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.
