The Saturday Night Ghost Club and the Nature of Memory

by
Scott D. Parker

Sometimes the perfect arrives at the best possible time.

I love summer. I love the heat (yeah, really). I love rolling down the windows of my car and blasting loud music (well, I do that all year round...). I love the movies that are associated with summer.
But most of all, I love the looser vibe.

By the end of summer, however, while I may not be ready to shift into an autumnal mindset, it approaches nonetheless. I always take stock of seasons as they end, and I was in that mood during the last week of summer 2023 as I started to listen to Craig Davidson's Saturday Night Ghost Club.

It was a selection in my science fiction book club, but this book is not that. It is a coming-of-age tale in the vein of Stand by Me, It, or any given movie from the 1980s featuring a group of kids who can't yet drive and get around town on bikes. As I always do whenever one of my other three guys pick a book to read, I don't read the description. I just download the audiobook and pushed play.

And it was the perfect book for the end of summer.

Our narrator, Jake Baker, tells the story of the summer when he was twelve. He's got a small group of folks he hangs out with and that includes his odd Uncle Calvin. His uncle is a believer of all things found in the National Enquirer or future episodes of the X-Files. In the small Canadian town just north of the border with New York, Uncle Cal runs an store featuring all sorts of occult trinkets. It's for the tourists, you see.

But Cal also starts to tell Jake and his friends about local legends around town. After forming the club, Cal, Jake, and his friends set out on various evenings to investigate the house that burned down, the car that sank in the river one winter's night, or the graveyard.

The adult Jake is the narrator and he tells the story as it happened…or how he remembered it. The story is a fascinating study about the power of memory and how we shape it as we get older. As I mentioned, even though this book has echoes of every other coming-of-age story, that's fine, because there are common moments we all share as we grow up.

The big twist was one I didn't see coming and it really changed the nature of the book...in a great way.

Davidson's writing style is fantastic, often quite vivid in his descriptions. All four of us in the club loved the book and all commented on Davidson's style. In fact, we all mentioned that this would not be the last Craig Davidson book we read.

Book Review: Spooky Archaeology by Jeb J. Card.

Spooky Archaeology: Myth and the Science of the Past

Jeb J. Card

ISBN: 9780826359148

   “How did we come to a place where the most recognizable explanation for the human past is space aliens?” That’s a striking question, asked late on in Jeb J. Card’s Spooky Archaeology: Myth and the Science of the Past. I should note, in all fairness, that it’s not the key question of the book. Card is handling a much larger and broader history. But it is the question which led me to seeking the book out. 

 

   My long-time reader will know I have engaged in a number of sub-culture deep-dives in recent years. Bigfoot. UFO’s. Atlantis. Ancient Aliens. The occult. I usually pass this off as research for my books, fishing for interesting ideas to play around with for 80,000 words of fiction. But there has been a deeper drive behind it. The last decade has seen the whole world seem to splinter into factions of ideas, and most-troubling has been the drive towards anti-expert thinking. It's a push that leads to us doing nothing about climate change. A push that leads to Brexit because we’re ‘sick of experts.’ A push that leads to Trump. And yadda yadda yadda a bunch of people in shaman cosplay storm the US Capitol. But tackling each of these issues can feel too large, too divisive, and so instead I turned my obsessive streak towards subcultures. Why do grown men dress up like commandos to go hunting for Bigfoot? Why do believers try to reinvent all of science to accommodate their idea of a giant ape in North America (who may-or-may-not be able to teleport?) Why do people cling to the belief that an alien spacecraft crashed in New Mexico in 1947, even after the full truth of the incident had been available for decades? Even after an archaeological dig was carried out on the ‘crash’ site that found no signs of a crash? How did Plato’s fictional and allegorical account of a lost city -understood as such for over a thousand years- somehow transform into something people believe is a ‘genuine’ myth? Why do people still search for this allegorical fiction? In each case, I started out thinking these sub-cultures would be an interesting way to try and understand obsession, and to try and understand how identity seems to be coming into conflict with expertise. But more and more, I came to find this was all connected. The bigfoot LARPers. The UFO crew. Those who believe ancient brown people were too stupid to move rocks. It all added up to the same thing, to this anti-science, anti-expert, anti-proof thinking. 

 

   “Mainstream science” is wrong. The “lamestream media” is lying to you. The government are covering up Bigfoot. And, somehow, also covering up the existence of aliens who have the technology to travel millions of light years but only ever seem to turn up when it’s dark. Archaeology is wrong, or worse- the Smithsonian is hiding the truth. Only a precious few people can be trusted to tell you how it really is. But they seem to need your money along the way. Before you know it, a creationist is sharing a platform with Bill Nye, to millions of viewers online, insisting that science can only observe the present and we can’t know anything of what happened in the mysterious past, except for what is written in one book. And there are people who live below ground that drink the blood of humans. And then, yadda yadda yadda….shaman….capitol.

 

   I find myself more and more interested in the question of folklore. And to what extent is fake news a feature or a bug? Is it just an extension of that need for folklore? We seek out narratives that feel true, that comfort some part of our identity. We are emotional and anxious apes, yet those of us who most want to argue for progress keep talking about reason and how all people can be reached with the right facts. I now believe that misses the point of who and what we are. Rome has been burning for a while now, with the flames on show in ‘documentaries’ on tv channels that use names like ‘History’ and ‘Discovery’ as cover for pushing dangerous information. And I don’t think we can put out those flames until we reckon with ourselves, and with what drives us. 

 

   Anyway. 

   Rant over. 

   This is supposed to be a book review. 

 

   All this by way of saying:  Spooky Archaeology: Myth and the Science of the Past scratched my exact itch. I should point out for balance that the book isn’t a skeptical or debunking book as such. This is more of a history, looking at the development of archaeology and modern myth, to try and decide to what extent archaeology contributes to its own ‘spooky’ reputation. 

Humans have been creating a spooky and mysterious past ever since we began encountering the remains of people who came before us. This inspired different versions of fairy lore across the world, as we imbued 'ancient' stone relics with mystical origins long before we had a real understanding of our own development. From here, Card takes us on a journey through mistakes, misdirections, cons, and romantics, tracing the evolution of archaeology from myth-making to antiquarianism, to modern science. The first full-on lightbulb moment for me in the book was the simple realization that we constantly 'other' the deeper past by placing the cultures and remains of our deeper ancestors in 'Natural History' museums, along with rocks, fossils, and dinosaurs, instead of the art museums that our more recent forebears are housed in.  

This book is full of insight and learning points. From the myths and ideas propagated by early antiquarians before the hieroglyphs were translated, to the creation of theosophy in the Victorian era that sought to push back against modernity by reaching for the ‘spiritual’ past. From the fiction of HP Lovecraft who combined these theosophical ideas with the ‘myths’ of Atlantis and the Egyptology craze, to the invention of flying saucers which were -and remained- steeped in the same theosophy ideas. Aliens who are both creatures from another world and visitors from another dimension, or beenath the sea, or from bases underground, and sometimes bringing Bigfoot with them. And now a man with silly hair is one of the most recognizable memes on the internet for the passing of racism as the real history of our people and of every scientific advancement. (And if you think I’m being overly dramatic about the dangers and damages of that show, know that it’s all based on the work of Erik Von Däneken, whose best-selling book Chariots of the Gods was edited by Wilhelm Utermann, who was a literal Nazi. A paid-up member. The same Nazis who cribbed ideas straight out of theosophy, and of a lost spiritual past, and who are now regularly linked to stories about UFO’s and people who live underground.These are the views, and the people, being platformed in these shows.)

 

   The question Card is dealing with here is how much of this is encoded within the very nature of archaeology. A lot of these bad ideas have been spread by people doing archaeology. A drive to understand our past usually goes through myth and mysticism on the way to finding fact. Governments have been happy to use excavations, myths, and expeditions as cover for espionage. (The Yeti. The Titanic.) Card argues that “accepting our checkered past should be an exercise in ‘constructively deconstructing’” and I find his case to be solid. The book is more than solid. If you have any interest in any of the subjects I’ve mentioned today, you’ll find something interesting in these pages. 

 

   Now, if you’ll excuse me, Rome is still burning and there’s a hole in my bucket.   

Orphan X: Not Your Typical Thriller

by

Scott D. Parker

(Well, I had a good post but it's stuck in my 2007-era MacBook Pro. And the Mac is dead at the moment, the victim of a power adapter that's finally called it quits. I've ordered another and it should be here today (as you read this) but it also means I have to do a rerun. Originally published 5 Feb 2020 on my blog. So, enjoy. And let's hope the new power adapter works.)

For a few years now, the Orphan X series by Gregg Hurwitz, has been circling my radar. I'd download a sample onto my Kindle, but never get around to it. I'd see the second, third, and fourth books in the series be published, but still I didn't move off high center.

Until late last month.

In that timeless week between Christmas and New Year's Day, I was at the paperback racks at a Barnes and Noble in far west Houston and saw OUT OF THE DARK, the fourth volume in the series. My new standard for reading books is to read the book that captured my attention, no matter what number it is in the series. But when I realized it was an Orphan X novel, I was reminded that this series is one I should try.

From the beginning.

Evan Smoak - Not Your Typical Action Hero

If you read ten thrillers, how many of them open with the main character--or a side character--running? Seven? Eight? It's a perfectly acceptable trope for the genre, but I was happily surprised ORPHAN X didn't begin that way. True, Evan is bleeding from a knife wound and he's trying to get back to his apartment in Los Angeles, but there are no bad guys chasing him. Instead, we get a domestic scene with Evan trying not to show fellow tenants of his high-rise apartment he's bleeding. Not the nosy old lady nor the single mom who lives a few floors below. But her son suspects the truth. The entire tension of chapter one is whether or not Evan can make it up to his apartment without anyone noticing he's bleeding.

That is how ORPHAN X starts, and it makes all the difference.

It tells you that you're in for a different type of thriller, one I couldn't put my finger on until I saw Gregg Hurwitz at Houston's Murder by the Book on Monday.

A Normal Situation

Another thing Hurwitz does well is showing you what Evan's typical life is like. As an orphan, he was taken out of foster care and trained to be an off-the-books assassin. The kind with complete deniability. The only contact he has is his father-figure/trainer/teacher Jack Johns. For years, Jack trained Evan until--as we learn in the middle of the book--an even takes place that causes Evan to leave that life and disappear.

Now, he's the Nowhere Man, a man hiding in plain sight. Like the A-Team, if there's a person who needs help, all they have to do is call the special number: 1-855-2NOWHERE. Evan will help you. The only payment: pass his number--once--to another person who needs help.

Thus, the opening section of the book, we get an example of this "normal" life Evan has made for himself. You see him plan how he's going to help teenaged Morena, the terrible situation in which she and her younger sister find themselves, and how he goes about solving her problem. Intricate detail that reads fast and swift, never losing tension and anticipation.

It's when the next person calls--presumably Morena's pay-it-forward charge--that things really kick into a higher gear.

The Layers Unravel

Interspersed throughout the novel are flashbacks to Evan's training days and his early assignments. You get a deeper sense of what kind of man he is, what kind of person Jack Johns is, and how the two ultimately bring out nuances in each other both probably didn't expect.

I never saw the twists coming, which made for an even more entertaining read. It's no surprise--it's on the dust jacket--that some of the people after Evan are fellow Orphans, so he's not going up against run-of-the-mill thugs, but highly trained adversaries. Hurwitz, I learned on Monday night when I attended his author event, has done his research. But I already knew that. The details not only of the fighting but the weapons and accouterments are rich and descriptive.

Why is This Book So Good?

I knew going into the book the action would be good and thrilling. What surprised me, however, were the character moments. The time in the elevator I just mentioned. The times when he's having to worry about the bad guys and some busybody confronts him about not attending the HOA meeting. In addition, seeing Evan at home, in his apartment, what he did, what he drank, how he ate, all of that is there. I gravitated toward those moments just as much, if not more, than the action.

Why?

Well, on Monday night, Hurwitz commented that part of the genesis of Evan Smoak was the idea that you never saw James Bond go home.* You never saw Jason Bourne have an awkward conversation with regular folks.

That was the key to why I enjoyed ORPHAN X so much. That's why I'll keep reading the series.



*In the novel MOONRAKER (1954)--which is nothing like the 1979 movie--Ian Fleming writes a lot about Bond in the office, in his house, and playing cards. Not exactly pulse-pounding excitement, but wonderful to read. But the point Hurwitz is probably making is that none of the films show Bond in a normal setting. Not coincidentally, it is these scenes in MOONRAKER I remember well and hardly any of the larger plot. But hardly anyone remembers the original novel. You see? Hurwitz was onto something.

Recursion by Blake Crouch: A Time Travel Book With Heart and Thrills

 

By Scott D. Parker

(No, you are not suffering from False Memory Syndrome. Yes, Beau reviewed the very same book yesterday, something I didn't know until I went to post this review. Perhaps that is yet another key indicator of how good this book is.)

How often do you read a book in which the last sentence is the perfect end to the story?

Well, I finished one this week, and the last line was awesome.

Recursion by Blake Crouch is a thriller with a huge scoop of science fiction, specifically time travel. It was the most recent selection for my SF book club although I wasn't the chooser. We generally keep our selections within the genre--I actually picked the Sherlock Holmes book The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz--but occasionally we get books like this one. But this is one that really leans into the thriller aspects and it kept me engrossed all the way through.

As the story opens, New York police detective Barry Sutton has lived eleven years without his teenaged daughter who was killed in a hit-and-run accident. He's meeting his now ex-wife to commemorate their daughters birth. There have been a lot of things called False Memory Syndrome, a condition where folks remember whole other lives. 

In the reality of the story, these are alternate timelines.

Soon, Barry meets Helena, a scientist with a mother who suffers from Alzheimer’s. Her goal is to invent a tool that can help map her mom's memories before they are all gone. What another character realizes is that this machine can be used to travel back in time to a specific, vivid memory. And, when a time traveler arrives at the point in time where the traveler actually left, all the other timeline's memories cascade on them...and everyone else.

And there's a race...against time. 

I really enjoyed it. Loved it, actually. As recent as this past weekend, I hadn't even started it. I started listening while doing chores...then started finding new chores to do so I could keep listening. The Houston Texans helped by sucking so I stopped watching and started listening to this book. The premise drew me in pretty quickly and just kept me going.

The alternating narrators really worked in the audio. Enjoyed both of them. 

Really liked the moments when a certain timeline caught up with a character. When I was explaining this to the wife, what came to mind (but not during the reading) was the end of the movie Frequency back in 2000. Also had lots of echoes to Replay by Ken Grimwood.

Go no further if you don't want the spoiler, so if you don't, I thoroughly enjoyed Recursion and would highly recommend it.

SPOILERS for the end

Lastly, it is very rare that a last line of a book is this awesome, but this one is. Again, this is where listening to an audio version really brought it home. I was standing in line at the DPS on Tuesday. Outside, morning sun, looking at all the other folks doing what I'm doing. Crouch is talking from Barry's POV and building it up to talk to Helena. This is after he's killed the bad to prevent the whole thing from even starting. And he has realized that life has pain and that, as humans, we just have to deal with it. 

And then the last line! "And he says...."  I barked out a "HA!" as the credits rolled, grinning big time. Loved it! Crouch let the reader finish the story, creating our own, unique timelines.

ALL THINGS VIOLENT

One of the positive things about being in Lockdown is that I’m finally getting to catch up on some of the books that have been sitting on my To Be Read pile for a while.

It’s notable, I think, how publishing – which is, after all, increasingly part of the Entertainment industry – obsesses on novelty. A book comes out. It’s hot. Then it’s gone, and posting something like this reviewing and praising it months after it’s ‘been and gone’ is unusual.

But really: If we can’t wilfully abandon the prevalent standards in the middle of this global Craziness, when can we?

Books – as a very wise person once told me – do not cease to exist the week after Publication Day, so why – apart from the embarrassment of having to admit it’s taken me serval months to get around to reading it – should I worry about posting an appreciation of one here, well after Publication.

The book I want to bring to your attention – though many of you are already very familiar with it, thus making this piece even less relevant – is All Things Violent by Nikki Dolson. 

Once upon a time, Laura Park was a normal college sophomore with her best friend at her side. A year later, Laura was on a deserted road on the outskirts of Las Vegas killing a man. 

In Laura's world anyone can become a target, loyalties can shift in a blink of an eye, and when everyone is homicidal, people are definitely going to die.

I read the book a week or so ago, and I’m still obsessing about it. It’s funny, sexy, brutal, exciting, gripping, sad and ultimately a wonderful, razor-sharp and crow-dark slice of Noir that could easily sit alongside the classics of the genre. I’m now awaiting the announcement that Shonda Rhimes has optioned it, because if you can imagine stuffing David Caradine’s Kung Fu series in a Nutribullet with Lawrence Block’s Keller novels and Uma Thurman in Kill Bill then hitting Pulse you’d have some idea of the brilliance – and cinematicness* - of the book.

In my mind It’s a movie. One of those 80s highly stylised movies. Like One from the heart but with murder. Gore. Las Vegas lights - the city as ultra beauty but also dirty. Gaudy. But gorgeous.

(*

One of the characters – a flash of hope in the gathering darkness of Laura’s story - and his ultimate destination - broke my heart a bit.

And Laura’s mentor Frank is the sort of character who’s backstory normally takes up half a Netflix season.

There’s a nihilism to the story that’s perfectly American. It reminded me in some places  of American Psycho. But where that book revelled in a completely amoral self-centred view of the world, Dolson’s does what it singularly failed to do: there is hope in these characters. There is a code. There is honour. There is logic and error and humanity.

I’m in awe.

(*what? I'm a writer and I say it's a word).

Derek Farrell is the author of ‘Death of a Diva’ ‘Death of a Nobody,’ ‘Death of a Devil’ ‘Death of an Angel,’ and the novella "Death of a Sinner," all published by Fahrenheit Press.

His novella "Come to Dust" is available for free download from his website derekfarrell.co.uk

The books have been described as “Like The Thin Man meets Will & Grace.” “Like M.C. Beaton on MDMA,” and – by no less an expert than Eric Idle – as “Quite Fun.”

Derek’s jobs have included: Burger dresser, Bank teller, David Bowie’s paperboy, and Investment Banker, and he has lived and worked in New York, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Prague, Dublin, Johannesburg and London.

He’s married to the most English man on the planet and lives in West Sussex. They have no goats chickens children or pets, but they do have every Kylie Minogue record ever made.

Review: The New Book Every Writer Needs

By Claire Booth

I am a word geek. A well-turned phrase makes my heart sing. But so does a well-placed comma. And the two hyphens I just used, for that matter.

My husband knows this about me (and loves me anyway), so he knew the perfect thing to get me for Valentine’s Day this year. Dreyer’s English. It’s a new book by Benjamin Dreyer, the copy chief of Random House Publishers. And it dives (splashingly, gleefully) into the minutiae of word choice, punctuation, abbreviations and grammar.

Right now, I’ll bet half of you are running to order it, and the other half of you are running for the hills while screaming in horror. Bear with me.

Dreyer is funny and witty throughout the book and doesn’t take grammatical rules too seriously. “. . . just because I think something is good and proper and nifty you don’t necessarily have to.”

He shrugs off time-worn gospel like never starting a sentence with “and” or “but,” never ending it with a preposition and never splitting an infinitive. Most novelists ignore these anyway, but it’s nice to have someone of Dreyer’s expertise agree with us. Those rules are nonsense, he says, even though if you violate them “. . .  you’ll have a certain percentage of the reading and online commenting populace up your fundament to tell you you’re subliterate. Go ahead and break them away. It’s fun, and I’ll back you up.”

The whole thing is written in this same playful voice, and has some of the most entertaining footnotes I’ve ever read. Here’s one that enlivens the entry telling you that straitjacket is one word:

“The title of the 1964 Joan Crawford axe-murderess thriller—which you really ought to see, it’s the damnedest thing—is Strait-Jacket. (The generally preferred American spelling is “ax.” But I’d much rather be an axe-murderess than an ax-murderess. You?)”

We disagree on a few things. He likes the series comma (It’s also called the Oxford comma and is the one that comes after the second-to-last item in a list. If I agreed with him, there’d be one after “abbreviations” in the sentence above. As you can see, I don’t. It’s the journalist in me; an Oxford comma is a waste of a space in a newspaper column.)

I do agree with him on many items (please, please don’t use an apostrophe when you just need to make a name into a plural). And I even learned a few things, including several new words. My favorite is “crotchet.” Like crotchety, but a noun. I’d never heard it before. Now I use it all the time.

Many of the things he covers are easily transferable from fiction to non-fiction and journalism. But since his expertise is copyediting novels, he does have a few things to say that are specific to our little corner of the writing world. Consistency is a big one. Your characters should have the same eye color all the way through the book. I know I’ve been saved by copy editors many times on this front. And I’m still grateful.

A reference of fundamental guidelines is a good thing for everyone to have. But, as Dreyer rightly points out, the English language is also always changing, and you should roll with it and have a little fun, too. This book is a great way to do that.

Sea of Greed by Clive Cussler and Graham Brown

by

Scott D. Parker

SEA OF GREED by Clive Cussler and Graham Brown is the latest entry in the NUMA Files series. Spearheaded by hero Kurt Austin and his right-hand man, Joe Zavala, the NUMA team tackles dire threats to America, usually of a nautical nature. Well, maybe that’s not entirely the case as I’ve only read one other NUMA story: THE PHARAOH'S SECRET. But if nautical-based adventure is what you want, then SEA OF GREED is the book for you.

As is typical of most Cussler modern-day thrillers, SEA OF GREED begins in the past, specifically 1968. It seems the French and the Israelis are working together to create something in a test tube. But things go south and whatever is being protected is lost at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea when a pair of submarines sink. Cut to the present day aboard an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Something goes wrong. Somehow, some way, the oil is igniting…underwater. Naturally this proves catastrophic. Nearby, however, are Kurt and Joe and they quickly race to the destruction and risk their lives rescuing some of the wildcatters and engineers. Only then do they all start to question what happened: how in the world could crude oil react to water? And what the devil was that strange saucer-shaped submersible coasting in and around the oil lines?

Quickly, Kurt and his team are tasked with finding out those answers, and just as quickly, they learn of the presence of Tessa Franco. Not only is she a billionaire seeking to create fuel-cell technology for a post-oil world [hint], she also invented the Monarch, a giant flying fortress that would have made Howard Hughes proud. Well, it doesn’t take that large a leap to conclude the lady is part of something nefarious, and Kurt must endure the hardships of champagne with the beautiful Tessa to learn more.

And fists fly and action ensues.

I could go on, but do not want to give away any major plot details. Sure, some of the plot is fairly easy to guess, but that does not disappoint the reading—or, in my case, the listening by the always excellent narration by Scott Brick. The story moves along at a pretty good clip. What’s fascinating about this story is how the disparate team members all work together without knowing what their partners are doing. Not knowing the entire series well, the characters of Kurt, Joe, and Prya really shine in this novel. They are believable, even when they’re performing death-defying acts of daring do. I rather enjoyed the smaller moments just as much as the over-the-top ones. Scott Brick is my favorite audiobook narrator. He reads all the Cussler series—including my favorite, Isaac Bell—and he does such a great job at bringing a taste of whimsy to the narration. It is like the old Superman TV show where Superman/Clark Kent and we, the viewers, were in on the secret, and he’d sometimes wink at the camera. Somehow, Brick does the same with his voice.

I really enjoyed SEA OF GREED. It was one of the more enjoyable books I've read this year. And I  will make a beeline back to Audible and start reading, er, listening to, the rest of the books in this series.

————

Well, 2018 is at an end for all of us at DoSomeDamage. On behalf of everyone here, we thank you for your continued support, reading, commenting, and the overall community.

Speaking of the community, 2019 marks the tenth anniversary of this little project! We will certainly have some celebratory posts come summer 2019.

And as for me, well, I plan a fun, interesting, and exciting 2019 with all of my projects. I will feature many of my activities here at DSD, so tune in the first Saturday of January to get the lowdown.

But until then, have a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a safe New Year’s.

See you in 2019!

The Dark Knight Returns

By Ray Banks

About twenty-two years ago, I was given a charity anthology called Unusual Suspects. The reason: the book boasted a “lost” Jim Thompson story, “The Car In The Mexican Quarter”. Now I couldn’t tell you much about that story (I probably liked it), nor do I remember the details of work by the likes of Joyce Carol Oates, George Pelecanos, James Lee Burke or Jonathan Lethem. The only thing I do remember is the jolt of the penultimate tale, a short-short piece barely four pages long, called “Homeless”.

“When I was a little kid, I saw this demonstration in the park near my house. A lot of people, screaming and yelling. Most of the men had long hair. The man who lived with my mother would have said they were fags. There was a big sign. BRING THE WAR HOME it said."

This was my introduction to Andrew Vachss. It blew my world apart. I didn’t know writing could be like that. Declarative sentences, meticulously crafted. Statements of fact. This is the world. This is the truth. This is important. And God help you if you don’t pay attention. His voice is that of the voiceless, his focus unparalleled. Many writers are described in pugilistic terms; very few read like they’re fighting for their lives. Further research confirmed the theory: this was an author who’d been an aid worker in Biafra, a labour organiser, a director of a maximum-security juvenile prison, an attorney specialising in cases of child abuse. For a young writer prospecting for authenticity in his prospective influences, Vachss was the motherlode.

I read Shella. I read the Burke books. I narrowly avoided tumbling into existential despair. Burke’s New York is rancid to the core, populated with irrevocably damaged outsiders trying to keep the predators from their prey. His worldview is grim, his victories small. Vachss became a tough recommendation to make, more so as ultra-hardboiled pretenders aped the violence and eschewed the informed indignation. In the end, it became easier to file Vachss under “grim-dark” and leave him there. For all their rigorous intensity, Vachss’s work felt too nihilistic to revisit. But then I felt the same way about Pinter for a while. And I was wrong there, too.

“Don’t confuse me with others in this game. I’m no cold reader. I don’t do hypnosis, I don’t look for tells, and I don’t use Amytal or psychedelics. Staging is important, yes, but I am the only indispensable element in the equation.”

Vachss’s latest is The Questioner, a novelette from snarling new publisher Utopia Books. The eponymous (and nameless) questioner is a man schooled in the dark arts of interrogation, but for whom violence is never a means to an end. He is a persuader, a diviner, a truth prospector. Over the course of 36 pages, we follow The Questioner through a series of interrogations as he gently probes his subjects and guides them towards their absolute truth, interspersed with meditations on his craft. On a surface level, this is another in a long line of skilfully rendered psychological thrillers from Vachss; scratch that surface and you’ll find a philosophical investigation into morality on a global scale. The hard, simple truths of Burke and his ilk have become something nebulous, their solutions no longer applicable if indeed they ever were. And in case you think this is a blurring of talent, rest assured that Vachss’s prose is still as precise as ever. The difference now is that he dares to leave room for interpretation. In this respect, the novelette’s ostensibly slight length is a bonus: this is a story that demands repeated reading, and promises to offer more with each experience.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some re-reading to do. And what the hell, it’ll start with a demonstration in the park. That never goes out of style.

--

Ray Banks has worked as a wedding singer, double-glazing salesman, croupier, dole monkey, and various degrees of disgruntled temp. He currently lives in Edinburgh, Scotland and online at www.thesaturdayboy.com.

A Thriller with a Historical Twist: The Escape Artist by Brad Meltzer

By
Scott D. Parker

Sometimes, a little known fact in history can spark an entire story.

THE ESCAPE ARTIST is the latest novel by Meltzer, a man who has a healthy respect, understanding, and love of history. If you haven’t read any of his books, you might know him from his TV shows “Decoded” and “Lost History.” He first came onto my radar when he wrote “Identity Crisis” for DC Comics, a graphic novel that shows actual death in the DC Universe and how it affects the characters. The ending of that story reverberated through the comics for years after, and it’s still unnerving. I read his Culper Ring Series featuring Beecher White, an archivist at the National Archives. Any author who can make an archivist a hero is a good writer. I earned two degrees in history and while I may have soured on the political aspects of being a professional historian, I still retain the passion. It’s a passion Meltzer shares and it’s why I enjoy his novels. And don’t’ even get me started on his awesome series of kids’ books focusing on heroes for his son and his daughter.

In the weeks leading up to the book’s release, Meltzer’s excitement for THE ESCAPE ARTIST was palpable. His social media and his newsletter (sign up herehttp://bradmeltzer.com/) was filled with anticipation that we would soon meet Nola Brown. She is one of the two protagonists in the new book. Taking a page from lost history, Meltzer made Nola the official painter of the US military. Ever since World War I, the military have hired a painter to capture things a photograph cannot: the anguish of war and what it really means. She doesn’t show up for a little while in the book, but her presence does.

The opening chapter shows a military plane taking off from somewhere in Alaska. Soon thereafter, it crashes, but not before the unnamed female character has a chance to write a last message. The message is received by the other protagonist, Jim “Zig” Zigarowski, a mortician who works at Dover Air Force Base. This base is where all our fallen soldiers arrive after they die in service to our country. Zig and the other morticians help to give families closure by fixing up the dead. When the name “Nola Brown” comes across the big board, Zig personally takes it upon himself to work on her corpse. You see, Nola helped saved the life of Zig’s daughter back when they were Girl Scouts. It doesn’t matter that his daughter died a year after that; Nola gave Zig the extra time, and for that, he’ll pay the debt. But the woman identified as Nola Brown is, in fact, not Nola at all. Zig would know because of a particular physical mark on the real Nola. This unidentified woman’s identity is specifically being targeted so as to wipe away Nola’s existence. What gives Zig even more pause is the note he finds in the most unlikely of places: on a piece of paper in the dead woman’s stomach.  You see, if a person wanted to pass along a message in the seconds before a disaster strikes (like a plane crash), the person can write a note and swallow it. The stomach acids will preserve the paper and the message. It happened in real life on 9/11with one of the people on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Meltzer took that unknown piece of history and wove it into a spectacular story.

The narrative is divided into two main POVs: that of Zig and Nola. Often, we get “This is Nola at age sixteen” or “This is Nola at age ten” segments where a particular moment of his life is revealed, giving us a greater understanding of what makes her tick. I listened to the audio with my favorite narrator, Scott Brick, is teamed up with January LaVoy who reads Nola’s parts. The combination is fantastic.

As is the story. There are too many layers to note here without spoiling the fun of this book. In January, I discovered THE SHADOW novels from the 1930s and thoroughly devoured all that were available on Audible. Now, I’ve moved on to the reprints in my library. In breathless prose, Meltzer’s writing is clean and precise as always, delivering a bonanza of excitement that would have been right at home in the heyday of pulp fiction, with a heroine who can stand alongside The Shadow himself.

The Perfect Stranger -- Review

Recently, I had a few long drives lined up so I picked an audiobook. The Perfect Stranger by Megan Miranda. It had a bit of a rocky start, but once it got me hooked, I was really hooked. The book handles a lot of things that I'd like to see more of. Leah Stevens' main issue through the entire book is that no one believes a thing she says. The catalyst that sets everything in motion is a story she didn't tell. The thing she thought no one would be believe - and as her fraught relationships with the police, her coworkers, and even her students play out, it's like a running commentary on why she was right to lie.

Without getting into spoilers it's difficult to describe the nuance with which Miranda handles questions of trust and female friendship. Each person Leah interacts with, from her mother to her coworker across the hall seems to represent a different type of friendship, a different level of trust. As she discovers how long she's been lied to, how hard she's been screwed over, she still has to contend with the fact that most people think it's more believable that a woman is losing her mind than that something bad happened to her.

One thing the book doesn't do is give a nice redemption arc. Three of the major players in the story are starting over after something bad has happened in their lives, and one is dealing with the immediate aftermath of a life changing tragedy. Questions are raised about the parts each of them played in screwing their own lives, and the lives of other's up. But this book isn't about any of those characters fixing their shit. It's not an ending where everyone gets their name cleared and their old jobs back. I think that really works for the story. Miranda sets up a very realistic world, where people are afraid of not being believed, afraid to come forward, afraid to move on. A world without easy answers.

There is a resolution, and a good one, but it's not a Hollywood happy ending. I won't ruin it, but Miranda seems to be interested in how people choose and accept their fates, rather than how people triumph over old mistakes.

It took several drives and a few laundry folding sessions to get through the audiobook and get to the end. I found myself turning to the audiobook the way I often turn to paper books - eager to hear what happens next, in a way I don't often find with audio. There are moments in the story that frustrate - people making nonsensical decisions, red herrings that aren't dismissed in a satisfactory way - but it works in a story where the characters actually behave like real people.

Curious Minds by Janet Evanovich

By
Scott D. Parker

If  you read my post from last week, you’ll remember that I recently read a book “into the dark.” That is, I had zero preconceived notions of the book, the characters, the reviews, etc. I didn't look up any back story on the writing of the book or find any interviews with the author and her inspiration. I simply read the book because the back cover blurb hooked me with a single word (“irrepressible”) and I felt like reading the novel.

But how was it? That’s the point of today’s post.

Curious Minds is billed as “A Knight and Moon Novel.” You see what Evanovich did there? A nice play on words. The first person is Emerson Knight, rich billionaire playboy who is quite quirky. He is described as the cover of a romance novel come to life. I don’t know about y’all but the first thing I think of when I read that was Fabio. But Emerson’s dark hair also gave me a Ryan Gosling vibe. It didn’t hurt that I had recently re-watched The Nice Guys (still love it).

Moon is Riley Moon, junior analyst for the mega bank Blane-Grunwald, and up to her chin in student loan debt on account of her earning two degrees, one from Harvard Business and the second from Harvard Law. She’s whip smart and her Texas upbringing comes across in her attitude and her ability to shoot a gun, something her sheriff father made sure she knew how to do. Her favorite phrase is “Crap on a cracker,” and Emerson never fails to find her charming.

Her job is simple: babysit Emerson and his intense desire to see his gold in Blane-Grunwald’s vaults. His unwavering determination quickly reveals a secret that sends Knight and Moon on a race against time and across the country to uncover a dreadful secret before the bad guys catch up to them and take the out.

The story itself is a breezy sort of yarn, perfectly at home, say, on network television. That’s not a bad thing, mind you. I love network TV. But what you get with Curious Minds is a tale with little in the way of bad language or on-the-page violence. The bad guys often revert to saying what they’d do to a person and let that serve the reader’s imagination. The pace is rather quick with little in the way of scene-setting. Evanovich gave just enough description that I didn’t need a lot of extra words.

This book is, in some ways, like a romance. The plot is there mainly to serve as a means of throwing Knight and Moon together and letting them—and us readers—get to know each other. The will-they or won’t-they vibe is present, but not too oppressive. There are quite a few comments about modern pop culture that I found entertaining.

The tete-a-tete between the two is why you read a book like this and I wasn’t disappointed. Since I read the novel in five days—hey, I have to sleep and go to work!—it counts as the fastest book I’ve read in a long time. I usually had a grin on my face and thoroughly enjoyed myself with this, my first Evanovich book.

How much did I enjoy it? I’m already less than a hundred pages to the end of Dangerous Minds, the second novel in the series.


BTW, I've still not read a single review. I wanted to wait until I wrote my own. Now, my embargo is over!