Review of The Execution of Noa P. Singleton by Elizabeth L. Silver

Title: The Execution of Noa P. Singleton
Author: Elizabeth L. Silver
Publisher: Crown Publishing
Published: 11 June 2013
Genre: crime, mystery, drama
Source: eARC from the publisher via NetGalley
Rating: 7/10

I know I did it. The state knows I did it, though they never really cared why. Even my lawyers knew I did it from the moment I liquidated my metallic savings bank hoarded in the bloated gut of a pink pig to pay their bills. I was lucid, attentive, mentally sound, and pumped with a single cup of decaffeinated Lemon Zinger tea when I pulled the trigger. Post-conviction, I never contested that once.

When Noa P. Singleton was put on trial for killing Sarah Dixon, she never took the stand in her own defence, and the state’s weak, melodramatic case was enough to give her the death penalty. Now, after a decade in jail and her execution date six months away, Noa is suddenly approached by Sarah’s mother Marlene. At the trial, Marlene stated that Noa was exactly the kind of person the death penalty was designed for. Now, she offers to use her considerable influence as a high-powered attorney to get Noa granted clemency – life in prison instead of death.

In exchange, Marlene wants Noa to prove that she’s reformed, specifically by revealing the all the details that she never confessed during the trial – her motives and the specifics of what happened that day. Whether or not Noa deserves to be on death row, they both know that she was put there for the wrong reasons. Marlene sends her lawyer Oliver to speak to Noa, who begins telling her story, from the very beginning when her mother dropped her as a baby.

Which is kind of funny in the black way that Noa sometimes laughs at things if only to avoid crying about the way her life has turned out. This is a mystery novel, but it’d be more accurate to think of it as a tragic life story that led to a murder and a death sentence. At ten-months old (I’m rather sceptical about the idea that Noa has memories from such an early age, but whatever) Noa’s mother accidentally dropped her from the top of a second-floor stairway. Too embarrassed to admit what happened, she made up a ridiculous story about an intruder and proceeded to wreck Noa’s crib and the house as evidence for her lie.

In true Freudian style, Noa repeatedly looks to her past to explain or contextualise the later events of her life. This incident is mentioned several times, particularly because of her mother’s bizarre attempt to cover up the truth, as Noa has done. Being dropped as a baby is also the first in a long line of mishaps and tragedies that characterise Noa’s life. She was raised by a single mother who frequently changed boyfriends. She suffered a disastrous miscarriage, requiring an emergency abortion that left her unable to have children. She dropped out of college soon after and proceeded to do absolutely nothing with her life. Later, Noa’s estranged father gets in touch with her and tries to build a relationship with her. He’s an ex-con and a recovering alcoholic who is very obviously a relapse waiting to happen.

Although this sounds more like a drama than a crime novel, most of Noa’s story, down to the sad little details, eventually ties in to the murder, the trial and her sentence. A lot of it ends up being misused in the trial, which seems more like a soap opera than a serious legal procedure.

It turns out that Noa is actually the one writing the story we’re reading, doing her best to explain how she ended up on death row, why she never defended herself, why she committed murder in the first place. She sometimes suggests that she’s an unreliable narrator – revealing that a story she just told is a lie, or leaving out important events and details – but you get the impression that if she has misled you, she will eventually tell the whole truth. In between her biographical chapters, she also describes her conversations with Marlene’s lawyer Oliver (a sweet twenty-something who, unlike Marlene, is very serious about helping Noa), details about the death penalty in America, comments on how the trial was conducted (like the way the jury was frequently asked to ignore statements from witnesses, or how she was demonised as a bitter, barren psychopath), life on death row and so on.

Partly because Noa is the author here, your sympathy falls with her, the confessed, convicted murderer. She manages to be the heroine rather than the villain, even if you don’t quite like her (she’s certainly not cute and fluffy). If there is a villain of any kind, it’s Marlene, the mother of the murder victim. Noa says she “had never known Marlene to possess even a quarter of a heart, let alone a full one”, and even when accounting for the fact that Marlene is shown from Noa’s perspective, she really does seem to be a stone cold bitch. Her motives for wanting to get Noa granted clemency are purely selfish – she wants a means of getting the truth, and she wants Noa to spend the rest of her life wasting away in jail rather than being given an early escape. Which is a perfectly understandable attitude toward the woman who shot your daughter, until you realise that this is simply an example of Marlene’s cruel selfishness. The narrative actually includes some letters she writes to her dead daughter, but these don’t elicit sympathy so much as reveal Marlene to be the unstable, controlling woman that Noa warned us about.

I want to make a few comments on the writing and narrative style. The novel is easy to read, but Silver often makes attempts at being poetic that tend to be confused or just fall flat. Oliver actually criticises Noa’s metaphors at one point: “Lovely, Noa,” he said, spitting a bit of scoff my way. “Taking a poetry class via the post?” Based on that you could say that this style is a voice Silver crafted for Noa, but sometimes Marlene does it too.

Another thing I wanted to mention is that a couple of chapters are little more than lists. Between telling her life story, Noa gives us trivia related to her experience at the trial an in prison – excuses people make to avoid jury duty, final words of people who’d been executed, final meals. Some of this is interesting for a short while, but it quickly gets tedious without adding anything to the story. It’s also unclear where Noa gets this information, since she’s stuck in prison with few connections to the outside world.

But flaws aside, this is a pretty good read and an impressive debut novel. I loved the way the main characters’ psychology unfolded as the novel progressed, with all their twisted issues about family, guilt and atonement. It moves relatively slowly for quite a while, but by the last quarter or so I was anxious about how it would turn out. If I’d read it in print instead of on a Kindle I’d have had to stop myself from ‘accidentally’ glancing at the final pages. And any mystery that has that effect on me has done its job.

 

Review of Helen of Troy by Ruby Blondell

Title: Helen of Troy: Beauty, Myth, Devastation
Author: Ruby Blondell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 02 May 2013
Genre: literary criticism, mythology, feminism, history
Source: review copy via NetGalley
Rating: 9/10

I don’t read much non-fiction, although not for lack of noble intentions. I’ve got a bookshelf packed with philosophy, essays, art theory, literary theory, history, etc. But  most of the non-fiction I’m interested in is fairly academic and demanding, so it takes quite a lot of determination for me to actually read any of it. But I’m inspired to try harder when I come across wonderful books like Ruby Blondell’s Helen of Troy: Beauty, Myth, Devastation.

Combining literary analysis, classical studies, feminism and philosophy, Helen of Troy beautifully bridges the gap between academia and general interest. It’s a scholarly work but you don’t need to be a scholar to appreciate it (although you might be inspired to become one afterwards). Going in, my only knowledge of Helen’s story came from pop culture and a few light books on Greek mythology I read when I was a child. I have never read The Iliad. I didn’t know Helen appears post-war in The Odyssey living comfortably with Menelaus. I’d never even heard of any of the lyric poetry or Athenian tragedy that later re-addressed or revised her story. No doubt I could have gotten much more from this book if I was familiar with these texts, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it anyway, and in my ignorance I was able to learn a hell of a lot too.

Blondell begins with an overview of “Greek gender ideology, focusing on female beauty, the conceptual position of women between objectification and agency, and the intrinsic ambiguity of the female as embodied in the first woman, Pandora.” The Greeks treated beauty as something that could be measured objectively, which is why they can conceive of a character like Helen. In the 2004 movie Troy, Diane Kruger played Helen. I think she’s lovely, but there are more beautiful women who could have played the role. My partner always complains about the casting, because he doesn’t find her especially attractive. But the ideal casting for Helen doesn’t exist (which is why the movie wisely chose political rather than mythical reasons for the war). No woman is so beautiful that everyone would agree she was the most beautiful woman in existence. But that’s exactly what Helen is, and because she embodies the very idea of perfect beauty, she also perfectly embodies male anxieties about female beauty and sexuality. Of which there are many.

These issues are so fraught with paradoxes (then and now) that writers like Blondell are immensely valuable if only for their ability to unpack and discuss them. I barely know where to start, but one of the recurring themes is that of the parthenos – a virginal adolescent girl who is ready for marriage. The parthenos is at the peak of her sexual attraction, which also means she is at her most threatening (because of the effect she has on men) and the most volatile (she may act ‘inappropriately’ on her own desires and is ‘exposed’ as she makes the transition from her father’s house to her husband’s). The parthenos “embodies a feminine wildness that must be “tamed” by sex and marriage”, but Helen is like an eternal, untameable parthenos who brings about the very things that men fear about parthenoi and women in general. Neither her age nor her marital status seem to have any effect on her overpowering beauty; she causes Paris to break the inviolable bonds of guest-friendship by sleeping with Helen while a guest in her husband’s house; Helen then leaves her husband’s household either by inciting Paris to a criminal act of kidnapping/theft or by acting on her own desire and leaving willingly with him (both are bad); her beauty causes the greatest war of all time, but also ensures that neither side can end it prematurely because she is too valuable to give up. And although Helen is the reason men can achieve glory on an epic battlefield, she is also the reason they die by the thousands. In the Odyssey it is generally agreed that she wasn’t worth it.

The problem of beauty isn’t only related to Helen. Paris is a particularly beautiful man and this in itself is considered problematic because physical beauty is considered a feminine asset. Men should aspire to moral and marital beauty, and it’s telling that Paris makes poor moral decisions and isn’t much of a warrior. The goddess Aphrodite promised Helen to Paris if he would declare her to be the most beautiful of the goddesses in a beauty contest. Zeus had already planned to use her for destructive purposes – he wanted to reduce the human population and fathered Helen to cause the war, while Achilles functioned as the principle slaughterer.

This is not the first example of Zeus using a beautiful woman to cause destruction, or of female beauty being portrayed as inherently dangerous. Pandora, “the first woman and prototype of all women” was created by Zeus as revenge for Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and giving it to men (who lived in a homosocial paradise at this point). Pandora was so beautiful that even the other gods were impressed, but her beauty was a trick: Prometheus’s brother Epimetheus took her into his home (the first marriage) where she opened the sealed “jar” full of evils.

Like all women, and like Helen in particular, Pandora is a “kalon kakon”, a “beautiful evil”. The term is used frequently throughout the book. Pandora’s very desirability is deceptive and dangerous, the cause of men’s downfall. Caught in such paradoxes, women can’t win, and this problem is hardly limited to ancient times. Our worth is frequently measured by our physical beauty, but that beauty is also cause for distrust (a beautiful woman is more likely to inspire lust and commit infidelities), fear or even hatred. Women have the power to use their beauty against men, can cause strife among men, and are assumed to be morally weaker, and therefore must be controlled by husbands and fathers. At the same time, women aren’t expected too act like dolls. They should express some desire and use their beauty to please men but not to the extent that they appear promiscuous or vain. They should use their allure as if they are innocently unaware of its power. It’s a difficult, if not impossible balance to achieve: “As Hesiod declares, in a strikingly close parallel, a bad wife brings a man utter misery, but even a good one is a mixture of good and evil (Theog. 607–12).”

Given that Helen leaves her husband for another man, she can’t be considered a ‘good woman’, so why fight over her? These issues are raised by Homer, and in fact Blondell identifies Homeric epic as providing the most complex representation of Helen. These chapters were the ones I found most interesting.

For Helen to function as a casus belli (the reason for war) it was necessary for both sides to objectify her. She can’t be thought of as “just a woman” because it’s embarrassing for thousands of men to fight and die over one woman. It just proves how much power she has over them (which she does, of course). Instead, she is considered an artefact, a demi-god, the daughter of Zeus, a perfect thing of such great value that she is worth fighting over no matter the cost. For most, she doesn’t inspire lust or love but awe.

Paris is seen to have stolen her from Menelaus as if she were his property. As a result, pretty much everyone blames him for starting the war, but neither the Trojan nor Greek men can blame Helen. blaming her is like admitting that she’s ‘damaged goods’, and they’re idiots for dying over her. But a perfect Helen is the reason they can find glory in war, and martial prowess was considered a great form of male beauty (making Achilles the most ‘beautiful’ or perfect man). It’s different for the women, who all seem to dislike Helen; they can’t achieve any glory in the war, but they do lose husbands, sons and brothers, and are later brutally raped murdered, so they have every reason to hate Helen.

Helen actually blames herself, although this might be strategic, as Blondell explains. In doing so, she saves the men from having to do it, but more importantly, her self-blame is part of what makes her perfect. In the tangles of Greek gender ideology (and many others…) the best women are “misogynistic, self-policing, and male-identified. They are sensitive to public opinion and embrace their subordinate status, along with the accompanying restrictions on their freedom of speech and movement.” So although the men can’t afford to agree with Helen’s self-blame, her self-deprecation fits neatly into the male idea of a good woman.

There’s another paradox here – it could be that Helen is more powerful than she appears, actively using self-blame to manipulate the way other characters and the audience see her. In that way she’s using her inferiority as a woman against the very people who impose that inferiority. And that’s another male fear about women – that they can create deceptive illusions, that their outwardly beautiful appearances conceal evil, deceptive natures.

The issue of Helen’s culpability is one that frequently made me think of women in the fiction I read, and it’s no co-incidence that I picked up on the issue of women’s agency in Poppet by Mo Hayder, which I read right after Helen of Troy and have already reviewed. A good/virtuous character is a disempowered character if they are good simply because they can’t choose to be bad or if they are not held responsible for bad actions. There are times when I appreciate villainous female characters because they have the power to act, have influence over others, and are held responsible for what they do as free, intelligent agents.

If Helen isn’t responsible for the war then she is virtuous. But being virtuous typically means she has no agency – Paris is blamed for kidnapping her or the gods are blamed for manipulating her and Helen is just a puppet. Some stories actually try to remove her from the war entirely, claiming that she never left with Paris but spent the war in Egypt while a double created by the gods took her place in Troy. She retains her virtue not only because she doesn’t have any choice in leaving with Paris, but because she’s not even present.

Chapter 8 deals with a defence of Helen by the orator Gorgias, the first on record to offer a sympathetic portrayal by defending her elopement with Paris, rather than simply arguing that she never went to Troy at all. But in exculpating Helen, Gorgias strips her of all power – nothing is her fault because she has no real control over her actions. In fact, according to his argument, no human being is ever responsible for their actions whether good or bad. It’s ridiculous, but intentionally so – Gorgia’s defence of Helen is a joke, a common form of entertainment where orators would (paradoxically) display their rhetorical skills by making superficially moving but flawed arguments. In Helen’s case, Gorgias is defending the indefensible. There’s something hopeful in his argument though – if the idea of Helen being completely innocent is a joke, then so is the idea of her being powerless.

There are three chapters on Athenian tragedy, and in one play by Euripides, Helen is, for the first time, given the opportunity to defend herself for leaving with Paris. But she does the same as Gorgias and the opposite of what she does in the Iliad – she blames everyone but herself, rendering herself powerless in order to claim that she is innocent. But there’s a fundamental contradiction here – the very fact that she taking up a male role by using rhetoric to defend herself proves that she is far more powerful than she claims. Again we see the paradoxical ways in which women are simultaneously empowered and disempowered in these texts. And I’m simultaneously frustrated and fascinated by Blondell’s analysis.

These issues aren’t limited to dead societies and ancient literature – they frequently appear in modern fiction, and I see them regularly in opinion columns and on blogs. The recent SFWA sexism scandal (there are so many articles I don’t know what to link; just google it) arose partly because of the tendency for women to be judged by their looks rather than their abilities in ways that men almost never are. This is one of the reasons I found Helen of Troy to be such a fantastic read – it offers ideas that are (sadly) still central to contemporary feminist issues, and it does so with compelling textual analyses of one of the world’s most popular and powerful myths. Not only did I enjoy reading it more than I enjoy most novels; it was an immensely valuable experience.

I’ve only been able to discuss a fraction of what has been packed into this relatively short book. The passages I highlighted are far longer than this review, so I just touched on what was most memorable for me. There’s a chapter on the Odyssey where Helen is seen back in Sparta with Menelaus, and is given a more empowered but less sympathetic role now that the war is over and the characters are more concerned with marriage and community. Blondell goes on to analyse ancient texts that the Homeric epic inspired. The chapter on lyric poetry was my least favourite, but it was nevertheless interesting how dramatically Helen’s character changes in the hands of different authors, and how they manipulate her for their various ideologies. There are three chapters on Athenian tragedy, and here Helen is used for more political ends. Blondell also points out the way in which the stage production highlighted male control of female representation – men write the stories and male actors perform all the roles for an audience that is mostly male. And hey, that’s not very different from contemporary female characters written by men to fulfil the fantasies of mostly male target markets.

In her epilogue, Blondell briefly lists more recent incarnations of Helen (such as the painting – by a female artist – which graces the cover) and ends by stating that “[d]emonized, idolised, allegorized, or humanised, Helen is still here”. At that point, she hardly needed to point that out. I’d love to read a follow-up text on more modern representations of Helen.

And I’ve bought a copy of this book. Just going through my review notes made me want to read it again.

Review of Poppet by Mo Hayder

Title: Poppet
Series: Jack Caffery #6
Author: Mo Hayder
Publisher: review edition published by Atlantic Monthly Press; first published by Bantam
Published: Atlantic Monthly Press: 14 May 2013; Bantam Press: 28 March 2013
Genre: crime thriller
Source: eARC from the publisher via NetGalley
Rating: 7/10

Something strange is going on at Beechway High Secure Unit. Or rather, something even more bizarre than what usually goes on at a psychiatric hospital “housing patients who are an extreme danger to themselves and others. Killers and rapists and the determinedly suicidal”. The legend of the Maude – the ghost of a dwarf who abused the children in a 1860s workhouse – is setting the wards ablaze with rumours, while a series of mysterious power cuts heightens the tension. The worst part is that a patient has died of a heart attack, shortly after being found with Bible verses cut into her arms, reminiscent of the Maude’s practice of forcing children to write out biblical texts until their fingers bled.

AJ LeGrande, the senior nursing coordinator, finds himself subject to the terror of the Maude as well, but knowing how the insanity in a psychiatric hospital can ‘infect’ the staff, he focuses on finding rational explanations what’s happening. He soon finds sinister connections between the Maude phenomenon and a patient named Isaac Handel, who was recently released. Isaac had a habit of making ‘poppets’ – freaky voodoo dolls representing the people around him. AJ’s investigations suggest that Isaac may have been terrorising the other patients, and the dolls could be connected to the legend of the Maude and nightmares of a small figure sitting on patients’ chests.

AJ discusses his suspicions with Melanie Arrow, the unit’s director, and in doing so he forms a relationship with her that quickly grows from concern for a co-worker to passionate romance. But their new-found happiness is marred by the threat of Isaac and the Maude. When AJ’s conclusions become too disturbing to dismiss, he contacts the talented and dedicated Detective Inspector Jack Caffery.

 

This is my first Mo Hayder novel. I was only vaguely familiar with her name, but I when I saw Poppet on NetGalley I was immediately drawn to its creepy cover and intrigued by Hayder’s reputation for bringing elements of horror into her crime fiction. The very first chapter demonstrates exactly what I was looking for. It describes a patient’s intense fear of an approaching monster. She believes that she can make herself invisible by unzipping her skin and peeling it off like a wetsuit, a truly gruesome act that is described from her perspective. This is realist fiction not fantasy, but Hayder incorporates the supernatural through the psychoses of mental patients. Combined with bursts of shocking violence, the novel can be quite creepy.

It takes a while to get going though, for several reasons. AJ and Melanie’s relationship plays an important role, and some time is taken to set this up. Then, the relationship impede’s progress when Melanie begs AJ not to contact the police. He repeatedly complies because she’s so beautiful and he’s been single for a long time. AJ’s attitude towards his patients also slows things down a little. He lives “by the maxim that what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him” so “he’s never wanted to know what his patients have been in the unit for” because some of the things he’s heard are unbelievably horrific and can interfere with his ability to treat a patient fairly. For the reader, this means that you won’t learn anything useful about Isaac from AJ, who doesn’t even understand the significance of the poppets. You have to wait for Jack to give you the dirty details.

The final and most problematic issue for pacing is Jack Caffery himself. You see, this is the sixth book in the Jack Caffery series. No, you don’t have to read the others, although it might help to know more about Jack, who is stiff and bland. But the real problem is that because this is Jack’s series, he has to have a major role and an ongoing presence. AJ is really the main character, but he can’t be allowed to overshadow Jack. Unfortunately, the main plot doesn’t involve Jack until almost halfway through when AJ contacts Caffery to discuss his suspicions.

I assume it goes against protocol for the main character of your series to play second fiddle in one of the books, so Hayder has a side plot that puts Jack in play from the very start. This plot involves a missing celebrity named Misty Kitson, a case that’s apparently leftover from the previous book (but, again, you don’t need to read that). Jack knows Misty is dead. He wants the police to find the body so that Misty’s mother can have something to bury, but he can’t just reveal what he knows because he’s protecting a pretty young cop named Flea Marley who has covered up the crime. Jack needs her cooperation to retrieve the body and achieve the most favourable outcome – allowing the police to find the body so Misty’s mother can move on, but in a way that won’t implicate Flea or get Jack in trouble for protecting her.

I found the Misty case to be pretty boring. There’s no action, and very little suspense. There’s nothing for us to discover except the details of her death and the cover-up (nothing special). The narrative is driven by Jack’s attempts to persuade Flea to cooperate. But who cares when there’s a violent psychopath on the loose?

The Misty saga has absolutely nothing to do with the Beechway/Isaac story. The only links are two or three minor similarities between the plots. For example Jack’s relationship with Flea mirrors AJ’s relationship with Melanie: both men protect the women out of some overblown sense of chivalry inspired by the women’s beauty. In AJ’s case, it’s stupid but understandable – he’s sleeping with Melanie and falling in love. He doesn’t want to hurt her by jeopardising her career or hurt his chances of a long-term relationship.

Jack, however, is taking a greater personal risk for something more abstract:

Whenever he looks at Flea the animal part of his brain lights up. His limbic system goes into overdrive. Sometimes it screams sex. Sometimes, like now, it screams protect. Kill anything that threatens her.

Ah, there’s nothing like a bit of old-fashioned sexism to make a character really, really boring. The book at least exposes this kind of patronising male behaviour as a mistake – denying women their agency and relieving them of responsibility for their actions turns out to be pointless, humiliating or dangerous.

An excellent point, but the book is still full of traditional femininity, with women typically defined by their relationships with men &/or wholesome domesticity. Flea is a morally questionable victim who needs a man like Jack to protect her, chastise her for taking the wrong moral path, and set her straight. Melanie, a woman in a position of power, is seen as an ice queen, while the men – AJ included – perv over her beauty. She describes having lost lovers because she preferred having a career to being domesticated. AJ’s Aunt Patience almost never leaves the house, spending most of the novel cooking for and feeding AJ. She’s a grumpy old matron who grows all her own fruit and vegetables, makes preserves, and disapproves of any woman AJ brings home. Monster Mother, an insightful patient on one of the wards, cut off her own arm in response to her husband’s constant infidelity and now imagines that she gave birth to all the patients and staff. Penny, a character whose presence in the book feels seriously neglected, has been living alone and isolated with her dog for years after several failed relationships. She is very beautiful and makes preserves for a living.

The resolutions at the end of the novel don’t make any improvements on the portrayal of women; if anything, it gets worse, but I can’t have that discussion without major spoilers.

At least the novel doesn’t disappoint as thriller, especially once Caffery gets involved and a serious investigation begins. The Misty stuff is backgrounded, and we finally get into the dark and twisted details of Isaac’s insanity. Isaac is incredibly creepy, partly because he remains hidden for a long time, while we learn more about what he’s done and what’s going on at Beechway. He’s set up as a monster, unhindered by reality so that you’re left holding your breath for what he’s going to do when he finally does appear. As far as I’m concerned, the more messed up a villain is the better, and Poppet has no shortage of craziness.

I’d like to read some of the earlier thrillers that established Hayder’s reputations and where, hopefully, the plot isn’t complicated by the importance of Jack’s role. Without the Misty case holding Poppet up, the novel could have been so much more taught and impressive. I wasn’t too happy with the way the female characters are written, but I can’t deny that Hayder delivers an entertaining story.

Review of The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

 

Title: The Shining Girls
Author: Lauren Beukes
Publisher: review copy published by Mulholland Books; originally published by Umuzi
Published: 15 April 2013 by Umuzi; review edition published 4 June 2013 by Mulholland
Genre: fantasy, science fantasy, crime thriller, historical
Source: review copy via NetGalley
Rating: 8/10

Kirby is a bright girl bursting with life, despite her troubled childhood with a single mother whose “default state of being is absent” and the constant upheavals as they move from one home to another.  It Kirby’s sense of promise, the fact that she’s a “shining girl”, that draws Harper Curtis to her. He visits her for the first time when she’s six years old. He gives her a My Little Pony that hasn’t been invented yet. Fifteen years later he returns to kill her in a brutal attack, as he does with all the shining girls.

Harper is a serial killer travelling through time in the city of Chicago, drawn to girls who ‘shine’ with potential and determination. It’s his destiny to snuff their lives out. It’s the House that drives him. He was living in the shanty towns on the outskirts of Depression-era Chicago when fate delivers him a key that unlocks a seemingly abandoned house. Inside is a room full of objects and women’s names written on the wall in Harper’s own handwriting. The names of the shining girls. The objects are what will lead him to them, and Harper knows that he has to find them and kill them.

But he didn’t kill Kirby. Four years after his attack, she starts tracking him down. She joins the Chicago Sun Times as an intern for Dan Velasquez, the reporter who covered her case. He’s writes for the sports desk now, but Kirby will do whatever she can to find the man who nearly killed her, even if she has to waste time compiling baseball scores.

Kirby gets everything she needs, but Harper still presents a seemingly insurmountable challenge. He started killing in 1931, and with the House he can leap across the decades before returning to his own time, untraceable. Any evidence he leaves behind offers only impossible conclusions, allowing him to murder the girls unhindered.

The Shining Girls is the third of Beukes’s novels, and I think it’s now my favourite too, trumping Moxyland. Beukes writes with a very snarky, edgy style that I loved at first but tired of in Zoo City. The Shining Girls feels more mature, more refined, and offers a better story as a result. That’s not to say it doesn’t have that signature style or that Kirby isn’t smart-mouthed and bold enough to stand-up to her counterparts in Beukes’s earlier novels; it’s just toned down in a way that feels more natural and helps the story flow.

Mind you, it takes a fair bit of concentration to keep a firm grasp on the narrative, because the time-travel aspect means there’s a time shift with almost every chapter. The chapters are short too, keeping you on your toes. The key is to take note of the names, dates, and locations that comprise the chapter headings. I tend to ignore most chapter headings as unimportant, but I quickly learned that these are vital. The story is composed of multiple POVs in various times. Harper’s story begins in November 1931 but constantly moves between that time and 1993 as he hunts the shining girls. I think his story is actually relatively linear, but it doesn’t feel that way because what he experiences as linear time involves multiple time shifts, while the House itself is a atemporal space – a place that exists in all times and no time.

Kirby’s story begins in 1974, when Harper first contacts her. We see her as a child and a teenager, but usually as the scarred (literally and figuratively) 25-year old in 1993. The 1993 narrative is also told from Dan Velasquez’s perspective, as he tries to help Kirby out of his growing respect and affection for her. Then there are several minor POVs, including the shining girls and a junkie named Malcolm who tails Harper in the hope of getting some cash for his next hit.

It sounds overwhelming, but it easy to adjust to. The characters are distinctive and memorable, and there was only one chapter where I was confused about the POV. It’s not essential to understand everything in strict chronological order anyway; the most important events will come together smoothly. Beukes also employs an elegant tactic, using the objects in the House as narrative devices that tie the stories together: “Shining stars linked together through time. A constellation of murder”. The House is an atemporal space where the objects are always present, even when Harper takes them out. We see the links when objects in the room turn up in the shining girls’ stories, or when Harper takes an object from one girl and leaves it with another. Besides their practical narrative function, the objects are also just a pleasure to spot, like putting a puzzle together.

How they came together in the House, however, remains a mystery. The novel leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but in a way that intrigues rather than frustrates. There are hints and ideas that seem to lead to understanding but never quite get there, leaving the reader pondering the possibilities. There is no how and why for the House. We don’t know how it enables time travel, how it came into being, or why it is focused on killing the shining girls. It’s not clear what exactly motivates Harper either, even though we spend so much time in his head. He avoids taking responsibility for his acts, blaming his victims for shining:

“It’s not my fault, sweetheart,” he says, “It’s yours. You shouldn’t shine. You shouldn’t make me do this.”

There’s also a sense in which he’s driven to do what he does by the objects, the House itself and the time paradox it’s entwined him in. The objects call to him and shine in ways that show him what to use and when.

He tells himself he is only looking around, but he knows one of his girls is here. He always does. It’s the same tug in his stomach that brought him to the House. That jolt of recognition when he walks into someplace he’s meant to be. He knows it when he sees the tokens that match the ones in the room. It is a game. To find them through different times and places. It’s a destiny he’s writing for them. Inevitably, they’re waiting for him.

The force exerted on him by the House and the object sometimes makes him uncomfortable, hurts him even, suggesting that he’s being coerced. He certainly doesn’t choose any of the victims himself; they’ve already been chosen and he’s just drawn to them. On a personal level though, Harper is a sadistic psychopath. It’s obvious that he wants to kill and takes a perverse pleasure in contacting his victims as children and then murdering them as adults, destroying the potential that makes them shine.

I will definitely be in the minority here, but Harper is my favourite character. Which isn’t to say I like him – he’s utterly despicable and I like all the other characters a lot more, with the possible exception of a hipster who wants to film Kirby having sex with him so that she can “reclaim what happened to [her]“. Harper disgusts me, but I love a good villain. He’s not especially smart, but he has an intuitive understanding of the House and eschews all gasping disbelief that characters typically go through when fantasy invades reality. When he steps into the House he claims his destiny as if slipping into a perfectly tailored suit. The way Harper hunts and kills the shining girls is so sick and brutal that I find him fascinating and repulsive in equal parts.

The shining girls are wonderful characters too, by virtue of the qualities that make them ‘shine’. Their roles are small, but they would be strong enough to drive an entire novel themselves. Each of them shows a rare sense of determination, typically in defiance of the racial and sexual discrimination prevalent in Chicago across the decades. Zora is a young black woman doing hard manual labour in a shipping yard to support her four children after losing her husband to war. Alice is a transsexual; Willie a lesbian. Some of them shine because of the difference they make in society. Margot arranges safe abortions for girls and women who can’t afford them. Jin-Sook is a social worker changing lives in black communities. Others shine because of their talents. Willie is a promising architect who fought her way into the field at a time when women weren’t normally given such jobs. Mysha is a brilliant botanist.

What makes Kirby shine seems to be something a bit different – her ability to defy Harper, and her potential to find him and stop him. She is the very reason there is a story. Surprisingly though her part of the narrative moves quite slowly, focusing on character development, her internship with Dan on the baseball desk, and his growing affection for her. The investigation takes a back seat. It seems a little odd, given Kirby’s fervour, although we later learn that she’s spent most of her free time trawling through old newspapers and police reports looking for clues and patterns. Nevertheless, it’s not until we near the end of the book that Kirby starts to make real progress, much of which is dismissed because it seems impossible. The book is by no means boring, but I think it relies heavily on Harper and the other shining girls to drive the narrative until Kirby’s story is ready to get into gear for the climactic ending.

The advantage is that you’re kept in prolonged suspense wondering how the hell Kirby is going to find Harper, the seemingly unstoppable serial killer. I didn’t particularly like the way this happened – through chance, rather than Kirby’s deductions – but I can’t deny that the ending was pretty tense and exciting anyway.

There is much to appreciate in the interim – Beukes’s awesome writing, the horror that is Harper, the stories of the shining girls, Kirby’s relationship with her mother, Kirby’s relationship with Dan. I also waited very patiently but with growing anticipation for the chapter where Harper tries to kill Kirby. As much as I’d hyped it up by the time I got to it, it still managed to be shockingly brutal and evocative, leaving me stunned with one of the saddest and most painful images in the book.

Umuzi Collector’s Edition

One final thing I want to mention is how impressive the depiction of Chicago is. Beukes has obviously done extensive research (don’t ignore the acknowledgements; it’s worth seeing how much work went into this). The plot traverses six decades, and in the relatively short space of 298 pages we see several of Chicago’s historical and cultural faces as the city shifts and grows.

I’m glad that I bought the Umuzi signed and numbered collector’s edition hardcover of this. It’s a great story and one of the best South African novels I’ve read. I love its mysterious take on time travel and the way Beukes uses it as a plot device that brings a fresh perspective to both historical and crime fiction. The Shining Girls deserves its status as one of the most talked-about books at the moment, and strongly encourage you to read it and join the conversation.

Review of Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse edited by Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin

Title: Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse
Editors: Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin 
Publisher: Jurassic London
Published: October 2011
Genre: short stories, science fiction fantasy horror
Source: review copy from author Sam Wilson
Rating: 7/10

I debated reviewing Pandemonium. I received a review copy in November 2011, but it’s only now that I read the whole thing cover to cover. When I finished, I learned that Pandemonium was a limited edition. Very limited: it was available for just over a year and now it’s out of print in both paper and digital formats. Questioning the merits of reviewing a book that no one can buy, I figured I could perhaps help someone decide whether or not to take it off the tbr pile, borrow a copy from a library or friend, or perhaps check out some of the stories if they appear elsewhere. And of course there might be another print run. So, on with the end of the world!

The apocalypse is, of course, the theme of this anthology, but it’s also inspired by the  work of John Martin an English Romantic painter famous for grandiose apocalyptic visions based on his intimate knowledge of the Old Testament and related mythology (such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost). The cover of Pandemonium features the painting Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion, which is also the title of one of the most harrowing stories in the collection. I’d seen The Fallen Angels Entering Pandemonium  in the Louvre last year, and the anthology encouraged me to check out more of Martin’s work online. And I must say – it’s impressive stuff. It’s epic. And I love the idea of an sff and horror anthology based on those paintings.

Admittedly, it doesn’t encourage a great deal of variation in apocalyptic visions. With John Martin and his art in mind, many of the stories use Christian mythology, so there are plenty of angels, demons, and worlds ending in fire. But while a few stories are a bit dreary, others offer creative twists or alternative visions. Many don’t actually seem to take much inspiration from the paintings, but I guess it’s an anthology based on the apocalypse, not an anthology based on John Martin.

The collection starts out very strong. The first story, “The Architect of Hell” by David Bryher, is still one of my favourites. It’s written as a series of hilarious letters from the demon Mulciber (the architect of the demon city Pandemonium in Paradise Lost) to John Martin himself, asking John to design Pandemonium for him. Mulciber lost all his creative abilities when God threw him out of heaven and Lucifer’s going to be really angry if Mulciber can’t deliver.The story is clearly based on the golden city in The Fallen Angels Entering Pandemonium and is actually a surprisingly bright start to the anthology: it’s quirky, funny and ends on a note that’s doubly apocalyptic but hopeful too. Also, the apocalypse – or rather post-apocalypse – depicted in the story is the fallen angels’, not the humans’.

There’s actually plenty of humour here; perhaps the best way to deal with the end of the world. The second story, “Chislehurst Messiah” by Lauren Beukes is a kind of black comedy horror set in an affluent English suburb. A snooty upper middle class bastard plays a Facebook game while his wife dies horribly, and he thinks about how this is an easier way of getting her money than divorcing her. The world is ending, but his thoughts remain ridiculously selfish and narrow-minded:

He needed to get to the gym; his abs were turning into jelly. Too much stale bruschetta and salty snack foods. But the one in the building’s basement stank like an abbatoir and the Stairmaster was practically alive with maggots. (25)

High on the uppers he stole from one a neighbouring apartment, he imagines that he could be the Messiah for the supposedly aimless lower-class “chavs” who are  running riot in England as society falls apart.

“OMG GTFO” by S.L. Grey is another satire, with a narrative composed of emails, interview transcripts, Twitter feeds, and so on. It describes a world descending into chaos as politicians, celebrities and other prominent figures are randomly possessed by dead people who describe visions of hell. But is it a vision of hell itself or hell on earth? The humour comes from the kind of speech you get on Twitter and in emails, the rubbish that spews from the mouths of air-headed celebrities, and the little ironies that emerge as the world degrades. It’s a great story.

There’s an amusing case of denial in “Another Abyss” by Magnus Anderson which features another snooty upper middle class English character. Leticia’s husband Geoff has just been promoted, and she’s hosting a dinner party to celebrate and gloat. She’s extremely upset that the damn apocalypse is ruining the evening with a blood-red sky (forcing her to close the curtains more than is respectable) and lava pouring down the lawn. Leticia is someone who’d be bragging about the cost her antique violin while Rome burned. The burning world-scenario is a common one in this anthology, but like the better stories that use it, Anderson makes it the background of a character-based tale rather than taking the more boring route of putting cliched apocalyptic destruction at the forefront.

“The End of the World” by Den Patrick is not as elegantly humorous as the previous four, with character names like Bumblefuck, Rigorprick, Spittleshite and Candy. But it’s tongue-in cheek, and surprisingly cute – the demon Spittleshite has fallen for a human named Candy and as a result he’s not especially keen about the apocalypse that’s about to begin. The story can be silly and crude, but it’s also hopeful (well, sort of) and quite fun.

Being an agnostic, I enjoyed the irreverent nature of all the stories that address Christian beliefs, which are typically are revealed to be useless or deceptive while the truth is rather disturbing. It helps to have a sense of humour when the apocalypse comes, but being a Christian seems pretty pointless.

Of these stories, “Evacuation” by Tom Pollock is the most beautiful and touching; instantly one of my favourites here. The evacuation in the title is the evacuation of Earth by the angels. The archangel Michael goes to find the last two humans, who have been held back by Michael’s lover, the angel Zaphkiel. The stories segues back and forth between the present story on the burning earth and the history of their relationship in heaven, bringing up issues of the war with Lucifer, and doubt in God.

“The Day or the Hour” by Jonathan Oliver sees Reverend Paul Smith questioning his faith when he finds himself among “the chosen” who have who have “been called to fight the forces of Satan” (164) in the final battle between good and evil. Commanded by cold, arrogant angels, Paul doesn’t feel divine love and inspiration. He feels like canon fodder in someone else’s war.

Like “Another Abyss”, “The Harvest” by Chrysanthy Balis is a story of denial, although in this case it’s extreme religious belief distorting the characters’ perception. Paul and Pepper are fully aware that their world is ending, but they’re delighted, believing that the Rapture is here at last, and soon they’ll be taken up to heaven. They decide that it’s best to wait for God in their expensive “neo-Italianate home” (203) full of earthly comforts, watching the drama unfold on their “75″ Panasonice LED flat screen” (204), favouring the Christian Broadasting Network where they “could get the real news”. They’re full of self-righteous, contradictory bullshit, but also some rather funny ideas about what will happen:

“Paul, what about Schultzie [the dog]? […] If we hold onto him real tight maybe he’ll get Raptured along with us?”

“Anything’s possible under the Lord honey,” (203)

“What if He doesn’t come for us?”

Paul had turned stern and taken her by the shoulders. “It’s not possible, do you hear me? We’re plugged in to Jesus. And the Bible says that it’s by His grace alone that we’re saved. Now, if that’s not true then nothing is.” (205)

Jesus is coming to conquer Satan at last, and God’s going to create a New Jerusalem for us to live in.”

“Would we be able to get a house like this one?”

“Sure! […] “But with a bigger pool!”(205)

“What if the Rapture begins but the angels can’t find us because we’re inside?”(206)

All these questions come from Paul’s wife Pepper, a rather daft ideal of femininity. Her daffy character makes sense in the context of the story, but she reminds me of one problem with this anthology: there aren’t many women in it. Of the eighteen stories, only five have female protagonists, and there are only six female authors. Most of the male-protagonist stories don’t have major female characters. The apocalypse, it seems, is considered to be a mostly male affair.

This is particularly noticeable in one of my two least favourite stories, [Pandemonium] by Andy Remic (the actual title is written in a script that my computer won’t copy). The story has some of the least interesting characters. There are three men – a nerd, a hulking goon, and a ferrety goon. Then there’s a hot blonde woman, whose job it is to whine, hang on the hulking goon’s arm, and look hot. But that’s not the only reason I disliked this story. It’s a rather unimaginative portrayal of the basic fires-of-hell-on-earth scenario. Several of the stories use it, but I found Remic’s to be the least engaging, with too much cheap gore. It was the first story I disliked, and marked the point where the anthology took a dip – the middle is rather middling.

“At the Sign of the Black Dove” by Lou Morgan is my other least favourite. It appears to be about a group of people drinking themselves into oblivion and waking up to find that the world is ending. Worst hangover ever? Meh.

“Closer” by Osgood Vance takes place in a world about to die, where most people have already been claimed by heaven or hell. The remainder are essentially the most average people on earth in terms of both skill and morality. I actually really liked this concept, but Vance uses it to tell a story about a baseball match – a group of Americans’ last stab at a bit of joy before they are all consumed by darkness. It makes sense – if you think about being average in terms of skill, then sport would be one of the things you’d think about – but I’ve never been interested in baseball and the story isn’t kind to non-fans, with its name-dropping and technical details about scoring.

There are three stories which weren’t bad, or even average, but just didn’t do anything for me – “The Last Man” by Jon Courtenay Grimwood (although, notably, ‘the last man’ is a female cyborg), “The Immaculate Particle” by Charlie Human and “Postapocalypse” by Sam Wilson. Each of them actually have interesting ideas – the cyborg, vanishing city blocks in “The Immaculate Particle” and apocalypse via postmodern thought in “Postapocalypse” but for reasons that are probably entirely subjective none of these stories left much of an impression.

In contrast, there are a couple of stories I wanted to single out for being more creative than others. They’re not necessarily better, but I liked the ways they differed from the norm. “The Architect of Hell” and “OMG GTFO” both use alternative narrative forms – letters in the former (not groundbreaking, I know, but it stood out) and media excerpts in the latter.

“Sadak In Search of the Waters of the Oblivion” by Archie Black disturbed me more than the visions of hell and burning. It’s set in a world ravaged by climate change where the earth hasn’t died (some landscapes are breathtakingly beautiful) but is horrifically hostile to humans. A research team heads out on an expedition, only to find themselves constantly assaulted by insects and micro-organisms, wading through a swamp and forced to sleep in it so they never get dry. Bugs nest in the flesh of the humans, horses and dogs in the team, their bodies rot while they’re still alive and the pain drives them mad. It’s heartbreaking and utterly revolting; if predictions of starvation isn’t enough to scare people into taking climate change seriously, then this would.

“Deluge” by Kim-Lakin Smith, inspired by the painting The Eve of the Deluge also features a post apocalyptic world ravaged by climate change, but in this case they’re about to experience a second apocalypse – a flood. Eve, the daughter of a pirate philosopher and a ‘weather witch’ in her own right, realises that the flood is coming, and tries to warn her society, a city built on a dried-up ocean floor. But, as with Noah, no one believes her. It’s only by turning to the pirate aspects of her heritage that she’s able to find salvation.

“A Private Viewing” by Scott K. Andrews is the only story besides “The Architect of Hell” that actually uses John Martin’s artwork in the plot. This story is not about the apocalypse itself, but suggests that the paintings themselves are apocalyptic forces inspiring unrest or madness. In the novel a man is forced to sit and stare at one of the paintings for hours every night and it gradually unhinges his mind.

After my interest had waned midway, I was hoping that the editors had saved a really great story to end the anthology. I wasn’t disappointed. “Not the End of the World” by Sarah McDougall is a poignant story set in Germany in WW2; or at least it seems to be. It follows a small group of tenants living in a house where ghosts from the war occasionally appear. It’s sad, but brave and hopeful; an elegant note on which to close the book.

Overall Pandemonium is a strong collection; I wished I’d read it earlier so I could review it while it was still in print. On the other hand, this also seems to be the year of the short story for me. seldom paid them much attention in the past but suddenly I’m reading or listening to at least one every weekday. It’s given me fresh appreciation for this form of fiction, so in that sense maybe it’s good that I waited until now to read this. It’s a pity that it’s out of print, but get a copy if you can, or see if you can find some of the stories elsewhere. They’re all quite short (except for the last) and most of them are worth the diversion.

Review of Murder as a Fine Art by David Morrell

Title: Murder as a Fine Art
Author: David Morrell
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Published: 7 May 2013
Genre: historical, crime, mystery, metafiction
Source: NetGalley
Rating: 6/10

London, 1854. A killer steps out onto to the streets to create a masterpiece of murder, a perfectly planned tableau of horror designed to evoke great pity and utter terror. His work is a realisation of the gruesome essay “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts” by Thomas De Quincey, which details the brutal Ratcliffe Highway murders “that terrorised both London and all of England in 1811″ but portrays them as a work of art.

Thomas De Quincey himself is in London with his daughter Emily, promoting his books because he desperately needs money. De Quincey became famous – or infamous – with his autobiography Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, detailing his addiction to laudanum – a combination of 90% alcohol and 10% opium that in Victorian times was commonly administered as a painkiller, even to children and babies. De Quincey’s addiction is partly responsible for his literary success – he claims that laudanum opens up other realities, showing him new perspectives that he puts into his writing.

But it’s also affected his health and he currently drinks enough to kill several people. Considered by many to be a degenerate, he’s the first person that Detective Ryan and Constable Becker of Scotland Yard suspect. But as Emily – a strong, outspoken woman – points out, her father is too old and frail to go around murdering entire families. In fact, De Quincey might be part of the murderer’s plans – he and Emily are staying in London at the expense of a mysterious benefactor who lured De Quincey with the promise of resolving a very personal mystery for him. And of course, the murderer has been inspired by De Quincey’s writing.

Although Ryan and Becker are shocked by De Quincey’s laudanum addiction and more than a little horrified at his fascination with the murders, they are sensible enough to see past De Quincey’s reputation and Victorian sensibilities. With De Quincey and Emily’s help they hunt down the master serial killer whose unbelievable acts of violence are reducing London to a state of terrified chaos.

Murder as a Fine Art is a metafictional intersection between historical fiction and commercial crime thriller. Morrell’s inspiration comes from the “novel of sensation”, a literary trend that was surprisingly popular in the conservative Victorian era, bringing the darkness of Gothic fiction into the homes and neighbourhoods of ordinary citizens, as he explains in his introduction. And that’s what this novel does, placing a particularly violent killer in the midst of London’s society. It’s full of historical trivia and passages describing the scene – the “notoriously thick fogs” composed of mist and smoke, the noise of farm animals amidst the sound of carriages – and although Morrell tends to reply heavily on info dumps, I found them quite interesting. The novel also offers the satisfaction of unfailingly good protagonists (even De Quincey’s laudanum addiction is useful) chasing after an irredeemably evil villain.

It’s all very black and white, but I didn’t mind as far as the good guys were concerned. While I prefer twisted heroes, sometimes it’s comforting to have the fantasy of smart, dedicated people always doing the right thing and sacrificing themselves for the greater good, barely undermined by their weaknesses. De Quincey’s the troubled genius, the one whose best equipped to track down the murderer but also so incapacitated by addiction that he could be an easy target. He wasn’t quite as memorable as I expected him to be – he’s the major historical figure driving the narrative after all – but he’s likable and amusingly snarky at times. Detective Ryan is a committed policeman, but he’s Irish and he has to struggle against the prejudice that tends to arise when the Londoners spot his red hair (his deliberately coarse appearance doesn’t help either). At one point he is attacked by an angry mob that assumes that the murderer must be a foreigner and goes after Ryan when they see the colour of his hair.

Becker, who plays the good cop to Ryan’s bad cop, actually looks much more respectable than his superior. He’s so determined to earn the rank of Detective that he risks his life just to protect a set of footprints that Ryan asks him to guard.  Emily is particularly charming as a forthright, practical woman despite Victorian constraints imposed upon women. One of the most memorable things about her character is her very practical decision to wear “bloomers” under her dress instead of the complicated and very heavy whalebone structure that respectable women don. The bloomers allow Emily to move easily but are considered scandalous because it means the movement of her legs is visible under her dress. Emily doesn’t care; she chooses function and comfort over silly sensibilities. The downside to her character is that she’s the ‘exceptional woman’ and the only interesting female character. Nevertheless, she was my favourite.

I was less pleased with the irredeemably evil villain. The fact that he’s thoroughly evil doesn’t bother me; it’s the way he’s progressively degraded as the story progresses. At the beginning, the artist is ruthlessly organised and controlled, but also able to think on his feet and adapt to unforeseen circumstances. His justifications for the murders are ‘pure’ – it’s not about revenge or monetary gain, but something more philosophical. He’s enacting and enhancing De Quincey’s rendering of the Ratcliffe Highway murders, in a ways that evoke the greatest level of pity and sorrow, thereby throwing society into tumult.

In his first set of murders, he chooses a shopkeeper and his family because of how sad and unfair it is that innocents and honest, hardworking people should be killed so horribly. He closes all the doors in the house so that whoever comes in will uncover a series of horrific sights one by one. He knows that the community will be driven to panic by the apparent senselessness of the crime; anyone could be the next victim when its got nothing to do with money or revenge. Considering all this, the murders do seem like artworks in a way, and the murderer like an artist.

Once the artist’s identity is revealed however (or once you guess; it becomes increasingly obvious), his image starts to deteriorate. His motives are muddied by personal obsessions. His intellect and slick control are too easily undermined by our unfailingly smart and noble protagonists. He becomes boring. I often see this trend in mainstream film, probably to cater to a longing to see evil fail under the forces of good – a previously powerful villain is reduced to a pathetic, desperate mad man. That’s understandable, but I don’t find it particularly satisfying because I love a good villain. I love it when they’re highly intelligent and focused. Even when I expect or want them to be defeated I don’t want them reduced to fumbling dopes just so the heroes can kick just them in the teeth.

But, as I said, this is still a commercial crime thriller; it’s not going to be unconventional. And as commercial crime thrillers go, it’s not bad at all, with its well-researched historical setting, social critiques, and metafictional intersections. It’s a quick fun read, but with substance. Recommended, if you’re looking for a strong crime thriller.

Review of Twin-Bred by Karen A. Wyle

Title: Twin-Bred
Series: Twin-Bred
Author: Karen A. Wyle
Publisher: self-published
Published: 13 October 2011
Genre: science fiction
Source: eARC from the author
Rating: 4/10

When considering the possibility of alien contact, I worry how humanity will behave. As a species, we have frequently proven to be intolerant or hostile when confronted with difference (of race, gender, culture, nationality etc.). Sf has frequently used the alien as a metaphor for the other, exposing and critiquing modes of prejudice and oppression. Less socially conscious tales often reveal our assumptions about the other; consider the stereotype of aliens kidnapping humans for experiments or how many sf stories are about violent alien invaders, portraying other intelligent species as our enemies.

Twin-Bred by Karen A. Wyle is a case of humans behaving badly towards an alien whose motives and culture they do not understand because they can’t or won’t speak to them. It’s an almost embarrassing portrayal of close-minded people encountering a race of technologically inferior beings who might turn hostile.

In the novel, a human colony has been living on the planet Tofarn for 70 years. They share the world with the indigenous Tofa, a race of inscrutable four-armed aliens who don’t have any facial features except a blank pair of eyes. The humans do not know how to communicate with the Tofa, and after seven decades of co-habitation the two races still don’t understand each other. So far, this hasn’t been too problematic and the Tofa didn’t seem accepting of the human presence on their planet. But every now and then a conflict arises: the Tofa pack up and leave a village for reasons the humans cannot discern; they complain that humans are shaking hands in public or wearing the colour blue; they make a noise to prevent the humans sleeping at night.

Mara, an ambitious but emotionally dysfunctional young scientist, comes up with a solution: breeding human and Tofa twins. They will not have any genetic relationship; instead, a host mother (human or Tofa) will be implanted with both a human and a Tofa foetus. Mara believes that sharing a womb will forge a unique bond between the twins, finally enabling the two species to communicate. The humans will be able to learn about the Tofa, and the twins will be trained to resolve inter-species conflicts.

Mara’s idea is the result of her bond with Levi, her own twin who died in utero. Mara has secretly kept him alive in her mind as an entity who is also her only friend and confidant. Mara even names her twin project after him: the Long-Term Emissary Viviparous Initiative or L.E.V.I.

The Project gets government backing, probably because the government officials all have their own agendas, hoping to use the twins and their abilities to gain power and influence. Even the Tofa seem to be plotting something, not that any of the humans have the means of finding out what they’re up to.

Now that you have the gist of the plot, I’ll return to the start and begin unpacking all the ludicrously implausible aspects of this story. Humans lived for 70 YEARS on Tofarn without talking to the Tofa. SEVENTY YEARS. There are actually villages and towns where the two species live together, but still, nothing. Granted, the Tofa are not what you’d call sociable, but the overwhelming impression I got is that humans didn’t even try. It seemed like they took one look at the Tofa’s featureless faces, and gave up any hope of conversation. A couple of them might have tried speaking loudly in English.

But guess what: the Tofa have mouths and they can speak. A little girl named Laura learns this when she befriends a young Tofa who tells her his name. Her father tells her that Tofa mouths are just hidden by membranes. She tells her friend Veda this and introduces her to the Tofa. They play together until the Tofa’s father comes and breaks up the friendship. Laura, her father, and Veda never mention this groundbreaking information to anybody, and no one reports a similar experience.

So humanity plods along in total ignorance. Apparently they left Earth without realising they might encounter beings who aren’t exactly like humans. Many of them are outright racist and a couple behave like rednecks whose ideal social gathering would be a lynch mob. It’s been seventy years and the sight or close proximity of the Tofa still disgusts and disturbs them. The Tofa basically allowed them to set up a very comfortable colony on their planet, and all the humans can do is complain about how weird and icky the aliens are.

Enter Mara with L.E.V.I. Because when people don’t even want to look at the Tofa you can try implanting human women with their foetuses. Humanity goes from making virtually no effort at communication to setting up an extremely complex, long-term, expensive Project based on an “uncertain and speculative” hypothesis from a scientist with serious mental problems.There are so many holes in this Project it’s easier for me to put a few in point form:

• Humans know NOTHING about Tofa biology. They haven’t even realised that the Tofa have mouths. They don’t know how Tofa reproduce. How could anyone possibly conceive of a Project that involves implanting Tofa and human mothers with embryos of both species?
• Most humans seem disgusted or at least disturbed by the Tofa, so why is it so easy to get host mothers who are willing to carry an alien foetus?
• The humans can’t speak Tofa and the Tofa can’t speak English so they have to explain the Project using drawings with stick figures. WTF?
• If the humans can explain something as complex as the Project using stick figures, then why didn’t they try this before or after?
• The Tofa are technologically inferior to the humans, so how are they able to harvest and store embryos for the human scientists to use?

But whatever. The Project continues as (badly) planned, with a few hiccups like foetuses dying or human mothers freaking out when they see alien babies inside them during the ultrasounds (were they not briefed?). Nevertheless, a bunch of healthy human-Tofa twins are born.

The Tofa children are taught to speak English, which they do as easily as the human children. And to everyone’s shock, the Tofa mothers learn to speak English too, picking it up while living in the Project compound. If communicating was so simple why have none of the Tofa done it before?! Yes, they aren’t generally in favour of speaking to humans, but if the mothers are so willing to do it, I find it impossible that they were the first. The ending reveals additional reasons for the Tofa remaining aloof, but it’s unconvincing and just leaves you with another slew of questions.

It’s impossible for the humans to truly learn the Tofa language, because it has a telepathic component, so humans are conveniently exempt from having to bother. But you’d think that the human scientists would spend every waking moment learning everything they can about Tofa biology and culture. They don’t. Or at least they don’t seem to. Every revelation happens by chance, usually when the twins are playing together and one of the adults notices something unusual and asks for an explanation. It’s perhaps not surprising when you consider what some of the staff members are like – even after years spent working on the Project they still squirm at the sight of human and Tofa children sitting together, or seeing a Tofa come up to speak to them. Considering the resources that must have gone into the Project, it seems almost fruitless.

Even more so when the twin-bred are actually sent out on their first assignments. Up to this point, the Project remained top secret (highly unlikely, given their sloppy security measures). You can imagine what happens when the the results of a human/alien breeding program are introduced as surprise communication specialists to a world full of people who don’t like aliens. FAIL.

There are loads of other plot issues, but there’s not much point getting into them; you get the picture. I’ll move on to the writing, characters and worldbuilding.

The writing is fine and seems to have been properly edited, but the style or structure is very strange – Wyle tells the entire story in brief sections with more POVs than I could possibly remember. Most of these are only a few paragraphs long; the longest scenes are maybe 2 or 3 pages. The result is that the story moves very quickly because each little section is like a report on an issue or development in the plot, which covers 30-40 years. You could argue that this very perfunctory narration suits the pseudo-scientific plot, but it’s also completely… um, alienating. It struck me as a means of writing a novel if you were focussing on the plot but weren’t in the mood for things like character development or worldbuilding.

There are far too many characters, quite possibly more than I’ve encountered in any novel. Many of them make such minuscule contributions to the plot that it doesn’t matter if you instantly forget who they are. Sometimes Wyle randomly throws in a new character with a name, job title and a cup of coffee just so they can make a minor point about something. There’s almost no characterisation except to distinguish Tofa children from their human twins and to emphasise how socially inept Mara is. She’s actually the only character with a personality, but at the same time I found her thoroughly unlikeable.

The worldbuilding is equally flat. Tofarn is the most un-alien alien planet I’ve ever come across. It’s like a human society on Earth with a scattering of aliens thrown in. We hear very little or absolutely nothing about the flora, fauna, climate, geography, etc. of Tofarn. Whatever is mentioned has no bearing on the plot whatsoever. The humans are still in the process of reproducing what they had on Earth (they don’t have the resources to farm cows yet, for example), but most of the time you could forget that they were on another planet. Their society is almost identical to an affluent American town. They eat chocolate and muffins, wear leather, keeps cats as pets. The only major differences are the technological advancements like hover cars and the tablets everyone carries around in lieu of cellphones.  It makes perfect sense that they brought the necessary plant seeds, animal DNA and tech from Earth, but how is it that everything works perfectly on Tofa? Did they not have to make any adjustments? How do the humans even know that the planet is called Tofa?

Even though I didn’t like the way the humans behaved or how mysterious the Tofa are as an alien race, I can accept that as the tough situation within which the characters must struggle. One of the more interesting aspects of the plot was the way some people viewed the Project as a means of customising the Tofa, making them more acceptable to humans. Clearly the novel is meant to function as a critique of intolerance, which is good, although it ends up being quite defeatist about the issue. But I can accept that too – we can’t always have he endings we want. What I can’t ignore are all those other flaws. It’s just so deficient in the speculative part inherent in speculative fiction.