Sirens by Joseph Knox

First published in Great Britain in 2017; published by Crown on February 20, 2018

The third strike against Detective Constable Aidan Waits sent him to undercover work. None of the strikes are legitimate, but the world is unfair. Newspapers refer to Waits as disgraced, but David Rossiter doesn’t believe what the papers say. Rossiter is a Member of Parliament whose 17-year-old daughter Isabelle is mixed up with a drug dealer named Zain Carver. Waits has been surveilling Carver; Rossiter wants him to keep an eye on Isabelle while he’s playing his undercover role as a suspended dirty cop.

Waits cozies up to Carver by revealing inside information that Carver’s own informants within the police don’t have. He is able to cozy up to Isabelle because Isabelle likes that Waits is unlikable. She’s tired of “backpacking round a cultural wasteland with people my own age” so she’s trying out a different wasteland. But Waits suspects that she’s become involved in Carver’s nefarious dealings, and he is not inclined to babysit her when more age-appropriate women, including Sarah Jane and Catherine, are also hanging around Carver’s party house.

The suspense in Sirens comes from Waits’ unfailing ability to dig himself into a hole and then to dig it deeper as he tries to escape from it. The central question is whether someone will kill him before the police arrest him for his misdeeds, both real and perceived. People who want to kill him are not in short supply. He’s in the middle of a war between Carver and rival drug dealers, including the nefarious Sheldon White, while Carver’s inside sources in the police department might sleep more easily if Waits were laid to rest.

Joseph Knox presents Waits as terrifyingly alone in the world, partly as a result of his upbringing, partly by choice. He ignores efforts of his estranged sister to reach out to him. He is a less than ideal boyfriend. His dark and alienated personality might serve him well as he tries to understand the criminals he chases, but he is barely a step removed from them. He does, however, have a conscience, and that’s the difference that makes it possible to feel empathy for him.

Waits’ miserable life brings him into contact with all sorts of characters, from crooked cops to feuding drug dealers, from drag performers to aristocrats. Knox gives every significant character a strong personality that fits the character’s past without turning the character into a caricature.

The plot maintains tension by placing a number of characters at constant risk, while maintaining interest by layering one mystery on top of another. The labyrinthine plot never loses credibility, and for all the story’s complexity, Knox manages to tie up every loose end. For all its darkness, the story allows a ray of hope to filter through in the end, a chance for new beginnings. Sirens isn’t the right story for fans of sunny and optimistic literature, but if you like your noir extra dark, Sirens is a good choice.

RECOMMENDED

Connect by Julian Gough

First published in Great Britain in 2018; published by Doubleday/Nan A. Talese on August 14, 2018

Without much subtlety, Connect makes the point that different systems (the human body, society, the universe itself) are organized in similar ways, and ponders the connection that results in that commonality. To make sure we get it, Julian Gough quotes the Upanishads and scientists and philosophers and poets and Philip K. Dick, all noting that so many vastly different things in the universe, including its vastly different people, are all fundamentally alike. That’s an interesting premise for a novel, but Connect is only partially successful in conveying it, as opposed to explaining it.

Colt is an autistic 18-year-old boy. He freaks out when he’s touched. He is homeschooled (unconventionally) by his mother Naomi because he can’t be around other kids without fighting them. Colt spends most of his life engrossed in videogame environments. Naomi wants him to live in the moment; he argues that living in the moment is impossible. Naomi wants him to engage with the real world; Colt argues that reality is a matter of perception, and what he perceives online is just as real as anything he perceives when he takes off his visor. On the other hand, Colt meets a damaged girl online named Sasha, for whom he feels the kind of desire that can’t be satisfactorily acquitted online.

Naomi is a scientist who was once a porn star who is into S&M, a character trait that isn’t entirely gratuitous. She’s working on a project to regrow limbs. It isn’t ready for human experimentation but it has shown promise in rats. Colt, who has a genius for coding, steals Naomi’s work and offers it for publication at a conference, forcing Naomi to attend when the paper is accepted. That gets Naomi out of the house, clearing the way for Colt to use the research to enlarge his corpus callosum in the hope that he will become normal, or at least able to understand people, Sasha.

The research has military implications, however, and Naomi finds herself trouble with her ex-husband and the government for publishing the paper without the military’s approval. Fortunately for the government, the next incarnation of the NSA can make information disappear pretty easily by taking control of electronic devices (a trick that is only a small step away from tricks the government already performs).

All of this sets up a plot that involves the military’s (primarily Colt’s father’s) desire to use Colt’s newfound abilities as a human supercomputer to better identify and kill America’s enemies. The plot pits Colt against his father and against an automated defense system that is designed to kill America’s enemies, one of whom (it decides) is Colt. A good chunk of the story consists of Colt using his gaming environment in an attempt to thwart the defense system.

One of the story’s more pedestrian themes involves the power of love, which (surprise, surprise) conquers all. I appreciate the sentiment but Gough’s execution of that theme is a bit heavy-handed. To Gough’s credit, the novel gives a new twist to the romantic comedy formula by digitizing it in an epic battle between Colt’s game world and the immune system (they hate each other, they need each other, they love each other), but the related coming-of-age theme seems artificial because Colt only learns lessons because his mother’s neural experimentation allowed him to overcome his autism — hardly a formula that younger socially-challenged readers will be able to follow as they come of age.

The book isn’t any more successful in addressing the theme of connection. One logical extension of recognizing that we are all fundamentally the same is to stop thinking in terms of “us” and “them” because there is no “them,” there is only an all-encompassing “us.” The novel tries to advance that thought by anticipating the emergence of a new consciousness, something godlike. While other writers projecting the rise of a godlike machine intelligence have done so with dread, Connect speculates that a godlike consciousness making decisions based on reason rather than fear might be just what an angry world needs. It’s an appealing thought, although surrendering autonomy (assuming we have any) to an artificial consciousness might be more crippling than the disease it cures.

While Connect scores points for grappling with big ideas, it becomes excessively preachy at the end. I agree with the message of unity that’s preached and I think the message is well-intentioned, but the final chapters read more like an essay than a work of fiction. They are written from the perspective of a machine intelligence (the System of Systems) that didn’t strike me as the voice of an intelligent machine. It’s constantly “digging deeper” and going to “another level” as it explores dominant themes of religion and philosophy and myth, but the superficial conclusions it draws hardly seem to justify the intellectual effort (e.g., killing a large chunk of the Earth’s inhabitants would be bad for the Earth’s inhabitants; inequitable distribution of resources is unfair and something should be done about that). On the whole, Connect works as an adventure story, but it fizzles out when it tries to become a deep philosophical tome. I can recommend the novel as high tech thriller that might particularly appeal to fans of gaming, but I would suggest skimming through or skipping the mundane pages that are narrated by the godlike System of Systems.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Price You Pay by Aidan Truhen

First published in Great Britain in 2018; published by Knopf on July 10, 2018

Jack Price is badass. He’s about as badass as a character can be and still be a character a reader will enjoy encountering — in fiction, because I wouldn’t want to know him in person. A Japanese police detective refers to Jack Price as a “spectacularly awful person” before wishing him luck (and promising to have him run over with a delivery truck if he ever visits Japan). That’s pretty much my reaction to Price. He’s a deplorable sociopath, but it’s impossible not to cheer for him, if only because his survival means that he’ll keep narrating the story.

Price narrates The Price You Pay in a distinctive voice. It’s hard-boiled and slangy and profane, uninfluenced by conventional rules of punctuation and sentence construction. I loved the voice. The voice gives Price instant personality while making it clear that he’s intelligent and funny and someone no sane person would want to have as a neighbor.

Price is an upscale cocaine dealer, although he outsources the actual deliveries. An elderly woman named Didi is murdered in his building. Price hated Didi but he asks questions about the murder because he doesn’t think people should be getting murdered where he lives. The killing and Price’s inquiries set in motion a wild chain of events. A contract is put out on his life which is accepted by the celebrity assassins known as the Seven Demons, marking the best day of Price’s life because all restraints are off and he’s free to do as he pleases. Seven world-class assassins versus Jack Price. It’s a pretty even match.

The story’s tongue-in-cheek nature allows it some over-the-top moments. Aidan Truhen doesn’t overdose the reader with those. Humor pervades the story, and while it is sometimes violent humor, the story’s goofiness makes it easy to like Price without worrying that he’s a sociopath. It’s hard to be squeamish about decapitation when you’re laughing out loud. It’s also easier to like a guy who is totally honest about being an asshole than it is to like an asshole who styles himself as an heroic patriot whose moral purity and sense of duty outshines everyone else (i.e., today’s typical stalwart thriller hero).

While Price behaves like a sociopath, there are signs that he might actually have a heart. There are also plenty of signs suggesting just the opposite. One of the characters even tells him that he isn’t a sociopath because “you experience the world like a normal person but there is no limit on your behavior.” In other words, he is capable of liking people and dogs but doesn’t let casual friendship stand in the way of creating mayhem to achieve his goals. And when the people he likes end up dead, he doesn’t shed many tears; he’s too busy planning the next round of mayhem. As another character tells him, Price just wants “to do appalling things and sass people and get laid.” That doesn’t sound like it should be endearing, but it is. Kudos to Truhen for making me like Jack Price.

RECOMMENDED

The Girl in the Ice by Robert Bryndza

First published in Great Britain in 2016; published in paperback by Grand Central Publishing on April 24, 2018

The Girl in the Ice gives the reader a standard crime novel plot: intrepid investigator continues to pursue leads after being suspended for an insubordinate disagreement with the investigative choices made by her bureaucratic bosses, who avoid upsetting powerful people by focusing suspicion on an easy but innocent target. The plot also includes a human trafficking element, which is the current trendy crime novel crime. Standard plots and trendy crimes are fine if they are made fresh, and The Girl in the Ice manages to stand slightly above the pack of standard but trendy crime novels with interesting characters and a solid story.

When a fellow finds a dead woman in the ice, DCI Erika Foster is assigned to the case. Foster has recently transferred from Manchester to London, carrying with her some heavy emotional baggage. The dead woman is the daughter of a prominent politician (and a baron, no less). The politician happens to be the wealthy owner of a private defense contractor, so PR is important, as is a quick and favorable resolution of the crime. Foster’s Slovak background is considered good for PR given the similar heritage of the victim’s mother, until Slovak discovers that the victim’s mother considers herself superior to Foster based on the respective cities in which they were born.

The investigation leads to a pub where the dead woman met a man — a pub that people are afraid to discuss. One of the fearful witnesses ends up dead, but Foster’s superiors view that as a coincidence, not as evidence that a serial killer is on the loose.

Naturally, Foster disagrees with her superiors and concludes that a serial killer is, in fact, killing attractive young prostitutes. And naturally, the politician doesn’t want his dead daughter lumped together with prostitutes, which accounts for the reluctance of Foster’s superiors to pursue her theory. But even if the politician’s daughter wasn’t a prostitute, she might have had something in common with the other murder victims, so Foster ignores her superiors and her suspension and investigates the crime in her own way.

Despite my weariness with human trafficking plots, The Girl in the Ice held my interest. The focus is not so much on trafficking but on a murder investigation that branches in several directions, and the killer’s identity is nicely concealed until the big reveal. Robert Bryndza takes time to build his characters and establish atmosphere, but the pace picks up considerably as the novel enters thriller territory in its stretch run. Erica is a bit of a stereotype, but she’s likable, or at least sympathetic. The novel has obviously benefited from effective marketing by its original publisher, but I enjoyed it, even if some of the accolades it has earned are a bit suspect. The Girl in the Ice is the first in a series, and while I might not go out of my way to read the next one, I certainly won’t avoid it.

RECOMMENDED

Peach by Emma Glass

First published in Great Britain in 2018; published by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC on January 11, 2018

Peach is a surrealistic novel about the aftermath of a sexual assault. The story has elements of a disturbing fantasy. Sexual assault is disturbing but it isn’t a fantasy, and I must admit that I’m not sure I understood Emma Glass’ purpose in telling a story about such a serious event from a perspective that is so obviously removed from reality. The reader is clearly not expected to view most of the novel’s events as plausible, but if that’s so, should we view the sexual assault as real? And if nothing in this story is meant to be accepted as real, what is its purpose? Perhaps the point is that the protagonist has unraveled as a result of the assault, but I can’t quite fit that in with the surrounding environment, including bizarre parenting and cannibalism. I have to confess that Glass’ meaning entirely eluded me. But I enjoyed the story, and perhaps more astute readers will unpack its mysteries.

Peach comes home bleeding but her parents don’t notice. If anything, they are pleased that she is “putting out” before she’s married. Peach wants to tell Green, her boyfriend, what happened to her but she can’t find the words. The details are not explicitly shared with the reader, but it is clear that she was sexually assaulted. She later receives a letter, words cut from newspapers, signed with the name Lincoln, that smells like greasy sausage, as did the man who assaulted her, and so puts the name Lincoln to her assailant.

Later Lincoln (or so she assumes) attacks Green, a vicious beating that is witnessed by Green’s friend Spud. Peach knows when Lincoln has been watching her because he leaves behind a slimy residue that carries an odor of grease and meat. Describing Peach’s ultimate confrontation with Lincoln would spoil the story, so I will say only that it is the stuff of fantasy or horror fiction. Not to put too fine a point on it, but my primary thought as I was reading that scene was WTF?

Mysteries for the reader to ponder include Peach’s sudden weight gain (which may or may not result from the obvious explanation), the meaning of Lincoln’s cryptic notes, the sex-obsessed behavior of Peach’s parents, the symbolic nature of Lincoln’s meat smell, the reason that Peach’s parents are so obsessed with eating meat (Peach is a vegetarian), and the parents’ reaction to the aftermath of Peach’s confrontation with Lincoln. My hat is tipped to readers who can answer those questions.

Peach tells a dark story in an incongruously light style. Some aspects of the story are bizarre, and I am not quite sure what message Emma Glass meant to send. Is the book intended to say something about female empowerment? Is it a meditation on the pain of rape? Is it a fantasy or the product of a disturbed mind? The reader will need to decide; I haven’t been able to settle on an interpretation, or even to begin shaping one that I regard as credible.

Emma Glass uses a number of literary techniques associated with poetry, including alliteration, assonance, repetition, imagery, and even the occasional rhyme, to give her prose a lyrical feel. She also indulges in a bit of wordplay. “Thick slick. Blood bleeds into the water, colour changes copper. … I tread, I tread. I reach between my legs until I find the final thread. I tread. The fine fibre I fumble to find with thick fingers, feel through viscuous liquid leaking out, leaking in. Treading still, I dread, I tug the thread.” A little of that can go a long way, but the novel is short, which makes it read like an epic poem.

And it’s good that the novel is short because the imagery is often quite disturbing, which might explain why Glass lightens the story, albeit with dark humor. Peach is a challenging novel but the prose alone is rewarding, and the story’s strangeness offers ample nourishment for thought. For that reason, and because I enjoyed the prose, I am recommending Peach despite my inability to make much sense of it.

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