Nobody Walks by Mick Herron

This looks like the beginning of a delicious new spy/crime/mystery series by the veteran literary thriller writer and CWA Dagger Award winner, Mick Herron. The emphasis in Herron’s books is less on kinetics and more on character development. Already he has treated us to classic portraits including the bald and bewigged head of MI5’s Intelligence Service, Dame Ingrid Tearney, and the pale and twitchy successful games producer, Vincent Driscoll. But his main character, Tom Bettany, is one we expect to see again.

Where do disaffected British spies go when they leave the service? Thomas Bettany, a.k.a. Martin Boyd, leaves Britain and scuffles around the rougher parts of France where nobody much wants to know anyone’s personal history. Bettany lost his wife to cancer, and suddenly his estranged son turns up dead in London. Bettany had always figured on reconciliation, but that won’t happen now. So, how does a young man die suddenly? Bettany goes to find out and ends up walking smack into folks looking for him.

Mick Herron already has a host of good mysteries to his name, but he has refined his skills with this one. This is fun and involving--a great book for a day of too hot sun or heavy snowfall.

Soho Press is publishing this new series and the earlier Slough House series which included Slow Horses and Dead Lions.


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Dead Lions by Mick Herron

Mick Herron wrote a two-book Slough House series featuring River Cartwright which began with Slow Horses and ended with Dead Lions. ‘Slow Horses’ is a nickname given to disgraced spies who live out the rest of what might generously be termed their careers in the MI5 Slough House, as opposed to working in pin-stripes at Regent’s Park. Too knowledgeable to be cut loose and too damaged to handle edgy assignments, these talented but dismissed spies are called upon in Dead Lions to chase a ghost—a Russian spy long hidden from view.

I’ve been reading backward through Herron’s work, beginning with his soon-to-be released Nobody Walks published by Soho Crime, which is a cornucopia of rich characterizations, cynical observations about the business of spying, and imaginative spycraft. I have not gotten to Slow Horses but I can tell you that these works are all of a piece. River Cartwright was ostensibly the main man in the first two books, though his involvement was not as pronounced in Dead Lions as Tom Bettany’s is in Nobody Walks.

Mick Herron has an eye for the ways individuals can look absurd in large bureaucratic organizations: who gets ahead, who stays ahead, and who stays alive are all subject to his scrutiny and imaginative doodlings. The failings of ordinary folk provide a rich vein of material.

Dead Lions is written like the screenplay for a TV series in that much of the novel is conversation. Unless one is a Londoner, this presents a little bit of a challenge in being able to follow the action especially when being told by a cynical and wily old sidelined spy. One never knows what is true and what is not even if one understands his language. When one grows up in an organization, there is a specific vocabulary for insiders. If one is not part of the group, understanding can be as difficult as crashing a company’s Christmas cocktail party. But like that theoretical Christmas party, if one holds on long enough for understanding to dawn, the ride is quite fun enough.

Herron is good at writing spy thrillers, very good, indeed. If this is your special genre, his books are a must-read. If British spy thrillers are only an occasional treat for you, he is still one of the best, and getting better all the time. Start with Nobody Walks.


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For the Dead by Timothy Hallinan

The trinity at the center of this series, Poke, Rose, and Miaow, has our allegiance. I prefer to think of them as a triumvirate because of their power. Poke has soul, Rose is sexy, and Miaow has knowledge of the streets that no child should ever have.

The Rafferty’s use their powers together in this latest installment of the Poke Rafferty series to bring down a corrupt power broker hiding in the police force. They had a little help (well, okay, a lot of help) from Andrew, Miaow’s best mate and school chum, and his contacts in the Vietnamese embassy. Hallinan keeps us riveted as Miaow escapes the nets laid for her and Andrew demonstrates his computer wizardry. They are teens, with all the confusion, angst, and drama of teens, and we ache for them…and their parents.

Hallinan may be unsurpassed in character creation. Miaow, Poke’s adopted daughter from the streets, is brought into clear focus when we listen to her confidence when confronting the hitmen who chase her. She learned too early how to escape the traps of bad men. The personality quirks of Rose and Poke, and their patter together, have the comforting tension of two distinct, discerning individuals who nonetheless respect and love one another. It is a pleasure to see what Hallinan will choose to highlight in his novels, because there is always a ring of truth.

A powerful cop is setting up kills that benefit him financially and “solving” the cases with the help of coerced police lower in the hierarchy. Things start to unravel when Miaow and Andrew buy an iPhone 5 on the black market. In pursuing the aggressor, Poke is mainly impotent except for his rage…but he has intelligent friends with mythic powers, and as a team, they each use their special skills to resolve the issue satisfactorily. Moments of finely-calibrated tension are seeded throughout the novel impelling the reader to the nail-biting finish.

Hallinan introduces us to two unforgettable characters. One is a cop in a backwater precinct who is brought to Bangkok to work on this case because of her extraordinary computer skills. Her name is Kwai Clemente, part Filipino, and she has eyes that people cannot help but comment upon. Though she barely says a word except “yes, sir” in this story, but one cannot help but want to see her again. Writers, take a look at how Hallinan did this. Hallinan creates characters that actually think, breathe, and bleed so that we feel some kind of connection with them.

The second person we cannot forget is the Western bank manager who refers to Thais as “these people” and who, after ordering only for himself at a luncheon, strongly suggests to his dining companions what they should order. “Pink-faced and closely shaven,” James Kalmenson is “a finger-snapper and finger-pointer,” “indulges in…imperious post-colonial behavior,” and “has no obvious shortage of self-regard.” We don’t long to see Kalmenson again because his type is easy to find, alas.

One reviewer calls this series a literary thriller, and I agree with that characterization, though I would put the emphasis on literary. I admit to a short attention span for thrillers as a genre because the characters often seem like cut-outs whose purpose is to propel the action. Hallinan’s thrillers are the opposite. There is riveting action, but it is the characters we come to see.

Poke is a hapless sort. The one time he could have done some damage to a bad guy he didn’t have his gun. (view spoiler)[He just raged at the guy, and hit him with his belt buckle. (!) (hide spoiler)] But we’re riveted anyway because—and this is another of Hallinan’s tone-perfect choices--women and children might be victims, and that we couldn’t bear.

If you haven’t read Hallinan yet, you do not have to start at the beginning, though you may wish to go back later to sop up every delicious drop of this mystery series. The Fear Artist (Poke Rafferty #5), for instance, won all kinds of praise among taste-makers for its white-knuckled swerve into international espionage. Hallinan does it all.

You can start reading the series here. What you need to know is that Poke Rafferty is a writer who occasionally sidelines as a private investigator, Rose is a former Bangkok prostitute who has happily retired, and Miaow is a now-teenaged former street kid the two have adopted. This odd threesome has the love and joy and anguish of all the world within their encircling arms.


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Invisible Murder by Lene Kaaberbol & Agnete Friis

This Danish mystery series featuring Red Cross nurse Nina Borg in modern-day Copenhagen follows a long line of deliciously cosmopolitan and yet delightfully local novels translated and published by Soho Crime. Reading a few of the mysteries by these illustrious authors will give the reader an indication of the quality associated with Soho Crime: James Benn, Cara Black, Jassy Mackenzie, Leighton Gage, Timothy Hallinan, Martin Limon, Peter Lovesay, Qiu Xiaolong, Helene Tursten, Akimitsu Takagi, Matt Benyon Rees. Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis are in good company. Crime and intrigue is all the more complicated in a Danish society famously known for its liberality.

Invisible Murder is the story of a young gypsy Hungarian boy seeking to gain some control over the fates of his family by looting an old hospital left to rot by departing Russian occupiers. He intends to sell leftover X-ray equipment to the highest bidders in Europe, leaving himself and his family exposed to the most rabid and calculating bottom-dwellers in the criminal syndicate.

We meet Nina Borg, a Red Cross nurse volunteering outside work with illegal immigrants to Denmark, and members of the Danish Counterterrorism Units who are chasing whomever accessed known terrorist sites on the internet while in their jurisdiction. We get a fascinating peek at the concerns of Danish society today, and the impetus for crime from the most underserved and exploited communities in the EU.

This novel is the second in a series, and as such the authors may have missed an opportunity to present Nina Borg in the depth first-time readers need to accept her leading role. The book was long and complicated—perhaps more complicated than it needed to be. Some judicious editing or more time spend reducing the work to its essentials would have aided our understanding and interest starting out, but the action picked up in the last third and it stands as a solid entry in this crime series.

BTW, I just noticed that amazon is running a special e-Book price for The Boy in the Suitcase (Nina Borg #1) at $1.99 for a limited time if you think you want to read this series from the beginning. (8/13/14)

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Herbie's Game by Tim Hallinan

Junior Bender is a burglar. That’s a fact. What keeps it from being a hard, cold fact is Bender’s heart. Bender has a set of codes by which he lives and a set of rules given him by his mentor, Herbie, by which he works. One of those rules “was to delay as long as possible the moment the mark realizes his stuff has been boosted.” That means not taking everything, nor making a mess. Another rule is not to take anything the mark can’t live without.

When Bender finds himself holding a matching set of brooches that prove to be irreplaceable, their pricelessness makes him less pleased than uneasy. And Herbie his mentor is dead--not just dead, but tortured. Bender wants to know why, and who was responsible.

Los Angeles is central to the action in this series, and Hallinan goes right for the nub of a characterization, be it cities or people. When entering a house, for instance, he might toss off a comment about the front lawn looking recently replaced:

“Judging from the eye-ringing emerald hue of the lawn, the grass had never endured a dry minute since it was planted, about forty-five minutes ago. There are two schools of thought associated with good lawns: the British approach, which says you simply plant it and roll it for several centuries, and the Los Angeles nouveau-riche view, which says you just put in a new one whenever the old one gets a little ratty.”

And this:

"I went into the kitchen and filled a very nice Baccarat glass with ice water and carried it into the big living room, with its art deco windows that faced east toward downtown. The window framed only a fragment of the usual view, since the top floors of our relatively small collection of skyscrapers disappeared abruptly into a line of yellow-brown smog as hard and sharp as the stripe on a shirt.”

Hallinan has a real knack for and sensitivity in portraying girls and women as whole beings. In this novel he has two new fourteen-year-old computer savants who already have a productive history of online theft from various state coffers. Bender recruits them to assist him in his search for Herbie’s killer, though he has twinges of conscience about it. One senses his deep compassion…for himself, but also for the girls. When one of them throws her popsicle stick out the window of his moving vehicle, he has to talk himself out of stopping to pick it up. He imagines becoming their mentor, now that his own has passed. It’s actually kind of frightening, though of all the mentors these girls could possibly meet, Junior Bender might be considered the finest still breathing.

Hallinan has an instinctive ability to dots his i’s and cross his t’s (important in mystery and thriller-writing) and still move the action along in character-revealing scenes. His creation of the lovely Ting Ting, a slim-waisted martial arts bisexual that captures the hearts of bruisers and wasters, is not just an aside to the action…I argue it is the action. These characters have their basis in life, though perhaps not in lives we often encounter. Either Hallinan runs into folks like these on a regular basis, or they are all running around his head...pretty wild, even for southern California.

In his Afterword, Hallinan admits that he “had to kill off a few” characters he’d created earlier in the series because they were cluttering up the scenery, such that readers wanted them in every installment. Imagine creating such rich characterizations that we feel peripheral characters are neglected when we don’t see them.

Hallinan has a fluency born of long and deep reading, and constant writing. His other series featuring Poke Rafferty are set in Thailand, which is where I first discovered his unerring eye for what I call “the tell”: uncovering the (sometimes laughable, sometimes painful) characteristic of a place or a person that may define it, and that we recognize in our heart-of-hearts as true. My use of heart-of-hearts is not cliché. Hallinan has more “heart” than any other thriller/mystery writer I know. He and his characters seem to actively practice the Zen Buddhist (?) No Asshole Rule. And characters call each other on transgressions.

Reading Hallinan is just fun and because of that, it reminds me of the Don Winslow mystery series about surfing. I mean, really, can crime be more fun than hanging out with these guys? Junior Bender is such a softie, we don’t like to think of him actually killing people, though he does in this one. He carries a gun after all. It’s not just for show.

I received an advance copy of this title through Netgalley from Soho Publishers in exchange for an honest review.

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Little Elvises by Tim Hallinan

One picks up a book by Tim Hallinan to have fun. There’s a little murder, sure…sometimes a lot of murder…but it’s usually the bad guys that “get it” and we rest easy, knowing there is someone out there who’d rob us blind if he could, but who won’t take more than we can afford to lose.

Hallinan’s creation, Junior Bender, is the kind of guy you might ask back to your house for a party, after he’d robbed it, just to ask how he did it. He’s that amusing.

The Junior Bender series of books is based in Los Angeles and captures the vibration of southern California precisely. If you’ve ever found yourself missing the place, you might want to pick up one of Hallinan’s books for a cure. Hallinan lasers in on defining characteristics, and picks up those things we thought we’d fixed with botox, or managed to hide with designer advice. He is brilliant at describing environments, in this case an old art deco apartment building with a view of the city purchased by crooked Koreans. Crumbling and unkempt on the outside, it is gloriously restored on the inside, with secret escapes and hidden garages, just perfect for hiding ill-gotten gains or for a man on the run.

Junior has a code of ethics that is not taught in any religion, but like many southern Californians, is just something he created out of whole cloth and “evolved” into. But we like this code, just as we like him. He is a thief, yes, but his heart is in the right place. Everyone wants his help at some time or another, even the cops, and if they don’t, well, mostly they want to lock him up or kill him. Which keeps Junior on his toes.

Junior has a family, and in this episode, his thirteen-year-old daughter, Rina, shows she is growing up into someone he can admire. Do I need to say she has computer skills that put her father to shame? And while she is not old enough to have a boyfriend, she has a friend that is a boy who is as special and interesting as everyone else in the family. We yearn to see more of him, and watch him grow.

Hallinan writes crime novels that defy the type. One can imagine finding a sprung-binding massmarket paperback of his with its delicious, distinctive single-color cover and woodcut silhouettes and opening to the first page…only hours later surfacing to reflect that one had found gold.


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Cold Storage, Alaska by John Straley

Winter sets in long, cold, and lonely in Cold Storage, Alaska, but Straley sets us up with a comic narrative that takes most of the vinegar out of the population of “drunks and depressives” and sweetens it with romance. He introduces us to a fiercely independent and strangely cohesive group of folks who laugh (and make us laugh) in the face of adversity and who create the conditions for generosity of spirit. But not all is feasting on “King Salmon Every Day.” It continually astonishes me that characters in a fiction can make one feel actual sorrow and sadness, but we do in this one. Everything is going swimmingly and then something truly dreadful happens.

It is the year 2000 and Clive is thirty-five years old. He is being released from a seven-year prison stint in Seattle. After a brief detour to eat a fresh lettuce salad, Clive goes to collect his share of criminal proceeds from his pre-incarceration drug sales days. He is aiming for a small coastal town in Alaska where his brother, Miles, and his mother still reside.

Cold Storage is a failing fishing village of 150 residents on the outer coast of southeastern Alaska, originally settled by Norwegian fisherman who felt at home in the steep-sided fjord-like bay: “She’s hell for snug except when it’s coming straight down.” Some of my favorite passages in this novel come when Straley is describing the surrounding countryside, the changing quality of the water, the luminescent sky, the ragged rim of trees.

This novel is a little hard to characterize. It is not mystery, but it could be romance, though it is an unusual example of the genre. Falling in love is no more remarkable in Cold Storage than falling out of love. Both provide important entertainment to residents even when they themselves are not directly involved, except perhaps through the placing of bets on the timing of who is falling in or out of bed with whom...

No, this is a crime novel, though law enforcement is rarely in sight, and is the butt of jokes when it does come calling. This story is all about the ‘crims’ and their extended family of friends and partners in crime. We empathize with these oddball characters, many of whom act much as we have done (though we don’t wish to admit or recall), and all of whom change in the year or so since we meet them.

Straley claims in interviews “…I do not recognize revenge as the lifeblood of a great plot,” but he introduces a little revenge in this novel that upends his screwball comedy and changes lives forever. Straley then tells us his secret: “I still believe that love and compassion are what move through the hearts of all great characters.” And that’s exactly what we like about them.

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The Roving Party by Rohan Wilson

This remarkably assured debut novel by Tasmanian author Rohan Wilson is a grim but evocative retelling of the clearing of Van Diemen’s Land for white settlers. Darkly imagined and unblinkingly told, the story features Black Bill, a black man raised white, as a key figure in the 'roving party' that travels the countryside seeking to capture or kill aborigines in the area that came to be called Tasmania. Black Bill is also called The Vandemonian. 'Vandemonian' is a term white settlers of Van Dieman’s Land called themselves.

Leading the roving party is John Batman, a well-known historical figure born in Sydney of British parents and who settled in Tasmania’s northeast. Batman led roving parties over a period of years during the ‘Black Wars’ (1828-1832) that is the subject of this novel. The roving party has two more black scouts, both from Parramatta near Sydney, who join for payment. Much of the rest of the group are poor damned men, recently released white convicts who seek government pardons or land grants for their efforts. There is a young boy, too, who follows, watches, and learns.

Wilson balances on a knife’s edge in re-creating the real life that fills this story, rounding out his two main characters by instilling in them a steely-eyed savagery, an ability to coldly reason and plot their advantages, and a blessed and unexpected charity. Rich language and complex characterizations make this tragedy the marvel it is, and Wilson is positively Shakespearean in adding comic relief with the occasional buffoonery of some of the rovers.

The raid depicted in this novel is a recorded event that took place in September 1829. Batman led an attack on a large group of Plindermairhemener clan aborigines who were headed by the witch Manalargena.

"Foremost among that singular horde was Manalargena who carried across his shoulder a waddy shaped from blackwood and stained with the filth of war…his wife had ochred his hair into long ringlets as precise as woven rope…the beard on his chin was matted, and the lank twists as red as a rooster’s wattle jiggled as he walked about…"

On this raid, Batman takes hostage a young mother and her child. He sends the mother off to the penal colony down south while he keeping the child in his own household. But it is Black Bill we watch with such terrible intensity throughout the novel, praying that his motivation becomes, if not acceptable, at least understandable. He knows Manalargena, and hosted his band at his home.

Riveting though the story may be, it is the clear and gorgeous prose and rich imagining that held me. Wilson captured the sense and sound and feel of the men as they trekked through snow and rain, trailing the aborigines as they fled the bloodthirst.

"The men had their ears bent listening to Bill's tale and when he paused to take a sip of his tea they also raised their mugs and drank. The Vandemonian flicked a finger at the billycan in the fire for another serving and the boy obliged by lifting it away with a stick and pouring using his sleeve tugged over his fingers against the burning handle. With a fresh steaming mug in his hands Bill went on and the men listened now like he was giving scripture."

There is no apology in this work: we feel transported to a different time. Whatever dislocation non-Australians might feel with the language, the weapons, the plants and animals unique to the continent ‘down under’, one knows in one’s heart and gut the bald truth of the white man’s sense of ‘manifest destiny’: What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine. That each of our continents experienced it makes this terrible tale no less potent.

Originally published by Allen & Unwin in Australia in 2011, this book won the Vogel Literary Award there in that year. It has also won the 2013 Tasmania Literary Award Margaret Scott Prize, and the 2012 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award. It was shortlisted for the numerous other awards. It deserves all this attention for as a debut this is an extraordinary achievement. For more history of the time and place recorded in this fiction, see this Wikipedia entry for Ben Lomond Mountain in northeast Tasmania.

It turns out that Black Bill was real, too. His name was William Ponsonby. Rohan Wilson shares with us the experience of writing his first novel and winning the Vogel Prize. His writing schedule and methods are revealed here in an interview.

This book is being released in the United States in February 2014 by Soho Publishing and is available for pre-order. I was given a copy in exchange for an honest review.


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Foreign Gods, Inc. by Okey Ndibe

Readers of this blog are treated to two reviews for this book, one by guest blogger, Zak, who won the giveaway for this title, and one by myself. Zak gives a well-rounded account of the novel and with our two reactions, you get a good idea of how the novel reads.


ZAK: Okey Ndibe’s Foreign Gods, Inc is a welcome insider’s tale about West Africa and West African émigrés to the US. The setting is specific to southeastern Nigeria, and in some ways the book could be considered a pastiche following the descendants of the people in Things Fall Apart, but most of its themes are universal enough to reveal essential truths all readers should be able to relate to.

The story follows the flailing attempts at success by a New York cab driver from Nigeria named Ikechukwu “Ike” Uzondu. A decade after graduating from Amherst with a degree in economics, Ike is an educated man stuck in a blue-collar job he considers beneath him. Even while in college in the US, he seems to have clung to the delusion that America is a place where immigrants are greeted at the airport with duffle bags full of cash, a Hollywood star for a spouse, and the keys to a mansion with a fully stocked six-car garage. In the shock that followed his eventual disillusionment, Ike allowed himself to be repeatedly conned, bullied, and beaten down. He is on the cusp of middle age with nothing to show for a decade of work except an empty apartment, incipient alcoholism, and a growing gambling problem. (See, the themes DO work for any culture!) Well, he actually does have a lot of generous, gregarious friends who try to reach out to help him and a family back home, but his priorities are for wealth and status, and people are just tools to reaching those ideals. When Ike discovers an ongoing fad among the super-rich for buying up “primitive” idols from foreign cultures, he concocts a scheme to return to his village in Nigeria and steal the image of the local war god; Ngene, which has been in his family’s care for generations; and then to sell it to a gallery owner for a king’s ransom.

So, Ike is not a particularly sympathetic character, and aside from a few good friends in NYC, we don’t encounter many through the rest of the book. The trip home to his village is like Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street recast in contemporary Nigeria; portrayed as a nation of ignoramuses ruled by the vulgar; where the credulous are fleeced by the marginally more clever; a place where there is no ladder to climb; where police exist only to remind people how small and powerless they are; and where every encounter with authority is an exercise in humiliation, prostration, and potential danger. (To be fair NYC is shown in largely the same light.) Is this the whole story of Nigeria? No. But there’s enough truth in the presentation of what life is like for many people living in countries with weak institutions and limited recourse to legal protection to believe that Ndibe knows what he’s talking about.

The only wholly likeable characters are Ike’s grandmother and his old uncle, Osuakwu, who is the custodian of the local god whom Ike plans to steal. Ndibe thankfully resisted any urge to paint the traditionalist Osuakwu as a saint or mystic—the men who gather daily in the shrine with Osuakwu tell crude jokes and pursue petty rivalries—but Ndibe convincingly implies the constancy of their traditional values has let them retain something most of those around them have lost: their sanity. This may include Ike.

The weak point in the book is Ike himself. He is not a hero or even an antihero. We know he was talented enough to win what must have been a coveted scholarship to come study in America, but he shows few hints of any talent or drive other than his attempt to rip off his relatives. Even his “plan” for getting the god isn’t very clever. He is mostly shown as weak-willed, or at least someone whose will has failed him at critical moments in his life. When he’s not crumbling before his bullying wife or a slick art dealer, he’s making inappropriate stands against the wrong people (his religiously deranged mother) at the wrong time (customs agents at the Lagos airport.) If he were a complete loser, he wouldn’t have had such engaging friends, but whatever charms he used to win them over in the first place are never shown, and I felt not so much that I couldn’t relate to Ike as much as he seemed a hollow shell.

The main character’s limited appeal notwithstanding, I’d recommend Foreign Gods, Inc to anyone looking to understand a little more of the African, post-colonial, or immigrant experiences. There were some very interesting parallels between the families “left behind” in this book and those in Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names, in that those who stayed behind in the old country have absolutely no sympathy or any idea that they should perhaps have sympathy for those who emigrated. It's also very amusing that Nigerians apparently send those same ridiculous emails to each other, not just to foreigners! The language in the book is also great, and I especially like the way Ndibe shows how academic jargon is its own kind of pidgin, but one that expresses class identity more than actual content. This is often a very funny book, but ultimately more bitter than sweet in its outlook.

------------Now, this is my take on this second novel of Ndibe's-----------------

TRISH: This picaresque bildungsroman, spiked with folktales, horrors, and gorgons aplenty, features a young man seeking his fortune in an un-fortun-ate world. The young man discovers instead his own base nature. To be honest, I thought this was going to be a funny, light-hearted read. I have grown accustomed to comic novels that harbor hideous truths. But Ndibe does something entirely different with this fiction. He uses a nineteenth or early twentieth-century sensibility and style in this novel with some success, and creates a tragi-comic naïf for whom we reserve a special pity. Only the time frame of the novel and its actual language are modern: the rest is as old as man himself.

Ike (pronounced Ee-kay) is a Nigerian immigrant to the United States. Although he attended a fancy New England college and graduated magna cum laude in economics, his thick Nigerian accent bars him from landing a job in his field. He struggles to find paying employment, finally landing a job as a taxicab driver. At the same time he searches for a wife to give him the infamous green card legal status he requires for higher paying low-level jobs for which he is (over)qualified.

This lacerating novel peels back the veneer to uncover the reality of immigrant life in the United States and in the home country for an educated man. Ike struggles mightily to rustle up the needed cash to return home in response to repeated requests by his family, but he also uses his visit to Nigeria to steal the effigy of a deity from his native village to sell on the New York art market. With this, he plans to vanish his financial woes and make his fortune.

Whirled about and confused in the maelstrom of humanity on two continents, Ike resembles a modern Don Quixote, though he seeks the good life promised by America rather than the chivalry, human goodness, and true love sought by Quixote. Like Quixote, Ike comes to his senses occasionally, only to sink back into a feverish belief that his dreams will come true. Comic elements abound (two bribe-taking customs sessions, a visit to a corrupt politician’s home, an interview with a Nigerian Christian pastor, as well as the absurdity of a high-end art market for religious deities), and although we are ready to laugh through much of the book, we come to realize this horrible dream is really true, and Ike is desperately spiraling out of control into the black hole of penury and despair.

Foreign Gods reads like a big short story, partly because of the ending, and partly because the time frame is short. We have character development but not resolution. We grow to like, if not admire, the character of Ike. He is more acted upon than actor, since he can’t seem to come to grips with the world in which he lives. He is perhaps not very clever, despite his degree, for he is guilty of the basest naiveté when it comes to his get-rich-quick plan. He is a good man at heart, but we onlookers know that will probably not be enough to get him through.

And if our reactions are not enough, here is Janet Maslin's take at the New York Times. This book was sent to me by Soho Crime in return for an honest review.


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GIVEAWAY -- Foreign Gods, Inc. by Okey Ndibe -- ends 12/17/13

Soho Press is publishing Okey Ndibe's second novel Foreign Gods, Inc in early January 2014. I was fortunate enough to get two Advance Reader copies of this novel and would be happy to share one of my copies with an interested reader of my blog. You will certainly receive it in time for Christmas.

Ikechukwu Uzondu, though a recent magna cum laude graduate of Amherst College, is driving a cab in New York City. He has a thick Nigerian accent, a gambling habit, and a manipulative ex-wife. When Ike hears that an art boutique in New York is looking for authentic foreign deities, he hatches a scheme to return to his native village to steal the effigy of Ngene, the god of war. While this might sound like a bad idea even to those of us who don't believe in "the gods," Ike seems to think it will solve his problems. It may, but perhaps not in the way he is hoping.

I haven't had the chance to read this title myself, but I thought I'd share my extra copy now in case someone out there wants to read it with me, and possibly post a review in this blog. We can do a conversational question-and-answer review, or just each write our own thinking.

Sign up below with the secure form below. We only have seven days for this giveaway so don't delay!

12/17/13: We have a winner! Thank you everyone!

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Crashed by Tim Hallinan

”For most people who write thrillers and mysteries, creating crooks is more than half the fun. They’re intrinsically interesting because they’ve rejected the standard set of values and, since we all need values of some kind, they’ve invented their own. It was probably just a matter of time before I came up with a series that’s essentially all crooks.”—Tim Hallinan

Tim Hallinan wrote the above in the “Author’s Note” to the first book in his new series featuring Junior Bender, "Burglar to the Stars," in Los Angeles. For those readers unfamiliar with Hallinan’s work, he has written a series set in Thailand featuring Poke Rafferty, a travel writer with a heart of gold and karma to burn. Rafferty makes a lot of sense (and friends) defending the underdog in unequal transactions and seems to grasp the essentially welcoming Thai society is not as morally deficient as it is painted by some critics, but has a strong sense of values that are easily transgressed by unwitting or unthinking Westerners.

In the Junior Bender series Hallinan turns his eagle eye on Los Angeles for a change. The reader can tell he is having a blast with the range of folks and the shifting sense of morality he encountered there. Hallinan still has a strong instinct for protecting the underdog: witness his lack of judgment about the drug addiction of his latest fictional charge, a young female actress on a downward spiral snookered into making a porn film. These are verboten subjects in Western educated circles but Hallinan doesn’t let it faze him. He has the “come to me with your handicaps” generosity of the Dalai or the Pope. And if those two men of god will fix your afterlife, Hallinan, and his henchman Junior Bender, will fix the here-and-now.

The pace in this novel is fast—the whole thing takes place in a couple of sleepless days (the reader may experience this also)-- and the subject matter is edgy. California is once again on the leading edge in reformulating “moral man.” But everybody is a crook of some sort, as Hallinan said in the opening quote to this review, so one has to roll with the attitude and take the material for the laughs. Moral insights are there, however, as they always are with Hallinan’s books, which makes it thought-provoking and good discussion material. How far would we be willing to go, given the same constraints or circumstances?

Check out the genesis of this series on Tim Hallinan’s website. Hallinan is a man who doesn’t let a little negativity let him down. When his long-time publisher didn’t want an L.A. series, Hallinan self-published until Soho Crime picked him up. Now he has sold the film rights and the audio rights. But he’s got it going on now: visit this review by blogger and former Valley girl Nancy O.


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Kittyhawk Down by Garry Disher

"[Challis] heard a loud chaffcutter rattle overhead and looked up. It was a 1942 Kittyhawk fighter."

This second in the mystery series set on a peninsula close by Melbourne on the southern coast of Australia shows Disher at his equivocal best. The police officers central to this series are good people at heart, but they’ve got issues…which interfere with their policing. Once again, we find wicked townspeople committing crimes, but it is the police we are watching, horrified as they bumble their way into yet another indiscretion. We fear that if we take our eyes from them for a moment, we will miss the next questionable (and objectionable) behavior.

Southern Australia never looked so lawless as in this spit of land popular with holiday-goers yet filled with low-rent year-rounders struggling to make crime pay. In this installment, we have a member of “International Most Wanted,” rapists, drug-pushers, marijuana growers, and baby-killers. All the while we sense a deep vein of Disher humor keeping the whole wildly improbable fiction from spilling over into downright absurdity. I like the way Disher thinks. He’s funny, but there is an edge there that reminds us of underlying truths.

Just a thought: for a story written on a narrow peninsula, there is precious little discussion of the sea. The peninsula isolation is complete even without Disher's mentioning shifting sands, the color of the water, or the quality of the air. It is unrelievedly dry and dusty. So is the rest of Australia, really, which makes us wonder what is the quality that makes this any different from any "bush" mystery. There is a coastal tang to the culture, then. One senses flip-flops and sees a few surfboards. The ocean creeps in unheralded and unremarked. There are no black people, and in fact, there are immigrants. One rarely (if ever) finds immigrants out "bush." Just a thought.

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The Dragon Man by Garry Disher

This first novel of the Hal Challis series by Garry Disher is disturbing. The setting is The Peninsula, a spit of land on the outskirts of Melbourne in Victoria Province. It is described as dry, even somewhat barren in places, and susceptible to drought and fire. Paradoxically it is surrounded by water on three sides--the kind of environs that gives us, in the age of global warming and extreme weather, immediate pause and a sense of foreboding. It is near a major city but removed from its hustle. It is populated by those with great wealth and those who can barely scrape together the wherewithal to make a meal. There is an annual influx of campers and holiday-goers escaping the even greater heat of the farther north. In this setting we meet the officers of a constabulary struggling, to a man, to stave off poverty, ennui, petty professional jealousies, inappropriate love, and finally, crime. None of them succeed with all of these.

As I struggled to express my unease with the underlying story in this “crime” series, I came across an essay written by Stepan Talty for the New York Times called "Stranger Than Fiction on the Cop Beat". Talty goes right to the heart of my unease by saying that the real cop stories are often funny and horrible at the same time: “how beautiful and sinister a thing the cop brotherhood can be” is how he puts it. Just so. By that standard, Disher must be writing something very close to the truth because his description of the men and women of law enforcement leaves us unsure of them, of the criminals among us, and even of ourselves (the curious, the gawkers, the next-door-neighbors). There is a serial killer on The Peninsula, but it is the police that hold our attention and engage our emotions. The sense of dread is amplified by watching them.

A reviewer for a different book once wrote that some readers must like the characters they read about, or approve of their choices, or sympathize with their point of view, but not all novels will give us that. Well, this one won't. But readers who pick up a crime novel should expect, in some small way, to come away unsettled. This series looks like it will deliver.

Garry Disher has a long string of novels to his name and has received honors, awards and prizes, but this series has only been published in the United States beginning in 2004. There are now six books in the Challis series and U.S. publication is coming now at only a slight remove from publication in Australia. Disher discusses his books and provides an extract of the sixth Challis novel on his website. His female character Sergeant Ellen Destry began to take on a life of her own as the series progressed, so now the series can reasonably be called the Challis/Destry series.

Check it out. Australia without the bush has a different feel. Be prepared to be disconcerted.


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The Fear Artist by Timothy Hallinan

Hallinan has a series featuring Poke Rafferty, an Anglo-Asian male living in Bangkok. In Hallinan’s hands, Bangkok becomes an international center of intrigue focused on its restive Muslim south and juggling its overheated, overaged male spy population who had happily retired themselves only to be called back into harness. More importantly, Hallinan has created his most interesting and powerful female character yet, Ming Li.

Ming Li is the Anglo-Chinese step-sister of Poke and she aids his latest attempt to uncover a psychopath bent on destroying those who know his shadowy past. Young, (female), smart, (vulnerable), and irreverent, Ming Li blasts through accepted modes of spycraft to intuit actions of the players in advance. She does not spare her brother who, as a member of the male ruling class, had no need to learn lessons of body language and intent early on.

What I loved: 1) Poke Rafferty’s humanity. When attacked by a man with a gun, he manages to save his attacker before rushing off to save himself. Fearful as Poke might have been, he was a good man first. Rafferty is willing to believe the best of people he suspects, reserves judgment on their behalf, and stretches to preserve their basic dignity despite their iniquities—not including the really bad man who deserved everything coming to him. 2) Ming Li. Where Rafferty sees ambiguity, Ming Li cuts through the dross with a rapier mind and lays flat broad swathes of bad folk. 3) The way the author ratchets up the tension by having a long-winded Russian collaborator slow the action with pages-long detail at a critical moment when Rafferty (and readers!) just want the facts. It’s a gentle, funny way to tense us up and preserve forward momentum.

Hallinan did very well in raising the temperature of this thriller, but he didn't succeed without flaw: I disliked what I saw as the artificial character of “Treasure” when I first met her. Later, I realized how entirely possible it was to have such a character, neglected, abused, and exploited, when a psychopath is in charge. But the psychopath and the daughter felt like weak links.

And herein lie my only quibble: I would have preferred, were it at all possible, to have a bad man with more ambiguity, depth, and moral equivocation than our bad man here. He was so dark, he seemed like a caricature, and made everyone else a little like a caricature also. I believe the general outline of these characters and places are quite the real thing, with only a few of their sketch lines missing.

But you know what? It would have been a completely different book had Hallinan made it difficult for us with moral ambiguity. One could even argue the bad man wasn't as bad as he made out, since he did something uncharacteristic for his nature at the end of the book, one assumes because he was a father after all. And after the big event in the final pages, only one body was found instead of two, so one of the two that were "taken out" will be back, I fear. Which will it be?

I like Hallinan’s books very much, and when one needs a dose of the heat and flavour of Southeast Asia, or of Thailand's wonderful, complicated "anything goes" acceptance, I recommend having your moral compass realigned by reading a couple of Hallinan's books. Onward [Buddhist] soldier…and tell us more tales.


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Summer Reads from Four Bloggers

Porter Square Books

When: June 21, 2012
Where: Cambridge, MA
Porter Square Books

[Courtesy of http://portersquarebooks.com/]

Four bloggers shared their best recommendations for summer reads with us:

• Trish (Me!) of The Bowed Bookshelf @bowedbookshelf
• Tahleen Ovian Shamlian of Tahleen's Mixed-Up Files @tahleen
• Gail Yates of Ticket to Anywhere @Irisheyz77
• Marie Cloutier of BostonBibliophile @bostonbibliophl

I went first, and explained that although I read fiction and nonfiction, I chose fiction for this summer. You can click the book titles listed below to see why we chose each title.

Moonlight Downs by Adrian Hyland

If Jack's in Love by Stephen Wetta

It's Beginning to Hurt: Stories by James Lasdun

Revival by Scott Alarik

Tahleen reviews young adult books and she had a mix of great titles that she'd picked from the past several years.

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex

Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley

Paper Towns by John Green

Gail reads a mix of genres: fantasy, young adult, romance, science fiction and she has chosen the best of her blog for your delectation this summer.

Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers

Hold Still by Nina LaCour

The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

Hourglass by Myra McEntire

Marie, the Boston Bibliophile, chose some of the books in the past months that have rocked her worldview.

Pure by Andrew Miller

Second Person Singular by Sayed Kashua

Absolution by Patrick Flanery

Sorry to be getting this list out late to you, but think of it this way: summer is in full swing. If you missed on your choices so far, take a look at ours and begin again. You won't be sorry.

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Slash and Burn by Colin Cotterill

Readers meeting Dr. Siri and his cohorts for the first time in this eighth in the Siri series might very well wonder what they had stumbled into. Farce, cross-dressing, and the supernatural are not characteristics we instinctively think of when reviewing our knowledge of communist Laos, but Cotterill shows us that Laos has it all. A world more remote from everyday American life would be hard to find, but Cotterill manages to make a seventy-plus-year-old government coroner the best guide to Lao life.

Usually Lao communist government policies are the target of Cotterill’s acerbic wit, but this book introduces a group of Americans searching for the body of a downed pilot. The target thus shifts, and Cotterill uses history against the Americans. Carpet bombing of Laos during the Vietnam War era left scars on the country, killed or displaced hundreds of thousands of villagers, and led to the discovery of gold in the mountainous bombed areas of eastern Laos. (It‘s true, according to the New York Times in 2002.)

We are also given an outsiders’ view of the American election cycle in which senators buy their seats and fathers murder their own sons to further their personal fortunes or political ambitions. One could argue it looks like that to outsiders, particularly to outsiders viewing our current elections politics and who do not subscribe to American reliance on self as opposed to family, community, or larger social groups. But it is all done with a sense of parody and the absurd foremost.

One does have to wonder, however, how much the Lao characters are Lao in name only and how much a western mindset is overlaid their thoughts and actions. I have always wondered this about the series and can’t help but suspect these folks are too cosmopolitan and worldly-wise, despite their ages, for a country as closed and psychically distant as Laos. It’s all in Cotterill’s mind, and what a mind it is! Great fiction here, folks: Take the trip.


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Moonlight Downs by Adrian Hyland

I am thrilled to see a writer of Hyland’s gifts create a series with an Aboriginal heroine called Emily Tempest. Hyland’s use of language is so specific to the region that readers unschooled in the language of the Australian bush might not be able to comprehend. There is a glossary--for Aboriginal words and Australian slang—but still. For me, however, it is pure bliss.

Strains of music can be heard throughout the book and one is tempted to listen while reading to those artists mentioned to see what it is about each one that defines character. Lucinda Williams, the Louvin Brothers, Paul Kelly, the Warumpis, Slim Dusty, Nick Cave… If one has downloaded the book to an ereader, one can crank up the Pandora® app, select these artists for the background, plug in earphones, and get down to it.

Emily Tempest is half white Australian and half native Aborigine, which gives her entree to both circles. Descriptions of her native ground do not stint on the realities of bush dwellers’ (white and black) unusual habits and habitats. But she also has a fascination with geology, and that clinches my certainty that this is more than just a very funny mystery about an underreported culture—it is a mystery that goes to the very heart of Australia itself. The discussion of geology raises the level of discourse and makes one’s mind wander to the unique characteristics of the continent and its inhabitants.

Author Adrian Hyland won the Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction in 2008 for this debut novel and first book in a series. It suffered a title change when it was published in the United States to Moonlight Downs from the Australian title Diamond Dove. Since that early success, Hyland has produced another title in the series: Gunshot Road. It is likewise published in the United States by Soho Press and both are available as ebooks.

Hyland himself worked in Central Australia for ten years as a community developer in remote Aboriginal communities, so knows whereof he speaks. He has a clear eye and sense of the absurd that allows us to revel in a remarkable indigenous culture. The beauty of the Australian bush comes through strongly—its riches and treasures are celebrated. Hyland also wrote Kinglake-350 about the devastating bushfires in the state of Victoria in 2009, and which is considered a masterpiece of reportage. It has been shortlisted for the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Nonfiction in 2012.


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