River's Edge by Kyoko Okazaki

First serialized in Japan in 1993 and 1994. Published in translation by Kodansha/Vertical Comics as a graphic novel on June 27, 2023.

Its publisher describes River’s Edge as “a celebrated work that shows the hardships and the realities of growing up as a teenager in early 90s Tokyo.” Ichiro Yamada’s hardships are harder than most. Boys beat up Yamada because he’s quiet — and probably because girls like him. They suspect (correctly) that he’s gay. Girls like Yamada because he’s stylish and has a pretty face.

Yamada is dating Kanna Tajima but she doesn’t know he’s gay. Yamada thinks he might start liking girls if he dates one. Not surprisingly, he only ends up hurting Tajima. Yamada should really tell Tajima that he's gay since she’s overdosing on teen angst about why Yamada isn’t getting physical with her. I guess teen angst knows no geographic or cultural boundaries.

Haruna Wakakusa rescues Yamada when her boyfriend Kannonzaki locks him inside his locker. Yamada confesses his secret to Wakakusa and they become friends, much to Kannonzaki’s displeasure.

Yamada found a dead body in a field (more of a skeleton at this point) and thinks of it as his “treasure.” There’s something about seeing a corpse that comforts him. The only other person who has discovered the skeleton is a pretty actress with an eating disorder named Kozue Yoshikawa. Kozue is strange in a warped and unpleasant way. Readers who don’t want to read about animal abuse might want to avoid this graphic novel, while nearly all readers will find Kozue’s interest in dead kittens to be unattractive. Wakakusa befriends homeless kittens, which makes it all the more strange that she isn’t repulsed when Kozue kisses her.

Wakakusa envies Rumi, a high school friend whose 38-year-old boyfriend buys her expensive cosmetics.  Wakakusa had sex with Kannonzaki just to experience sex (she finds it filled with “contradictions and mysteries”). Rumi has sex with him for fun (and is much more into it than Wakakusa) but she becomes pregnant, possibly by Kannonzaki. Now Wakakusa is ghosting Kannonzaki, which his ego can't handle despite having a second girl to use for sex. Naturally, Rumi has teen angst in the form of jealousy about Wakakusa.

Characters lose control and gruesome acts of violence occur the story’s second half. One is accompanied by this narrative explanation: “Tragedy doesn’t just occur at random. That’s not how it works. The truth is that it slowly, gradually prepares itself. In the midst of our stupid, boring daily lives, that’s how it comes, and when it happens, it’s like a balloon popping out of nowhere.” That passage sums of the graphic novel’s theme: life is boring until it becomes tragic, but both boredom and tragedy suck.

The story has some interesting insights, including a character’s observation that teenage girls gossip incessantly to avoid saying anything meaningful. The characters ruminate about death quite a bit, sometimes imagining they see ghosts. They don’t seem capable of imagining a future in which they are still alive, with new friends and new ways of seeing themselves, but that’s what it’s like to be a teen.

I’m not an art critic, but the comic is drawn in the simple, sketchy style I associate with Dagwood and similar comic strips. It’s sometimes difficult to tell characters apart, particularly when they are drawn without a face. The style didn’t bother me, but this isn’t a graphic novel that enhances the story with impressive art. At least the characters don’t have ridiculously big eyes.

Fans of Japanese manga and/or teenage angst might understand why River’s Edge is a “celebrated work.” I can only say that the story is sufficiently interesting (in part because Japanese culture is interesting) that I remained engaged from chapter to chapter.

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Trust Her by Flynn Berry

Published by ‎ Viking on June 25, 2024

Trust Her explores the depths of a 36-year-old woman from Northern Island whose life was upended after she helped her sister help the IRA before she became an informer for MI5. Now she lives in Dublin with her son, having separated from her husband because he had an affair during her pregnancy.

Tessa and Marian both assisted the IRA, but Marian built bombs while Tessa essentially acted as a courier. For reasons that aren’t revealed until late in the story, Marian turned on the IRA and became an informer. She passed on information to Tessa who passed it along to an MI5 agent named Eammon. Tessa was attracted to Eammon but managed to keep her pants on during her career as an informant’s helper. As the story progresses, it seems increasingly likely that her pants will come off.

When suspicious IRA members interrogated Tessa and Marian, they managed to survive. They fled to Dublin where they began new lives. Tessa took a job as a subeditor at a newspaper, married and started a family. Marian married a cameraman in the movie industry and has a newborn of her own.

Now an IRA operative named Royce is back in Tessa’s life. He wants her to make contact with Eammon and turn him into a double agent who will provide intelligence to the IRA. Why Eammon even dreams that is possible is something of a mystery, but when he threatens Tessa’s family, she feels she has no choice but to give it a go. Marian isn’t so sure but why the IRA hasn’t already killed Marian isn’t quite clear. She seems like an easy target.

I didn’t have much sympathy for Tessa, not because of her tenuous connection to the IRA, but because she confesses that connection to the police when her sister is a couple of hours late returning from a hike. Tessa makes needless trouble for herself (and for her sister) with little reason to believe that telling the police about her history with the IRA is either necessary or wise. Naturally, the cop begins to bully her.

The story leads to a climax that doesn’t merit its suspenseful buildup. A surprise near the end changes the game for Tessa a bit but doesn’t quite resolve all the issues that the novel develops. A final, much darker surprise promises to give the story some real weight, but Flynn Berry arguably cops out to deliver a softer ending that readers might prefer. Blowing up a suspense balloon and letting all the air out before it pops struck me as a copout.

Still, the character development in Trust Her is first rate. The plot is strong, and if the ending is a bit disappointing, a final feel-good chapter suggests the possibility of redemption when familial love displaces darkness. I can’t dislike that message, so my sense is that most readers will enjoy the story.

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Sentinel by Mark Greaney

Published by Berkley on June 25, 2024

I give Mark Greaney credit for writing some of the best action scenes in the thriller industry. Still, I’m a bigger fan of his Gray Man series than his Armored books. The Gray Man is antisocial, justifiably paranoid, and a bit of an asshole. That’s why I like him. Josh Duffy is friendly, likable, dependable, and has as much personality as a GI Joe action figure. The only trait that makes him seem human is his PTSD, and that only manifests itself in nightmares that have no impact on his work. He’s too boring to make me look forward to his next adventure.

Duffy works for the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. His wife is a State Department Political Officer. They begin the novel in Washington D.C., where Duffy protects a European Union official when a riot breaks out at a protest attended by her daughter.

Duffy and his wife are then jointly assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Ghana. They get to take their kids because Ghana is a relatively stable democracy so what could go wrong? Duffy expects the assignment to be dull, but a Chinese intelligence officer is working to orchestrate a coup that will increase China’s influence in western Africa. The agent has enlisted the services of a South African mercenary who once worked with (and was despised by) Duffy. They were employed as “private security,” a polite term for mercenaries, in Afghanistan and Syria.

The South African in turn enlists the services of Russian mercenaries who work for Wagner. The Chinese agent has also recruited rabble rousers from Togo and other surrounding nations. Unbeknownst to the South African, the Chinese agent also employs Islamic terrorists, with whom the South African would not ordinarily work. It’s good to know that people who overthrow democracies have principles.

Duffy is assigned to a team protecting the US ambassador during a trip with Ghana’s president and a UN representative as they make political appearances in Ghana. Duffy's wife is part of the diplomatic team because of course she is. The trip takes them to a hydroelectric dam that the South African has just captured in stage one of the coup. Bad weather causes them to arrive a day early, upsetting the coup timetable. Shootouts and explosions ensue.

From that point onward, the novel is a series of action scenes, primarily involving Duffy and a Ghanian cop as they try to keep the dam from being blown up while protecting diplomats and Duffy's wife. They also need to prevent the South African from recovering a laptop computer that would provide embarrassing evidence of Chinese involvement in the coup.

The novel's credible atmosphere is obviously the product of meticulous research. The action is fast but perhaps a bit too predictable. When, for example, the South African kidnaps Duffy’s kids (thriller fans will see that coming from the second they learn the kids are traveling to Ghana), Duffy’s plucky daughter displays the kind of bravery that triller fans are used to seeing from the children of action heroes. While the story holds no surprises, it generates excitement through constant motion. I can easily recommend it to action novel fans, but Sentinel lacks the spark that Greany brings to his Gray Man novels.

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Prez: Setting a Dangerous President by Mark Russell (text) and Ben Caldwell (art)

Published by DC Comics on June 4, 2024

The Prez I remember from my teenage years was published from 1973 to 1974. The premise was that a constitutional amendment eliminated the age requirement for service as the United States president and lowered the voting age to 18. A teenager named Preston Rickard ran as a third-party candidate and prevailed. I don’t remember much about the series apart from my belief that it died a fitting death after a four-issue run.

DC’s Mark Russell gave Prez a reboot in a 6-issue series that was published in 2015 and 2016. In this version, the teen president is Beth Ross, a 19-year-old who works at Lil’ Doggies House of Corndogs in Eugene, Oregon. She gets enough votes from other young people to deprive the major party candidates of an electoral vote majority. That throws the election into the House of Representatives, where a tie vote encourages Congressmen to vote for Beth, never expecting her to get a majority but with the expectation that they would change their vote to whichever mainstream candidate promised them more political pork. Their shenanigans result in Beth’s inadvertent election to the presidency.

Betsy doesn’t owe anyone a favor and doesn’t care if she’s humiliated. That makes her an ideal president, apart from her ignorance of anything unrelated to corndogs. Fortunately, she’s a quick learner who isn’t afraid to ask for help. In this version, Preston Rickard was never elected, but he once ran for president and is now Beth’s vice president. She fills her cabinet with reality-based people who aren’t science-deniers. Her old boss at the corn dog restaurant was good with details, so she becomes Beth’s chief of staff.

Beth has some great ideas. Once of my favorites is an international apology tour. She personally apologizes to other nations for America’s history of unfortunate behavior (“sorry Vietnam; our bad, Nicaragua”).

At the time of its publication, Russell’s story earned recognition for its political satire. The story skewers America’s refusal to assure decent healthcare to everyone, price gouging by pharmaceutical companies, the dominant role played by social media (rather than debating, the candidates appear on Puppy Slap’s podcast), religious beliefs in God’s preference for bigotry and extremism, America’s hypocritical definition of terrorism (“it’s not terrorism if you can afford a stealth bomber”), border security, useless technology, government surveillance, the stock market, consumerism, self-driving cars, war, artificial intelligence, gun nuts, the Supreme Court, and cats.  The story even envisioned a pandemic and the search for a vaccine, although Russell didn’t anticipate the rise of vaccine-deniers as a political force.

Prez is pretty funny. DC is presumably reissuing Prez because this is an election year. This edition collects the 6 issues of the rebooted Prez, as well as a story from Catwoman: Election Night that was published in November 2016. It also includes a new story and “bonus material” (the usual collection of preliminary sketches). The reissue is a timely reminder that politics always provides fodder for mockery and satire (just ask Mark Twain).

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Shanghai by Joseph Kanon

 

Published by Scribner on June 25, 2024

Having relied on Berlin and Istanbul to provide noir atmosphere in earlier novels, Joseph Kanon turns to another classic setting for espionage novels: the city of Shanghai. Shanghai is set in the 1930s. Wars are breaking out, Germany and Japan are both set on world domination.

Daniel Lohr is a Berliner. Because he is Jewish, his life is in danger. His father has already been taken away. Daniel’s uncle Nathan in Shanghai buys him a first-class ticket on a ship that is crowded with refugees. Daniel’s property is confiscated by Nazis, apart from the ten marks with which he will start his new life.

On the trip to Shanghai, Daniel meets Leah Auerbach, an Austrian who sells her expensive coat at a bargain price to an affluent passenger so that she will have some money to support her aging mother. He also meets Yamada, a member of Japan’s secret police who has his eye on Leah. Other significant characters are communists: Florence, an American passenger on the ship who is too open about her political beliefs, and Tomas (rebranded as Karl in Shanghai), who knew Daniel in Berlin.

Daniel was part of a secretive group of communists in Germany. He isn’t particularly ideological, but he saw communism as an alternative to fascism. He hoped that the group would kill Nazis but he left Germany before he had a chance to make that hope a reality. In Shanghai, he resists overtures to continue helping the communist cause. Communism now is about Russia and Daniel only ever cared about Germany.

Daniel instead turns his attention to two jobs. He sells gossip to the entertainment editor of the local newspaper while helping Nathan operate his casino. To stay in business, Nathan needs to pay squeeze to the Japanese police or Chinese gangs (or both) who assure that Shanghai lives up to its reputation for corruption.

Shanghai politics will eventually drive the plot. As Yamada says, Shanghai makes strange bedfellows. Japan is confident that it will conquer China and come to control Shanghai. Until then, the Japanese are warlords who demand tribute. China is confident that it will outlast Japan. The Chinese have patience learned from centuries of watching one dynasty replace another. Refugees from the Nazis have flooded into Shanghai but often can’t get visas to go elsewhere. The various factions in Shanghai enter into shifting alliances as they try to protect their own interests.

Nathan has Daniel swing a partnership in a new casino with the Chinese, where Yamada will be a silent owner in lieu of paying squeeze. That deal does work out as well as Nathan hope. Violence in the club causes Daniel to return his attention to the communist cause as an alternative to the seemingly inevitable Japanese rule of Shanghai.

A love story is buried in the plot, but it isn’t a story of romance. Nor is Shanghai a traditional spy story, although spies lurk everywhere in the city. While the story defies categorization, it might best be understood as a story about what people will tell themselves to preserve their self-esteem as they struggle to survive. It is also a story about starting over. Some characters start over repeatedly because they have no better choices. You do what you must to survive, but sometimes you do what you can to make life better for someone else.

The story culminates with Daniel’s complicated but credible plan to save Leah and Nathan and maybe even himself from becoming collateral damage in an inevitable Shanghai war between the Japanese military and Chinese gangs. Whether the plan will succeed is the question that gives the novel its suspense. That suspense is considerable as the plot tightens.

Implementing the plan will require more than one character to engage in violence. Kanon invites the reader to weigh the benefit of the violent acts against the guilt that empathic people feel when they cause harm to others. Even if the people who are harmed might have earned their fates, living with the consequences of self-preservation might be a life-changing experience. Guilt makes people into someone new. The time characters spend in Shanghai “had done something to them that couldn’t be undone, or they had done it to themselves.”

Shanghai works on multiple levels — as a love story, an historical drama, a low-key espionage story — but it is more than the sum of its parts. The plot’s resolution leaves doors open to avoid the predictable happy ending I feared. The historical and geographic setting will help the reader stay engaged with Shanghai, while sympathetic characters and the risks they face will assure that the reader continues to turn the pages.

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