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.

May

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, 2006

Oh, man. How long has it been since I've read a novel that was this well-written, this sharp, this thrilling, and this much fun? A really long time. The Lies of Locke Lamora is fantastic, y'all. It's the kind of book where just about everything works just as it's supposed to, where you can find yourself excited, horrified, amused and shocked all in a row. The fact that this is author Scott Lynch's first novel is kind of staggering, because Lies is a crisp, vivid, perfectly calibrated read from start to finish.
 

The novel is set in a sprawling, fantastical city called Camorr that's a mix between Venice and London. Our (anti)hero is Locke Lamora, a silver-tongued conman who leads a group of thieves called the Gentlemen Bastards. The Bastards gleefully plunder from the nobles of Camorr, right under the nose of the city's most formidable crime boss. Locke's life of merry derring-do is plunged into chaos with the arrival of the Gray King, a mysterious figure who starts a deadly war in the city's underworld – and he wants Locke's help.
 

Where do you even start with a book like this? Every just worked, start to finish. The novel is fat, over seven hundred pages long, but the pacing is so good that it just zips by. The plotting – my God, the plotting is fabulous. It's somehow completely straightforward and deftly complex, a mixture of fantasy thriller and crime caper that's so logical you wonder why you don't see it more often. Lynch is as good a conman as his protagonists; he's got a real knack for smooth plot twists and tricky authorial maneuvers that always took me by surprise (seriously, be ready to yell “No!” out loud at least twice). And I know I already mentioned the pacing, but seriously: absolutely top-notch. It's a common gripe, especially when dealing with a long fantasy novel, that the pacing is “off” or “slow.” Not here. This novel is perfectly calibrated. Even the constant flashbacks interspersed throughout the narrative fit without bogging things down. There's the odd tangent that strays from the main plot, but nothing like the myriad of subplots that clog the novels of Jordan or Martin. Lynch's plot is clean and crisp.
 

Lynch's worldbuilding is terrific, too. His fictional universe is a complicated and fascinating hybrid of medieval fantasy, steampunk and even an intriguing dash of sci-fi. The mythology and politics of Camorr are integrated into the story perfectly (no artificial info-dumps for Lynch). Instead, he builds his world in a natural way, while still keeping the story front and center. His lavish and tactile descriptions of the city are superbly handled, for the most part; there's plenty of description, but the pace of the story never lags because Lynch is busy describing a church spire or something.

His writing is self-assured, smooth and excellent. Great facility with language, and a Diana Gabaldon-like talent for immersion through careful description. You can see, hear and smell his world – which, thanks to his Quentin Tarantino streak, is not always pleasant. His dialogue is a huge highlight, too. It's incredibly colorful, nimble, often laugh-out-loud funny and features some of the most creative and lyrical vulgarity I've ever read. There's the occasional stylistic hiccup, but nothing that would rise above the level of a personal preference.
 

Most novels, in my opinion, live or die based on the characters, and thankfully, Lies has a cast jam-packed with great ones. At first, I thought Locke and his fellow thieves might end up a bit too cookie-cutter to be compelling protagonists. Nope. I was very, very wrong. Locke is one of my new favorite characters. He's devious, short, quick on his feet, incredibly proficient at all forms of deception, fiercely loyal, and completely useless in a fight. I ended up totally adoring him. And I loved Jean, the badass bruiser with a gentle heart. Even the supporting players get fully developed characteristics. The main villain is perhaps a bit mustache-twirl-y, but he's appropriately formidable, and he gets a nice dash of development towards the end of the novel.
 

If I have a nitpick about the novel as a whole, it would be the lack of introspection on the part of the main characters. The novel has so much forward momentum that it seems like we don't often slow down to get inside Locke's head. Of course, Lynch makes up for this with flashbacks that illuminate the characters' pasts, but I still would have liked a bit more internal narrative. Also, there are a few super minor plot shortcuts taken throughout the book, which are acceptable, but sometimes a tad noticeable. But yeah, those are both very, very minor issues in an otherwise stellar novel.
 

In summary, Lies is wickedly clever, often hilarious, and cruel enough to make George R. R. Martin proud. It's one of the most purely entertaining books I've read in a long time, and it's crafted with incredible skill. Most exciting of all, there are more adventures to come; although Lies could stand on its own well, it's just the first in a projected seven-book series, thank God. I'm not sure I could have let this world and these people go after just one novel. Bring on book two.

I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman, 2010

I'd Know You Anywhere begins with Eliza Benedict, a seemingly ordinary suburban mother in her late thirties, receiving a letter. It's from Walter Bowman, the man who kidnapped her and held her hostage when she was fifteen. Now on death row for the rape and murder of another girl, Walter is about to executed. And he wants a favor.
 

From this simple, chilling premise, Laura Lippman weaves a novel of incredible psychological tension and astounding depth. The book isn't quite a thriller (there's no action or pyrotechnics, no real mystery to be solved), but it reads like one, a white-knuckle journey full of subtle horror. This book gave me a genuinely sleepless night, I was so involved in the story. It's horrifying because the characters are so well drawn and the emotions so expertly evoked - not because Lippman splatters blood and gore all over the place.

A novel like this can only work if the author is exceptionally talented at sketching complicated and interesting characters. Lippman is. In Eliza, we have a very unusual and very complex protagonist, and in Walter, we have a chillingly realistic and strangely sympathetic villain. The interplay between these two characters provide the bulk of the novel's tension, but the pages are also crammed with colorful supporting characters, all realized with enormous sympathy, balance and intelligence. Even walk-on players like Eliza's liberal parents or a put-upon attorney have multiple dimensions.

Lippman is an extremely well-regarded crime writer, and it's easy to see why: she manages the very difficult trick of creating prose that is resoundingly literary (you would not mistake this novel for an airport mystery) while still being completely readable. She rarely uses flourishes or fancy devices to show you that she is writing, dammit. She just draws you in with the force of her storytelling; this novel is definitely a page-turner. If I have a critique - and it's extremely nitpick-y - it's that Lippman's dialogue sometimes has a touch of sameness to it.

The central question of the novel is the true nature of Eliza and Walter's somewhat twisted relationship. It's a complicated question with a complicated answer, and Lippman deals with it beautifully. It's an incredibly suspenseful device, and it's absolutely to Lippman's credit that she doesn't make it into a big twist at the end. The solution to the mystery - if you can even call it a mystery - is that Eliza and Walter understand each other in ways that no else does. To paraphrase Lippman's gorgeous title, they'd know each other anywhere.

Honestly, I wish there were more thrillers like this - novels that used emotion and character development to shock and thrill us, rather than cheap plot twists and gunfights. Ultimately, this is a novel about people who have a limited ability to understand their own emotions. What makes it amazing, in my opinion, is not only Lippman's deep understanding of grief and pain, but her equally great knowledge of strength and grace. For a novel as deep and dark as this one, it ends on a surprising moment of melancholy, deeply earned triumph.

Mission Canyon by Meg Gardiner

Mission Canyon by Meg Gardiner, 2008

People ask me whose fault it was. Who caused the accident? Where did the blame lie--on reckless driving, blinding sunlight, a sharp curve in the road? Hidden in their questions is a deeper query. Did Jesse bring it on himself? Was he careless? Perhaps he rode his bike into the middle of the road. Perhaps he insulted God. Maybe that's why he won't be walking me down the aisle, they imply.

What people want to hear, I think, is that the accident was fate, or foolishness. The hit-and-run killed Isaac Sandoval outright. It left Jesse Blackburn broken on the hillside, struggling to reach his friend's body. And people wanted me to tell them that yes, it was the victims' fault. Jesse should have done something different, should have looked over his shoulder or flossed his teeth every day. What they want me to say is no, of course it could never happen to them. They want reassurance, and I can't give it to them.

When they ask me whose fault it was, I've always said: the driver's. It was the fault of the man who sat behind the wheel of a satin-gray BMW, arcing up a narrow road into the foothills of Santa Barbara, with one hand on the steering wheel and one hand caressing the hair of the woman whose head bobbed above his lap. It was the fault of the man getting the blow job. It was the fault of the guy who got away.

That's what I always told people. Until now.---- (page 1)

I hesitate to say that Mission Canyon is a perfect thriller, but for me, it comes darn close. It ticks every single one of my boxes, fulfills every one of my requirements for what makes a great thriller. Gardiner is one sharp, funny, incisive writer, and she knows how to spin a twisty, nail-biting plot. Her characters are a terrific mixture of quirky and totally human, and unlike China Lake, the first book in the Evan Delaney series, the villain is both unexpected and truly scary. This is one of the best mysteries I've read in a long time.

The book's plot stems from a seemingly simple incident: while biking in Santa Barbara, best friends Jesse Blackburn and Isaac Sandoval are mowed down by a reckless driver. Isaac is killed and Jesse is paralyzed from the waist down. Years later, the driver, a white-collar criminal wanted for embezzlement, returns to Santa Barbara, dredging up Jesse's guilt and desire for revenge. As strange new facts come to life and a pack of ruthless gangsters come to town, Jesse's fiancee Evan is drawn into an impenetrable and deadly tangle of shocking secrets, far-reaching cover-ups and cold-blooded murder.

I'll get my only main criticism out there at the start: the opening chapters are a slippery info dump. Gardiner introduces too many characters with too many unlikely connections in a small space of time, and it comes off as a little frenzied. That's okay, though, because once the clumsy introductions are past, the plot takes off like a rocket and never lets up.

Like all good mysteries, Mission Canyon's center is layers of character interactions. Jesse's barely controlled rage, his intense survivors' guilt and his burning hatred of the man responsible for his paralysis comes across beautifully, as do Evan's complex feelings about marrying someone who is handicapped. Their relationship, nicely established in China Lake, is really put through the wringer in this installment; their no-holds-barred arguments are truer and deeper than you might expect from characters in a thriller. Jesse's friendship with Isaac's brother Adam is another example of Gardiner's ability to depict strikingly real relationships in the middle of a blisteringly fast-paced, high-concept narrative.

Not all of Gardiner's characterizations are as true to life; she's not above writing a caricature. In China Lake, the caricatures were the villains, a device that just didn't work well. Here, we have Evan's cousin Taylor, a glitzy, loud-mouthed lingerie saleswoman from the Midwest. Taylor may be cartoonish, but she's a lot of fun, injected in the narrative both as comic relief and as a sly way to display the kind of reaction that Evan's family might have to her marrying someone disabled. Thankfully, most of the novel's characters have more depth than Taylor; in fact, most of them have multiple layers that are peeled away before the end. Perhaps most importantly, for a thriller, the villains are all believably threatening and scary. Mickey Yago, the cold-blooded leader of i-heist, would have been an effective Big Bad, but in a book as packed as this one, he's merely a decoy.

The real villain is only unmasked at the novel's end, and there are a hell of a lot of twists before that revelation. This is one of those great plots that only clicks together when we have all the facts. Gardiner doesn't do predictable, and it's been a long time since a mystery writer has made me jump through so many hoops. I'm usually fairly adept at figuring out the structure of a story, but Mission Canyon had me on the edge of my seat nearly the entire time. And I did not see the endgame coming, even though everything fit together close to perfectly. Putting together a plot that good must have been incredibly difficult. While not everything in the story is completely plausible (a chase scene set in an old church is a bit of a stretch), Gardiner accomplishes the thing that every high-concept writer has to do: convince us that it is. Her characters are so well drawn and her pace so breathless that I rarely considered how delightfully nutty the book is in places. Her action scenes can be over-the-top, but she sells her characters so well as real people that they work anyway.

By the end, Gardiner has woven a complex and perfectly paced thriller with both an emotional punch and a serious funnybone. The way she blends the light and the dark, the pulse-pounding suspense and the quiet, searing emotion, is absolutely masterful. Mission Canyon is without a doubt one of the best mysteries I've read in a long time, and I can't wait to see where the series goes next. The further adventures of Evan and Jesse are looking awfully enticing.

NEXT UP: The cheerful hit YA novel, The Book Thief, which is a real knee-slapping good time. Not.

Without Fail by Lee Child

Without Fail by Lee Child, 2002

"Better just to walk away now," he said.

They didn't, like he knew they wouldn't. They responded to the challenge by crowding in toward him, imperceptibly, just a fractional muscle movement that eased their body weight forward rather than backward. They need to be laid up for a week, he thought. Cheekbones, probably. A sharp blow, depressed fractures, maybe temporary loss of conciousness, bad headaches. Nothing too severe. He waited until the wind gusted again and raised his right hand and swept his hair back behind his left ear. Then he kept his hand there, with his elbow poised high, like a thought had just struck him.

"Can you guys swim?" he asked.

It would have taken superhuman self-control not to glance at the ocean. They weren't superhuman. They turned their heads like robots. He clubbed the right-hand guy in the face with his raised elbow and cocked it again and hit the left-hand guy as his head snapped back toward the sound of his buddy's bones breaking. They went down on the boards together and their rolls of quarters split open and coins rolled everywhere and piroutted small silver circles and collided and fell over, heads and tails. Reacher coughed in the bitter cold and stood still and replayed it in his head: two guys, two seconds, two blows, game over. You've still got the good stuff. He breathed hard and wiped cold sweat from his forehead. Then he walked away. Stepped off the pier onto the boardwalk and went looking for Western Union.--- (page 19)

One of the things that kept cropping up in my mind while reading Without Fail was the durability of Lee Child's formula. After reading six or seven of his Jack Reacher novels, recurring patterns clearly start to form. In truth, most of the Reacher thrillers are pretty similar in structure. The setting, characters and details all change, but there's usually a comforting sense of familiarity to the way things are going to go down. We know from the start that it's going to end with Jack Reacher kicking some ass and then riding off into the sunset. It speaks to Child's grasp of storytelling and his terrific sense of pacing and tension that the ending is always white-knuckle anyway.

Another sign of Child's superiority is his ability to do new things with his basic formula, keeping the series feeling fresh even when very little about the novel's skeleton changes. Without Fail, like all of its predecessors, is a fantastic thriller/mystery with a twisty plot, lean writing and terrific action scenes. But it also contains some very finely wrought bits of character development and world-building that Child sneaks in with such finesse that it's easy to overlook, what with all the shooting and punching and such.

The plot: Jack Reacher is in Atlantic City when he's approached by an old ex-girlfriend of his brother's: Secret Service agent M.E. Froelich. Froelich has an unusual proposition for Reacher. She wants him to assassinate the Vice President-elect, Brook Armstrong. Froelich is running a security audit and wants to see if her system can be breached by a professional. However, a team of real assassins are closing in on Armstrong, and it falls to Reacher and Froelich to foil their plan and save the Vice President-- who knows more about his would-be killers than he's letting on.

The novel's basic premise is a little rickety, especially when the Secret Service takes on Reacher as a consultant, immediately making him privy to all of their classified intelligence. The novel's midsection is also a bit humdrum-- a lot of running around between the Secret Service office and various hotels and restaurants, not a lot of action, a couple of too-convenient plot devices. Having Reacher actively working for law enforcement is an interesting and atypical move, but it also makes us wait until the end for the usual sense of vigilante justice.

A slower pace isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it gives the novel time to develop a highly interesting subplot: Reacher dealing with the death of his brother and coming to terms with their difficult relationship through the lens of Froelich's memories. Reacher's family is a thematic undercurrent that has subtly run through the series (most notably in The Enemy) and Child prises apart Reacher's emotional armor with exceptional delicacy and understatement. Like many good writers, he lets the moments of emotional revelation come in dialogue rather than in description, and there are several conversations between Reacher and Froelich that are surprising in their emotional impact. The storyline's main Achilles heel is that Froelich herself is a fairly bland character, and having her serve as the Obligatory Love Interest feels both boring and a little cheap.

Much more interesting than Froelich is Frances Neagley, who makes her first appearance in the series here (she also shows up in Bad Luck and Trouble, a few books into the series). Violent, damaged, smart and insightful, Neagely is my favorite recurring character so far. She's one of the rare characters that is truly presented as Reacher's intellectual and tactical equal. It's a lot more interesting to give Reacher a potential love interest who, like him, is an emotionally scarred warrior (he's had way too many tough-but-vulnerable flings over the course of the series). Child keeps their relationship fairly low-key, not hinting too strongly at a romantic connection. Hopefully theirs is a relationship that will be explored further.

Without Fail is not the most dynamically plotted of the Reacher novels; the clues and twists are well-placed and deployed with Child's usual verve, but there's little that's highly shocking. Child seems to be setting up his bowling pins a bit too carefully in the opening segments. The novel hums along entertainingly until a big twist in the narrative about three-quarters of the way through. From there, things get kicked into high gear and yes, the finale is, as always, something special. This time the showdown takes place in a remote, snowbound Wyoming town. The last forty pages are a little masterpiece of building tension and the climax, while not as over-the-top as some, is masterful. I don't think I've ever read an author as accomplished at this kind of sequence as Child. I also liked the fact that the villains were not professional killers or assassins (although they're certainly deadly enough).

The parameters of the series are a bit too clear for my taste, it's true. I would love it if Child branched out a little more, exploring different stories and trying different methods of telling them. He could also work on more interesting supporting characters; there are several in Without Fail who make next to no impact, including the crucial character of Froelich. There have been encouraging signs throughout the series that Child is indeed trying out different things, such as Without Fail's surprisingly emotional subplot.

But let's face it: with a formula this rock-solid he doesn't really need to try new things. Child has already found a structure that more or less guarantees excellent thrillers, and Without Fail is another great one, despite a couple of saggy sections. I suppose the old ain't-broke-don't-fix-it adage applies. When the you-know-what is hitting the fan, very few writers can deliver the pulse-pounding tension and suspense like Lee Child. And even though I usually talk up the action and thriller elements, his writing is sometimes disarmingly sharp and insightful, even a bit poetic, in a hard-boiled sort of way. Good suspense doesn't really work unless you care, and Child does a wonderful job of making you care about where it all ends up, even though you know it'll end the way it always does: the victorious, lonely Jack Reacher taking a bus out of town.

NEXT UP: Mario Puzo's modern classic The Godfather.