Review of When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro

When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro

Once upon a time, part of the summer experience for high school kids was having to scroll through a long list of books and try to glean those 10 or so volumes that were not dry as dust and then get them read before Labor Day. Over the years, the lists have included more contemporary literature and, in many cases, the requirements are less onerous.

I read in the paper yesterday though that, as ever, everybody cannot be pleased. When the summer list of a local high school contained a book controversial because of the subject matter, and a minute fraction of the parents complained, the solution was simple. The school board just abolished the list completely and each student was to pick any one book he liked and read it. One book! Let's hope it's not written by Dr. Seuss.

I am still a fan of lists, and they guide some of my reading to this day. One such list, The 50 Essential Mystery Novels that Everyone Should Read, caught my eye last week and, along with the classical favorites written by Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins, I found When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro (Knopf, 2000).

Having read and enjoyed The Remains of the Day and a few other Ishiguro novels, I was surprised to see a novel from this author that fit into the crime-writing genre. I couldn't wait to read it. Ishiguro always reminded me of Henry James, but I liked him better because I enjoyed what he had to say as much as the way he said it.

The story begins before 1920 in Shanghai, China. Christopher Banks is leading an idyllic childhood and spends most of his time in the international compound of a city in turmoil. This was during the time of the early rise of the Red Chinese party, which was trying to gain a foothold in an area where the Japanese and British concerns already had deep roots. Banks's father worked for a British company actively involved in the importation of Indian opium.

Ironically, Christopher's mother was active in trying to help stop the importation of the very addictive substance, which was eroding Chinese society from its heart. Christopher is oblivious to any turmoil at home, for the most part, and he plays happily with his closest friend Akiro, a Japanese boy, and other children who live nearby.

One day, his father simply disappears. While the authorities are doing their best to find him, his mother disappears as well. Christopher is sent back to England to stay with family, and there he grew up, went to Oxford and got on with his main ambition––which is to be a great detective.

This is what he manages to do in the spit-spot fashion recommended by Mary Poppins. All the details that the reader gets is that Banks solved this or that famous case and was becoming something of a celebrity in the society of London. I must say that excluding any details of his cases made his frequent patting himself on the back rather pointless. Once he feels affirmed in his notion that he is indeed a great destroyer of evil, he decides to return to Shanghai to discover the fate of his parents and solve the great mystery of his life.

It is at this point that Ishiguro begins the real purpose in this book. He subtly reveals his study into the inner working of an uncomfortable mind.

Christopher is a different person back in Shanghai, which is disorienting and unfamiliar now that the Japanese have invaded mainland China. He is arrogant, cruel at times, and maybe a bit tortured by the way his memories are not shared by the people he once knew. Up until now, Christopher has been presented as a clear-minded, logical man, in control most of the time. Here in Shanghai, he begins to disintegrate. Expecting to solve the problems of the China-Japan conflict, he is at least successful in some of his primary goals.

Thomas Wolfe said it best: "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood. . . back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame .. . back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time––back home to the escapes of Time and Memory."

I had a difficult time, just as Christopher did, deciding what was real and what was a delusion. Memories of times long past are like that. Part of the problem is that Christopher was essentially a cold man who had had no close friends since childhood. Aside from a very manipulative woman in London who led him a merry dance, he was also pretty much asexual and avoided women. It was a chore to like this man.

Why this book was on any list of mysteries is open to discussion. This detective story is more about investigating the investigator.

This doesn't change my belief that lists have a place in our lives, and they encourage knowledge of what's out there for readers in this age of vanishing bookstores. I have great fun perusing many of the lists of books at the Goodreads site categorized for one reason or another, including lists like the "worst book you will ever read," as well as "the most anticipated books of the year." A nice fillip is that the readers are continually working on these lists by voting for their own favorites.

Review of Tomorrow City by Kirk Kjeldsen

Tomorrow City by Kirk Kjeldsen

After a robbery goes spectacularly wrong, a young American ex-con flees to Shanghai and goes straight, until his past drags him kicking and screaming back into crime.

In a nutshell, that's what Tomorrow City is about, but that synopsis gives you little sense of the power of Kirk Kjeldsen's fictional debut. I read this bleak and beautiful book in one sitting, repeatedly brushing off my husband's reminders that we were late with "just a few more minutes, I'm begging you." It's not easy creating a criminal with whom a reader empathizes, but Kjeldsen pulls this off. His Brendan Lavin, a criminal with a conscience, joins the ranks of criminal protagonists such as George V. Higgins' Eddie Coyle, W. R. Burnett's Cesare "Rico" Bandello, and Out of the Past's Jeff Bailey.

Brendan's mother took to heroin when her husband abandoned her and her young child. Growing up, Brendan was good at getting into things, working "with the grace and efficiency of a vaudevillian escape artist on stage." He started robbing warehouses and 16-wheelers with a crew, but one job went wrong, and he was arrested and sent to Rikers Island. To reward him for his silence, his old mates sent him cigarettes and protection money. Now that he's out, Brendan considers them even. He's working hard, running a New York City bakery, but when he can't pay his bills, he decides to pull just one more robbery.

It's a disaster, and Brendan needs to run. He's always been a tabula rasa; it's as easy for him to slip into another identity as it is for him to slip into a locked house, safe or car. Brendan has heard that everything is like the Wild West in China, so that's where he goes.

For 12 years, life is good. Brendan is married to Li and has a little daughter, Xiaodan. In Shanghai, he can hide his bakery in plain sight, where he's unlikely to be spotted, and still do good business. Unfortunately, "unlikely" proves too likely, and Brendan's past becomes his present and what looks like his future.

Writer Kjeldsen is an assistant professor in the cinema program at Virginia Commonwealth University, although he lives in Shanghai. His love and knowledge of the city is evident, and his writing is cinematic and poetic. No matter how far a man runs, sooner or later Fate will have him twisting and turning in her hands, and I read Tomorrow City with that delicious sense of growing dread dear to us fans of noir. My only criticism is that I wish Kjeldsen's characters were more fleshed out; when you're reading this good a book of 200 pages, you wish there was more. Still, it's a wonderful debut, and I'm putting Kjeldsen on my list of go-to authors.

Note: I received a free review copy of Tomorrow City, published by Signal 8 Press in 2013.

Shanghai photo by Bruno Barbey/Magnum

Caught in a Web

I like spiders, but I have no desire to see them doing a number on some poor victim caught in a web. The very idea of a trapped animal disturbs me; yet, I do like books in which people are ensnared, and they're forced to muster every shred of courage and resourcefulness they possess to extricate themselves.

Of course, some of the best fictional "no way out" predicaments involve espionage, and former CIA operations officer and veteran thriller writer Charles McCarry can spin a tangled web of deceit with the best of them. His 2013 book, The Shanghai Factor, doesn't feature series protagonist Paul Christopher, a highly skilled and saintly American agent. Instead, we have a cynical, unnamed 29-year-old narrator, who graduated from an elite college and served with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. Nameless spent months in a hospital recovering from a bomb injury, and it's not clear how much he cares whether he lives or dies. He is now in Shanghai, working as a sleeper agent for "Headquarters" (possibly the CIA).

Espionage for such a spy can proceed like dripping molasses, and Nameless spends 2-1/2 years doing little more than avoiding fellow westerners, improving his Mandarin, and frolicking in bed with a beautiful and mysterious Chinese woman named Mei. Things pick up when Nameless notices tag teams of Chinese following him, and he's grabbed and assaulted. But it's after he's called home to speak to Luther R. Burbank, chief of Headquarters Counterintelligence, whose job is "to finger the bad guy inside every good guy and banish the sinner to outer darkness," that the wheels within wheels really begin to turn. Burbank plays mind games with Nameless before offering him the chance to be "the agent of his own fate." In other words, Luther wants Nameless to act as bait to lure, and then hook, their adversary. When Nameless accepts, Burbank shoos him back to China. Soon Nameless is traveling between Shanghai, New York City, and Washington D.C., plying his tradecraft, meeting lovely women, and playing such subtle espionage games, it's difficult to tell who he, and the enigmatic others, are really working for—the Chinese intelligence agency (Guoanbu) or the American Headquarters.

The Shanghai Factor is a mostly cerebral, rather than a high-octane, espionage thriller. It contains complex characters, vivid writing, and witty observations. The plot's action takes place during periods of tense quiet that are punctuated with spine-chilling moments of danger. There's an overall atmosphere of ambiguity and menace. Living as a spook under cover in hostile territory leads to justifiable paranoia. Nameless says, "You can never be a fish swimming in their sea, you are always the pasty-white legs and arms thrashing on the surface with a tiny unheeded cut on your finger. Meanwhile the shark swims toward the scent of blood from miles away." Watching the valiant Nameless use his brains to navigate perilous waters, in which no one can be trusted completely, makes a very satisfying read.

Not all of the pitfalls crime fiction writers devise are outside their characters' skins. Some poor protagonists are victimized, not only by evildoers, but by their own minds as well. This is the case for narrator Bryan Bennett in The Worst Thing, a 2011 standalone thriller by Aaron Elkins, well known to many of us as the author of the Edgar Award-winning "Skeleton Detective" series, featuring forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver.

We meet Bryan, his wife Lori, and his Odysseus Institute boss, Wally North, at a restaurant, where they're celebrating Bryan and Lori's tenth wedding anniversary. Shoving aside his dessert, Wally offers Bryan and Lori a trip to Reykjavik, Iceland. He wants Bryan to present their corporate-level kidnapping and extortion seminar to the executives of an Icelandic fisheries corporation, GlobalSeas. GlobalSeas CEO Baldur Baldursson, who previously escaped a clumsy kidnapping attempt by members of Project Save the Earth, specifically asked for Bryan, the former hostage negotiator who created the crisis management and security policies program.

Lori is thrilled by the idea, but Bryan refuses. He explains to us that "each life has a defining moment, an episode that shapes and colors, for good or ill, all that follows." Bryan's defining moment came more than 30 years ago. When he was five years old, he was kidnapped in Turkey and held, chained in a dungeon, for two months. As a result, Bryan struggles with claustrophobia, nightmares, and occasional nighttime panic attacks. He's also convinced that he'll get himself kidnapped again. Sitting in a cramped airplane cabin and speaking to a group in Iceland about kidnapping is definitely not something Bryan wants to do.

He does it, however, for Lori's sake, setting into motion a terrific twisting-and-turning chain of events, in which the determined kidnappers writer Elkins has already kindly introduced to us get a chance to meet Baldur, Lori, and ... Bryan.

I don't mean to imply that The Worst Thing is a comic caper in the style of Donald E. Westlake, because it has some thought-provoking themes. Bryan conveys the long-term consequences of traumatic events, the troubling nature of memory, and the debilitating nature of panic attacks and their treatment very clearly. Despite these serious subjects, this book is fun. Colorful villains and sympathetic nice guys, unusual settings, a nice sense of irony, and sly plotting are all here. Elkins knows how to tell a story, and suspense builds to a nifty surprise ending. The travails of brave Bryan Bennett in Iceland would make a great hammock read this summer.

A Fireside Chat with a Hot Female Shamus

During these cold winter evenings, it's a luxury to sit by the fire and escape into a book, especially if the book comes equipped with a tough, pool-playing shamus named Alessandra Martillo.

Al is of Puerto Rican heritage. She grew up in New York City's public housing. Her father, a military man, was largely absent although he made sure his 6-year-old daughter knew how to defend herself and drummed it into her head that men are only after one thing. Al was sent to live with an aunt after her mother committed suicide when she was 10 years old. She ran away and lived on the streets for a year until she was rescued by her Tío Bobby. A career in the NYPD evaporated when Al was thrown out of the police academy. Al has serious problems with authority.

When Norman Green's The Last Gig begins, Al is working for PI Marty Stiles, an ex-cop who knows his stuff, but who's not above getting his hands dirty for his clients. Neither is he above having the hots for his employee. Even though Al made it clear she's not interested, he still can't keep his cool around her. When she wears low-rise jeans, "his tongue hangs out so far you could put a knot in it and call it a tie."

Stiles has an acquaintance, Daniel Caughlan, an Irish mobster and trucking company owner. Someone is hijacking his trucks, possibly for transporting drugs. Caughlin suspects he's being set up for a fall and someone close to him is involved. Although Stiles has had Al handling only minor investigations such as car repossessions, Caughlan hires Al because she's smart, stubborn, doesn't scare and "can take a punch." He wants her to name the traitor. It doesn't take long before Al is digging into the death of Caughlan's musician son 6 months earlier and she realizes it's much less straightforward than Caughlin thinks. It's also very dangerous for Al.

It's hard to imagine a situation that Al would consider too dangerous. She's courageous to the point of foolhardiness, probably because she's stronger and more coordinated than most men. Al is also beautiful. She's not a Barbie doll but "the kind of broad who could pitch a shutout against your softball team, hit one out herself, then drink you under the table after the game."

These same traits that make Al an exciting heroine in the style of Lisbeth Salander and Kathleen Mallory can also be a source of eye rolling and tedium when all the reminders of her attractiveness and strength start piling up. Still, as long as the reader accepts a near-superhuman heroine, it's easy to root for Al and enjoy Green's book. The author has a detailed knowledge of his characters' city and the music industry that employs some of them. Other than Al, the characters are believable people. The plot is engrossing and it moves at a satisfactory pace, but what makes the book is Alessandra Martillo. She's da bomb and I'll read the sequel, Sick Like That.

I'm not sure when I'll get to that sequel, because I have some other books on a shelf near the fireplace. I'm anxious to go back to the Philippines via reading Alexander Yates's Moondogs. Kirkus Reviews describes the book in this way: "The kidnapping of an American businessman in the Philippines sets in motion an odd series of events involving his estranged son, a hard-boiled cop who inspired a hugely popular film series and a ragtag strike force with special powers." That sounds good to me.

But before visiting the Philippines, I'm enjoying China with Qui Xiaolong's Death of a Red Heroine. This is a book with another irresistible protagonist, Chief Inspector Chen Cao, head of the Shanghai Police Bureau's Special Case Squad. Dick Adler of the Chicago Tribune says, "Blends history, plenty of poetry and a compelling mystery: the murder of Guan Hongying, a former national role-model worker, a beautiful young woman who slipped from patriotic fame into loneliness and depravity... We get to see, smell, taste and hear an amazingly evocative portrait of a country."

I hope that wherever you are, you are safe and warm and have a good book to read.