Beautiful Days by Zach Williams

Published by Doubleday on June 11, 2024

The stories collected in Beautiful Days are unexpected. They earn my recommendation simply because they are surprising, free from the typical domestic drama that seems to be the subject matter of most American short fiction. Some of the stories are a bit surreal, but most are not so far removed from reality that they lose their appeal.

In one of my favorite stories — “Lucca Castle,” the longest in the volume — a man who is grieving the loss of his wife and isn’t coping well with his daughter embarks on an experiment. The experiment essentially involves living in the moment and being open to anything, even if “anything” means sleeping all day and wallowing in grief. A younger woman at a diner takes an unlikely interest in him and, following a bizarre coincidence that might be interpreted as fate, they hook up. She brings him to a guru-like figure who might be a cult leader, a man who condemns the kind of wealth-acquisition work that is the protagonist’s career. By walking away from the cult, the experiment brings him closer to his daughter, closer to understanding how he needs to move ahead with his life.

“Ghost Image” is another of my favorites. It is narrated by a man who, while working at a meaningless temp job, pitied his boss for dreaming of a post-retirement career as a monorail conductor at Disney World. Years later, as a father whose unfaithful wife has died, having realized none of his own half-formed dreams, the man talks to his former boss as if he is a spirit, seeing him in a stranger in a bar, seeing him in the teenage son from whom he has become estranged. After abandoning his life, he journeys to a future where Disney World is shuttered and surrounded by the remnants of natural disasters, and imagines seeing his old boss wearing a conductor’s cap. The story is a reminder that when we are young, we don’t “know how long life takes, or what it does to you as you live it.” This is an odd and discomfiting story. Those qualities might contribute to my admiration of it.

The narrator of “Trial Run” works for a small analytics firm. Someone has been sending antisemitic emails to the business’ employees. The emails target the manager. Since the emails began immediately after a diversity workshop, there is reason to believe that the sender is an employee. The business has hired a security guard, but he seems to be a believer in conspiracy theories, leading the narrator to wonder whether the guard sent the emails. Another suspect is a paranoid co-worker who overshares, a man who might be “hiding below the surface of routine, awaiting, with all the patience of a fanatic, some dark eventuality in which to reveal himself.” The story is an amusing take on office politics and daily fears.

In the most surreal story, Jacob and Ronna rented a vacation cottage but they can’t recall how long they’ve been there or even where the cottage is located. They argue about ways to investigate their circumstances and fail to follow through on their plans. Their behavior grows progressively more bizarre. Their toddler never seems to be injured when he falls, never seems to be hungry when his parents leave for days to explore the wilderness. Like a snapping turtle, he never seems to grow older. In his crib, Ronna believes him to be safe from scary things. His parents might be the scariest thing in his life, which might or might not be the point of “Wood Sorrel House.”

“Red Light” tells the story of a kinky hookup with a woman whose boyfriend (his description is a bit freakish) likes to watch her have sex while hiding in the closet. In “Neighbors,” an elderly woman’s son asks her neighbor to check on his mother. The mother is dead but someone is standing in her bedroom, a resident of “an unbroken field, containing everything.” The protagonist in “Mousetraps” has a strange conversation with a hardware store owner who questions the value of humane mousetraps.

Three other stories, including one about a fellow who suddenly grows an extra toe, didn’t do much for me. On the whole, however, this is a diverse collection of enjoyable, offbeat stories.

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Red Star Falling by Steve Berry and Grant Blackwood

Published by Grand Central Publishing on June 11, 2024

Red Star Falling takes place in the present, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In this version of reality, Putin is a man named Konstantin Franko. Apart from the name, he is essentially Putin. Franko took over from Aleksei Delov, who took over from Gorbachev. I suppose that makes Delov the analog of Boris Yeltsin, although Yeltsin died in 2007. Delov is dying but he’s determined to bring down Franko, who has betrayed the principles of democracy that Delov championed.

Luke Daniels works for the Magellan Billet, a fictional counterterrorist unit of the Justice Department that conducts international investigations. Luke’s mentor is Cotton Malone, the protagonist in a long series of Steve Berry novels.

Red Star is an old Soviet program that maintained orbiting satellites armed with nuclear warheads. Delov ordered the satellites to self-destruct. All but one. He wants to put an end to Franco by dropping that one on Moscow. Not a bad idea, apart from the tens of thousands of innocent people who would die. The solution to the Russian dictatorship is too extreme for Luke’s sensibilities.

Luke had been stationed in Hungary, working with the CIA on an operation that ran intelligence agents in Ukraine. The operation fell apart and CIA agent John Vince was captured by Russia. Now Vince has gotten word to Luke that he’s still alive. Luke resolves to get him out of Russia.

Vince is in prison with Efim Kozar, one of two surviving scientists who understand the launch details for a Red Star attack. The other is Ilya Mashir, who has the codes to activate the nuclear device and send the Red Star tumbling toward Moscow. Kozar was recently questioned by Delov’s bodyguard and, based on that questioning, has figured out that Delov plans to activate the Red Star. He imparted that information to Vince.

In the action thriller tradition, Luke embarks on a series of adventures. He needs to break Vince out of a remote Russian prison. Vince wants Luke to take Kozar, which sparks a new mission — finding Mashir, acquiring the self-destruct code, and making his way to the station that communicates with Red Star so he can send the code. But the code is encrypted and Mashir needs Luke to recover a book from a Russian museum that is under the control of an oligarch so he can decrypt the code. Mashir also has a vested interest in recovering the library of Ivan the Terrible from the gangster oligarch who now controls it.

This chain of events struck me as unlikely make-work, existing only to give Luke some thrilling tasks to complete. Such is the nature of the modern thriller. Finding the book from Ivan's library struck me as particularly silly, but at least Luke didn’t have to raid a tomb.

Luke gets a hand from Danielle Otero, a former Russian agent who was in love with Vince. What’s a thriller without a beautiful Russian spy? Danielle has a grudge against Franko and would like to get revenge against all the people she holds accountable for Vince’s capture. Details of Luke’s travels with Danielle through remote parts of Russia give the novel a sense of realism that helps the reader disregard the unlikely nature of the plot.

As is his habit, Berry did copious research when writing the novel. While research contributes to atmosphere, he provides more historical detail about Ivan’s library and certain locations (such as the history of Oreshek Island and the construction of its fortress) than the story needs.

Although the plot bogs down on occasion, it usually moves forward at a steady pace, adventure following adventure, complete with fistfights, gunfights, helicopter rides during storms, boat chases — the familiar trappings of an action thriller. The action is reasonably credible. The novel is a bit light on the tradecraft that fans of espionage novels might crave, but it does feature the betrayals that are a standard part of spy fiction. Fans of action thrillers will find much to enjoy in Red Star Falling.

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Clete by James Lee Burke

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on June 11, 2024

Some of my favorite crime writers have a greater interest in the supernatural than I do. James Lee Burke is one of those. I suppose monstrous crimes can be seen as the product of evil and evil can be seen as the realm of the supernatural. A disembodied force of evil has symbolic value for writers who confront crimes that are beyond ordinary experience. But the supernatural in Clete takes the form of a good person rather than an embodiment of evil.

Clete is narrated by Dave Robicheaux’s best friend, Clete Purcel. At various times in the novel, Clete gets advice from the ghost of Joan of Arc, or maybe Ingrid Bergman playing that character. Either way, she occasionally materializes and saves Clete’s life or cautions him not to be a fool. Clete has engaged in foolish behavior throughout his life, but now he’s sober and dedicated to helping others in his work as a private investigator. If Joan of Arc wants to help him, who am I to say that Clete is the victim of an overactive imagination?

The plot follows multiple threads. They are joined by Clete’s Cadillac. Clete leaves it at a car wash. When he returns, he finds that some thugs from the Dixie Mafia are taking it apart. After dealing with the thugs, he discovers that they were searching for something that they believe to have been concealed in his car. One theory is that the car wash owner, Eddy Durbin, let his brother Andy use the car to mule some drugs from Mexico. Clete later learns that the hidden object may be something different from the black tar heroin or fentanyl that is prevalent in Louisiana.

The nature of the substance supposedly hidden in Clete’s car is a bit vague. At one point Clete is made to believe that his exposure to the hidden substance might be fatal. The threat posed by the “lethal chemical called Leprechaun” enters and leaves the story at random intervals, never taking a firm hold. An FBI agent who seems to be looking for Leprechaun similarly makes occasional appearances without adding much to the story.

Clete connects the destruction of his car to a Nazi named Baylor Hemmings. Clete carries a picture of a Holocaust victim and her children, apparently to remind himself of how evil the world can be. Clete’s occasional references to the picture seem forced. They never resonate with the power that Burke likely intended. Of the thousands of Holocaust images, what it is about this particular picture that has gripped Clete is never made clear.

In his search for Hemmings, Clete questions a bail bondsman named Sperm-O Sellars, whose sideline is described as white slavery. Clete and Robicheau rescue a captive woman named Chen whose passivity has been assured by keeping her high on heroin. They’ll eventually need to rescue her again.

Sperm-O made the mistake of grabbing the ankle of Gracie Lamar, a dancer at a strip club who kicked his teeth in. Sperm-O hires Clete to find her after she jumps bail. Gracie turns out to be an ex-cop who got fired for unorthodox conduct that included killing some men who, in Clete’s judgment, probably deserved their fate.

All of that somehow ties into a plot thread involving Lauren Bow, a con man who made a fortune selling soap franchises, a Ponzi scheme that has gotten him into tax trouble with the IRS. His wife, Clara Bow, wants to hire Clete. She says she intends to divorce her abusive husband and claims he is blackmailing her with forged evidence that she was a participant in his tax fraud. Clete is a protector of abused women and so, against his better judgment, agrees to help her.

Bodies begin to drop. Clete and Robicheaux become targets, perhaps because Clete took his car to the wrong car wash, perhaps because they are questioning dangerous people.

In addition to Joan of Arc, another character seems to be related to the supernatural. When he dies, his body decomposes at a startling rate and with an unusually putrid stench. I can’t say that I understand how that character fits into the larger plot. But then, I can't understand why Joan of Arc has taken an interest in Clete Purcel.

The plot seems more of a muddle than is customary with a James Lee Burke novel. It is nevertheless interesting and moves at a satisfying pace, not so quickly that it overlooks the need to build atmosphere and suspense, not so slowly that the reader’s mind begins to wander. As always, I admire Burke’s prose. He’s simply one of the best wordsmiths in the crime writing business. In Clete, however, he tends to express the same ideas redundantly.

Burke didn’t sell me on the Leprechaun plot or on Joan of Arc, but his action scenes are credible and the characters of Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel have become iconic in the world of crime fiction. I always look forward to reading about their adventures. The different perspective here, seeing Dave through Clete’s eyes, adds another window through which the reader can view their enduring friendship. If this isn’t the best of the Robicheaux novels, it is still better than the average thriller writer can produce.

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Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Published by Tordotcom on June 4, 2024

Service Model is an amusing story of a robot’s search for purpose. There has been an apocalypse (or a series of apocalyptic events) but it wasn’t caused by a robot revolution. In fact, quite the opposite. Since the cause of civilization’s collapse is the point of the novel, I won’t reveal it, but I will say that Adrian Tchaikovsky furthers the grand tradition of exploring big ideas through science fiction.  

Some humans have survived the end of civilization, but they are outnumbered by robots who follow their programming, carrying on with tasks that have become meaningless. They are increasingly starting to glitch, the end of civilization having had “a negative impact on scheduled updates.” They wander in circles, freeze in place when their memories are full, haul freight back and forth that never gets unloaded. Robots are lining up at repair centers for maintenance that will never be scheduled. Being dutiful robots, they stand in line until they stop functioning altogether.

The story’s protagonist is Charles, a valet robot who works in a manor for a wealthy recluse. Since his master no longer entertains or goes out, Charles maintains a social calendar that is empty and lays out clothing that is never worn. This does not bother Charles, who is content in his performance of useless tasks. Serving a human is all he wants to do, even if the service has no value.

One day, while Charles is shaving his master, he discovers that his master’s throat has been cut. Charles endeavors to go about his day — even reasoning that taking his dead master for a drive might cheer him up — before the majordomo that operates the house calls a robot doctor and a robot cop. Hilarity ensues.

Charles realizes he might have a fault that will require diagnostic intervention but hopes he won’t be sent into retirement. “Given the considerable investment in domestic service that Charles represented, surely he should be allowed to murder three, or even five people before being deemed irreparably unfit for service.”

The plot follows Charles as he searches for another human to serve. He makes his way to Diagnostics, where he hopes a software adjustment will make further murders improbable. He meets a girl who, by virtue of her attire, he mistakes for a robot. She introduces herself as The Wonk and tries to convince him that he has acquired the Protagonist Virus and is now self-aware and autonomous. Charles is certain he is neither of those.

Diagnostics is overcrowded with robots who will never be fixed, so Charles is sent to Data Compression, where it seems his fate is to be recycled. Fortuitous circumstances cause Charles to visit the Library, where all human knowledge is being stored, albeit in a way that makes more sense to robots than to humans. He later encounters a group of humans who would be at home in a Mad Max movie. In the last stop of his journey, Charles visits God.

While Service Model tells a funny story, Tchaikovsky makes some serious points. To preserve humanity’s past, humans held captive in the Library make a long circular commute to engage in meaningless make-work at workplaces next to their residences. Robots were supposed to make manual labor unnecessary, but how can humans be valued in the eyes of others if they don’t work?  The novel asks whether the employment of laborers is any different from ownership of robots. When a robot stops being productive, society discards it. Are humans any different? “Individual value is tied to production, and everyone who’s idle is a parasite scrounging off the state.” The homeless are treated no better than obsolete robots.

Tchaikovsky also has an interesting take on justice. How would one program a robot to mete out justice? In the end, wouldn’t a rational robot determine that everyone is guilty of something and that humans all deserve to be punished? The notion that it’s better to punish the innocent than to allow the guilty to get away with crime is antithetical to American and British values, but common enough among people who accept the authoritarian promise to protect them from imagined threats. And who would make a better authoritarian than a robot?

The story is ultimately about Charles’ search for purpose. Charles appears to frustrate The Wonk at every turn by insisting that his purpose is to serve because that is how he was programmed. And if serving others makes Charles feel fulfilled (a possibility Charles would never articulate because he does not “feel” anything), perhaps service is his purpose. Perhaps humans also have a predetermined purpose that requires no search. Perhaps we are all wired in a particular way and Charles is simply being more honest than humans who believe they can find a purpose through religion or philosophy. Yet the ending suggests that Charles might eventually work around his programming and determine his own purpose, one his programmer did not envision.

This is the first novel of Tchaikovsky’s I’ve read that is primarily a comedy. I’ve enjoyed his space opera and fantasy, but he is just as successful at humor. Tchaikovsky borrows ideas from Star Trek, Borges, A Canticle for Liebowitz, and the Wizard of Oz (among other sources), then milks them for their comedic potential. The story can be read as a cautionary tale about the potential causes of humanity’s destruction, but the end of civilization has never been funnier.

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Tell Me Who You Are by Louisa Luna

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux/MCD on June 4, 2024

Most psychological thrillers fail to take a deep dive into psychology. Tell Me Who You Are features a psychiatrist who lectures the reader about various psychological maladies, including dissociative personality disorder — commonly referred to as a multiple or split personality disorder — the existence of which is controversial. Certain characters in the novel — maybe all the important ones — might be delusional or deranged. The ambiguous truth that underlies their apparent maladies supplies the intrigue that engages the reader's interest.

Caroline Strange is a psychiatrist. Her patients call her Dr. Caroline. A local online rag published a story that included her on a list of the ten worst doctors in Brooklyn. The story was written by Ellen Garcia. It didn’t take Caroline long to find out where Ellen lived.

Some of the story is written from Caroline’s point of view. It quickly becomes apparent that she might not be a reliable narrator. Nor is she anyone a reader would want to know. She’s self-absorbed and self-important and scornful of her patients — the kind of therapist who probably belongs on a Ten Worst list. She doesn’t want to be burdened by her sons or her mother, making her self-indulgent both as a parent and as a child.

Some of the story is narrated by Gordon Strong. He was Caroline’s next-door neighbor when, as a child, she gave him some disturbing news. Not long after that, Gordon killed everyone in his house, except Caroline, who was staying overnight. Or did he?

Gordon is the most convincing character. Gordon was laid off from his job. He drinks too much. He’s portrayed as a man who is disintegrating, who has turned to alcohol to cope with his vanishing self-esteem. It doesn’t help that his father belittled him while he was growing up. Gordon progressively demolishes the hedge he’s trying to trim, the hedge perhaps serving as a symbol for his life.

Several chapters are narrated by Ellen as she’s being held captive. After a few days of captivity, Ellen launches into a monolog that amounts to “It’s hard to be a woman.” It’s well-written but too well-written to be the delirious rant of a water-deprived kidnap victim. For a woman who is starving and dehydrated, she’s way too chatty.

The meat of the story begins with a walk-in patient who tells Dr. Caroline that he thinks he’s going to kill someone. Then he says, “and I know who you really are.” The man, who calls himself Nelson, does seem to know something about Caroline’s past.

After Ellen disappears, the police question Caroline on the theory that she might resents Ellen’s unkind article about her. Caroline points the police toward Nelson as a more likely suspect. As the story unfolds, the police are more focused on Caroline than Nelson, whose existence they can’t establish. Caroline decides to track down Nelson herself.

It isn’t clear whether Nelson is in fact a criminal or the subject of Caroline’s warped delusions. I could have gone either way on that question for most of the novel. While the story is a bit farfetched, the clever plot kept me reading with interest. The story ends with a mild surprise that reflects Louisa Luna’s willingness to take chances. She understands that novels can be good even if the key characters are unlikable. Because Luna pulls off a difficult plot and fills it with difficult but carefully developed characters, Tell Me Who You Are stands apart from run-of-the-mill farfetched thrillers.

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