Field Gray by Philip Kerr

Published by Putnam on April 14, 2011

Field Gray begins in 1954 when Bernie Gunther is persuaded to smuggle a woman out of Cuba. Once they are at sea, Gunther's boat is stopped by an American naval vessel and Gunther is taken into custody. After brief stays (accompanied by beatings) in Gitmo and a military prison in New York, Gunther is rendered to Germany where Americans interrogate him about war crimes. As Gunther begins to reveal his past, the novel shifts in time; ensuing chapters alternate between 1954 and earlier times in Gunther's life: the 1930's and 1940's in Germany and France and Russia. As a captain in the SS, Gunther commanded a firing squad that executed Russian POWs; in occupied Paris he was nearly murdered; as a POW in a camp near Stalingrad he conducted a murder investigation. These and many other snippets of Gunther's checkered life are linked (more or less) by Gunther's on-and-off involvement with Erich Mielke, who (in the real world) served for many years as the minister of state security in the German Democratic Republic.

In some respects, Field Gray reads like the autobiography of Bernie Gunther. Unfortunately, the novel shifts ground so often, and Gunther seems so detached from the story he tells, that the novel fails to create an emotional resonance between the reader and its subject. What makes Field Gray worth reading is Philip Kerr's creation, in Gunther, of a morally complex man, one who is neither entirely good nor primarily bad, who tries to survive in an evil environment without becoming wholly corrupted by it. At one point Gunther is described as "a victim of history," an apt label that gives him an interesting perspective upon the era that is the novel's focus. That perspective is most often one of anger, broadly directed at Americans, Russians, the French, and other Germans, although he's more forgiving of the British (perhaps because Kerr is British).

The story's pace is a bit uneven; unfortunate since Kerr doesn't have the kind of absorbing prose style that rivets a reader's interest when the plot begins to lag. Kerr's writing style is nonetheless capable; I never considered abandoning the story despite its occasional dull moments. Staying with it paid off in the form of an unexpected ending. While I liked the choices made in the last few pages, I suspect some will not, particularly readers who want the good guys to triumph; there are no "good guys" in this novel. But the ending is true to the story that precedes it, and I thought it was both clever and satisfying. Readers who stay with Field Gray and who aren't turned off by moral ambiguity should have a rewarding reading experience.

RECOMMENDED

Quiet Chaos by Sandro Veronesi

Published in translation by Ecco on April 12, 2011; first published in 2005.

After Lara, the mother of his child, unexpectedly dies while Pietro is at the beach saving the life of a drowning stranger, Pietro spends his days in his car outside his daughter’s school, contemplating the quiet chaos of children spilling out of the building, experiencing an almost euphoric relaxation that has taken the place of grief.  A good bit of the novel takes place in Pietro’s mind as, in his thoughts, he justifies the affairs he had before Lara died, considers his absent feelings of loss, judges the friends and co-workers who visit him in his parked car and is judged by Lara's sister, with whom he had a fling before he met Lara.  Pietro is an executive in the Milan office of a cable television company that is undergoing an international merger, creating another element of chaos as his boss is sacked, but Pietro -- despite daily visits from company officers and employees -- is indifferent to the workplace turmoil, finding peace and tranquility in the park adjacent to the school, where he engages in amiably superficial conversation with the woman who takes her golden retriever for a daily stroll and plays a recurring game with a Down’s Syndrome child whose mother is taking him to physical therapy sessions. 

There’s something seductive about Sandro Veronesi’s prose, something that drew me in and held my attention even when nothing much was happening.  Other than the early scene in which Pietro and his brother save two women from drowning, there is little action in Quiet Chaos.  There is, instead, a good bit of observation and contemplation.  Pietro listens to Radiohead and decides that the few lyrics he can understand are meant for him, messages from Lara.  He begins to see himself as a symbol of pain, to see his car as a wailing wall without the wall, a fixture planted in front of the school so that others, imagining his sorrow, can feel they are sharing their own suffering with him.  The world happens all around him -- his daughter takes dance lessons, a stranger makes lunch for him, a new car parked by the school is damaged in two different accidents, a co-worker disappears after mistaking the CD drive in his laptop for a cup-holder -- and Pietro stands apart from it all.  One of the few times Pietro is “in the moment” comes during a passionate encounter with a woman (an extended, wonderfully written scene that is nonetheless quite graphic; readers who are turned off by scenes of that nature should stand warned) and even then Pietro suddenly becomes aware that he’s “in the moment,” thereby transforming himself from actor to observer.

For a meandering novel that is in many ways quietly chaotic, the ending offers a surprising amount of resolution and closure. While on its surface Quiet Chaos is about a man coming to terms with his life after his significant other’s death, there’s a lot going on here, more than I am able to articulate in a brief review.  I expect that additional meaning will creep into my consciousness as I continue to think about this fine novel.  Readers who are looking for an action-filled plot will likely be disappointed by Quiet Chaos, but I appreciated Sandro Veronesi’s strong, vividly detailed writing, his intense characters, and his illuminating ideas.  When I finished the novel I pondered whether to give it my highest recommendation but it keeps nagging at me, I keep thinking about it, and on the strength of its impact on my thoughts alone I’ve decided it deserves to be highly recommended. 

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The White Devil by Justin Evans

Published by Harper on May 10, 2011

Not being a fan of many ghost stories not written by Edgar Allen Poe, I wasn’t sure what to expect from The White Devil.  Made curious by a description that painted the novel as something more than a horror story, I began reading it with some fear that I might find it too dull to finish.  Exactly the opposite occurred.  Within the first few pages I was drawn into the narrative by the intelligence and wit that Justin Evans brings to his writing.  While it isn’t perfect, The White Devil is more complex and of higher literary quality than an ordinary tale of the supernatural.

The White Devil mixes a coming-of-age story with one of midlife redemption, adds the spice of sexual tension, and yes, tells a ghost story, but one with a twist that even Poe might have admired.  Yet the quality of the writing in The White Devil appealed to me more than the story.  The characters are carefully crafted, filled with interesting quirks and inner turmoils that grabbed my interest.  Events unfold at a rapid pace; the novel is a quick and easy read.  Yet The White Devil never filled me with sense of menace and foreboding that the best thrillers deliver.  Perhaps I was too far removed from the story, unable to envision myself threatened by a ghost at a British boys’ school, or perhaps the nature of the threat was so unlikely that it failed to conjure a sense of dread.  The best horror fiction appeals to both the cerebral and the primal mind; The White Devil left my primal fears untouched.

Ghost stories require the reader to suspend their disbelief, but The White Devil demands more from a reader than a willingness to believe in ghosts.  The story depends upon unlikely coincidences, beginning with the character Andrew’s uncanny resemblance to the poet Byron.  All the buildup leads to an ending that I thought was a bit too easy.  In fact, the ending all but abandons minor characters, which I found a bit frustrating.  Still, I was carried along by the stories within the story, by the interactions of the characters, and by the clever conceit that practically makes Byron a character in the story.  For all of those reasons, I liked the novel enough to recommend it, but not enough to rave about it.

A brief warning to readers who don’t want to encounter acts of physical intimacy in a novel, particularly when they involve teenagers:  there’s a fair amount of fooling around in this book, and while I wouldn’t consider the descriptions graphic, some readers might.  To me, those scenes seemed well suited to the novel, but I know that some readers would be offended by them, and they should know of the book's content before deciding whether to read it.

RECOMMENDED

Doc by Mary Doria Russell

Published by Random House on May 3, 2011

Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp are firmly established in the pantheon of Wild West legends, along with Jesse James and Billy the Kid. So many books have been written about them, fiction and nonfiction, that it may seem surprising to find another novel based on one of these gunslingers. It must be their legendary status that draws the attention of writers. Widespread familiarity with the legend becomes the writer's base, and the chance to reinvent or reinterpret an icon has an undeniable appeal. In Doc, Russell embraces the challenge of making the familiar seem new with surprising success.

Behind every legend there's a person, and it is the person, not the gunfighter, that Mary Doria Russell imagines in her story of Doc Holliday's time in Dodge City. Russell underplays the novel's armed confrontations, taking note of how legends build, how tall tales grow: an incident involving six cowboys evolves in the telling until Holliday faces down two dozen. Ultimately Russell deconstructs the legend, deemphasizing Holliday's skills as a gunfighter/gambler while painting a detailed picture of a loquacious, consumptive dentist who seems always a step away from death. The plot, such as it is, involves the apparent murder of an entirely fictitious character, a friend of Holliday and Wyatt Earp, but the mystery of his death is merely a vehicle to drive a deeper story. It isn't the familiar story of the O.K. Corral and Wyatt Earp's confrontation with the Clantons; the novel makes reference to those events in a concluding chapter, but the story effectively ends in Dodge City, before the Earp brothers and Holliday make their way to Tombstone.

Russell begins with an eyeblink view of John Holliday's Civil War childhood and his brief but violent stay in Texas (where he killed a man and was shot by another). By the time Holliday decides to rebuild his tubercular life in Dodge City, he's taken up with Kate, a princess turned prostitute who entrances him with erudition that matches his own. Kate is a significant figure in Holliday's life and in the novel. Kate's affinity for Holliday is based in part on his ability to win large sums of money at the card tables, in part on his intelligence and education, and in part on her inability to understand him. Unlike the other men in her considerable experience, who "were as obvious and as easily dealt with as a phallus," the complex dentist becomes her most memorable lover. To Kate's dismay, it is Doc Holliday's dentistry, not his gambling, that fills him with pride and purpose. Russell portrays Holliday as a compassionate if ill-tempered man who treats the fictitious characters "China Joe" and John Horse Sanders with respect regardless of their race, who understands the difficult lives that drove women to work in bordellos. Russell's Holliday is a man isolated by his intelligence and southern manners as much as his illness and quick temper.

Russell's Dodge City is a lawless land of unchecked freedom, fueled by the seasonal influx of money brought by Texans driving cattle: "They were giddy with liberty, these boys, free to do anything they could think of and pay for: unwatched by stern elders, unseen by sweethearts back home, unjudged by God, who had surely forsaken this small, bright hellhole in the immense, inhuman darkness that was west Kansas." Russell populates Dodge City with fully realized characters, emphasizing the routine and drama of their daily lives rather than the excitement and rough justice of frontier life. Speaking to Morgan Earp about literature, Holliday argues that Raskolnikoff and Oliver Twist's Fagin are interesting characters because they are a mixture of good and bad. Russell's characters are interesting for the same reasons. She creates a Wyatt Earp who is filled with insecurities instilled by an abusive father. The experiences and motives that drive her politicians and villains illuminate their lives.

I can't speak to the novel's historical accuracy, although I can note that Russell, in an afterward, calls attention to a few minor changes she made in the historical record. She also lists the novel's characters, italicizing the few who are entirely fictitious. Frankly, I don't think it matters; writers of fiction are licensed to change the past for the sake of the story. Still, so far as I can tell, Rusell's novel is as true to the past as it is to the artist's purpose: to tell truths even when they are fictional. Doc is a wise and stirring and truthful novel about a hard, determined, complicated man.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The Hanging Wood by Martin Edwards

Published by Poisoned Pen Press on April 5, 2011 

Orla Payne, seemingly a bit whacky (or at least a tad drunk) jumps into a silo in the apparent belief that it will help her solve a mystery. Her body is later found buried in grain. The day before she jumped, Orla begged Hannah Scarlett to investigate the disappearance of Orla's brother, Callum Hinds, twenty years earlier, when Orla was seven and Calum was fourteen. Scarlett works with the Cold Case Review Team at Cumbria Constabulary. Soon after Calum's disappearance (and the simultaneous disappearance of his uncle's pig), his uncle, Philip Hinds, hung himself in the Hanging Wood, an act widely viewed as an admission of responsibility for Calum's death. Although Philip was the last person who saw Calum, no evidence of Philip's role in Calum's disappearance was ever found. Scarlett tackles the mystery with the help of historian Daniel Kind. As the story progresses, another person dies and someone turns up who appears to have a long-lost connection to the Hinds family.

Martin Edwards sets up the usual range of diversionary suspects, giving Scarlett and one of her detectives a chance to muck around in the lives of the upper crust Lake District residents. Some of the people they interview repeat information provided by others; the redundancy tends to slow the narrative flow. In fact, much of the story is carried by exposition and dialog; in the absence of action or significant conflict, the pace lags. If the lives and relationships of the wealthy family members fail to generate much interest, neither does Scarlett's life, despite her continual fretting about her failed marriage and her critical assessment of the men who happen into her gaze. Again, the redundancy is irksome: how many times do we need to hear that the macho womanizing detective she's working with isn't her type, despite her admiration of his "powerful forearms"?

Perhaps readers who have read the previous Lake District novels will feel an attachment to the characters that I lacked and will have more interest in the mundane details of their faltering relationships. My interest lay not in the characters but in the story, which takes some interesting twists before arriving at a satisfying conclusion. Despite the uneven pace and lackluster characters, Edwards' capable prose style and plotting skills make The Hanging Wood a reasonably good yarn that dedicated mystery fans should enjoy.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS