The Dark Winter by David Mark

Published by Blue Rider Press on October 25, 2012

Some novels about serial killers challenge the reader to discover the pattern that links the murderers.  The Dark Winter is not one of those.  The pattern will become clear to the reader about a third of the way through the novel.  The police, who are a touch slow to see the obvious, figure it out by the novel’s midway point.  The more challenging puzzles are the killer’s identity and motivation.

Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy of the Humberside Police responds to a scream that turns out to be the last sound made by an adolescent girl named Daphne before she is hacked to death with a machete.  Born in Sierra Leone, Daphne was adopted after her parents became victims of genocide.  McAvoy would like to lead the investigation but he is instead assigned to tell Barbara Stein-Collinson that her brother Fred has been found dead in a lifeboat off the coast of Iceland.  Fred Stein had survived the sinking of a trawler at the same location more than thirty years earlier -- one of four that sank during the Black Winter -- and Fred had returned at the request of a documentarian to lay a wreath in the water to honor the dead.  Although Barbara believes that Fred committed suicide, we know from the novel’s prologue that Fred was knocked unconscious and thrown into the lifeboat.

Fans of crime novels will immediately suspect that the two killings are related.  The link will be clear to the savvy reader when a third killing occurs, and McAvoy eventually figures it out.  The real question is the killer’s identity.  The answer, of course, depends upon unlocking the killer’s motivation for following the pattern.  In that regard, the resolution of the mystery is at least plausible (by thriller standards, anyway) and modestly clever.  The novel’s conclusion, however, is a contrived attempt to add a final “thrill.”  It doesn’t detract from the story that precedes it but it doesn’t deliver the payoff that David Mark must have intended.

Mark writes fast moving prose.  Short sentences.  Omits pronouns.  When he isn’t doing that, he’s actually a decent wordsmith with some literary flair.  I’d like to see more of that in the next book.  It’s more appealing than strings of two word sentences.

Although this is Mark’s debut novel, McAvoy comes with the sort of baggage that most series protagonists accumulate over the course of a half dozen books.  His face and career are scarred by an incident that took place many months earlier.  Although he is mildly obsessive, a bit neurotic, and harbors an unhealthy passion for his job, he has the orderly mind of an accountant -- a trait that has condemned him to a desk job, managing databases.  He is therefore an unhappy cop, one who is burdened with the self-doubt that victimization can instill.

Half the story -- the better half -- focuses on McAvoy’s conflict with police officers who are more keen on making an arrest than on finding the guilty party.  McAvoy, who is also burdened with a conscience, wants the job done right, statistics be damned.  This makes him an interesting character, someone I’d welcome meeting again.

RECOMMENDED

The Alamut Ambush by Anthony Price

First published in 1971; published digitally by The Murder Room on September 6, 2012 

The Alamut Ambush is the second in a series of spy novels that began with The Labyrinth Makers. David Audley is the thread that connects each novel, but he is not always the central character. Audley plays an important part in The Alamut Ambush but most of the legwork is done by Hugh Roskill, RAF Squadron Leader turned intelligence operative. Jack Butler, who stars in some of the later novels, plays a less significant role in this one.

While characterization is Anthony Price's strength, The Alamut Ambush benefits from an intriguing plot. A car bomb explodes, killing the technician who was trying to disarm it. The bomb was apparently intended for David Llewelyn, the man who got Audley kicked out of the Middle Eastern group, and against whom Audley still bears a deep resentment. Audley was the brains of the group, an expert on the Middle East with a strong network of contacts, particularly in Israel. When Roskill and Butler seek Audley's help in finding the bomber, he rejects their overtures, apparently miffed that the bomber did not succeed in killing Llewelyn. Before long, however, Roskill works out the truth -- the real target of the bomb wasn't Llewelyn at all -- and Audley can't resist the cat-and-mouse work of catching the killer.

Roskill is on more-than-friendly terms with Isobel Ryle, wife of Sir John Ryle, a relationship that makes him less than comfortable when he investigates the Ryle Foundation, an organization that develops educational resources in the Middle East but seems to be providing assistance to terrorists. Roskill is also drawn into interviews with two people who could have orchestrated the assassination: an Israeli and an Egyptian. Shockingly, each of the two men go to great pains to absolve the other, further deepening the mystery, while pointing to a rogue assassin whose clandestine organization has always been assumed to be mythical. Roskill fumbles his way along, always feeling that he's the wrong man for the job, but motivated by the sense that he is partially responsible for the death of the technician, who Roskill recommended for the job.

The Alamut Ambush blends the intrigue of Middle Eastern politics with a detective story as Roskill tries to piece the puzzle together. What he finally learns shocks him while nearly leading to his death. Audley, as always, is two steps ahead of everyone else, pursuing his own agenda while nominally working for his nation's benefit. Although Roskill receives more attention, Audley is the novel's star character. He's supremely hard-headed, devoted to ignoring ignorable rules to prove that he's "a gentleman rather than a player," yet he's also petulant, particularly when he's on the losing side of a turf war. A flawed genius, Audley is a more fully rounded character than those commonly found in spy fiction.

While there are moments of violence in The Alamut Ambush, particularly in the final, tense scenes, this is a novel of intellect rather than action. Price's interest in history, particularly medieval Arab history, informs the story. The conflicting interests in Middle Eastern politics are fairly represented, and although the novel was written in 1971, too little has changed to make it feel dated. The Alamut Ambush is a largely forgotten novel that should be a rewarding discovery for fans of spy fiction.

RECOMMENDED

A Cold Red Sunrise by Stuart M. Kaminsky

First published in 1988; published digitally by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Media on October 16, 2012

Stuart Kaminsky's death in 2009 brought an end to the career of a prolific and talented crime writer. His novels about Porfiry Rostnikov might be his finest work. Known to his colleagues as "the Washtub" because of his stature, Rostinikov is a pragmatic, persistent, apolitical cop whose bum leg does little to hamper his investigations.

Commissar Illya Rutkin is dispatched to a small village in Siberia to investigate the death of a dissident's child. He is about to wrap up the case when a large creature drives an icicle through his eye, killing him. Rostnikov, recently demoted to the MVD Bureau of Special Projects after clashing too often with the KGB, is charged with investigating the death, perhaps as a prelude to his own exile to Siberia. Both the KGB and the Procurator General are keeping an eye on him, documenting any mistakes he might make.

Although the local police officer theorizes that Rutkin was killed by a bear, a happy theory that would have no political ramifications and require no actual police work, bears do not stab people with icicles. A witness to the crime believes Rutkin was murdered by a snow demon sent by an Evenk shaman, an equally unlikely explanation.  Rostnikov's methodical investigation, his dogged questioning of the village residents, gives The Cold Red Sunrise the flavor of a Russian police procedural combined with a murder mystery.

A couple of subplots play out in interesting ways. The primary mystery follows surprising paths and resolves satisfactorily. An episode involving the shaman is a bit too mystical for my taste, but it doesn't detract significantly from the story's overall effectiveness.

Kaminsky adds humor to the novel with Rostnikov's humorless, grim-faced assistant and with another investigator who, back in Moscow, is assigned to work undercover as an ice cream vendor. Whether they play large or small roles, Kaminsky invests all of his characters with full lives. Rostnikov's strength as an investigator is that he seems instantly to understand everyone he meets. His weakness as a human being is that he doesn't understand himself. He is an engaging, sympathetic character with greater depth than is typical of fictional police detectives.

The short novel offers a wealth of information about Siberia, including a brief but fascinating account of its turbulent history. The hardship of Soviet existence -- both in a Moscow dependent upon black market vegetables and a Siberia that is defined by frigidity and isolation -- is a theme that establishes the book's atmosphere. The role of dissidents in Soviet life and restrictions of civil liberties are equally strong themes. A third theme is integrity, which Rostnikov and his dour-faced assistant have in abundance despite the political corruption that surrounds them. For all of that, for the entertaining story it tells, and for its cast of characters, A Cold Red Sunrise is a worthy addition to the mystery reader's shelf.

RECOMMENDED

Bowl of Heaven by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven

Published by Tor Books on October 16, 2012

Larry Niven has often worked in collaboration, and it's good to see him working at all, given his age. Not many writers born in 1938 are still kicking out science fiction. Gregory Benford might have manned the laboring oar but, having been born in 1941, he's not much younger. Ignoring the trendiness of modern sf, Benford and Niven have crafted an old-fashioned story of space exploration and first contact. Unfortunately, while I have enjoyed much of Niven's writing and at least some of Benford's over the years, Bowl of Heaven does not match the best work of either author.

The story begins as a promising (albeit conventional) "scientists journey to a new world" story. In the prolog, they are preparing to leave on their newly tested starship. As the novel begins, Cliff Kammash is awakened from an eight decade sleep, well before the ship is scheduled to reach the planet they have named Glory. Cliff, a biologist, thinks it odd that he has been awakened to opine about an unusual star the duty crew have observed -- odd until he realizes that the star is partially surrounded by a hemisphere, an object that was clearly manufactured. For reasons they can't explain, their ship has been losing velocity, and the knowledge that they aren't going to make it to Glory alive prompts them to investigate the bowl-covered star. The bowl is actually a vast (and literal) starship, using the star as its source of propulsion. Once they are inside the bowl, Cliff and his buddies discover an ecosystem the size of the inner solar system.

The plot then follows two branches as half the landing crew is captured by feathered aliens while the other half escapes. Both branches morph into wilderness survival tales as the two groups investigate the planet. For the most part, the story is bland and uninspired. Slightly more interesting are the underlying questions that the humans must confront: what is the origin of the bowl, where did it find its star, where is it going and why? One of the groups improbably stumbles upon a museum that provides helpful clues, furthering my impression that life inside the bowl is just a little too easy for our friends from Earth, a flaw that hurts the story's credibility. Eventually the humans discover what the reader learns much earlier: other aliens from other worlds are trapped in the bowl, in much the same predicament. The question then becomes: Why are the Big Birds who seem to be in charge rounding up and "assimilating" intelligent life forms from other planets?

The human characters lack distinctive personalities -- or any personalities. They are as bland as the story. They engage in random quarrels about points of science that have precious little to do with their survival, and a couple of them engage in hanky-panky, but for the most part the characters are interchangeably dull.

Bowl of Heaven works best when the focus shifts from the humans to the aliens. The Big Bird we encounter most often is Memor, who is charged first with understanding the humans and then with destroying them. The most interesting Bird chapters concern the aliens' attempt to understand the humans -- their speculation, for instance, about the evolutionary significance of facial gestures and human anatomy -- and the political consequences of Memor's repeated failures to bring them under control. The payoff comes when the reader meets a not-so-assimilated species that actually seems alien -- the politics of revolution comes into play -- but that doesn't happen until the novel's final chapters: too little and too late to redeem an uninspired plot.

The story hearkens back to an earlier, simpler era of science fiction in its conviction that humans, while not as technologically advanced as aliens, are clever and scrappy and so have the capacity to outwit their superior foes. Of course, it helps that the Big Birds are shockingly inept in their confrontations with humans.

Most disappointing is that the story ends abruptly -- not really a cliffhanger but leaving everything unresolved -- as the reader is encouraged to pick up volume two (Shipstar) to see what happens next. I'm sufficiently indifferent that I might not, but mildly curious about the unanswered questions noted above so maybe I will.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Stonemouth by Iain Banks

Published by Pegasus on October 10, 2012

With the addition of a middle initial to his name, Iain Banks writes immensely entertaining science fiction novels, with fast-moving action and tongue-in-cheek attitude. Without the middle initial, Banks writes novels that have the heft, characters, and prose of serious literature. Stonemouth is one of the latter, and it is a small gem.

Stewart Gilmour returns on a Friday to Stonemouth, his hometown in northeast Scotland, for the funeral of Joe Murston, an elderly man he befriended in his teen years. Stewart had been run out of town five years earlier by the Murston family for reasons that are only hinted at until the story is two-thirds done. His safe readmission to Stonemouth requires him to make nice with Joe's son Donnie, one of Stonemouth's two resident crime lords, who warns Stewart to leave no later than Tuesday and to stay away from Donnie's daughter Ellie. Stewart, of course, harbors the distant hope that it isn't quite over with Ellie and can think of nothing except seeing her again.

Stonemouth is a weekend journey of discovery. Stewart reviews the past and rethinks the present as he visits old friends and lovers. He learns the full truth (or as near to it as he will likely ever come) about the incident that caused his banishment from Stonemouth. The novel's early chapters alternate sly and amusing and tragic observations about the perils of being young with moments of unexpected tenderness. The later chapters give Stewart the chance to come to terms with his mistakes as he decides whether to let go of his past or to make it the foundation of his future.

The principle characters, and Stonemouth itself, are skillfully developed. Stewart and Ellie are particularly nuanced, but even the minor characters have personalities that transcend the stereotypes they could easily have become. Stewart has changed since leaving Stonemouth (not always in ways that suit him); Ellie is changing; the male Murstons, like the town of Stonemouth itself, resist change with the force of ... well, stone. It is the conflict between the inevitability of change and the intractability of family tradition that animates the story.

An atmosphere of danger hangs over the novel as Stewart goes about his business: a chance encounter with Ellie's flirtatious sister; a brutal encounter with Ellie's brothers; a tense encounter with a thug in a pool hall; an obligatory visit with the town's other crime boss, Mike MacAvett, and with Mike's daughter Jel, who represents a different sort of danger. Banks deftly juggles the gentleness of a love story with sudden bouts of violence, letting tension build intermittently until the story reaches a thundering climax.

Banks' strength as a science fiction author is his ability to tell an engrossing story. His strength in Stonemouth is his ability to tell an engrossing story with literary flair.

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