The Busy Body

Donald Westlake
The Busy Body

Open Road Media/Mysterious Press eBook, 2011
(originally published in 1966)

Al Engel is the right hand of the New York crime boss Nick Rovito. Engel was once an ordinary hood in the organization (read: the syndicate) until he saved Rovito from the coup at the top.

«If it hadn't been for the Conelly blitzkrieg, Engel might have kept drifting along in the organization for years. But the Conelly blitzkrieg came along, and Engel was in the right place at the right time, and all of a sudden the kind of future his mother had been talking about for years was dumped in his lap. As his mother pointed out, all he had to do now was take the good things that were being offered him. He had it made.»

The boss gratefully placed Engel closer to himself. Since then, Engel did not touch the dirty work: the organization has ceased to use violence, focusing only on the business side. But Engel's hands stayed clean only until the boss gives him the job to dig a fresh grave of an ordinary drug courier Charlie, who had a “grand send-off”. It turned out that Charlie was buried in a blue jacket, in the lining of which had been left the package of heroin valued at $ 250,000. Engel at middle of the night has to dig the grave, get the jacket, again bury the grave, but at the same time to kill his digging assistant, low-level hood. But things go awry.

The Busy Body became one of the first three Westlake’s comic capers after a series of gritty books (under his own name and under the pseudonym Stark). However, I can not say that the previous books by Westlake were deprived of humor. Another thing is that in the first four author’s books he thought of his characters seriously. Al Engel of The Busy Body, for example, is not very different from the protagonist of The Cutie. Only the hero of this book has many different features, from the phone calls from his mother to relationships with women, when he becomes the object of ridicule (from the reader’s point of view).

The tone of the writing felt lighter, but the described gangster world remained the same, and the plot is quite viable, forcing flipping pages. What is very good: the novel rests on not giggle and occasional ha-ha, but on a twisted affair with a missing body. Westlake’s humor is situational, which is very conducive to the plot.

The Busy Body once again proves that Westlake did not write bad books.

The Shanghai Factor

Charles McCarry
The Shanghai Factor

Mysterious Press, 2013

Nameless narrator, an aspiring spy, working for an organization with called only HQ, is coming to China to become a sleeper agent in Shanghai, to learn one of the Chinese dialects and to live a normal life of a student. So he does, except that he accidentally meets on the street, after one incident, a young Chinese girl named Mei, who becomes his permanent mistress and teacher of Mandarin at the same time. Agent thinks that Mei herself works for the Chinese intelligence, but he does nothing about it. Mei tells nothing about her life, and the agent does not ask questions.

Then the agent is called to Washington, after which he returned to China, where he receves a job offer from the director of the influential Chinese corporation CEO Chen. By that time Mei disappears somewhere, but she is replaced by another girl working on the corporation. Work for a corporation ends as abruptly as it had begun, but the agent receives a new assignment from his superior officer Luther Burbank, the only person in the HQ who knows about the agent’s job. Unnamed spy must recruit children of influential parents, and he is trying to do just it. The agent is caught between HQ and the Chinese intelligence Guoanbu, and the key to everything may be the missing Mei.

After this novel is hard to argue with the fact that the spy fiction should be written by professionals, spies to be exact. Charles McCarry is a former CIA agent, and he knows his business. The novel is written brilliantly, but amateurs also can write brilliantly about spies. The Shanghai Factor distinguishes the accuracy of details and the knowledge of what is going on in the mind of the spy.

Unnamed spy from the book originated somewhere in the classical fiction. He is not an heir and not a child of Bond, Matt Helm and Sam Durell. Spies here don’t destroy the army of terrorists by themselves that are often found in modern espionage literature, do not shoot with two hands and one foot, do not try to save the world, which already seems to be not in need of salvation. Everyday life of a spy is not explosions every minute and betrayles every day, but learning the language of another country and reading e-mail.

The nameless hero is not quite common. Agent in the novel is a rookie (although he has done some fighting in Afghanistan) spy-wise. He just learns the ropes: the book has a few scenes where the hero, not knowing how to act and what to think, wants to quit his job. Along with the hero the reader also learns spy stuff, and the reader is too far from how intelligence works. This is the cause of the fusion between the character and the reader.

McCarry reduces action to a minimum (unnamed agent at the beginning of the novel is kidnapped and thrown into a river by the unknown Chinese, but it is perhaps the only more or less fighting scene here), but in the details shows the life of a spy, his relationship with his superiors, the essence of the method of tracking and counter-intelligence. And it's an amazing read.

The Shanghai Factor is a book which is also about accidents and coincidences. Is there any coincidence in the spy business, or everything matters?

This book is a must-read for any self-respecting admirer of spy fiction.

Ken Bruen video profile

I rarely do such a thing as posting there some sort of promotional material, but I've been a fan of Open Road Media for a long time, I thought I'd post there their new video profile where Ken Bruen looks at Irish Noir.

These video materials are surely admirably directed and deeper than any book trailers as you can find on the Internet. I believe the future is in video like this, with focus on writer, not a particular book.

MysteriousPress.com is bringing back Ken Bruen's The White Trilogy in print and electronic format. In Bruen¹s The White Trilogy, he explores the dark, seedy streets of London through the eyes of two tough, aging cops on their search for their 'White Arrest'every policeman¹s dream, the White Arrest is a high-profile success that makes up for all past failures. For Roberts and his brutal partner Brant, this means going up against a mysterious hitman in Taming the Alien, and a cunning kingpin in The McDead.

Dog Eat Dog

Edward Bunker
Dog Eat Dog

MysteriousPress.com/Open Road, 2011 (digital)
(Originally published in 1996, by St. Martin's)

Troy Cameron, son of the law-abiding citizens from Beverly Hills, is released after a second prolonged serving time. In prison, Troy read (including Joyce), thought about the nature of things, did push-ups and sit-downs to keep fit, and planned how to hit the jackpot with enough money till the end of life somewhere in the house on the beach. Shortly before the release, Troy receives an interesting offer from a friend. Troy with accomplices have to rob the pimps, drug dealers and other offenders who, in the case of a robbery, will not be able call the law. His friends whom he has known since the reform school are already waiting for him. One of them is a maniac and a cocaine user, nicknamed Mad Dog, the second, Diesel Carson, is a fixer who works for the local crime boss. Diesel and Mad Dog can’t tolerate each other not both love Troy, considering him a criminal genius.

Finding himself free, and rested a couple of days, Troy meets with his buddies, and together they drive to Los Angeles, the hometown of Troy, where they are to do a robbery (on a tip from a lawyer) of a black drug dealer. And if in this case everything goes smoothly, then for Troy and friends a series of mistakes and failures begins, and a lot of blood will be shed.

Bunker, who himself served prison time not one time, but plenty, knows what writes about, so those moments when the author describes prison life, are the most reliable and sometimes even touching. Troy itself is partly Bunker: they have in common a love of books, childhood, spent in the reform school, living in criminal circles, sharp mind. Troy, the son of a drunken doctor, began his path to lawlessness with his father, whom he nearly killed in an attempt to protect his mother. Troy is tired of prison and wants the freedom and all that it can offer. Troy would rather die from a bullet of another criminal, than the next - and last - time would be placed behind bars. The point is that each of the three friends already have two convictions, and the third, no matter how small it is, will give an offender life prison term. Therefore, the three friends must try to do everything, just not to fall into the hands of police.

The plot is a chain of "cases" that Troy and associates should work to raise such a sum, which would have sufficed almost till the end of life. And even though Troy seems to have a reliable team, everyone should keep an eye on everyone, especially on Mad Dog, who a few weeks before Troy’s release ruthlessly killed his girlfriend and her daughter. The action, however, slacks a little, and does not fly, because friends have rest between the cases.

And if the story mostly delivers the goods, Bunker’s style in some places are clumsy. In the action scenes there are not enough of a strain. Sentences are written properly, but there is no lubrication between them, and entire paragraphs crackle and creak. Yes, and dialogues in the second half of the novel are written with laziness, they do not have enough sharpness.

Bloody and desperate finale, in which you feels like in a cage which sucked all the air from, fairly concludes this novel about the brave people who chose the path of lawlessness.