in the valley, but most of Bruno’s emails discuss his theories about Neanderthals, theories he developed while living in a cave. Bruno is “anti-civ,” or against civilization in the parlance of French activism, although he might best be seen as a tragic figure who responded to the death of his daughter (run over by Bruno’s own tractor) by rejecting farming and most human interaction. Lacombe now believes it is time for mankind to return to the caves, to live in “tiny clans,” a recipe for a future that seems more post-apocalyptic than visionary.

Bruno’s obsession with Neanderthals opens the door for informative discussions of archeology and evolution, language and war. For example, Bruno distinguishes his preference for cave dwelling from living in a bunker to avoid nuclear annihilation. “In a bunker, you cannot hear the human community in the earth, the deep cistern of voices, the lake of our creation.” In the cave, Bruno can hear everything, including languages he doesn’t understand, prompting him to comment upon the development of language.

Kushner seems to use Neanderthals and environmental activism and even the choice of sex partners to develop a deeper theme about human progress, but the precise definition of that theme is open to debate. Perhaps book clubs will be able to ferret it out.

The novel explores several other topics, including the French Revolution, map making in the time of Captain Cook, and the tendency to mistake random luck for fate. These are interesting discussions even if they do not obviously advance the plot. Repeated references to Guy Debord, a Marxist theorist who influenced Pascal, fit more comfortably into the story, although the characters are primarily interested in whether Debord is worthy of a place in the activist pantheon, given his incestuous relationship with his sister. 

Speaking of the plot, Sadie manipulates Lucien to connect her with Le Moulin. Believing Sadie to be an unemployed American grad student, Lucien arranges for Sadie to translate into English a book that Pascal and the other Moulinards are writing. She dutifully spies on the activists and takes the opportunity to shag one because “even as I maintained a fraudulent persona, within that persona I found methods to meet real needs.”

As Sadie discharges her duties to her employer, she is again asked to set up an act of violence that would not occur without her intervention. The reader will wonder whether Sadie learned anything from her earlier experience with entrapment and whether that experience will shape her response to her employer’s deadly demand.

While I wouldn’t categorize Creation Lake as a thriller, the story does build tension by raising concern about Sarah’s fate as an undercover operative. Perhaps because Kushner focuses on ideas and characterization, the novel’s pace is uneven. Few novels can be everything to every reader; those looking for an action novel might be disappointed by Creation Lake. Still, a fast-moving scene near the end provides a satisfying, if anti-climactic, answer to whether Sadie's effort to set up the Moulinards will succeed.

Sadie is an interesting character but isn’t particularly sympathetic. Some readers might find Kushner’s digressions into the purpose of Neanderthal cave paintings to be distracting. I would agree that, while the novel's various asides are interesting, they add unnecessary words to the book. The words are nevertheless wielded with great skill and the novel is a welcome departure from formulaic spy/undercover cop stories.

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Happy Labor Day

Safe Enough by Lee Child

Published by Mysterious Press on September 3, 2024

Safe Enough is a collection of Lee Child’s short fiction, excluding Reacher stories. In a forward, Child admits that he is a novelist who hasn’t mastered the art of writing a short story. I would agree that he often swings and misses, but enough stories in this collection count as base hits that Child has a decent batting average.

Many of the stories collected in Safe Enough set up a mildly interesting scenario before Child tries to deliver an O. Henry ending. The assassin in “The .50 Solution” is hired to kill a racehorse but makes a predictable departure from the plan. The journalist who narrates “Public Transportation” talks to a cop about a murder case that was closed for the sake of convenience, not because the crime was solved correctly. The true killer’s identity is predictable.

In other stories, Lee makes the formula work. “Ten Keys,” about a man who stole money and product from a drug distribution organization, telegraphs part of the surprise in its ending but manages a final unexpected twist. “Me & Mr. Rafferty” is narrated by a killer who leaves clues for Mr. Rafferty to find. The ending is genuinely surprising.

“My First Drug Trial” benefits from an ending that surprised me, but I’m ranking it as one of my favorites because of a weed smoker’s internal monologue as he talks himself into getting high before court.

A snobby FBI agent tells a Metropolitan Police inspector to read a Sherlock Holmes story as the source of clues to a murder. The murder turns out to be a misdirection. The element of surprise makes “The Bone-Headed League” a fun story.

I enjoyed a few others, as well:

For an assassin, “The Greatest Trick of All” is getting paid by a husband to kill his wife and getting paid by the wife to kill her husband — a trick that has disastrous consequences when it doesn’t work as intended. “Pierre, Lucien & Me” is an interesting take on an art forgery story that begins immediately after Renoir’s death.

One of my favorites, “Normal in Every Way,” is about an autistic file clerk in San Francisco in the 1950s who solves crimes by reading files and seeing connections that others miss. In “New Blank Document,” a reporter tells the story of a Black jazz musician who stayed in France after World War II, a place that allowed him to escape the racist place where his brother was murdered.

“The Snake Eater by the Numbers” is narrated by a rookie London cop who is tutored by a corrupt cop in the importance of clearance rates. When the corrupt cop fits up a mentally unwell Londoner who believes himself to be an American Marine, the rookie learns the meaning of street justice.

“Safe Enough” is written in a more literary style than is common for Child. The story of a disintegrating marriage, after the wife apparently killed her last husband, has some insightful thoughts about marriage but ends predictably.

“Addicted to Sweetness” benefits from interesting dialog about punishment inflicted in the West Indies upon people who stole sugar from their employers. The dialog enhances this story about the leader of a criminal organization who learns the downside of imposing tough punishments.

And I was unimpressed by several:

“The Bodyguard” is interesting only because the bodyguard fails at his job. “Section 7(A) Operational” begins with an intriguing story of an operative assembling a team for a dangerous covert operation. The story’s ending renders the setup pointless.

Another five or six stories don’t merit comment. Since I enjoyed more than half, I regard the good stories as outweighing their forgettable companions, but it’s a close balance.

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September Mourn by Jess Lourey

First published as September Fair in 2009; reissued by Thomas & Mercer on August 27, 2024

September Mourn is a novel of the northern Midwest. The pace is easy. Characters are at least superficially and often genuinely friendly. Cows are abundant.

September Mourn is the fifth entry in a series that stars Mira James. Mira is a librarian and part-time reporter for a small-town newspaper in Battle Lake, Minnesota. She regularly stumbles upon murder victims, a habit she would like to break. I confess that I haven’t read the first four “Murder by Month” mysteries — the series was first published by a Minnesota publisher that subsequently closed its crime fiction imprint — but I don’t think that impaired my ability to understand or enjoy this one.

The story takes place at the Minnesota State Fair. Ashley Pederson is awaiting coronation as the new Milkfed Mary (a/k/a Queen of the Dairy) while a sculptor carves her likeness from a large block of butter. The lights go out. When they come back on, Ashley is dead. Her skin has turned “the brightest red” Mira has ever seen. There’s a clue in the skin color, yes?

Mira takes a picture of Ashley just before the lights go out, but someone steals her camera before she can study it. As a reporter whose story will be better if she can solve the crime, Mira dutifully interviews people who might offer insight into the murder. She discovers that locks of hair have been cut from the heads of several Milkfed Mary contestants. Another clue? She uncovers scandals and crimes, some related to the murder and others not, as she assembles a bucket full of clues that will help her find the killer.

Ashley was a Mean Girl, so the list of murder suspects is lengthy. Is the killer a competitor for the crown? Could it be the chaperone, the pageant sponsor, or the state fair’s corporate president? Might it be the eco-terrorist Aeon Hopkins or a Milkfed Mary from the past? The lengthy list of potential suspects should engage the attention of murder mystery fans.

September Mourn has the light tone of cozy mystery with a dash of romcom. Violence is restrained and not particularly graphic. Mira doesn’t try to be an action hero, although she does defend herself when necessary. Mira is attracted to Johnny Leeson (the Adonis of Battle Lake) but she doesn’t jump into bed with him. For Mira, sex is a matter of desire rather than action. She shares thoughts with the reader that are slightly saucy (“I wanted to kiss so long that our lips pruned”), but cozy mystery fans can probably read the story without blushing. The few ribald comments in the novel are made by a senior citizen.

The senior who contributes lusty thoughts to the story is Mrs. Berns. Some of those thoughts are inspired by Neil Diamond, who is performing at the fair. Mrs. Berns’ friend Kennie Rogers is the mayor of the small town in which Mira lives. They provide comic relief in a novel that never takes itself too seriously.

Jess Lourey’s prose is consistently witty. The mystery’s resolution is satisfying. The characters are enjoyable. Atmosphere is spot on. I was pleasantly surprised by September Mourn and look forward to dipping into other entries in the reissued series.

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The House Hunt by C.M. Ewan

Published by Grand Central Publishing on August 27, 2024

Lucy is claustrophobic. She also lives with a constant fear of being attacked. Her husband, Sam, is a psychology professor who runs support groups to meet his university’s community involvement guideline. Sam hasn’t managed to cure Lucy of her phobias, although one of his support groups is devoted to people with debilitating fears.

Sam inherited a house that he and Lucy can’t afford. They went into debt to fix it up before putting it on the market. A potential buyer named Donovan arrives to look at the house, but the estate agent is running late. Sam is working and Donovan has another appointment later so Lucy sets aside her fear and agrees to show him the house. Since this is a thriller, you know that Lucy made a brave but bad decision.

Intercut with scenes that set up events inside the house are scenes of Sam running his support group. A couple of its members seem unbalanced, particularly one who fears that he won’t be able to control his homicidal impulses. Will Sam be harmed?

The separate Lucy and Sam storylines eventually intersect, leading to multiple nongraphic scenes of violence. Characters find themselves under attack for reasons that most of them can’t comprehend. The reader is challenged to decide which characters are innocent and which are villainous. The reader will suspect nearly every character of living a hidden life.

Speed, intensity, and cinematic action are the novel’s strengths. C.M. Ewan accomplishes this by using the traditional tricks of the thriller writer’s trade:  short chapters (116 of them) populated by short (often single-sentence) paragraphs. He invites the reader to experience the novel as a movie by making frequent cuts between the main action and distant action. Ewan needn’t have used techniques that create the illusion of a page-turner; he speeds the story along by keeping it in motion at all times. He judiciously mixes in distractions — unexplained thumps, a character’s failure to respond after venturing into the basement — to ratchet up the suspense. His use of the genre’s writing techniques is masterful, even if they make the book seem a bit formulaic.

When it seems that the plot has been resolved, Ewan wheels in a new ending. He does this multiple times before the story finally runs out of gas. It’s fun to be surprised but when surprise follows surprise follows surprise, I feel like I’m being played. Given that the plot as a whole is unrealistic, I don’t suppose an unrealistic series of surprises at the end can do any harm.

It’s difficult to say whether Lucy is a likable character. She’s so frenzied that the reader gets little chance to know her. Lucy is the kind of protagonist who places herself in a dangerous position rather than waiting for the police to arrive, as if she knows that the story will be better if she does one more brave deed. Characters making stupid decisions is the foundation for every slasher movie, but I always hope that thriller writers will invest their characters with a bit of common sense.

My most significant complaint about The House Hunt does not relate to how the story is told, but whether the story makes sense. To avoid spoiling it, I won’t discuss why characters behave as they do. I will say that the topics of altered or lost memories and brainwashing make their way into the plot. As is often true in thrillers, Ewan’s vague explanations of how those concepts drive a character are unconvincing.

The obligatory upbeat ending will please many readers. Setting aside a plot that a less charitable reviewer might describe as preposterous, The House Hunt merits a firm recommendation for accomplishing the ultimate goal of thrillers: creating suspense, a puzzling mystery, and exciting moments. I set aside my concerns about the plot for the sake of enjoying a book that, despite its flaws, tells an engaging story.

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