Comic strip artists and writers of thrillers have the same idea _ creating a character that can defeat evil single-handedly. The drawback is that when actual evil people come on stage, it requires the army, navy and marines to take them down. During WWII, I was one of millions of kids disillusioned that Superman didn't make short shrift of Hitler.
KILLING FOR THE COMPANY by Chris Ryan 404pp 2011 Coronet paperback. Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops, 695 baht.
Be that as it may, children and adults are still being fed superheroes of one kind or another. Rough or smooth, humanoids or human, each is powerful, super intelligent, expert with any weapon, dedicated to justice and right. America and Britain have the majority of them, other lands fewer but of the same breed.
Alas, they don't exist. Yet the scriveners expect us to suspend disbelief because they make us feel safe and secure. After all, we can't defeat evil. They can. At least for the length of the story. And there are often other books of the same ilk. Killing for the Company is like that. Chris Ryan, a bemedalled ex-SAS soldier, is the author.
In his successive novels, Ryan writes what he knows best: war. Relating battles in the first person, or personae based on real members of the 22nd Regiment of SAS, the elite special forces of the UK, he makes the reader feel like an observer. And the protagonist is every inch the hero.
The venues move from Serbia to Iraq to the UK to Israel. Chet Freeman and Luke Mercer are regimental buddies until Chet loses a leg and joins the Stateside Grosvenor Group. For some reason, somebody is trying to kill him. Meeting Suze McArthur and siring their child, he goes to blazes literally. She goes on the run.
Years pass. Enter Evil: Maya Bloom, a hitwoman for Mossad stationed in Albion. Her parents killed by a suicide bomber, she enjoys killing Arabs ("All Arabs are terrorists"). She also carries out wet jobs on non-Arabs, ordered by her superiors, reluctantly, Chet among her victims.
Suze contacts Luke to help her. He uncovers a conspiracy that the ex-British prime minister is trying to foment another Israeli war. In the penultimate chapter Luke and Maya thwart an attempt to blow up the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. And guess what? Superhero Chet isn't dead!
Killing for the Company is more complex than Ryan's previous works. Still, it reflects the complexity of the situation in the Middle East.
THE LEOPARD by Jo Nesbo. 740pp 2011 Vintage paperback. Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops, 350 baht.
Stop, already
Reviewers rarely mention it, but we have attention spans. From experience, we get the gist of a story as early as the first chapter, no later than the third. Our minds do the arithmetic and we calculate how many pages it will take it to unfold. Without discussing it among ourselves, we come up with pretty much the same number: 350 pages for novels.
Authors, however, fail to realise that after that figure, our interest wanes. They write on and on, some paid by the word and keep an eye on the adding machine. Others have editors with a blunt red pencil. The exceptions are historical novels whose names, dates and places take up space.
I felt this strongly while reading The Leopard by Jo Nesbo, translated from Norwegian by Don Bartlett, which runs and runs and runs to 740 pages. Not that its pace is leisurely _ what with bodies piling up, red herrings and changes of venues to three continents _ yet none of it justifies being twice the length it should be.
Granted, Nesbo's literary creation isn't the stereotyped protagonist: Homicide Inspector Harry Hole is a lush, a druggie, a gambler (horses). His wife, keeping their son, threw him out of the house. His chief tolerates him because he's honest and intrepid, but is too frank for his own good.
A serial killer is murdering women who seemingly have no connection. No clues. The rest of the force stumped, the cases are thrown into Hole's lap. The number of pages enables him to have an on-off affair with one of his subordinates. As lovers go, she isn't faithful, only to return with tears and apologies and a proposal.
Rejected because he longs to return to the fold if and when he straightens out. Still, sex is permissible. What has it to do with love? Back to the crimes, a possible connection is found: Investors in a business venture in the Congo. The author details tortures to natives slow to reveal where diamonds and rare minerals may be found.
The good inspector is given leave to check out his suspicions. By then the miscreants put him on their hit list. Battered but alive, he keeps his trousers zipped long enough to nail the culprits. Then off to Hong Kong for the horse racing. The likelihood of Hole being welcomed back into hearth and home remain distant.
