Tag: crime

Mortal Prey, by John Sandford

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Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆

mortalpreyMurder mysteries typically climax with the apprehension of the murderer, or murderers; but at the conclusion of the 10th Lucas Davenport series novel, Certain Prey, one of the two culprits, Clara Rinker (who’s been a professional hired killer ever since she was 16), made a clean getaway. When I finished that book, I was sure that readers hadn’t seen the last of her. Sure enough, this 13th series installment picks up her story three years later; and I knew that it was a story I couldn’t leave hanging.

It should be stated at the outset that this book has much the same flaws as its predecessor. While the characterizations of the secondary characters are sometimes, I think, a bit sharper here, most of them again are not likable. Series sleuth Davenport is even more unlikeable here than before. His abrasive, cocky, arrogant, “rules-don’t-apply-to-me” personality and his fondness for physical intimidation is clearly meant to give him an edgy, “bad-boy” appeal, but for me just manages to make him annoying. Compared to most traditional fictional detectives, moreover, he’s not in the top league; he’s willing to slog through a lot of leg work, and both books make reference to his uncanny luck, but having case solutions fall into his lap through luck and intuition is a cheap literary substitute for close observation (though here he admittedly does pick up on a couple of crucial details at one key point) and reasoned deduction. (The series isn’t pure noir, but has enough similarity to it that I could recommend it to noir fans; he reminds me more of fictional detectives in that tradition, like Sam Spade –though in fairness to Spade, I can’t imagine the latter freaking out like Davenport does at one place here.)

That the FBI would bring him in to consult on this case at all is also a stretch; apart from luck, he was hardly that effective against Clara in the earlier book. (There, the idea that they would cooperate with the Minneapolis police was quite plausible; but here, though the main setting is St. Louis, there’s apparently no attempt at all to cooperate with the local police there –which isn’t so plausible.) Sandford milks a supposed contrast between the allegedly street-smart local cop culture and the putatively effete, overly technology-reliant FBI mentality for all it’s worth, but I have my doubts about the realism of either end of that portrayal, as well.

However, the strengths of the earlier book are here in spades, too. The foremost one, again, is the portrayal of Clara, who’s one of the more complex, nuanced, vital and fascinating characters you’ll ever meet in the pages of fiction. She was already well-drawn in Certain Prey, which brought to life both her prominent ruthless/callous streak and her off-the-job “regular gal” side. (That book also vividly sketched her formative years, which were genuinely hellish –though if she’d had better moral fiber to start with, being the repeated victim of brutal violence herself would have given her a more compassionate perspective toward other suggested victims.) Here, though, Sandford deepens his portrayal exponentially, digging down to reveal the gentler and kinder side she doesn’t usually display. True, the evil side of her nature is pretty strong, and used to dominating. While she’s no sadist, and isn’t incapable of sparing people’s lives if she doesn’t believe killing is necessary, she also has no qualms at all about taking innocent life as part of her job, or if her survival depends on it (for her, being captured would mean death, since she’d certainly be executed), and she can be highly vengeful.

But though her capacity for empathy with her fellow humans is usually dormant, some people do evoke it; and her conscience isn’t always impotent. She does draw some lines even she won’t cross; and while she may threaten, for intimidation purposes, more than she’ll actually do, her bark is sometimes worse than her bite –even though her bite can be nasty.) And she’s a loyal friend you could literally trust with your life, a caring sister to her weak-minded little brother, and capable of genuine kindness and even love. Sandford shows us both the best and the worst sides of her nature here; it’s not wise to forget the latter for a minute –but not fair to forget the former, either.

Much more than in Certain Prey, the author raises profound ethical questions here, which are compounded of black and white that do represent absolute polarities, but which in the real world intermix in all sorts of challenging shades of gray. They’re not posed explicitly; they just arise naturally out of the situations, and they don’t come across as set up to cynically discredit the idea of absolutes (as they would be in the noir tradition), but rather as serious questions that seek to apply absolutes in a fallen world. (And trying to do that in the context of practical situations –real-life or fictional– is more apt to be illuminating than meditating on detached abstract principles.) The plotting also surpasses even the high standard of the earlier book. Successive developments are again completely unexpected but logical. While the familiar frequent taut tension and suspense is there through much of the book, in about the last fifth or so it becomes nearly unbearable, and the successive surprises literally throw your emotions and expectations around as if you were on a carnival thrill ride. The climax packed an unexpected emotional wallop that blew me out of the water.

It was hard to apply a star rating, but I thought the superior quality of this second novel of the pair deserved four. This is a grim, gritty, violent read, with a high body count; not everyone who dies here deserves to, and a couple of people are gruesomely tortured to death (not by Clara –in fairness to her, that isn’t her style), though their suffering isn’t directly described. Adjectives like comforting, happy and upbeat don’t apply here. But the adjectives riveting, thought-provoking, evocative, and powerful are most definitely appropriate!

Note: As in Certain Prey, there’s a lot of bad language here, often including obscenity, and some very coarse sexual attitudes expressed and evidenced by some of the male characters (but no explicit sex).

Author: John Sandford
Publisher: Berkley, available through Amazon in all formats.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Cat Run 2

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★★½
“Time for this cat to be put out.”

The original Cat Run was an unexpected pleasure, lifted far above its expected delivery of slick, vapid entertainment by Janet McTeer’s wonderful turn as polite hitwoman Helen Bingham. The sequel lacks McTeer and it’s no surprise that this time, it is no more than slick, vapid entertainment. Leads Anthony (Mechlowicz) and Julian (McAuley) are back, still dabbling in private eye work, and end up in New Orleans after Julian’s cousin, a soldier, is involved in a strange incident at an army research base. Two hookers, brought in for the pleasure of the officers, turn out to be on a mission to steal secret blueprints: one is gunned down, but the other, Tatiana (Zoli) escapes, and a cover-up is instigated by the military. The more our heroes dig, the worse things get, as they attract the attention of the criminal cartel behind Tatiana, led by Hannah Wollcroft (Branch).

catrun2Unfortunately, the makers retained the most irritating part of the original – the two main characters, who remain as blandly irritating as they were previously, delivering the sort of witty banter between friends which only occurs in movies like this. To little or no purpose, they also lob in a meandering, weak subplot about Anthony opening a restaurant and needing to find his inner soul in order to win a televised cooking contest. I’d rather have had more sequences of naked, cybernetically-enhanced Eastern European assassins kicking ass: while your mileage may vary, I suspect I’m not alone there. Zoli does her best, yet is certainly well short of McTeer, even if the script tries to give her the same kind of character arc, and the story does provide her character with a spot more background then usual. Then, at the end, for some reason the script decides it wants to be Iron Man. I’m sure there’s a world in which that story decision made sense.

Still, there are moments which work, such as the the sequence where Tatiana has to take on a ninja posse while simultaneously distracting a guy she picked up speed-dating. It’s clear Stockwell has seen far too many badly-dubbed kung-fu flicks, and I’m right alongside him there. When it isn’t trying too hard, and the film is content to be that slick, vapid entertainment I mentioned, it’s fair enough, with some well-staged action such as a hovercraft chase through the bayou, and a solid sense of atmosphere and location, not present in the original. However, the absence of McTeer leaves a gaping hole, and helps explain why this is a significant step down in almost all other ways.

Dir: John Stockwell
Star: Scott Mechlowicz, Alphonso McAuley, Winter Ave Zoli, Vanessa Branch

Tigresa

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★★½
“Tigresa, tigresa, burning bright…”

tigresaTIL there’s a genre of cinema – indeed, an entire culture – called “Nuyorican”, which is for and by the immigrants from Puerto Rico who now live in and around New York. del Mar made five such movies, mostly in the late sixties, but this 1969 production is the sole action heroine entry. It has a nice sense of local atmosphere, feeling a bit like the early work of Abel Ferrara, but also has it’s moments of berserk insanity, which one can only presume must have made sense at the time.

The heroine is Patricia (Faith), a young woman who is bullied by her schoolmates, and whose life reaches a low after she is assaulted by a bedroom intruder, an attack which also results in the death of her father. But, in a plot twist I defy anyone to see coming, she is left half a million dollars in the last will of a Jewish store-owner for whom she works, and this lets Patricia dye her hair blonde and sets her up as the owner of a nightclub, the ‘Chateau Caribe’. She has also developed a heck of a lot more self-confidence, allowing her to take revenge on her former tormentors, rescue other women from assault and continue looking for the man responsible for her assault and her father’s demise. However, her friend, Maria (Lee), has plans to rob Patricia, with the help of her boyfriend, Jimmy (H) – who, it turns out, was also the rapist. They concoct a scheme for Jimmy to seduce Patricia, providing a distraction which will allow them to break into her safe.

There are also subplots involving the local mafiosi, and a police detective (Crespo), who doggedly attempts to solve the crime by dressing as a transvestite hooker. I’m not quite sure hoe that’s intended to work: it might take a while, to say the very least, and my instinct is it probably says more about the cop’s personal proclivities than anything. Certainly puts a new spin on “to protect and serve”. I liked Faith’s performance, since she genuinely manages to get your sympathy, as the dysfunctional nature of her relationship with her father becomes apparent. He gets drunk because its the only way he says he can see his late wife; so she then gets drunk, wanting to see her dead mother too. This is accompanied by a tinkly, music-box like score that’s quite poignant – well, up until the point that the musical cue gets overused to death, anyway.

After her transition into the tigresa [incidentally, the “La” part of the title seen on the DVD sleeve appears to be entirely the distributor’s addition], she’s still quite a laudable character, taking no shit from the organized crime boss. She refuses to let him use her club as a front for drugs and prostitution, but does partner with him in exchange for his help finding her attacker. Though this just consists of wandering local gyms trying to find someone with the distinctive back scar which was her assailant’s sole distinguishing feature – I’d have expected better from the mob. It’s just a good thing absolutely no-one in these places ever wears a shirt. There’s another bizarre diversion where she meets a gangster, who then goes home to discover his wife in bed with another man. So he drowns her in the bathtub and decapitates her lover, before vanishing from the film entirely.

Yeah, it’s like that: nonsensical in many ways, and obviously cheaply made, with performances all over the place, from the monotone to the hysterical. Yet it’s strangely hypnotic, and you find yourself watching, just to see what will happen next and in what surreal way things will develop. For all its many faults, I can’t say I ever found Tigresa dull. There are GWG films which are so forgettable, I find myself struggling to write 300 words on them. This was certainly not one of those.

Dir: Glauco del Mar
Star: Perla Faith, Johnny H, Cindy Lee, Guillermo Crespo

Certain Prey, by John Sandford

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆

certainpreyThis tenth novel in Sandford’s popular Lucas Davenport series was my first experience with his work. Usually, I prefer to read a series in order, but this installment can be read just as well out of sequence. Series sleuth Lucas Davenport, a Minneapolis homicide detective (who, by the time of this novel, is actually a deputy police chief) isn’t really the protagonist here; structurally, at least for much of the book, the two pistol-packing female villains are really the co-protagonists, and Davenport the antagonist (albeit one who’s on the side of good). And although I classified it as a mystery, the who-done-it, why and how of the contract killing here isn’t a mystery to the reader; we’re shown the personae, planning, and execution (literally) of the crime at the outset. The element of detection is in seeing how the forces of justice will prove what we already know. And this time, it won’t be easy.

On the plus side, Sandford does a very effective job of creating a really involving, page-turning read, with excellent plotting that throws curves into the story which you often don’t see coming, but which are completely logical outgrowths of the situation and never forced. He hooked me early and hard, to the point where I knew I would finish the book no matter what; and while the adjectives “thriller” and “pulse-pounding” are advertising hype, there genuinely are places with a good deal of suspense and tension here. (Readers familiar with the Twin Cities would probably also say that he does a good job of incorporating their real-life geography into the book; but though I was born in Minneapolis, I wasn’t raised there and have hardly ever been back, so that element was pretty much lost on me.)

His other outstanding feat here is the sheer virtuosity with which he creates professional hit woman Clara Rinker and her employer, millionaire criminal-defense attorney Carmel Loan, who’s hired the former to kill the wife of a fellow lawyer for whom she’s in lust. In keeping with the necessities of a good mystery plot, they’re very worthy opponents for any detective. They’re both smart, cunning, and pretty ruthless (Carmel totally so); Clara’s had years of practice covering her tracks, having started killing for hire when she was 16, while Carmel knows rules of evidence and police procedure from the inside and her wealth and political connections make her almost untouchable.

Obviously, neither of these women are one bit likable as characters (a likable villain is pretty much an oxymoron, anyway). “Don’t worry, I’m just a sociopath. Like you. I’m not a psychopath or anything,” Carmel assures Clara at one point, but her claim to the contrary, she’s both: she not only has a fixed determination to have anything she wants when she wants it, regardless of how much harm she has to do to anybody else in the process, but she derives a warped excitement and enjoyment from inflicting pain and death. Clara doesn’t, as such; for her, killing is just a good-paying job, and some of Carmel’s actions bother even her. But she’s almost (though not quite) without a conscience or normal human empathy, like one of Philip K. Dick’s androids. But both are fully alive, vital, three-dimensional and understandable as characters, and come across as (very flawed) human beings, not just cardboard incarnations of evil –though they are both evil, in their different ways, or capable of doing very evil things. And they’re strong, dominating, formidable characters, who hold your full attention and stay in your memory; like all well-drawn villains, they fascinate, in various ways and at various psychological levels. Sandford also excels at depicting the nuanced, fragile bond that grows between the pair, whose misguided life choices and defective personalities have prevented them from ever knowing real friendship, though there’s a buried part of their psyches that’s starving for it.

Grading just on the strength of his plotting and sharp characterizations of these two women, I’d give Sandford four or five stars here. There are negatives to the book, though, that drag its rating down. I don’t expect villains to be likable; but very few of the characters here are particularly so, including Davenport. Many aren’t drawn in enough depth to be either likable or unlikable, as if the author exhausted his resources on his protagonists. We don’t even get much sense of knowing Davenport from the inside, though Sandford does bring out his phobia of flying in planes, and his liking for escaping job stress by fishing in the North Woods. (Of course, his character is probably developed more in the earlier novels of the series.) He has some unappealing traits, though, including a willingness to cut corners on legal restraints (he was temporarily kicked off the force for brutality some years before). I also don’t think he’s outstanding as a detective –he can be intuitive, and has a good memory for details, but he often doesn’t recognize verbal clues or faces until long after the optimum time for doing so has passed, and he blabs one detail of the investigation to a civilian in a way that even I (with no police training!) recognized as really irresponsible. I got enough entertainment out of the book that I don’t regret reading it, and it earned its stars fairly. But there are other heroes in the genre that I find more congenial than Davenport, and I always prefer action heroines over action villainesses.

Note: There’s a lot of bad language here, including a hefty seasoning of obscenities. There’s no explicit sex, but a number of the characters also have (and demonstrate) coarse sexual attitudes.

Author: John Sandford
Publisher: Berkley, available through Amazon in all formats.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

The Godmother

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★★★
“Romain in place”

godmotherDefinitely not to be confused with the upcoming film starring Catherine Zeta-Jones as Colombian drug-queen, Griselda Blanco, this is likely a much gentler piece of work. Jennifer (Anderson) in an English teacher, happily married to a Romanian accountant, Radu (Bucur) and with a young son, David (Iamcu). But her life is turned upside-down when her husband is arrested, for it turns out his main job was keeping the books for the area’s top mobster, Spanu (Alex). To prevent him from testifying, Spanu sends his goons after his accountant’s family, and Jennifer has to rely on her wits to survive. Eventually, she decides the best form of defense is attack, and sets up her own criminal organization, with some unlikely help in the shape of the local cops, some of husband’s book-keepers, and a former mobster turned monk.

It is, of course, all entirely implausible: in reality, a scenario like this would end in only one way, and would be neither gentle nor amusing. Fortunately, Spanu is largely incompetent, to the extent that it’s inconceivable how he could ever have made it to the top of the criminal underworld, and his minions are little better. Still, given that conceit, I spent most of the movie with a goofy smile on my face, watching “fish out of water” Jennifer coming to terms with her situation, and the oddball characters who surround her – the gangster monk, who spends most of the time drinking heavily and/or floating in the pool, was probably the most amusing. Though I do feel this missed a trick, not having a heroine whose character was located somewhere between Mary Poppins and Nanny McPhee, with a steely determination and implacable sense of propriety, e.g. scolding the villain for his poor table-manners. Still, Anderson brings a peppy likeability to the role. though the wrap-around section, concerning two street kids apparently finding her diary, doesn’t fit well with anything else.

It’s filmed in a mix of Romanian and English, which is a bit flaky at times, since some of the characters are clearly not acting in their native tongues. However, the script holds the threads together nicely, and even manages to find a way for the heroine to triumph – such an obvious conclusion, it doesn’t even count as a spoiler – that is not entirely contrived or impossible. Without giving too much away, it involves “turning” an operative sent into her camp, with the help of a strange medical student who sells body-parts on the side. While I’d like to have seen more action, that isn’t the real focus; however, it does show occasionally surprising invention, that allowed this to skate around its weaknesses.

Dir: Jesús del Cerro, Virgil Nicolaescu
Star: Whitney Anderson, Velea Alex, Stefan Iancu, Dragos Bucur

Cut Off

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★★
“Can only dream of being a competent movie.”

cutoffRich-bitch heiress Patricia Burton finds her easy life yanked out from under her, after her millionaire father stops her allowance and requires her to get a job. Rather than anything legal, she opts, along with dumb boyfriend Pauly (Nicholas) and his friendly drug dealer, opt to rob a check-cashing store. That goes badly wrong, and they’re forced to hijack an ambulance which is transporting a stabbing victim to hospital. That doesn’t exactly solve their problems, as the local cops are on their trail after the drug dealer is arrested, whole the patient in the back (Kurupt) also turns out to have gang ties, and so is none too keen to meet the police either. How will Patricia handle the multiple threats?

The makers must have called in a lot of chips here, since the supporting cast is impressive and well above average in terms of star power. Patricia’s parents are portrayed by McDowell and Faye Dunaway, while also in the cast are Anne Archer, James Russo and Clint Howard. However, these fail miserably to cover up the flaws in the script, which is full of massive plot-holes. Apparently, when you hijack a vehicle in Tucson (hey, local interest to this Arizona resident!), for the first few hours, the authorities will only send a single patrol car, containing two vanilla officers, to keep an eye on you. And if you’re in a siege situation, you can just wander out the back, because the police won’t bother to cover it. I will admit, these inconsistencies are addressed with a final twist. On the other hand, that simply replaces it with a far worse, cop-out, which I’ll avoid spoiling, except to say I was warned against it by my English teacher when I was seven. This is, however, probably the only GWG film which explicitly nods for inspiration to The Wizard of Oz.

It’s a difficult role for Brooks, especially given her lack of experience, because the film starts off by making Patricia borderline repellent, and she has to spend the rest of the film pulling the audience back from this initial dislike. There are a number of flashbacks, which explore her relationship with her father, and make it clear that her brattishness and delinquency are largely cries for his attention. However, this may be a case of ‘too little, too late,’ and while you can admire the strength of personality she is shown as developing over the course of the proceedings depicted here, it’s a quality which also has its impact undercut by the final twist. The influence of Quentin Tarantino is clearly present in an excess of mind-numbingly meaningless dialogue, and if I remain a sucker for an action heroine with a British accent, that isn’t enough to salvage what is closer to an ill-conceived mess.

Dir: Gino Cabanas + Dick Fisher
Star: Amanda Brooks, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Kurupt, Malcolm McDowell

88

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★★★
“Not entirely forgettable.”

88More by accident than design, this is the third film I’ve seen in the past couple of weeks which features amnesia as a plot-device. It’s a bit of a scripting minefield, since it’s easy to become a crutch for the writer, with the amnesia being “cured” at the moments necessary to the plot. You need a lot of discipline to avoid this: Memento is likely the platinum standard for this being done well, and to be honest, most other efforts come up short in comparison. This is no different, with an absolutely key piece of data being withheld from the audience [and the lead character] until dramatically convenient at the end – though it doesn’t exactly take Nostradamus to figure it out in advance. Gwen (Isabelle) find herself eating in a diner, with absolutely no memory of how she got there. Checking her purse, she finds a gun, and accidentally shoots a waitress. Fleeing the scene, she also discovers a key to a motel room, #88. Going there, she finds more questions than answers. What was her relationship to local mobster, Cyrus (Lloyd)? Did her really kill her boyfriend, Aster? Who is Ty (Doiron), the cheerful killer who is helping her? And why does everyone keep acting as if she’s a stone-cold killer?

This opens with a caption explaining the concept of the “fugue state”, which Wikipedia tells me is “characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality, and other identifying characteristics of individuality… and is sometimes accompanied by the establishment of a new identity.” I note that the section there on this disorder in popular culture, is rather longer than the list of real-life incidents, since it’s pretty much an open invitation to scriptwriters, to sculpt as they see fit. The key question is how interesting the story would be without the conceit. Here, I give it a qualified passing grade, since both Gwen and Cyrus are interesting characters, the former particularly when she’s in bad-girl mode, and just not giving  damn [the same can be said about Isabelle’s most well-known performance, as a teenage werewolf in the wonderful Ginger Snaps] It’s also fun to see Lloyd, better known for his mad scientist in Back to the Future, playing a sleazy scumball, But I can’t help thinking the fractured timeline doesn’t actually add all that much to proceedings, and is only made necessary by that single point of data mentioned above. It could have been played as a straightforward revenge flick, without the psychological trappings, and been little or no less effective.

The style here is a mix of the effective and the irritating. The soundtrack seems particularly intrusive, as if the director simply set her iTunes collection on random and let it play, and the shootout at the bowling alley ends with the characters skipping merrily away across the lanes, which as someone who has tried to walk down one knows, is wildly unrealistic [a over-energetic bowl had led to my wedding ring following the ball, and I can state confidently, it’s the only location where the physics of a Tom and Jerry cartoon is actually a good approximation to real life!] But even if you work out where this is going, the underlying story is a solid one, and Isabelle’s performance does a good enough job of compelling attention, to make for a passable 90 minutes of entertainment.

Dir: April Mullen
Star: Katharine Isabelle, Christopher Lloyd, Tim Doiron, Michael Ironside

All Souls: A Gatehouse Thriller, by Karin T. Kaufman

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Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆½

allsoulsFull disclosure at the outset: Karin Kaufman is a Goodreads friend of mine, and I was one of ten people to claim a free review e-copy of this book. Through much of my reading, I was ready to give it a solid three stars, and the super-strong ending commanded a fourth.

The premise here is that humanity is secretly menaced by a worldwide society of thrill killers, who make the notorious Thugees look like philanthropists, and who are recruited from all walks of normal life, into which they blend anonymously. (Their Gatehouse adversaries call them “Sacks,” short for “Sacks of sh*t”.) By Gatehouse estimates, the society has well over a million members, and has been around for at least 100 years. Organized in hierarchical ranks (members of each rank supposedly don’t cooperate very closely, and hate the other ranks –but they take orders from the higher ranks, and want to advance into them), it has a culture of strange behaviors, like the members taking bizarre secret names and tattooing them on their bodies.

Yet it has apparently no belief system or ideology except conscious embrace of evil and chaotic destruction for its own sake; Sacks apparently have no agenda beyond picking off as many individual innocents as they can without being exposed. The U.S. government –and possibly other governments, but our setting is the U.S.– knows about them and preserves their secrecy. But it combats them with an unofficial arm, the Gatehouse organization, which commands a small army of “hunters” who periodically assassinate individual identified Sacks (as opposed to, say, dealing with them through law enforcement and the court system) at the direction of contacts called “porters.”

Our action-heroine protagonist here is Gatehouse assassin Jane Piper, who’s very competent at what she does, and very motivated –her only sister was butchered by a Sack. She’s as lethal a woman as you’ll ever meet in fiction –but at the same time,one of the most compassionate (the two qualities aren’t incompatible), a decent person who’s kept her humanity and moral compass in a blast furnace of trial. I never had any trouble liking her, nor any doubt of her butt-kicking capabilities.

Early on, Jane reflects that if she stood up and shouted all of the above information in public, nobody would believe her anyway. Apparently, she thinks that the general populace might find this premise far-fetched. Readers might have the same difficulty. The idea is definitely original, but it’s rather hard to suspend disbelief here. While many people do embrace very evil agendas, including the killing of the innocent, hardly any do so while openly and consciously telling themselves that they’re doing so. The vast majority of them have to have some ideological belief system that justifies the evil by telling them that in reality it’s “good,” or for a greater good. I may be naive, but I don’t think Sack recruitment on the basis of “embrace homicidal evil just because it’s fun” would gain as many adherents as they have here. And while I see how Sacks have an interest in keeping their activities secret, I don’t buy the explanation that the government tacitly agrees to cooperate in letting them do so, lest they unleash an even greater blood bath if they’re forced into the open. Credibility is also strained by some individual characters’ motivations. Granted, action-heroine fiction writers often do stretch strict credibility a bit in their premises, and sometimes the tone is sufficiently tongue-in-cheek that the reader doesn’t take such lapses very seriously. Here, though, the tone is pretty serious.

It’s all the more a credit to Kaufman’s ability as a writer, and the strength of this book, that she took that kind of premise and made a four-star book out of it. Her command of language is impeccable –professional, literate, with the kind of painstaking craftsmanship that makes the flow of words seem easy. A Colorado native, she sets her tale in her home state, and the neighboring parts of New Mexico and Wyoming; she’s obviously at home on the ground, with real locations and a sense of place. The plotting is very taut in terms of time, compressed into just seven days –Oct. 27-Nov. 2, All Souls Day. Jane’s a first-person narrator for all but the first chapter, and hers is the perfect voice for the tale. She and the other major characters are all well-drawn. “Gripping” doesn’t begin to describe this book; it grabs you and pulls you along from the starting gate, and I’d have read it in one sitting if I could have.

That’s not to say it’s all action; but the waiting intervals in between are as tense as harp strings. When action comes, it comes quick, realistic, and bloody, with a high body count by the time you get to the last page; Kaufman knows her guns, and she writes action scenes clearly and credibly. Jane’s colleagues tend to be as combat-skilled as she is; and some of their adversaries are extremely deadly and crafty as well. (Generally speaking, in real life I have a problem with governments violating their own laws by sponsoring programs for extrajudicial killing. But I don’t hold operatives like Jane and Nathan responsible for acting in the situational context they’re in. They don’t make the policy; all they can do is protect the innocent and take care to kill only the guilty.) And Kaufman’s plot is a roller-coaster of surprises.

Ultimately, though, this is more than a novel of slam-bang action. It becomes a serious exploration of the possibilities of moral conversion, from great evil to willing embrace of good; of guilt and atonement; of the limits of forgiveness –in short, the kinds of serious moral questions that occupy the great literature of the Western tradition; underneath the smell of gun smoke and blood, we’re in the same realm here that Hawthorne and Dostoevsky, Undset and Graham Greene have visited before. Since this is a series opener, it’ll be interesting to see where Karin takes this theme in future books. And I’ll find out; because I definitely want to follow the series!

Note: there’s not only no sex here, but no romantic sub-plot. Gatehouse doesn’t encourage its operatives to marry, and doesn’t allow them to stay in the organization if they conceive a child. (If Jane ever decides that she wants a man in her life, I think that she deserves a good one, and that she’d be a great wife; but for now, she’s content to be alone, and doesn’t obsess about men and sex.) There is a fair amount of bad language, including some use of the f-word.

Author: Karin T. Kaufman
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, only for Kindle or as an audio book at this time.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Clash

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There used to be a review of Vietnamese movie Clash here, along with the movie’s trailer. However, in what can only be described as a bit of a dick move, Johnny Tri Nguyen, one of the film’s stars, submitted a takedown notice for the trailer. Yes, the trailer: footage specifically created and intended for promotional purposes. We emailed him politely asking how we could resolve this amicably. That was over a week ago. Not even the courtesy of a reply.

So, as a small protest at Nguyen’s high-handed and counter-productive actions, we’re pulling all reviews of films in which he appears from the site. I’m sorry to the rest of the cast and crew – particularly the action heroines whose presence is why the films were reviewed here to begin with. But if he’s going to behave this way, and act to shut down legitimate and reasonable coverage of his films. I’m happy to oblige.

Dir: Le Thanh Son
Star: Ngo Thanh Van, Johnny Tri Nguyen, Hoang Phuc, Lam Minh Thang
a.k.a. Bẫy Rồng

Real Dangerous Job, by K. W. Jeter

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Literary rating: ★★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆½

kimoh2I was graciously given a free review e-copy of this second series installment by the author, with no strings attached. As in the case of the first one, I blazed through it; it’s compulsively readable, and I made every opportunity I could to log on to it. Had time permitted, I’d have read it in one sitting –it’s that compelling.

Much of the evaluation and background material in my review of Real Dangerous Girl applies to this sequel as well. Here, Jeter brings the immediate story arc begun there to a close, while leaving the future open. The themes of coming-of-age, “primitivism,” and darkness vs. light begun in the first book are also explored further here, to serious effect. Kim has to really grapple here with the significance of what she’s decided to do, and face the fact that it’s changing her into a person who’s less innocent and less gentle, and that this isn’t necessarily a good thing. But that’s set against other psychological factors of self-actualization and self-determination that aren’t wholly negative either. This isn’t the story of a good girl changing to a bad one. It’s the story of an essentially decent girl learning to balance who she is with a world that’s far from decent, with no other guides (besides a very dubious mentor) than her heart and her conscience. And this will be reflected in the real moral choices that come her way.

We get to know Kim better here, as a person as well as the fact that she’s only 17 (as an “emancipated minor” –though we already knew she was pretty young). Other supporting characters are back and developed in more depth as well –not surprisingly, Cole, Donnie, Monica, McIntire and his chief goon Michael (and more surprisingly, TV newswoman Karen Ibanez). Also, we learn that our setting is a city in upstate New York (a character comes “up from Albany,” an expression that wouldn’t apply to New York City, which is down the Hudson from there, but would to cities built in the higher ground above the river valley). Jeter has kept his moral vision and standards of literary quality here. Again, there’s no sex, and bad language is restrained. Action fans who felt that the first novel was light on violence (several people die there, but in only two parts of the book) will get more of it here, and Kim will be an active participant in more of it. Her development into someone who can both psychologically and physically handle that, as Jeter presents it over the course of the two books (rather than overnight) is believable. But again, the violence is handled tastefully, with no wallowing in gore for its own sake.

I didn’t have any issues with plot credibility here, and the pacing and developments are excellently crafted to keep a high level of suspense and tension, again building to a very powerful climax. Jeter imparts a lot of obviously well-researched information about guns and ammo, explosives, body armor and other technical equipment that adds verisimilitude without being info-dumped in in such large doses that it takes away from the movement of the story.

Kim’s a heroine I think many characters can relate to in her moral quandaries, even though they involve extreme situations most people don’t face –because, as she muses at one point, everybody, or just about everybody, at times has people who, at one level, they might like to kill, and figure the world would be better off without. The moral possibilities Jeter is using action-adventure fiction to explore are possibilities, or temptations, that confront us all.

One of the greatest strengths of these books, IMO, is the brother-sister relationship between Kim and Donnie, which is genuinely beautiful and touching (and a two-way street of caring and emotional support). As an only child, I never had a sister; but if I’d had a big sister like Kim, I think I’d have counted it an enormous blessing!

Author: K. W. Jeter
Publisher: Self-published, available through Amazon, only as a Kindle e-book at this time.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.