SNAKE ISLAND: A Novel, another good "discover Australian culture through violence" thriller

SNAKE ISLAND: A Novel
BEN HOBSON
Arcade Crimewise
$16.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: For fans of Cormac McCarthy, Phillip Meyer, Fargo, and Justified, a gritty rural noir thriller about family, drugs, and the legacy of violence.

In an isolated town on the coast of southern Australia, Vernon Moore and his wife, Penelope, live in retirement, haunted by an unspeakable act of violence that sent their son, Caleb, to serve time in prison and has driven the couple apart. Ashamed, they refuse to talk about him or visit, but when a close friend warns Vernon that Caleb has been savagely beaten, he has no choice but to act to protect their only child.

The perpetrator of the beating is a local thug from a crime family whose patriarch holds sway over the town, with the police in his pay. Everyone knows they trade in drugs. When Vernon maneuvers to negotiate a deal with the father, he makes a critical error. His mistake unleashes a cycle of violence that escalates to engulf the whole town, taking lives with it, revealing what has been hiding in plain sight in this picturesque rural community and threatening to overtake his son.

Told from shifting perspectives at a sprint, in language that sometimes approaches the simple profundity of parable, this gritty debut was hailed on its Australian publication as “a darkly illuminating thriller that soars across genre constraints . . . [and] engages with pressing contemporary issues while exploring timeless questions. Hobson writes as if his life depends on it” (The Australian).

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My Review: The comps in the first line of the description are spot-on. This is a very *Australian* book, though. It could not have happened in the US or Canada in the way it's presented here. For one thing Author Hobson is careful to set his scenes in rural Victoria state, not some generic hot dry small town. The action is intense, and it's really the point of the read.

By which I mean a compliment...the violence in the story isn't pointless, purposeless activity to distract the reader from something...and a knock: The characters are, to be polite, thin. It is a feature of the majority of high-violence stories that the characters are not the most thoroughly fleshed out. I didn't expect them to be. I was, to my surprise, not particularly able to see how I would've known these were retirees, and their son an older man, had I not been explicitly told so once in a while. Many older couples have that kind of relationship that doesn't look very active from the outside. These two, estranged by their shared shame in their son's terrible actions, barely even register as a unitary family. I'm not implying this is unrealistic, only that it makes the course of the story less comprehensible. Penelope in particular comes across as...detached.

This not being what I was reading the book for, I mention it to others who find the absence of a character to root for a deal-breaker. This is a book about a couple living in an Australian coastal town whose lives are upended in a violent, shaking wind; they then go on to ignore their feelings in that very Australian way; then as the violent wind morphs into a whirlwind, they are forced to find a new and better response to their awful, transformed lives.

The mystery is, will they? I won't tell. I will tell you that I left this thriller entertained and glad for its availablilty in the US.

WHERE DEMONS HIDE, or really "don't hide well enough to get away with it"

WHERE DEMONS HIDE (Rebecca Connolly #4)
DOUGLAS SKELTON
Arcade CrimeWise
$27.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Something scared Nuala Flaherty to death. When her body is found in the centre of a pentagram on a lonely moor, Rebecca is determined to find out what. Was she killed by supernatural means, or is there a more down-to-earth explanation?

Rebecca’s investigation leads her to a mysterious cult and local drug dealings. But what she doesn’t know is that crime matriarch Mo Burke still has her in her crosshairs. Mo wants payback for the death of her son, and after one failed attempt to hurt Rebecca, she is upping the ante. And this time, it could be lethal.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Back to Stoirm Island go we all as Rebecca gets drawn into another strange, outlandish murder's resolution. The reason I like these stories is that they offer such weird ways for people to die...with very down-to-Earth explanations that fit consensus reality down to the ground. This being how I experience the world...whatever's got weirdness wrapped around it is being obfuscated by someone for some reason...I'm down for another trip.

Nuala's death was so OTT that the author's hand seemed tipped too far from the start. As her sad little life's ending proves, some people just have no luck in this world. The Children of the Dell are clearly a cult, and Nuala should've kept away. Cults are dangerous. Always. "Don't get near them" is the only advice you need about dealing with cults. Run away if they come for you, and never get into it with cultists, or Trouble will follow. This equally applies to Rebecca, of course; the difference is, she's responsible for ending the profitable cult-like existence of Mo Burke's family's drug-dealing cult of loyalties fiercely held. Not all religions need the supernatural to exist powerfully in their followers' hearts.

Rebacca, understandably, isn't going back to Stoirm to look into stuff...Chaz and Alan getting married there puts them into position to be her eyes and ears. These two are a delight! Rebecca's weird, unsettling past on Stoirm isn't going to keep these boys from doing the needed work for her; it's not going to cow them into inactivity, despite the spooky overtones to so many things; it's not going to prevent them from being their fun, funny, in-love selves as they help their friend fix the broken thread of a taken life in the world's tapestry.

No matter that there are explantions for what happened to Nuala, and what's behind the scene set to distract from her death; Author Skelton makes Rebecca and her catspaws work for every clue and struggle to make sense of the remorselessness of greed and jealousy that propel narcissists to act with cruelty and finality. Revenge? They think it's Justice. Being Right is an addiction to the narcissistic people of the world. Rebecca, and Elspeth, like being right for better reasons: Resolving evil deeds done by powerful and power-hungry narcissists. The two of them, having suffered at those hands they now do their best to tie up in handcuffs, pursue the benign factual-correctness face of Being Right. Theire news-reporting business is dedicated to it. This is an agreeable dream to me, so I suspend my disbelief that independent news-gatherers in Inverness, Scotland, could do what they do without being squashed under lawsuits and calumnies and threats to their safety.

Fiction is a balm and a blessing for letting me have these fantasies of Ma'at being served so well. Douglas Skelton's talents for dialogue and character creation are, as expected, well used and effective throughout the read. The plot isn't without its issues. At times, Rebecca doesn't see things I've come to think she should until past the time they're obvious. This is usually handwaved away but it happens. Chaz and Alan are, as mentioned, very sweet togeher if just a touch overplayed. I don't mean as a gay couple...I mean as Rebecca's sleuths, at times, they seem to be taking their roles flippantly and playing up how cute they are. These are quibbles, not issues; the fact is that reasonable readers can and will read the same words I did and not see what I saw, so I'm not in any way downgrading the story.

What, as always with Author Skelton's stories, happens is clearly a result of Rebecca's, and Elspeth's, moral values: No matter what, who, or where they are, victimizers must be stopped and brought to punishment for their wrongdoing. Mystery series are always in service of ma'at. The Egyptian personification of Justice and balance and harmony and order and even law is the one whose remit includes protecting and aiding this kind of journalist/sleuth with a powerful moral compass. It makes the genre one I resonate with on a bone-deep level. Rebecca, and all the people she surrounds herself with, resonate to Justice's gonging vibrations. I love the way Author Skelton uses, sometimes almost too much and too often, the hints of something from the Beyond being on Rebecca's side. I believe there is a Rightess in the world that is tipped out of balance when someone is victimized. Finding, in Rebecca and her crew, others who have that feeling too makes these reads deeply satisfying.

This outing's no exception. The ending is very satisfying, and will leave my fellow series-loving readers happily anticipating more from Douglas Skelton.

DOUGLAS SKELTON's Rebecca Connolly series: THUNDER BAY, THE BLOOD IS STILL, A RATTLE OF BONES

THUNDER BAY (Rebecca Connolly #1)
DOUGLAS SKELTON
Arcade CrimeWise
$25.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Stoirm’s secrets are worth killing for in this gripping thriller for readers of All the Missing Girls and Neon Prey.

When reporter Rebecca Connolly gets a tip that suspected murderer Roddie Drummond will be returning to the island of Stoirm, she smells a story. Though never convicted in the death of his girlfriend Mhairi fifteen years earlier, Drummond is still guilty in the eyes of many islanders, and his return for his mother’s funeral is sure to stir up old resentments, hatreds, possibly even violence. Rebecca has another reason for going to Stoirm. Her own father came from there, but he never went back, and he always refused to speak of it or say what drove him away.

Defying her editor, Rebecca joins forces with local photographer Chazz Wymark to dig into the mystery surrounding Mhairi's death and her unexplained last words, “Thunder Bay”—the secluded spot on the west coast of the island where, according to local lore, the souls of the dead set off into the afterlife. When a string of violent events erupts across the island, Rebecca discovers the power of secrets, and she must decide what to bury, and what to bring into the light.

Longlisted for Bloody Scotland's McIlvanney Prize for best crime book of the year.

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My Review: Journalists make great sleuths for a series because asking questions and poking into stuff others would prefer to leave alone is literally their job description. They're also, by training, very, very sensitive to being lied to and misdirected. Plus the police know they really need what journalists have...the public's attention...so they tend to understand that cooperation is the best way forward if both sides are to get what they want and need.

This series opener relies on an investigative journalist, Rebecca Connolly, ignoring her editor's instructions to leave a juicy story about a past crime alone. A murder happens, the perp...in everyone's eyes a guilty man...fled his little gossipy island community after the Scottish verdict is handed down (loosely translatable as "not guilty but don't do it again"), leaving all islanders convnced that he absolutely murdered the beautiful, popular girl he was living with. Now, fifteen years later, he's back. Things on the island are changing, luxury vacation destination development is being proposed, opposed, and debated, and here's Roddie coming home to a place that emphatically does not want him.

What unfolds is a corking raking-up of old secrets, including some from Rebecca's family that's from this island. There is an expected amount of anti-social behavior, mostly in the past, but the homophobia and domestic violence here could offend a sensitive reader. It isn't prurient in its use but it is present and neither downlayed nor valorized. Your personal thresholds for this kind of action should be your guide in picking the book up.

The very best thing about this story is the intensity of place in it...the island, the islanders, the outsider (Rebecca) come to stir things up and ask questions about her own family connection to the place...all vividly described and strategically deployed to lure the reader in and cause the readerly radar to see false images and think they're facts. This requires Author Skelton to deploy an unweildy cast of characters and to require the undivided attention of his reader. The late Connolly père backstory, and its deep-past relationship to the story told here, felt like that one-too-manyeth bite of pecan pie with whipped cream...so tasty but just should've stayed on the plate because now it's all a wee bit much. The rhetorical palate-cleansing swig of coffee that is Rebecca's full comprehension of her father's reason for being so closemouthed about his youth on the island wasn't quite enough to keep the fifth star on this stellar debut effort. The big reveal of it was, to be honest, anti-climactic to me because I thought "...really...? this is what you were traumatized by, with all the other stuff going on?"

So, not a perfect read but, as a series-starter, darn good entertainment. Worth your eyeblinks and your gold.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE BLOOD IS STILL (Rebecca Connolly #2)
DOUGLAS SKELTON
Arcade CrimeWise
$25.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Investigative journalist Rebecca Connolly returns in this riveting, immersive thriller from the author of Thunder Bay—for readers of Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, and Denise Mina

When a man in eighteenth-century Highland dress is found dead on the site of the Battle of Culloden, where Bonnie Prince Charlie led his forces to a rout seared into Scottish memory, Rebecca Connolly takes up the case for the Chronicle. A controversial film about the rebellion and battle is being shot nearby, and it has drawn the ire of the right-wing nationalist movement Spirit of the Gael. Is there some link between the murder—the weapon used to impale the man leaves no doubt it was murder—and Spirit of the Gael or the shadowy militant group New Dawn, thought to be associated with them?

Meanwhile, in the working-class part of town, Rebecca's assignment to cover a protest against the placement of a convicted child molester into the community leads her to Mo Burke, the unlikely protest leader. Mo is a formidable woman, but she is also the matriarch of a known crime family and usually prefers to shun the spotlight. What has drawn her out? And what of her two grown sons, who share in the family business? The older one, Nolan, with Ben Affleck good looks, is clearly intrigued by Rebecca, as she is by him, despite her better instincts to steer clear of their dangerous, violent world.

And then another body is found, this one wearing the Redcoat uniform of the victorious British army.

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My Review: There's a theme developing here...huge casts of characters, this time with lots of Scots Gaelic spellings for many things, people, organizations. Rebecca, our sleuth, stumbles into another community buzzsaw as she covers the protests against a convicted pedophile being housed in a working-class neighborhood that happens to be the turf of a crime family...in its most literal sense. The matriarch, Mo, is an understandably publicity-shy person. She has broken her public silence to lead the protests against the pedophile's housing among her people. Add in a right-wing politico out to woo voters to his vile cause by stoking paranoia (*sigh* in Scotland, too?) to a terrorist organization sowing fear and distrust plus a major motion picture using the touchy site of the Battle of Culloden and we're away!

The narratives are as expected loaded with wonderfully observed and described moments, people, emotions, and places. Possibly a bit harder to take in with equanimity are the anonymous narratives of a survivor of sexual assault. I was put off by them, but as the ending unfolded, I understood why Author Skelton made that particular choice. Be aware that it exists in the narrative, but also that it serves a plot purpose beyond prurience.

Journalism is undergoing a lot of changes in the internet age. Rebecca's job is, she feels, unstable because there have been some executive ownership shifts at her paper. What that means for her future is, clearly, to be determined...along with her interesting taste for local crime-family man Nolan. His mother, redoubtable Mo, isn't at all pleased with her son because he's done with crime and because he's been clear with her that he's not going to back away from fascinating, exciting Rebecca. This conflict is very clearly going to cost all concerned a lot of tears, stress, and heartache. *eager hand-rubbing*

The deaths at Culloden and the ugly truths undergirding their choice of methods and victims are part and parcel of the changes Brexit and the forces underlying it have revealed in Scottish society. The passions that nationalism, or I suppose tribalism is closer to the meaning I want, evokes in people are never more blatant than when History puts on her Mythmaking apron and brews up social poisons of stunning strength. What Author Skelton does with this, as with Mo and her criminal family, is scrape off the filthy film of facile propagandizing (he reserves that for Finbar the politico) for a clear-sighted look at why people adhere to often deeply destructive Causes and ideals. Means are never separable from ends. Ends are never separable from needs. Needs dictate the means at one's disposal. Round and round we go, where we'll stop nobody knows...even up to the moment that death results from in/actions that seem perfectly reasonable on their face.

There's a truly terrible sacrifice demanded by Justice, of course, and it strains everything in Rebecca's journalistic world, as well as in her emotional core. The journalist's liaision she of necessity maintains with the police is costing her dearly, and won't stop in the future. Her enemies have chosen her, as she would prefer not to make enemies at all. But that's what makes the complexity and enmeshment of the reader's intellect in the casuistries Rebecca must purvey, or puncture, or both in turn, so worth the effort.

You won't be surprised that I can't give five stars to a series mystery, given the nature of the beast is to scratch the ma'at rash that murder represents erupting on the body politic. Treading the same ground comes with costs. One of them is breaking new ground, so this four-and-a-half star read is as close to five as I myownself feel I can come.

I will say that the ending is both condign and very sad. It sets us up for some dark future probabilities and honestly I can't wait to see them.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A RATTLE OF BONES (Rebecca Connolly #3)
DOUGLAS SKELTON
Arcade CrimeWise
$26.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In 1752, Seamus a’Ghlynne, James of the Glen, was executed for the murder of government man Colin Campbell. He was almost certainly innocent.

When banners are placed at his gravesite claiming that his namesake, James Stewart, is innocent of murder, reporter Rebecca Connolly smells a story. The young Stewart has been in prison for ten years for the brutal murder of his lover, lawyer and politician Murdo Maxwell, in his Appin home. Rebecca soon discovers that Maxwell believed he was being followed prior to his murder and his phones were tapped.

Why is a Glasgow crime boss so interested in the case? As Rebecca keeps digging, she finds herself in the sights of Inverness crime matriarch Mo Burke, who wants payback for the damage caused to her family in a previous case.

Set against the stunning backdrop of the Scottish Highlands, A Rattle of Bones is a tale of injustice and mystery, and the echo of the past in the present.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: First, read this:

              Near Ballachulish, the Scottish Highlands, 1755
The red-coated soldier was a bloodstain against the dull sky and drab scrub on the hill.

It had a name, this desolate lump above the waters, a heathenish Scotch concotion of sounds, but he was damned if he could pronounce it. To him it was little more than a pox-ridden mound of dirt that drew the elements like a hedge whore did corn-faced beard-splitters.

The waters of the lake shivered as chill breeze weaved its way up the hill to find his solitary figure standing post. Private Henry Greenway huddled deeper into his coat, watching the small ferry being rowed across the narrows. He wished he was in his billet, a cup of hot grog in one hand and a mutton pie, warm from the oven, in the other. This was a pointless duty, a punishment for not taking proper care of the Brown Bess he now crooked loosely in one arm. His sergeant would be displeased to see him cradle the gun so carelessly, except there was no one here to bear witness, except the blasted elements and the one he guarded, who was beyond caring, Greenway wagered.

There's no question that scene sets a very clear tone...and it's one that very much resonates through this third entry in the Rebecca Connolly thriller series.

With the new life she lucked into at the end of book two lurching into gear, Rebecca Connolly can truly feel the cold truth of freedom on her neck: No one can say no but no one needs to answer her questions, or give her leads, or so much as consider offering her the chance to do what she most wants to do: fix stuff.

She's got to build her reputation all over again, in a new and different world of newsgathering, and she loves it. When Rebecca's last adventure ended in so much loss, yet so much opportunity being spread before her, this story is the one that unfolds to her horrified fascination. James Stewart, Tanist of Clan Stewart and a wrongfully convicted victim of judicial murder, has a strong resonance with an imprisoned modern-day James Stewart convicted of murdering his politician lover...though to be honest there's pretty much no sensible motive (at least to my mind) for him to have done so, and he insists that he didn't, just as the eighteenth-century James did. Because I am indifferent to spoilers, I wikied up the long-ago story and spent the rest of the book looking for the ways the current story resonated with it. Rebecca, not having my information, gets involved in this fearsomely complex muddle blind to these clues. This situation is, unsurprisingly, one that draws in her old foes from the last book. It was handled in what I found to be a plausible way.

The main character is one I love spending time with, and love sharing troubles with. This outing into the world of crusading journalism is as deeply satisfying as before. Rebecca has a difficult group of folks whose involvement in her current investigative project is central...the mother of a jailed innocent, for example, has every reason not to respond positively to a journalist...but no access to an established powerbase to give her an effective lever to prise open their minds. All she's got is her tenacity and her inability to admit defeat.

These qualities work wonders. They usually do. Afua, the mother of the present-day innocent James Stewart, is a vividly drawn rageball, betrayed and abused by those with power over her and her son's fate. She's inflexible...it's cost her a lot, but when you have no one to turn to you need to be strong...and she's got a mother's outrage at her child's ill treatment fueling her. Watching as she learns to tolerate Rebecca's "interference" in her own chaotic efforts to free her James was frustrating for me. Stiff-necked inflexible people are maddening!

What makes The story satisfying to read is the usual tension between a homophobic culture and the reality of the ease with which anyone Othered can be used to hide real criminals on the one hand, and Author Skelton's clear and unwavering presentation of these gay people as ordinary, average people. It's distressing but refreshing to see the sexual nature of the characters simply be a fact, and only the bad actors and evildoers investing in their Othering for the lowest of motives.

Literally everything about these reads is immersive...landscapes, relationships among the characters, the background concerns of twenty-first century Scotland and of news media outside major cities and underneathe international radar, which is of course where all of us live our real lives. They're present and they're intentional but they aren't competing for your readerly attention. Author Skelton makes the propulsive story much richer by allowing the reader to choose how much thought to devote to these interrelated parts while assuring the main focus is always what we saw on the marquee.

Far and away my favorite of the three reads to date.

FIRE ON THE ISLAND: A Romantic Thriller, Greek-American gay sleuth in the homeland & THE FOURTH COURIER, end-of-Cold-War spyjinks story

FIRE ON THE ISLAND: A Romantic Thriller
TIMOTHY JAY SMITH
Arcade Crimewise (NON-AFFILIATE Amazon link
$2.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: For lovers of crime fiction and the allure of the Greek islands, Fire on the Island is the perfect summer read.

FIRE ON THE ISLAND is a playful, romantic thriller set in contemporary Greece, with a gay Greek-American FBI agent, who is undercover on the island to investigate a series of mysterious fires. Set against the very real refugee crisis on the beautiful, sun-drenched Greek islands, this novel paints a loving portrait of a community in crisis. As the island residents grapple with declining tourism, poverty, refugees, family feuds, and a perilously damaged church, an arsonist invades their midst.

Nick Damigos, the FBI agent, arrives on the island just in time to witness the latest fire and save a beloved truffle-sniffing dog. Hailed as a hero and embraced by the community, Nick finds himself drawn to Takis, a young bartender who becomes his primary suspect, which is a problem because they're having an affair. Theirs is not the only complicated romance in the community and Takis isn't the only suspicious character on the island. Nick has to unravel the truth in time to prevent catastrophe, as he comes to terms with his own past trauma. In saving the village, he will go a long way toward saving himself.

A long time devotee of the Greek islands, Smith paints the setting with gorgeous color and empathy, ushering in a new romantic thriller with the charm of Zorba the Greek while shedding bright light on the very real challenges of life in contemporary Greece.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The main thing a person wants in a beach read is escape, right? A chance to see something new and different in the world while baking on a sandy stretch of not-my-problem, with a little light romance/sex tossed (!) in for fun. And here it is, laddies and gentlewomen: The prescription substance for your beach-read needs.

Nick is our sort-of PoV character, though I think the novel's fairly ensemble-cast-y. He provides the action that solves the problems, so it's not unfair to promote him to centrality. He's a Greek-American settled in Athens, where he does Greek-themed stuff for the FBI. Considering how important Greece is to many and various criminal enterprises within the US, this didn't raise my eyebrows. The situation in which Nick arrives...an active refugee crisis, a local problem with criminal arson, a subplot of Russian-mafia troubles...was, then, one in which I could certainly imagine US federal law enforcement taking enough of an interest to send someone to monitor.

I'm a little more skeptical about Nick's open gayness. Not so much in Greece...the history's there, and the Greek townspeople's homophobia isn't over- or under-played...but in the FBI. Gayness within the federal law enforcement establishment isn't surprising but its openness is to me. I suspended disbelief on the subject because I could simply be behind the times and am most certainly sour and suspicious of all law enforcement personnel.

That said, those were my principal struggles with the book's set-up; its delivery of them, and of the remaining elements of the plot, was most agreeably deft and disarming. I knew from the start that the idea of the village was to offer the storyteller a pressure cooker. The Greece-to-Australia pipeline is well and truly attested for generations now, and plays a large part here in this story. The ways Author Smith brought the connection to life were sneaky and very nicely executed, having the desired effect of making the guilt of Nick's local fling Takis look inevitable while making sure that he couldn't really be guilty. (You'll work that out in mere moments when the means of linking Takis to the crimes is presented.) So, while it plays out, enjoy the mummery. Likewise Nick, the scion of Greek emigrants, is treading a well-worn real-world path from Greece to Baltimore and back again. The refugee crisis is horribly real. Its dreadful, cruel scope isn't even as severe in the story as in reality. The ongoing Greek debt crisis is presented but not explored because, honestly, would you rather read about a sexy young guy setting his sights on a silver fox and then bedding him, or microeconomic consequences of predatory capitalism?

Me neither. And, for the ewww-ick homophobes, the sex is not explicit or more than sketched in. Perfect beach-read level sexytimes, with plenty of happy coupling left to the adult relationship veteran's inner eye. What sex wasn't pleasant to view to one's inner eye was the sadder-but-wiser loss of virginity for a teen girl, an event she precipitates and, while it was happening, realizes is pretty damned disappointing. She doesn't leave the experience with good feelings about it. She also realizes what her own responsibilities in the situation are when it threatens to run her true love's course into a brick wall. Luckily she's a sensible person and makes very sure to exert her quite considerable will towards the resolution she wants to bring about. I was pleased that she was both a teenager...moody, nasty, angry as hell about whatever it is that makes teens so angry...and a burgeoning adult, with a clear goal she sets when things are at their most bewilderingly loud. I liked her for that trait.

Her mother and grandparents have a surprising connection to the arsons that bring Nick to the island. Her family's Australian connection and resultant outsiderdom are played for some clear plot advantages. The family isn't as outside as they feel themselves to be. The village, in fact, doesn't come out of the arsons and the other terrible crimes that occur while Nick is there entirely unchanged. The problems Nick knew were festering and which his mere presence were always going to lance were the sorts of issues that confront small, tight-knit communities the world over. In the end, Nick's actions in pursuit of solutions are as well-aimed at the dark and ugly past as at the creepy present.

While I liked that aspect of the story, I think I might've liked Nick a lot more for his characterization than his actions. He's in the early stages of midlife. He's got a terrible, nightmarish trauma in his past that he doesn't like to reveal. As it has physical marks on his body, he's reluctant to be as slutty as most gay characters in beach reads are (goddesses please bless their anti-gravity underwear). His body dysmorphia comes from literal scarring events, and it's shown as being truly troubling for Nick to confront. Takis is the agent of his reassessment of the problem. It is shown that Takis is singularly uninterested in Nick's scars and quite empathetic with his scarring. That was a very nice side-show in their passionate seasonal fling.

I also particularly resonated with the fact that everyone from the island is shown as possessing a very solid motivation for their actions, and those motivations (dark or bright) were delineated in enough detail that I could make them part of my response to the tale as a whole. I think the author's investment of time in revealing the town's traumas caused and endured paid off...even the revelation of the arsonist led to the revelation of the motives and the sheer awfulness of Hatred, that dark miasma clouding the haters' ability to see the essential sameness of all human beings. It was well handled. I didn't condone the actions that led to the actions I didn't condone, which matryoshka-doll of a response is far more complex than most beach-read thrillers I've read over the years.

But there are no perfect experiences in this, our life, are there. I wasn't really impressed with the handling of the art-forgery subplot. and its blatant gaudy obviousness. I was moved, and saddened, by the reasons for arsonist's tricks. I wasn't at all impressed that the consequences were so severe for the present-day crimes and not equally severe for those that motivated them in the first place. I was very amused with the by-play between Takis and Nick, the way they make what can only be a season's romance into something both fun and important to them both. I suppose a door was left open at the end for them to reconnect but it was pretty heavily deterministically set down as "nevermore." A bit less of a hammerblow to the gauzy soft-focus desire for A Happy Ending to their happy endings wouldn't have come amisss, and as it was felt more like the author was caving in to pressure to close down that Happy Ending.

None of these are deal-breakers, I hasten to add. I want to read more Timothy Jay Smith stories and I can definitely recommend this one to you for your beach reading pleasure.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE FOURTH COURIER
TIMOTHY JAY SMITH
Arcade Crimewise
$24.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: For International Espionage Fans of Alan Furst and Daniel Silva, a new thriller set in post-Soviet era Poland.

It is 1992 in Warsaw, Poland, and the communist era has just ended. A series of grisly murders suddenly becomes an international case when it's feared that the victims may have been couriers smuggling nuclear material out of the defunct Soviet Union. The FBI sends an agent to help with the investigation. When he learns that a Russian physicist who designed a portable atomic bomb has disappeared, the race is on to find him—and the bomb—before it ends up in the wrong hands.

Smith’s depiction of post-cold war Poland is gloomily atmospheric and murky in a world where nothing is quite as it seems. Suspenseful, thrilling, and smart, The Fourth Courier brings together a straight white FBI agent and gay black CIA officer as they team up to uncover a gruesome plot involving murder, radioactive contraband, narcissistic government leaders, and unconscionable greed.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Atmospheric, dark thriller about the immediate aftermath of the USSR's fall, its consequences for the former Warsaw Pact countries (especially Poland), and a morally ambiguous story of how the balance of power stays balanced.

I was unsurprised to see the homophobia of the Eastern Bloc countries brought into focus...remember Swimming in the Dark? Nationalist Love?...but was quite surprised to see it used to make a US spy into a honey trap for a General known to be, um, susceptible. It's such a realpolitik maneuver that I've always assumed it was simply unknown. Silly me. If something can provide leverage, of course it's been used by both sides.

Kurt, our gay character, is both Black and a CIA honey trap for the self-loathing General. He's...fine with it. He uses his body, its beauty and power, to further the interests of his chosen side. This means he's not a good gay, or a good guy. This being Reality I'm all down with this in theory. In practice, as it's handled in this story, it's a bit more like prostitution than it is noble self-sacrifice. I'm not criticizing here but analyzing what it is that the two things have in common: Exchange of value. The sheer mercenary chill of Kurt giving the General what he craves is perfectly appropriate, if distasteful.

Again, the consummation of the act isn't explicit. It's more detailed than it was in Fire on the Island. It's staged in a shower, and that made me chuckle...let's keep it clean, boys!...and the ending, which is indeed Happy, is somewhat heavy-handedly made into a political commentary. But I wasn't anywhere near as creeped out as I routinely am in these sorts of situations when it's a woman using her body to get a man to do something for her side. My primary issue is: That's it. That's what Kurt's there to do, he does it, and buh bye now!

As with all the gay characters in the book, they serve a role and vacate the scene when it's fulfilled. I found Jay, straight and narrow Jay, uninteresting really. He was an investigator who didn't investigate but ran across answers. It's not like that is unknown in thrillerdom. It just doesn't endear him to me. And honestly I just do not care about his ex-wife or about his borning relationship with Lilka the Polish lady, which yet again (see review above) is clearly stated as Not Going Anywhere.

Nowhere near as much fun to read as Fire on the Island, but I wanted to finish the read. I was involved, I was entertained, and yet still I was unsatisfied because Kurt was underutilized. Why tell me about him at all if all he was there to do was fuck one guy and then melt down the shower drain with his jizz?

I don't doubt that straight people will like it more than I did.