Library Limelights 197

Thomas Harris. Cari Mora. Large Print. USA: Hachette/Grand Central Publishing, 2019.

From the elder statesman of thrillers with a gruesome touch, Harris returns with a taut tale that plunges into an aftermath of drug culture between Florida and South America. The notorious Pablo Escobar owned a luxury home in Miami where two competing sets of thieves set their sights on millions in gold hidden there. Cari Mora is a young woman who survived the drug wars in Colombia, now in the USA on Temporary Protected Status (TPS); she's been housekeeper to various film companies renting the house. Some thieves are worse than others, of course, and Hans-Peter Schneider is an unspeakable predator as well. Thankfully he does not take up too much of the action. On the other side is an old guard of Colombian cronies, a network operated by Don Ernesto in both countries. Cari is judicious about helping them although they are protective toward her; her considerable skills were hard-earned as a child.

The action moves speedily amidst the amoral characters. They find that the gold lies in a sinkhole; immense effort and expertise is required to move or open the booby-trapped safe before various federal agencies catch up with them. Dead bodies pile up fast, some of them gory, thanks to a few psychopaths with guns and, oh, a stray crocodile. Harris provides searing details of the Colombian wars, even an occasional nod to current politics. Scuba cave diving, birdsong, and bird rescue play a part. But all along, anytime, we expect Hans-Peter to strike and capture Cari, to work his grisly "magic" on her. Yet depravity is balanced by some compassionate humanity. Harris proves his unequalled mastery of the genre.

Word: gavage - force-feeding, usually by intubation

One-liners:

▪ Umberto thought the old man looked a little crazy in the face. (49)

▪ "I think his knife would fit into his asshole, but loosely, with room for his sunglasses." (65)

▪ She pressed the bag hard against him and shot him twice through the bag, the gases blowing up inside him like a bang-stick round. (117)

▪ The U.S. president could cancel everyone's TPS at any time in a fit of pique, if the president knew what a TPS was. (257)

Multi-liners:

▪ "I'm only going to look around. She'll never know I'm in the house." (7)

▪ "He's from Paraguay," Marco said. "They say he is a very bad man." (37)

▪ I wonder if Cari can still keep dreams in her heart after the things she has seen. I have seen things too. I hope the ceiling of her heart is higher than the ceiling of mine. (47)

▪ "I don't think you understand yourself, Don Ernesto. For two-thirds of twenty-five million dollars, you would do anything." (263)

A Miami home for Cari:

Among the neighbours, Teresa explained without prompting, the Prieto mango was most popular with households of Cuban origin, such as the Vargases, whose son was in dental school. The Madame Francis mango was favored among those from Haiti, like the Toussaints on the corner, whose daughter was starting law school. The Neelam mango was preferred by the Vidyapatis, a Hindu family of pari-mutuel clerks from India at the end of the street, whose son was a medical student at U of M, she went on. The Jamaicans were extremely opinionated and scoffed at all this in favor of the Julie mango. They were the Higginses, whose daughter was a pharmacist now. The Chinese were divided in their opinions and used all types of mango mixed with lychee in their Café Canton on 163rd Street. Their son Weldon Wing had been regarded by the elders as a nincompoop because he went around singing all the time and performed at open-mic nights as the rapper "Love-Jones." But Weldon, or Love-Jones, rose swiftly in his family's regard when he got his own fried-chicken franchise from Popeyes, which the neighbor gave the Miami pronunciation as "Po-payez." (103-4)

Don Ernesto negotiates:

"Here is the bank's receipt. In return, I want you to tell me everything: what you took to Miami for Pablo and how I can get it." 

"The method is complex." 

"Jesús, don't string this out. Schneider has located the cube. You can't sell me its location; I already know. You already sold that to Schneider." 

"What I will tell you is that if it is opened wrongly, you will hear the result for miles." (180)

Education of sorts:

Academia de Baile Alfredo in Barranquilla, Colombia, is on a street of bars and cafés. The entrance bears the image of a couple dancing the tango, though instruction in the tango is not part of the actual curriculum. 

The academy is the current headquarters of the Ten Bells school of pickpocketing, theft, and robbery. The school is named for the test of hanging ten bells from the clothing of a practice pickpocket victim to teach stealth. The pockets are sometimes lined with fishhooks or a razor blade as well to increase the difficulty of the dip. (185)

Robert Barnard. Dying Flames. 2005. UK: Allison & Busby Limited, 2007.

As fillers go, it's a side trip into sedate pacing and the dynamics of a dysfunctional extended family. To his surprise, novelist Graham Broadbent meets Christa, a beautiful nineteen-year-old claiming to be his daughter ‒ a possibility easily disproved. Behind the fake claim is his teenage crush, Peggy, mother of Christa and once an aspiring actress whom he hasn't seen for twenty-five years or so. Graham is drawn to Christa but only mildly interested in scotching the rumour. Mild interest sums up my own impression until Graham agrees to attend Peggy's staged dinner party and some hell breaks loose. An older son of Peggy's is a shock for most of them. Peggy is a classic narcissist, blithely insensitive to the feelings of others, especially the three children she bore to three different fathers.

Then someone has the decency gall to murder Peggy. Before he can turn around, Graham has two of the now almost-adult children moved in with him. A trail of illegitimacy, adoption, and paternity is disclosed as Peggy's daughter, son, father, and Graham figure out her lies. Nature vs nurture is one issue on their minds. Everything is couched in rather bland, agreeable language and style. There's nothing compelling or breathless here, just a steady, competent, satisfactory read.

One-liners:

▪ "I knew everyone else in the cast had ‒ well, I suppose the current expression is "got the hots" for me." (49)

▪ "Reading a bit of Macbeth is a gratuitous piece of literary cannibalism." (100)

▪ Never underestimate the elasticity of youth, he said to himself. (131)

▪ Peggy was surely a product of nurture too, though: the blind spoiling of her by her parents, love creating a monster, as it so often did. (239)

▪ George Long's voice rose skywards in command, as if he were rehearsing a herd of prima-donna camels for Aida at the Pyramids. (241)

Multi-liners:

▪ "She found life humdrum and limited here, and she was yearning for bright lights and glamour. So she made up another existence for herself." (60)

▪ The world revolved around her and that almighty carousel could be twitched and manipulated to minister to her monstrous sense of self. What didn't happen to her, didn't happen at all for her. (101)

▪ "You have to look at everything she says, check it if you can, to see if it's true," said Adam at once. "I'm fed up with it." (149)

▪ A mother who has borne a child might well feel something for it for the rest of her life, even if she had had it adopted. But a father, one who has been unaware of the birth? How can he suddenly feel something for that child? (272)

Tea with the culprit:

"Why did you tell Christa I was her father?" Graham had often found in emotionally charged situations shock tactics worked well. Peggy bridled. 

"Oh, I expect she got it all mixed up. You know what teenagers are like. Their hormones or testosterone or whatever it is are fizzing away inside them, and they don't know whether they're coming or going half the time." 

Graham left a moment's silence. Peggy took advantage of it to start in on her second cake. It was the Viennese Whirl, and it left a lacy border of cream and chocolate around her lips. Suddenly for the second time Graham caught an intimation of the charm that had enthralled him as an adolescent and captured his soul for the months of rehearsal and performance of St Joan. (47-8)

The second son:

"It's over a week now. There may come a point when the police will find it odd if we don't make a bit of a fuss." 

Adam considered this. 

"She might have met up with that stupid long-lost son. Probably she's made it up with him, and they're all lovey-dovey somewhere or other in London." 

"It's one of the possibilities. But when he left Luigi's he was almost as angry with her as you were." 

After a few minutes Adam said: 

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. Terry is your son." 

"Apparently." (148-9)

Police discretion:

"You must understand that we're still at an early stage," he said, his voice lowered as if the KGB were standing a foot away from him. "All options are still open. I'm sure you understand that we can't talk about the progress of the case with anyone who is at all central to the investigations. I realise this is frustrating." 

"Oh, I understand entirely," said Graham. "What puzzles me is how Peggy got ‒ alive or dead ‒ from Romford to Brightlingsea. And of course who she was with." 

"We have a sighting in Brightlingsea," said Relf. "She made inquiries about B&B at a house there, if the sighting is reliable. That is all I am telling you, and it's not definite. I'll say good morning, sir." (244)

Karen Cleveland. Keep You Close. USA: Random House Large Print, 2019.

Another killer thriller from Cleveland (Need to Know was her impressive first); when it comes to bestsellers, large print books seem to have much shorter waiting lists. Stephanie Maddox is an FBI special agent, head of internal investigations at their DC headquarters. In a long, intense career path she's not had quality time to develop real intimacy with her now teenage son Zachary. Stephanie has always kept her emotions hidden. But when Zachary becomes the innocent suspect in a secret assassination plot, she has to find and expose the truth before it happens. It's a race against time with shocking revelations, past and present, including but not limited to federal elections interference. The evidence piles up against Zach and Stephanie can't trust anyone to believe her; she can't take any of her colleagues at face value.

Peeling through layers of deceit and concealment, she will do anything to protect her son and find the real perpetrators. Cleveland makes the intricacies of secret agencies and international espionage ‒ true or not ‒ highly believable. Staccato style sentences and half-sentences seem to be a trend these days in crime literature. They do suit Stephanie's obsessive behaviour but combined with a very liberal use of italics for emphasis (rendered in bold in large print books) it becomes a bit annoying. The bloom is somewhat off the rose - an off of writer. Nevertheless, plenty of thrilling action toward a very chilling finish.

One-liners:

▪ "You don't know him as well as you think you do, do you, Steph?" (99)

▪ Something was wrong: every instinct I had was screaming that something was wrong. (233)

▪ The fact that he has me trapped, that I have no choice right now but to be silent, makes fury blaze inside me. (290)

▪ The fragments of information swirling around in my brain slam together in that very moment into a single, awful truth. (349)

Multi-liners:

▪ And I knew what it was like to be trapped by a man in power, to feel helpless, alone. I couldn't let that go. (231)

▪ "Go ahead, Stephanie. Run." She leans back against the pillow. "It's what you do." (259)

▪ I'm the one who got him into this. Who dragged him back into it, pleaded with him to help me, flew all the way out here to Omaha. (336-7)

Mom pulls no punches:

"Zachary needs to be your first priority, honey. A child―" 

"Don't do this." 

"A child should always be a mother's first priority." 

Fury is spreading through me like wildfire. "How dare you say that? Zachary is my life―" 

"Your work is your life. Zachary comes second. He always has." 

"You need to leave. Now." 

"Honey, I just want to help you fix things. Before it's too late. Before you don't have any relationship at all with your child." 

"Because you have such a great one with yours?" 

"I have always put you first." 

"Then I guess there's more to being a good mother than just that." (136-7)

So far, so good:

Relief washes over me at the sound of his voice. "Zachary, are you okay? Do you feel sick or anything?" 

"No. Why?" 

He's fine. 

They haven't gotten to him yet. 

"Where are you?" 

"On my way home." 

"Lock the doors. Do not eat or drink a thing." 

"What's going on?" I can hear the bewilderment in his voice. 

In my mind, I see Mom, being pushed down those stairs. Scott, being run off the road. (358)

Impossible choices:

I'll always keep you safe. 

I meant it. I always believed I'd do anything to keep him safe. But this? 

If I turn my back on the truth now, it's all been for nothing. All those years of trying to do the right thing, at all costs. To be the champion of those who were wronged. To speak for those who dared not speak.But how could I turn my back on my son? (408)