Library Limelights 188

Mick Herron. Reconstruction. 2008. USA: Soho Press, Inc., 2015.

[Who puts the stickers on these books, anyway?]

From my fave espionage/thriller author. Others have noticed how unique he is, with reprints appearing for novels written pre-Slow Horses days (see "Herron" in Books Index 2018, above). Except for the mysterious opening events, the hostage situation in an Oxford nursery school is depicted in breathless scenes that move the action from one group of individuals to another. Nursery school does not sound like Herron's usual territory, but wait: the name Sam Chapman is one that will appear in later books. And terms like "the Office" and "Head Dog" and "joe country" are dead giveaways that MI6 is somehow involved. But first, a jittery young gunman has trapped some frightened victims — school teacher Louise, the cleaning woman Judy, and parent Eliot who was delivering his three-year-old twins for the day, twins now fastened like clamps to his legs.

Then, at the gunman's request, government employee Ben is parachuted, more or less, into the standoff. No one knows why. Beneath the surface, Ben worked with a colleague being sought by "the dogs" ‒ internal security for MI6 ‒ so "reconstruction" (of the title) unravels the activities of each person leading up to the nursery school situation. Only Sam suspects a more sinister connection but even as Head Dog he's persona non grata while local police and the spooks argue jurisdiction. As always, Herron is meticulous in prose and characterization with brain-twisting red herrings. Happy dance, more to come.

Word: synaesthetic ‒ experiencing a sensory perception as transposed to a different sense

One-liners:

▪ But Judy radiated hostility, and it was hard not to respond in kind; hard not to feel there was little about her worth knowing better, starting with her appearance. (36)

▪ He'd better hope he died on the operating table, because if he ever walked upright again, Sam Chapman would break him in two and kick the halves in different directions. (54)

▪ Ben Whistler looked like what you got when you thought about a rugby player, then fixed his teeth. (85)

Multi-liners:

▪ In dreams legs turn to lead, and the floor sucks at the feet. The ability to move forward decreases in exact proportion to the need to do so. In real life, exactly the same thing happens. (45)

▪ The helicopter wasn't just taking him from his desk. It was flying him into the world of the dogs. (92)

▪ What had she seen this morning by the gate? You couldn't tell Judy there wasn't something going on: once a trollop, always the same. Paint didn't peel off easy. (159)

Cops v. Spooks:

"And is he dangerous?" 

Well, he has a fucking gun, Chapman thought. Join the frigging dots. But what he said was what he'd practised saying, sitting in that plastic chair: "I suspect his intention will be to disappear. Head underground." 

Fredericks said, "Let's cut to the chase. We're talking about terrorism, is that right?" 

"I can't answer that." 

"Your fuck-up has put an armed terrorist on the streets of my city. No, let's get this straight. Your fuck-up has armed a terrorist and put him on the streets of my city." 

"I imagine he'll leave your city as soon as possible." 

"Well, what a relief. But forgive me if I don't base the official response to this on what you imagine." (55-6)

Louise on stage:

Her legs felt wobbly, like a newborn giraffe's. All of this—the accumulated cars; the anxious policemen; the doubtless imminent cameras—were part of her story now, because that's what this was, her story, and to have sidelined herself at the earliest opportunity would have been accepting mediocrity ... Was this why she'd gone back inside? Partly, she admitted now. Some of her wobbliness was stage fright. And besides, she had—who didn't?—the indestructible sense that things would work out; that her story wasn't going to be cut short. Hand in hand with the consciousness of mortality went the sense of invulnerability—sure, death would happen, but not today, not to her. (106)

Under pressure:

"You'll have to run that by me again." 

"It's been three weeks since Miro Weiss disappeared with enough money to start his own country, and Bad Sam's no nearer to finding him. How hard is he looking?" 

Nott said, "Like you say, it's a digital world. And Weiss covered his tracks well." 

"I don't care if he's the last of the fucking Mohicans, if Chapman was trying, he'd have him by now." Roger Barrowby paused—he didn't swear often, and knew Nott knew this. "There have been rumblings," he went on. "You police your own, we know that. In principle, we stand by that." (138)

Witch comfort:

But Judy wouldn't have wanted to hear this; and besides, the words would have choked off as Judy's face dissolved into tears, along with everything else—just washed away in front of him as if a plug had been pulled; simply swirled round going nowhere, until it struck him that Judy wasn't crying, he was— Eliot Pedlar. Just when he'd been about to offer comfort, a terrifying reversal took place, because she was reaching her arms out for him instead, and if anything should have stopped his sobbing it was the prospect of this squat witch comforting him, with his wife and kids not feet away. (263)

Kate Atkinson. Transcription. Toronto: Bond Street Books/Penguin Random House Canada, 2018.

What a perfect week reading week - Herron and now Atkinson, who rivals Galbraith/Rowling for exceptional intellectual thrillers. In 1940 young and naive Juliet Armstrong is hired by England's MI5, becoming the transcriber of recorded conversations with Nazi sympathizers. Godfrey Toby is the agent entrapping the appeasement enthusiasts; Perry is their boss, in charge of the operation; Alleyne is Perry's boss, and so on up goes the chain of command. Juliet constantly reins in her flippant imagination, especially when requested to infiltrate a fifth-columnist group. She becomes Iris Carter-Jenkins. As events play out, she also has a turn at being Madge Wilson. But the narrative sometimes switches to 1950 when Juliet – now working for BBC radio – thinks, hopes, her secret wartime activities are over.

Along with her own acerbic thoughts, Juliet's crush on her boss and the workings of BBC radio all make for some very funny moments. Double and triple agents, the Nazi fear, then the Communist peril; Juliet weathers her way among the spies despite a few serious repercussions. After the war she may be succumbing to paranoia as her service time haunts her. Suspicion and suspense go hand in hand while the various characters practice deception on each other in typically understated British fashion. An irresistible heroine and a labyrinthine world so realistic it required an informative Author's Note at the end ― this is Atkinson at her enthralling best!

Words: deliquesce - (basically) to melt

hejira - an exodus

vespine - wasp-ish

embrocation - a linimment, salve (this has come up before)

tenebrism - painting in notably light/dark contrasts, chiaroscuro

One-liners:

▪ Sometimes he had such a roundabout manner of speaking that his intentions got lost along the way. (67)

▪ A counterfeit person, a fakery, signing away the life of another counterfeit person. (160)

▪ Radio allowed for a degree of slippage in the gender department. (181)

▪ People always said they wanted the truth, but really they were perfectly content with a facsimile. (185)

Multi-liners:

▪ She had come under the wing of an enthusiastic art teacher at school, Miss Gillies. ("You have an eye," Miss Gillies told her. I have two, she thought.) (33)

▪ "Don't let your imagination run away with you, Miss Armstrong. You have an unfortunate tendency to do so." (78)

▪ Perhaps sex was something you had to learn and then stick at until you were good at it, like hockey or the piano. But an initial lesson would be helpful. (154)

▪ "Yes, might have thought that they were killing you. She was carrying your handbag, your identity papers." (163)

▪ Juliet and Hartley had long ago abandoned manners with each other. It was refreshing to behave without respect towards someone. (197)

Paranoia begins, 1950:

"Mr Toby? It's Juliet, remember me?" (How could he not!) Pedestrians flowed awkwardly around them. We are a little island, she thought, the two of us. "Juliet Armstrong." 

He tipped his hat ‒ a grey trilby that she thought she recognized. He offered a faint smile and said, "I'm sorry, Miss ... Armstrong? I think you have confused me with someone else. Good day to you." He turned on his heel and began to walk away. 

It was him, she knew it was him. The same (somewhat portly) figure, the bland, owlish face, the tortoiseshell spectacles, the old trilby. And finally, the irrefutable ‒ and rather unnerving ‒ evidence of the silver-topped cane. (15)

Her day job, 1940:

She returned to typing ‒ one of Giselle's reports (although it hardly merited the word). It was an analphabetic jumble, rather like being given an insight into the chaotic workings of a cat's brain, although there was a rather well-doodled cartoon of a fat man in white tie and tails, an equally fat cigar in his mouth. Beneath it Giselle had scribbled "La Proie du soir". La Proie ‒ was that prey? There was no Larousse in Dolphin Square. Juliet supposed it was a portrayal of the Swedish arms dealer Giselle had spent the evening seducing. Successfully, apparently. (148-9)

Expectations change:

Think of it as an adventure, Perry had said right at the beginning of all this. And it had seemed like one. A bit of a lark, something from Buchan or Erskine Childers, she had thought. A Girls' Own adventure. The Russian Tea Room, the stickering, the escape down the Virginia creeper. But it wasn't an adventure, was it? Someone had died. Beatrice had died. A sparrow. A mouse. An insignificance to everyone but Juliet. (163)

Eavesdropping:

They might at least have got their stories straight, Juliet thought. Amateurs everywhere. Straining to hear, Juliet caught the words "abroad" and "rid of her". 

He got rid of me, Juliet thought? Or they're going to get rid of me? Two tenses with rather different meanings. Or perhaps it was Godfrey Toby who had been got rid of. Or Godfrey who was going to get rid of her. It was as if a complicated game of chess was being played, but Juliet didn't know all the rules or where anyone else was on the board. She was clearly intended to be a pawn in this game. But I am a queen, she thought. Able to move in any direction. (241)

C.J. Tudor. The Hiding Place. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2019.

Creepy! Right from page one. Are we to like Joe Thorne, a liar and gambling addict? It's for each reader to assess as Joe returns to his childhood village on a mysterious mission. Arnhill's mining days are finished; the abandoned colliery broods over all, the place where children are forbidden to play. But of course they went there in Joe's day and still go secretly anyway, to explore. Like many recent crime novels, this one treats bullying ‒ fodder for psycho-suspense ‒ and how far the consequences can extend. As a teacher at his old school, Joe finds that some behaviour never changes. His old nemesis, Stephen Hurst, is a prominent citizen whose son is a chip off the old block. Meeting former schoolmates brings back regret and scary memories; his youthful crush, Marie, is now married to Hurst.

Related in the first person, Tudor skillfully builds the creepiness about whatever torments Joe from the past and the fate of his little sister Annie. A blackmail plan may solve his gambling debts and lose the alarming enforcer who follows him. Gradually, layers of Joe's past are peeled back to events more frightening than old mining shafts; he fears what happened before is happening again. Brendan is the one friend he can count on for moral support. Tudor has a very special hand in constructing twisted plots and haunting atmosphere.

One-liners:

▪ You can roll a turd in glitter, but it's still a turd. (7)

▪ If we're going to play Pretty Little Liars here, I bet I can win. (84)

▪ If Arnhill was a living organism, then the mine was its beating, smoke-bellowing heart. (123)

▪ Our job as teachers, adults and parents is to stop, at every level, kids being kids, or they'll tear the fucking world down around our ears. (143)

Multi-liners:

▪ The past has a habit of repeating on you. Like bad curry. (5)

▪ Self is only a construct. You can dismantle it, reconstruct it, pimp up a new you. (63)

▪ That same faint chittering sound. It makes my fillings hum and the hairs on my skin bristle. Grating, external tinnitus. (115)

Flashback:

I pulled the door shut and stumbled into my own room. I took off my dirty clothes and chucked them into the laundry basket. It would all be all right, I told myself. We would sort it all out in the morning. Make up some story about what happened tonight. I would tell Hurst I didn't want to be part of his gang anymore. I would spend more time with Annie. I would make it up to her. I really, really would. 

I collapsed into bed. Something fluttered briefly, like a soft gray moth, in my mind. Something about Annie, in her bed. Something important that was missing. But, before I could grasp it, it was gone again. Dissolved into dust. I pulled the duvet up to my chin and closed my eyes. (205)

Encounter from the past:

"Would you have come back if I had just called?" 

"Maybe." 

"We both know that's not true." 

Her voice is sharp. And I feel rebuked. Like a child caught in a lie. 

"I learned a lot," she continues, "working with children all these years. One—never ask anything outright. They will only lie. Two—always make them think it is their idea. And three—make something interesting enough and they will come to you." 

"You missed out four—never let them light their own farts." 

A small smile. "You always used sarcasm as a defense mechanism, even as a boy." (192)

Support buddy:

The next day, I make plans. This is out of character for me. I'm not someone who believes in planning ahead. I've seen firsthand how planning is a predictor of disaster, an invitation for fate to screw with you. 

But for this, I need to be prepared. I need to have a course of action. And, without a job, it's not like I have much else to do. 

Brendan left the cottage just before two this morning. I offered him the spare room, but he declined. 

"No offense, but this place gives me the feckin' creeps." 

"I thought you weren't superstitious." 

"I'm Irish. Of course I'm superstitious. Along with guilt, it's in our DNA." He shrugged his coat on. "I've booked into a B&B down the road." (225)