Little Green by Walter Mosley

Published by Doubleday on May 14, 2013 

The good (if not particularly surprising) news for Easy Rawlins fans is that Easy isn't dead -- he just thinks he is. A few paragraphs into the opening chapter, his revival from a coma gives birth to a new Easy Rawlins adventure. Even before he is back on his feet he has a mission: to find a missing boy named Evander Noon (a/k/a Little Green). At about the novel's midpoint, Easy takes on a second assignment, helping a friend who is the victim of a blackmail scheme.

Walter Mosley always captures the place and time in which his novels are set in high definition detail. Little Green takes place Los Angeles in 1967, a time when hippies were still a phenomenon and the Watts riots were the prism through which whites viewed blacks. Mosley builds characters who, over time, become as familiar and as real as distant friends, yet -- like real people -- they're still capable of surprising behavior. For Easy Rawlins fans, Little Green is worth reading to discover the new stage of his life that Easy has reached. This is a mellower, more optimistic Easy, one who is finally coming to terms with his difficult life, one who, having been reborn, is starting over (just as, in many senses, the country was doing).

It's a given that Mosley's dynamic prose will sweep a reader along from his first word to his last. The plot of Little Green, on the other hand, is less engrossing than Mosley has delivered on his better days. The story moves at a steady pace but it never soars. There are so many backstories in play that they tend to overshadow the central plot. The voodoo medicine that keeps Rawlins going is a silly distraction. Yet Mosley has always been a chronicler of the human condition, and if the plot is unexciting, it nonetheless has revelatory moments that illuminate the darkness within his characters, as well as their struggles to overcome it. Little Green is ultimately a story about a changing world, one that offers more hope than despair. Viewed in that light, the novel is a modest success.

RECOMMENDED

Dead Lions by Mick Herron

Published by Soho Crime on May 7, 2013 

Dead Lions has everything a good spy novel needs -- intrigue, strong characters, crafty tradecraft, byzantine plotting, sharp prose -- with the addition of a healthy dose of humor. The heroes (if you could call them that) are slow horses: Intelligence Service officers who aren't trusted with serious work, assigned to Slough House in the hope that they will retire or die of boredom.

Dickie Bow, a former spook with a drinking problem who went off the books after the Cold War ended, spots a Moscow hood in London and, acting on instinct, follows him. While riding a bus a couple of seats behind the hood, Bow dies, apparently of a heart attack. Jackson Lamb, in charge of Slough House, investigates Bow's death, while his employees are diligently avoiding productive work -- not that they're ever given productive work to do. The slow horses are an engaging group of misfits, and as the novel unfolds, we get to know them all. We even start to like them ... most of them, anyway.

The Cold War is over, but as Lamb investigates Bow's death, he begins to wonder whether there are Russian spies who didn't get the memo. Particularly the greatest spy of all, a legend who never existed -- unless he did. Lamb's minions at Slough House aren't particularly suited for field work, but Lamb decides to mount an operation that will get to the bottom of Bow's (presumed) murder and a (presumably) long-dormant scheme involving sleeper agents. Meanwhile, without Lamb's knowledge, two slow horses are borrowed from Slough House and tasked with creating a security plan for an upcoming meeting with a Russian industrialist. As you would expect, these plot threads eventually join into a single strand.

I've read any number of spy novels that are more somber than this one without being half as clever. The plot is both wild and wickedly smart. It's also more believable than the plots in many novels that are meant to be taken more seriously. Mick Herron writes in a tone of perfectly understated sarcasm that never fails to amuse. At the same time, he manages to tell a conventional spy story that is sometimes heart-warming and always intriguing. Toward the end, he delivers the excitement of a thriller. All of that, coupled with the cast of quirky characters, make me want to read the novel that introduced the slow horses.

RECOMMENDED

Point and Shoot by Duane Swierczynski

Published by Mulholland Books on April 30, 2013 

Had I read the first two books in the Charlie Hardie series before reading Point and Shoot, I might not have felt quite so lost as I tried to make sense of Hardie's flashbacks in the opening pages. What's this outfit called the Cabal and why is Hardie in low Earth orbit watching a daily video of his family in their kitchen? He's essentially been put to work (quite against his will) as a security guard whose job is to kill anyone who manages the nearly impossible task of breaking into the satellite. Of course, someone does. What is Hardie guarding? He doesn't know, but it's clearly something dangerous.

Point and Shoot is a thriller infused with elements that border on science fiction. It's sort of tongue-in-cheek Ludlum, complete with a conspiratorial organization and a protagonist who, like Jason Bourne, has been the subject of unorthodox experiments. Yet unlike Bourne, a protagonist who is meant to be taken seriously, Charlie Hardie is anything but. In addition to crime fiction, Duane Swierczynski writes comic books, and there's a touch of superhero in Hardie -- a jaded, reluctant superhero, sort of Howard the Duck crossed with any of those Marvel characters who were constantly complaining about their lives. The story has a comic book sensibility in that it's not quite grounded in the real world, although that doesn't diminish the fun of reading it.

And reading this fast-moving, tongue-in-cheek novel is loads of fun. Hardie is wild, "a force of living mayhem" whose unending bad luck is reinforced by the fact that he's so hard to kill. The poor guy would sometimes prefer death to the unfortunate life he's living, making him a sympathetic, even likable, protagonist. The addition of a second character who is carrying a lot of Hardie's baggage doubles the fun, and the spectacularly over-the-top killers who populate the novel are just hilarious. For all the mayhem, however, the ironic ending has a certain sweetness. (Although there's a second ending, more like the beginning of another novel, that culminates in a cliffhanger. How annoying is that?)

Swierczynski makes frequent references to movies, beginning each of the short chapters with a quotation from a film. The book would make an entertaining action flick. It isn't deep but it isn't meant to be. Hard-charging prose, goofy characters, and a mayhem-fueled plot are enough for readers who like that sort of thing ... and I happen to be one of those. (Note to sensitive readers: if you shy away from the F-word and its variants, you really want to avoid Point and Shoot.)

RECOMMENDED

The Ophelia Cut by John Lescroart

Published by Atria Books on May 7, 2013 

Anthony Ricci, NYPD police sergeant and part-time hit man, enters a witness protection program to avoid swimming with the fishes. Now known as Tony Solaia, he finds himself swimming with Dismas Hardy in the chilly waters of San Francisco's bay. Soon after that, Hardy is representing Solaia, now working as a bartender, on a charge of selling alcohol to minors. The raid of the bar in which Solaia was working has been orchestrated by a politician, in concert with the owner of several massage parlors, as part of a Machiavellian scheme to achieve their mutual goals.

Solaia is the connecting thread in a story that weaves together a number of characters, many of whom will be familiar to fans of the series. Other than Hardy, the most significant to the plot are Hardy's brother-in-law, Moses McGuire, and Moses' daughter, Brittany McGuire, a beautiful young butterfly who briefly alights on Goodman's arrogant chief of staff, Rick Jessup, before landing on Solaia. Jessup's political machinations and history of violence give birth to the novel's primary storyline, culminating in a murder that provides Hardy with another case to defend. The plot turns into a whodunit, as neither Hardy nor the reader know who committed the murder. In addition to Hardy's client, there are a number of possible candidates from whom to choose. To his credit, John Lescroart kept me guessing until the novel's end.

As is common in series fiction, much of the story focuses on the interaction of established characters, their relationships and conflicts. The character of Brittany is drawn with particular sensitivity. The courtroom drama that is the hallmark of legal thrillers is absent in the first half of the novel, as Lescroart sets up the story and develops his characters. The leisurely pace of the novel's opening half might not appeal to some readers, but I appreciated the time Lescroart took to fine-tune the friendships and divided loyalties that are so integral to the plot. Once the story gets moving (about the time the trial starts), it moves swiftly.

Lescroart has a good handle on the games played by police, prosecutors, and judges to protect their own turfs. He also has a jaded (i.e., realistic) understanding of the political motivations that underlie high profile arrests, followed by futile prosecutions, of low-impact crimes like underage drinking. At the same time, he doesn't use the novel as a soapbox -- his characters express their opinions within the context of the story. Like all good legal thrillers, the novel is full of "Inside Baseball" lore about the art and pitfalls of criminal trials, from greedy expert witnesses to the perils of eyewitness identification, the burdensome hurdles the defense must overcome before it can argue that some other person committed the charged murder, and the ever-tricky problem of how a defense lawyer deals with the suspicion that a client, or some other defense witness, is telling a lie. Both Hardy and the prosecutor engage in the kind of theatrics that, if they happened more often in real life, would make trials a whole lot more fun to watch ... but those theatrics make the story fun to read.

Some aspects of the story stretch credibility, but never beyond its breaking point, and certainly no more so than is common in modern thrillers. The ending is a shocker, in a way that is perhaps a bit too karmic. It might make some fans of the series unhappy, but it reflects the reality that actions often have unexpected consequences, karmic or otherwise. Besides, by the fourteenth novel in a series, it's probably time to shake things up. In the end, and in addition to the ending, there are enough small but nifty twists in the story to make The Ophelia Cut thoroughly absorbing.

RECOMMENDED

The Morels by Christopher Hacker

Published by Soho Press on April 30, 2013 

The Morels might be summarized as a book by Christopher Hacker about a writer named Arthur Morel who writes a book titled The Morels. Yet that summary, while accurate, would not do justice to Hacker's stimulating novel. The Morels is actually two absorbing novels merged into a successful whole. Alternating between philosophy and storytelling, the first half of The Morels is an examination of art: the purpose of art; the meaning of applause; whether the creation of literature should be driven by readers' demands; the difference between literature (solitary in its performance and reception) and most other art (experienced communally and offering immediate feedback to the artist); the extent to which the act of writing literature can be blended with artistic performance. The second half is an examination of an artist. It tells the riveting story of a writer who becomes lost in the blurry gap between the real and fictional worlds he inhabits. What is the difference, Hacker asks, between reality and its artistic representation?

In his desire to create an emotional impact that his audience will experience honestly, Arthur Morel, an accomplished but socially inept student of the violin, does something shocking during a performance. His friend Chris (the novel's narrator), playing the cello in the orchestra, does not see Arthur again for fourteen years. While Arthur seems to have fallen into an ordinary domestic life, complete with wife (Penelope) and child (Will) in Queens, he's also authored a best-selling book -- a fortunate development since, according to Penelope, he's otherwise "barely employable." Chris, a struggling filmmaker who feels adrift and craves guidance, renews his friendship with Arthur with the hope that Arthur will become his mentor. Yet the roles are reversed when Chris tries to become Arthur's teacher, an advocate for responsible limits on artistic license, limits that Arthur dismisses as evidence of limited taste.

The first half of The Morels poses penetrating questions and challenges the reader to form his or her own answers: Is art worthwhile if it fails to provoke, if it appeals only to people who have weak stomachs? Should a writer be shunned for depicting, without judgment, an act that society would universally condemn? Are decency and moraltiy essential components of enriching literature? Is it the obligation of literature (as John Gardner argued) to promote moral conduct? Or is (as Arthur argues) "the death of transgression" also "the death of art"?

Most of the story's drama surrounds Arthur's second novel, The Morels, a book that is about "the dilemmas of everyday life." In other words, like much contemporary fiction, "there's little story to speak of." It is a self-referential novel of "exquisitely rendered scenes, well-observed prose." It also has a shocking ending. Its publication causes repercussions that drive the story's second half.

Does this description of Arthur's novel also apply to Hacker's? Yes and no. Arthur is portrayed as a literary genius. Hacker is not quite of that caliber, although his skills are admirable; his prose is wonderfully descriptive and he wields it to tell a compassionate, intelligent story. Arthur's book "uttered what can't be said" while Hacker found a way to write about provocative art without actually producing it. Arthur reveres and emulates writers like Gass and Barth and Burrows, precisely the writers Gardner eviscerates. They are (Arthur tells us) writers who don't try to make us feel good, who leave us feeling confused about who we are rather than confirming our understanding of ourselves. Hacker straddles the line: he allows the reader to feel good by making it possible for the reader to understand why the artistic representation of depravity might have value -- and to understand why an artist might be driven to produce it. Hacker's novel might be less "courageous" than Arthur's, but that doesn't diminish its worth. And, unlike Arthur's version of The Morels, Hacker's has a plot (in addition to, but intertwined with, unraveling "the puzzle of Arthur Morel"), although it doesn't blossom until the novel's second half. This isn't a courtroom drama, but it does generate dramatic tension as Arthur and his family become entangled in the criminal justice system as it engages in the difficult and error-prone task of separating fact from fiction. And if the ending of Hacker's novel isn't shocking, it is sufficiently surprising to cast the entire story in a new light.

The Morels pulls no punches. It isn't the right book for a reader who craves sunny characters and upbeat endings. Arthur, tortured by the past, learns something meaningful about living in the present, but this isn't a story about someone who learns a valuable lesson and lives happily ever after. No character emerges unscathed (although, as one character learned in Vietnam, "given time, even scorched earth recovers"). While Arthur, Chris, and Will each learn something about how to live a life, the true lessons of The Morels are more subtle. Mining the depths of this memorable novel to unearth them is an enriching experience.

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