The Child Who by Simon Lelic

Published by Penguin on February 28, 2012

Leo Curtice -- the solicitor representing Daniel Blake, a twelve-year-old boy accused of brutally murdering Felicity Forbes, an eleven-year-old girl -- has the biggest case of his career. His fifteen-year-old daughter, Ellie, doesn't want her father to take the case, but after spending his career "mopping up the spillage" from tavern brawls, Leo wants a meatier challenge, a high profile client. He isn't prepared for the public's reaction: a mob nearly overturns his van, students throw red ink on his daughter's coat, a supermarket shopper spits on his wife. To the small-minded residents of Exeter, an accusation is proof of guilt, a lawyer is just as guilty as his client, and the lawyer's family merits the same condemnation as the accused.

The head teacher at one of the many schools Daniel attended insists that Daniel was born bad. Yet Daniel's stepfather is no model of self-restraint. To mitigate Daniel's punishment, Leo knows that Daniel needs to talk to a psychologist who can get to the bottom of Daniel's antisocial behavior. Daniel's stepfather steadfastly resists that suggestion, leaving the reader to wonder what the stepfather is trying to hide. The answer is surprising.

Leo observes that the media would have children like Daniel "breaking boulders, even before they had been convicted of a crime." Never mind that he's twelve. Never mind his horrible childhood. He committed a crime and the eye-for-an-eye crowd demands retribution. Their attitude echoes John Major: "We need to condemn a little more and understand a little less" -- as if understanding why people act as they do is a bad thing.

Simon Lelic does a remarkable job of getting inside the young boy's head and of conveying society's unthinking hatred of him. Reading The Child Who is an intense experience. Readers who are open to looking beyond a horrible crime and understanding a child's motivation for committing it will appreciate this novel. Those who agree with John Major will probably want to pass it by. The novel's message -- expressly stated at one point as "hate trumps humanity" -- will not appeal to every reader, but for those who are prepared to see the world in more complex terms than the "good versus evil" text of a morality play, The Child Who has much to offer.

There are really two stories here: Daniel's and Leo's. To some extent, Leo's story is a familiar one: A lawyer's family can't understand why the lawyer is defending an obviously guilty client at the expense of his own family's welfare. Yet Simon Lelic's novel is more than a rehash of a tired story. His sensitive exploration of a family dynamic is both powerful and insightful, and about two-thirds of the way through the plot takes a sharp turn, before maneuvering in yet another direction at the end. The new developments could have been maudlin but Lelic made smart decisions, omitting scenes that probably can't be written in an original way, jumping forward to explore the consequences of dramatic events, then backtracking, filling in the gaps with just enough information to maintain tension and the reader's empathy.

Lelic writes in a simple style to maintain a brisk pace but The Child Who is anything but a simple novel. It tackles complex and enduring questions that are routinely ignored by the talking heads who would rather sensationalize crime than help their audience understand it. It focuses on all the people whose lives are touched by crime, not just the immediate victims. This is a rich and rewarding novel.

RECOMMENDED

The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont

Published by St. Martin's Press on February 28, 2012

The Starboard Sea tries to do many things and doesn't fully succeed at any of them. Amber Dermont's assured writing style kept me reading to the end, but her high quality prose is largely wasted on a contrived plot. I made no intellectual or emotional connection to the story or any of its characters. The novel's first half is predictable and dull while the rest is only moderately interesting, ultimately leading to the sort of blockbuster revelations that are designed to shock. Unfortunately, since Dermont didn't convince me that the story or characters were real, the revelations did not have their intended effect. To the extent that the novel illustrates the obvious truth that people with money and power often escape the consequences of their bad behavior, the lesson is less than profound.  I give Dermont credit, however, for avoiding a happy ending that might have pleased readers while making the story even less realistic.

Having been expelled from Kensington Prep, Jason Kilian Prosper spends his eighteenth birthday driving his father's Cadillac to Bellingham Academy, a school that will happily forgive his transgressions provided his father contributes to the school's building fund. Before the sun sets, Jason has a moment with a beautiful girl who is staring into the ocean. The reader knows that Jason is destined to meet her again and that she will play a significant role in the novel.

Prosper is recovering (or not) from the death of his best friend and Kensington roommate Cal. Prosper feels guilt about certain circumstances involving Cal, the sort of machination authors create to add emotional heft to a character. When Aidan (the beautiful girl) says she'd like to be a photographer's light meter so she would "know for certain whether people were giving off light or taking light away," the author is again laboring to imbue a character with depth when, in the real world, Aidan's audience would fall down laughing at her preposterous comment. Only infrequently does any of the dialog in The Starboard Sea have the ring of realism.

In addition to being self-absorbed, Prosper is self-aware to a degree I didn't find credible. Teenage boys do not describe their own behavior as "careless in the most deliberate way." They do not say "I slept well that night because someone had been kind to me." They do not tell their friends at the end of the school year, "We've taken good care of one another." A teenage boy might say "I cared too much about everything" as a means of impressing a girl, but Prosper actually means it. For that matter, teenage boys do not look at a beautiful girl and think that her face has "a quiet authority" that says "I am not to be put on display" and they do not worry about the pressure prep school girls might feel "to pigeonhole themselves." Prosper's introspection and relentless self-analysis quickly becomes overbearing. This is a coming of age novel about a kid who already thinks like a forty-year-old.

A huge error of logic becomes apparent in the novel's final pages (I can't reveal it without spoiling one of the revelations) that shouldn't have made it past the first edit. The novel is otherwise cohesive and internally consistent.

Devotees of Hollywood gossip and/or sailing might appreciate this novel. Prosper loves to sail (except when he hates sailing) and knows all there is to know about wind, while Aidan knows more than most people need to know about Robert Mitchum. Fans of debutantes and old money prep schools might also be fascinated by the story Dermont tells. I felt distant from it; nothing drew me into Prosper's world. Although I'm normally a sucker for literary allusions, the attempt to draw parallels between Prosper and Herman Melville failed to resonate. Equally silly is an earnest discussion of racial sensitivity, complete with allusions to Hemmingway and Samuel "Chip" Delaney (a family friend of the novel's only black character).

I admired Dermont's writing style and appreciated her ability to set a scene. Readers who can set aside their skepticism about the authenticity of the story and characters, readers for whom strong writing is enough, will likely enjoy the novel more than I did. I hope Dermont writes another novel, one that is less contrived than The Starboard Sea, because I would like to give her another chance.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Clawback by Mike Cooper

Published by Viking on March 1, 2012

Clawback refers to "the mandatory return of compensation paid on a deal that later goes bad." Silas Cade collects clawback from hedge fund managers and other bigwigs of the financial world who might not otherwise be inclined to pay. His logo, if he had one, would be "a green eyeshade crossed by a 9 mil." When Cade's latest client is murdered, a new client -- after concluding that the deaths of two other spectacularly unsuccessful money managers might be connected to the most recent murder -- hires Cade to find the killer. Notable contributions to the plot come from a female financial blogger (beautiful, of course), a disgruntled forger, and a couple of tough guys who have surprisingly well rounded personalities.

Cade is the kind of action hero I like. He lives in the shadows, "in circumstances of tenuous legality," yet is endlessly frustrated by the impossibility of living off the grid in an urban environment. He's tough but not sadistic; moral but not obedient to inconvenient laws. Unlike any number of one-note buffoonish vigilantes who populate thriller world, Cade has intellect, an interesting personality, and a self-deprecating sense of humor. Unlike his wealthy clients, he's well grounded. His running commentary on life, sardonic yet perceptive, is reason enough to read Clawback.

Clawback is intelligently plotted. The motivation for the various murders is plausible. The solution to the mystery is clever. And oh happy day, Cade manages to make it through the novel without once turning to a gifted computer hacker for assistance. That in itself makes this thriller stand apart from its contemporary competitors.

Mike Cooper's lucid prose contributes to the novel's rapid pace. He manages to make the world of finance accessible to folks like me who can barely balance a checkbook. Some of the action scenes elevated my adrenalin levels. Yeah, Cade at one point leaps onto a helicopter as it's taking off and later chases a boat on a jet ski -- yeah, we've all seen those scenes on bad TV shows a hundred times -- but Cooper managed to write them in a way that made them fresh and credible. He also created a believable romantic entanglement, one that depicts the love interest's reaction to the hero more realistically than most thrillers manage.

Clawback isn't deep but it's fun, engaging, escapist fiction, the kind of book most thriller fans should enjoy.

RECOMMENDED

Archive 17 by Sam Eastland

First published in the UK as Siberian Red in 2011; published in US by Bantam on February 28, 2012

Shortly after he offers to tell the commandant the location of Col. Kolchak, a man named Rybakov is murdered in a Siberian prison camp. Stalin, believing that he watched Kolchak die, is alarmed to learn that he might still be alive. Stalin assigns Pekkala to investigate Rybakov's death and to find Kolchak. Pekkala was the Tsar's most trusted investigator before the Revolution, a unique position that carried an insignia and title: the Emerald Eye. Despite his connection to the Tsar (which resulted in years of imprisonment after his post-Revolution arrest), Pekkala now works for Stalin in the Bureau of Special Operations.

Posing as a prisoner, Pekkala returns to the Siberian camp where he survived years of forced labor in the frozen wilderness, marking trees for cutting. Pekkala's investigation of Kolchak's murder is hampered by an unfriendly camp commandant, a hostile guard, and a troika of prisoners who are all that remain of the Comitati, Kolchak's loyal followers. Pekkala soon realizes Stalin's true agenda: the hope that his investigation will lead Pekkala to the supply of Imperial gold that Kolchak was hiding for the Tsar's family. Yet the answer to the Kolchak mystery may lie in Archive 17, where inconvenient information goes to die.

Archive 17 blends riveting action with psychological tension as characters are forced to confront current threats and terrors from their past. There is a subtlety to Sam Eastland's characterizations that isn't a common feature of modern thrillers. Even characters who aren't at the forefront of the novel -- including Stalin's personal assistant and a sadistic prison guard -- have well-formed personalities.

Eastland peppers his story with atmospheric detail that contributes to its illusion of reality. His writing style is economical, resulting in a narrative that is rich but short. Layers of intrigue rise to a dramatic pinnacle as the story progresses. The novel's conclusion is surprisingly satisfying.

This is the third Eastland novel to feature Pekkala. It isn't necessary to read the first two (I haven't) to understand this one. I nonetheless intend to place the first two novels on my reading list. Pekkala is a fascinating creation of a skilled writer.

RECOMMENDED

Dogma by Lars Iyer

Published by Melville House on February 21, 2012

Lars and W., two friends last seen wandering through life in Spurious, return in Dogma. The end is still near. Lars is still the butt of W's scathing criticism and the recipient of his opinions on subjects ranging from courtship to capitalism. Lars' flat is still damp. Lars and W. are still loyal to their idealistic vision of an unspoiled Canada. They are still fond of Kafka and Plymouth gin. They are still trying to understand religion and Rosenzweig. They still embrace life while feeling defeated by it, no more consequential than "leaves swept up in an autumn storm."

New in Dogma: W. images himself as Diogenes while visiting Nashville ("the Athens of the South"), while deeming Lars "a Diogenes gone mad"; Lars and W. compare the British to Americans (who can't make true distinctions, particularly when it comes to gin); Lars writes poetry of despair; W. takes Lars on a pointing tour of Plymouth (where Lars photographs W. pointing at architecture he admires).

Also new is the intellectual movement that W. and Lars decide to christen. They call it Dogma. Dogma has rules. Dogma is spartan, full of pathos, sincere, and collaborative. Ironically, W. and Lars are none of those things, making them poor standard-bearers for the movement they invent. They are, however, according to W., "the last friends of thought." It is up to them to keep thought alive. That effort is slightly hampered by a new rule: "The Dogmatist must always be drunk" because "who can bear the thoughts that must be thought?" Fortunately they think just as much, and about as clearly, when they are drunk as when they are sober, although after drinking they have trouble remembering the other rules (not that it matters, since they add new rules on a whim).

In my favorite section of Dogma, Lars and W. travel to America on a lecture tour (their lectures, unsurprisingly, are sparsely attended). As the best and (mostly) worst of America rolls past -- novelty motels, "huge crosses looming over nowhere," miniature golf courses -- I was reminded of Humbert Humbert in Lolita. W. is as acerbic as Humbert but funnier; his commentary provokes chuckles and occasional belly laughs ("They've made a Disneyland of Armageddon!").

When a sequel is more of the same, a reader probably shouldn't complain if it is a sequel to something wonderful. Dogma gives us more of the same biting humor, more of the same maddening characters, more of the same nutrition for our minds. Still, one of the things I loved about Spurious was the sense that I'd never read anything like it. That magical feeling was missing while reading Dogma, because I've read something exactly like it: Spurious. And that, really, is one of my only two complaints about Dogma: the feeling that I was reading outtakes from Spurious. The second is that Dogma has more philosopher in-jokes than Spurious (at least I think they're in-jokes; not being a philosopher I can't pretend to understand them). I think Spurious is a bit more accessible to those of us who aren't intimately acquainted with the history of philosophy.

Those mild criticisms aside, Dogma is just as funny and provocative and stimulating as Spurious. These books are as much about friendship as anything else, and reading Dogma is like visiting old friends (albeit the kind of friends you want to keep at a distance lest they begin to annoy). I'll therefore look forward to the third book of Lars Iyer's trilogy, but with the hope that Iyer finds a way to differentiate it from the first two.

RECOMMENDED