September

 

California lawyer Evan Delaney has survived an insane religious cult and a death-fetishist serial killer, and in Jericho Point, the third novel in Meg Gardiner's crime series, she has another set of very deadly problems to deal with. The trouble begins with the gruesome murder of a young girl at a Santa Barbara party attended by Jesse's immature, wayward brother P.J. Turns out the dead girl was an accomplished identity thief, and Evan was her last victim. Sucked into a dangerous whirlpool of crime, violence, and rock and roll, Evan and Jesse must outfight a pair of vicious loan sharks, navigate some fresh wrinkles in their incredibly complicated relationship, and identify a demented killer within the ranks of Santa Barbara's would-be celebrities.

Mission Canyon, the last Evan Delaney novel, was one of my favorite thrillers in forever (the first installment, China Lake, had problems, but was still pretty great overall). Jericho Point falls somewhere in between its too predecessors. It's an extremely fun read, a propulsive hybrid of mystery and thriller, with expertly drawn scenes of tension and suspense and some truly fantastic character-building. And Gardiner's spiky, sassy prose is, as ever, a delight. I do have some issues with the novel that prevent it from reaching the heights of Mission Canyon, though.

Problems first: Jericho Point's Achilles Heel is that the plot keeps slipping out of Gardiner's control. It's not poorly constructed at all, but it's labyrinthine and convoluted to the point where the pacing gets jerky as different parts of the story get focus and other fall into the background. There's a lack of cohesion, especially in the middle segments where the book – like so many mystery novels before it – sags under the weight of so many rapidly intersecting plot points. The final quarter of the novel really gets back on track, as things start clicking into place in time for the action climax. I like big, complicated plots, but they're awfully difficult to consistently maintain over three hundred and fifty pages. My only other significant gripe is that Gardiner's tendency to slip into cartoonishness – the grab-bag of sneering baddies, Evan careening from one over-the-top encounter to another – sometimes undercuts the serious stuff a little.

A couple of plotting snarls don't make this a bad novel, though. Not by a long shot. Jericho Point, like all the Evan Delaney books, is inventive and funny and quick, but there's a dark undercurrent to it that sets it apart from other exciting thrillers. When Evan is horrifyingly assaulted by two thugs by the side of the road, she suffers from realistic post-traumatic stress. She doesn't shake off such a harrowing experience and bounce fresh-faced to the next adventure like Nancy Drew. Jesse is still haunted by the events of the last book and beyond, even to the point where he seriously considers suicide. Evan's flirtation with sexy fighter pilot Marc isn't a cute subplot, it's a very real and frightening threat to Evan and Jesse's relationship. Gardiner's characters go through insane stuff, but they remain human. That, for me, is perhaps Gardiner's greatest strength as an author: following through on the psychological toll that being protagonists in a crime series takes on her characters. Evan and Jesse are rich, complex characters, and they resonate. I do wish Evan was a bit more flawed at times; she can feel a tiny bit Mary Sue-ish at times, always ready with the perfect quip.
 

The supporting cast are somewhat flimsier than the two protagonists, but there's plenty of depth there, too. Jesse's passive-aggressive family, for example, are so sharply portrayed it seems like they just walked out of a Jonathan Franzen novel (P.J. in particular will make you want to give him a hug and punch him in the face, at the same time). The book's villains are a little too uniformly psychotic for my taste, although the vile Murphy Ming is memorably grotesque. I would have liked more of Sin Jimson, the snaky, manipulative stepdaughter of an aging rock star; she's a character I could imagine popping up again to wreak fresh havoc.
 

Characters aren't the only things Gardiner can write: Evan's narration is laden with pop culture references, playful wordplay, quirky, poetic descriptions and loads of delicious snark. Her dialogue is usually crisp and pleasingly screwball, although when events takes a heavy turn, it hums with tension. And the woman can write suspense and action like nobody's business: the huge final sequence, set on an oil rig, is a nightmarish tour de force of escalating terror. I like my thrillers to go big and wild for the climax, and Meg Gardiner always delivers on that front. She even dispatches one of the novel's bad guys in as gruesome and creative a manner as I've ever encountered in a novel.

 

Jericho Point is not a perfect thriller (it's just a hair too chaotic in its plotting), but it is an absolutely top-drawer one, with strong prose and deeply compelling characters. Meg Gardiner is slowly getting more visibility as an author (particularly after Stephen King's article praising the Delaney series in Entertainment Weekly), and hopefully she'll eventually receive all the attention and accolades she deserves. With Jericho Point, the Evan Delaney series continues to delight, and I'm already looking forward to seeing what Gardiner will throw at Evan and Jesse in the next volume.

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill, 2007

The ghost came to his feet, and as he rose, his legs moved out of the sunlight and painted themselves back into being, the long black trouser legs, the sharp crease in his pants. The dead man held his arm out to the side, the palm turned toward the floor, and something fell from the hand, a flat silver pendant, polished to a mirror brightness, attached to a foot of delicate gold chain. No, not a pendulum, but a curved blade of some kind. It was like a dollhouse version of the pendulum in that story by Edgar Allan Poe. The gold chain was connected to a ring around one of his fingers, a wedding ring, and the razor was what he had married. He allowed Jude to look at it for a moment, and then twitched his wrist, a child doing a trick with a yo-yo, and the little curved razor leaped into his hand. --- (page 56)

Heart-Shaped Box is a finely wrought gem of a novel. The dust jacket proclaims it to be a book of spine-tingling horror, and it is, but it's so much more. It features a complex, unusual, incredibly likable protagonist and a surprisingly sensitive and beautifully drawn love story, as well as being highly thrilling and uniquely scary. To top it off, the novel is wrapped up in idiosyncratic, intricate, chilling, funny, occasionally gorgeous prose.

The concept begins with pure simplicity: a ghost is offered for sale on the Internet. Aging heavy-metal rock star Jude Coyne buys it for a joke, only to find the ghost all too real--and now it's out to claim his soul. From here, the plot gently unfolds, twisting, turning and deepening with ever chapter, as Joe Hill cheerfully ignores the constraints of genre and structure. "Original" is a word that gets bandied about a lot in book reviews, but Box is as starkly original as it gets.

I began the novel expecting a traditional ghost story, which follows a fairly simple pattern: Ghost is introduced, ghost haunts main character, scary things happen, ghost is destroyed in deus ex machina ending. There's nothing inherently wrong with this kind of pattern, but it's rarely conducive to a really memorable read. Hill throws the classic pattern (and the much overused single-location trope) out the window. His ghost is more of an aggressive thriller villain than a creepy specter.

It's a poorly kept secret that Joe Hill is the son of horror master Stephen King. Frankly, King hasn't written a novel this good in many years and, despite the shared bloodlines and genre, there are no similarities between the two. Hill's lean, agile, playful, dialogue-heavy style bears no resemblance to King's rambling, galumphing prose. Hill's powers of characterization and sense of humanity far outstrips his father's. King has never created a character as totally believable and multi-dimensional as Judas Coyne.

It's Jude's journey that really elevates the novel. Hill lets him develop slowly, filling in his back story gradually. He goes from being an unlikable antihero to a courageous, flawed, redeemable hero. What a fantastic progression. His relationship with the woman he calls "Georgia" (her real name is Marybeth) is layered and surprisingly sweet. Hill's dialogue in their scenes together is as sharp as Craddock's deadly razor.

Hill, like his father, doesn't focus too much on the how and why of the supernatural world and there are a few plot points that he basically ignores and doesn't explain (say, why Jude's dogs are the only reliable protection against Craddock). A few guidelines to govern the rules of ghosts and hypnotism would have been nice. Still, you can't fault him for originality: you have to love Craddock literally cramming himself down the throat of the man he's possessing.

So what do we have here? A twisty, unpredictable plot, two highly memorable main characters, excellent dialogue, beautiful writing, some true jolts of horror. Box is, on the surface, a simple ghost story, but it's really an exploration of death and redemption and a smart, literate examination of Judas Coyne. A wonderful book on several levels, and especially amazing when you consider that it's only Joe Hill's first novel.

NEXT UP: Lee Child's Bad Luck and Trouble.

Different Seasons by Stephen King

Different Seasons by Stephen King, 1982

I've read a lot of Stephen King. Some of it is very, very good--The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (2005) is a personal favorite, as is the entire Dark Tower series--and some of it is self-indulgent and ponderous--Under the Dome (2009), for instance.

Different Seasons is mid-period King and it's one of his best efforts that I've read. The four novellas that make up the collection are not his usual small-town horror, although one of them has a strong supernatural element.

The opening novella, "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" is something of a modern classic, especially since the iconic film adaptation. The story is a terrific little gem, a bit hokey in segments (as much of King's work is), but ultimately a strong piece.

In the novella, wrongly convicted man Andy Dufresne becomes a beacon of hope in the darkness of Maine's Shawshank Prison, as told by another inmate:

You may also have gotten the idea that I'm describing someone who's more legend than man, and I would have to agree that there's some truth to that. To us long-timers who knew Andy over a space of years, there was an element of fantasy to him, a sense, almost, of myth-magic, if you get what I mean. The story I passed on about Andy refusing to give Bogs Diamond a head-job is part of that myth, and how he kept on fighting the sisters is part of it, and how he got the library job is part of it, too. . . but with one important difference: I was there and I saw what happened, and I swear on my mother's name that it's all true. The oath of a convicted murderer may not be worth much, but believe this: I don' t lie. --- (pages 38-39)

Number two in the collection is "Apt Pupil," a long, shuddery tale of a parasitic relationship between an old Nazi war criminal hiding out in the States and a sadistic young boy. This is King outside of his comfort zone and it's a triumph. The novella is far scarier than most of King's horror novels and is a well-constructed thriller aside from a few moments that don't ring quite true (the initial meeting between Dussander, the Nazi, and Todd, the boy, is a good example).

The third story is "The Body," the tale of four young boys on a quest to find the body of a kid who was hit by a train. Technically, it's well done, but the main characters themselves become grating over the course of the novella and there's just a little too much sap. Still, it's a fairly successful entry in the collection.

It's the fourth novella, "The Breathing Method" that lingers most in my memory. It's really two stories--one concerns a bizarre gentleman's club in New York and the other is a Gothic tale of the supernatural. Both stories pack a wicked punch and King's prose is knife-sharp.

Overall, it's an excellent collection. All of the novellas are entertaining in their way. "The Breathing Method" is probably my personal favorite, but they're all well-crafted stories. King's prose is confident and strong, even though faults that will become more annoying as time goes by (folksiness overload, incredibly obvious symbolism) are present.

Different Seasons is a vastly superior collection to King's next one, Four Past Midnight (1990), which shows King at his weakest. Different Seasons is Stephen King at the height of his talent. It makes me wonder why King has produced so much mediocre material over the past few years. Sometimes he seems to be trying too hard, sometimes he's trying too little. He should look back at this collection and all the things he did right in it.

NEXT UP: Drums of Autumn, the fourth novel in Diana Gabaldon's fabulous Outlander Series.