Capture by Roger Smith

Smith continues exposing the underbelly of Cape Town.

Nick Exley is a motion capture entrepreneur living on the coast with his wife and 5 yo daughter. But all’s not idyllic. His wife is cheating on him with a Slavic brute. Nick smokes dope regularly to escape his failing marriage to this bipolar shrew. Daughter Sunny is his queen.

The story revolves around the collective guilt of the parents. At a small party on their beach, the wife is inside being unfaithful while the husband is sharing a joint on the beach, both ignoring Sunny. The child wades into the water to get her toy boat, gets caught in the current around the rocks and drowns.

The whole episode is witnessed by one of the community’s security who, having purposely waited too long, tries to save the child. Vernon is an ex-cop who lives with his diabetic mother in the Cape Town slums and he severely abuses his mom. Among others, he also has his hooks into Dawn, a stripper, and her 5yo child. Vernon takes great pride in manipulating people for money, drugs, power, or just for the pure entertainment value. This guy is just mean once he gets hold.

Nick and his wife fall further into their personal pits of guilt and remorse while Vernon’s ‘help’ is meant to serve one purpose: his own. Need a preacher for Sunny’s funeral? Need a dancer for a motion capture job? Need a gun? Need to direct blame for a killing on to a stoner bum? No problem. Let Vernon handle it.

“Capture” is the 4^th in Smith’s continuing series of tales of the people who inhabit some of the worst slums on the planet and how their plight spills over to people outside. As with all Smith stories, this noir tale is bleak, violent, remorseless, and ridiculously tense reading. It opens up bright with Nick and Sunny, then spirals down, down, down after Sunny’s death. And yet we keep on reading. Smith’s real skill is in keeping us glued to the pages knowing full well that this probably will not turn out all that well. It never does. 

You don’t believe, me do you? 

Under the Lake by Stuart Woods

Under the Lake is a stand alone novel written by Stuart Woods early in his career... before his popular Stone Barrington and Holly Barker series.

John Howell is an unhappy middle aged man.  His career as an investigative reporter has ended and as an author he has lost his inspiration.  His marriage is on the rocks.  Defeated, he reluctantly accepts an offer to ghost write an autobiography for chicken entrepreneur, Lurton Pitts.  John’s brother-in-law loans him a cabin on a man-made lake in Sutherland, GA and off he goes to churn out the book in solitude.  But the locals take notice of him.  Gruff founding father, Eric Sutherland warns him to mind his own business and Sheriff Bo Scully befriends him but appears too interested in John’s business.  John’s closest neighbor, the Kelly’s consist of a psychic older woman with healing powers and four children all with genetic abnormalities.  She tells him he is there to avenge a wrong to her family and John begins to have dreams and see visions of a ghost from under the lake.  When John tries to find out more about the history of how Eric Sutherland bought up the land in the valley, flooded the farms, and developed the town, doors are closed in his face.  No one is willing to talk about the family who disappeared under the lake 35 years ago.

Meanwhile, Heather McDonald, a young reporter from Atlanta has infiltrated the sheriff’s office as secretary, Scotty Miller.  John knew her as a reporter from the Atlanta newspaper where they both worked but manages not to expose her identity.  She is in Sutherland incognito to follow a rumored tip that Sheriff Scully is into drug trafficking.  So the picture perfect town of Sutherland is not what it appears to be.

 

John and Scotty team up romantically and professionally to unearth Bo Scully’s indiscretions and to reveal secrets buried under the lake.  Together their investigation unveils conspiracy, paranormal activities, drug smuggling, interbreeding and incest and cover-ups to protect the secrets of the town of Sutherland’s sketchy origin.  John’s search for the truth puts his life in danger but at the end of the day, saves his life by giving him new purpose.

I’ve read a lot of Stuart Woods and have come to know him as a fluff writer... something light to read when none of my favorites are available.  I rarely bother to critique him.  The Stone Barrington series with it’s conversational style is entertaining but every book is the same with no intellectual stimulation.  Woods’ stand alone books, however, are more interesting and less predictable... like he actually did some research and put some thought into them.  Under the Lake is like that.  It demonstrates that Woods has a true story telling talent... developing likable characters and somewhat believable scenarios then peeling the onion one layer at time.... building the suspense... revealing the mystery.  A fun read.  I’m glad I ventured into his earlier stuff.

Acts of Nature by Jonathon King

Max Freeman's been a busy boy with his developing PI business down there in S. Florida. So has his Ft. Lauderdale police detective girlfriend, Sherry. So busy they decide to take a week and go native at Max's shack/home in the eastern edge of the Everglades. No cell phones, no radios. Just some books, a little fishing, plenty of wine, campfires, some canoeing. Sounds pretty good to me (except the fishing part). One a whim, they pack up for an overnight or two at a vacant fishing camp a couple hours away.

Not the best of plans or timing with a Caribbean hurricane set to make an unusual turn NE and back up into Florida.

Buck, Marcus, and Wayne are B/E guys, fencing what electronics and jewelry they lift from Dade county homes. Buck has the bright idea that after the storm passes, all those rich folks who have weekend shacks in the Glades will be more concerned with cleaning up their homes than they will be about a shack so the picking should be pretty easy. 

Then there is Harmon and his buddy Squires, both former Army SpecOps and now security for an oil company, now safe at home after convincing some backwoodsmen in some banana republic that drilling is good, protesting is bad . . . make that fatal.

Some sun, sex, wine, more sex, naps, a little fishing, pan-fried dinner, dessert (wink, wink) under a blanket of stars. Life is good for Max and Sherry, only to be yanked to reality by the now Cat 4 storm blowing the shack they've clandestinely invaded back into the swamp. In their struggle to find what little shelter is available, Sherry falls through a floorboard and the torque fractures her femur. Open wound in the Glades is not good. Infection is now as big an issue as the storm.

After the storm, Max manages to splint and bandage her leg, gently get her in the canoe, and start the slow paddle back to his shack where he can call for help. They pass another fish camp and they pull in to see if there might be some bandages or medicine. Success. There is, but there is also a door with an electronic lock and no other way in. Odd for a fish camp.

Buck and the boys are working their way through their route of fish camps, taking all manner of fence-able items. They come up on Max and Sherry in their air-boat. Max's ex-cop radar goes nuclear, for good reason. Buck tries the nice-guy approach, but ends up ordering the bind-gag of Max and Sherry while one of his boys stands guard.

The oil company calls Harmon. Wants he and Squires to go check on a 'research station' (an illegal attempt to root around for oil in the Glades). Now that the storm is history, Harmon hires a helicopter and off they go. The noise alerts Buck and distracts Marcus, so Max, having managed to get loose of his duct tape bonds, jumps Marcus and removes Marcus' lower leg with a blast from a shotgun.

Got one of those Mexican standoffs with guns pointed at all directions, no one knowing who's who and who can be trusted.

I've missed you, Max and it's glad to have you back. The perfect remedy for this summer’s heat wave.

East Coast Don

The English Girl by Daniel Silva

I have been a long and devoted fan of Daniel Silva, so it’s not surprising that I find his latest work, The English Girl, to be another example of the best in the genre of the international spy thriller. Really, that should be enough of an endorsement to get anyone to read this next book in the series about protagonist Gabriel Allon, the Israeli assassin, and the usual cast of characters which includes his wife Chiari, Ari Shamron, Uzi Navot, et al. Silva reintroduced a character from his former books, Christopher Keller, an assassin who once was assigned to kill Allon.

In this story, a young and beautiful English girl, Madeline Hart, was kidnapped while on vacation in Corsica. It turns out, she had been having an affair with the current Prime Minister of England, Jonathan Lancaster. About the same time, despite tough opposition, Lancaster’s government approved the Russian energy company to have drilling rights in the North Sea. I won’t reveal more of the plot, but it does bring the current Russian government into the story. Although Silva does not mention Putin by name, his hostile references to Putin are crystal clear. He wrote, “The current president of Russia was a man with no ideology or belief system other than the exercise of naked power.” Silva then uses a Russian character, Victor Orlov, the former owner of Russia’s largest oil company who was driven out of Russia by Putin’s power grab, to say, “He is a fascist in everything but name.”

I thought the only weak part of the plot was the use of Mikhail Abramov, an Israeli spy, who had to be quickly be educated in world energy economics and then be too rapidly accepted and recruited by the KGB (actually currently known as the SVR, but Silva points out that everyone in Russia still refers to that agency by its former designation). Even for those of us who are adept at suspending reality in order to follow a story, that part was a little bit of a stretch. Still, that does not significantly detract from the flow of the book. And, Silva uses this story to successfully set up Allon’s future role in his organization. I expect new great stories to flow from Silva.

My enjoyment of this book was heightened by the fact that I downloaded the book on my Kindle while traveling in Russia where much of the book takes place. I had a meal at the Pushkin Café in Moscow and stayed at the Ritz Carlton near Red Square, all of which played prominently in this novel. Currently, I’m writing this critique in St. Petersburg where more of the novel takes place. As he does in his other novels, Silva writes a great travelogue that only enhances a reader’s experience. This is a cannot-miss book which I could not put down, and as always, Silva gets my highest possible recommendation. Now, once again, I have to wait for another year for the next novel in this series. I only wish Silva would publish more often.

Dust Devils by Roger Smith

Robert Dell is one part pacifist, one part reporter, married to the half breed Rosie and father of twins. Living a nice life in Cape Town, except that Rosie is carrying on with a fat, rich white man. After one tryst, 2 guys surprise them and execute the old guy, putting Rosie's life in danger to say the least. While driving their truck a day or two later with Dell riding shotgun and the 2 kids in back, a truck forces them off the road and down a cliff, but But Dell is tossed free and he watches his family plunge down to a fiery death. 

The man behind both hits, a South African cabinet minister making a play for president, arranges for Dell to be held on charges of murder. As he is about to be transferred to South Africa's most notorious prison, Dell is hijacked by father, Earl Robert Goodbread.  Dell's dad is a former US special ops soldier and recently a merc in the war against apartheid, but now dying of lung cancer.

Years ago, 2 Zulu running mates, Disaster Zondi and Inja Mazibuko, murdered a woman whom Diasater had enjoyed a brief fling. With time, Disaster and Inja took different paths. Disaster became an investigator and Inja is also a cop, but he works most closely as the sociopathic enforcer for the Minister.

And Inja has full blown AIDS. And according to legend, the only cure is to marry a virgin, which Inja has chosen . . . the daughter of the woman he murdered 16 years ago who may or may not be Disaster's daughter.

Goodbread knows that Inja is the muscle behind the murder of that fat crumb and Dell's family. He also knows that the way to smoke Inja out is through his betrothed. So does Disaster, making this girl the target of a three-pronged chase - Sunday away from Inja with Disaster, Dell, and Goodbread all after the girl.

We've reviewed Smith's two previous efforts. This follows right close behind Wake up Dead and Mixed Blood. All three are some of the most brutal noir I've ever read. Murder in nearly every chapter, sometimes by most gruesome means, the remains roting in the African desert or left to the hyenas. The specter of AIDS, the soon to be 16 yo bride as remedy, Goodbread's looming death, the abject poverty and desolation of the outlying landscape. Don't give Inja the answers he wants? He'll kill your goats, burn your house, execute your wife, decapitate your kids. Down here in the south, we'd say "He needs killing."

Make no mistake. This noir tale is dark, brutal, uncompromising, and an absolute winner in every way. The ruthless behaviors presented grabs you by the throat and won't let you go until you turn the last page and that doesn't take long because this book is really hard to put down. No smart aleck Elvis Cole or jaded cop Harry Bosch will be found here. Heros and villains in Smith's world are awfully hard to tell apart.

East Coast Don

Once Upon a Gypsy Moon, a Memoir by Michael Hurley

I’m a fan of true life adventure stories, and that’s made me take a look at this book which has been in my books-to-read for some time. Once Upon A Gypsy Moon is a story about a man’s love for sailing and his decision to turn to his long-imagined voyage at a time his life has come undone by a nasty divorce, losing his well-paid job with a big law firm, and losing all his money. The subtitle is all too self-important: “An Improbably Voyage and One Man’s Yearning for Redemption.” It was much less about the sailing adventure than I had hoped and way more about the author’s struggles on land. On the first page, he remarks that he’s been told there are more men alive today who have flown in outer space than who have sailed alone around the world, but in the end, after starting in Chesapeake Bay, he never got farther than the Dominican Republic. Rather than one continuous sailing adventure, Hurley kept flying home to work or go on a date, and then he would not return to his voyage for months at a time. Back on the ocean, when his motor finally went kaput, he abandoned his trip and rushed home to continue his new law practice and his new on-line relationship. I gave Hurley 100 pages before I began scanning the rest of his 261-page book. Since he quit the promised voyage around the world after failing to make even one more continent, I was willing to quit his memoir. This one does not get my recommendation.

Boy's Life by Robert McCammon

MRB friend Charlie Stella says he makes it a point to regularly go back and reread Eddie Coyle, the book that started him on his path as a writer. Honestly, I could never see the point of reading a book I've already read. Think I might have been a touch premature in that conclusion. I read Boy's Life (copyright 1991) back in the mid 90s after having read one or two other books by McCammon. It wasn't a NYTimes best seller for nothing. 

It's March 1964 in Zephyr, a small town in southern Alabama. Cory Mackenson is 12yo with a close core of 3 or 4 buddies. Cory's dad Tom delivers milk and is taking Cory on his route. Off route 10, they drive by Saxon Lake, considered bottomless by the locals. A car speeds out from a side drive, crossing their path on its inalterable path to the lake. Tom dives in to see a sight that will haunt him for the next year. The driver is naked and dead. Strangled with a piano wire so tightly that the driver's head is dang near separated from its body. And the driver is handcuffed to the steering wheel. Strange tattoo on his shoulder and the guy is unrecognizable. An investigation by the sheriff finds no one missing. The lake is bottomless, so there is no body. The investigation stalls, but Tom has recurring nightmares that the deceased wants him to join him at the bottom of Saxon Lake.

That's the story arc that serves as the unifying thread throughout the book. The other story line is a year in a Cory's life. Four sections - 1/season, sort of. Then multiple chapters per section, 1/month, sort of. Each chapter is almost a standalone short story - like Easter Sunday, the loss of a bike, the boy's first camping trip, Biggin Blaylock and his sons, bullies Gordo and Gotha Branlin, Old Moses, the redheaded, nose picking Demon, the annual carnival . . .

. . . and most importantly, The Lady. Zephyr was no different than countless southern towns in that it was two towns, the other being Bruton, the colored side of town. The town matriarch is the century-old Lady and most of the whites are scared of her. The river floods in the spring and both towns mobilize to hold back the water. Cory and his mom help an old black resident and a young boy. Later, the Lady wants to meet Cory and his mom to show her appreciation - and surprisingly asks about his dad and his nightmares. Turns out the dead man is reaching out and Tom and The Lady are receiving (or intercepting) the victim's call. She wants to talk to Tom, but he is scared and refuses to meet her. Then there is Lucifer and an escaped carnival monster.

OK, Tom eventually meets the Lady. The county bad guys meet their match. The crime gets solved. That's not the point. McCammon calls this book a fictography - fiction with lots of autobiographical accounts. Which are real and which sprouted up from McCammom's fertile imagination? I don't care. It's all in the storytelling and this is storytelling at it's undeniable best and what makes McCammon one of my favorite authors.

We see what Cory loses over the year; a bike, a dog, a teacher, his dad's job . . . to say we see Cory lose his innocence would be trite. We also see what he gains; the Lady's respect, his classmate's respect following a memorable outburst, and he learns to "Get Around Round Round I Get Around" courtesy of The Beach Boys and didn't everyone have a Grandpa Jaybird? Upon seeing a dream girl, Cory realizes that "If I would've had a tail, I would've wagged it."

And some lines that stuck with me . . .
"Sheer terror has no voice."
or something being "as slow as a toothache"
or "I think I could hear my hair growing."
"If my father was watching a baseball game, he would be agreeable to flossing his teeth with barbed wire."
"She was as thin as a shadow and just as dark." (regarding The Lady)
"one sorry thing about being a kid is that grown-ups listen to you with half an ear" (don't even tell me you didn't feel the same thing as a kid)
or learning of something that "opened up a space in my mind that I'd never known needed light."
a summer day so hot "that if a dog went running, its shadow dropped down to rest."
wondering, "if black people occupied the same heaven as white people, what was the point of eating in different cafes?"
after a playground brawl, the resulting set of stitches looked like they were sewn in "by a cross-eyed medical student with a severe case of hiccups."

and a few lines that sort of summarize things: "It's crazy the things a boy can imagine" because, as a teacher  told Cory, "No one ever grows up" and then Cory realizing that he "wasn't as grown-up today as I thought I was yesterday."

As a grown-up, Cory, now a published writer, comes back to Zephyr with his wife and daughter and sees a vision of his dad on the front porch of his boyhood home asking, "I did all right, didn't I?"

Yeah. Robert McCammon, you sure did all right. You've helped all of us who have grown far too old remember what made being a child so terrifying and wonderful and hating with all our being that we have - make that had to - grow up.

Mr. Stella? I think I'm going to follow your lead and venture back to Zephyr again when I'm feeling far too old and in need of a refresher course on life as we once knew it.

East Coast Don