Honor Among Thieves by James S.A. Corey

Published by Del Rey on March 4, 2014

The full title of this novel is Star Wars: Empire and Rebellion: Honor Among Thieves. It is the second novel in the Empire and Rebellion series. I did not read the first and I generally do not try to keep up with Star Wars novels (that would be a full time commitment in itself), but I read this one because I admired the work that the writing team known as James S.A. Corey did in The Expanse novels.

Most of Honor Among Thieves concerns a potential new weapon -- developed by a long-departed race -- that both the Empire and the Rebel Forces would like to acquire. A Rebel spy named Scarlet Hack tracked down information about its location but the information was stolen before she could steal it herself. Now the Empire is after the thief, along with Scarlet and Han Solo (and Chewbacca, of course). The chase leads them (and the Empire) to a planet that is hosting a conference attended by Princess Leia, who is there to do some fundraising. There are, naturally enough, a wealth of fights, space battles, smugglers, bounty hunters, dive bars, odd aliens, droids, and all the other elements that make Star Wars enjoyable.

In the meantime, the Rebel Forces need to find a new secret base. In an early chapter, Leia dispatches Luke Skywalker to check out a possible planet, but it's in the galaxy's equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle. That storyline disappears for a time, but Luke resurfaces in the final third of the novel as the story threads weave together.

Corey's skill with characters serves the story well. Han Solo is skeptical, sarcastic, roguish-- in a word, perfect. Han isn't the introspective type but Corey has him thinking about his life -- what he might have been but for meeting Luke Skywalker, what he might become. His friendships and alliances are still uncertain but he stands on the verge of change, of acquiring meaning in a self-centered life.

The story moves at hyperspeed. The plot -- well, this is an adventure story so there isn't much of a plot. The outcome is predictable but that makes it no less fun. I was easily and willingly swept along by the narrative. Yet despite its lack of depth, Honor Among Thieves does make a salient point. The Universe needs smugglers and thieves. They represent rebellion against order ... and thus freedom. It is a lesson that even the uptight Leia can appreciate.

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Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin

Published by Little, Brown and Company on January 14, 2014

John Rebus is a traditional old school cop, the kind often admired by fans of police procedurals ... so admired, in fact, that Saints of the Shadow Bible is the nineteenth Rebus novel. Rebus drinks too much, he's no good at relationships and even less good at following orders or respecting the chain of command, but his instincts for crime are sound and he's a relentless investigator. When he manages to remain employed, he solves crimes. Rebus is employed in Saints of the Shadow Bible, although his role as Detective Sergeant is a step down from the Detective Inspector position he once held -- and his ability to retain his warrant card until the end of the novel is once again called into question.

Jessica Traynor's one-car accident hardly seems to merit the attention of DI Siobhan Clarke and DS Rebus, but Jessica's father is well-connected. A routine inspection of the scene raises doubt that Jessica was driving when her car left the road. Jessica doesn't want to talk about it but Rebus and Clarke soon focus their attention on her boyfriend, Forbes McCuskey, whose father happens to be Justice Minister. Complications ensue.

The novel's title comes from Rebus' days at Summerhall, where he started as a Detective Constable. All Summerhall detectives belonged to the Saints of the Shadow Bible. The Saints were less than saintly when it came to police work. One of their cases involved a murder suspect who beat the rap, perhaps because he was a police informant. Thirty years later, Scotland having loosened its protection against double jeopardy, the Solicitor General plans to revive the case, which means investigating the surviving Saints. Nick Fox, an interesting character who is charged with that task, initially meets with the usual derision earned by cops who police cops but eventually turns into a central (and quite likable) character. Fox appeared in a couple of his own novels before Ian Rankin added him to the cast of the previous Rebus novel.

All of this takes place against a political background in which characters line up as favoring Scotland's independence or opposing its separation from the UK. One of the prominent political players is a former Saint of the Shadow Bible and has a great deal to lose if the new investigation reveals anything untoward about his conduct. The political conflict adds an interesting dimension to the novel.

Rebus has a pleasantly gruff and abrasive personality that has attracted a loyal readership. Rankin walks a fine line between creating a mean-spirited (and thus unlikable) character and one who is merely acerbic and sarcastic (and thus funny). The ultimate mystery (who committed the 30-year-old murder?) requires the unraveling of several other mysteries. Rankin juggles a number of plot threads but never drops any of them. None of the resolutions are particularly surprising but they don't need to be. The story is satisfying and following Rebus through the course of an investigation is always an enjoyable stroll.

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Bitter Eden by Tatamkhulu Afrika

First published in the UK in 2002; published by Picador on February 25, 2014

A letter and a mysterious package arrive for Thomas Smith, an aging, long-married man living in South Africa. The letter forces unwanted memories to surface, memories of Tom's capture and imprisonment, first by Italians and then by Germans, while serving as an intelligence officer in the North Africa Campaign during World War II. That brief introductory scene is followed by a captivating examination of a man who is bound not just by the fences and razor wire of prison camps (bitter Edens policed by fallen angels), but by unwanted and uncontrollable emotions.

In the context of confinement, Bitter Eden centers on Tom's struggle to define love and to separate his love for another man from sexual desire. As grim days pass in the Italian camp, Tom reluctantly forms relationships with two men. One is a friendship with a mothering gay man named Douglas to whom he feels no attraction but comes to regard with affection. The other involves an attraction (and eventual devotion) to a married man named Danny who is (for much of the novel) hostile to openly gay men. Tom and Danny bond naturally, having both been victims of paternal abuse. Tom does his best to deny his feelings for Danny, or to define them as nonsexual, a challenging task when Danny sleeps next to him in a platonic but naked embrace. Jealousies are aroused and magnified when a gay artist paints Tom in the nude and when Tom begins to perform with the openly gay cast of the prison theater.

Bitter Eden deals with a subject that might discomfort some readers, but does so with sensitivity and compassion and gorgeously descriptive prose. Yet no reader should be made uncomfortable by a story that is ultimately about love, "an emotion too often threatened by ennui to attain to the grand passion for which I have long since ceased to hope." Tatamkhulu Afrika (who was, like Tom, a POW in Italy and Germany) vividly conveys the drudgery and deprivation and fear that pervades life in a prison camp, as well as the uncertain life that follows liberation, "the now's new ambiences, changed circumstances, grown alien strictures and codes." The story is dramatic and eventful but most of the events are small and the story's power resides in their accumulative impact on Tom. The extreme circumstances that give rise to Tom's self-examination raise profound questions about the nature of love and bonding under trying circumstances.

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The Troop by Nick Cutter

Published by Gallery Books on February 25, 2014

This is the second tapeworm novel I’ve read in the last few months. As trends go, I doubt that tapeworms are likely to replace zombies, but they are sufficiently creepy and disgusting to lend themselves to thriller/horror novels. The Troop gives the tapeworm theme an interesting spin. The story involves a bunch of boys stranded on an island. It’s sort of like Lord of the Flies … with tapeworms.

Scoutmaster Tim Riggs had taken his troop of 14-year-olds to Falstaff Island for a camping trip. They believe they are the only humans on the island until Tim encounters Tom Padgett: a seriously thin man who is driven to eat, constantly and insatiably. And he’ll eat anything. Tim, a doctor, is disturbed to notice that something seems to be moving under the man’s skin. He doesn’t know that Padgett (known in the press as The Hungry Man or Typhoid Tom) is “a runaway biological weapon,” the product of an experiment gone wrong. Or maybe it hasn’t.

Fortunately, Boy Scouts know they need to Be Prepared, even for monster tapeworms. The Scouts are a diverse bunch. Three of the five are nice enough, one is a typical alpha pack bully, and the fifth is almost as monstrous as the killer tapeworms. Teachers expect to see Shelley’s “slack and pallid moon-face staring up at them from an oil-change pit at Mr. Lube” but Shelley seems destined for a crueler life.

True horror lies not in external threats but in the darkness that lives within us. True horror is reflected in the way people behave under extreme circumstances and in the extreme behavior of people who have been entrusted with leadership. Nick Cutter occasionally moves away from events on the island to reveal the cause of Padgett’s tapeworm infection and the government’s response to it through a series of journal entries, hearing transcripts, and magazine articles. Those passages remind us that not all monsters are artificially created.

Cutter has a flair for the truly vile, which is what readers generally want in horror fiction. His description of an unorthodox surgical procedure and its aftermath is vivid and intense. Death permeates the novel but the story is ultimately about the tenacity of life. Cutter uses the plot to address difficult moral questions but, in the end, a depressing story is enjoyable because those questions are presented through well drawn characters.

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Deep Winter by Samuel W. Gailey

Published by Blue Rider Press on February 20, 2014

Deep Winter is a character-driven crime novel. The crime is secondary to the impact it has on the characters. The story has a Cormac McCarthy feel in its exploration of troubled and isolated lives. Few of the characters feel they have any ability to control their destinies. Events overtake them and they don't cope well. The plot is simple but filled with tension that elevates sharply as the story nears its conclusion. A significant amount of killing takes place, yet the story acts as a reminder of the value of life -- and of living it without judgment, pride, or selfishness.

Now middle-aged, Danny Bedford and Mindy Knolls have known each other since their childhood in Wyalusing, a town they never left. Deep Winter begins with Danny standing in Mindy's trailer looking down at her dead body. The narrative then moves back a few weeks, allowing the reader to follow the events that precede Mindy's death.

Danny suffered brain damage as a child. While the book is written in the third person, the chapters that follow Danny tend to use simple declarative sentences and language when echoing Danny's thoughts. The thoughts of the other small town characters are far from eloquent but the prose becomes more interesting in the chapters that do not focus on Danny.

Some chapters follow Deputy Sheriff Mike Sokowski, a redneck jerk who spends his days belittling Danny, using Mindy, and dealing weed. We meet additional characters in the novel's second half, most involved with law enforcement, who help carry the novel beyond Mindy's death. Whether justice will be done, or whether injustice will prevail, is the question that drives the plot. Yet what constitutes "justice" is often unclear, a point Deep Winter makes with force.

Whether people can change is another strong theme of Deep Winter. Some can, some can't, some won't. Many of the characters are torn apart by guilt. Other characters don't let themselves feel guilt. Key characters reach a point that requires them to make a choice about something that is fundamental to their lives, a choice about the kind of person they want to be. Some choose wisely. Others refuse to recognize the ability to choose. Diversity in character development and a recognition that different people respond to a moral crisis in different ways is the novel's strength. Readers looking for likable characters will find some in Deep Winter, as well as a truly despicable character and some who are flawed but worth rooting for. Samuel Gailey juggles the characters with more skill, and gives them greater depth, than is common in a first novel. He deserves an audience for his debut effort.

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