THE JOB
By Douglas Kennedy
Hyperion, $23.95
Just when the future is looking rosy for ad salesman Ned Allen, the world begins to fall apart. And given that Allen is one of the most aggressive, competitive and shallow main characters to hit the bookshelves in a while, his comeuppance is fairly enjoyable, as is his ultimate redemption.
When we first meet them, Allen and his fashionable wife, Lizzie, have shed their small-town roots for Manhattan sophistication. It’s an expensive lifestyle, one they are barely able to afford, and things begin to turn grim when the magazine that Ned works for is sold to a no-nonsense European conglomerate whose corporate motto could be, “Make money . . . or else.”
Allen tries his best, even going so far as to blackmail a client into buying ad space. But when the magazine is sold again, he finds himself out of a job and soon out of his marriage. Just as he hits rock bottom–thrown out of the house by his wife with $7 in his pocket–he meets an old high school friend who offers him a job working for a popular, but shady, motivational speaker. Faster than you can say “yuppie penance,” Allen is turned into a bagman by his new employer and, in case he has any thoughts about going to the police, is set up as a murder suspect in the death of the client that he earlier blackmailed.
Douglas Kennedy has his main character narrate the proceedings in a breathless, anxiety-ridden tone that keeps the pages turning even as the plot becomes more and more incredible. Not a bad follow-up to his debut novel “The Big Picture,” and certainly confirmation of his talent for creating a fast-paced yarn.
DIE TRYING
By Lee Child
Putnam, $23.95
It takes a brave man to move into the macho territory of suspense writer Stephen Hunter, but Lee Child is making his move with this follow-up to “Killing Floor.”
This one opens with a bang: FBI agent Holly Johnson is kidnapped off the streets of Chicago in broad daylight by three gunmen. Along with Johnson, the gunmen grab former Army Maj. Jack Reacher, who happens to be walking by during the abduction. The two are thrown into the trunk of a getaway car, where Reacher eventually learns that Johnson is the daughter of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the goddaughter of the president. Their kidnappers turn out to be members of a Montana supremacist group that intends to secede from the Union, using Johnson as a bargaining chip. Once they’ve arrived at the group’s hideout in the mountains, the book turns into a battle between Reacher and the group’s leader, Beau Borken, a neo-Nazi sadist whose idea of discipline is crucifying anybody who crosses him.
Child has a knack for creating violent moments, but occasionally the over-the-top plotting makes one yearn for a little more logic, and the mano-a-mano confrontations become a bit outlandish. Still, Child is a suspense writer to be reckoned with.
THE ELEVENTH
COMMANDMENT
By Jeffrey Archer
HarperCollins, $26
Warfare is never pretty, especially when the combatants are supposed to be working on the same side.
In Jeffrey Archer’s latest, we find the CIA controlled by a hard-nosed director, Helen Dexter, who has it in for ace assassin Connor Fitzgerald. For his part, Fitzgerald is happily married and looking for a promotion to a comfortable desk job.
Dexter, however, sends Fitzgerald on one last assignment: the assassination of a warmongering candidate for the Russian presidency. What Connor doesn’t know is that our own president hasn’t signed off on the hit; Connor thinks he’s carrying out orders from the White House. Worse yet, Dexter has Connor set up so the hit will fail and he’ll be sent to Russia’s worst prison, dishonored and never heard from again. Of course, the wily veteran Connor has a few tricks up his sleeve in this entertaining and sprightly paced suspense story.
One of the virtues of Archer’s books is that, unlike a few of his colleagues, he refuses to take the political thriller completely seriously, which means there is plenty of fun amidst the action here.
PRETTY BALLERINA
By John Wessel
Simon & Schuster, $24
Chicago native John Wessel follows up his fine first book (“This Far, No Further”) with a return engagement for his private investigator, Harding. This time, Harding is hired by Cassie Rayn, a former porn star and current queen of slasher movies, who has been receiving sinister mailings from a place called Lost Moon Developers. Cassie, whose real name is Kalani Moon, turns out to be the sole survivor of a bloodbath that took place 20 years earlier when her father murdered the entire family, except for Kalani, who was hiding in the basement. Two years before that horror, her brother Kim had disappeared, and she now believes the odd flyers may be a message from him.
Harding starts to check things out and pretty quickly attracts attention from assorted goons and weirdos on his way to finding some answers. In a genre where 400-page novels is the rule rather than the exception, this 240-page volume seems to be an attempt to keep the story spare and to the point. Unfortunately in this case, Wessel is a victim of his own talent: “Pretty Ballerina” cries out for more detail, and readers may be a little let down with the sudden finish. It will be interesting to see if Wessel’s next Harding book returns to the breadth of his debut novel.
COCAINE NIGHTS
By J.G. Ballard
Counterpoint, $23
“Crossing frontiers is my profession,” observes the main character of “Cocaine Nights,” but the same might be said of the book’s author, J.G. Ballard. Possessed of a bleak social vision and a strong fascination with the perversities of late-20th Century life, Ballard has made a career of subverting genres (most prominently science fiction) as a way of exploring his ideas about technology and human behavior.
By his own standards, “Cocaine Nights” is rather mild–this is, after all, the same author who wrote the controversial “Crash,” a graphic tale of sexuality and car crashes–but it is an interesting example of just how far the elements of a thriller can be stretched.
As the book opens, travel writer Charles Prentice has arrived in the upscale resort community of Estrella de Mar on Spain’s Costa del Sol to get his brother, Frank, out of jail. Not an easy task, given that Frank, manager of the Club Nautico, which is ground zero for the local drug and pornography trade, has confessed to setting a fire that killed five people. Charles, however, doesn’t believe it and sets out to uncover what really happened. In typical Ballard fashion, this means gradually taking on the identity of his brother. Soon, Charles is sleeping with Frank’s mistress (a local femme fatale), working at Club Nautico and, finally, sliding into Frank’s role as local facilitator and fall guy.
Told in a cool, dispassionate style that effectively blocks all identification with its main character, “Cocaine Nights” provides what many suspense novels only hint at before backing away: a social order in which conventional morality has been completely and absolutely upended.
