The Cactus League by Emily Nemens

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on February 4, 2020

Cross Bull Durham with Desperate Housewives and you’ll get the flavor of The Cactus League. The story is filled with characters who have the kinds of problems that fuel melodrama. Players gamble or party or cheat on their wives. Employers boost their sense of power by treating employees with disrespect. Cougars prey on young talent. Wives complain about their husbands, the cougars, and the burdens that accompany marriage to an athlete who won’t be making Major League money forever.

The chapters have the feel of related stories rather than the building blocks of a cohesive novel. The musings of a retired sportswriter tie the chapters together. He used to write a sports column, “half human interest, half old man opining,” in the belief that his was the kind of writing a big-market paper needed, right up until he was fired. Now he’s hanging around a newly built stadium, enjoying the swirl of spring training.

The sportswriter eventually tells the reader that the book is about Jason Goodyear. The reader will figure that out long before the sportswriter announces that the book’s purpose is to recount “all the improbable things” that brought Goodyear to his destination, simply because Goodyear is the only character who is common to nearly every chapter. Goodyear is a star, a stud, a clean-living MVP who graces magazine covers, but his gambling (poker and craps, not sports betting) has gotten out of control. His wife, a first-grade teacher named Liana, can’t deal with it, but when she gives him a choice between gambling or her, addiction drives his choice.

Many of the players have two homes, one in Los Angeles (the home city of the Major League team for which they play), another in Scottsdale that is convenient to spring training. Their wives and ex-wives tend to renew bonds in the spring “like friends from summer camp — rambunctious, beautiful girls who were briefly the most important people in the world but now remembered in dull colors and with vague edges.”

An early chapter spotlights a cougar who, much like the Susan Sarandon character in Bull Durham, latches onto ball players in the belief that she can improve their game while getting laid. She spends a fateful evening with Goodyear after his separation, resulting in a criminal charge that could lead to the loss of an endorsement contract.

One chapter focuses on the housewives, only some of whom are desperate. One focuses on an aging batting coach whose Arizona house was trashed while he was with the team’s Triple-A club in Salt Lake. One focuses on Goodyear’s agent and the agent’s troubled assistant. One focuses on a team owner who befriends and betrays one of the team’s established players. A pitcher whose Tommy John surgery isn’t working out stars in a chapter, while a rookie who won’t make the cut stars in another. Even the new stadium’s organ player gets a chapter.

All of this is interesting as sort of a gossipy version of Inside Baseball. It’s disappointing that with so much attention given to characterization, nearly every character but Goodyear disappears (save for occasional cameos) after the chapters in which they are featured. If the point is to show us all the factors that shaped a year in Goodyear’s life, I can’t say the novel succeeds. The organ player waves at him. Other characters have a bit more interaction with him, but a majority of the chapters seem less than formative. The disappearance of those characters is even more disappointing because they are more interesting than Goodyear.

The story sort of fizzles away at the end, reinforcing that Goodyear is a decent man at heart while resolving nothing. Most of the chapters end the same way, with no real resolution of the problems that develop in the supporting characters’ lives. I guess that’s a microcosm of life — a bunch of intersecting people who lurch from one trouble to the next — but I can’t say it’s a satisfying approach to a novel. Still, the characterization is so strong and the scenes of life at spring training are so sharp that I feel compelled to recommend The Cactus League, even if it left me wanting more.

RECOMMENDED

Blue Moon by Lee Child

Published by Random House/Delacorte Press on October 29, 2019

Readers who crave gratuitous violence can count on Reacher novels to satisfy their addiction. Readers who enjoy a good thriller and don’t mind gratuitous violence can count on Reacher novels to push the right buttons. Lee Child’s punchy sentences and short chapters assure that the novel will move quickly, and he usually comes up with a plot that isn’t stale. Readers who want to root for decent characters will always find someone to like, while readers who appreciate the complexity of human nature will admire the darkness with which otherwise likeable characters are infused. Reacher novels are serious but characters occasionally say something amusing to relieve tension. There’s a little something for everyone in a Reacher novel.

Blue Moon follows that formula. The plot carries the ever-wandering Reacher into a small city that is divided down the middle. Both sides are controlled by criminal organizations. Albanians are in charge of crime on the east side while Ukrainians provide the crime on the west side. The operate protection rackets, loan sharking, prostitution, and other enterprises that, in the good old days, were Mafia-run businesses.

A kindly old gent named Aaron Shevick has borrowed from a loan shark to pay for an expensive treatment that might save his daughter’s life. He is on his way to repay the loan when a mugger interrupts him. Reacher knew this would happen we he saw the envelope full of cash in Shevick’s pocket, so he follows Shevick and thwarts the crime. Then he acts as a bodyguard and even stands in for the old guy to make the payment, something that is made possible because the regular Albanian hood has been replaced by a Ukrainian hood who doesn’t know Shevick. That happened because of a power grab that turns into a comedy of errors as each side misunderstands the forces driving their conflict. A confusion of identities follows, as both the Ukrainian and Albanian organizations operate under the mistaken belief that Reacher is Shevick. The Ukrainians even come to believe that Reacher is a representative of organized crime in Russia who has been sent to take over the entire city on behalf of Russian interests.

All of that, of course, is just an excuse for Reacher to bust heads and to shoot people for a worthy cause. In this case, the cause is to protect the Shevick family, although he also hopes he can help by locating Maxim Trulenko, who embezzled funds his company should have used to pay health insurance premiums for his employees, including Shevick. This leads to an interesting and possibly accurate discussion of how administrators of a government fund that is supposed to address problems like this one are motivated to save money by waiting for patients to die so they don’t need to pay their healthcare expenses.

That, however, is the only serious point in a novel that is dominated by Reacher proving again that he is the toughest guy on the planet. I lost track of the body count as Reacher gunned down every Ukranian and Albanian criminal in the city. This is tolerable because, unlike most tough guy protagonists in thriller world, Reacher isn’t obnoxious about his toughness. It’s just who he is. Being tough is something he does. No big deal. I appreciate that. And I appreciate the action, despite its implausibility. Also implausible is Reacher’s ability to guess at the existence and location of a secret guarded passage into an otherwise impregnable building, but hey, it’s Reacher. Of course he can do implausible things.

Between the action scenes, Reacher engages in his usual musings. Other characters join him in speculating about what might happen next and how to plan for it. All of that held my interest, as Child always does. Only at the very end does the story’s implausibility become hard to swallow. Still, happy endings are nearly always implausible. Readers want them anyway.

Reacher’s good-and-evil perspective appeals to readers who believe that answers to moral questions are never ambiguous, but to his credit, Child doesn’t pander to mean-spirited readers who view the world as a simplistic conflict of us against them. Central characters are primarily decent or villainous, but Child shades them with a touch of gray. Most of Reacher’s killings in Blue Moon are acts of self-defense, although some are outright murders of unarmed bad guys, at least one of whom committed no obvious crime that warranted the death penalty. If that sort of thing troubles you, there is hope for humanity. If it troubles you even to imagine such things, Blue Moon isn’t the book for you. Child doesn’t glorify the killings, so I can accept them for the sake of the story, even if I would want to see Reacher behind bars in the real world. Fortunately, the real world is pretty far removed from a Reacher novel, which makes it easier to recommend Blue Moon as one of Child’s typically well-executed tough guy fantasies.

RECOMMENDED

Run Me to Earth by Paul Yoon

Published by Simon & Schuster on January 28, 2020

Many fine novels have been set during the Vietnam War, telling a brutal story from the perspective of American soldiers. Less common are stories told from Asian perspectives. The war took far more lives of Vietnamese than Americans. It spilled into neighboring countries, disrupted families, and destabilized societies. The central characters in Run Me to Earth are Laotians whose lives were changed — or ended — by the war.

Laos was littered with American cluster bombs during the war in an effort to close supply lines used by the North Vietnamese. Unexploded bombs the size of baseballs continue to kill Laotians fifty years later. The war sparked a conflict in Laos between the Pathet Lao and the Royal Lao Government. The CIA supported the RLG in a futile effort to thwart the spread of communism. Part of that support consisted of training Hmong fighters to resist the Pathet Lao.

The initial focus of Run Me to Earth is on a Laotian hospital that helps wounded Hmong fighters and civilians. In exchange for American dollars, Prany and Alisak work in the hospital. They were recruited to the job at the age of sixteen. Prany’s sister Noi is a year younger than Prany.

The three live together in a nearby farmhouse that was once owned by a Frenchman who is known to locals as the Tobacco Captain. When Noi was twelve, the Tobacco Captain hired her to help in the kitchen at a party. Noi will not talk about that day, but a later chapter gives us a glimpse of Noi’s experience.

In 1969, when Prany and Alisak are seventeen, American planes arrive to evacuate the hospital workers. A doctor named Vang expects Prany, Alisak, and Noi to join him on the plane. Much of the novel recounts their harrowing journey toward evacuation, a journey that only one of those four characters will complete. That character makes it to France, where he stays in the home of the Tobacco Captain’s brother.

Five years later, the story follows a woman named Auntie who, for a price, smuggles Laotians into refugee camps in Thailand. She yearns for the optimistic time, before the appearance of American aid, when villagers did not realize they lived in poverty. She hears about two familiar characters who have been captured by the Pathet Lao and brutally interrogated. Three years later, the story follows those two characters after their release. They are assigned to work on a village farm, but they have other ideas about where and how they want to live. The meaning of freedom in the midst of war and poverty is one of the novel’s important themes.

Toward the end of the novel we learn about a sacrifice that a character makes so that a girl named Khit can leave Laos. She eventually makes her way to America with a couple who pretend to be her parents. Her new family assimilates as immigrants will do when given the chance, eventually opening a restaurant in Poughkeepsie, yet Khit lives in constant fear that her new life will be taken from her. Fifteen years later she travels to France so that she can keep a promise she made on the day she was smuggled out of Laos. There she learns partial answers to questions the reader will have about the fate of other characters.

Tension becomes palpable as the primary characters struggle to escape the lives that shackle them. They often do so in unexpected ways. Although a work of fiction, Run Me to Earth is infused with details that remind the reader of the tragedy that resulted from America’s intervention in Vietnam and neighboring countries. At the same time, the story invites the reader to make connections to other tragedies — of war, of oppression, of prejudice — all stemming from weaknesses in the human spirit that are partially offset by those who find the strength to resist.

The novel tells a powerful and moving story about characters who make difficult choices under unimaginable circumstances. One choice involves violent retribution, an understandable act even if it is morally questionable. On other occasions, the characters make selfless choices that place the welfare of their friends above their own. Notwithstanding the larger issues that permeate the story, Paul Yoon’s focus on ordinary people in an extraordinary situation gives the novel its heart. Friends are lost and new friends are made. Lives change but survivors endure because others sacrifice. It is impossible not to be wrenched by their pain and inspired by their fundamental decency.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The Circus by Jonas Karlsson

First published in Sweden in 2017; published in translation by Hogarth on January 28, 2020

The Circus lies somewhere on the border between surrealistic and realistic. It might best be categorized as a psychological mystery that challenges the reader to decide whether the evidence supplied by the narrator supports the conclusion he has drawn. The plot revolves around the disappearance of a man at a circus — he apparently entered a mirror, and like Alice, left this dimension and entered some secret realm. Or did he?

The narrator is invited to the circus by his friend, Magnus Gabrielsson. They haven’t spoken in a year and the narrator regards their meeting as a social obligation he needs to get out of the way. A circus magician announces that he will make a member of the audience disappear. Magnus volunteers. When the magician directs Magnus to walk behind the mirror, the narrator can see Magnus’ reflection in the mirror but cannot see Magnus. The act ends when the magician removes the mirror. The narrator expects to find Magnus at the intermission but Magnus cannot be found. Nor can he be found in the days that follow. Nor can rumors about his disappearance be confirmed.

We learn that the narrator was a friendless child until he met Magnus. The narrator spent his school hours listening to music on his Walkman (he was more fond of synth than hard rock). When he noticed Magnus hanging around the periphery of the school playground, he struck up a conversation about music. They bonded, although the narrator did most of the talking. Magnus absorbed the narrator’s music lectures, learning as much as possible about the bands Magnus recommended.

At some point, the narrator realizes “there was another life outside the claustrophobic little world Magnus and I constructed.” He imagines himself befriending a popular kid named Dennis until Dennis steals his Walkman. So much for the wider world.

As an adult, the narrator’s only friend is Jallo, who he met at a summer camp. When the narrator tells Jallo about Magnus’ disappearance, Jallo suggests an address the narrator should visit. The narrator is surprised when, after some false starts, he finally visits the correct address, but the surprise brings him no closer to solving the disappearance of Magnus.

Soon after Magnus disappears, the narrator begins to receive telephone calls from someone who never speaks. Is it Magnus? Or perhaps the ghost of Magnus? Music sometimes plays in the background, but is it music that Magnus would play? Sometimes the narrator plays music for the silent caller. Near the novel’s end, they carry on a conversation by playing songs to each other, a conversation that gets its content from the song titles.

All of this is strange but intriguing. Those attributes are the signature of a novel by Jonas Karlsson. Thanks to the narrator’s interaction with Jallo, the reader will come to suspect that the truth behind Magnus’ disappearance is quite different than the narrator believes it to be. Yet the ending suggests that even the explanation that Jallo proposes might not be true. Everything in a Karlsson novel is ambiguous because, well, isn’t life?

Reading a Karlsson novel is like taking a break from reality, or at least from the way we are accustomed to perceiving reality. Karlsson’s novels are always grounded in a philosophical view of existence. This one suggests that the world is a circus (or as Shakespeare suggested, a stage) and life is nothing but an attempt to impose order on chaos. Order is an artificial construct, one of our own devising, an unnatural state but perhaps a necessary one if we are to muddle through a life that only has the meaning we assign to it. Whether or not the reader accepts or rejects that philosophy, fiction that tells an absorbing story while inviting the reader to consider life from a different perspective is always worthwhile. And in the case of a Karlsson novel, it is always entertaining.

RECOMMENDED

The Janes by Louisa Luna

Published by Doubleday on January 21, 2020

The Janes is the second Alice Vega novel, following Two Girls Down. Both books are a fresh take on the concept of a private investigator who tracks down missing children. While most protagonists who track down missing kids are ridiculously self-aggrandizing, reminding everyone they meet how much they care about victims, Vega cares about being paid. Yeah, she cares about the kids too, but she doesn’t talk about it. In fact, she doesn’t talk about much of anything. Unlike thriller heroes who can’t stop talking about themselves or recalling their difficult childhoods or berating others for not caring enough about victims, Vega keeps her mouth shut and gets the job done. Vega is not loquacious; she lets her actions speak.

The title refer to two Jane Does, two female children who have been killed and dumped. A piece of paper with Alice Vega’s name is clutched in the hand of one of the dead girls. We learn in an early scene that Spanish-speaking girls are being held for sex work in a “television room.” If a month goes by when no customer picks them, or if customers complain about their performance, they are taken to the garage by a fellow named Rafa, where something bad will happen. Vega has been in the news thanks to her child rescue efforts, which is how the girls in the television room know about her.

The girls are wearing IUDs with serial numbers that are only five numbers apart. Vega assumes there are at least four more girls where these two game from. A couple of police officers hire Vega to track down the girls. To that end, Vega doubles the proposed fee so she can use half to pay her friend, Max Caplan.

Cap is a retired cop with a potentially lucrative and easy job awaiting him. He’s not sure he wants to take on another adventure with Vega, who has a tendency to place him in dangerous situations. His daughter is even less certain that he should be risking his life. But Cap has a thing for Vega, who played him in Two Girls Down with a kiss he can’t forget. Whether she has any actual feelings for Cap won’t be clear until the novel ends.

Vega goes about her business efficiently, without ever talking about herself or her worldview. I love that about her. She wasn’t trained in the military or by a martial arts expert. She’s fairly small and doesn’t rely on superior fighting techniques when she places herself in danger, as she regularly does. If she needs to overcome a larger foe, she hits them in the knee with a bolt cutter. Or she shoots them in a nonlethal location. I love the fact Louisa Luna doesn’t make her protagonist a superhero. Cap is a bit more philosophical, and certainly the more demonstrative of the two, which makes him a good counterpoint.

I’m not typically a fan of human trafficking stories (thriller writers love to imagine there is human trafficking everywhere, but in reality, it’s pretty rare in the US). This story won me over because of the intriguing twists it takes, as Vega investigates corruption and an off-the-books approach to immigrant detention in various police and government agencies. The plot is credibly low-key and all the more fascinating because of it. The Alice Vega series establishes Louisa Luna as a thriller writer worth following.

RECOMMENDED