Knight's Reading List XIX: July 2008

Reading List:

Coben, Harlan. Promise Me.
McCarry, Charles. The Tears of Autumn.
Saramago, Jose. The Cave.
Stewart, Mary. The Last Enchantment.
Stewart, Mary. The Wicked Day.

Fiction:

Coben, Harlan. Promise Me. Dutton, 2006. 370 pages.

The late, great, Robert E. Howard once said that his hero had to be a little stupid, because if he were too intelligent he wouldn’t get into the situations Howard needed him to encounter. Howard may have been speaking of his most famous character, Conan the Cimmerian, but the comment applies to many of the heroes of thrillers and adventure novels. Many of these stories depend upon vows of secrecy or other mechanisms to keep the protagonist from just picking up the telephone and calling the police, the potential victim’s parents, or the local newspaper, an act which would end the novel on page 15.

This is one of those stories. Myron Bolitar, sports agent and former basketball star, foolishly extracts a promise from the teen-age daughter of a friend to call him if she’s in trouble. To induce her to keep the promise, which he intends as insurance against her taking a ride with a drunken boyfriend, he promises not to reveal anything he might learn to the girl’s parents. By the time Bolitar is induced to break that promise, both he and the girl are in deep trouble. This story hinges on a foolish promise, and upon hiding a bit of information that should have been exposed rather quickly. These artifices allow Coben to keep us turning the pages in this thriller, but they also make it rather unsatisfying in the end. If Myron Bolitar were just a little smarter, there’d be no story here at all.

McCarry, Charles. The Tears of Autumn. Overlook Press, 2005 [1974]. 276 pages.

Speaking of satisfying thrillers, this lovely, lovely book, first published in 1974 is one of the best I’ve ever read. We’re talking about deep plots on the order of John LeCarre, elegant prose, and terrific descriptions of scenes around the world. There is a sequence in Vietnam which is as heart stopping as anything in the oeuvre of Adam Hall. McCarry, who worked for the CIA in the 50s and 60s, sets up Paul Christopher as smart, knowledgeable, and brave, and Christopher drives himself into the middle of the Kennedy assassination plot. McCarry does a beautiful job of working his fictional scenes into the background of facts, so that the reader will find himself asking if this is the real explanation of Kennedy’s killing.

Overlook press began reprinting McCarry’s novels in 2005, and this was the first of the series. It was an excellent choice. I, for one, intend to find more Charles McCarry novels and read them. If they are all as good as The Tears of Autumn, I’m going to spend many enjoyable hours with them.

Saramago, Jose. The Cave. Harcourt, 2002. 307 pages.

Saramago is a Nobel Prize winner in literature and a well-known Portuguese of the leftist persuasion. As the title indicates, this spare story draws upon Plato’s parable to explore our struggles to cope with a world we perceive only dimly. Unfortunately, a couple of the major characters failed to come alive for me, and the economy Saramago creates is simplified to the point of being a parody. I don’t think there was really enough here to make a novel of even this moderate length.

Stewart, Mary. The Last Enchantment. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1979. 538 pages. Sequel to The Hollow Hills.

This is the finale to the legend of Merlin, and Stewart does a nice job of wrapping up this complex tale of love and betrayal. The way she portrays the relationship between Guinevere and Bedwyr captures the tragic conflict between love and duty, desire and nobility. By the way, Stewart doesn’t include the character Sir Launcelot du Lake, noting that this name is a late addition to the Arthurian legend. This book completes the story of Merlin and Arthur, but it doesn’t quite complete Arthur’s tale.

Stewart, Mary. The Wicked Day. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1983. 453 pages.

The Wicked Day is the story of Mordred, King Arthur’s illegitimate son by his half-sister. Naturally, no good can come of incest and deception, and this book takes us through Mordred’s life, as told by himself, to the point when he and Arthur, all unwilling, battle each other for the kingdom and all is lost. No, this isn’t a cheerful story, as it seems that human frailty, misunderstanding, and suspicion must turn all good intentions into daggers pointed at the hearts of those we love. Throughout the Arthurian legend runs a theme of good intentions thwarted and love gone wrong. This book makes that theme starkly plain.