The Devil Doesn't Want Me by Eric Beetner

Published by Penguin as a "Dutton Guilt Edged Mystery" on October 23, 2012

Lars is a hit man, and with two exceptions, a successful one. One was a recent bloodbath in Vegas and the other is Mitchell "Mitch the Snitch" Kenney, who for seventeen years has been evading Lars, hiding in a witness protection program somewhere in the southwest. Lars has been practicing yoga and chasing down leads but has never managed to find Mitch. Now Lars is being forced into retirement, replaced by a kid named Trent who expects to find and kill Mitch within a few days. As the plot unfolds, the question isn't whether someone will kill Mitch but whether Lars will kill Trent before Trent can kill Lars.

Large quantities of blood splatter across the pages as the story develops, but this isn't a novel of mindless action. Not that the story lacks pace -- it moves like a racehorse -- but it is characterization, not action, that makes the novel stand out. Lars has lost the motivation that shaped his murderous career. He feels old. That doesn't make him unique in the annals of crime literature, but it makes him more interesting than the typical killer. With the perspective of age and an outmoded, Old School sense of virtue, Lars realizes that he's ready for retirement, yet he feels a duty to protect a sixteen-year-old girl who, through no fault of her own, becomes a target of Trent's men. Can Lars get his stone cold killer mojo back before it's too late?

Dialog is sharp and snappy (I particularly liked "A puppy with a squeak toy is more dangerous than you, kid"). The story is peppered with humor, much of it provided by Lars' befuddlement with the sixteen-year-old who becomes his road trip partner. Also contributing to the humor are Trent, who can't get anything right, a rivalry between Lars' ailing boss and the son who can't wait for dad to die so he can take over the mob, and a group of FBI agents who would prefer to do anything but work. Even minor characters are memorable, sketched with a deft hand.

The road trip ends with a clever twist that leads to a wild ending. Although Eric Beetner had me before the novel even began by writing an Author's Note that talks about his love for his dog, it is his ability as a storyteller that kept me fully engaged.

RECOMMENDED

Accelerated by Bronwen Hruska

Published by Pegasus on October 2, 2012 

Accelerated is a novel in search of an identity. The first half is a cross between a character-driven literary novel and a cheesy soap opera. The second half tries to be a thriller, while the overall theme suggests that Accelerated is a message novel. While some aspects of the novel work reasonably well, none of its ambitions are fully realized.

Sean Benning beats himself up because he's not Wonder Dad. He doesn't take his third grade son Toby to Sight Training or to Occupational Therapy to improve his pencil grip. He can't pay for Toby's pricey private school, the sort of place that caters to the overprivileged, but his in-laws are picking up the tab, a circumstance that (like most of his circumstances) leaves Sean feeling humiliated. The school thinks Toby should be medicated because he engages in the sort of "distracting" behavior that is common among boys, but Sean initially resists the idea of turning his son into a drugged zombie.

For no apparent reason other than the need to drive the storyline, Toby's mother, Ellie, has disappeared for three months, occasionally phoning in her regrets. She resurfaces with a desire to take Toby over his Christmas break, which would give Sean the time he desperately needs to prepare for an art show that he scored on the basis of a mere three pieces. Ellie later proves to be such a self-absorbed ninny that it's impossible to take her seriously.

Parts of Accelerated hint at Bronwen Hruska's talent. Sean's concern for his son and struggle with parenting feels authentic. Hruska effectively conveys Sean's anxiety as he talks to Toby about the death of another student, as well as Sean's sense of frustration when he deals with school administrators and mental health providers who seem rather glib in their desire to pin labels on Toby.

Other aspects of the novel don't work at all. Hruska strives for biting humor and sweet sentiment but the story she tells is too obvious to reach those goals. Sean's attendance at a party where Bill Clinton hits on Toby's third grade teacher is laughable, while Sean's inevitable relationship with the teacher is predictable. A happy ending is forced, clearly created to appease readers who like happy endings.

Much of the story surrounds Sean's belief that Toby's school pushes healthy kids to take unnecessary medication and then covers up the disastrous results. In its implicit condemnation of school administrators and drugs like Ritalin, the plot becomes heavy-handed. I have no problem with the notion that normal childish behavior is misdiagnosed as ADHD and that schools have a vested interest in medicating boys as a control mechanism. I do have a problem with hinging a thriller plot on the proposition that drugs like Ritalin routinely cause heart problems in healthy children, that schools push for medication of every male student despite ensuing health problems, that they tell parents the problems are caused by peanut allergies or bee stings, and that parents are too blind and cardiologists too incompetent to recognize the truth. By flirting with hysteria, the plot loses its integrity.

Before Accelerated spins out of control, it features a reasonably balanced debate about the merits and pitfalls of medicating kids. That theme could have been the foundation for a serious novel. By turning the story into a mundane thriller, Hruska cheapened an important debate, wasted her carefully constructed characters, and impaired the novel's credibility. Despite its merits, the novel never recovers from those flaws.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

First published in 1956

There are more ideas in The Stars My Destination -- profound ideas about human potential -- than you're likely to find collectively in the next dozen novels you read. The Stars My Destination begins as a tale of obsession and vengeance. The protagonist is an anti-hero, not the sort of person for whom a reader would normally root, but he is sympathetic compared to most of the novel's other characters, including a powerful corporate executive who makes Gordon Gecko seem like a mischievous boy. In Alfred Bester's future, people have acquired the ability to teleport over long distances, the colonized planets are at war with each other, and cities are filled with people who belong in carnival sideshows. But that's all window dressing for Bester's deeper exploration of a man who is "nothing but hatred and revenge," an Ahab of the twenty-fourth century chasing his own version of a white whale, a spaceship called Vorga. Ultimately, The Stars My Destination is a novel about the limits of idealism, the meaning of justice, the nature of power, and the transcendental ability of the human species to overcome its self-imposed limitations.

Gulliver Foyle, a common man who lacks ambition, a brute raised in the gutter school and "among the least valuable alive," is a crew member on the Nomad when it is attacked during the war between the inner and outer (colonized) planets of Earth's solar system. Foyle, the only member of the Nomad to survive, lives for months in an airtight tool locker not much bigger than a coffin. On his way to madness, he becomes obsessed with a rhyme that ends: "Deep space is my dwelling place/And death's my destination." When a ship called the Vorga ignores his distress signal, Foyle makes it his mission to repair the Nomad's engines so he can track down and destroy the Vorga. He manages to get himself to the asteroid belt (populated by descendants of stranded scientists who tattoo a grotesque tiger-design on Foyle's face) before he makes his way back to Earth. Once there, however, he's captured by employees of Presteign, CEO of the company that owns the Vorga. Presteign wants to know where to find the Nomad and its valuable cargo, a weapon that could shift the balance of power in the interstellar war. Foyle's captivity brings him into contact with Jisbella McQueen, with whom he falls in love -- but love is a small emotion compared his consuming hatred of the Vorga. He later falls in love with Presteign's daughter Olivia, who sees the world in infrared. But love is a cruel emotion, particularly when it clouds the overwhelming desire for vengeance.

New and strange twists appear regularly as the story progresses. Foyle creates the ability to move at accelerated speed. An entity called The Burning Man pops up from time to time, a fiery creature who looks like Foyle. While Foyle wonders if The Burning Man is his guardian angel, a more creative and satisfying explanation for the entity eventually comes to light. After a series of adventures that lead Foyle back to the Nomad, Foyle reinvents himself, becoming Fourmyle of Ceres, an illusionist and circus master whose clout matches Presteign's own. Foyle uses and abuses telepaths in his attempt to track down the person who ordered the Vorga to ignore the Nomad's distress call. The truth, when he finally learns it, shocks him.

Bester gives the uneducated Foyle a unique dialect that is a joy to read. Bester's vivid prose is well-suited to the story, but the novel was ahead of its time in its unconventional use of font placement, creating pictures with fonts to emphasize the confusion that besets Foyle's mind.

The Stars My Destination is a seminal work of science fiction that succeeds on a number of levels. It is a rollicking adventure story and an imaginative tale of the future, but it is more fundamentally a psychological exploration of a troubled soul in need of redemption. It is a cautionary tale about the arrogance of leadership and the virtue of restoring power to the people. Finally, it is a touching story about acceptance and self-determination and the possibility of achieving greatness. To achieve his ends, Gully Foyle must remake himself, and that is where the novel's genius lies. Foyle is no Ahab, incapable of change, consumed by a hatred that will eventually destroy him. Foyle's obsession motivates him to acquire knowledge and strength to serve his need for vengeance, but once he has those new resources, he begins to see the world anew -- as does the reader. Foyle recognizes that he is a freak, but so what? "Life is a freak. That's its hope and glory." We're all freaks, but we all have the ability to become something glorious.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Only Superhuman by Christopher L. Bennett

Published by Tor Books on October 16, 2012 

Superheroes endure in the imagination because they speak to our desire to empower the powerless, to be inspired by the iconic. Superheroes in science fiction have gained new life by the trendy notion of transhumanism, the use of technology to enhance human abilities. The current breed of supermen aren't born on Krypton; they're genetically or mechanically engineered. While paying tribute to comic book superheroes of the twentieth century (particularly a certain webspinner who likes to talk about the responsibility that comes with power), Christopher Bennett's Only Superhuman transforms the costumed superhero into a plausible (if unlikely) inhabitant of the future.

The novel opens in 2017. The hero upon whom the story focuses is a Troubleshooter named Emerald Blair, a/k/a the Green Blaze. Bennett gives her a melodramatic origin story (a tradition for superheroes) and sets up a background in which most transhumans hail from the asteroid belt, genetic engineering having met with disfavor on Earth. The Troubleshooters are a union of uniformed vigilantes who strive for justice, except when they don't. The Troubleshooters are only one of a number of competing transhuman groups. The most significant of the others are the Vanguardians and the Neogaians (human/animal hybrids who oppose restrictions on human enhancement that deny humanity "its right to evolve"). The Vanguard is most prominently represented in the novel by Eliot Thorne and his daughter Psyche, a woman with genetically enhanced empathy and an engineered ability to manipulate others.  A helpful appendix identifies the different groups that have taken up residence in the various asteroid belts.

While the story has its share of battles between costumed characters, the plot is driven by political treachery. Emerald must decide whether the leaders of the Troubleshooters are using improper means to achieve the wrong ends and eventually comes to question her long-standing assumptions about the group's righteousness. Should she ally herself instead with the Vanguardians, the organization her father abandoned and where her relatives still dwell? Emerald improbably blames her father for her mother's death, and what she learns with the Vanguard requires her to confront that anger.

As you might guess from this synopsis, much of the story is too obvious to succeed as good storytelling. The reader knows that Emerald will learn Valuable Lessons and will resolve her feelings about her father. At the same time, the heart of the story -- the betrayals and political intrigue -- is reasonably strong. Only Superhuman also showcases an interesting debate about the ethics of genetic enhancement, the possibility of saving and improving lives versus the use of babies as guinea pigs. More of that and fewer obvious life lessons would have made this a better novel.

The story's pace is uneven, in part because too much of the writing is expository and in part because it is so filled with relationships and betrayals that a reader might need to diagram them to make sense of it. Too much anguished conversation interrupts the story's flow. All the superhero sex becomes a bit tedious (the Green Blaze is easily aroused and Psyche, who uses sex as a weapon, has a full arsenal). Emerald's histrionics are tiresome. The novel keeps going long after it should end as the various characters engage in extended talk therapy with each other. In short, some good ideas and likable characters kept me reading, but a tighter, less predictable story would have earned a stronger recommendation.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

One for the Books by Joe Queenan

Published by Viking on October 25, 2012

Joe Queenan is a columnist/journalist/writer/reviewer.  He describes his regular work as “ridiculing nincompoops and scoundrels.”  To some extent, One for the Books is a collection of funny, book-related stories that do exactly that.  He ridicules the inept security guards who detained his bag in a library, the luncheons he has attended to honor writers because “they are still breathing,” and the book store employees who treat him like dirt because he isn’t searching for their favored titles.  More significantly, One for the Books offers an amusing glimpse at the life of a dedicated reader.  The last few paragraphs in particular are a wonderful tribute to reading.

Although reading has collateral benefits, Queenan is convinced that most book lovers read books “to escape to a more exciting, more rewarding world,” a proposition with which I completely agree.  Queenan reads every day and would read more if he could.  He reads enduring literature and he reads trash (although less of the latter as he ages).  He sometimes reads “the types of books that thirtyish women devour at private swim clubs, often to the dismay of their drowning children,” but only years after they have lost their trendy bestseller status.  He forms relationships with his books and often prefers their company to the bozos he knows.

Queenan is equally fervent about the books he has read and those he refuses to read, ever.  He names names.  Yet, for all the titles that Queenan drops (typically several on every page), this isn’t a work of literary criticism.  He may or may not mention what the book is about or his impressions of it, but when he does, he rarely employs more than a few words.  One for the Books is about Queenan’s experiences as a reader and feelings about reading more than it is about the books he has read.

Queenan is something of a book snob and he makes no effort to disguise his snobbery.  Rather, he revels in it.  He expresses his opinions forcefully, in the manner of a curmudgeon.  Books about businessmen and politicians “are interchangeably awful.”  Detective novels are “piffle.”  He would rather have his “eyelids gnawed on by famished gerbils than join a book club.”  He ridicules the questions prepared for book clubs that can be found in the backs of books and on websites, and contributes (mockingly) a few of his own.  He does not want friends to loan him books and cannot understand “how one human being could ask another human being to read Look Homeward, Angel and then expect to remain on speaking terms.”  He doesn’t like to discuss books with people who don’t love serious literature because they always set the conversational agenda, which tends to focus on current bestsellers, but he enjoys pulling a book from his shelves and reading “striking passages to baffled dimwits who have turned up at my house.” Although he frequents a variety of bookstores and finds some of them alluring, he is acerbic in his description of their employees (particularly the “Irony Boys”).  He complains about readers “upon whom the gift of literacy may have been wasted.”  He thinks book critics are “mostly servile muttonheads” while blurb writers are “liars and sycophants.”  He refuses to read books about the Yankees and their “slimy fans” or books written by Yankees fans (Salman Rushdie included).  He will not read books with ugly covers.  He does not read digital editions because they make reading “rote and mechanical,” stripped of its “transcendent component.”  He is no friend of the Kindle.

Although we’re often on the same page (so to speak), about equally often I disagree with Queenan’s opinions.  This is, after all, a guy who cavalierly dismisses two of my favorite novels, Catcher in the Rye and Catch-22.  His decisions about books he will not read are often capricious.  That’s fine.  Agreement with Queenan is irrelevant because he writes with such passion and conviction and humor that it is impossible not to be entertained, and occasionally moved, by his words.  Besides, as Queenan points out, people who care about books are willing to get into knife fights to defend their beliefs.  I appreciate that he cares so much, even if I might sometimes be inclined to tangle with him using sharp blades.

Other than a long list of books ranging from The Iliad to the obscure, is there anything Queenan actually likes?  Shockingly enough, he claims to admire Amazon book reviews, at least the snide ones written by courageous reviewers who hide behind the bushes, fire their muskets and run away.  He even offers (mockingly) a few Amazon reviews of his own.  They are hilarious.

Queenan would hate this review because I have nothing nasty to say about his book.  My only complaints about One for the Books are (1) its haphazard organization and corresponding (albeit occasional) tendency toward redundancy, and (2) a chapter that is largely devoted to the visits he has made to towns and homes and graves of dead writers bogs down in stream-of-consciousness triviality.  Otherwise, I have to say sorry, Joe, but I really enjoyed your book.  Fortunately, someone else will come along and trash it, providing him with the kind of review he admires.

RECOMMENDED