1) "The Osterman Weekend" by Robert Ludlum
Not as imposing a superstruct as The Scarlatti Inheritance, but the same powerhouse momentum in the story of three families who live, very well, in a New Jersey suburb and the Ostermans -- their mutual friends -- who come for a get-together weekend, and the mythical man from the C.I.A. who blows them all apart with his revelation of a Russian-based program. As shrill as the siren on the prowl car that keeps turning the corner without ever stopping. Neither does this.
2) "The Chancellor Manuscript" by Robert Ludlum
3) "Iron House" by John Hart
In Hart’s latest (The Last Child, 2009, etc.) a vengeful ex-orphan tracks fellow former orphans, asylum not on offer.
Michael and Julian, brothers, abandoned as babies, lead lives of mounting desperation in a prototypically grim orphanage tucked away in the North Carolina high country. Iron Mountain Home for Boys has long sped past hardscrabble on its way to Dickensian, and the brothers have endured every manner of unkindness known to unprincipled orphanage management. Michael, 10, physically and temperamentally suited to vicissitude, can cope with Iron House’s horrors. Sensitive, painfully vulnerable Julian can’t. He falls victim to a particularly nasty quintet of bullies, who catch and torment him whenever his older brother is occupied elsewhere. Suddenly, events take an even darker turn, and Michael is forced to flee, leaving Julian unprotected. But not for long. Enter the elegant and very rich Abigail Vane, wife of U.S. Senator Randall Vane, who not only plucks Julian from Iron House but nurtures him lovingly all the years it takes for his career to blossom. When it does, Julian is an A-list, bestselling author. Meanwhile, Michael, too, finds a benefactor, though of a considerably different stripe. Respected almost as much as he’s feared, Otto Kaitlin is the powerful, high-profile rackets boss who recognizes in Michael a kindred spirit and takes him under his wing. Counseled by Kaitlin, Michael becomes an adroit, unregenerate killer, hell bent on a brilliant gangster future. But then Michael falls in love with a good woman, and all bets are off. Will he now seek some sort of redemption? Will the brothers finally reunite? Will Iron House be revisited so that the brutish five can get a well-deserved comeuppance? The plot twists and turns supply a full measure of answers, few of them unpredictable, most of them engulfed in gobs of gratuitous violence.
Two-time Edgar Award winner Hart, after three first-rate outings, is not at his best in what amounts to a soap opera for the macho set.
4) "Children of Paranoia" by Trevor Shane
Joseph, a young assassin drafted into a longstanding shadow war in which loved ones are routinely killed for no apparent reason but revenge, falls in love with a Canadian girl and attempts to escape to a new life with her.
Joseph, the would-be hero and narrator of Shane's first novel, doesn't know what he's fighting for, only that if he doesn't do his job, the "evil" deeds committed by the other side won't be answered. Knives are preferred over guns. The best weapons are his bare hands, which he uses to choke a targeted woman to death outside her Brooklyn brownstone in the book's opening scene. Though the war has been going on for some time, most people seem to be unaware of it, even though high-school kids are instructed on their future roles. (You have to be 18 to become a soldier; no one under the age of 18 can be killed.) After he falls for Maria during a botched job in Montreal—they meet cute in front of a porno theater—he tells her what he does and breaks all kinds of other rules to be with her, especially after learning she's carrying his baby son. He also violates code to spend time with his two best friends and fellow killers, Michael and Jared. There are other assignments in the war, we learn. You can also work intelligence or be a "breeder" leading a domestic life to keep the ranks replenished. Credibility is not Shane's strong suit. There are too many question marks and unlikelihoods hanging over the plot, and over 17-year-old Maria. Give the author credit for sustaining the story as well as he does, and for devising a compelling finish. But he hasn't satisfactorily worked out his premise, one reason why the paranoia played up in the title is never felt on the page. Having introduced the rule that if you have a child before you turn 18, you have to turn it over to the other side, Shane does nothing with it. Maybe he's saving that for the sequel he sets up.
Senseless individuals carry out a senseless sort-of-secret war, with not a true hero or even a protester in sight.
5) "The Eiger Sanction" by Trevanian
Assassin Jonathan's only true passions involve works of art and loyalty to friends -- leading respectively to work for a more-or-less ept arm of an inept CIA-like agency, and several extracurricular rub-outs of former friends to avenge the victims, also friends. But the well-meaning treachery of the one girl he is warming to results in a simple good-by before the climax in which he climbs a forbidding Alp to chase an unknown target. Killings, triple crosses, and a spaghetti plot -- all with plenty of sauce.
6) "A Simple Plan" by Scott Smith
A fairy-tale windfall blasts the lives of two brothers, determined to do whatever it takes to hold onto the money, in Scott's electrifying first novel. On their way to visit their parents' graves in rural Ohio, Hank Mitchell and his brother Jacob, together with Jacob's no-account pal Lou, find a downed plane, a dead pilot, and four million dollars. After briefly considering turning the money over to the authorities, they decide to let Hank keep it for six months to see whether anybody comes looking for it--believing in their innocence that if nobody does, they'll be safe in spending it. But the very next day, when Hank and Jacob are back at the plane to make sure they haven't left any traces of their presence, they're forced to kill a witness to their discovery. When Lou finds out and begins to blackmail Hank for advances on his share of the loot, Hank's surprisingly resourceful wife Sarah comes up with a scheme to shut his mouth--a scheme that ends, inevitably, in more violence, as Hank keeps killing to protect his family's stake in the American dream, the secrets of his earlier murders, and his sense of himself as normal ``despite everything I've done that might make it seem otherwise.'' By the time the horrific plot has wound down, nine people have died, with more deaths (the Mitchell parents, seven victims in a Detroit kidnapping) hanging heavily over the story. Yet Smith infuses each new twist of violence with shocks of unexpected pity, as Hank, devastated by the killing, keeps drifting back to the rationale he and Sarah share: He had to do it, it wasn't his fault. An eerily flat confessional whose horror is only deepened by its flashes of tenderness. Think of a backwater James M. Cain, or a contemporary midwestern Unforgiven--and don't think about getting any sleep tonight. (First printing of 75,000; film rights...?)
7) "The Loo Sanction" by Trevanian
Trevanian, you'll remember, can keep up with the old Len Deighton and this is the second appearance of Jonathan Hemlock, ex C11-art critic who finds a still life in the loo, his. This also has something to do with interorganizational activities and with a Loo organization, run by a Vicar, and sanctions which are assassinations (bodies used as covers or the means of leaking the wrong information) and a girl called Maggie Coyne. You'll miss her -- he does. In a word, irreducible, with the decisively punchy, stylish clout as before.
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