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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Squeaky Clean by Calum McSorley

First published in the UK in 2023; republished by Pushkin Vertigo on June 11, 2024

One of the pleasures of Scottish crime fiction is the challenge of translating dialog into a more familiar form of English. Turning “Wit did ye dae?” into “What did you do?” is simple enough, but longer passages require some effort. Fortunately, translation skills sharpen as the reader gets used to the dialect.

The protagonist is Detective Inspector Alison McCoist, a member of the Major Investigations Team who has been relegated to pursuing trivial investigations as punishment for accusing a man of a vicious murder he didn’t commit. In her defense, the man confessed. In the US, McCoist would get a medal and the police would conveniently overlook evidence that the confession was false.

The false confession protected Paulo McGuinn, a notorious Glaswegian criminal. Other young women have died at his hands, or at the hands of customers of his brothels. Some died in transit to Scotland as they are being trafficked.

The action starts when McGuinn gets his expensive car cleaned at a carwash owned by Sean Prentice. Davey Burnet, a hapless employee of the car wash, borrows the car without permission when he realizes he is late for a family court hearing. He wants to fight for visitation rights and knows he won’t have a chance if he can’t show that he is a responsible person. Sadly for Davey, he isn’t, but he does his best.

On the way to court, thugs working for a man named Croaker ambush the car in an attempt to assassinate McGuinn. Davey is spared only because Croaker realizes the thugs have kidnapped the wrong man. McGuinn, on the other hand, decides that the damage to his car can only be repaid by turning the carwash into one of his criminal enterprises and by making Davey his errand boy.

The plot takes plausible but suprising turns that place Davey in the middle of a war between McGuinn and Croaker. As Davey is drawn more deeply into McGuinn’s world, his thoughts become more frantic. He wants to rehabilitate his relationship with his girlfriend so he can see his daughter, but cleaning up McGuinn’s bloody messes interferes with that goal. He wonders if he can be protected by going to the police before he discovers that police officers are protecting McGuinn. Davey is such a likeable character that his predicament will cause readers to fear for his future.

DI McCoist is another likeable character, although she plays a less important role in the story than Davey. She’s called to the carwash on a couple of occasions and suspects that Davey is caught up in trouble that he can’t handle. She can relate to Davey’s desire to spend time with his daughter. McCoist’s twins live with their father and she can’t seem to connect with them, even when she steals a puppy from a puppy mill during a police raid. She might not be in the right profession, but she gains the reader’s sympathy by mustering the courage to go after McGuire. She gained my sympathy by being good to the puppy.

The tight plot proceeds at a steady pace. The ending is a bit dark, a surprise that gives the story a sense of realism. Even if the characters were less likable, I would have enjoyed Squeaky Clean just for its phonetic rendering of the Glaswegian dialect.

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Beautiful Days by Zach Williams

Published by Doubleday on June 11, 2024

The stories collected in Beautiful Days are unexpected. They earn my recommendation simply because they are surprising, free from the typical domestic drama that seems to be the subject matter of most American short fiction. Some of the stories are a bit surreal, but most are not so far removed from reality that they lose their appeal.

In one of my favorite stories — “Lucca Castle,” the longest in the volume — a man who is grieving the loss of his wife and isn’t coping well with his daughter embarks on an experiment. The experiment essentially involves living in the moment and being open to anything, even if “anything” means sleeping all day and wallowing in grief. A younger woman at a diner takes an unlikely interest in him and, following a bizarre coincidence that might be interpreted as fate, they hook up. She brings him to a guru-like figure who might be a cult leader, a man who condemns the kind of wealth-acquisition work that is the protagonist’s career. By walking away from the cult, the experiment brings him closer to his daughter, closer to understanding how he needs to move ahead with his life.

“Ghost Image” is another of my favorites. It is narrated by a man who, while working at a meaningless temp job, pitied his boss for dreaming of a post-retirement career as a monorail conductor at Disney World. Years later, as a father whose unfaithful wife has died, having realized none of his own half-formed dreams, the man talks to his former boss as if he is a spirit, seeing him in a stranger in a bar, seeing him in the teenage son from whom he has become estranged. After abandoning his life, he journeys to a future where Disney World is shuttered and surrounded by the remnants of natural disasters, and imagines seeing his old boss wearing a conductor’s cap. The story is a reminder that when we are young, we don’t “know how long life takes, or what it does to you as you live it.” This is an odd and discomfiting story. Those qualities might contribute to my admiration of it.

The narrator of “Trial Run” works for a small analytics firm. Someone has been sending antisemitic emails to the business’ employees. The emails target the manager. Since the emails began immediately after a diversity workshop, there is reason to believe that the sender is an employee. The business has hired a security guard, but he seems to be a believer in conspiracy theories, leading the narrator to wonder whether the guard sent the emails. Another suspect is a paranoid co-worker who overshares, a man who might be “hiding below the surface of routine, awaiting, with all the patience of a fanatic, some dark eventuality in which to reveal himself.” The story is an amusing take on office politics and daily fears.

In the most surreal story, Jacob and Ronna rented a vacation cottage but they can’t recall how long they’ve been there or even where the cottage is located. They argue about ways to investigate their circumstances and fail to follow through on their plans. Their behavior grows progressively more bizarre. Their toddler never seems to be injured when he falls, never seems to be hungry when his parents leave for days to explore the wilderness. Like a snapping turtle, he never seems to grow older. In his crib, Ronna believes him to be safe from scary things. His parents might be the scariest thing in his life, which might or might not be the point of “Wood Sorrel House.”

“Red Light” tells the story of a kinky hookup with a woman whose boyfriend (his description is a bit freakish) likes to watch her have sex while hiding in the closet. In “Neighbors,” an elderly woman’s son asks her neighbor to check on his mother. The mother is dead but someone is standing in her bedroom, a resident of “an unbroken field, containing everything.” The protagonist in “Mousetraps” has a strange conversation with a hardware store owner who questions the value of humane mousetraps.

Three other stories, including one about a fellow who suddenly grows an extra toe, didn’t do much for me. On the whole, however, this is a diverse collection of enjoyable, offbeat stories.

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Red Star Falling by Steve Berry and Grant Blackwood

Published by Grand Central Publishing on June 11, 2024

Red Star Falling takes place in the present, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In this version of reality, Putin is a man named Konstantin Franko. Apart from the name, he is essentially Putin. Franko took over from Aleksei Delov, who took over from Gorbachev. I suppose that makes Delov the analog of Boris Yeltsin, although Yeltsin died in 2007. Delov is dying but he’s determined to bring down Franko, who has betrayed the principles of democracy that Delov championed.

Luke Daniels works for the Magellan Billet, a fictional counterterrorist unit of the Justice Department that conducts international investigations. Luke’s mentor is Cotton Malone, the protagonist in a long series of Steve Berry novels.

Red Star is an old Soviet program that maintained orbiting satellites armed with nuclear warheads. Delov ordered the satellites to self-destruct. All but one. He wants to put an end to Franco by dropping that one on Moscow. Not a bad idea, apart from the tens of thousands of innocent people who would die. The solution to the Russian dictatorship is too extreme for Luke’s sensibilities.

Luke had been stationed in Hungary, working with the CIA on an operation that ran intelligence agents in Ukraine. The operation fell apart and CIA agent John Vince was captured by Russia. Now Vince has gotten word to Luke that he’s still alive. Luke resolves to get him out of Russia.

Vince is in prison with Efim Kozar, one of two surviving scientists who understand the launch details for a Red Star attack. The other is Ilya Mashir, who has the codes to activate the nuclear device and send the Red Star tumbling toward Moscow. Kozar was recently questioned by Delov’s bodyguard and, based on that questioning, has figured out that Delov plans to activate the Red Star. He imparted that information to Vince.

In the action thriller tradition, Luke embarks on a series of adventures. He needs to break Vince out of a remote Russian prison. Vince wants Luke to take Kozar, which sparks a new mission — finding Mashir, acquiring the self-destruct code, and making his way to the station that communicates with Red Star so he can send the code. But the code is encrypted and Mashir needs Luke to recover a book from a Russian museum that is under the control of an oligarch so he can decrypt the code. Mashir also has a vested interest in recovering the library of Ivan the Terrible from the gangster oligarch who now controls it.

This chain of events struck me as unlikely make-work, existing only to give Luke some thrilling tasks to complete. Such is the nature of the modern thriller. Finding the book from Ivan's library struck me as particularly silly, but at least Luke didn’t have to raid a tomb.

Luke gets a hand from Danielle Otero, a former Russian agent who was in love with Vince. What’s a thriller without a beautiful Russian spy? Danielle has a grudge against Franko and would like to get revenge against all the people she holds accountable for Vince’s capture. Details of Luke’s travels with Danielle through remote parts of Russia give the novel a sense of realism that helps the reader disregard the unlikely nature of the plot.

As is his habit, Berry did copious research when writing the novel. While research contributes to atmosphere, he provides more historical detail about Ivan’s library and certain locations (such as the history of Oreshek Island and the construction of its fortress) than the story needs.

Although the plot bogs down on occasion, it usually moves forward at a steady pace, adventure following adventure, complete with fistfights, gunfights, helicopter rides during storms, boat chases — the familiar trappings of an action thriller. The action is reasonably credible. The novel is a bit light on the tradecraft that fans of espionage novels might crave, but it does feature the betrayals that are a standard part of spy fiction. Fans of action thrillers will find much to enjoy in Red Star Falling.

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Clete by James Lee Burke

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on June 11, 2024

Some of my favorite crime writers have a greater interest in the supernatural than I do. James Lee Burke is one of those. I suppose monstrous crimes can be seen as the product of evil and evil can be seen as the realm of the supernatural. A disembodied force of evil has symbolic value for writers who confront crimes that are beyond ordinary experience. But the supernatural in Clete takes the form of a good person rather than an embodiment of evil.

Clete is narrated by Dave Robicheaux’s best friend, Clete Purcel. At various times in the novel, Clete gets advice from the ghost of Joan of Arc, or maybe Ingrid Bergman playing that character. Either way, she occasionally materializes and saves Clete’s life or cautions him not to be a fool. Clete has engaged in foolish behavior throughout his life, but now he’s sober and dedicated to helping others in his work as a private investigator. If Joan of Arc wants to help him, who am I to say that Clete is the victim of an overactive imagination?

The plot follows multiple threads. They are joined by Clete’s Cadillac. Clete leaves it at a car wash. When he returns, he finds that some thugs from the Dixie Mafia are taking it apart. After dealing with the thugs, he discovers that they were searching for something that they believe to have been concealed in his car. One theory is that the car wash owner, Eddy Durbin, let his brother Andy use the car to mule some drugs from Mexico. Clete later learns that the hidden object may be something different from the black tar heroin or fentanyl that is prevalent in Louisiana.

The nature of the substance supposedly hidden in Clete’s car is a bit vague. At one point Clete is made to believe that his exposure to the hidden substance might be fatal. The threat posed by the “lethal chemical called Leprechaun” enters and leaves the story at random intervals, never taking a firm hold. An FBI agent who seems to be looking for Leprechaun similarly makes occasional appearances without adding much to the story.

Clete connects the destruction of his car to a Nazi named Baylor Hemmings. Clete carries a picture of a Holocaust victim and her children, apparently to remind himself of how evil the world can be. Clete’s occasional references to the picture seem forced. They never resonate with the power that Burke likely intended. Of the thousands of Holocaust images, what it is about this particular picture that has gripped Clete is never made clear.

In his search for Hemmings, Clete questions a bail bondsman named Sperm-O Sellars, whose sideline is described as white slavery. Clete and Robicheau rescue a captive woman named Chen whose passivity has been assured by keeping her high on heroin. They’ll eventually need to rescue her again.

Sperm-O made the mistake of grabbing the ankle of Gracie Lamar, a dancer at a strip club who kicked his teeth in. Sperm-O hires Clete to find her after she jumps bail. Gracie turns out to be an ex-cop who got fired for unorthodox conduct that included killing some men who, in Clete’s judgment, probably deserved their fate.

All of that somehow ties into a plot thread involving Lauren Bow, a con man who made a fortune selling soap franchises, a Ponzi scheme that has gotten him into tax trouble with the IRS. His wife, Clara Bow, wants to hire Clete. She says she intends to divorce her abusive husband and claims he is blackmailing her with forged evidence that she was a participant in his tax fraud. Clete is a protector of abused women and so, against his better judgment, agrees to help her.

Bodies begin to drop. Clete and Robicheaux become targets, perhaps because Clete took his car to the wrong car wash, perhaps because they are questioning dangerous people.

In addition to Joan of Arc, another character seems to be related to the supernatural. When he dies, his body decomposes at a startling rate and with an unusually putrid stench. I can’t say that I understand how that character fits into the larger plot. But then, I can't understand why Joan of Arc has taken an interest in Clete Purcel.

The plot seems more of a muddle than is customary with a James Lee Burke novel. It is nevertheless interesting and moves at a satisfying pace, not so quickly that it overlooks the need to build atmosphere and suspense, not so slowly that the reader’s mind begins to wander. As always, I admire Burke’s prose. He’s simply one of the best wordsmiths in the crime writing business. In Clete, however, he tends to express the same ideas redundantly.

Burke didn’t sell me on the Leprechaun plot or on Joan of Arc, but his action scenes are credible and the characters of Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel have become iconic in the world of crime fiction. I always look forward to reading about their adventures. The different perspective here, seeing Dave through Clete’s eyes, adds another window through which the reader can view their enduring friendship. If this isn’t the best of the Robicheaux novels, it is still better than the average thriller writer can produce.

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