Shake Off by Mischa Hiller

Published by Mulholland Books on August 14, 2012 

Intifada has its origin in an Arabic word meaning "to shake off"; hence the title. By the novel's end, shaking off his past (and possibly his codeine addiction) will be Michel Khoury's greatest challenge.

Although he carries a Lebanese passport (among others), Khoury is a Palestinian. He was born in a refugee camp in Beirut where his parents were murdered by Lebanese Phalangists. As a result of that experience (as well as his admiration of Primo Levi's writing), Khoury comes to identify with Jewish victims of atrocities and to understand that "no suffering is unique" while at the same time resenting the loss of his own feeling of uniqueness.

While Khoury is in foster care, he is recruited by a shadowy figure named Abu Leila, given an education, and trained in the techniques of espionage. Leila tells Khoury that he will be working as an undercover PLO agent. Although he has trained Khoury to be wary of "the competition" (Israel), Leila clearly has his own agenda and seems to be harbor some resentment of Arafat's approach to leadership.

Things go wrong for Khoury after he takes delivery of an envelope in London and brings it to Leila in Berlin. Although the contents of the envelope are a mystery to Khoury (and to the reader), it soon becomes apparent that the envelope will create trouble for both men. The mystery is a good one; I was surprised by the revelation that comes when the envelope is finally opened.

Mischa Hiller adds a love story (and a fling story) to flesh out this novel of intrigue, although the love story is uninspired, standard fare for a spy novel.  Hiller avoids the obvious ending that I feared in favor of a more nuanced resolution. Apart from Khoury, the characters lack depth.  Khoury, on the other hand, has an interesting and credible background. The demons that drive him make him a sympathetic character.

Although the characters express political opinions, I give Hiller credit for telling a good story without overtly pushing a political point of view. There is a political message in the story, but it is delivered with subtlety and even-handedness. Unlike some spy novels set in the Middle East, Shake Off neither distorts nor sensationalizes history.

Hiller doesn't waste words; no subplots are added that would detract from the novel's pace or interfere with the mounting suspense. He tells his tale in workmanlike prose. Still, it is the plot and the protagonist rather than the prose that make Shake Off worth reading.

RECOMMENDED

Where the Bodies Are Buried by Christopher Brookmyre

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on July 10, 2012 

Set in Scotland, Where the Bodies Are Buried is a carefully constructed, multi-layered mystery with convincing characters told in winning prose. Christopher Brookmyre writes Tartan Noir, but Where the Bodies Are Buried is a departure from his typical fare. His novels have tended to feature recurring characters and the noir has been brightened by more than a wee bit of comedy. Not so with Where the Bodies Are Buried.

Jasmine Sharp is a hapless young newbie private investigator employed by her Uncle Jim. When Jim disappears, Jasmine looks into the two missing persons cases he was most recently investigating: one involving Anne Ramsey's parents and baby brother, who drove away and were never seen again; the other a gangland enforcer and debt collector named Glen Fallan. Both cases are more than two decades old. Jasmine's attempt to track down Jim leads her to a mysterious character named Tron Ingrams who lives in a violent world that she is ill-equipped to inhabit.

Jai McDiarmid thinks that Tony McGill, a/k/a the Gallowhaugh Godfather, has "a face you would never get sick of kicking" but it is Jai's face that feels the boot, shortly before he's shot to death. It falls to Detective Superintendent Catherine McLeod to learn who killed Jai, but she has to battle the bureaucracy within her own department to make any headway.

The two storylines develop in alternating chapters, the death toll rising in each until, about two-thirds of the way into the novel, they join together. The linked mysteries that Catherine and Jasmine unravel are good ones; the clever connection between the two stories baffled me until it was revealed. The plot is both smart and credible, an unusual combination in thrillerworld. The pace is perfect for an intellectual thriller: occasional bursts of action keep the pages turning without becoming mired in explosions and improbable gun battles.

The characters are just as strong as the story. Catherine and Jasmine are a study in contrasts. Jasmine's insecurity -- her well-founded fear that she is likely to screw up any task she undertakes -- makes her a sympathetic character. Catherine, on the other hand, is supremely confident. Having once been coerced to lie in court to cover up the blunder of a fellow officer, she's developed an independent streak that allows her to resist the demands of solidarity imposed by her peers. The male characters have less depth, but that's not a serious problem: the story belongs to the women.

The quality of Brookmyre's writing is well above the thriller norm. The dialog sounds as true as conversations overheard through an open window. Scottish accents and slang add color to the characters. Brookmyre describes the surroundings with camera lens clarity, from "the aspirational Glasgow of tourist brochures" to "a neglected-looking stretch ... like a withered appendage at the end of Argyle Street, where the chain stores and logos gave way to hand-written posters full of stray apostrophes."

The story's ending is a little too neat and the final pages drag a bit as Brookmyre labors to tie up every loose thread in a way that is designed to satisfy readers. Still, there is little to dislike about this intelligent, engaging novel.

RECOMMENDED

City of Women by David R. Gillham

Published by Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam on August 7, 2012 

Sigrid Schröder is a stenographer in the Patent Office in 1943 Berlin. After eight years of living with her in-laws during her uninspired marriage to Kaspar, Sigrid begins an affair with a mysterious Jewish man who calls himself Egon. When Kaspar is sent to the Russian front to fight, Sigrid begins an affair with a second man, a wounded soldier, and meets a secretive woman named Ericha Kohl. Given the time and place, the nature of Ericha's clandestine activities isn't difficult to guess. The question is whether Sigrid will sympathize or rat her out to the authorities, as would any number of party members living in her apartment building (Sigrid's mother-in-law among them).

City of Women is novel of suspense mixed with a love story, laced with elements of a spy novel. Suspicion and betrayal are dominant themes. A character's true nature is not always apparent to Sigrid or to the reader; infiltrators and informants are everywhere, leading to a series of surprises. In the second half, the story loses some of its force, but it never becomes dull or commonplace, and tension mounts again as the story nears its end.

This is a story of moral choices. David Gillham illustrates the difficulty of making the "correct" choice under perilous circumstances, and does a remarkable job of creating sympathy (or at least understanding) for those who make the "wrong" choice. On occasion (one character suggests), it is necessary to engage in "improper" behavior if doing so serves a greater good. Another suggests that breaking the rules cannot be so easily justified, that serving a higher purpose may simply be an excuse to behave as one pleases. The questions posed are not easily answered. When is it acceptable to place some people at risk in order to protect others? Morally correct (albeit dangerous) choices are often obvious in hindsight, but City of Women makes the case that they are not nearly so clear when the consequences to those who must choose are potentially dire.

The ease with which injustice can be ignored when injustice is written into the law, or reported only anecdotally by the media, or readily accepted by neighbors and friends, is another of the novel's prevailing themes. "Don't bother yourself with what you cannot change," Kaspar tells Sigrid after she watches a synagogue burn to the ground. Yet there is a cost to tolerating the intolerable. As Ericha says, "You avert your eyes enough times, and finally you go blind."

Both Egon and Ericha want Sigrid's clandestine assistance, for different but related purposes. Sigrid's indifferent patriotism is more easily tested by her choice of bed partners than by Ericha's plea to help strangers escape harm. Sigrid's motivation for acting as she does is never entirely clear, apart from her penchant for contrariness. Her explanation -- to "avoid complicity" -- rings hollow; it does not explain why she acts when so many other residents of the "city of women" do not. My most significant reservation about the novel was my sense that Sigrid was sleepwalking through the story, a sense born of my failure to understand the reasons for her choices.

My second reservation is that the story wraps up a bit too neatly. Sigrid's ability to emulate a master spy in the novel's closing pages is difficult to accept. Still, it makes for a good tale.

During the first half, the narrative bounces around in time without transition. I often had to reread a paragraph after realizing that Sigrid was remembering the past rather than living the present. Disconcerting as that technique might be, I eventually adjusted. It does, after all, reflect the reality of how people think: walking along a path or looking out a window, lost in the memory of a distant event until something happens that snaps us back into the present.

In the end, my reservations about the novel are minor compared to my appreciation of its credible, suspenseful plot and its insightful illumination of complex moral issues.

RECOMMENDED

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

Published by Knopf on August 7, 2012 

“There is no hyperbole anymore just stark extinction mounting up.”  So says Hig.  A survivor of the flu and blood disease and whatever killed the trees and trout, Hig and his neighbor Bangley have formed a partnership born of necessity rather than friendship.  Hig flies his Cessna, taking off from a runway in Erie, Colorado, scouting for trespassers who might enter their perimeter.  If he spots any, Bangley kills them.  Thus the men stay alive symbiotically, maintaining an uneasy peace between them.

Hig is a man with few choices left to make.  His wife is dead.  His dog is old.  He loves to fish but only carp remain.  Flying is his remaining passion, but runways are deteriorating and aviation fuel won’t last forever.  Everything ends.  Hig knows that but still he perseveres.  Even in sorrow.  Even in grief.  Even when every day is filled with pain.  Hig perseveres and wonders why.

Bangley is the counterpoint to Hig.  While Hig wants only to soar above the world, “to animate somehow the deathly stillness of the profoundest beauty,” Bangley’s sole desire is “to kill just about everything that moves.”  Hig has befriended and sometimes assists a colony of Mennonites, knowing most of them will die of blood disease.  Bangley would just as soon help them to their deaths, thus lessening the risk of his own infection.  Still, Hig longs for something more than Bangley’s uneasy companionship, and his quest to find it drives the novel’s second half.

To some extent, The Dog Stars reminded me of On the Beach -- the sense of profound loss and sadness, the search for other survivors, the protagonist’s fading hope that something good might be left of the world.  Yet this is both a darker and a brighter story than Neville Shute’s, one that places a greater emphasis on evil while offering a glimmer of hope.  What I think Cormac McCarthy tried to do in The Road -- reducing man to a primitive state to illustrate the eternal struggle of good versus evil -- Peter Heller does with more subtlety in The Dog Stars.  Heller may even be making a mildly sarcastic reference to McCarthy when Hig says “I’m the keeper of something, not sure what, not the flame ….”

While reading the first quarter of the story I wasn’t sure I liked it.  By the halfway point I was completely absorbed.  Hig has gone a little crazy in his isolation and sorrow but he’s retained a sense of humor and, more importantly, his humanity.  The second half opens up, combining a rapidly moving adventure with a poignant love story.

The book is written in choppy prose, not quite stream-of-consciousness but not far removed from it.  It is the language of a man alone too long, a man who, talking to himself, has no use for grammar.  Sentences often end with the word “and” or “but” to represent his half-completed thoughts.  Heller nevertheless brings a rough eloquence to Hig’s first person narration.  I doubt Heller will write it, but The Dog Stars easily merits a sequel.  I would love to know what happens next.

RECOMMENDED

Thy Neighbor by Norah Vincent

Published by Viking on August 2, 2012

Now that Norah Vincent has Thy Neighbor out of her system, perhaps she will apply her talent to a more meaningful project. The novel's protagonist, Nick Walsh, is such a caricature of an immature male that I wondered whether Vincent modeled him after someone she felt the need to ridicule. Nick's friend Dave is just as bad.  Every significant male character, in fact, is either abusive or emotionally stunted.

The story is told in the first person from Nick's perspective. Vincent doesn't write with a convincing male voice. Nor is Nick a convincing character. He is both extremely shallow and intensely self-analytical, two conflicting qualities that do not belong in the same persona. Although Nick is self-deprecating to the point of being self-eviscerating, his descriptions of himself read as though they are being supplied by a third party -- which, of course, they are.

Nick's personality is a checklist of male stereotypes. He is self-absorbed. He fails to clean up after himself. He doesn't know how to take a proper interest in women. He doesn't listen. Although he wants to feel loved and appreciated, getting laid is his defining desire. He is intimidated by any woman who has a brain -- like his sex buddy Monica. While Vincent takes shots at needy overweight women and the "hausfraus" who watch Ellen and Oprah, immature and abusive men remain the bulls-eye in her satirical dartboard.

Why is Nick such a mess? We are well into the novel before Vincent reveals Nick's dark secret, but by then I didn't care. The reader suffers through many chapters filled with Nick's tedious introspection while waiting for something interesting to happen. When he's not bemoaning the existence of Facebook or opining about the nature of trust, Nick indulges in whiny and self-pitying monologues about his horrible childhood. To the extent that the story has a plot, it is driven by accusations (founded and unfounded) of pedophilia, by Nick's use of hidden cameras to spy on his neighbors, by the badly behaving daughter of Nick's cougarish neighbor, and by Nick's connection to another neighbor, Anita Bloom, whose daughter (Nick's childhood friend) went missing thirteen years earlier. Nearly two-thirds of the novel passes by before the plot develops any sort of momentum. Not that it matters; the story that finally emerges is so preposterous that I didn't believe a word of it.

Some of the scenes in Thy Neighbor are disgusting. Descriptions of repulsive behavior don't bother me if they serve a purpose, but Vincent had no purpose that I could discern. Perhaps she was going for shock value (is there such a thing these days?). If so, she sacrificed credibility for the sake of cheap thrills. The penultimate scene is over-the-top and the story's conclusion, while meant to leave the reader gasping with surprise, is so contrived it made me giggle.

Vincent's capable prose style kept me from ditching Thy Neighbor and turning to something better -- that, and the hope that Vincent would work her way to a story worth telling. She knows how to write zingers, some of which are reasonably funny, and she occasionally produces a clever metaphor. In the end, though, melodrama dressed up in a stylish, sophisticated form is still melodrama. Sometimes I'm a fan of melodrama, but not this time. I would include a warning that, due to its foul language and scatological content, this book isn't appropriate for minors, but really, I can't think of an audience for whom it might be appropriate.

NOT RECOMMENDED