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The 13th Target by Mark de Castrique
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Having just come down from reading a major, rather densely written fantasy tetralogy, I’ve hit remarkably lucky with The 13th Target by Mark de Castrique (Poisoned Pen Press, 2012). This is, quite simply, a wonderful straight-line political thriller. It has an elegant plot and the execution is pitch perfect. I could stop here but, as those of you who read these reviews will recognise, I’m incapable of letting something go once I’ve started to write about it.
For me, the major problem with many modern thrillers is the superficiality of the plot. We meet our hero. It’s usually a tough male, albeit soft round the edges and getting on in years, i.e. he’s old enough to know better but gets sucked into danger because of those soft edges. He’s either endowed with supernatural fighting skills or possessed of enough weaponry to sink a battleship (and any nearby aliens as well). Should he have the misfortune to be beaten up or tortured, he’s stoical and, after the application of a bandaid and a stiff drink, he’s fighting above his weight for the world championship. Usually, our hero walks innocently into a situation. As a PI, a client may randomly pick his name out of the phonebook or he may just be in the wrong place at the wrong time (as it were). The first reaction is either cherchez la femme or follow the money. Then, before you can say [insert appropriate word with many syllables], he’s up to his neck in sharks trying to chew off his leg and anything else free-floating. Naturally, he escapes and, after shooting off several heavy-duty guns, not quite being on the receiving end of explosions and drinking several cups of tea, we have a revelation that it was the guy in the green hat masterminding the entire thing. Put another way, if there’s a choice between plot and characterisation, the pace of the storytelling wins and the characters must simply fit into the pattern of events even though their credibility grows increasingly suspect. Once you’ve read one of these “things”, you start ticking off the different variations. Some have more or less sex. Some involve major political players and scandals to rock the White House or House of Commons or House on the Prairie if you prefer something wilder. There can be drugs or gangs fighting over the loot from robberies. But, in a sense, none of these substantially change the core plot which has our bulletproof hero ducking and weaving until he can deliver the knockout blow.
Mark de Castrique following in Carl Sandburg’s footsteps
The plot of The 13th Target, however, is of a completely different order of magnitude. It’s an intelligent take on the controversy over the role of the Federal Reserve in America. Every country has both a political department charged with trying to balance the books and a national bank. Sometimes, the bank is just a tool of the Treasury. But in some countries, the national bank is an independent agency of government, i.e. it works within broad guidelines laid down by government, but is not directly accountable to the politicians for day-to-day decisions. The Fed has three core mandates and a significant number of duties making it “independent within government”. There’s Congressional oversight but, essentially, the Fed can do what it likes and without having to disclose its actions. Indeed, this lack of transparency is at the heart of this novel. If the public had a right to know what the Fed is doing with its money, a number of other governments, international organisations, national organisations, and individuals might be embarrassed. The Fed might then face reform or, indeed, abolition.
Against this background, we have a primary hero and two important sidekicks. Two of the three are relatively old, the other a couch potato. Worse, they are capable of holding intelligent conversations rather than handguns which they might just use to shoot everyone wearing a green hat on a precautionary basis. I was waiting to see if any of our trio would actually pick up a gun in anger, awarding negative hero points as the plot developed without the good guys shooting people. It was deeply satisfying that neither sidekick fired a gun. Even better, we have a twin narrative track which shows the planning and execution of the dastardly plot. We see enough of the initial plan and then how it must be modified to keep pace with developments in the field. As the author of the plan is quick to recognise, SNAFU always applies and anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. The plot must therefore be positive in its aims, but sufficiently flexible in its execution to allow for the anticipated FUs. I should explain the reason for this review’s focus on plots. The man tasked with running this criminal operation is a thriller writer with many of his books translated and sold around the world. He’s an expert in manipulating events on paper to get to the desired outcome. Although we should perhaps note that, quite often, his books end up remaindered. Curious. I wonder why that is. Structurally, this almost makes the book metafictional, i.e. it shows an author at work in one narrative thread creating the responses to the action in the other narrative thread. But this is presented descriptively so it ends up merely showing some nice ironies.
Anyway, The 13th Target is an elegant, stripped-down piece of writing with no superfluous words other than as required to discuss the heavy-weight issues of constitutional law and international finance. When not in the higher intellectual realms, the plot charges along with our hero following the money trail and finding bodies with his name obviously chalked in as the killer. Eventually, he understands why he’s being set-up as the fall guy and demonstrates a pleasingly proactive approach to saving himself and the 13th target. For once when reading a political thriller, I was hugely entertained and finished with a big smile on my face.
For a review of another book by Mark de Castrique, see A Murder in Passing.
A copy of this book was sent to me for review.
The October Killings by Wessel Ebersohn
I’ve just finished The October Killings by Wessel Ebersohn (Minotaur Books, 2011) which is an outstanding political thriller cum police procedural cum crime novel. But as I sit here with a blank screen in front of me, I find myself surprised by this reaction. At this precise moment, I’m not entirely sure why I think it so good. This requires a little thought. In part, it begins with the origin of the plot. It’s a sad admission that the last book I read based on the South African experience was more than thirty years ago. Nevertheless, Biko by Donald Woods remains firmly embedded in my memory as a magnificently brave book. In his own way, Wessel Ebersohn is also prepared to stand up and speak honestly about later events pre- and post-apartheid. This story begins in 1985 with a raid by South African Defence Force troops across the border to eradicate ANC rebels. Young Abigail Bukula survives thanks to the intervention of Leon Lourens, a young white soldier and, later, the bravery of Michael Bishop who worked for the ANC.
This sets the theme of the book. The question for discussion is what qualities do we recognise as heroic? In some senses, it’s easier to define in a fight when, despite the danger and the position of relative disadvantage, the individual continues the struggle. This may be reckless. It may even be suicidal. But it’s usually magnificent when you see it (and survive). So we’re looking for people who give their all for the greater good of society. It can be political leaders who defy the odds to establish a new reality. It can even be academics if they supply the persuasive force to move the masses. To many, Karl Marx is heroic even though the result of the class struggle was determined by the people on the streets. The labelling all depends on how those with access to the discourse write the history. Myths become facts until they are inconvenient and then are dismantled into folk memories and slowly forgotten as the generations die. So would Abigail be a hero? She’s the child of activists who were murdered for their beliefs. She not only survived the massacre, but also escaped from jail the next day. Or perhaps the man who rescued her was the hero. Had the ANC not sent him, she would probably have died. Or perhaps it was the white soldier who defied orders and threatened to shoot his commanding officer unless he spared Abigail’s life.
Wessel Ebersohn pretty fly for a South African guy
It would depend on who you asked and when you asked the question. Abigail’s parents were considered terrorists by the government of the day. When the ANC later took power, the same victims were martyrs to the cause. As an insubordinate soldier, the saviour was a race traitor. After the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had done its work, he could live openly in South Africa without harassment. And Abigail? Well, she became a lawyer working for the Justice Department. And Michael Bishop? It’s a curious thing about killers. When their services support the winning side, they are quietly lauded and protected. But what happens after victory is declared? Should they continue to kill because that’s what they enjoy doing, will they lose the protection offered by those in power? Or, with their image as unsung heroes tarnished, will they be thrown to the wolves?
Now the tables are turned. Twenty years later, Leon comes to Abigail for protection. It seems someone is killing off all the members of the team that crossed the border. In the hope of working out who would be motivated to systematically kill all these men, she tries to visit Marinus van Jaarsveld, the captain in charge of the death squad. To get inside the prison where he’s held, she enlists the help of Yudel Gordon, a psychiatrists specialising in the criminal mind. Together, they begin to probe the mystery and confirm all the deaths took place on the same day in October. With only days to spare, Leon disappears. Now they must increase the speed of their investigation. Suspicion naturally falls on the elusive Michael Bishop except no-one admits to seeing him for years. When Yudel has a theory about where Bishop might be found, they recruit Deputy Commissioner Freek Jordaan to their team. He puts together a police team and sets a trap.
In all this, I hope you have asked why Abigail is trying so hard to save a white man. This is more than the simple repayment of a debt. It’s an affirmation of the relationship between the races in the new political reality. That she can work equally well with the ageing Yudel is further evidence of her commitment to accept people regardless of their race, gender, age or apparent abilities. She’s simply motivated to get results. Given she starts off this investigation at a disadvantage, I suppose this makes her a heroine.
The October Killings is a fascinating look inside a country I have not actively thought about for some years, a very good crime story or political thriller, and a thoughtful examination of what it takes to be a hero — not just in physical terms but also in matters of the heart when it comes to the process of reconciliation as opposed to revenge. The core of the book can be summed up in a single sentence, spoken by Abigail to Yudel, “One night in Maseru I was saved by a good man, defending an evil cause, and on the next I was saved by an evil man, fighting for a good cause.” It’s only when you step back and see the breadth of the book that you can also understand why it’s so good. So, even though you might not immediately consider reading a book set in South Africa, you should definitely make an exception for this. It’s wonderfully engaging!
A copy of this book was sent to me for review.
The Restoration Game by Ken MacLeod
This is a review I need to construct with some care to avoid overly annoying readers. Let’s start with the headline which is that The Restoration Game by Ken MacLeod (PYR, 2011) is a terrific read. The prose positively crackles with invention and quite considerable wit for what may properly be classified as a kind of political thriller in a science fiction frame. It’s relatively unusual to read through a revenant of Russian espionage thrillers with a smile hovering on the outskirts of my face, waiting to come in from the cold when summoned by some unexpected delight. That said, the actual content is a reworking of some “old” ideas.
We need to go back to books like Time Out of Joint (Lippincott, 1959) by Philip K. Dick, Counterfeit World (Gollancz, 1964) (also published under the name Simulacron-3 and later filmed as The Thirteenth Floor) by Daniel F Galouye, Surface Detail (Orbit, 2010) by Iain M Banks, and so on, in which people are living in a virtual reality. We then take a small detour into the Dragon’s Egg (Ballantine, 1980) and its sequel Starquake (Ballantine, 1989) by Robert L Forward which are wonderfully accessible hard science fiction novels in which we first meet the Cheela and then help them rebuild their civilisation. The point of the duology is that, by virtue of the difference in time between the human outside observers and the Cheela on the neutron star, a Cheela day is 0.2 seconds in our time dimension. This allows us to watch the rise of a civilisation and, with dubious morality, influence its development. Finally, we need to come to books like Deep State (Orbit, 2011) by Walter Jon Williams in which online multiplayer role-playing games are used as a mechanism for planning and executing espionage activity.
Like the painting of the bridge, Ken MacLeod is a work in progress
At this point, some of you are likely upset because, without the courtesy of a spoiler warning, I’m apparently telling you what the book is about. Well, you’re both right and wrong. The book’s title tells you we’re dealing with a game. The Prologue starts with a quote from Wikipedia defining an “exploit” and is titled, “First-person shooter: Mars 2248 A.U.C.” Reading that chapter will confirm the exact set-up of the history experiment being run by rogue AIs and the unintentional flaw in the design of the simulation. It’s one of these silly mistakes any advanced artificial intelligence system might make (or not, depending on how stupid you want the machine to be). Except, of course, the inhabitants of the simulation will believe the scientific measurements they make. It will take them “centuries” to understand that there’s a certain lack of consistency in the physics. And, even if they do get confused, why should it matter? They are only simulations, after all!
Ah, so this brings us to the nub of the problem as presented by Ken MacLeod. By personalising the sims and spending most of the book describing their lives, he’s reinforcing the notion that they are people in the same way that we are people. When we go back to the Prologue, we should also notice that Daphne Pontifex herself seems interested in the collection of points. This gives us the implication that her world is simply another level in a gaming simulation where the players have been tasked with solving the problem of errors in an AI-generated simulation. Think of the structure of this book as a matryoshka doll with simulations of reality packed inside each other in descending sizes. Each simulation, from its own point of view, would consider itself real unless something fairly dramatic happened to disturb that consensus view, e.g. if scientific experiments were consistently to prove neutrinos may travel faster than the speed of light.
Back to dealing with your potential complaints. Everything discussed here is drawn from the first two chapters. The author is not interested in hiding the nature of the worlds in play here. He wants us to think about what responsibility, if any, we might have for any of the simulated realities our technology might create, whether now or in the future. At present, we might “inhabit” these worlds through avatars, but what would happen if there was enough computing power to make each character partially or wholly self-aware? Would it be murder to turn off the power without saving them all to hard memory? Finally, the fact the book is recycling “old” ideas does not make it any less interesting or enjoyable. If you compare romantic novels, a male and female meet at a social level. In due course, they explore the possibility of a relationship. There are problems. In the final chapter, they do/do not have sex depending on whether the book is propagandising abstinence before marriage.
The real enjoyment in this book comes from following the life histories of the generations through Eugenie, Amanda and Lucy. Somehow, the entire family seems tied into an obscure place called Krassnia, formally a part of the USSR. In all the telling, Lucy is a wonderfully unreliable narrator, in due course ably assisted by Ross Stewart. Then there’s the question of her paternity and why a version of the South Ossetia War might be fought. All in all, The Restoration Game is great fun told by Ken MacLeod with a knowing wink and a sly look in our direction.
The cover illustration is by the consistently excellent Stephan Martiniere.
A copy of this book was sent to me for review.
For the record, The Restoration Game is a finalist for The Prometheus Award for Best Novel 2012.
For a review of another book by Ken Macleod, see The Night Sessions.
Gods and Fathers by James LePore
Gods and Fathers by James LePore (The Story Plant, 2012) is a roller-coaster ride. It may not get into the Guinness Book of Records for being the longest ride at a relatively short 272 pages, but it sure does produce high-class thrills. In a book sitting on shelves marked thriller with sub-genres in legal and political, that’s all you can ask for. So what’s it about? As the title suggests, this is mainly about families with a focus on fathers. The families involved straddle religious divides between Christendom and Islam, and within Islam between Sunni, Shia and the factions. On the barricades between families and their faiths, emotions run high, feuds persist over time and the desire for revenge is inexhaustible. Also in play are the countries. At the heart of all social contracts between citizens and their state is the notion of parens patriae: a fundamental public policy that the sovereign is parent to all its citizens and will step in where necessary to protect the weak and the vulnerable.
To show he means business from the first page, James LePore introduces Matt DeMarco, a tough attorney in his first major case, an honour killing. You can’t get more controversial in that even the Islamic mainstream disapproves, characterising it as an unfortunate survival from tribal cultures. The year is 1993 and our hero is given the task of running the first major trial in New York. The difficulty in such cases, of course, is that the lead attorney necessarily becomes a political player. The decision to prosecute is setting down a marker for the local community of a change in policy. From now on the intention is to treat this form of domestic abuse as a mainstream crime. This is the sovereign state of New York asserting its parental duty to care for wives and daughters at risk. For better or worse, Matt DeMarco does not hold back. He’s not into neutrality. He wants the result. When the jury convicts, a son faces sentencing for the murder of his sister.
We now jump forward to 2009. Matt is divorced. His wife has married Basil al-Hassan, a wealthy Syrian businessman who’s now stepfather to Matt’s son, Michael. When his girlfriend Yasmine Hayek is found shot dead, the first rush of evidence suggests Michael is guilty. With money no object, Basil gets a top firm to represent his stepson. Because of potential conflicts of interest, Matt is unable to remain in the prosecutor’s office. As the investigation continues, we learn there’s a lot more to this killing than meets the eye. There’s a United Nations investigation team on the ground and the CIA has an interest. When the first NYPD officer falls in the line of duty, interests coincide. Matt finds himself more at home with the homicide and other detectives he’s known over the years. They have to find a way of working through the political minefield to get enough of the truth to save those involved from further harm.
As background, President Bashar al-Assad has been in power since 2000. A controversial moment came in 2005 when Rafik Hariri, the Prime Minister of Lebanon, was assassinated. There’s long been suspicion this death was ordered by Syria. The extent to which this death should be investigated by the international community was considered. As always there were strong differences. Some countries routinely promote a policy of non-intervention in the affairs of another sovereign state. At the other end of the spectrum, states promote universal justice and the need for the guilty to be brought before the International Criminal Court. These are difficult issues for America because it’s against the notion of any supranational court asserting jurisdiction over its own citizens, particularly those acting in a military capacity. Yet it also wants to deal with Syria as one of those states more directly involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict. This makes the Syrian connection to the death of Yasmine Hayek even more difficult. Add in the fact that her father, Pierre Hayek, had secretly been a member of a Christian militia responsible for a savage attack on a Moslem ghetto and the State Department, Justice and the CIA prefer Michael to plead. That allows them a relatively free hand. If charges were dismissed and Syrian nationals were to be implicated. . .
By the time we’re done, bullets, RPGs and bombs have left their marks. That’s the one thing fathers have in common. If you threaten their children, they get emotionally involved. If one of them like Matt has military training, he can be more effective than the usual parent. With the covert backing of the NYPD, the results might surprise the governments of the states and countries involved. For all this is a relatively short book, it manages to pack in both a lot of action and enough background so we can understand the characters as people. None of those more directly involved are simple stereotypes. We’re allowed the see shades of grey and the complexity of situations. While it may not say that much about the political and moral implications of events, Gods and Fathers does enough to make this a superior legal and political thriller.
A copy of this book was sent to me for review.
Dark Tangos by Lewis Shiner
In Dark Tangos (Subterranean Press, 2011), Lewis Shiner has written a political thriller about guilt. As everyone with a conscience knows, guilt can have a powerful effect because we generate it internally. It’s our own sense we have done something wrong. We acquire this ability to judge ourselves as we grow up in our culture. We learn how we are expected to behave within the limitations of legal, moral and purely social rules backed up by various types of punishment should we transgress. It should go without saying that long-term absolutes in behaviour are very rare, if not impossible. I suppose someone of a saintly disposition could go through life in a state of moral purity, never doing anything blameworthy. Equally, a sociopath could avoid ever feeling guilt by rejecting all external rules as a limit on his or her behaviour. Most of us live somewhere in the middle ground.
Lewis Shiner emerging from the long grass
Expanding our definition, guilt is not the same as shame. Guilt is the personal acceptance of responsibility. No-one else need be aware of what we have done until we go on to the next stage of remorse, the sense we should do something practical to relieve the emotional distress caused by the guilt. This links guilt with notions of honour and integrity. Shame only comes when those in our community share in the judgement that our behaviour fell below the standards expected. We lose public esteem and can only recover our reputation by showing contrition and accepting punishment in good spirit. This demonstrates the broader principle that the process we call rehabilitation does not work properly unless the wrongdoers accept society’s judgement and want to reform. This is true both for individuals and also for nations. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa is regarded by many as a successful attempt by a nation to come to terms with its past. Without openness and transparency, a group of people cannot understand what was done and then set the terms for forgiveness — which includes forgiving themselves, of course. The problem with the South African approach is that it gave amnesty to alleged wrongdoers and thereby denied victims the chance for justice in the criminal or civil courts.
The problem addressed in Dark Tangos is that holding trials does not work any better. During the so-called Dirty War in Argentina, a predominantly right-wing Catholic elite kidnapped, tortured and killed communists and other “dissidents”. This is well-documented as is the practice of taking the babies when they were born during detention. Equally well-documented, but not so well acknowledged inside the US, is the involvement of the CIA in the more general Operation Condor to prevent socialism from taking hold in the southern states of South America. There’s no doubt the US was complicit in the use of death as a form of political repression. Later, in Argentina under a different regime, there were some show trials but the government granted a general amnesty to all military officers who might have participated in the disappearances, and formally pardoned the leaders of the Junta during the relevant time. Although the amnesty laws were repealed in 2005, the people of Argentina have never been allowed a clear view of what happened and there’s little willingness in the successive governments to accept the need to establish guilt or shame those responsible. Consequently, the thousands who “disappeared” are wounds that will not heal in the Argentinian soul.
Dark Tangos assumes the CIA not only provided intelligence to the death squads, but also channelled finance through legitimate US companies trading in South America. This support for right-wing governments benefitted the US politically at a time when the domino theory was still considered relevant. The US corporations who laundered the money also benefitted because they were awarded profitable contracts by the governments for hiding payment to their operatives. In spirit, this book is not unlike The Quiet American by Graham Greene except it deals with the aftermath, rather than the early years, of US support for right-wing repressive regimes.
Rob Cavenaugh is an emotionally vulnerable older man whose marriage has just collapsed. His employer, a multinational US software company, relocates him to their Buenos Aires office which suits him because it gets him away from his wife, and he’s in love with the tango — he’s visited before to learn the dance with his wife. On arrival, he immediately throws himself into the local dance scene and starts taking lessons with a top dancer. Speaking Spanish with reasonable fluency, he’s soon making new friends. We can think of him as being one of those openly friendly guys, naturally gregarious but politically naïve. This essential innocence is soon under threat as he finds himself in love on the rebound with a young Argentinian woman. However, it soon becomes clear she has an agenda and, remarkably, she drops him. Guilt comes in many forms and seducing a man to recruit him into a dangerous activity is high on the list of things not to do. However, he finds himself all too willing to become a human pawn. If nothing else, it shows the power of sex to overwhelm basic rules about self-defence. Once he’s crossed the Rubicon, he’s immediately at risk and, as the number of people involved slowly expands, he finds himself one of the Disappeared. Yes, it still happens when one of the old operatives feels at risk. So before you decide to read this book, decide whether you can stand reading an extended description of torture and its consequences. Some of the passages are quite strong meat.
Lewis Shiner has a slightly dense prose style, including a lot of background information. Perhaps I’m unusual in being familiar with much of it. I suppose the intended American readership might be less well-informed and will benefit from the explanations. If you are going to do it justice, it’s not a quick read. However, I feel that, while being reasonably accurate in attributing guilt to the Argentinians, it underplays the guilt that should be accepted by the US. That said, this is a brave book by an American author in dealing with the uncomfortable truth about the Dirty War and Operation Condor. As a story, it exposes the shades of moral grey that all humans of ordinary courage experience. In this instance, I only found one person’s actions surprising although, in retrospect, it’s consistent with what we have seen and heard. Everyone else nicely lived up, or down, to our reasonable expectations given the set-up. This is a testament to the credibility of the characterisation. Lewis Shiner has also done justice to life in Buenos Aires. Overall, this is an intellectually powerful and socially interesting commentary on what happened in Argentina. I opened by describing it as a political thriller, i.e. it deals with an innocent man who opens Pandora’s Box on an international mess of repression and corruption. What makes this a good example of the genre is that it does include the detail of the politics. Unlike many other authors who prefer more superficial plots with guns blazing and bombs exploding to keep us interested, this is a thinking person’s thriller with attitude. It’s well worth reading.
A copy of this book was sent to me for review.
Thinking about books 