Identical by Scott Turow

Published by Grand Central Publishing on October 15, 2013

The identical twin crime novel has been done so often it's become a cliché, but Scott Turow knows that. Just when I thought I had it figured out and was disappointed that the story followed an obvious path, the plot twisted. Then it twisted again, becoming a different story altogether. Kudos to Turow for taking a familiar plot device and doing something new with it. Unlike some of Turow's other novels, Identical isn't a courtroom thriller. It is instead a novel about the intersection of politics and law. That's been done before too, but few writers do it better than Turow. Identical is set in the familiar legal terrain of Kindle County and features several secondary characters (including Sandy Stern) who are well known to Turow's fans.

Paul Gianis is a brand new attorney who, as the novel opens in 1982, will soon become a prosecutor in Kindle County. Paul is attending a picnic where several of the novel's principle characters are gathered, including Paul's twin brother Cass, his mother Lidia, his brother's caustic girlfriend Dita, and Dita's father, Zeus Kronen. After warning us that the day of the picnic will change Paul's life, Scott Turow jumps ahead to a 2008 parole hearing, where we meet Dita's brother, Hal Kronen, a wealthy real estate developer. Cass has nearly finished serving his sentence for Dita's murder. Also attending the hearing are Kronen's vice president for security, Evon Miller, and his private investigator, Tim Brodie. Paul, having departed the prosecutor's office for a lucrative personal injury practice, is now the majority leader in the state senate and a candidate for mayor. He isn't happy when Kronen publicly accuses him of playing a role in Dita's murder, an accusation that threatens to derail his campaign if Paul doesn't neutralize it.

Turow crams a lot of story into a few pages, and that's just the beginning. Turow sets up the central mystery, common to identical twin crime novels, early on: which twin did what? Occasional flashbacks to 1982 lead to an eventual answer. The answer is complicated by a present day plot twist (revealed about two-thirds in) that is relatively obvious, but Turow clearly intends the reader to guess some of what's happening. At roughly the same two-thirds point, Turow shocks the reader with several revelations that force Miller and Brodie (and the reader) to rethink the mystery.

The meat of the novel comes after Paul files a lawsuit for defamation against Kronen. Much of the story is about dirty politics and the ability of people with money to smear candidates they dislike. Turow adds a bit of drama to each character's life without sidetracking the main story, which contains enough family drama to drive a multigenerational saga.

Identical isn't quite as clever as Turow's best novels, but lesser Turow is still better than most writers of legal thrillers can manage. The story kept me guessing and my attention never wavered. Strong characters and a strong plot are enough to earn Identical a strong recommendation, even if it isn't my favorite Turow.

RECOMMENDED

Doomed by Chuck Palahniuk

Published by Doubleday on October 8, 2013

Is it possible to base an entire novel on potty humor? Not many serious writers would have the audacity to try, and few of those would pull it off as capably as Chuck Palahniuk. Doomed, the sequel to Damned, is a send-up of religion, Hollywood parenting, and hypocrisy in all its guises. Humor of this nature is difficult to sustain, so it's fortunate that Doomed isn't overly long. Sometimes Palahniuk's satire is too over-the-top to be effective; other times it is spot on. Most of the time, Doomed is amusing. On occasion, it is outrageously funny.

Dead, fat thirteen-year-old Madison Spencer, the daughter of a billionaire tax dodging environmentalist father and a New Age actress mother, is experiencing a mid-death crisis. She suffers from postmortem depression and is blogging about it on her PDA. Satan has trapped her on Earth, in a sort of purgatory. By communicating with the predead, Madison has inadvertently inspired a new religion called Boorism that is based on cursing, belching, racial slurs, and ... well, you get the drift. As Madison blogs about her own predeath (her motto: "I irritate; therefore I am"), she reveals some truly awful and truly funny events from her childhood, including one that takes place in a public men's room. (Warning: Not everyone will find it funny. A taste for the macabre helps. And since the incident involves an erect member that the little girl mistakes for something quite different, some readers will find it offensive.)

Riffs on Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle and on the Bible contribute to the offbeat humor, as well as an unusual prophesy of the End Times (which involves something called Madlantis, where dwells a baby-thing conceived inside a lipstick-and-chocolate coated latex sheath that is tossed out the window of a Lincoln Town Car as it drives down Hollywood Boulevard). I enjoyed the humor and the prose more than the story (which often seems to be searching for a point), but maybe Palahniuk's random acts of satire are the point. In any event, I enjoyed the novel so I'm recommending it, but this is far from Palahniuk's best work.

RECOMMENDED

The Case of the Love Commandos by Tarquin Hall

Published by Simon & Schuster on October 8, 2013

The Love Commandos are determined to change India's caste system. Believing that the custom of arranged marriages is detrimental to India, the Love Commandos facilitate marriages between members of disparate classes and religions. Although (as Tarquin Hall points out) India's hierarchy of class is slowly being replaced by a hierarchy of wealth that gives a rich Dalit more clout than a poor Brahmin, arranged marriages within castes continue to thrive -- much to the dismay of the Love Commandos.

Vishnu Mishra, a Thakur (or "lord"), has threatened to kill Ram, a Dalit (the lowest caste), if he comes near Vishnu's daughter Tulsi. With the assistance of the Love Commandos, Tulsi and Ram are preparing to elope. When Ram is kidnapped, Love Commando Laxmi, who is also an operative for Most Private Investigators Ltd, turns to her boss, Vish Puri, for help. The story becomes a murder mystery when Puri's investigation leads him to Ram's murdered mother. The killing implicates Mishra -- but could it be that easy? Puri has his doubts. His investigation is complicated by the appearance of his archrival, Hari Kumar of Spycatcher Private Investigators, and by the murder of a second woman, a researcher in a genetics lab.

Puri is rather impressed with himself and a bit of a braggart (he is, he says, "the best detective in all India"), an amusing trait that Hall milks for all its comic potential. If pride goes before a fall, poor Puri's ego is in for a battering. Puri is affectionately known as "Chubby" to his wife Rumpi. Puri's employees also have descriptive names -- Handbrake, Door Stop, Tubelight, Facecream (a/k/a Laxmi) -- but not much personality. The most memorable supporting character is Puri's mother (Mummy), who lives by the motto "old is gold" and (to Puri's chagrin) is a better detective than her son. A subplot has Mummy sneaking around hoping to catch a devious man who is either a pickpocket (the police don't believe her) or planning to murder his wife (the police don't believe her) or otherwise up to no good (the police would like her just to go home). The story follows three parallel tracks as Puri investigates the disappearance of Ram while his mother pursues her suspicions and Facecream (in the weakest part of the novel) takes an undercover job as a teacher.

Hall's prose reflects the lilting rhythms of Indian English. He takes the reader on a tour of India, from populous Jammar to the small villages where caste segregation is still blatant. You can almost taste the golguppas and smell the rajma chamal as characters visit food stalls. (Oddly enough, a number of recipes are appended to the novel as an extra treat for readers with culinary talent.)

The novel's laughter cloaks a serious theme: changing life in India. From imported shirts to "swanky" houses, India is becoming less parochial. Yet (as Facecream and a researcher in genetics opine) the hierarchy imposed by the caste system continues to be an impediment to national progress.

The Case of the Love Commandos isn't a novel that will leave a lasting impression on me, but it is a novel that provoked a smile on nearly every page. I enjoyed it enough to spark my interest in the first three novels in the series.

RECOMMENDED

Inherit the Dead by Jonathan Santlofer (ed.)

Published by Touchstone on October 8, 2013

When twenty writers each contribute a chapter to a novel, the result can be fun or a disaster. Inherit the Dead is a little of both. Seeing how each writer adds his or her spin and comparing different writing styles is an enjoyable way to read a novel. Serial novels are more entertaining when each writer adds plot twists that are meant to challenge the writers that follow, although the resulting story often lacks coherence. This isn't that sort of novel. The writers were "following a plan" which I assume means a plot outline, and most of them did little more than that. Inherit the Dead has few twists of any kind, leaving the impression that none of the writers wanted to add a complication that would make the project more difficult for writers of subsequent chapters. More distressing is that few of the writers tried to imprint the story with a personality, resulting in a book that has none. Inherit the Dead is a remarkably bland novel -- not a disaster, not really bad, but nothing to be excited about.

Chapter 1 by Jonathan Santlofer sets up an ordinary premise: Ex-cop turned private detective Perry Christo is asked to find Angel, Julia Druscilla's missing twenty-year-old daughter. If Angel doesn't sign some trust documents on her twenty-first birthday, her share of a sizeable trust will be forfeited to Julia. Christo was booted off the police force for misconduct that remains unspecified until chapter 2's writer fills in the details, but we're given to believe that the accusations were false, making Christo a typical wronged-cop-turned-PI. Santlofer also appends a first-person narrative to the end of the chapter, voiced by someone who is following Christo. Some of the other writers do the same, but that aspect of the novel is largely abandoned by its midway point.

One reason to read a book with so many different voices (and, I suspect, one reason writers contribute their voices) is the possibility of finding a pleasing voice the reader hasn't previously encountered. I recognized the names of most of the contributing authors, but several I had not read before. Stephen Carter, Sarah Weinman, and Bryan Gruley all encouraged me to look for their work. Some writers who were more familiar to me made worthy additions to the novel, including James Grady, Lisa Unger, Dana Stabenow, Val McDermid, Mary Higgins Clark, C.J. Box, and Max Allan Collins. Strong chapters were turned in by exceptionally strong writers: John Connolly is the first writer to put serious flesh on Christo's bones; Ken Bruen infuses the story with his biting Irish anger; Mark Billingham restores Bruen's edginess to the story; and Lawrence Block ties together the loose threads with the skill of a seasoned writer.

The contributions of several writers (many of whom have done better work than they display here) failed to impress me. Marcia Clark's chapter was shallow, as was S.J. Rozan's. The chapters by Heather Graham and Charlaine Harris were better suited to a trashy romance novel. Alafair Burke made no significant contribution to the plot but decided Christo should be whinier -- a bad choice.

Inherit the Dead was written in support of a charitable cause, so kudos to the writers for taking the time to do it. It strikes me as false advertising, however, to list Lee Child as one of the writers. Child dashed off a three page introduction praising all the writers for being so wonderful but he didn't contribute a chapter of his own. However praiseworthy the other writers might be for contributing their time, any of them writing individually would probably have produced a novel with a stronger plot and fleshier characters.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

North Sea Requiem by A.D. Scott

Published by Atria Books on September 3, 2013

A.D. Scott tells a good story in North Sea Requiem. It is, unfortunately, a 200 page story that takes more than 300 pages to tell. The strong characters, rich atmosphere, and pleasant prose kept me reading but the dragging pace keeps me from giving the novel a strong recommendation.

Nurse Urquhart, the wife of the shinty team's coach, is also the team's laundress. When she discovers a boot in the tub of laundry, she's unnerved to find a leg is still wearing the boot. The story takes an even darker turn when a character who is important to the shinty team takes a large splash of acid in the face and throat, while a shinty player is severely beaten. Could a small town shinty rivalry really get so carried away? Or is something else afoot?

John McAllister finally has a story worthy of the front page of his weekly newspaper. Rob McLean is excited to report it and Don McLeod is itching to edit it, but they are unsettled to learn that people who work for the paper may know more than they're revealing. Meanwhile, reporter Joanne Ross investigates the fate of an American Air Force officer, Robert Bell, who was stationed at an RAF base in Scotland from 1951 to 1952 and whose airplane disappeared in the North Sea. It is now 1958 and Mae Bell, his widow, wants to know what happened. When she starts receiving threatening notes telling her to mind her own business, as did the victim of the acid attack (and, eventually, as does Joanne), the reader wonders how these events could be connected.

North Sea Requiem is a mystery that is often told with a surprisingly light touch given the gruesome events that underlie the plot. (The real mystery to me was: What the heck is shinty? Apparently it resembles field hockey.) The Highlands setting is easy to picture. Atmosphere, dialog, and characters are the novel's strength. The Scottish characters are quirky and quarrelsome and cantankerous, but they pull together when friendship is needed. Most of the men treat women as "wee fluffy creatures that should be kept on the mantelshelf and cuddled every so often" but Joanne Ross is determined to report real news, not just social events and recipes. She's also dealing with domestic drama, knowing that her divorce (like her friendship with McAllister) will fuel small town gossip. Scott's attempts to instill the story with emotion are too heavy-handed, but that's only mildly distracting.

The plot is slow to unfold as the first half of the novel develops the setting and the characters. The answer to the mystery is ... well, it's a little weird ... but a quarter of the novel remains when it seems to be revealed. Of course, with that much story remaining, there are more revelations to come. They are credible and surprising, but the final chapters leading up to the final revelations follow a predictable course. They also fail to convey the sense of urgency that Scott must have intended. Had the plot moved with more vigor after the characters and setting were established, this would have been a better novel. It is an enjoyable reading experience as it stands, but too drawn out to merit a strong recommendation.

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