Authors and publishers are still experimenting with their craft. Centuries and modern print-face, bigger and smaller print, over and under 100 chapters, chapters numbered and not, spaces instead of chapters, single and double quote marks, beginning the story on page one or three or higher. Not to mention the variety in covers.
The October List By Jeffery Deaver Grand Central paperback 2014 384pp Available at Asia Books and Leading bookshops, 315 baht
This reviewer regards it all as good fun. Picking up each book with anticipation, I seek the gimmick used and smile when I find it. Sometimes obvious, at other times subtle. Alas, all too many readers miss it and fail to experience the pleasure of discovery.
In the book under review they can't possibly miss it. Popular and prolific American author Jeffery Deaver has gone all-out in the October List. A one-off, he's never gone this far and it's unlikely he will again. Nor will others of his ilk follow in his footsteps.
Deaver has written this crime thriller backwards. The October List opens with Chapter 36 — the climax — and ends 300-some-odd pages later, with Chapter 1. The title page and foreword come at the end. The form brings to mind the film Back To The Future. We are expected to read it as presented. Back to front loses the effect.
Nevertheless, the plot only makes sense in proper chronological order. Set in the Big Apple, the protagonist is Gabriela McKenzie. An undercover policewoman, beautiful, divorced, no children, she works in a multinational company which produces nothing, making fabulous profits from illegal activities.
Were its boss not so elusive, our heroine would have nailed him earlier. She comes up with a scam that will put him in one place. A fictitious list of criminals and evidence of their crimes. In addition, she claims to have a daughter who has been kidnapped, letting it be known that she'll trade the list for her daughter and add $400,000 as a sweetener.
Enter a sociopath, who claims to have the daughter and will do the trade. Gabriela has no time for the NYPD, who accidentally killed her detective father, but calls on their help to apprehend the "abductor", yet he keeps outsmarting them. Getting his kicks from torturing and killing women, he notifies her that she's on his list.
The October List is worth reading, not because it's an interesting plot, but for its unique presentation.
The Bourne Retribution By Robert Ludlum/Eric van Lustbader Grand Central paperback, 2014 425pp
An odd sort of hero
Throughout the 19th century, when famed authors, e.g. Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas, passed away, their popular characters went with them. In the 20th century, however, publishers or families of the deceased came up with the idea of carrying on with the characters, albeit with stand-in writers.
All too often it didn't work. The stand-ins work is deficient in one way or another. A few, it may be said, were eminently successful. This practice continues in the 21st century. When Robert Ludlum, one of the top scribes of thrillers, left the scene, another top scribe, Eric van Lustbader, became his stand-in.
Purists may opine that Ludlum was in a class of his own, but this reviewer takes issue with this. As I see it, Lustbader does Ludlum's literary creation, Jason Bourne, proud. As does Matt Damon in screen adaptations. When Bourne first appears fished out of the Mediterranean he lost his memory.
In each story in the ever-lengthening series, he learns a little more about himself. Adept in close combat and weaponry, fluent in languages, a master of disguise, killing without conscience those he considers enemies. Those who know him regard him as a rogue agent.
On the side of the good guys, Jason is the bane of the existence of the bad. The love of his life, Rebeka, has a mysterious background. Another good agent with a license to kill. When she dies in his arms in Mexico City, he resolves to go after the killer, thus the The Bourne Retribution.
In the process, our hero takes on the Mexican drug cartels and the Chinese Politburo, leaving a trail of bodies behind him. He is close to Isreal's Mossad director. Not so close to a Russian FSB courier. Much is made of rivalries in high places in Beijing. Polonium is the poison of choice to get rid of them.
Lots of action, Bourne gets out of cliffhanging situations incredibly well. Chases and shoot-outs, swordplay and knife-fighting, straight razors and improvised toxic gas make for non-stop action. Hamas mortaring Israel isn't omitted. Twists and turns as expected. The last one will have you shaking your head.
Jason Bourne has so many aficionados, there's no end in sight to the series. In J. Edgar Hoover's time crime didn't pay. Period. Since then, gunslingers and vigilantes are the literary heroes. Don't you find this odd?
