Skeleton Picnic by Michael Norman

Published by Poisoned Pen Press on April 3, 2012

Collecting artifacts -- pottery, arrowheads, beads, particularly those of the Anasazi -- is a hobby for the Rogers family. Because their collection includes human bones, they call their outings "skeleton picnics" (a polite euphemism for the desecration of burial sites). When Rolly and Abigail fail to come home from a skeleton picnic, their neighbor, J.D. Books, investigates. Books, a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Ranger stationed in Kane County, Utah, soon learns that the Rogers' home has been burglarized and their antiquities collection stolen. When the Rogers' truck is found at a dig site with no sign of Rolly and Abigail, Books wonders whether their disappearance is related to the burglary of their house. The answer to that question probably won't surprise any of the novel's readers.

Skeleton Picnic is the second J.D. Books novel. Although I didn't read the first (On Deadly Ground), my impression is that Books has a more exciting professional life than most BLM Rangers. According to the BLM website, Rangers in the southwest spend quite a bit of time dealing with "off-highway vehicle issues." Since ticketing drivers doesn't make for dramatic reading, it's fortunate that Books encounters an improbable amount of violent crime. It's unfortunate, however, that there isn't more drama in this rather unexciting novel.

Books is a dull guy with little personality. A rookie sheriff's deputy Books inexplicably ends up "training" at least stirs up a bit of controversy by suggesting that it is wrong for Books to lie to suspects, but that ethical debate is quickly abandoned. Similarly, a conflict between Books and his lawyer girlfriend after she is appointed to represent a suspect in the Rogers' disappearance could have given the story an emotional jolt, but the subplot eventually fizzles out. Books has a strained relationship with his father (who isn't really his father, a fact he must have learned in the first novel), but that subplot also travels to a dead end. In the final chapters Books supposedly recognizes the possibility of danger in a situation where the danger is obvious to the reader but walks into it anyway, making me wonder just how bright the guy is. "Nice but boring and a little dense" is the best description I can give of Books -- not the sort of protagonist who can carry a crime thriller to a successful conclusion.

Skeleton Picnic includes some middle-off-the-road political viewpoints that most readers will likely find inoffensive. In addition to those, Books indulges in several (mercifully short) lectures on the evils of collecting and selling illegally recovered antiquities. Of course, grave robbing is one thing and digging up an old blanket is something else, even if the blanket happens to be buried on public land. Norman appears to recognize that and Books ultimately expresses some balanced opinions on the issue. He even recognizes that he's probably enforcing unenforceable laws and questions the wisdom of devoting federal resources to futile pursuits. I appreciated his sense of proportion but wondered whether a character doing dull and pointless work is really worth writing about.

Norman's dialog-heavy writing style occasionally relies on clichéd expressions but for the most part his prose is readable if unexceptional. Like Books, the supporting characters in Skeleton Picnic are nice but bland, which is also how I would describe the story. Skeleton Picnic is a pleasant police procedural covering an unusual aspect of law enforcement but there's nothing special about it.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig

Published by Angry Robot on April 24, 2012

Blackbirds is a surprisingly powerful, emotionally appealing novel that poses fundamental questions about fate.  “Fate gets what fate wants,” Miriam’s mother always said, but what is fate?  Is the future immutable?  If you knew your fate, would you be able to change it?  These are old questions, but Chuck Wendig shapes them into a story that might prompt you to reconsider your beliefs.

When people touch Miriam, she knows how they’re going to die.  Not an original concept -- in fact, it’s been done to death (pun intended) -- but Wendig imparts a fresh twist to the old story:  as Miriam watches the murder of a man she has just met, a stabbing that will occur in about a month’s time, she hears the man say her name.  As Miriam gets to know (and like) the man, she dreads the coming moment when he will die with her name on his lips.

Miriam is a foul-mouthed, emotional mess and something of a drifter, but she’s figured out how to use her unwanted talent to eke out a living.  Her method is a bit unsavory but it’s working for her:  she’s a scavenger, picking at the remains the dead leave behind.  Her life isn’t great but it seems likely to get even worse when she meets Ashley, a con artist who won’t reveal the contents of his metal suitcase.  Two lethal criminals named Harriet and Frankie are after Ashley -- or more specifically, after his suitcase.  Somewhere in the middle of the novel the contents of the suitcase are disclosed, probably not to any reader’s great surprise.

Wendig gives Miriam the kind of history that explains her troubled personality.  She’s an appealing if somewhat obnoxious character.  That’s one reason to read Blackbirds.  Another is the high energy writing style that assures the fast-moving story will never be dull.  Blackbirds benefits from snappy prose.  A couch has “fabric so rough it could grate cheese.”  A disagreeable woman is “like a kidney stone lodged in the urethra.”

In a novel about fate, either fate wins, free will triumphs, or fate turns out to be something other than what was expected.  Blackbirds plays it down the middle, doesn’t try to answer the unaswerable qeustions, leaving room for the reader to read in one of many plausible interpretations of the novel’s conclusion.  That was an admirable choice.  The best aspect of the ending is that it sets up the possibility of a sequel.  I hope Wendig writes it.

RECOMMENDED

The Innocent by David Baldacci

Published by Grand Central on April 17, 2012

As The Innocent opens, Will Robie is carrying out a mission for his Agency masters.  He assassinates a man (and his four ultra-evil bodyguards) who is planning a military coup in Mexico that will create a government hostile to American interests.  This is followed by the rather improbable assassination of a Saudi prince.  Robie doesn’t let himself be bothered by his assignments, but he finds himself with a dilemma when he’s ordered to kill a nearly middle-aged woman in D.C., particularly when he discovers (after breaking into her apartment) that she’s the mother of two, including the infant sleeping next to her, and a U.S. government employee to boot.  The dilemma is resolved when Robie’s handler shoots mother and child from a distance and attempts to take out Robie in the process.

After this dramatic opening, the story takes a strange twist when Robie, who is now the target of the government he once served, hooks up with a fourteen-year-old girl named Julie whose parents have been murdered.  They barely survive the explosion of a bus on which they had been riding.  Who was the target:  Robie or Julie?  What, if any, is the connection between the woman Robie was sent to kill and Julie’s parents?  Many gun battles and explosions later, the answer to those questions remains unclear.  That’s what held my attention to the end of this fast-moving novel.

I wouldn’t call the plot byzantine, but it is deliciously complex.  To my amazement, every plot thread (even an incident or two I didn’t expect to be important to the overall plot) comes together in the final chapters. The story covers a lot of ground and introduces a gaggle of supporting characters, ranging from Gulf One army buddies to traitorous FBI agents, from the retired assassin who is Robie’s mentor to the White House political analyst who becomes his romantic interest.  Robie can’t trust anyone, including the FBI agent with whom he is partnered (another potential romantic interest for the studly Robie).  None of the characters are given great depth but they seem real, and that’s enough in a story that is driven by plot rather than character.

David Baldacci’s prose style is punchy and efficient.  Short sentences and single-sentence paragraphs during action sequences contribute to The Innocent’s blistering pace.  There are times, particularly in the final chapters, when Baldacci succumbs to melodrama.  Since the story continues to be engaging, that is a forgivable sin.

This is a dual climax thriller.  The novel seems to be moving toward a particular scene, but when that scene occurs, there are still many pages left.  That scene borders on the preposterous and the unmasking of a key bad guy -- clearly intended as a shocker -- is disappointingly obvious.  The second and final climax is unsurprising but satisfying.

With all the action, suspense, and mystery that Baldacci provides, The Innocent will probably appeal to a Hollywood producer, particularly since brash, snarly fourteen-year-old girls always make appealing movie characters.  Thriller fans don’t need to wait for Hollywood; The Innocent ran like a movie in my imagination as I was reading it.

RECOMMENDED

Rain Dragon by Jon Raymond

Published by Bloomsbury on April 24, 2012

As I was reading Rain Dragon, I often wondered what the story was about.  It begins as an account of a couple trying to drift into a better life, then evolves into a description of a corporate counter-culture, then hints at a failed (or failing) relationship before turning into a disquisition on advertising and marketing strategies.  Large chunks of the novel read like a primer for progressive business management -- enlightening, but not really the stuff of a successful novel.  Finally, right at the end, Rain Dragon turns into a human drama, but by then it’s too late for the novel to establish an identity.

Damon and Amy decide to leave behind the trendy world of LA to “go north” in the hope of remaking their lives in the alt-trendy environs of Oregon.  They want to work at the Rain Dragon farm, an organic operation that makes yogurt, grows flowers, produces its own honey, and allows its people to indulge the belief that they are contributing to “an alternative society based on principles of sustainability and justice, counteracting all the self-destructive drives that humanity had blindly adopted since the industrial era and the onset of the consumer society.”  Rain Dragon’s CEO, Peter Hawk, also does some motivational training and consulting in business development and management.  To become paid employees at Rain Dragon, Damon and Amy will have to serve a volunteer apprenticeship for an undefined time, until they can prove their value to the organization.  Amy takes to the place naturally, fitting in well as an assistant beekeeper, but Damon can’t find a niche.  The role he finally adopts brings him closer to Hawk but seems to drive him away from Amy.

The story is told in the first person from Damon’s perspective.  Amy eventually falls into the background with the other secondary characters.  That didn’t bother me because Amy is incredibly annoying -- the kind of nightmare who manufactures turmoil because she isn’t comfortable with a serene relationship -- although in that sense she is a realistic character.  In fact, all the characters in Rain Dragon seemed real to me, although none were particularly appealing.  I don’t need to like the characters in order to enjoy a novel, but I do need to be interested in them.  Rain Dragon’s characters love to natter on about the nature of the world but their personalities are just too colorless to compel attention.

Jon Raymond’s writing is of such a high quality that I feel I should have liked Rain Dragon more than I did.  The discussion that Peter Hawk has with the CEO of a paper company about different business models -- Hawk wants employees to self-actualize, the CEO just wants them to work a little harder -- is fascinating, but it doesn’t create the kind of dramatic tension that makes a novel memorable.  When the drama finally arrives, the novel is nearly over, and so was my interest.  The big moment toward which the story builds is utterly predictable.  More troubling is that when it finally arrived, I just didn’t care.  Rain Dragon has its moments, but not enough moments to earn a strong recommendation.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Viral by Jim Lilliefors

Published by Soho Press on April 10, 2012

Every thriller set in Africa must, it seems, include in its cast a tough-minded female doctor doing humanitarian work. In Viral, that role is played by Sandra Oku. She watches dozens of villagers die during the course of a morning, victims of a mysterious and fast-acting respiratory disease. As the disease spreads through the village and to surrounding farms, Sandra realizes that this is the threat of which her cousin, the journalist Paul Bahdru, had warned her, albeit in vague terms. Days after that conversation, Bahdru is scheduled to meet with private intelligence analyst Charles Mallory. As Charles waits for Bahdru to appear, a package is delivered to Charles containing Bahdru's head. When Charles fails to keep a telephonic appointment with his brother Jon (having hinted that he will provide Jon with a big story for Jon's weekly news publication), Jon goes to Africa in search of Charles, who in turn wants Jon to be witness to a tragic story that needs to be told. Another witness is, of course, Sandra Oku. There weren't supposed to be any witnesses, she tells Jon, so it isn't surprising when witnesses start to die.

And so the stage is set for the reader to guess at the exact nature of the threat -- a revelation that comes a little more than halfway through -- and to guess how Jon and Charles will defeat the bad guys. They are the main characters; Sandra and many other characters weave in and out of the story's fabric but play secondary parts. This isn't a medical thriller; we hear some familiar information about how a virus might be created and defeated, but the focus is on the two brothers, not on doctors or microbiologists.

Much of the story has a familiar feel. It differs in key respects from spreading-virus novels like Outbreak, from bioterrorism novels like The Cobra Event, and from corporate conspiracy novels like Contagion, but Viral blends in elements of each. It also echoes classic Ludlum thrillers in which the people who can help the hero die before they get the chance. The apparent goal of the bad guys' scheme is one I haven't seen in other thrillers, although thriller writers like to employ misdirection. In this case, it's a temptation that should have been resisted. What seems like an unusual and inventive story turns into one that is all too ordinary. Even before that plot twist appeared, the story had such a derivative feel that I couldn't get excited about it. The story cruises to a predictable but entertaining conclusion, although the last quarter of the novel is longer than it needs to be.

The best subplot involves manipulation of the media. I particularly liked the comparison of news stories to viruses that spread out of control. Cryptology fans will enjoy the ciphers that Jon must puzzle out. I thought his ability to do so was a bit of a stretch, and I was never convinced that Charles wouldn't have simply called Jon rather than playing cipher games, but most modern thrillers ask the reader to suspend disbelief for the sake of a good story. In that regard, the most difficult thing to accept is that Jon can pass for an African by wearing dark brown make-up while he labors all day under the hot sun.

Neither the good guys nor the bad guys have unique personalities; they are wooden creations that exist only to drive the plot. James Lilliefors' writing style is clean and competent and most of the novel moves quickly. Parts of the novel work quite well, but the attempt to reconceive it in the final chapters falls flat, in part because too much chitchat stalls the story's momentum. An attempt to jump-start the action again in the final pages was welcome but belated. In short, this is a likeable but flawed thriller.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS