Review of Robert Wilson's Capital Punishment: A Thriller

Capital Punishment by Robert Wilson

Kidnapping. That terrible word calls to mind a dizzying variety of true and fictional crimes. There's legendary Helen of Troy, whose beauty inspired her abduction and the Trojan War. Robert Louis Stevenson's David Balfour, young heir to the House of Shaws, kidnapped and cast away by his Uncle Ebenezer, in an effort to defraud him. Heiress Patty Hearst and former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro, snatched by left-wing extremists to trade for imprisoned comrades. Charles Lindbergh's baby, carried away to be ransomed for money. Elizabeth Smart, abducted by a pedophile. While the crime is kidnapping, the motive varies.

When the 25-year-old daughter of Mumbai billionaire Frank D'Cruz is kidnapped off a London street in Robert Wilson's Capital Punishment, wouldn't you think the motive is money? That may not be the case. A kidnapper's calm, distorted voice on Alyshia's mobile phone toys with Alyshia D'Cruz's mother, Isabel Marks. There's no ransom demand. Neither the police nor the press must become involved. Isabel is the only person allowed to communicate with the kidnapper. She is to tell ex-husband Frank that Alyshia's return will not involve "a bit of good old Asian haggling" and that he must take the kidnapping more seriously than if it were a mere money-making endeavor.

A Mumbai crowd

Though Frank loves his dazzlingly smart and beautiful daughter, it's hard to tell what he makes of Alyshia's abduction. He won't say why they became estranged during her stay in Mumbai or why she moved back to London nine months earlier. Frank was an Indian gangster and charismatic Bollywood actor before he became an industrial tycoon. He's paranoid, enigmatic and always acting. His ruthlessness has made many enemies and his gangster ties have plugged him into international networks of espionage, criminals and terrorists. Frank hires Charles Boxer, a "freelance kidnap consultant" working for a private security company, to advise him and Isabel.

Boxer served in the Gulf War, and afterward, normal life seemed monotonous and dull. He became a homicide detective, but that work was "historical." Boxer found he needed to be part of situations, like kidnappings, where "life really matters." Psychologically, this work helps fill the dark hole at his center, formed in childhood when his father disappeared. It's not all therapeutic, however. Boxer's professional code of ethics has already become morally flexible, and now he finds himself attracted to Isabel. It's ironic that while Boxer travels the globe freeing rich men's children, he and his Ghanaian ex-homicide partner, Mercy Danquah, are afraid that they're losing their own 17-year-old daughter, angry and rebellious Amy.

The complex relationship between Amy and her parents, who split up but remain good friends and professional colleagues, is an example of the complicated professional and personal relationships maintained on all sides of the kidnapping. This is one of the most complex and sophisticated thrillers in my recent memory. It deals with themes of corruption, counterterrorism, distribution of wealth, loyalty and morality. Over 400 pages, it zigzags between multiple settings in London, Pakistan and India and a huge cast of colorful characters. We bounce between the London kidnappers and Alyshia, those competing to muscle in on the kidnapping, others who want to take advantage of the kidnapping for their own purposes, and people poring over evidence to identify the kidnappers and bring Alyshia home.

Writer Wilson handles all this extremely well. In the beginning, I jotted down names and notes, but before long I learned I didn't need to do this. I simply paid attention. Characters became clear through repeated appearances or short IDs such as "Simon Deacon of MI6." The only problem I found with the many multidimensional characters is that my brain was often more engaged than my heart. I wasn't always emotionally connected to the good guys, some of whom are almost as bad as the bad guys.

No matter what my feelings, Wilson's witty descriptions and writing kept me entertained. One poor MI6 agent found himself captured in India and transported like a sack of potatoes in a rickshaw shortly after eating food that disagreed with him, "as his fear multiplied the horrors of his guts." Later, he was pressed down onto a sofa and "the hood came off with a flourish, as if he was the main dish at a restaurant with ideas above its station." I'm thrilled that this thought-provoking and diverting book, published in 2013 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, is the first of a new series.

"Go to Heaven for the Climate, Hell for the Company" (Mark Twain)

Use your imagination to populate this picture of Heaven

Mark Twain must have spent a lake vacation with my family, our friends and miscellaneous pets. As soon as we got out of the cars and smelled the water, we all ran completely wild. It was so much fun. There is nothing like spending time with friends and family you love. The books I read during the past few weeks have characters with special relationships, too. Let me tell you about some of them.

Author Edward Conlon's dad, grandfather and uncle were cops. Conlon graduated from Harvard, but his blood runs cop-uniform blue and he became a NYPD detective. Red on Red is his first novel and it's a doozy; a literary book you don't have to be a mystery fan to love. It's about two NYPD detectives, protagonist Nick Meehan and "Espo" Esposito, who became partners five months earlier. Nick, desperate for a transfer, agreed to take a look at Espo for the Internal Affairs Bureau. The two men are very different, but a close relationship or good partnership doesn't have to begin with a likeness, a shared past or shared tastes. It can begin with unlikeness that leads to thrilling epiphanies of jokes and actions one wouldn't have thought of but the other one did. During the first night a reader spends with them, they discover an unidentifiable woman hanging from a tree in the rain at Inwood Hill Park. The mysterious witness who called the cops and the odd scene appeal to Nick, who likes cases with "funny things or lucky things, glimpses of archaic wonder and terror, where life seemed to have a hidden order, a rhyme." They are also called to the scene of a shotgun victim, probably the result of a drugs turf war, that the aggressive and competitive Espo will handle. Espo and Nick accidentally cause a death to round out their shift. Fabulous characterization, setting, plot, humor and insight. I can't recommend this 2011 book, nominated for an Edgar First Novel, highly enough.

William Landay's Defending Jacob is set among the Barber family. Andy Barber couldn't believe his luck when Laurie, his dream girl, married him. He's happy at home and at the DA's office in Newton, Massachusetts, where he's been the top assistant DA for more than 20 years. When 14-year-old Ben Rifkin is found, stabbed to death on his walk to school, Andy expects to prosecute the case. These plans are turned upside down when Andy's son, Jacob, is accused of the crime. Jacob says he is innocent and Andy insists that it's his duty as a father to believe him. Laurie, reeling from the criminal charges against Jacob and the flabbergasting revelations from Andy, isn't so sure. This book has been described as a Greek tragedy. I'll say. It's both thought-provoking and suspenseful. Author Landay is a former district attorney and a Dagger Award-winner for Mission Flats. Defending Jacob, published in 2012 by Delacorte, is his third outstanding non-series novel. If you like books by Scott Turow, you'll like this one.

Austalian writer Garry Disher's Port Vila Blues was originally published in 1995 and will be re-released by Soho Crime tomorrow. In a nutshell, here's the scoop. Wyatt, a cool-headed career thief, has once again joined forces with his old crime-planner and trusted friend, Jardine. Six months earlier, Jardine was grazed by a bullet above his ear, suffered a stroke and hasn't been the same since. He directs Wyatt to a house with a stash of cash. Along with the cash, Wyatt finds a diamond-studded Tiffany brooch. He and Jardine then seek a fence. Unknown to them, the brooch was stolen before. When its original thieves hear it's turned up again, they assume someone among them is cheating the rest. This is not a comfortable state of affairs because they are very enterprising and ruthless corrupt cops. They set out to investigate their fellow friends-in-crime and Jardine and Wyatt. Port Vila Blues, the fifth in the Wyatt series, is set in various cities of Australia and on the island of Vanuatu. I'm not sure why it reminds me of those old Spy Versus Spy cartoons in Mad Magazine. It's not a book of espionage. Maybe because of the murderous scheming and betrayals among colleagues and friends. Chasing the determined crooks are determined cops. The book's ending makes me anxious to read others in this series, especially the next, The Fallout.

Shawn Maguire is ex-CIA. He was kicked out for his violent behavior, his insufficiently brown-nose-ish attitude and his drinking. He's now living in rural England so he can be near the grave of his wife. Other than attending meetings for sex addicts and running out of money, he's not doing much. An arms dealer asks him to look into the disappearance of Darius Osmani, whom the CIA suspects of being a Middle Eastern terrorist with information about a nuclear device. Although he hopes to be reinstated in the CIA, Maguire agrees to accept this freelance job. He heads to Paris, where he meets Osmani's beautiful wife, Danielle Baptiste. This isn't a thriller of blood-pressure-raising action, although Maguire and Danielle track Osmani, who's being flown from one black hole to another, courtesy of the CIA. Instead, it's a look at Maguire's history as a CIA operative in the Middle East during the war, CIA renditions and the short-sighted American practice of throwing money at problems and taking a hand in other countries' elections. The flashbacks within flashbacks can get a little confusing. Maybe that's appropriate. In Gerard Macdonald's The Prisoner's Wife, published in May 2012 by Dunne/St. Martin's, it's confusing to figure out who's a friend and who's an enemy, because sometimes it depends on the time and place. I enjoyed the quietly beautiful writing and Maguire, an appealing and complex protagonist. I hope to see him again soon.

There you go. I enjoyed my time at the lake with family and friends. After reading these books, I realized how lucky I am not to worry about which friends might sell me out or try to kill me. I don't suspect my kids of any serious crimes and I doubt my husband will drop a bomb on me. Now I hope you'll read these books in a heavenly place and the hellishly good company of the fictional characters will kindle your enjoyment.

Home again and needing a vacation

Life's Unexpected Turns

A few months ago I was thinking about the unexpected turns life can take when I spotted the following news item:

"My ultimate dream is to be buried in a deep ocean close to where penguins live," explained the former Alfred David, 79, otherwise known in his native Belgium as "Monsieur Pingouin" (Mr. Penguin), so named because a 1968 auto accident left him with a waddle in his walk that he decided to embrace with gusto. (His wife abandoned the marriage when he made the name change official; evidently, being "Mrs. Penguin" was not what she had signed up for.) Mr. Pingouin started a penguin-item museum that ultimately totaled 3,500 items, and he created a hooded, full-body black-and-white penguin outfit that, according to a September Reuters dispatch, he wears daily in his waddles around his Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek. [Reuters, 9-29-2011]

Monsieur Pinguoin

Unlike Mr. Penguin, Sophie Marx's unusual life doesn't result from a fluke accident, but an unconventional upbringing. She was born to parents who were always on the run––from whom, Sophie was never sure. All she knew was that there were many things she couldn't talk about with anybody. So it isn't entirely surprising that she ended up at the CIA, "a building full of weirdos." It was the first time she felt completely understood.

When David Ignatius's Bloodmoney opens, Sophie is no longer working for the "mainstream" CIA. She has been recruited by Jeff Gertz to be part of an off-the-record CIA intelligence unit that he operates out of Studio City, California, under the guise of an entertainment agency, The Hit Parade. Sophie is sending field agent Howard Egan off to Pakistan, where he is to meet with a Pakistani asset. Egan is afraid to go and afraid to ditch the mission once he arrives there, for fear he'll be fired. Turns out he had good reason to be afraid, because he goes missing.

It's a bad week for The Hit Parade, as several other Hit Parade undercover agents are killed overseas. Gertz has to answer to the President's Chief of Staff and a superior in the CIA. How have these agents been uncovered? Gertz is concerned that his agency will be closed. At his request, Sophie investigates in Pakistan and at Alphabet Capital, the London hedge fund that provided Egan his cover.

Ignatius, the author of Bloodmoney, is an associate editor and foreign-affairs columnist at The Washington Post. Bloodmoney's intelligence-agency characters, whether working for Pakistan or the United States, are very believable. I must glumly conclude that I'm not nearly subtle, crafty or sophisticated enough to work in intelligence, either in the field or at the home agency. I enjoyed following Sophie as she learns about global finance at Alphabet Capital, although the close friendship that quickly springs up between her and the fund's manager seems a bit unlikely.

I wasn't surprised to read in this book about the U.S. government's failure to learn from other countries' (or its own) mistakes in the Middle East, and its tendency to ignore long-term policy in favor of short-term fixes like hosing the region with money. Although this is fiction, Ignatius provides insights into the tribal culture of Pakistan. I found Bloodmoney fascinating for that reason, as well as how entertaining it is as espionage. Days after reading it, I'm still thinking about the murky ethics of gathering intelligence and the terrible nature of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I highly recommend it.

Let's segue now from Ignatius's intelligence people to the classic rock jocks of Bill Fitzhugh's Radio Activity. I can't recall how Fitzhugh's Rick Shannon became a radio station DJ, whether it was by accident or design. It may be that he became one because Fitzhugh was one in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1970s. Don't ask me how Fitzhugh found himself in that spot.

Back to the book. As Radio Activity begins, Rick is unemployed. Again. Clean Signal Radio Corporation has bought another radio station and fired all the staff at the Bismarck, North Dakota FM station where Rick worked. A satellite feed will now bounce in voice-tracked jocks from Chicago and Florida. Rick and all the other DJs of his era "were like silent movie stars at the dawn of the talkies." A call offering him a job from Clay Stubblefield, manager of a station in a small town in Mississippi, catches Rick when he's reduced to selling his prized vinyl records. Rick isn't thrilled but he decides to take it.

When he arrives, Rick learns that he's been "Stubbled." He will have to do programming in addition to his night-time FM DJ shift for no additional money. He'd leave, but where would he go? Had Rick known what I knew from page 7, that Captain Jack, the DJ he's replacing, was handcuffed to a fence, pleading for his life while a backhoe dug a hole big enough to hold his corpse, Rick might have left any way. But maybe not. Rick has the chance to formulate his station's classic rock programming. His fellow jocks are good people. Captain Jack left a double-wide trailer full of wonderful records and that's where Rick will live. Plus, the station's sexy receptionist Traci has blue eye shadow that reminds Rick of his younger years and makes his knees weak. Not to mention Kitty's restaurant, which serves tater wads and other non-chain food.

Rick finds evidence that makes Captain Jack's disappearance look very suspicious, and he follows clues that lead to a solution of the crime. I've read more complex mysteries, but I've never read one in which music is so well integrated with the plot. This book is beguiling entertainment and a love offering to classic rock and roll. Defining the era. Describing how DJs perform their craft. Relating stories about the singers. Commenting about the songs, and not just the 50 songs you hear over and over on homogenized classic rock stations. I loved it. It made me anxious to listen to music I've almost forgotten I miss. If you are a fan of mysteries and classic rock and roll, embrace an opportunity to read it. Crank up your stereo and rock out.

P.S. Rock and rollers, if you want to read some great set lists, check out Fitzhugh's All Hand Mixed Vinyl.

Not Everybody Wishes You Well

I've been wringing my hands, racking my brain, and ransacking my books since Sister Mary Murderous posted her list of favorite 2011 reads. I'm not the organized person she is, and trying to figure out which the heck books I read in 2011, let alone which were my favorites, is a Sisyphean chore. These questions will require more mental and physical excavations over the next few weeks, but not completing this task is inconceivable. The guilt I'm already feeling at my lateness allowed me to eat pumpkin pie for breakfast this morning while my brain smoldered. Compiling my best-of-2011 list is a tough job, but others in fiction had tougher lives than I do. Let me point out a few of them in these books I read in 2011.

Oh Lordy. An incredibly brutal world, religious passion, and bizarre characters. Themes of destruction, creation, and redemption. Last year I read about Francis Tarwater, a 14-year-old boy who struggles with his destiny as a prophet in Flannery O'Connor's ironic southern gothic The Violent Bear It Away. Last night I read Donald Ray Pollock's The Devil All the Time, a 2011 book its publisher states "marr[ies] the twisted intensity of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers with the religious and gothic overtones of Flannery O'Connor at her most haunting." Doubleday got that right. The Devil All the Time has a three-story plotline involving Arvis Eugene Russell, an orphaned 9-year-old boy, whose beautiful mother Charlotte dies of cancer despite her husband Willard's blood sacrifices on his prayer log in the woods; a traveling preacher named Roy and his wheelchair-bound friend Theodore; and a young married couple who use their summer vacations to pick up and kill hitchhikers. This account takes place from the end of World War II to the mid-1960s in the hardscrabble world of Knockemstiff, a town in rural southern Ohio, and West Virginia. Lovers of noir should read no more about this powerful book; they should just read it.

The fictional world of Daniel Woodrell contains less religious fervor than Pollock's but no less brutality. His three hardboiled novels have been collected into the 2011 omnibus The Bayou Trilogy. These bold and gritty tales are set in St. Bruno, in Louisiana's bayou country north of New Orleans. They feature Cajun ex-prizefighter-turned-cop Rene Shade, who lives above his mother's pool hall and maintains complicated relationships with his two brothers, bar-owner Tip and prosecutor Francois. The first novel in the Trilogy, Under the Bright Lights, concerns the killing of a black member of the city council. Despite the mayor's desire that the police investigation calls it a robbery, Shade's digging leads to a festering mess of corruption and betrayal. In Muscle for the Wing, some ex-cons try to take over St. Bruno's gambling scene, and Rene becomes involved. The Ones You Do finds Shade's long-gone father, pro gambler John X., returning to St. Bruno.

Woodrell grew up on the Mississippi River and currently lives in the Ozarks. He is a masterful storyteller and his characters––desperate losers anxious to escape their fates and more sophisticated bad guys who prey on them––are unforgettable. Woodrell is author of four standalone novels, including the wonderful Winter's Bone (16-year-old Ree Dolly has one week to find her meth-cooking, bail-jumping father before losing the family home), which was made into the 2010 movie of the same name.

The life of Elmore Leonard's Mickey Dawson, wife of real-estate developer Frank Dawson, doesn't seem too tough. She lives in a big brown and white Tudor house in a wealthy suburb of Detroit, Michigan. Tennis and drinks at the country club make up her life in The Switch. Suddenly, her life becomes very tough when she is kidnapped and held for ransom. The ransom collecting is complicated by the facts that (1) both Mickey and her husband are having affairs, and (2) the thugs can't trust each other. As usual, Leonard's ear for dialog and his plotting are first-rate. This caper, complicated for its participants, is an uncomplicated and fun time for its readers.

Half the world away, life is not easy for characters in Jamil Ahmad's The Wandering Falcon. The Wandering Falcon of the title is born near the book's beginning, and the reader catches glimpses of him as he moves from childhood to adulthood. The chapters are like pop beads strung together––neither completely independent stories nor a flowing narrative from one chapter to the next. This memorable nonmystery fiction features lyrical writing by an 80-year-old man who well knows the people and region of plains and mountains in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where tribesmen have moved their families and animals according to the season for centuries. Now, governmental regulations and pressures of modernity are changing their lives. The slim 2011 book is a glimpse at an area of the world that's in the news but still mysterious to many of us. After reading it, I have a better understanding, and I highly recommend it.

Well, back to the difficult job of pondering my favorite books from this past year. I hope you have read some books recently that would qualify for your own best reads, because we would love to hear about them. There aren't many days left in 2011. I'm not going to think about how quickly we'll be amassing our best-books-of-2012 lists. Hmmm....