The Plague Forge by Jason M. Hough

Published by Del Rey on September 24, 2013

As the final novel in the Dire Earth trilogy, The Plague Forge promised to solve the central mystery that animated the first and second books: Why did aliens build space elevators on Earth, turn most humans into subhumans (except for those protected an aura emitted by alien gadgetry), and scatter objects around the globe that were meant to be plugged into an alien spaceship like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle? The Plague Forge does indeed answer those questions -- apart from some annoying gaps in the explanation -- although the reader must wade through a lot of repetitive action scenes before an expository information dump in the final pages reveals the aliens' purpose. The answers are disappointing, and in some respects absurd, but most disappointing of all is that they seem to set up another series of books that will probably feature more mindless action scenes with little substantive content.

The characters are the strength of the series. They aren't particularly deep but they have well-defined personalities and undergo credible changes as the story develops. Although Skylar is the chief protagonist, several of the supporting characters are equally important, and in some respects are easier to care about. Some turn into unlikely heroes, furthering a theme that heroism is often a function of desperate circumstances. That's the aspect of The Plague Forge (and the series) that I liked best.

Post-apocalyptic political struggles are well conceived, giving rise to the kind of characters who are fun to despise. The seeds of political intrigue that were planted in the first two books bear fruit here. Some other interesting ideas underlie the series, but they are too often buried in scenes of people hitting and shooting each other. There are only so many times our heroes can do battle with subhumans or bad humans before the battles become tiresome. The entire series could (and should) have been whittled down to a single book, yet it would still be a book with a disappointing expository ending that isn't an ending at all. The Dire Earth novels have some merit, but if there are more to come, I doubt I'll devote any time to them.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Sins of the Flesh by Colleen McCullough

Published by Simon & Schuster on November 12, 2013

A serial killer starves his victims before removing their testicles. Police Lieutenant Abe Goldberg's search for the killer takes him to the world of small town theater (which, in the Holloman, Connecticut of 1969, is surprisingly elaborate). Meanwhile, Sergeant Delia Carstairs is occupied with the Shadow Women, six missing women -- one disappearance each year for six years -- who rented apartments around the first of the year, lived isolated lives, then disappeared in late June, leaving behind a few articles of cheap clothing and a studio portrait. That investigation segues into the department's oldest open missing persons investigation (involving a female doctor who disappeared in 1925), which the star of the series, Carmine Delmonico, undertakes to solve.

Delia's new friends, Ivy Ramsbottom and Jessica Wainfleet, are given starring roles. Jessica is the director of an institute for the criminally insane who is famed for curing the raging psychopath Walter Jenkins. As an author should, Colleen McCullough devotes considerable time to character development. While Delia tends to be stuffy, judgmental, pretentious and dull, Carmine and Jessica are just pretentious and Abe is just dull. Fortunately, some of the supporting characters are more colorful. Nearly all of the characters, however, are so eloquent in their conversations (even when talking to themselves) as to detract from the novel's credibility. The characters are not necessarily inauthentic, but the dialog is. They speak with the same voice ... an annoying voice that often borders on the ridiculous. They are so determinedly chipper and witty and chummy and erudite that I wanted to strangle them every time they spoke -- and they are a loquacious bunch. The exceptions consist of absurdly stereotyped members of the underclass who speak a "ghetto" patois of the sort wildly imagined by someone who has never been exposed to that side of life.

McCullough's prose is generally fluid, which makes it surprising that occasional sentences are remarkably awkward while others smack of a forced attempt at literary excellence. Some aspects of the story are just whacky (Jenkins draws a bath for Jessica, finds her asleep in the tub, picks her up, towels her off, and carries her to her bed, all without waking her; Jenkins, as a trusted trustee in addition to bathtub filler notwithstanding his status as an insane serial killer, has been given access to all the confidential files of his fellow patients; Jenkins is allowed to help build the security system that confines him; Jenkins not only uses the hospital machine shop without supervision, he somehow has the technical expertise to build a complex device). Nothing about Jenkins' situation is credible -- an unfortunate lapse, since he plays such a key role as the plot develops.

Notwithstanding its flaws, the story has some entertainment value. One of the two investigations holds a few surprises even if some aspects of the plot eventually descend into silliness. Much of the novel is a celebration of female friendships, but the characters celebrate by having endless gossipy conversations, adding to the novel's tedium. Had the writing style (and particularly the dialog) been less irritating, this would have been a better book. As it stands, the novel's weaknesses offset the (mostly) appealing nature of its farfetched plot.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Black Flag by Brad Taylor and Blood Brothers by James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell

The trend of offering a short story in digital format to promote an upcoming series novel (a excerpt of which is packaged with the short story) creates buzz for the novel and a bit of extra income -- or so writers and their publishers hope. Two stories that follow that trend are reviewed here.

"Black Flag" by Brad Taylor

Published by Dutton on November 19, 2013

Avast, me bucko! Arrrr! No, it isn't Talk Like a Pirate Day, but "Black Flag" put me in the mood. The latest Taskforce story is about ... you guessed it ... pirates. Unlikely though it seems, Knuckles commits his team members to help search for Blackbeard's treasure. Of course, the treasure hunters who want to hire the business that the Taskforce uses as a cover are not your ordinary adventurers who spend their time diving for doubloons.

"Black Flag" promotes The Polaris Protocol, the fifth novel in Brad Taylor's Taskforce series. Taylor's short stories have steadily improved, and "Black Flag" is the most imaginative of the ones he's produced. There isn't much that's new here in terms of character development, but that's to be expected in a between-novels story. There is, however, plenty of action, the pirate theme lends itself to some tongue-in-cheek fun, and (as is typical of Taylor) the story is smart and fast-moving.

RECOMMENDED

"Blood Brothers" by James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell

Published ditigally by William Morrow Impulse on October 22, 2013

"Blood Brothers" is part of the Order of the Sanguines series, which began with The Blood Gospel. It promotes the second book in the series, Innocent Blood.

Arthur Crane finds an orchid in his apartment and flashes back to 1968 when, as a reporter in Great Britain who traveled to San Francisco to write about the death of a British folksinger, he saw a poster bearing the picture of Christian, a relative who was almost like a brother as Arthur was growing up. He didn't find Christian that day, but he did learn that the folksinger's killer left an orchid on his body. A pattern soon developed -- the victim receives an orchid in the morning and is killed twelve hours later, another orchid left on the body -- leading Arthur to dub the murderer The Orchid Killer. Arthur knew things weren't going well for him when he found an orchid on his typewriter. The story moves on from there until Arthur returns to the present and his second orchid.

Some aspects of "Blood Brothers" are unoriginal, including the inevitable "secret order buried deep within the Catholic Church," and Rollins/Cantrell are not subtle in their character development. Still, the story moves quickly, the setting is described in convincing detail, and action scenes are more plausible than is common in thrillers (at least if you discount the fang-like teeth that both good guys and bad guys are sporting). I liked "Blood Brothers" enough to recommend it to the legions of James Rollins fans but I wouldn't recommend it to readers who are anxious to find something new and different. Nothing in the story convinced me that the world needs another series of books about an ancient secret society.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Hunter and Other Stories by Dashiell Hammett

Published by Mysterious Press on November 4, 2013

Most of the Dashiell Hammett stories in this volume are previously unpublished; the rest are previously uncollected. They display a range of storytelling that goes beyond the detective noir for which Hammett is best known. The works in this volume are uneven and some are incomplete, but the book is a must for the Hammett completest.

The first section, subtitled "Crime," includes four stories. "The Hunter," about a private detective who finds a forger, is notable for its description of the detective's efforts to restrain his sense of compassion. "Sign of the Potent Pills" is notable for its humor, as a fledgling detective uses his wits to save an old man and his family from a criminal scheme, although not quite in the way he planned. In "The Diamond Wager," a diplomat in Istanbul recounts the story of his bet-winning theft of a diamond necklace. "Action and the Quiz Kid," involving a gambler who suckers a younger gambler, is the least substantial of the four.

Eight stories are collected under the subtitle "Men." Three excellent stories explore the themes of courage and cowardice. "An Inch and a Half of Glory" tells of a man who, after making a not-very-daring rescue of a child from a smoky building, learns the folly of pursuing the glory of heroism. The flip-side of that story is "Nelson Redline," in which a man who selfishly flees a burning office building, leaving his co-workers to fend for themselves, makes an unsuccessful attempt to justify his cowardice. "The Cure" tells the ironic story of a man who is goaded into confronting his fear of drowning.

In "Faith," one of my favorite stories in the volume, working men debate the existence of God. One of them knows God exists because only God could make his life so miserable. "Fragments of Justice" is indeed fragmentary, but the three character sketches of men serving on a jury are colorful and convincing. Another character sketch, "A Throne for the Worm," is less successful. In "Monk and Johnny Fox," a fighter talks about his fears. "Magic," about the magic of love (as invoked by a sorcerer), didn't appeal to me.

Women generally get the better of men in the stories that appear in the section labeled "Men and Women." A reporter exposes the true nature of a friend's fiancé in "The Lovely Strangers" while fighting a battle of the sexes he can't hope to win. A poet's love letter produces an unwelcome response in "The Breach Born." An actress hopes she is "On the Way" to stardom as well as marriage to a cad. The vignettes in "Seven Pages" and the description of an illicit "Week-End" did nothing for me.

A section entitled "Screen Stories" includes treatments that Hammett wrote for screenplays. "The Kiss-Off" is a noir story of love, murder, and betrayal that was eventually filmed as City Streets with Gary Cooper. Originally written as a Sam Spade story but rejected because it departed so sharply from Spade's characterization in The Maltese Falcon, a reworked version of "On the Make" about a crooked private eye was eventually filmed, in a much altered form, as Mister Dynamite. The treatment is written in the style of a short story -- a good story, but lacking the plot twists that made The Maltese Falcon a great novel and film. The more abbreviated "Devil's Playground" is essentially a western set in China.

The final entry in the printed book is the beginning of the last Sam Spade story. "A Knife Will Cut for Anybody" reprises some characters from The Maltese Falcon. Hammett abandoned the story but kept the plot, intending to use it in a non-Spade novella that was never finished. The story begins with Spade's discovery of a dead woman's body -- the woman he was hired to find. While disappointingly brief, the story fragment stands on its own. It is nonetheless a tantalizing opening to a more substantial work.

The eBook version (but not the printed book) concludes with fragments of additional unfinished works. The first is a rough draft of the beginning of "The Secret Emperor," about a private detective who works for a power-hungry, crooked senator. Hammett incorporated some parts of the abandoned novel into The Maltese Falcon and The Glass Key. Hammett wrote (or tried to write) "My Brother Felix" later in his career, when he was struggling to create a notable work beyond the bounds of crime fiction. The two fragments that appear here are rather rough.

Hammett devotees will enjoy the commentary that precedes each section and the Afterword by Hammett's granddaughter. For the casual Hammett fan, the book is worthwhile for the opportunity it provides to read Hammett's previously unpublished and uncollected stories.

RECOMMENDED

Tatiana by Martin Cruz Smith

Published by Simon & Schuster on November 12, 2013

Some writers of genre fiction transform the genre, taking it to a new level of excellence. Martin Cruz Smith has done that to crime fiction with his Arkady Renko novels.

An interpreter is killed after being kidnapped by a thug who has been paid to steal the interpreter's notes of a secret meeting. Unfortunately for the thug (and for the interpreter), the notes are encoded, so the thief discards them. The notebook makes its way to a journalist named Tatiana Petrovna, who is soon the apparent victim of a murder. The Kremlin, happy to see the end of a prominent critic of governmental corruption, proclaims the death a suicide and closes the investigation. Renko, as always, isn't buying the official line.

To get to the bottom of Tatiana's murder, Renko must learn why the interpreter was killed. The plot takes Renko to Kaliningrad, a city noted for its high crime rate and the center of the world's amber trade. Renko gets help (or hindrance) from Zhenya (a young chess genius who became Renko's ward in an earlier novel) and the poet Maxim Dal, as well as Renko's boss and co-workers. Of the various supporting characters, Zhenya (whose struggle to decide upon his future provides a strong subplot) gets the largest share of Smith's artistic attention. Renko's neighbor and part-time lover, Anya Rudenko, also plays a role. Her association with the son of a recently deceased mobster gives the beleaguered Renko yet another problem to worry about.

Smith is an old school thriller writer. His plots are surprising but believable. He writes absorbing stories without heavy reliance on car chases and martial arts contests to hold the reader's interest. His never forgets the importance of character development. In that regard, Renko is one of the strongest characters in crime fiction. In novel after novel, as his world deteriorates, Renko endures. He is, paradoxically, a cynical idealist. Given the corruption that surrounds him, Renko doesn't believe his actions will improve Russian life but he carries on anyway, perhaps because solving crime is all he knows how to do. With a bullet lodged in his head that could kill him at any moment, he is understandably fatalistic but never morose. His wry humor is often self-effacing, making him an immensely likeable character, but he displays the emotional complexity of the best literary creations.

Tatiana is shorter and tighter than some earlier Renko novels. The story is not as poignant or as personal as the best novels in the series, but Smith nonetheless supplies the skillful plotting and soul-revealing characterization that make the Renko novels so memorable. Tatiana is a nifty display of storytelling and a worthy addition to a wonderful series.

RECOMMENDED