Distant Water by Bruce Gray

Published by Live Oak Book Company on January 27, 2012

Twin mysteries unfold in Distant Water, both involving missing daughters in Asia. The first story is sometimes told in the first person by Bryan Paton, an American lawyer who has just joined a Hong Kong firm that represents a prominent businessman, Li Dak-chung. As the novel opens, Dak-chung's daughter, Fiona Li, is entering China. When we last see her, she is on the brink of being abducted. When the Chinese government notifies Dak-chung that his daughter's dead body has been recovered, Paton is dispatched to China to identify the body and to arrange for its return to Hong Kong. The reader soon begins to wonder whether the body is, in fact, Fiona's.

The second mystery, which dominates the second half of the story, gives the novel the flavor of a political thriller. It revolves around General Zhu Fangguo, whose daughter is also missing. Zhu supports the moderate political faction in its struggle for power after Chairman Mao's death -- a position that puts Zhu squarely at odds with Mao's far-from-moderate widow. Zhu is both the instigator and the victim of political intrigue. Zhu hopes to use the recent death of Chairman Mao as "the cover for exacting cold revenge," although the meaning of that phrase does not become clear until late in the novel.

For that matter, it's unclear how the stories of the two missing daughters are related until late in the novel, although the connection isn't difficult to guess. The plot is nonetheless clever. Distant Water easily held my interest from the first page to the last, in part because the cast of characters is so diverse. From British diplomats to Chinese civil servants, Bruce Gray gives each character a unique personality. I can't say that I became emotionally attached to any of the characters, but I enjoyed reading about them.

In addition to the power vacuum that follows Mao's death, the novel delves into the political situations in Taiwan (where Dak-chung's sister is a powerful and ruthless figure) and in Hong Kong, while offering a history lesson that begins with the Treaty of Versailles and the May 4th Movement. Readers who don't know much about the twentieth century history of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong may need to breeze through a Wikipedia article or two, as I did, to get a better handle on the story. The struggle of a faction that included Mao's wife for leadership of the government, popularly characterized as "the Gang of Four," as well as the complex relationship between China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong are all integral to the novel.

Gray paints a convincing picture of the authoritarian regime that has Paton (and other characters) in its clutches. Gray builds tension as the characters wonder who to trust in a treacherous environment. On occasion Gray indulges in unnecessary lectures about the evils of communist dictatorships, exposition that has less impact than his descriptions of the unease (at best) and terror (at worst) his characters experience at the hands of authoritarian thugs.

Putting aside the improbability that a young man with zero legal experience would be given such a high profile position in a law firm, Distant Water tells a believable story, at least as compared to most modern thrillers. One aspect of the ending is a bit of a stretch, but the "surprise" is well integrated into the cohesive plot. Despite my emotional detachment from the story, I found it fascinating and I do not hesitate to recommend it to thriller fans.

RECOMMENDED

The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura

First published in Japanese in 2009; published in translation by Soho Crime on March 20, 2012

The Thief is a Japanese version of noir, a dark psychological thriller that builds suspense rapidly as Nishimura, a pickpocket who often seems to be on the verge of a breakdown, becomes ensnared in the grip of a shadowy underworld figure in Tokyo. Nishimura's tension is palpable in the novel's early pages. He finds wallets in his pocket he does not remember stealing. He catches glimpses of a mysterious tower that he often saw in his childhood, a tower that may never have existed and that becomes a recurring, haunting image as the story progresses.

Nishimura imagines seeing his mentor, Ishikawa, as he looks into the faces of homeless men. For Ishikawa, picking pockets carried the ecstatic thrill of artistry. Not so for Nishimura as he nervously ponders Ishikawa's fate. The two men were wrapped up in a serious crime, more serious than Nishimura anticipated, and he hasn't seen Ishikawa since. The man who masterminded that crime soon recruits Nishimura to steal three things. The difficult assignments will tax Nishimura's skill as a pickpocket, but he is threatened with death if he fails.

The criminals in The Thief are unusually philosophical. Nishimura wonders whether there is "something deep-rooted in our nature" that compels people to steal. As a child he equated stealing with freedom; as an adult he's less certain of that equation. He thinks about how he has "rejected community" by reaching out his hands to steal, how he has "built a wall around myself and lived by sneaking into the gaps in the darkness of life." The mastermind, on the other hand, discusses the importance of balance, the need to feel sympathy and pity for a victim while torturing her to death. When the mastermind threatens Nishimura's life, he tells Nishimura not to take his life so seriously; he's just one of billions of people who are fated to die, and "fate shows no mercy." Nishimura sees it quite differently; he doesn't like his life, but he doesn't want to lose it. None of these musings are particularly profound but they add something out-of-the-ordinary to a story that is already offbeat.

The most interesting (and really, the only) relationship in Nishimura's life is with a child whose hooker mother forces him to shoplift. Despite Nishimura's detachment, his sense of isolation from the community of man, he feels protective of the boy. That plot thread builds interest in the story while adding another dimension to Nishimura.

Quite a lot in The Thief is left unexplained, although that makes sense within the context of the novel. As the criminal mastermind observes, "life is a mystery" and actions often seem arbitrary. Still, it's mildly annoying to invest time in a crime novel and then wonder what the crime actually was.

The simple but clever plot and swift pace make this short novel a quick read. I wouldn't recommend it to readers who want shiny, smiley, likable characters and happy endings. For fans of dark fiction, however, I would say that is one of the better Japanese crime novels I've come across, despite my reservations about its unresolved nature.

RECOMMENDED

Beautiful Thing by Sonia Faleiro

First published in India in 2010; published by Black Cat on February 28, 2012

Subtitled Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars, Beautiful Thing grew out of an article Sonia Faleiro wrote about Mumbai's "bar dancers" that was never published because it wasn't considered newsworthy (perhaps because the bars were officially banned in 2005). It is true that Faleiro's subject isn't groundbreaking, yet the world she investigated -- a world she found fascinating and intimidating even as it left her "feeling frustrated and hopeless" -- deserves to publicized, if only to illuminate the impact of poverty on women who live in a culture of limited options.

Faleiro sketches the hierarchy of sex workers in Mumbai, from the waitresses in a Silent Bar who provide manual relief while serving drinks and tandoori, to brothel workers, to call girls and massage parlor employees. Bar dancers reside at the top of the heap, in part because they sell sex discreetly and infrequently (and thus do not consider themselves to be sex workers), while facing many of the same challenges: paying bribes to the police to avoid being brutalized by their cattle prods; working for violent employers; enduring rude comments and the judgment of a society that regards their profession as impure. Still, by dancing for men, bar dancers gain freedom they could not otherwise enjoy. They do not have to live at home, under the domineering rules of fathers or husbands. They can speak to men to whom they are not related without fear of punishment. Their customers think the bar dancers are dancing for them, but according to Leela (the dancer with whom Faleiro spent tbe most time), the customers are dancing for the bar girls: exchanging money for an insincere smile, rewarding cheesy lines from Bollywood romances with lavish shopping trips, forsaking loving wives for the illusion of a satisfied lover.

Most of the book consists of stories that Leela and other bar dancers told Faleiro about their lives. Faleiro also interviews customers, bar owners, pimps, and a transgender hijra. Faleiro reports the stories told by bar dancers uncritically, without noting that tales of woeful pasts (rapes by their fathers and sons and cousins and strangers) told by women who are ashamed of their profession, as well as tales of success (the power they wielded over men who adored them) may not be entirely true. This seems particularly likely in Leela's case; her smug, self-centered nature is not conducive to honesty. Still, it is certain that the women Faliero interviewed endured horrid lives before they became sex workers, even if they might exaggerate the horror when they chat with a sympathetic listener. Although Leela is more than a little annoying, it would be impossible to read this book without feeling empathy for the abused women in Mumbai and anger at, not just the abusers, but the people in their lives who do nothing to help because they regard the violent behavior of men as none of their business.

Faleiro paints a bleak picture of Mumbai, one that is filled with gangsters and petty criminals rather than Bollywood celebrities. She describes a city ruled by corruption. She attempts to explain why men seek out bar dancers and how the dancers become obsessed with the unlikely hope of romantic love and marriage as the only means of erasing the stigma of their profession. In a chapter that showcases the book's strongest writing, Faleiro interviews a woman who has been diagnosed with HIV Wasting Syndrome and talks to Leela about what will happen to the woman's child.

Beautiful Thing has its flaws. Faleiro often leaves Hindi words and expressions untranslated, and while the meaning is frequently apparent from the context, I still felt I was guessing. An appendix with a glossary of Hindi words translated to English would have been a useul addition to the book. At some point, the stories begin to sound the same; there is too little to differentiate them from each other. Beautiful Thing has the feel of a lengthy magazine article that has been fleshed out to fill the pages of a book.

The second part of the book addresses the 2005 ban on dance bars, a cynical attempt to distract voters from the city's underlying problems (poverty chief among them) by focusing on illusory "quality of life" issues. (Perhaps the politicians in Mumbai learned from Rudi Giuliani, whose war on petty crime in New York City during the 1990s coincided with a spike in unemployment.) Far from improving the quality of life in Mumbai, the ban increased the city's population of destitute women by throwing the bar dancers out of work, placing the women at increased risk of disease and sexual assault. Leela did not fare well after she lost her job as a bar dancer, although there are always places for a sex worker to find employment. As this section of the book illustrates, the real story here is not that poor and abused women turn to sex work, but that poverty and abuse are so often ignored or tolerated by people of means. Beautiful Thing reports nothing new, but the reporting is nonetheless worthy of attention.

RECOMMENDED

Force of Nature by C.J. Box

Published by Putnam on March 20, 2012

Force of Nature is much better than the last Joe Pickett novel, which was so full of plot holes that it made for an awfully bumpy ride.  Force of Nature focuses on Nate Romanowski, who is finally facing a showdown with rogue elements of “The Five,” a group of Special Forces operatives to which Romanowski once belonged.  Their leader, a megalomaniac named Nemecek, wants to take Romanowski out.  To that end, Nemecek recruits three amateur assassins who approach Romanowski in a boat.  Pickett becomes involved when a fisherman discovers a boat full of corpses.  With the sheriff he despises nipping at his heals, Pickett finds himself facing the uncomfortable choice of pursuing or helping his buddy Romanowski.

Romanowski is a falconer and so is Nemecek.  C.J. Box appears to have done meticulous research into the art of falconry.  His descriptions of a falconer’s mindset are convincing.  The symbolic parallel between the falcon that hunts other birds and the dangerous man who hunts Romanowski might be a bit obvious but it’s nonetheless an effective device for telling the story.  Romanowski’s relationship with falcons and the role they play in his connection with Nemecek is the most interesting part of the novel.

Pickett appeals to readers because (in Romanowski’s words) Pickett is “straight and upright and burdened with ethics, responsibility, and a sense of duty.”  Romanowski also has a sense of ethics, but “straight and upright” he is not.  Romanowski has a sort of spirituality -- he tells us that he is of the Earth, not walking upon it -- and pursues falconry to get closer to “the primitive world.”  Romanowski is unquestionably primitive.  He keeps a braid of his dead lover’s hair dangling from his gun -- which is strange, but Romanowski is a strange dude, machismo on steroids.  That makes him (in this novel, at least) an interesting character, although Box sometimes takes him a bit over the top.

By contrast, when Box writes about Pickett, the reader is treated to a strong, silent man.  When he doesn’t know what to say (which is often), he looks down at his boots.  The boot gazing wears a bit thin after a few novels.  At least Romanowksi forces Pickett out of the rather dull (from a reader’s perspective) black-and-white world in which he prefers to dwell.  Romanowski doesn’t worry much about hunting season or game permits as he kills his evening meal, the kind of attitude that Pickett, in his role as game warden, frowns upon, but Pickett gives his friend Romanowski a pass for his many transgressions (revenge killing among them).  Pickett’s discomfort -- his attempt to have it both ways by refusing to listen when Romanowski wants to confess his sins -- exposes his willingness to engage in situational ethics when it comes to friendship and thus humanizes him.

As is so often true in thrilerworld, the story suffers from credibility issues.  It feeds upon the popular paranoid delusion that the government has the ability to intercept and erase all digital communications (including emails and website postings) that mention a particular subject or person.  Romanowski should know better.  It’s also hard to accept that a trained operative like Romanowski would be wedded to the belief that “torture works” when most serious students of interrogation agree that torture produces inaccurate information.  Romanowski even makes a bizarre speech about the “savagery in the streets” America would experience if not for the underappreciated tough guys who torture the evildoers in faraway lands.  Finally, I didn’t believe for a moment the romance that develops late in the story.  On the other hand, Romanowski’s dark secret, when finally revealed, is believable if anti-climactic, although his explanation for failing to blow the whistle on Nemecek makes little sense.

Credibility problems aside, Force of Nature tells an enjoyable story.  The action scenes are fun, the pace is swift, and the parallel plotlines come together nicely in the end (with, of course, the obligatory but unusually clever shoot-out).

RECOMMENDED

Glow by Jessica Maria Tuccelli

Published by Viking on March 15, 2012

Ghosts are common characters in horror stories, but only a few writers (Toni Morrison and William Kennedy come to mind) have successfully incorporated ghosts (real or imagined) into literary novels.  Although she isn’t at the level of either of those two fine authors, Jessica Maria Tuccelli deserves credit for having the courage to attempt a literary ghost story.  I give her even more credit for doing it well, although I suspect the novel would have been just as good -- maybe better -- without its supernatural elements.

Glow is more about the evolution of American race relations and the struggle for civil rights than it is about ghosts.  Tuccelli inserts historical documents into the text -- including congressional resolutions and instructions to census takers -- to emphasize how African Americans and Native Americans were differentiated, or discounted, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  That theme carries through in the more personal stories she tells.  Tuccelli might have been a bit too ambitious in addressing such a complex issue during the course of a hundred years, but she ultimately provides a journey worth taking.

The story has an unusual arc, beginning in the first half of the twentieth century, then working its way back through the nineteenth until time begins to move forward again.  The first quarter of the novel follows two main characters.  In 1924, Amelia J. McGee, the nine-year-old daughter of a half-Cherokee mother and Irish-Scottish father, uncharacteristically defies her parents and enters the woods alone, where she encounters the ghost of a black girl named Lovelady Belle Young.

Amelia’s story alternates with that Ella (E.F.) McGee, who, as a little girl in 1941, gets sidetracked at the end of a bus trip and ends up with Willie Mae and Mary-Mary, two women who have their own experiences with the spirit world.  Ella has her own encounter with a ghost -- one that is decidedly less friendly than Lovelady -- while staying with Willie Mae.

Glow then begins to move back in time.  Born into slavery in 1845, Willie Mae Cotton’s head begins to glow shortly after she survives a serious illness, just after she is separated from her mother and given to a new master.  Her story forms the next section of the novel, featuring some of the most intense scenes in a book that is filled with powerful images.

This is followed by the novel’s weakest section, one that reaches back to 1834 to tell the story of Riddle Young, who raises his sister Emmaline after their father’s death, using Shakespeare’s plays as bedtime stories.  This section of the novel provides an interesting look at the ancestry of characters who appear in earlier (and later) sections, but I’m not sure it adds anything of value to the narrative.

Riddle’s voice strives to be Shakespearean, or at least eloquent.  It is the only unconvincing voice in the novel, although it’s fun to read.  The varied dialog is otherwise well tuned to each character.  From the educated to the pompous, across racial divides and different eras, each character speaks in a unique voice.

Time moves forward again as we return to Willie Mae, pass through the Civil War, and are reintroduced to Lovelady, whose brief section is written in a completely different style, almost a form of free verse.  Racial violence is in full force as the story winds its way back to young Amelia and then to young Ella.  By that time, however, it is difficult to reconnect with those characters (particularly Ella) who have been absent from the text for so long, exposing the most serious drawback in the novel’s structure.

There is much to praise in Glow, beginning with the high quality prose.  Given the difficulties the characters endure, I am impressed by the sense of optimism that runs through the narrative.  Tuccelli mixes humor with tragedy, tosses a few romances into the mix (including one that is quite unconventional), creates compelling moments of drama, and manages to link all the stories together in a way that justifies the novel’s unusual structure.

Still, Glow is not without flaws.  The story wraps up a little too neatly, too coincidentally, in the end (although maybe when ghosts get involved there are no coincidences), and some of the characters -- particularly a biplane pilot and his wing-walking sister, a suffragette who is campaigning for Fighting Bob La Follette’s Progressive Party in the 1924 presidential election -- seem out of place and underdeveloped.  A scene that might have been more at home in a conventional ghost story didn’t work for me, and I’m not at all sure what Willie Mae’s glowing scalp adds to the story.

Although not entirely successful, Glow is a novel of big ideas, strong characters, and vivid images.  I easily liked it enough to recommend it, and I look forward to Tuccelli’s next effort.

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