‘Room of White Fire’ a dark and violent book
‘Charlatans’ teases, but fails to thrill
By Bruce Desilva
he Room of White Fire’ Sons), by Roland Ford is a private investigator who excels at finding missing people. He’s also a former police officer, an Iraq war combat veteran and a widower who is tortured by the loss of his wife, who comes to him now in waking dreams.
Dr Briggs Spencer is a psychologist who made millions teaching the CIA how to effectively torture suspects. He is atoning for it now — or so he says — by operating a chain of quality hospitals for the mentally ill. When a troubled Air Force veteran named Clay Hickman escapes from one of Briggs’ hospitals, the psychologist hires Ford to track him down.
“The Room of White Fire,” the first of a planned series of Roland Ford novels by veteran thriller writer T. Jefferson Parker, initially unfolds like a standard private eye novel. But as Ford digs deeper into the case, he discovers that everyone, from the hospital staff to Hickman’s parents, is either lying or has been lied to about the young man’s military record.
Hickman, it seems, knows a dark secret about America’s war on terror, and powerful and dangerous people are prepared to do whatever it takes to make sure the secret is never told.
As Ford searches for both Hickman and the truth, Parker deftly builds the tension from suspense to menace to an overwhelming sense of dread. The result is a fast-paced, beautifully written thriller.
Although “The Room of White Fire” is a dark and violent book, it ends on the hopeful note that even in these complicated times, a single man with courage and integrity sometimes can still make a difference.
Bruce DeSilva, winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, is the author of the Mulligan crime novels including “The Dread Line.”
“Charlatans”
(G.P. Putnam’s
(G.P. Putnam’s Sons), by
For his thirty-fifth novel, Robin Cook chose a subject scarier than a viral outbreak or comas or bioterrorism: doctors.
“Charlatans” centers on the life of Noah Rothauser, the super chief resident at Boston Memorial Hospital (BMH). Young and ambitious, Rothauser’s career is on the fast track. But when a series of anesthesia-related deaths rock the hospital, he starts to question a great many things about his chosen profession.
Cook, a physician himself, has always had plenty to say about the state of modern medicine, but “Charlatans” suggests that he’s more worried than ever. BMH features the latest and greatest technology, but the people using it to treat patients are stuck in a system that hasn’t changed since the start of the 20th century. Rothauser is dedicated to becoming a doctor at the expense of everything else in his life while doctors in the book who have already earned their M.D. are egotistic and entitled, often flaunting the rules and blaming their colleagues when something goes wrong.
The novel’s plot zooms along, but it never feels that suspenseful. In part, that’s because Cook spends a great many pages as the omniscient narrator, telling readers what characters are thinking and why they’re behaving in a certain way rather than showing them their actions and letting readers draw their own conclusions. Here’s an example from inside Noah’s head: “He wondered when he would hear from her, whether the next day or the day after that ... not since high school ... had he been quite so confused, irritated and worried all at the same time.”
Interesting
Noah is by far the most interesting character. The others feel too one-dimensional. Even the mysterious and beautiful Dr. Ava London, who lives in a three-story Beacon Hill home she shouldn’t be able to afford and maintains multiple social media profiles, never reaches the level of complexity she should. When we do learn her real life story, it provokes more of a shoulder shrug than an aha moment.
What Cook does well, and always has, are set pieces in the hospital. Each of the three patient death scenes are meticulously written, with crackling dialogue that readers will recognize from medical TV dramas: “He’s in ventricular fibrillation”; “I’m in the thorax and looking at the heart”; “Go ahead and bronch him!” It’s when the time of death is called and the action settles down that the book loses much of its momentum.
Still, Cook fans will keep turning the pages. He does make readers think with long passages about how medical training needs to adapt and how technology is reshaping not only the practice of medicine, but also what it means to be a doctor. At your next checkup, it may even make you wonder about those fancy diplomas
This cover image released by G.P. Putnam’s Sons shows ‘Y for Yesterday’ by Sue Grafton.
(AP)
on your physician’s wall.
“Y is for Yesterday” by
“Y is for Yesterday” is Sue Grafton’s projected penultimate novel in her alphabet series about intrepid California private investigator Kinsey Millhone. And if the series does end with “Z’’ — and there’s no reason to believe that it won’t be the finale — it’s going out with even deeper plots and more intense characterizations than when it debuted 35 years ago. Despite clocking in at 496 pages, “Y is for Yesterday” briskly moves Kinsey’s story forward.
Set in 1989, the theme of this 25th outing with Kinsey could, with a few variations, be set in 2017 with bullies, a cheating scandal and a sense of entitlement among high school students. “Y is for Yesterday” revolves around the murder of a high school senior by a classmate who was egged on by another student. That incident happened in 1979, but that decade-old crime seems like it happened yesterday to those who were involved, all of whom have been “marked by the tragedy.”
Kinsey is hired by the parents of Fritz McCabe,
(G.P. Putnam’s Sons),
This cover image released by G.P. Putnam’s Sons shows ‘Charlatans’ by Robin
Cook. (AP)
newly released from prison for shooting classmate Sloan Stevens when he was 15. Because of his age, California law requires that Fritz be released. He receives a demand for $25,000, with the threat that a 10-year-old tape showing Fritz and another student sexually abusing a drunken freshman will be released to police if the demand isn’t paid. Kinsey’s investigation follows the lives of those who attended a tony private high school and who were, in one way or another, involved in the shooting and the making of the tape. As Kinsey says, her case has everything: “Youth, … money, betrayal.”
She is also worried that serial killer Ned Lowe is still at large and has targeted her as his next victim.
Grafton skillfully delves into the psyche of this band of friends, many of whom peaked in high school, showing how the acts of teenagers affect their lives as adults.
From “A’’ to now “Y,” Kinsey is still the same “single and cranky-minded” private detective she always has been. But Grafton has almost imperceptibly allowed her to grow. She’s opened herself up a bit to relatives she didn’t know she had. She still is close to her landlord, Henry, who also is her surrogate father. And “Y is for Yesterday” finds Kinsey embracing, almost, a cat and a dog. (It’s a start.)
When “Z’’ comes out — planned for 2019 — Kinsey will be approaching her 40th birthday — and Grafton drops a few hints about what might await her. Meanwhile, savor “Y is for Yesterday.”
NEW YORK:
Also:
One of the country’s most honored poets, Jorie Graham, has received a $100,000 lifetime achievement award.
The Academy of American Poets told The Associated Press on Monday that Graham is this year’s winner of the Wallace Stevens Award for “proven mastery” in poetry. Graham’s books include the Pulitzer Prizewinning “The Dream of the Unified Field.” The $25,000 Academy of American Poets Fellowship went to Ed Roberson and the $25,000 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize was given to Patrick Rosal for his collection “Brooklyn Antediluvian.” The Marshall prize honors the best book of the previous year.
Thomas E. Peterson won a $25,000 translation prize for his work on the poetry of Italian writer Franco Fortini. Sam Sax’s “Bury It” won a $5,000 prize for best second book of poetry. (AP)