Library Limelights 270

 

Ken Follett. Never. Ebook download from TPL. USA: Viking, 2021.

Follett has created the most plausible world scenario of how a nuclear war could happen. Our daily headlines confirm. Dwelling on a few global flashpoints, the scope is still enormous. The power dynamics of the U.S. and China are examined as disturbing factions erupt in North Korea and the African country of Chad. CIA officer Tamara Levit attached to the embassy in N’Djamena depends on her field agent Abdul for tracking a cocaine shipment across the Sahara desert; its intended sale in Europe will fund ISIS activities. At the same time, ISIS tactics and Sudanese interference are leading to an army clash at the Chad-Sudan border when a destructive bomb initiates chain reactions. Chang Kai of China’s intelligence service needs to temper his hardline colleagues when their ally, North Korea, insists on attacking South Korea; then an aggressive military element takes control of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. Bottom line: Sudan is supported by China, Chad by the U.S.; the same distinction applies to the two Koreas.

American president Pauline Green must deal with all of the above as an invested interest. Which she does, with grace under extreme pressure amid all her advisors. With an election approaching on the home front, she also battles disinformation from a rival candidate. Follett goes even deeper with all of them. Pauline senses alienation from her husband Gerry, and increasing attraction to her national security advisor Gus, an old friend. Tamara finds herself with a growing romance while braving military shoot-outs and suffering an incompetent boss. Abdul is desperate to escape the desert mining encampment of slave labour for ISIS, among would-be refugees, all betrayed by a people-smuggler—but he can’t leave fellow prisoner, country girl Kiah, behind. In China, Kai is a lonely voice of reason but political enemies in the old guard will use his film star wife Ting as a way to silence him. Inexorably, neighbouring countries are pulled into the deadly cyclone.

Diplomats, spies, soldiers, administrators, national leaders—some are reckless, some are ignorant, some perform falsely, and some do their best to keep a lid on. Political maneuvering and negotiating can be delicate or face-saving, conditional or categorical; weapons of all shapes and sizes are ready for deployment. The escalation is relentless but the characters are engaging enough to sustain what amounts to over 900 pages in an ebook. Never is absolutely compelling, realistic, and scary—how far will the madness go? It’s nearly impossible to pull sufficient quotes to represent how Follett inserts us directly into the inner rings of power.

Tamara

▪ It was remarkable how quickly people forgot about confidentiality when the drinks were free. (212)

▪ “You briefed the ambassador!” he raved. “That’s not your job.” (227)

▪ Tab was in mortal danger. This was no longer her morbid imagination: it was plain fact. (346)

▪ The Chinese had no friends, in Tamara’s opinion. They had clients and debtors. (570)

▪ “An American drone has killed Chinese engineers. There’s going to be hell to pay.” (572)

Abdul

▪ Like everyone else, Kiah kept an eye on the lake, for there was no knowing when the jihadis might get hungry and come to steal meat and flour and salt. (60)

▪ There were a few made-up roads, including the Trans-Sahara Highway, but this bus with its contraband cargo and illegal migrants would not be taking the main routes. (261)

▪ The flames had spread all over the parking lot. Would all the cars be immobilized? (667)

▪ Sooner or later he would have to confess he was an American citizen and an agent of the CIA, and how would she feel about that? (731)

▪ “The consignment isn’t in Tripoli—I’ve checked on the tracking device. So it has almost certainly crossed the Mediterranean.” (781)

Kai

▪ He had fallen for her because he was enchanted by the free and easy ways of film people. They were always joking, especially about sex. (175)

▪ The strongest Chinese swear words all had to do with fucking someone’s mother. Such language was not normally used in foreign policy discussions. (433)

▪ “With no aid from us, the Pyongyang regime would collapse in days.” (693)

▪ Power resided not in one locus but in an immensely complex network, a group of key people and institutions with no collective will, all pulling in different directions. (786)

▪ China’s leaders needed to be reminded that it was Kai, not Fu, who sent them the crucial intelligence. (795)

President Green

▪ Pauline was a moderate Republican, conservative but flexible; Milt [V.P.] was a white man from Georgia who was impatient with compromise. (90)

▪ After a long moment she said: “It must never happen.” (493)

▪ So he was going to spend two nights in a hotel with Ms Judd, concisely described by Pippa as small and blond with big tits. (610)

▪ “Every catastrophe begins with a little problem that doesn’t get fixed.” (704)

▪ The only way to avoid war now was for China to restrain North Korea and the U.S. to restrain the south. (741)

▪ “The mission is to wipe out the North Koreans as a fighting force.” (795)

Hannah Morrissey. Hello, Transcriber. USA: Minotaur/St. Martin’s Publishing, 2021.

A small northern U.S. city has big crime, fuelled by illicit drugs; the Black Harbor police force is deluged with overdose deaths and jumpers from the bridge over the river. Hazel Greenlees comes to work for them as a transcriber: the one who types their verbal and scrawled crime reports. She is an unfulfilled writer, meeting her colleagues at first by voice only. The discovery of a nine-year-old’s body in a dumpster sets off a search for whoever is supplying the deadly oxycodone to youngsters. When detective Nikolai Kole appears in person, Hazel is smitten like a ton of bricks; she offers to help him nail Krejarek, a local drug dealer—is he the “Candy Man”? Her duplex next-door neighbour Sam, perpetually stinking of weed, living with his grandfather Will, seems peripherally involved but she’s too ashamed of her semi-slum neighbourhood to mention to Nik where she lives. Little does she know of the complexities of police work.

Hazel’s husband Tommy, an ecologist who goes off on many field trips, is a beer-loving gun freak; when home, he likes to hang with Sam and Will. One wonders how he and Hazel ever got together or stay together. She is obsessed with Nik who responds to her feelings, but the urgent investigation constantly interferes with the secret relationship. Suspicions arise in Hazel about police techniques and also interfere with her resolve to leave Tommy. Then Nik’s confidential informant, “Pearl,” is murdered—another dead body in the war on drugs. Beset with doubts at times, or perhaps an overactive imagination, Hazel feels close to figuring out who’s behind it when she is attacked. There are many breathless scenes and the tension never relaxes. Even though leaving a few questions about details, Morrissey gives us an unusual and impressive debut novel.

One-liners

▪ Dating Tommy was always an adventure; being married to him is a game of survival. (24)

▪ It takes a second to register that I’m on the other side of a two-way mirror; like the window in my office, they can’t see me. (53)

▪ There’s something about his voice that draws me in, a winch that pulls me to him, and I’m powerless to stop it. (87)

▪ Two seconds ago, if not for being paralyzed with fear, I would have sprinted out the door and thrown myself from the scaffolding. (94)

▪ I’ll avoid Tommy until the tension fades, an ember smothered by ashes, or until he drinks enough to forget what we’re fighting about. (194)

▪ My mouth looks like a capsized parenthesis, my eyes a pair of sad apostrophes. (228)

Multi-liners

▪ Living next to Old Will doesn’t help, either. The man is as paranoid as a teenager smoking weed in his parents’ basement. (21)

▪ Why would Kole wait so long to contact anyone? Surely it hadn’t taken him a half hour to track down Krejarek. (179)

▪ He’d confessed to tampering with evidence once. Who’s to say he wouldn’t do it again if it meant a chance to hunt down the Candy Man? (182)

▪ She touches her hand to her denim chest and giggles as though the funniest thing has just happened. It hasn’t. (184)

The job

It’s interesting work, and certainly beats my previous—and thankless―job as the assistant manager of the community college bookstore, but it’s not overtly creative. My fingertips twitch as I quell the urge to type my own words into the document instead of regurgitating his. The fact that I signed an oath never to compromise the authenticity of these reports always wins out. In writing, rules are meant to be broken. But this isn’t writing, I remind myself. This is transcribing. (13)

The suicide bridge

“Have you ever been on Forge Bridge?”

The question catches me like an ice pick in the chest. I narrow my eyes and shake my head as he half turns to extract a plastic baggie from his jacket’s inside pocket. He sets it on the table between us, next to the quarter I laid flat. Curled like a dead insect is a corded bracelet with my name spelled in yellow and emerald beads. The one I gave to the river two springs ago.

I steel my expression, forcing my right eyebrow to remain level. “What is that?”

“I was hoping maybe you could tell me.”

I force a laugh. “You think because it says ‘Hazel’ that it’s mine? There’ve got to be a hundred Hazels in this city.” (165)

Imposter

Muffled through the floor, I hear the sounds of my husband’s heavy boots walk into the dining room. The chair scrapes across the floor. He drops his tactical bag onto it.

I freeze. Look down at the arm draped over me like a snake. And scream.

The sound is shrill enough to shatter the windows. Within seconds, Tommy’s silhouette is in the doorway, brandishing a gun. There’s shouting, but I can’t make out the words. I wrest myself away from the intruder and fall off the bed, then scamper to the corner of the room. My back up against the dresser, I cower with my head buried behind my forearms and my knees. (216)

Adele Parks. I Invited Her In. Toronto: Mira Books, 2019.

I’d promised myself another Adele Parks after enjoying Just My Luck (LL265) and this one is certainly bursting at the seams with her signature domestic drama. Old friends Melanie and Abigail meet up after many years of silence. Mel is a suburban wife happily married to Ben; she is mother to seventeen-year-old Liam and two little girls (the main voice in the narrative is Mel’s). Abi’s career as a TV presenter, propelled by entrepreneurial husband Rob, makes her something of a celebrity, so Mel is thrilled that Abi accepts her invitation to stay with them. Although the visit is ostensibly to console Abi on her pending divorce, the two women bond again, recalling their fun college days—Parks carefully, almost too slowly, builds the first half of the story. After a few weeks of watching them drink too much, and household routine getting short shrift, Ben is not amused. He loves his wife, but their priority should be sorting Liam’s upcoming, promising university entrance.

Instead, what they get is a highly sexual affair between glamourous Abi and smitten Liam. The blatant activity and sudden reversal of Abi’s friendship signals a hidden agenda. Trust me, that’s only the beginning of some very bizarre follow-up. Mel is devastated; her special child—her first-born, long before Ben came on the scene―Liam abandons home and career plans to go stay with Abi. Ben says accept it, it will soon pass. Mel has never told anyone who Liam’s father is. Revenge is Abi’s goal and she’s doing very well at it, successfully turning Liam against his mother. Her motivation is about loss, but it’s a mystery to the family she wants to destroy. The worst is yet to come, even as Parks methodically, carefully, analyzes the reactions of the main characters. How assumptions and miscommunication can ruin relationships! “Twists and surprises” are an inadequate phrase for this potboiler.

One-liners

▪ Her path was so different to mine, I just found it easier not to dwell on what might have been. (33)

▪ There’s something about being with her that makes me feel like I’m eighteen again and can knock back drinks without any consequences. (88)

▪ The truth is, my teenage pregnancy did define me, for good and ill, whether I like it or not. (113)

▪ Through the day, when the house was empty, she liked to familiarise herself with their things. (141)

▪ “I don’t understand, are you—?” I stutter, “Are you leaving me?” (277)

▪ I can’t tell him that much of her reasoning to do this was to punish me. (400)

Multi-liners

▪ Possibly, saying “stay as long as you like” is a bit over the top. A bit keen. I hope she doesn’t think I’ve turned into the sort of person who is being particularly nice because she’s famous now. (32)

▪ Abi’s senses had been assaulted all evening as she was absorbed into their home. The house was shabby, cluttered, noisy, chaotic. (62)

▪ We all want to be better. None of us can really forgive ourselves for being human. (113)

▪ “What you are doing is unnatural,” I say. “Sick. Immoral.” (219)

▪ “She’s nothing like you,” he snaps. “She doesn’t fawn and grovel at the world, she grabs it by the throat.” (233)

▪ She has plotted to hurt me and embroiled my son in her Greek revenge tragedy. Other people don’t know and I can’t tell them. (373)

The news hits Mel

So, the rage flung its way around her body, ricocheting off her heart, bouncing around all her vital organs, spreading through her veins and arteries up to her brain. It intensified, multiplied. It ravaged her from the inside, while outside she had to keep smiling. (108)

Abi’s verdict

Well, Ben was a turn-up for the books. Not what she’d been expecting at all. More, she supposed. She’d thought perhaps he might be just a man Mel would settle for. He wasn’t. He was a man any woman would strive to attract, go all out to net. He was a pleasant surprise. Quite exciting to be around. Added an extra layer. Sharpened things. (141)

Awkward dinner

The sexual chemistry between them is obvious. How could I have missed it? Or is it a case that because I now know and the genie is out of the bottle, they’re being extreme and no longer wary or careful? Instead they are flagrant. Blatant, immodest, brazen. They reach for one another’s hands, she squeezes his leg under the table, he throws his arm around the back of her chair and caresses her shoulders. Ben tries to talk about—oh, I don’t know, his work, I suppose, or the traffic. It doesn’t matter, there’s no way in. They’re a unit and we are consigned to the role of spectators. (234)