Library Limelights 289

 The next edition of Limelights (no. 290) will undoubtedly be delayed. The culprit? ... a novel of more than a thousand pages in hand. My copy of Robert Galbraith’s (J.K. Rowling’s) latest in the Cormoran Strike series. I will definitely be lost for some time in The Ink Black Heart.

Anna Pitoniak. Our American Friend. NY: Simon & Schuster, 2022.

One appeal of this book is its unsubtle recall of recent White House figures, POTUS and FLOTUS. Sofie Morse is a newly-freelance journalist who agrees to write an authorized biography of First Lady, Lara Caine. The FLOTUS is an intensely private individual who carefully controls her public image. It’s known merely that Lara was born in Russia and her family lived in Paris for a long time. Sofie is flattered to be chosen in spite of her complete antipathy for the controversial President himself—Henry Caine’s partiality for Russian President Grusdev is not popular. The story opener dwells on Sofie and husband Ben hiding out in Croatia, under the guidance of someone called Greta; it’s mysterious and disturbing. But we know the backstory is about to deliver the goods, especially with Lara’s mother Irina and sister Natasha contributing.

A long series of interviews follows—detailing Lara’s activities in Russia and Europe up to the time of glasnost and perestroika. The first big news Lara reveals to Sofie is that her father Fyodor was a high-ranking KGB officer attached to the Paris embassy. Much later the Orlov family was returned to Moscow when Fyodor unexpectedly died. Midway along Lara tells Sofie about Sasha, her tragic one and only love. Was Sasha murdered for his reactionary sentiments? The ultimate consequences of that are so stunning, Sofie feels compelled to jump the (biography) gun and share Lara’s sensational revelation in public, even amid increasing demonstrations against President Caine’s authoritarian moves. Naturally, Sofie knows that doing it destroys the trust built over months with FLOTUS. How she presented the amazing story, and especially the reactions to it from the President on down, are not told to us! We still don’t know why Sofie’s in hiding, or from whom.

Yet there is more. Someone is manipulating at the highest levels. How much influence did Lara absorb from her beloved father? From lover Sasha? Journalist Sofie has been sucked right into the spin, making it a thriller of the first order. The intricate pieces are beautifully put together; the reader may experience some deja vu, or perhaps wishful thinking.

Sophie

▪ “For starters, what if she tries to control it? What if she hates what I write and comes after me and makes our life hell?” (46)

▪ This might be a mistake, an inner voice said. But so what? Not doing it would be a mistake too. (48)

▪ At the end of the day it was just the two of us, embarking on this project based on trust alone. (58)

▪ Even though we’d grown closer, this was crossing a whole other line: staying at her country house, captive to her hospitality. (153)

▪ “You can call me Walter,” he said. “I’m sorry for the intrusion.” (252)

▪ Walter shook his head. “The fourth man.” (257)

▪ “Lara,” I said. “You said he was giddy about the deal. Euphoric.” (270)

Lara now

▪ Laura Caine was the third wife of President Caine, the only First Lady since Louisa Adams to be born outside the United States, the most enigmatic occupant of the East Wing in decades, the silent companion of the most toxic leader in American history, the couture-clad Rorschach test for the nation at large—and the subject of my next book. (9)

▪ “I can see that she is letting you in. You are making her a little less alone.” (75)

▪ The world was thirsty for revelations about Mrs. Caine and her daughters, for the tidbits that turn figureheads into flesh-and-blood people. (77)

▪ “It would take another two years for me to find the courage.” (258)

▪ “I had to find a way to hide the truth in plain sight,” she said. “And it was you, Sofie.” (258)

▪ In broad daylight, during that Sunday outing with her daughters, Lara Caine had activated their old code. (259)

Lara then

▪ Lara was struck by how well Sasha knew himself. He could explain to her exactly how he came to believe or think a certain idea. She mistook that for transparency. They aren’t remotely the same thing. (171)

▪ Her parents had taught her to trust her own intelligence. Sasha had taught her to give voice to that intelligence. (172-3)

▪ “You’re so young, darling,” Irina said. “There’s so much time. You’ll fall in love again. You’ll see.” (187)

▪ Later, she would realize what an easy mark she’d been. (201)

▪ Fyodor recently recruited a scientist from France’s top research institute. This scientist was an expert in a particularly useful kind of chemistry. (219)

▪ With every revelation she learned, she felt Sasha drawing a little closer. (202)

Embassy gatherings

These countryside parties followed a well-established script. The women socialized with women; the men socialized with men. Fyodor and the other KGB officers, all of whom worked under diplomatic cover at the embassy, gathered at a distant point on the lawn.

A permanent tension existed between the ambassador and the KGB faction. In the daylight, the Soviet ambassador and his staff were working to establish productive relationships with foreign powers. Meanwhile, in the shadows, the KGB spied on and undermined those very same foreign powers. The KGB officers necessarily stood apart from the rest of the group: their own tight little world, their own party within the party. (131)

Stuart M. Kaminsky. The Dead Don’t Lie. NY: A Forge Book/Tom Doherty Associates, 2007.

Between waiting lists again, this book popped up like a ghost. I so enjoyed a couple of the author’s Lew Fonesca detective novels, this looked like a serendipitous find. It features Chicago police detective and insomniac Abe Lieberman, a different series from Kaminsky that I hadn’t explored. An introduction to Abe, lying in a bathtub and talking juvenile nonsense with his grandson, was too cute to be promising at first. However, Abe did leap into action in the middle of the night to deal with a body found repeatedly stabbed. Now we’re talking, he’s on the job. With no lack of Kaminsky’s droll humour.

The dead man was a doctor of Turkish origin, hence the novel’s opening teaser of a disreputable man clutching a mystery object in 1915 Turkye. In quick succession Abe’s policing territory is peopled with the owners of a Turkish restaurant; Bill Hanrahan, his partner (whose wife Iris just had a baby); the dead man’s seductive widow; two sophomore boxers who decide that mugging offers them a better living; Jonas Lindqvist, a half-mad, victimized pastry chef; Robert E. Lee Chang who loses a terrifying amount of cash belonging to gang boss Mr. Woo (who had expected to marry Iris); Turhan Kasmaka, the cop who speaks Turkish; Kemal the Camel, Turkish community informant; El Perro, another gang boss, but rather well-disposed; a radio host with at least three identities; and assorted bit parts including a guy called Paddles. Not to mention Abe’s wife Bess, monitor of his eating habits, and his wayward daughter Lisa who is too neurotic to raise her own children.

Four people are dead before Abe and Hanrahan figure out what’s going on. It’s all about Turks and their historic claims, right? Could be really about Armenians, though. A reputed century-old diary is up for sale. Every crime fiction fan should read at least one Kaminsky (RIP). The man’s talent was compelling and fun. He was previously forgiven for “off of” because he used the Oxford comma.

Abe

▪ A man who looked like a very sad spaniel with a white mustache knelt at her side. (55)

▪ Turhan had heard about the crazy little Jew detective who had faced down gang leaders, dope dealers, politicians, and millionaire bigwigs. (93)

▪ He woke less than four hours later grateful that he had not been attacked and killed by bad cholesterol during the night. (225)

▪ “Turkish coffee’s my new drug of choice. Legal, tastes good, potentially lethal, and socially acceptable.” (288)

One-liners

▪ Lydia, were she awake instead of gently snoring upstairs, would have told him not to go out in the middle of the night, in darkness. (51)

▪ Now he had to find a Chinese man who had been beaten, had a briefcase full of money stolen, and didn’t report it to the police. (87)

▪ How do you dress when you may have to shoot a man? (118)

▪ “No doubt it was written long, long ago,” Ekrem said slowly, enjoying the moment of revelation. (217)

▪ “When I have a fever I talk Swedish,” said Jonas. “I talk Swedish and I hit people who want to kill me.” (247)

Multi-liners

▪ The problem, they both knew, was that there was little money in being a pair of undercard Chicago club fighters. The money was at the top. (36)

▪ Jonas sat up in the darkness. The Ambien, to which he was sure that he was, after two months, addicted, was definitely not helping. (49)

▪ Bill didn’t know what the beautiful Chinese woman saw in him, but he didn’t question it. Iris had led him out of drunkenness and Abe had saved him from losing his job. (74)

▪ He would follow them. They would lead him to Mr. Woo’s money. They had to. (151)

▪ Tonight the validation of the document would take place. The wealthy Turk’s emissaries, two document experts, were already in the city at the Drake Hotel. (192)

Kemal

Abe didn’t know what the breath of a camel smelled like, but he was sure it couldn’t have been more offensive than that of the man he sat next to on the bench in Lincoln Park.

Everything about the man was offensive, from his food-stained pants to his wild mop of hair. Kemal the Camel needed a shave, a good toothbrush, a shower, a barber, and clean clothes.

“I was not always as you see me now,” the man said, arching his bushy eyebrows.

“Let’s hope not,” said Abe.

Kemal turned to face Turhan Kazmaka.

“Your friend is blessed with a sardonic sense of humour,” he said. “I like him.”

“And I like you,” said Abe. “How could anyone not like you?”

“It would be difficult,” Kemal agreed. (107)

Lisa

Their daughter Lisa had, essentially, left her children to be raised by Bess and Abe. Lisa was thirty-six, a biochemist, and the wife of Marvin Alexander, M.D., a black pathologist. She lived in California and had a lifelong love-hate relationship with Abe, the origin and fuel of which were beyond Abe’s comprehension and Lisa’s willingness or ability to articulate. The odds of her successfully bringing up a new baby were slim.

“They’ll have a little brown baby,” Abe said. “That’s what Ingrid Bergman said in Murder on the Orient Express, that she took care of little brown babies.”

“This isn’t a movie, Abe.”

“Unfortunately it is not. It is the chaos of mingled purposes,” he said. (132)