Library Limelights 186

Iain Banks. The Quarry. USA: Redbook Books/Hachette, 2013.

Not a crime story, but a compelling novel centred around an irascible dying man (Guy), narrated by his "on the spectrum" teenage son (Kit). Old friends come for the weekend and it's a lively tournament of memories, shifting relationships, and self-assessments. Plus ‒ the hidden agenda: find the embarrassing porn tape they made years ago as film students, forgotten somewhere in Guy's piles of accumulated junk. The incoming six also provide opportunity for Kit's agenda: discover who his mother is. The decrepit house he and Guy live in will soon be taken over and devoured by the working quarry behind their garden. Otherwise, Kit remains the socially inept but patient observer, restraining his obsessive-compulsive inclinations; logic is paramount in Kit's world. As the main carer for his father, he mostly ignores Guy's abusive rants.

Reliving their university glory days, the group indulges in all their old vices. Boozy or stoned discussions range in humour from funny to vicious, but also include tender moments. Holly is closest to Kit; Rob and Alison are unapologetic corporate climbers; Paul has serious political ambitions; Pris protects her new boyfriend Rick; Haze is still an unrepentant layabout. All are adjusting to their host's drastic decline, the face of death. Searching for the missing video inspires a huge bonfire to dispose of the hoarded junk. Above all, friendship flames the highest and warmest. Awesome! The book's entire concept and execution, altogether awesome.

One-liners:

▪ But after Hol said I was a bit whiffy when she first arrived and I got that initial hug, I've started showering like a girl. (222)

▪ "Embarrassing would be one word for it, at the ... at the very mild end of the spectrum of adjectives one might care to employ." (264)

Multi-liners:

▪ He can be stubborn. Hol says this is where I get it from. (27)

▪ Her glossy black hair needs brushing but it looks attractively tousled on her. When my hair needs combing I look like an axe murderer. (54)

▪ "Fucking stop it! One of the few pleasures I have left is wallowing in my own fucking despair." (167)

▪ "Fuck!" I say. I don't like to swear, so I must be upset. (232)

Status quo:

There's nothing to be gained trying to teach him new things or reinforce stuff he ought to know because he'll need this information for his life ahead; he hasn't got one. 

And of course, he's right, in a way. I am waiting for him to die. I don't necessarily want him to die (my deepest wish is that things could go on the way they were, just the two of us living here, minding our own business, like we did before the cancer got so bad and spread so far and he became so dependent on me), but knowing that his death is as close to inevitable as these things get, and not far off, makes me wish it was all over with sometimes. Apart from anything else, my knowing he doesn't have very much longer to live helps make it easier to ignore the insults and curses and the general unpleasantness that him being in this state leads to. (48)

Social responses:

"So, Rob," Rick asks, "what is it you do?" 

"I solutionise outcomes," Rob says. 

Hol, who had been talking to Pris, looks over and says, "What?" but Rob doesn't notice, or pretends not to. 

"We're both in Grazer Corps," Alison tells Rick, glancing at Rob. 

Rob nods sideways at Alison without looking at her. "We work in Moral Compliance." 

"Bloody hell," Rick says. "What's that then?" 

"Pre-identing up-torrent crisis nodes and realitising positive issue-relevant impending-threat-modulated countermeasure evasion-sets within the applicable statutory and regulatory challenge/riposte space," Rob says, without taking a breath. He looks round at the others. 

Guy and Haze, who had been arguing about drugs, are looking at him.Hol is staring at him, then she looks at Alison. "That was a joke," she says. "That was a joke, wasn't it?" 

Alison smiles at her. 

"What's the big problem?" Rob asks. "It's just what I do." (97)

Togetherness:

Pris frowns and looks round at the rest, finds no support, and with a little shake of her head, says, "Well, it's you ... It's your body, Guy. I guess none of us can live your life for you." 

"You can die my death for me, petal," Guy offers, sounding almost jovial now. 

Pris appears, I think, hurt at first but then looks up at him and gives a small explosive laugh when she sees him smiling, winking at her. 

"Anyway, remissions happen," Ali says. "You can never give up hope. You mustn't. You can't." 

"I live in bloody hope, Alison," Guy tells her. "Permanent bloody resident. Every morning I wake up thinking, Hey-hey; maybe it's gone and I'm fine! Never has been so far, but I don't let that discourage me." 

"I think you're finding your own way to be positive about it all," Pris says. 

"Mr fucking Positivity, that's me." Guy raises his teacup. "To fucking Positivity!" 

We all toast fucking Positivity. Even me, and I don't normally swear. (278)

April Smith. Judas Horse. USA: Borzoi Books/Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.

A Judas horse is the one trained to lead wild horses into captivity, and so the trope for Ana Grey, FBI agent, who performs as an undercover operative. Ana is recovering from her previous traumatic killing, but as is her nature, throws herself totally into being Darcy DeGuzman, passionate animal rights activist. Her bosses want to catch more than fringe-group bombers in Oregon; they want a psychotic ex-FBI agent among them, Dick Stone, whose alias is Julius Phelps. Darcy works her way into the man's life and farm via his partner Megan, establishing trust with his small group. Maintaining surreptitious meetings and communications with her handler Donnato – he of the longtime mutual attraction – bears the danger of exposing her.

As she gets to know the other acolytes, Darcy risks some empathy mixing with her top-secret mission to find enough evidence of terrorism. Julius is planning the mysterious Big One, anyone's guess what the target is but he's got the explosives. In the midst of growing complications from Julius's sinister contacts and a leak somewhere in the FBI hierarchy, Darcy meets cowboy Sterling (who shows up in the next Ana Grey book, White Shotgun, which I read out of sequence). How the FBI manages a psych evaluation of Ana in the midst of this is a bit crazy but foreboding. My only quibble was with occasional awkward inserts from POV's other than Anna's/Darcy's. Hope, hope, this series will yield yet another book.

CORKER: A sentence in which off of makes sense (with the slang) ―

Then some dudes from the Paiute Nation got ripped off of a load of semi-precious gems, and thus a legend was born. (271)

One-liners:

▪ "Ana," he says very carefully, "you're sounding a lot like the other side." (120)

▪ "I can't see you on the street," she says, which I find vaguely insulting. (134)

▪ I have noticed that you can't go wrong on wardrobe if you're a cowboy. (214)

▪ "Any examining doctor would have recommended that you not serve undercover." (264)

Multi-liners:

▪ Galloway is a New Yorker. He has no boundaries. (11)

▪ I have fallen in love with a horse. It is peculiar as hell. (69)

▪ Even through the blinding paranoid rage, he can see the truth of what I've done. What Darcy's done. (192)

▪ "I am a soldier for hire by a private military company. Outsourcing, ma'am. We run every war that's taking place in the world right now." (289)

Judas horse fait accompli:

The mustangs are completely silent. They circle their enclosures like fish, heads low, shoulder-to-shoulder in slow undulating patterns of chestnut and dun. A few break off and form other groups, and then they all flow together again. There is no nickering, no alarm at being captive, no rebellious kicking of heels—because the stallions and foals, I learn, have been separated from the rest. Leaderless, childless, the silence of the mares is haunting: a plaintive, voiceless female rebuke. Heard by whom? 

Heard by us. 

We surge forward to our assigned corrals to wait while Fontana moves down the line with the bolt cutters. (114-5)

Forced exercise:

Sara, not in any kind of shape, was struggling hard. Her legs were slow and rubbery and her face was hot pink. 

In undercover school, they would have asked, "What is the lesson learned?" 

"Sara's getting heatstroke," I told Stone on the pass. "She's had enough." 

He put out his foot and tripped me. 

The earth under my knees and in my mouth was soft. I got up and kept on running, so he could not see the look on my face. That was a killer moment, the hardest so far. To put aside your core values in order to accomplish the mission. I had to spit it out. I had to think about justice for Steve Crawford's family. About the day the sky will be filled with helicopters, and Dick Stone will be in prison the rest of his life. (141-2)

Introduction to Sterling:

"Hold your fire, please. Would you mind holding fire? Do you know this is a wildlife sanctuary?" 

The man lowers the weapon and turns, squinting into the blinding sun."I ain't botherin' the birds." 

"You could, though," I shout. "You could shoot one by accident. I just saw a bald eagle." Okay, a heron. "You realize you can go to jail for killing an American bald eagle?" 

The rifleman says, "I think I know a target from a bird." 

One hand shading his eyes, the man is peering at me with slow astonishment, as if I'd landed on his picnic table and swooped the hot dog off his plate. 

"This land is protected! There are all kinds of life-forms here that shouldn't be destroyed. That's why we have laws, and why the signs are posted!" 

I am delivering the rap with a passion that does not come from playing the undercover role, but from a deeper shift in my awareness. (155)

Shari Lapena. A Stranger in the House. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2017.

A suspense novel, with a murder, and very few characters. Tom and Karen have been happily married for two years — although I don't find an adequate foundation for their alleged marital bliss. Karen totals her car after speeding through a seedy section of town, a concussion causing amnesia about where she'd been or why. A murdered man is later discovered, and evidence places Karen at the scene. Karen's amnesia seems real, but she's hiding something else. Tom is bewildered by everything, but he too is guilty of hiding something. Predictably, his doubts and suspicions of his wife grow while the police close in to arrest her. When the victim's identity is learned, the drama shifts. Nosy neighbour Brigid watches the comings and goings with some satisfaction from across the street. Not a fast-moving or complicated plot, typically concentrating on feelings and psychological play.

One-liners:

▪ No one could accuse her of not being a good friend. (45)

▪ Brigid Cruikshank is a goddess among online knitters. (177)

▪ The woman he fell in love with, Karen Fairfield, was a mirage. (191)

▪ She tells herself she will not faint, hears, as if from a distance, Catch her. (194)

Two-liners:

▪ It's almost like it used to be. But it's nothing like it used to be. (51)

▪ He can't imagine her killing anyone. The idea is ... ridiculous. (86)

Cops consulting:

"What have you got?" Rasbach asks. 

"Well, the gloves. I was able to lift a good tire print off one of them." Stan sips his coffee appreciatively. "The tire tracks on the glove match the make and model of the tires on the car in question. They're the right type, but we can't match them definitively to to the tires you brought in. We can't say that it was definitely one of the tires on that car that drove over that glove. But it could well be." 

"Okay," says Rasbach. It's something. "What are the chances of getting DNA off the inside of the gloves?" 

"I'd say pretty good, but that's going to take longer. There's a waiting list for that." 

"Can you speed it up for me?" 

"Can you keep bringing me this excellent coffee?" 

"You bet." (74)

The watcher:

She looks intently across the street at number 24. Karen and Tom's house. She wonders what Tom's thinking, after her phone call earlier today. Does he believe as she does, that Karen is hiding something about her past? It has always puzzled her that Karen is so guarded with her, given that Karen tells Brigid that she is her best friend. Brigid's efforts to draw Karen into greater intimacy have always failed. 

And Tom—each night Brigid sees the light on in his office upstairs at the front of the house. He works too hard, like Bob, but at least when he works nights he works at home. Karen isn't sitting alone in the house every evening like she is. (107-8)

Clues surface:

"So what did you tell her? Did you tell her to leave him?" 

"It's not that simple. We have women living here for their own protection. It's difficult to get the supports in place. The restraining orders don't seem to do much good." She sighs in discouragement. "I told her she had some leverage. He had a good business. I told her that if she wanted to she could leave him and get a restraining order and threaten to make it public. Shaming them sometimes works. But she was too afraid." (225-6)