Book Review: Why Thrillers Sometimes Drive Me Nuts

The Sixth Man

Author: David Baldacci

Available from Rainy Day Books and other fine booksellers.

I’m still looting and pillaging in my late aunt’s library, and getting quite an education about the contemporary thriller genre. 

This week’s book, The Sixth Man, is another from the mind and word processer of David Baldacci.  Baldacci is a gifted writer, and he’s perfected his craft to a high level—but I’m becoming more and more clear on the fact that the thriller genre itself apparently has a tendency to punch a lot of my buttons.

The Sixth Man is especially a case in point.

Emotions: now there’s a concept

I’ve already written about the problem I have with emotionless characters—especially characters who remain emotionless, even when they are in situations where they shouldn’t or couldn’t be emotionless. 

Our two main protagonists are characters about whom Baldacci has written both before and since, Sean King and Michelle Maxwell. 

In this book they are in a semi-romantic relationship, as well as being private investigator-partners. In the course of the book they are placed in difficult and dangerous situations where they worry about each other, struggle to survive, and encounter other situations in which any normal person’s emotions would be engaged.

I sometimes wanted to yell at author David Baldacci.

However, we don’t generally encounter pumping adrenalin, pounding hearts, sinking stomachs, or other visceral reactions in this book—not even when they’d be highly appropriate, natural reactions.  I began to wonder for a while if all the characters in this story are sociopaths.  Striving to remain dispassionate and rational despite dramatic events is not the question, here—not feeling anything at all is. 

Neither King nor Maxwell has been characterized as a Zen master or a champion emotion-compartmentalizer, and yet time after time I wanted to yell, “How does she FEEL about that?” or “What does that make him FEEL?”

Wanting to yell at the author is definitely the kind of thing that bumps me right out of the story and distracts from my willing suspension of disbelief, so it’s a problem.

Unfortunately, it’s not the only problem I had with this book. 

The basis for the story is a big WTF

Yeah, that’s a biggie.  For me the concept of The Analyst—while perhaps not totally preposterous (?)—seems really problematical as an ongoing business plan, much less the foundation upon which national security should depend. 

If only one person ever found actually is able (because of his unusual mental capabilities) to do this job, then what’s the long-term outlook?  What’s a nation to do, when The Analyst dies or burns out (or is framed for serial murder)?  On what enduring safeguard do you base national security then?

It has a f—king prologue

I will readily admit I have a built-in prejudice against prologues (if it’s important to the story, why can’t it be “seeded in” during the setup?  In many cases, that would be the better option). I was annoyed when I found this book had one.

Prologues were invented for a reason, though, and I could maybe understand upon reflection why Baldacci used one in this case.  On the other hand, 15 chapters and 100 pages is a long time to wait until an important character, whom readers haven’t seen since the prologue, shows up again.  I had to go back to the f—king prologue to remind myself who the heck this dude was.

The opening is a nameless torture scene

I really despise this kind of opening—you know the one: you’ve read them, yourself.

There’s some nameless victim in a dark room, writhing in pain and begging “make it stop!” but Remorseless Powers In Charge just watch him squirm.  It takes three pages to get to the first character’s name, in this book (as it happens, he’s the guy who doesn’t show up again for another 100 pages).

I’ve read both beginning writers and actual, award-winning and/or bestselling authors use this device, and it never works for me, no matter what level of skills are brought to the task.

It’s supposed to be a dramatic opening that piques the reader’s interest, I guess.  But it invariably makes me want to scream and throw the book across the room.  I soldiered on in this case, but it was a very near thing.

Earlier books are summarized in an “As you know” scene

Other writers may call it different things; I call it an “as you know” scene.  It’s a scene in which two characters (in this case King and Maxwell) have a conversation, in which they tell each other things they already know, for the “benefit” of readers who don’t already know them. 

No one actually has conversations like this in real life—we already know!  Baldacci should already know better, too!   

Okay, so are there any redeeming features?

Sure there are.  If you can tolerate some of the aspects that gave me the occasional urge to yell, and you’re willing to accept the general levels of alienation and paranoia that seem to be kind of the accepted attitude for most contemporary thrillers I’ve read, then other aspects of The Sixth Man deliver pretty well. 

The perplexing murders and the underlying pattern that only gradually comes into focus are well handled. It was an interesting mystery, well paced, and with the various subplots woven in skillfully. Despite the low emotional inputs, the ending is fast-paced and interesting. And just deserts are nicely served to most of the deserving.

If this is your cup of tea, then by all means, go for it!

IMAGE CREDITS: Many thanks to Rainy Day Books for the cover image.  The photo of the author is courtesy of the "EBookee" website. 

Book Review: The Compartmentalized Man

The Innocent

Author: David Baldacci

Available from Rainy Day Books and other fine booksellers.

Last week I wrote about Joe Pike, the “Closed Man.”  This week’s protagonist, Will Robie, takes the “unemotional man” thing a step even farther.

Will Robie isn’t just closed: he’s a stone-cold hit man with major skills and apparent ice water for blood . . . except he’s just turned forty, and without exactly noticing it, he’s started to have a midlife crisis.

You might well ask, “How the heck can you have a midlife crisis without noticing it?”  It’s a pretty amazing feat of compartmentalization going on, there, truly.

I enjoyed watching Baldacci pull it off.  He hits just the right balance.

Robie notices that he’s occasionally experiencing certain disquieting reactions.  You or I would call them “normal emotions,” but his reaction is essentially to think something on the order of damn, that makes me uncomfortable, and then he puts up a new wall.

Author David Baldacci in 
a recent photo.

If all he had to deal with were straightforward jobs, clean and cold, he might get away with this approach.  Unfortunately for Robie, life keeps putting challenging women in his path.

First there’s Julie, a young teenager in whom Robie is surprised to find a number of admirable qualities.  He rescues her, and subsequently feels responsible for her—even though this feeling of responsibility irritates, puzzles, and burdens him in unaccustomed ways.  Somehow, that particular wall keeps falling over.

Then there’s Nikki Vance, a tough-minded, perceptive FBI agent with whom he regularly locks horns, but with whom he also has to cooperate, if he’s going to find up who tried to set him up, then kill him.

And finally there’s his neighbor Annie Lambert, with whom he has possibly one of the most weirdly passionless liaisons I’ve ever read about, even though at one point they end up in bed with each other.  And man, is THAT ever confusing for poor Will Robie, who apparently hasn’t had sex (at least not with a partner) in years!

Annie Lambert actually is my biggest complaint about this book.  Her role in the climax (of the STORY—not the other presumed climax, which we don’t get to see) was one I saw coming, and hoped I was wrong—but no, Baldacci went there. 

The other difficulty with the ending is the emotional impact of the dramatic “reveal” at the climax.  That impact is seriously blunted by the fact that the viewpoint character, through whose eyes we are seeing the action, is doing everything in his power NOT to have an emotional reaction.

All things considered, however, I’d still recommend The Innocent. It’s a good read, a good mystery, and an interesting, challenging character portrayal that’s handled well.   

IMAGE CREDITS: Cover image for the book is courtesy of Rainy Day Books.  The photo of David Baldacci is from the Feb. 27, 2014 issue of Barnes & Nobles online Review.

Book Review: The Closed Man

Book Reviewed: The Sentry (2011) 
Author: Robert Crais

Available from: Rainy Day Books, or other fine booksellers.

The Sentry

I have been sampling the collection in my late aunt's extensive library of thrillers and crime fiction. Here are some thoughts about one of her books, The Sentry, by Robert Crais.

Joe Pike and Elvis Cole are two of Crais' recurring characters, although it so far doesn't look as if my aunt had other titles in this series.  If a person was coming to this book in the context of the series, s/he might have different expectations. However, this was my first exposure to Pike and Cole. 

Robert Crais is an accomplished author, and his characters Joe and Elvis have a worldwide following, so even before I opened the cover I knew Crais would be doing a lot of things very well.  The mystery is well-conceived, the setting (Venice, California) adds enjoyable color, the viewpoints are clearly distinguished and well-chosen, the characters are all individual, believable, and interesting, and the suspense is written fairly effectively (more on that in a bit).

On the whole, the book rewards reading.

But. (You knew that was coming.) A major problem with noir heroes--for me, anyway--is the fact that they are Closed Men.

Tough. Hyper-competent. Emotionless. 

I kept imagining that if my writers' group was reading this as a manuscript, there'd be a lot of frustrated marginalia to the effect of "What is he feeling, here?  What is he thinking?"  

Joe Pike does not acknowledge, even to himself, that he has emotions, other than practicing a sort of Zen mind-set to keep himself from feeling his emotions. This makes for a distinctive character, I'll say that.

Unfortunately, the down-side is that he's also not terribly relatable, and the distance he keeps from his feelings also defeats some of the reactions a writer really wants his or her readers to be feeling at the climax.  

Joe does everything in his power to keep from feeling the very strong emotions that must certainly be in play when people are shooting at him, for instance, or when he is doing the Decisive Things noir heroes have to do. As a result we, the readers, don't really feel it very much.

In the writing, this emotionlessness can bleed over into characters who are supposed to be more in touch with their feelings, such as Elvis. At one dramatic point near the end of the book Elvis shed tears--but we do not feel his pain, so we (at least I) have no trouble staying dry-eyed. 

I'm sure Crais wasn't going for a multi-hankie tear-jerker, but if my character was crying, I'd want the readers to feel something.

Another problem I have with the Closed Man viewpoint is that Joe Pike seems always to know what to do next--but he doesn't clue the readers in to his thoughts. The result is a kind of myopic, "He went here.  He did this.  Next he went there.  He did that." 

Joe Pike does not explain himself. Either we "get it," or we don't, and he doesn't care which. He also does not second-guess himself, or appear to have many doubts--not even when he should. To me, that's not "strong," so much as kind of arrogant, and damned lucky more often than chance ought to allow.

He keeps his own counsel, and acts rather than speaking. His moral compass exists, but it's pointing in a somewhat different direction from most people's.  He's very selective whose pain he cares about, and he also seems to see a brighter, clearer line between "dirtbags" and "acceptable people" than most. I think in his own mind he's somewhere outside of either category.

Joe Pike doesn't care whether I like him or not. Unfortunately, by the end of the book I don't much care about him, either.

IMAGE CREDITS: the cover art is courtesy of Rainy Day Books' website, from the listing spotlighting the book.  The photo of Crais is by Julie Dennis Brothers, and is re-posted from his website bio page.

Book Review: Mummies and Murder!

Book Reviewed: The Keepsake (2009)

Author: Tess Gerritsen

Available from: Rainy Day Books, or other fine booksellers.

I was pre-sold to love this book.  I mean, mummies and murder!  What about that is not interesting?  I spotted this book on my aunt’s bookshelf when I was visiting last fall, and chose it with positive expectations.  However, I immediately ran into problems with it.

First problem: it starts with a prologue. I generally hate prologues.  I’ve rarely read one I felt delivered information we couldn’t have learned in the story itself. I've read so many pointless prologues, that lately  I have to fight to keep an open mind about the skill of the writer, whenever I run into another [expletive deleted] prologue.

Worse, there’s an unnamed, first-person narrator in this [expletive deleted] prologue, and s/he is muttering about fuzzy facts and talking in unspecified time frames.  I hate that.  It was cryptic to the point of I-started-skimming-very-rapidly.  Thank goodness that stuff is done with, when the [expletive deleted] prologue ends.  If it had gone on much longer I would never have finished the book.

Once I got into the story proper, the writing improved dramatically, but then I encountered what I came to think of as the “TV interference.” 

The names are the same, but TV changed things!

One reason I was intrigued to try the book was that it was billed as a “Rizzoli & Isles” novel.  Yep, I watch the show.  It’s not my utter favorite cop drama on TV (too many high-heel foot-chase scenes and long hair not pulled back at crime scenes or the morgue, for two reasons), but I like it enough to have programmed a “series record” command for it on my DVR.

Yeah, I know TV is a different medium and storytelling must be done in different ways, but I was not quite prepared to see exactly how much the TV show has deviated from the original books.  I kind of expected the characters to seem . . . familiar.

So I’m reading along, and--wait.  Frost is blond? And married?  

Jane has a husband and a daughter?  

Maura's in love with a priest??  Yikes!

Who are these people?  The names sound familiar, the setting is Boston . . . but woah.  Okay: not the TV show at all.  Major reset!  But once I stopped expecting them to be people with the same names that I knew from TV, I found the characters likable and interesting.

So, all right, I had some problems getting started.  But once I got past the [expletive deleted] prologue and the character-cognitive-dissonance, what about the story?  

Mummification: part of a unique M.O.!

Actually, that was pretty cool. Good villain, some logical but unexpected plot twists, plus did I mention the combination of mummies and murder?   

I liked Josephine, the murderer’s main "target," and especially the way she tried to fight back, even when she was at a huge disadvantage.  On the other hand, there were several times when she had maddening blind spots.

I did kind of see the end coming. It followed a  formula that's become kind of standard, especially on TV, and this wasn't written long enough ago to be a new approach. I would like for the author to have thought harder about "what if X realizes this, at that point?" to make the denouement take less predictable turns.

But (except for the prologue) it was pretty well written, and quite readable, and the archaeology angle was a lot of fun.  Would I say it was worth the time?  Yeah, I would.  But you probably could skip the prologue, and don’t expect the characters to be much like what you remember from TV!

IMAGE CREDITS: Many thanks to Tess Gerritsen's Website for the cover image!  The First Seasoon Rizzoli & Isles show poster is courtesy of the "Sylum Clan" Blog.  The photo of the mummy and sarcophagus is from the Dead Media Archive.