Death of the Demon by Anne Holt

First published in Norway in 1995; published in translation by Scribner on June 18, 2013

Anne Holt creates an ominous atmosphere in Death of the Demon ... or maybe the Scandinavian setting is enough to do that. Title notwithstanding, Death of the Demon is a fairly traditional murder mystery, not a tale of the supernatural, although several characters are possessed by demons of their own design.

Twelve-year-old Olav, confined to an institutional foster home in Oslo, is consumed by hatred. Foul-mouthed and ill-tempered, Olav is a chubby boy whose ravenous appetite is rarely satisfied. His mother cannot begin to control him. On the same night the foster home's director is stabbed to death, Olav disappears. Chief Inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen investigates, assisted by Detective Billie T.  With Olav, the other foster kids, troubled staff members, and the director's husband and boyfriend to consider, there's no shortage of suspects in this whodunit.

From time to time, Olav's mother provides a first-person account of the difficult life she had raising the little terror and the unwillingness of social services agencies to help, until they finally showed up to take him away. The degree to which Olav's mother is responsible for Olav's misbehavior is unclear (she has a hands-off approach to parenting), but social workers and teachers are eager to blame her instead of reproaching themselves for failing to give her the assistance she persistently requested. Those passages are probably meant to add human interest while serving as an indictment of Norway's social services agencies, but (other than the very last one) they're a bit too obvious to add anything meaningful to the story.

Characterization is above-average for a whodunit. Hanne, who is more comfortable being an investigator than an administrator, has some regret over her decision to accept her promotion to Chief Inspector. Discord between Hanne and her domestic partner adds spice to the story without becoming melodramatic. Holt gives Hanne and Billie T. a workplace friendship without relying on the clichés that often accompany relationships of that nature. I can't say that any of the characters are particularly deep, but neither are they shallow.

The ultimate test of a whodunit is whether the "reveal" is surprising and whether the story is engaging. Death of the Demon gets a better-than-passing grade on both prongs of the test. Holt has a talent for misdirection, as evidenced by a final twist that gives the story an extra spark while imparting new meaning to the book's title.

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The Abomination by Jonathan Holt

Published by Harper on June 18, 2013

In the grand tradition of thrillers that depend upon conspiracy theories, The Abomination serves up a Machiavellian plot involving NATO, the death of Aldo Moro, the Bosnian War, the Mafia, a private army, arms manufacturers, human traffickers, a corrupt Italian prosecutor, and two offshoots of the Catholic Church. Three storylines develop alongside each other, and for the first quarter of The Abomination, I was wondering how they could possibly tie together.

Kat Tapo has recently been promoted to the position of homicide detective for the Carabinieri (military police) in Venice. Her first murder investigation involves a female corpse wearing the robes of a Catholic priest. Tattoos on her body and similar marks at the crime scene -- an island that is shunned for fear of the evil spirits that purportedly haunt it -- might or might not be related to the occult. A second murder, apparently related, occurs in the hotel room that the two victims shared. Kat's attempt to investigate is obstructed at every turn.

Second Lieutenant Holly Boland has been posted to Italy, where she spent much of her childhood. In her role as an American military intelligence officer, she's asked to respond to a request for information about the relationship between the U.S. military and a Croatian commander who was responsible for atrocities committed during the Bosnian War. Her attempt to gather the requested information is obstructed at every turn.

Daniele Barbo is an antisocial computer whiz who maintains a website called Carnivia. It's sort of a social networking site combined with an Italian version of Second Life set in Venice. Because Carnivia safeguards the anonymity of its users, it is valued as a clandestine meeting place. The Italian government wants to put Barbo in prison because he won't allow the government to access Carnivia's encrypted data. Someone is attempting to break the encryption, and Barbo's efforts to discover the source of the attacks on Carnivia's coding are obstructed at every turn.

The interplay of the three storylines produces a plot that is shrewd, intricate, and mostly believable. The murder investigation leads to false trails, cover-ups, and more deaths. Tense relationships between Venetians and Americans, stemming from the American military's problematic presence in Italy, add credibility to the story. Kat and Holly, two women proving themselves in nontraditional occupations, are constructed with satisfying depth. Jonathan Holt seasons the story with convincing references to Venetian culture and attitudes.

This isn't the touristy Venice of gondola rides and museums (although both play a role in the story). Holt's Venice is seedy and crime-ridden. Although Holt pays tribute to the city's fantastic architecture, he gives close attention to the flooded basements and moldy walls that are hidden from visitors. Fetid waters become symbolic of the crime that seeps through the city.

The Abomination is an appealing novel, but it has its flaws. While the story is well-told, the pace is occasionally slowed by unnecessary detail. The theme (violence against women) is important but Holt indulges in a few too many preachy moments. Occasional scenes are over-the-top (no matter how well connected a conspirator might be, shooting a Hellfire missile into Italy will raise some eyebrows) but most of the story is believable. There's a bit of soap opera in one of Kat's relationships. It isn't overdone but it adds little value to a story that has plenty of human interest without the addition of a predictable affair. The novel's conclusion is underwhelming given the scope of the conspiracy that needs to be unraveled, although the ending contains enough ambiguity to whet my interest in the next installment of this trilogy. Imperfections aside, the novel's action scenes are both riveting and realistic, the story is consistently attention-grabbing, and the atmospheric setting is worth a return visit. I look forward to seeing the trio of key characters in action again.

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Eléctrico W by Hervé Le Tellier

First published in French in 2011; published in translation by Other Press on June 18, 2013

The events described in Eléctrico W take place in Lisbon over the course of nine days. Antonio Flores is a photographer living in Paris, but during his childhood in Lisbon, he raced every day to catch a funicular tram called the Eléctrico W. One morning he missed the tram but met a girl called Duck, who eventually became his lover. Their romance ended with a forced separation after Duck's father discovered she was pregnant.

Antonio tells the story of Duck to Vincent Balmer, a journalist with whom Antonio has joined forces to cover the trial of Pinheiro, the "Mad Killer of Lisbon." Vincent, the novel's narrator, has an old flame of his own, a woman he loved despite her refusal to give herself to him. Of Irene he confesses: "the memory of her terrifies me because it's everywhere in me, ready to spring up as soon as I'm alone, when all it really is is regret." Vincent is chagrined when Antonio reveals that Irene was Antonio's lover before Antonio left Paris, and is even more discomfited by the news that Irene will be visiting Antonio in Lisbon.

Motivated by a combination of jealousy and confusion, Vincent embarks on a search for the long-lost Duck. Vincent's wanderings gives Hervé Le Tellier the opportunity to paint caricatures of Lisbon's colorful residents, including a surprising woman named Manuela Freire. Vincent believes he has bad luck with women, but perhaps (as Manuela suggests) his problem is his inability to recognize and seize the moment when a woman is giving him a chance. Vincent's interaction with the novel's female characters, as well as Antonio's momentary obsession with a young woman named Aurora, allows Le Tellier to explore various aspects of love and desire.

The perfect understatement of each plot thread adds to the novel's realism. The reader eventually learns that there is more to the story of Duck.  That story's completion gives Eléctrico W its final dramatic edge.

Le Tellier's elegant, atmospheric prose makes this a novel to savor. Le Tellier makes frequent reference to poets, both real and fictional, and there is a poetic sensibility to his phrasing and choice of words. One poem that Le Tellier quotes is, like Eléctrico W, about "lying and illusion and sincerity."  During the nine days, Vincent idly translates the fragmentary stories written by a (fabricated) poet who has appeared as a character in some of Le Tellier's other work. Le Tellier seems to be suggesting -- through the translated vignettes, Vincent's coverage of Pinhiero, and the character of Manuela -- that the line between fiction and reality is murky at best. Vincent is drawn, he tells us, to "unfashionable authors, the ones who failed to produce a major famous work by which they'll be remembered." Eléctrico W deserves a better fate than the forgotten books that appeal to Vincent. I wouldn't classify it as a major work, but if every good novel "is good in its own way" (as Vincent opines), Eléctrico W is good in many ways.

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Through Darkest America by Neal Barrett Jr.

First published in 1986

Howie Ryder's father taught him that "stock" are animals that happen to look like humans, animals that can neither speak nor reason, nothing more than a food source raised for slaughter, a gift from God after the War destroyed the unclean animals upon which men once fed. Through Darkest America is a dystopian novel modeled after a western, with humans playing the role of cattle. It also echoes a Civil War story as the Loyalist army clashes with the Rebel army, leaving Howie caught in the middle. For the most part, however, Through Darkest America is a coming-of-age novel.

After Howie's parents are killed -- reprisal for his father's expression of anti-government sentiments -- Howie takes up a bow and vows revenge. He is alone (his sister having been selected for Silver Island, a supposedly idyllic community that embodies the ideals of a rebuilding nation) until he takes up with an opportunist named Pardo, an arms dealer who seems to be supplying competing armies. Against this background, Neal Barrett delivers an entertaining action story populated by well-drawn characters.

I'm not sure why writers of post-apocalyptic fiction so often imagine that language after an apocalyptic event will leave everyone speaking like Festus on Gunsmoke. Language would surely change (it always does), but it would evolve into something new. Still, Barrett wrote Through Darkest America as a classic western, complete with cattle drives and horse thieves and women of pleasure, so it's forgivable (if not particularly credible) that his characters speak as they do.

The epilog answers a critical question that I feared would go unanswered while tying the story together with a powerful conclusion. Howie is ultimately a tragic figure, surviving unimaginably painful ordeals while managing to hold onto his humanity -- at least to the extent that anyone could do so in the dystopian future that Barrett imagines. The ending of Through Darkest America sets up, and left me looking forward to reading, its sequel, Dawn's Uncertain Light.

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Love Minus Eighty by Will McIntosh

Published by Orbit on June 11, 2013

If Love Minus Eighty has a central theme, it's this: love is complicated. It's particularly complicated if you've fallen in love with a dead woman. Love Minus Eighty explores love in a light-hearted way from a variety of perspectives: characters are in love (both requited and unrequited), or want love, or are faking it, or fear it, or substitute manipulation and drama for actual love. Still, Love Minus Eighty will never be mistaken for a traditional romance novel. It's smart and funny, not trashy.

Love Minus Eighty features one of the best extrapolations of internet technology I've encountered. Will McIntosh mixes social networking with reality TV to create a medium that's both amusing and disturbing -- and utterly believable. In a future New York, the affluent live in High Town (built above the surface of old Manhattan) and wear skin-tight suits that, apart from using sensory filters to block bad smells and ugly sights, allow virtual access to others via screens that materialize in midair. Individuals who can attract enough followers at one time are rewarded with corporate sponsorship (earning money, for instance, by wearing a particular designer's boots). In its conglomeration of Facebook and Twitter and You Tube, Love Minus Eighty makes a telling point about all the people who "take time away from their own pathetic lives to watch [a self-made celebrity] live hers."

A woman named Lorelei manages to gain eight hundred viewers as she humiliates her soon-to-be-ex boyfriend, Rob Mashita. Having just watched Lorelei throw all his possessions out a window, the distracted Rob runs over a woman named Winter West. Winter dies without revivication insurance, but fortunately she's attractive, and her corpse is chosen for the bridesicle program and stored in a dating center at minus eighty. If she's very lucky, some wealthy man will pay to restore her to life, or at least awaken her for a quick chat. Out of guilt, Rob visits her from time to time, but he can't afford to restore her to consciousness for more than five minutes every few months.

Winter's death, and the possibility that she might never be revived -- or worse, that she might be thawed and buried if she proves to be unprofitable -- is at the heart of an engaging story. Although Love Minus Eighty is in essence a romantic comedy, it makes some serious points about the value and the downside of social networking, as well as the corporate tendency to place a monetary value on human life. It also delves into philosophy, asking the timeless question: "What's more real: what you think you are, or what external, objective reality tells you you are?" Just how real is virtual reality?

If you're looking for "hard" science fiction that explains how things work -- how death is cheated, how floating screens manage to pop into existence -- you won't find it here. That didn't bother me because the novel has the sort of tongue-in-cheek attitude that suggests it isn't meant to be taken seriously. The story's focus is on people rather than technology. The characters aren't multifaceted -- there is a clear division between likable and unlikable characters -- but that's forgivable in a comic novel. Love Minus Eighty doesn't require much analytical thinking (overthinking the story would probably destroy it) but the novel encourages empathy for its love-challenged characters, provokes easy laughter, and stimulates discussion about the future of social networking.

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