TransAtlantic by Colum McCann

Published by Random House on June 4, 2013

Connections across the Atlantic and across time furnish TransAtlantic's theme. The first part of the novel reaches into history to tell three true stories. In 1919, Jack Alcock and Teddy Brown retrofit an airplane once used to make war and use it to make history: the first nonstop transatlantic flight, from Newfoundland to Ireland. In 1845, Frederick Douglass travels from Boston to Dublin to seek Irish support in the fight against slavery. In 1998, Senator George Mitchell flies across the Atlantic to negotiate peace in Northern Ireland. Colum McCann is a loving biographer of these transatlantic voyagers, focusing more intently on their positive qualities than on the faults they may have had. Still, as much as I admired McCann's attempt to personalize the historic, the stories in part one failed to touch my emotional core.

McCann tells three smaller yet richer stories in the novel's second part. These are ordinary people, not the subjects of history texts. Lily Duggan, a maid who meets and admires Frederick Douglass in part one, flees the hardship and pain of Ireland and travels to the promise of America, where she marries an ice dealer and lives a common life of love and loss and modest success. Lily's daughter Emily (a journalist who wrote an article about Frederick Douglass' legacy) crosses the Atlantic so that she can interview Teddy Brown for the second time (having met him in part one) for a story about the tenth anniversary of his flight. Years later, Emily's daughter Lottie (who chats with Senator Mitchell in part one) is living in Belfast, as are her daughter and grandson. As is true of many people in that time and place (and in many other times and places), Lottie's story ends tragically.

Among the novel's many connections is a letter that Lottie gives Teddy Brown for transatlantic delivery. The letter brings together Frederick Douglass and every female in Lily's family, having been passed from daughter to daughter. It makes its final appearance in part three, more than ninety years after it crossed the ocean. Lottie's daughter Hannah wonders "what might have happened if the letter had made it to its proper destination in Cork, what random turn of events might have grown out of it, what chance, what accidents, what curiosities." TransAtlantic reminds us that life is often shaped by coincidence and chance, that "our lives are thrown into long migratory orbits" by random occurrences and by the things that might have happened but did not.

At some point McCann describes life as "an accumulation of small shelves of incident." TransAtlantic illustrates life as a collection of connected but ever-changing moments, each giving birth to something new as the old vanishes into memory. The world changes, and yet there are constants: war and violence, men and women striving to achieve. McCann's characters carry the weight of history as they battle "ancient hatreds." As one character explicitly states, our stories outlast us. Old stories are eventually retold with new names. Frederick Douglass brings the point home when he considers how people share the same responses to different forms of oppression and thinks about how people on roads in Dublin and Boston are traveling the same road, how they "meld into each other."

After a slow start, parts two and three bring TransAtlantic to life. McCann's prose, while vivid, did not strike me as forcefully here as it did in Let the Great World Spin, but his reliance on clipped, fragmentary sentences eventually grew on me. Both novels make a point about interconnected lives; both make clear that the world keeps turning, no matter how honorably or disgracefully its inhabitants behave. Each is compelling in its own way. If TransAtlantic did not blow me away as did Let the Great World Spin, it eventually worked its literary magic as the story danced from character to character. I'm a bit disappointed that in format and message it is so much like Let the Great World Spin, but TransAtlantic is a worthy novel in its own right.

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Light of the World by James Lee Burke

Published by Simon & Schuster on July 23, 2013

As the opening paragraphs of the twentieth Dave Robicheaux novel expressly state, Light of the World is an exploration of evil, a familiar theme in James Lee Burke's books. It is Robicheaux's tale of how "one of the most wicked creatures on earth made his way into" the lives of Robicheaux's family and friends. Initially, the reader wonders whether the "wicked creature" is a born-again rodeo clown named Wyatt Dixon, the serial killer Asa Surrette (who, according to the FBI, is dead), or some other character who might be channeling Keyser Söze, making the novel a sort of whodunit. In the end, Burke's point is that evil wears many faces. Some evil people enter and leave prison, some enter the worlds of business or politics, some carry a badge. And as the best thriller writers remind us, the boundary between good and evil is often indistinct.

Robicheaux meets Dixon after an arrow sails past the ear of his adopted daughter Alafair while she's jogging in Montana during a family vacation at Albert Hollister's ranch. Alafair soon realizes that someone is stalking her, and she thinks she recognizes Surrette, a psychopath she once interviewed in a maximum security prison for a book she was writing. The stalking coincides with the murder of a seventeen-year-old girl, the adopted granddaughter of a billionaire whose son is a scoundrel.

Burke adds another dimension to the story with the reappearance of Gretchen Horowitz (last seen in Creole Belle), the daughter of Dave's friend Clete Purcel. Sexually abused as a child, Gretchen became a contract killer before renouncing her criminal vocation. Child abuse is clearly evil; whether Gretchen is evil, given her past, Burke leaves for the reader to decide. She might be less evil than a member of the local police department who brutalizes a handcuffed suspect before focusing his unwelcome attention on her. Robicheaux is a cop, but he acknowledges the evil inherent in the "sick culture" that pervades law enforcement, the "smug moral superiority" that makes police officers feel entitled to violate the laws they are sworn to enforce. Of course, any book about evil is also about good, and rare is the person who is entirely one or the other. The fact that good and evil coexist assures that they will influence (or taint) each other by virtue of their proximity. Robicheaux has learned the lesson that we all "belong to the family of man, even if only on its outer edges."

Burke writes with such eloquence that his tendency to be verbose is easy to forgive. When he waxes poetic about human nature, I take it in stride, confident that he'll eventually pick up the plot thread. His soaring prose is a joy to read. Real people generally aren't as articulate as the characters in a Burke novel (I know I'm not), but if they were, the world would be a more interesting place.

There's as much family drama as thriller drama in Light of the World, but none of it is melodrama. Family isn't always easy but it's always family, a point Burke makes through several of his characters. Burke has a knack for creating characters I'd sometimes like to strangle, while at the same time making me understand why they behave as they do.

Thrillers that take evil as their theme often allude to the devil, and this one is no exception. When Burke asks whether evil has human origins or whether it comes from a darker place, he's walking on familiar ground. When his characters started smelling peculiar odors that they associate with malevolence and seeing prints made by two-legged goat-footed creatures and at least half believing that the killer is an emissary of the devil, I became worried about the novel's direction, but Burke offers an appealing contrast of explanations for those phenomena, grounded both in the rational world and in the supernatural. In any event, Light of the World is such a deft display of suspenseful storytelling that my qualms vanished well before the novel reached its climax.

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The Deep Whatsis by Peter Mattei

Published by Other Press on July 23, 2013

The Deep Whatsis is a familiar but funny sendup of the corporate environment. It's like Dilbert with sex, or Office Space merged with Fatal Attraction.

Eric Nye is 33, works in advertising ("advertising is how corporations outsource their lies") and is on page two of the screenplay he's been writing for three years. As the ad agency's Executive Creative Director, his primary job is to fire older workers, a task he handles with pleasure (for awhile, at least) despite his realization that he is the person most deserving of being fired. Like other writers who have lampooned the highly compensated denizens of corporate culture, Peter Mattei emphasizes Eric's shallow self-indulgence, his obsession with trendy consumerism, his emotional emptiness, and his dependence on mood-stabilizing drugs, none of which ward off his panic attacks.

Eric's one-night-stand with a client's young intern becomes problematic after she accepts an internship with Eric's employer and begins to stalk him. Naturally enough, Eric is obsessed with the one person who is devious enough to cause him professional harm. Yet Eric's mind seems to take occasional breaks from reality, leaving the reader to wonder whether the problems in his life are caused by the intern or are of his own design.

Mattei's characters are hilariously stereotyped, from the politically correct HR lady to the antisocial IT guy. Eric is a jerk but he's a self-aware jerk, so over the top in his jerkiness that he's almost likable. Eric experiences a transformation of sorts that gives the reader a reason to care about him, but how much he's actually changed is an open question by the time the novel reaches its abrupt ending. Eric's relationship with the intern is central to the story and to the development of Eric's character, but Eric's strong feelings about her are not entirely convincing.

Mattei's insights into advertising (the art of persuading consumers to buy junk they don't need) aren't new but his description of consumers buying shiny new things to increase their "game status" in the game of acquisition is amusing. His notion that technology is "taking away the fundamental truths about our humanity and making us pay to get them back" is, sadly enough, at least partially true. It is, in fact, Mattei's take on modern urban life -- more funny than profound -- that furnishes the novel's best moments.

Although The Deep Whatsis is built upon ideas that are recycled from other novels, Mattei has infused enough fresh humor to make it a breezy, entertaining read. The novel has an unfinished feel that might disturb some readers -- it's a slice of an unsatisfying life, with much remaining to be resolved -- but readers who don't mind writing their own endings are given ample opportunity to imagine where Eric's life will take him.

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They Don't Dance Much by James Ross

First published in 1940; published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road on April 16, 2013

They Don't Dance Much was first published in 1940, a time when noir was flourishing and when (unlike most modern thrillers) stories were believable. Writers mined the drama of daily existence and filled their novels with flawed, downtrodden characters rather than superheroic studs.

Jackson McDonald owes back taxes on a farm that's worth less than his mortgage. He also owes the funeral home for his mother's burial. With a sick mule and little chance of bringing in a decent crop, Jackson is happy to take a job working for his friend Smut Milligan, who plans to add a roadhouse and dance hall onto his gas station. The plans put Smut in debt, creating a risk that a business rival will take over the roadhouse if Smut can't pay the bank.

Jackson keeps hearing that Bert Ford buried a large amount of cash somewhere on his farm, a story that also holds great interest for Smut. The rumor leads to a predictable (but nicely executed) series of events. The novel's real drama, however, concerns the tension that develops between Smut and Jackson after Ford is out of the picture. A related plot thread follows Smut's continuing interest in his old girlfriend Lola, who is less than happily married to Henry Fisher, the richest man in Corinth (a tiny town in North Carolina).

The first person narrative is written in a deceptively folksy style. The rural atmosphere reeks of authenticity and the characters (for the most part, a mixture of white trash and subjugated blacks) are so real you can practically smell them (although you probably wouldn't want to). The story is a study in the dark side of human nature -- no significant character behaves virtuously -- yet James Ross manages to make the reader care about them (or, at the very least, understand them). They know only hardship. They endure but they don't dance much. Some are broken by life and others fight to keep their dignity. The rich get richer and the poor get screwed. Life isn't fair but it's life, and that's the beauty of Ross' novel.

Following a path laid by writers like Horace McCoy, Ross doesn't give readers a contrived, feel-good ending. Readers who like happy, sunshiny stories in which everything works out well for their favorite characters should stay away from They Don't Dance Much. The story is bleak, reflecting the spirit of the times. It's also dramatic, realistic, and brutally honest.  It isn't quite Horace McCoy, but it's awfully good.

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Masaryk Station by David Downing

Published by Soho Crime on June 18, 2013

Masaryk Station appeals to the intellect but not to the heart. David Downing's writing lacks passion and the story is only moderately suspenseful. The plot is nonetheless intriguing and the background is skillfully rendered.

John Russell is an American journalist, but that's a cover for a rather complicated life. He's married to Effi, a German movie star. He also works for the Army's Counter Intelligence Corps, currently (1948) assigned to Berlin. For the moment, however, he's on loan to Trieste, serving as an interpreter for the flood of Russians seeking to defect. He's also running errands for the CIA. He uses his free time to poke into a ratline operated by Catholic priests for the benefit of (among others) the Americans who pay by the head for each refugee smuggled out of Eastern Europe. When they aren't working for pay, the priests are saving the skins of Croatian fascists and fugitive Nazis, an embarrassing fact that Russell would like to expose. Russell's other secret is that he's a double agent who reports to Soviet intelligence.

During the course of the novel, the CIA sends Russell to Udine, Belgrade, and Prague. None of his missions go well, but since Russell doesn't seem to like any of his employers, he's content simply to stay alive -- a tricky proposition given the multiple attempts that are made on his life. Russell's real agenda is to get out from under the thumb of his Russian and American employers.

A less interesting storyline follows Effi in Berlin as she wrestles with career choices (including pressure from the Soviets to act in a movie being filmed in Moscow), assists a mother who hopes to reunite with her daughter in Prague, and becomes embroiled in the mystery surrounding an actress' death. Also in Berlin, Gerhard Ströhm, a liaison between Russia and Germany, engages in a series of academic discussions about socialism, capitalism, and communism that are a tad dry. More interesting are the efforts Russia is making (and that Ströhm must help orchestrate) to disrupt American activities in Berlin.

Masaryk Station is a pleasantly meandering novel, but not a particularly suspenseful one. One disadvantage (to the reader) of Russell's status as a double agent is that, when captured by either side, he can extricate himself from trouble by saying "Hey, I work for you guys." It's hard to worry about a spy who carries a "get out of jail free" card. Although Downing delivers a satisfying amount of action, I never had the sense of danger that the best espionage novels deliver. I also found it difficult to believe that the Americans and British failed to notice that Russell is a double agent, given events in the novel that practically scream out his betrayal.

Perhaps because I haven't read the earlier novels in the series, I didn't feel I ever got a handle on what makes Russell tick. He's clearly a man with a conscience and I appreciated that aspect of his character development, but I never understood why I should care about him. I spent much of the novel wondering about his motivation to act on Russia's behalf until Downing finally alluded to it. I suppose that's my own fault for beginning with the last book in a series so I don't hold that against Downing, but I wonder if I might have enjoyed this novel more if I had read the others first. In any event, I didn't find myself fully engaged with Russell's plight.

Still, I appreciated the novel's historical setting and the atmosphere that Downing creates. I also admired Downing's ability to craft an intelligent plot even if I didn't feel particularly connected to it. On the whole, Masaryk Station is a reasonably enjoyable novel, but I would recommend that readers avoid my mistake and start with the first book in the series.

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