Pike Island by Tony Wirt

Published by Thomas & Mercer on November 1, 2024

Pike Island follows a familiar structure that leads to a surprising conclusion. Two storylines, one set in the past and the other in the present, progress until they converge. As events unfold, the reader suspects that a political career in the present might be derailed by the politician’s actions in the past.

The story in the past involves four high school buddies who spend a week at a cabin on Cedar Lake in Minnesota. Jake’s grandfather owns the cabin. Andy had a talent for schmoozing adults and getting what he wanted. Of course, Andy will grow up to be a politician. Ryan and Seth are mostly along for the ride.

The kids goad each other into investigating an abandoned house on Pike Island in an isolated part of the lake. They are scolded by a DNR agent, but that’s the least of their worries. The house contains something of value and one of the kids will lure the others into trouble by allowing greed to overcome his moral sense (assuming he has one).

Andy’s full name is Harrison Andrew Harrison Leonard. As an adult, he goes by Harry. He’s serving his first term in Congress and hopes to get a career boost from a viral video in which he denounces the Supreme Court. His chief of staff, Krista Walsh, is more idealistic than Harry. She wants to get things done, while Harry just wants to climb the ladder of power.

Krista is the central protagonist in the storyline that is set in the present. She’s trying to manage Harry’s career in ways that will maximize his ability to help the less fortunate. Harry is more than willing to pay the political game, setting aside idealist goals in exchange for the possibility of running as vice president. Krista would prefer that he set Washington aside, run for governor, and seek the presidency as an outsider who might get something done.

Krista notices that Harry seems upset when he receives mysterious and vaguely threatening postcards from Cedar Lake. Krista decides to dig into his past so can try to protect him from political fallout if disclosures of sinister behavior might be on the horizon. She sets out to interview the men who went to Cedar Lake with Andy/Harry — or at least those who are still alive — and turns up facts suggesting that Harry might not be the affable progressive that she has always imagined him to be.

Tony Wirt builds an engaging mystery for Krista to unravel. Something bad happened on Pike Island, but what role did Harry play in those events? Who is sending the notes that threaten to expose Harry? (A reader might wonder why the note-sender doesn’t simply reveal what he knows to the press or police, but if he did that, there wouldn’t be story.) Misdirection keeps the reader guessing about the identity of the note sender but, more importantly, about the events that gave rise to the note.

Wirt creates a convincing atmosphere (more so in Minnesota than in D.C.). His prose is crisp. Characters have all the personality they need, which isn’t much. Readers who like to invest in characters and value those who are likable may be disappointed with the way a protagnist behaves at the story's end.

This isn’t an action novel, but the story moves quickly. Wirt builds suspense as the characters move toward a final confrontation. I credit him for crafting a surprise ending that is actually surprising. I’m not sure I buy it — it requires a key character to act completely out of character — but it’s rare that I mutter “wow, I didn’t see that coming” at the end of a novel.

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Disturbing the Bones by Andrew Davis and Jeff Biggers

Published by Melville House on October 22, 2024

Disturbing the Bones is a novel of racial injustice and an unsolved crime combined with a political thriller. The blend is interesting but it doesn’t quite work. The over-the-top plot is too unconvincing to generate suspense while the bland characters lack originality.

The story is set in Cairo, Illinois. Southern Illinois is south of the Mason-Dixon line and closer in spirit to Arkansas than northern Illinois. White business owners abandoned Cairo during the 1960s rather than obeying the law by hiring Black employees and serving Black customers. There isn’t much left of the place today. If the point of Disturbing the Bones is to remind readers of a racist history that racists would like to deny or conveniently forget, the point has merit. Maybe a novel will teach a history lesson that racists don't want their kids to learn in school. Still, a thriller needs to deliver thrills to earn a full recommendation.

The novel’s female protagonist is an archeologist named Mandy Moore. She’s been working in Vietnam (where she acquired an impressive knowledge of botany that turns out to be important for reasons that are too coincidental to be credible). Moore is called back to supervise a dig near Cairo, where plans to build a highway are temporarily halted by the discovery of ancient hunting sites. Moore has been hand selected by retired general Will Alexander, who has been a mentor and unofficial godfather to her. Both grew up in Southern Illinois. Alexander now runs a construction company that has built its wealth on government contracts for the military.

Moore discovers that the site contains the remains of villages from the Early Archaic Period. The dig unearths some human bones. The bones aren’t new, but they are far from prehistoric. Following protocol, she alerts federal officials who conduct DNA tests and identify the bones as those of Florence Jenkins, a Black civil rights reporter who went missing in 1978.

The novel’s male protagonist is Florence’s son. Randall Jenkins is now a Chicago police detective who has a troubled relationship with his adult daughter. Jenkins has always been obsessed with his mother’s disappearance and his obsession only grows when he is notified that his mother’s remains have been discovered in Cairo. The attempt to give Jenkins a personality fails to distinguish Jenkins from all the other fictional cops who give less attention to their family problems than the crime that obsesses them — in this case, a crime committed while Jenkins was still a child. Jenkins seems to hate everyone, including Moore, making him a decidedly unlikable protagonist.

The mystery of Florence’s death often moves to the background of a muddled plot that casts General Alexander as a parody of a melodramatic Bond villain. When he releases attack drones, he says “Go get them, my little darlings.” Dr. Evil of Austin Powers fame couldn’t have said it better. Alexander’s goal is to untrack worldwide arms treaty negotiations that would eliminate nuclear weapons after a little snafu in Russia turns yet another Russian city into a radioactive memory.

The authors earn credit for shrouding some supporting characters in mystery. An archeologist named Sandeep might or might not be a terrorist, given that he might or might not be flying drones over a military base, although why anyone believes a terrorist from Canada would be working on an archeological dig in Illinois is never made clear. A woman named Alison Foreman might or might not be a government agent and might or might not be a good guy or a bad guy. A clumsy reveal at the end brings her into better focus.

As an archeologist, Moore is positioned to play Indiana Jones. She must contend with evil people who want to cover up their role in Florence’s death by destroying the dig site and all the recovered artifacts. Given the unlikelihood that any evidence will be discovered that points to the truth, the coverup seems more likely to lead to imprisonment than the initial crime. The motivations of key characters just aren’t rational, even if they are necessary to keep the plot moving. Because it isn’t believable, the plot as a whole fails to build credible suspense, despite intermittent injections of mundane action scenes.

The ending is frankly depressing, although I suppose the authors deserve credit for avoiding an ending that is artificially happy. I’m not sure that substituting an ending that is artificially tragic is better, although the tragic aspect is likely meant to serve as a warning of where the nation might be heading. Really, if reading the news every morning isn’t a sufficient warning, I don’t know that a novel is going to reach you.

The story is marred by pedestrian prose. While I agree with the novel’s political viewpoint — racism is bad, the military-industrial complex is too powerful — there is little in the way of subtlety or nuance in a plot that sacrifices careful development of events and characters in favor of a story that I would expect from a bad made-for-TV movie. While the novel held my attention, it has too many flaws to earn a reservation-free recommendation.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The President's Lawyer by Lawrence Robbins

Published by ‎ Atria Books on October 8, 2024

The male characters in The President’s Lawyer have trouble keeping it in their pants while the female characters have trouble keeping their pants on. Well, the story is set in D.C. and most of the characters are politicians or lawyers, so that’s believable.

The novel is set in a time similar to ours, except D.C. is a state. Two elections ago, Jack Cutler defeated President Smith, who promptly founded a far-right TV network and began a campaign to convince voters that Cutler stole the election. Smith’s network blamed Cutler after a murder was committed by a migrant who Cutler pardoned for a minor drug conviction. Having been Willy Hortoned, Cutler was soundly defeated in the next election.

During his last year in office, Cutler had an affair with Amanda Harper, a White House lawyer who handled subpoenas directed at the Executive Branch. When Amanda’s body is found in a park, Cutler is accused of killing her. The accusation is supported by the presence of his DNA and fingerprints on her clothing. Amanda’s body had rope burns on her wrists, a fact that Cutler attributes to rough but consensual sex. It turns out that Cutler has had rough sex but consensual sex with other women, including his wife Jess.

Cutler wants his old friend Rob Jacobson to defend him. Rob has a rich sexual history of his own, a history that includes shagging Jess before she married Cutler and doing the same with Amanda before she dumped him for Jack. It is foolish for Rob to even consider representing Cutler given his personal connections to the victim, to Cutler, and to Cutler’s wife (who might be a suspect in the murder of his extramarital lover, after all), but the chance to represent a former president in a murder case is too tempting to resist. Besides, Cutler probably pays his legal bills, unlike some former presidents. Cutler’s trial constitutes the bulk of the plot.

Most of the novel’s characterization is devoted to Rob. He was an abused child. Perhaps for that reason, he manifests twitches and facial tics when he’s stressed. He also blames himself for a childhood friend’s drowning when she fell through thin ice. Rob revisits his past when his violent brother (very much an anti-Culter voter) shows up during the trial after making himself unreachable for years. Cutler’s family has a history of mental illness that extends to his own schizophrenic son, who may have had a grudge against Amanda for (in his view) breaking up his parents’ marriage. In the logic of the plot, any of these might be the true killer, assuming that Cutler isn't.

Legal thrillers depend on engaging trials and on characters who teach readers the “inside baseball” of criminal defense. Those are the strengths of Lawrence Robbins’ novel. A reader might quibble that experienced prosecutors would understand the theory that mitochondrial DNA can be recovered from a hair that doesn’t have a follicle, but the prosecutors in the story seem blindsided by a defense expert’s testimony to that effect. A reader might wonder why prosecutors failed to notice that a critical note on a key exhibit was written in a different color ink than the other notes on the same document. Prosecutors blunder on occasion, but these blunders only occurred because they were needed to advance the plot. In most other respects, the story is credible.

The reveal — the killer’s unmasking — brings a final twist to the story. I award points for its surprising nature and deduct nearly the same number of points for its unconvincing nature. Yet Robbins plays fair by planting subtle clues that might predict the ending. Although I was mildly disappointed with the reveal, The President’s Lawyer excels at the best part of any legal thriller: balancing drama and realism when crafting cross-examinations worthy of Perry Mason.

RECOMMENDED

A Woman Underground by Andrew Klavan

Published by Mysterious Press on October 15, 2024

A Woman Underground begins with a prologue, but it is the prologue to Treachery in the Night, a self-published novel that portrays white nationalists as the nation’s saviors. A character named Miranda is living with a brute named Theo before a bigger brute named Moran marches Theo into the woods and returns to claim Miranda as his prize.

Cameron Winter believes that Miranda is modeled on a girl he loved before he was old enough to understand the emotion. Winter arrives at this conclusion after recognizing the girl’s perfume outside his door and then glimpsing someone in a security video who might or might not be his old flame Charlotte. The woman is carrying a book with a partially exposed title. Winter matches the partial cover to Treachery in the Night, starts reading the book, and concludes for no obvious reason that Miranda is Charlotte. Winter rides an improbable logic train, but improbability is the norm in modern thrillers.

Winter is an English professor who formerly worked as a spy or assassin for one of those shadowy government agencies that are a thriller staple. Winter is a broken man. He meets regularly with Margaret Whitaker, a therapist who presumably has a security clearance. She replaced a therapist who fell in love with Winter. Margaret is also in love with him, making me think that Winter must be quite the hunk — or that women just dig assassins.

Despite her feelings about Winter, Margaret wants him to make a date with a woman who asked him to ask her out. She believes his obsession with Charlotte is preventing him from moving forward with a potential relationship. Most people abandon their childhood crushes when they reach adulthood, but Winter can’t for reasons that Margeret articulates after reaching deep into her bag of packaged explanations for stupid behavior.

Winter decides he needs to track down Charlotte, so there we have a plot. The endeavor brings him into contact with white nationalists and other disreputable people. The story takes place against a vague background of riots, violent clashes between left and right in unidentified cities.

Winter’s search for Charlotte is interwoven with a story from his past involving a search for Jerry Collins, an agent who disappeared while investigating child traffickers. Jerry’s disappearance relates to his knowledge of powerful men sleeping with kids — so many powerful men that they would fill Jeffrey Epstein’s island, but men with an appetite for sex partners who are even younger than Epstein’s. Frankly, the novel’s portrayal of nearly all powerful men as child molesters defied my usual willingness to accept the unbelievable for the sake of enjoying a thriller.

The story takes an odd turn when Cameron learns that his colleague, Roger Sexton, is carrying on with a student who makes a habit of shagging faculty. Cameron is too virtuous to sleep with a student, or perhaps he’s so hung up on his teen crush that other women fail to activate his libido. In any event, Roger’s dalliance with the student becomes an increasingly bizarre component of the plot and takes center stage when the student disappears. The circumstances of her disappearance again strained the limits of my willingness to get lost in the story.

Andrew Klavan has an addiction to adverbs that requires serious treatment. His prose is competent but unpolished. The pop psychology upon which Winter’s personality is based is probably needed to explain Winter’s obsession with Charlotte, but at least he has a personality. The wannabe Nazi characters are cartoonish, although I suppose that characterization might be accurate. Most members of America’s far right are not serious people.

Apart from its credibility issues, the plot is muddy. The major components — the search for Jerry, the search for Charlotte, and the drama that arises out of Roger’s sexual involvement with a student — do not fit together well. Roger’s plot thread comes across as filler that is included to pad the word count. On the other hand, a final twist in the epilogue is satisfying. While the story will probably maintain the interest of thriller fans, I doubt that they will become invested in plot threads that, in the end, just don’t make much sense.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin

Published by ‎ St. Martin's Press on September 24, 2024

I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom is both an indictment and a celebration of the internet. It’s also one of the funniest books I’ve read this year.

Abbott Coburn is an incel. Like other incels, he blames women for problems that extend beyond involuntary celibacy. Abbott has an anxiety disorder and depends on his medication to function. Even medicated, Abbott has no social skills.

Abbott lives with his father Hunter and earns money from a ride-share app by driving Hunter’s SUV. Abbott was bullied in high school and blames high school girls for the bullying because girls reward bullies with sex. Abbott has joined the hordes of young male vloggers who insist that they are victims of a conspiracy. The conspirators are either feminists or attractive women who won’t shag them, depending on the moment.

Abbott is such a dunce that he’s almost likeable. The dynamic between Abott and his father encourages the reader to feel Abbott is far from evil and not irretrievably lost to the internet’s dark side.

A woman named Ether asks Abbott for a ride across the country, from the West Coast to the East. When he explains that the app does not permit long-distance travel, she offers him a large payment of cash to work off the app, half in advance, provided he leaves behind his phone and laptop. The other hitch is that she’s transporting a large black box that might or might not display radiation decals. A mysterious employer paid Ether a large amount of cash to bring the box to his place outside of D.C.

Abbott sets aside his suspicion of women and accepts Ether’s terms because he needs cash to reboot his life. He soon realizes that Ether didn’t tell him that she’s being followed by a biker named Malort who wants to acquire the box for his own (presumably nefarious) purposes. Things get out of hand when Reddit users begin tracing Abbott and Ether on their trek, having convinced themselves that they are terrorists or heroes, no theory being too crazy to express as a certainty.

The story picks up additional characters as it bounces along, some of whom live almost entirely in the digital world. Zeke Ngata is in a wheelchair. He’s active on Reddit and a fan of Abbott’s vlog. Phil Green was a genius who lived off-grid in Canada. An anti-technology conspiracy theorist, Phil was convinced that software was rewiring human brains to turn us into zombies. Maybe he was right, but Phil is dead now, survived only by his blog. Phil had the black box when Ether first saw it, although he refused to reveal its contents.

A former FBI agent named Joan Key has a long list of problems (that’s why she’s a “former” fed). She sees the black box as an opportunity to rekindle her relationship with the FBI. Or, if she’s lucky, she’ll be near the box when it explodes, perhaps gaining postmortem recognition for her effort to avoid a catastrophe.

Key contributes to the narrative by expressing interesting opinions. She attributes school shootings and other random acts of mass violence to “aggrieved narcissism, a total inability to put personal affronts into perspective. Why shouldn’t others die for your petty humiliations, when you’re the Main Character of the Universe”? Key teams with Hunter to find Abbott before a wannabe internet hero kills him.

The characters come together in an action-adventure comedy that is driven by misunderstandings and (since people get their information from questionable internet sources) outright fabrications. The story is amusing — and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny — for multiple reasons, but my favorite is its depiction of Reddit as a haven for “mostly young males with a vast arsenal of shallow knowledge and free time.” Transcripts of Reddit conspiracy theories surrounding Abbott are hilarious. Was he taken hostage by a crazy woman? Was he abducted by aliens? Does the box in his father’s SUV contain the radioactive corpse of an alien? Is the box stuffed with the corpse of a woman who disappeared while visiting the state where Abbott lives? Is Abbott a terrorist who intends to set off a dirty bomb in Washington D.C.? Are people who post groundless conspiracy theories working for Russia or is that also a groundless conspiracy theory?

A reader might surmise that the title refers to the black box in Abbott’s SUV, but the “black box of doom” actually refers to the screens on our communication devices and the algorithms that assure our exposure to bad behavior, driving us to fear the badly behaving, who are inevitably depicted as people different from ourselves — different by race, gender, political affiliation, place of birth, or any other factor that allows us to distinguish ourselves as good people, unlike all the different kinds of people who are always causing trouble.

Abbott’s arguments with Ether about female manipulation of males are insightful in their realistic portrayal of opposing viewpoints, even if the viewpoints of both characters are easily mocked. I agree with Abbot’s view that it’s silly for women to put on a bikini and then complain that they feel objectified when they are noticed by visibly appreciative men. But it’s even sillier for Abbott to claim that he’d rather be raped than to be falsely accused of rape because rape victims get sympathy while society always condemns accused are men.

Ether wants to teach Abbott a lesson that all incels should internalize — “you can actually get over bad things that happen to you.” The story at least forces Abbott to grow up, to start making decisions for himself rather than blaming the world for his empty life.

What’s in the box? The answer, carefully set up by scenes that might quickly be forgotten in this fast-moving story, is delightful. Just know that the climax is wild and funny. Some scenes have the credibility of Road Runner cartoons, but comedy doesn’t need to be credible.

I would recommend the novel just for its goofiness and the Looney Tunes feel of its final act, but I am even more enthused about the characters’ semi-serious discussions of significant social issues: the potential impact of growing up with screen interactions rather than human touch; the incel movement that links young men with stunted social skills; and the ridiculous (and potentially dangerous) nature of the conspiracy theories that these socially challenged men devote their lives to spreading in the hope of improving their self-worth. Those are discussions that society should be having. For that reason, I'm Starting to Worry would be a good book for book clubs that actually discuss books rather than gossiping about book club members who didn't make it to the meeting.

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