Faceless Killers: Kurt Wallander 01 by Henning Mankell

From The Week of February 06, 2011

What is the cost to the human soul of looking too long into the abyss of crime? Can we be trained to slough off its ugliness, or must we always be tarnished by witnessing its destructive outcomes? It is a vital question not only for society, which seeks to understand and reduce crime, but for our police as well. For it is they who must repeatedly wade into the darkest corners of civilization, reconstruct there the grimmest crimes, and imagine from them the possible motives for such cruel deeds. Can they withstand such journeys without thinking the worst of us, or is it too much to understand the dark geography of the human soul without succumbing to its siren's call? Mr. Mankell deals with this question and more in this first, cold instalment in his famed series. His answer is not encouraging.

Hailing from the farmlands of southern Sweden, Kurt Wallander is a police officer as brilliantly insightful as he is self-destructive. For though he possesses all the characteristics one desires in a criminal investigator, diligence, doggedness and thoroughness, he is capable of bouts of anger, moroseness and self-pity all-too-typical of the average human. No wonder then that he has relinquished his wife to divorce, his best friend to horse-breeding and his daughter nearly to suicide, grave losses that have left him with only his father and sister as social connections to the broader world. The former, a painter, has never approved of his choice to become a cop and the latter has made her own life, well away from tiny Ystad in which nothing ever happens.

All that changes on January 11th, 1990, when, in the midst of a cold night, an elderly couple are brutally attacked in their farmhouse. Tortured and tormented, the husband dies before help can reach them while his wife manages to survive the week in hospital. There, before she joins her husband in death, she whispers to the police the only clue to the origins of her attackers, a single word that has the power to shatter the homogeneous peace of this sleepy town. "Foreign..." Armed with this trigger to a social timebomb, Kurt Wallander leads a team of local police on a search for the couple's ruthless murderers all while trying to prevent Ystad from succumbing to the savagery of ethnic strife.

As emotionally remote as it is chillingly authentic, Faceless Killers is perhaps the best example of that brand of Nordic crime fiction which has since been made so internationally famous by Stieg Larsson's best-selling Millennium Trilogy. One of Larsson's inspirations, Mr. Mankell, here, rejects the sensationalism of more Western crime fiction, so populated by mass-murdering fiends and the innocent women they prey upon, for a single act of violence which is all the more potent for standing alone amidst a sea of procedural drama. Here, less is very much more as the reader watches, through Wallander, a town try to come to grips with that which does not happen in peaceful Scandinavia.

The investigation, whose numbing monotony bleeds authenticity, is almost secondary to Mr. Mankell's journey of social anthropology which, without bias, reveals the limitations of homogeneity. Any crime, any negative development, is automatically blamed on external influences. After all, no native would be capable of such evil. In reality, every culture produces its own bad apples. Only multiculturalism has the power to remove our xenophobic blinders and allow us to see that, at root, we are all the same.

Wallander is the representation of this xenophobia. He is outwardly a pillar of the community while, inwardly, he is an impulsive drunk who can only flail helplessly as his various relationships deteriorate around him. He does his job with commendable skill and determination while a profound misery engulfs him. He does his duty while being pessimistic about the future of Sweden and, more broadly, humanity. His troubled goodness is a wonderful depiction of the life of a policeman in a world of white.

Not without its issues; the work is arid and overly procedural. However, given that these are qualities necessary for the novel to make its numerous points about the human condition, it's hard to imagine how the author could have avoided these drawbacks. Chilling work. (4/5 Stars)

Hedy's Folly by Richard Rhodes

From The Week of February 06, 2011

For some, life is a constant struggle between internal aspirations and external expectations, between what we want and what others want us to be. Customarily, these expectations flow from our parents who understandably infuse us with their own biases and beliefs. But for some famous few, they extend out to society as a whole which, seizing upon our talent at a game, a pursuit, a school of thought, compels us to do what they would have us be. No matter how much external pressure is applied to us, we have our own wishes. It does not automatically follow that being good at something means that it must become our life's aim. Sometimes the heart desires a different challenge, a different destiny, one which the world would, for reasons of bias, rather deny us. This is precisely the difficulty Hedy Lamarr faced throughout her long life. And though she never entirely overcame it, she ensured that history will remember her for that which she was most proud.

Born in Vienna to middleclass Jewish parents, Hedy Lamarr lived a long and fascinating life. Possessing a keen mind and a famous beauty, she was a willful adolescent transfixed by the arts. Initially a stage actress, at seventeen, she graduated to work in film at which time she performed her most infamous role as Eva in Ecstasy, a 1933 film made controversial by sexual content which, though tame by modern standards, was salacious for 1930s Europe. Her fame and beauty -- she was once declared to be the most beautiful woman alive -- earned her attention from one of Austria's wealthiest men, but marriage never appeared to suit Ms. Lamarr and she broke the arrangement to emigrate to the United States where, within a few years, she was one of Hollywood's brightest stars.

Never comfortable with being perceived as a beauty, Ms. Lamarr was given a chance to express her more intellectual talents when, with the onset of World War II, she and George Antheil, a film scorer, developed a new technique for frequency hopping which they patented and sent off to the Navy in hopes that it would be used to improve the remote control of American torpedos. The technique, which later became a cornerstone for wireless technology, was ignored by the US Armed Forces and shelved for decades before fresh eyes and opened minds in the 1960s and 70s returned it to academic prominence where, in subsequent years, it became the bedrock for many of the devices we use today.

Hedy's Folly is a slim but powerful biography of a remarkable woman. Though, for fans of Ms. Lamarr, the book contains few revelations, Mr. Rhodes, an award-winning historian, succeeds in interweaving her story with the even lesser known George Antheil to create a portrait of two inventive souls who, troubled by war and yearning for recognition, strove to create an achievement of the mind for which they could be proud. Though denied timely recognition, the extent to which their ideas helped fuel the technological revolution of the last 20 years ensures that their legacy will far outshine any glory Hollywood has the power to bestow.

As much as Mr. Rhodes pleases with his narrative and as welcome as the recognition might have been for both Lamarr and Antheil, the work's strongest virtue is the degree to which it exposes us to the minds of inventors. We live in a cultural age that venerates individuals. From Steve Jobs to Warren Buffett, from Bill Gates to George Soros, we are in awe of and marvel at the accomplishments of once ordinary men and women who shattered the rules of the game of life by shaping the world instead of being shaped by it. Consequently, we've become enamored with their stories and the secrets to their success, hopeful that, if we mine their wisdom long enough, some measure of their brilliance will rub off on us. Perhaps it will. Perhaps we can learn from them. Perhaps not all of their success is due to being in the right place at the right time. But such believers will find little comfort here for Hedy's Folly strongly suggests that inventiveness is a quality with which only some of us are blessed, that it cannot be bestowed like a gift. It is not reducible to an equation. It is the capacity to make intuitive connections that open up previously unconsidered avenues of thought. Sobering to say the least.

Quick and engaging work. Ms. Lamarr deserves to be remembered as a pioneer of our world. this volume certainly helps to make this a reality. (3/5 Stars)

Into The Silence by Wade Davis

From The Week of February 06, 2011

What are the limits of human endurance? It's fashionable to declare that we are only constrained by our expectations, that, if we could but throw off the mental and societal shackles we place upon ourselves, anything is achievable. Deep down, though, we all know this is nonsense. Yes, this pretty fiction may benefit us as a sop to our egos and a handy tool for motivation, but its utility ends there. Humans are animals and, like animals, our bodies can only endure so much pain and numbness, heat and cold, light and oblivion, before we surrender. But however compelling this logic may be, it does nothing to prevent the bravest and craziest among us from pushing themselves to that fateful line, to that moment beyond which death is assured. This is the macabre but fascinating theme that plays beneath Mr. Davis' intriguing but interminable history of the Mallory-lead expeditions to climb Mount Everest in the 1920s. Its affect will linger for some time.

In many ways, World War I destroyed the promise of the 20th century. In their arrogance, kings and politicians capitalized on all the grand, technological promise of their age and deployed it in a global conflict that sent millions of young men senselessly to early graves. The war, which lasted four painful years, ruined economies, ripped apart social fabrics, ended empires and inaugurated an age of mass-slaughter that characterized the whole of the century. The war was so costly that, In 1914, one out of every three British men, from 13 to 24, was killed. This was not a darkness from which any civilization could easily return. And yet, in his attempts to reach the summit of the world, one son of this slaughter would do his part to heal the wounded ego of a battered Britain and, in doing so, taste greatness.

The son of a clergyman, George Mallory was a tall and unusually attractive man who, after being educated at all the right schools, and after rubbing shoulders with the famed Bloomsbury group, was sent, like many of his friends, to war. But after making it through that terrible cyclone unscathed, he fixed upon a new mission, one that would take him far from the unimaginable devastation of western Europe. He would test himself against Mount Everest. The world's tallest peek at 29,000 feet, the mountain, nestled deep in the heart of forbidden country, had never before been summited. What's more, it was, or so its Tibetan natives believed, inhabited by great spirits whose wrath would be aroused by any attempt to climb its sacred slopes.

Accepting the former as a challenge and dismissing the latter as silly superstition, Mallory effectively lead three expeditions to the mountain from 1921 to 1924, each one financially and technically backed by Britain's prestigious Alpine Club. But even steeled by the Great War, supplemented by the finest gear, and willed onward by the most earnest desire for success and fortune, the first two efforts to scale the mountain ended in failure not a thousand feet from the elusive peek. The final ascent, in 1924, turned into the mystery of the century as Mallory and his climbing companion disappeared, pulled down into Everest's icy embrace and trapped there for 70 years until climbers in 1999 discovered their well-preserved bodies.

At nearly 700 pages, Into The Silence is a mind-numbingly thorough reconstruction of Mallory, his many companions and their three attempts to conquer the world's highest peek. Mr. Davis leaves no climber unacknowledged in his singlehanded attempt to fill out each man's background and to ground their collective achievements in the most traumatic event of their era. In this, the work becomes as much a history of war and its consequences as it is a paean the veterans of the Alpine Club whose ambitions knew no bounds. To the extent that Mr. Davis furnishes us with a detailed, chronological recount of the Mallory expeditions, Into The Silence is a success. However, the sheer voluminousness of the result is enough to cause the reader's eyes to blur with fatigue. For the author's exhaustive research overwhelms the reader, leaving him gasping for air as he is drowned in a sea of secondary players, most of whom have been lost to time.

At times, Into The Silence is compelling; the physical deprivations these men endured for the achievement of a goal is remarkable and well-deserving of celebration. Their lives are interesting, their pasts moving. But the work, otherwise, collapses under its own weight, leaving the reader flailing for purchase. the narrative too often digresses into detail that should have found the cutting room floor, causing the work to often lose focus. Oppressively informative... (3/5 Stars)

Far to Go by Alison Pick

From The Week of January 30, 2012

Though, as a world, we've come some way to restricting state power, it remains a potent force that can easily become pernicious when it is not checked by robust opposition. For with a few, clever manipulations, the state can tap into its people's worst fears, stoke them, inflame them, and then harness and shape the resulting anger into a blowtorch of violence and destruction, a righteous weapon that can be deployed against anyone foolish enough to stand in its way. Not only has this curse of nationalism been extensively discussed in countless works, its results are still visible in the ghost-filled battlefields of western Europe where two such bloody, propagandist wars were fought just in the last hundred years. Less visible, though, are the individual wounds inflicted by such conflicts, the costs, to families and their offspring, that are born in silent misery. It is to these small-scale pains to which we turn in Far to Go, the suffering of a single family who stand in for so many. It is a matter on which Ms. Pick speaks with passion and clarity.

The year is 1939 and, though Neville Chamberlain believes he has bargained with Hitler for "peace in our time," he has, in reality, purchased a few months of quiet at the cost of millions of souls. For in exchange for this brief respite, England has agreed to look the other way while Nazi Germany gobbles up Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland, territories it considers German by dint of the ethnically German populations who live there. Though this is notionally true of at least a portion of the population, these territories consider themselves free actors, imbued with their own traditions and councils, cultures and notions. They are proud to be who and what they are. The prospect of being annexed by a fascist Germany, and having all that they know overturned, is as terrifying as it is inevitable.

Pavel Bauer is a proud Czechoslovakian who, until the coming of the Nazis, never thought much about his Jewish heritage. He filled his days with family and the operation of his successful factory which earned him a comfortable, quiet existence. But as the Third Reich descends upon him and his country, Pavel, for all his wisdom, spirit and kindness, is no more able to defend himself than his country. Abandoned by France and England, Pavel and his country are forced into a succession of humiliating retreats: armies absorbed, factories repurposed, Jews disenfranchised. Eventually, faced with betrayal on all sides, Pavel flees to Prague, attempting to plan an escape for his young family, but doom seems to stalk his every step and not even the love of a good woman can keep the Damoclesian sword from descending upon him and the country he loves so much.

Longlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, Far to Go is a stunning novel. Told from the perspective of the Bauer's tender-hearted nanny, it is an exquisitely detailed reconstruction of everyday life in the midst of apocalyptic disaster. For the Bauers are witnessing nothing less than the end of everything they know. Though Ms. Pick succeeds in vividly reconstructing Czechoslovakia during World War II, crafting a cast of believable characters and embedding them in the midst of that nation's tragic circumstances, her genius truly shines in the extent to which she details the individual efforts of the Bauers to fend off the darkness. Holding onto his pride and his decency, Pavel tries to be stoic in the face of Nazi degradations, to endure their fists, their words and their deeds with silent courage that gets him nowhere. Meanwhile, his far more pragmatic wife, Anneliese, while fragile and emotionally remote, yields to the inevitable and tries to bargain with it in hopes of earning leniency. Together, they are the portrait of a marriage in war.

But as much as this is Pavel's story, Marta, the tale's narrator and the nanny to the Bauer's young son, is Ms. Pick's greatest success. Having never known her mother, and having been forced to bear the unwelcome attentions of her father, she is a damaged but lovely creature in a constant but silent search for love. Her life experiences tell her that she is too dirty to be the object of such pure emotion, to be the center of someone else's world, and so she is plagued by doubts that manifest in bouts of destructive self-sabotage. Nonetheless, she tries and in this we are witness to an achingly delicate girl trying to become a loved woman in one of our world's ugliest times. She is as exquisite in her sadness as she is beautiful in her gentle bravery.

Ms. Pick has a painter's eye for detail and a poet's emotional gravitas. Together, they have produced a novel as powerful as it is quiet. Rarely has war's devastation been writ small so well. (5/5 Stars)

Mindstar Rising: Greg Mandel 01 by Peter F. Hamilton

From The Week of January 30, 2012

The human being is a fascinating animal. He is capable of great goodness, acts of charity, selflessness and kindness that have the power to inspire a transformation of our world. But he is also capable of great ugliness, dark deeds driven by avarice and self-interest that have the power to infect and corrupt those he influences. How do we choose our paths? What factors, biological, environmental, circumstantial, shape that choice? And having once made it, can we go back and choose again? These are all questions that have been debated many times, in literature and in the culture, but they are questions no less potent for being so frequently posed. They underpin this gripping piece of cyberpunk from Mr. Hamilton, elevating it well above the fray.

In a near-future England devastated by climate change and political and economic upheaval, life is as tempestuous as it is treacherous. After ten years of communist rule, in which the country's infrastructure was allowed to decay, the Peoples Socialist Party (PSP) have been violently overthrown, their leader, along with much of Parliament, immolated by a powerful, non-nuclear bomb that could have only come from a handful of the world's richest nations. The conservatives, having been restored to power, try to implement economic reforms to get the country back on its feet, but ten years is an eternity in the arena of competitive advantage and England is sure to lag behind the rest of the advanced world for some time to come.

Enter Event Horizon, England's last, great corporate hope. Helmed by Philip Evans, an eccentric but brilliant billionaire, the British company, one of the world's foremost manufacturers of bleeding-edge technology, moved its operations into international waters to avoid the punitive collectivism of the PSP. Now that communism has left the isles, Event Horizon has welcomed itself back into the fold and is doing all it can to be the Atlas upon whom the British economy rests. And so, when its operations are sabotaged and its founders targeted for assassination by powerful but unknown interests, everything is at stake. For if Event Horizon falls, England may well fall with her.

A freak and a murderer, Greg Mandel is the result of a military experiment gone sideways. Attempts to breed a better soldier have left Mandel with hyperactive empathy, an ability which allows him to sense nearby minds and delve into them to sift truths from lies. Since his military days ended in a disastrous expedition in Turkey, he's been hiring out his gun to those who'll pay, keeping his head down and his conscience dormant while the world around him accretes towards oblivion. This chain of nihilistic jobs is broken, however, when Event Horizon comes calling. It's the job of a lifetime, a job so lucrative Mandel couldn't turn it down if he wanted to. It's a job that will take him to the highest orbits and into the most secretive of corporate enclaves to learn the truth behind the attacks on the Evans clan and the company they hold dear. He has a talent and they have a need. It's a match made in purgatory's shadow.

Mindstar Rising is quality science fiction that draws upon the conventions of the detective novel to create a compelling, high-tech thrillride. Originally published in 1993, it is the first entry in a trilogy conceived prior to the rise-to-dominance of the Internet and social media. And while this awkward timing leaves the piece feeling somewhat dated, like much of pre-millennial SciFi, the author is close enough for comfort. Even if one would wish to deduct points for his misses on the technology, Mr. Hamilton more than earns them back with his imagining of a future England savaged by Global Warming which, while discussed in 1993, certainly wasn't as ubiquitous a concern as it is today. His depiction of an overheated England is, to say the least, disturbing.

Though Mindstar Rising blends a solid plot with a decent mystery and seasons this mixture with interesting characters, flashy tech and a splash of sex, there's no doubt that the piece's unusual politics take center stage. In fitting collectivists with villainous black hats and then having the eccentric, ultra-capitalist billionaire ride in on his white steed to save the day, Mindstar Rising feels like a 1990s, science-fiction reinterpretation of Atlas Shrugged complete with all its unnuanced defenses of vulture capitalism. The author contends that he simply did not want to have fascists be the boogeymen for the umpteenth time and this is perfectly understandable. But what Mr. Hamilton seems to have missed here is that totalitarian regimes all desire to have power and to make war. They all invest in nationalistic symbols regardless of whether they are communist or fascist. The lengths Mr. Hamilton has gone to make the PSP seem bumbling and foolish compared to the unstoppable, inventive brilliance of his own Steve Jobs causes the piece to feel like a pretty lame argument for conservatism rather than a plausible glimpse into a dystopian future.

In any event, Greg Mandel is a fantastic hardman, a burdened man with a stained soul who finds a kind of redemption in Event Horizon. The author successfully animates both Mandel and his environment, investing them with sexy charm. I'll certainly be reading on. For while it's not Gibson, it's quality. (3/5 Stars)

Who Am I And If So How Many by Richard David Precht

From The Week of January 30, 2012

Ever since humans evolved into self-awareness, they have been searching for the universal truths that underpin both their environment and their souls. For we are sparks of life within an all-but-eternal experiment. And there is nothing grander than to try to best understand that experiment and our place within it before we die and pass on the torch of discovery to those who will succeed us. After all, the answers to such cosmic questions are too enormous to be found in a single lifetime. If they are to be solved, it will be by those who stood on the shoulders of the countless generations that preceded them. But just how will we arrive at those answers? What avenues of inquiry must we pursue? And while we're pursuing them, how should we live our lives? How can we be moral creatures? These are the musings that bring together Mr. Precht's treatise on philosophy and the human brain. It is an interesting if unoriginal journey.

From Mirror Neurons to Phineas Gage, from the morality of eating animals to the practice of euthanasia, Who Am I And If So How Many is Mr. Precht's journey through the dangerous and contentious jungles of philosophy and neurology. Without choosing sides in this increasingly quarrelsome battle between disciplines that attempt to explain the inexplicable, the author gives his readers a crash course in the history of philosophy while bringing them up to speed on the milestone discoveries of neurology. Along the way, he introduces us to the key figures of both fields, giants of thought and science who have done as much to shape our world as the generals and the politicians who so dominate our history books. In this, he creates a compelling portrait of the uneasy marriage between these two such disparate fields and the extent to which they will continue to be linked for decades and generations to come.

Who Am I And If So How Many is a swift and fascinating read. Mr. Precht is a charming guide through the thorny undergrowth that so defines the scientific ground over which philosophy and neurology are currently fighting. More over, he stays commendably neutral in the questions he raises, professorially extending to his readers the data they will need to draw their own conclusions about the mind and the brain. However, while Mr. Precht manages to educate and entertain in equal measure, I found myself frustrated by a total absence of original thought or research.

The author pays extensive homage to the historical giants upon whose shoulders he stands, but he does so without taking advantage of their discoveries and advancing the arguments further with his own contributions. Perhaps he does this elsewhere, in the classroom or in his other writings, but the piece certainly called out for Mr. Precht to supplement his account with his own conjectures. He is perfectly willing to do so on personal matters. But charming though his anecdotes are, his readers are surely eager for something from the author with more depth than personal reminiscences.

This is a delightful jaunt. Mr. Precht would be a fascinating man with whom to spend an evening, ruminating on the nature of man and his soul over a bottle of quality wine. But it seems to me that he conflated neutrality in the war between philosophy and neurology with neutrality on the pressing questions of the day, leaving others to venture their own opinions while reducing his own to witty bromides. A worthy but slightly annoying read. (3/5 Stars)

Champlain's Dream by David Hackett Fischer

From The Week of January 30, 2012

Why do we quest? Customarily, such journeys are dangerous, requiring us to brave the unknown, the unfamiliar, in order to either satisfy some personal desire, or to advance the sum total of human knowledge. Both ventures bring with them their own unique perils which can be completely avoided by living a normal life at home, surrounded by society and its well-established conventions. And yet, for some, the unknown is so powerful a lure that it trumps even the might of self-preservation, causing these inquisitive souls to brave unexplored frontiers in search of destiny. Samuel Champlain was just such a man. His legend is both honored and elucidated in Mr. Fischer's commendable and poetic biography of the famous adventurer.

Marinated in a 16th century France convulsed by a series of religious wars memorable for the extremity of their bloodshed and betrayal, Samuel Champlain was born to a modest family whose fortunes were suspiciously linked with that of Henry IV of France. The legendary king, who strove to end the conflicts and usher his country into a peaceful and united future, was famous for his love of women, a proclivity which helped give birth to the rumor that Champlain was one of no doubt many of his illegitimate sons. How else explain the rapid rise of a common-born man to the halls of power where he held sufficient sway with the king as to earn, for himself, captaincy of an exploratory mission to the new world? Oh, Champlain was loyal, having fought bravely in Henry's armies during the numerous civil wars of the period. And he certainly possessed a clear mind, a fair spirit and a dogged will. But were these virtues sufficient to earn such royal favor?

Regardless of Champlain's origins, he spent the next 30 years repaying the generosity of the French monarchy. For, after making 27 crossings of the Atlantic without losing a single ship, Samuel Champlain had founded the colony of New France, made peace there with numerous tribes of Native Indians, nourished the French fur trade and created a lasting legacy of courage and enlightenment in an enterprise (colonialism) so often wrought by racism, animus and discord. His colony, which would someday become the Canadian province of Quebec, flourished. And such was his influence upon it that, 200 years on, stories still circulated, within the First Nations of Canada, of the deeds of the great European explorer who was so unlike so many of his fellows.

Though Champlain's Dream is unquestionably a sympathetic account of the life of this most famous French explorer, it is nonetheless a moving and lyrical recount of a rare man. Mr. Fischer, a historian and professor, traces and illuminates the many deeds of Samuel Champlain without ever losing sight of the man's soul. For as much as the explorer's actions are legendary, the author wants his readers to understand the purity of spirit that infused him, to grasp how rare it was for a European of this time to rise above the biases of his supposedly civilized world and treat people unlike himself with respect and dignity. In this, he is deeply reminiscent of Candido Rondon, the 20th century Brazilian hero who also set aside the conventions of his world to embrace the fantastically foreign.

But for all that Mr. Fischer succeeds in laying before us the mind and the actions of the famous Frenchman, this is, to a disturbing degree, a pro-Champlain account. The author almost exclusively draws upon Champlain's own words to retell his story, relying on a few Indian tales and a handful of contemporary accounts that occasionally intersect with Champlain's deeds for corroboration. Though this is made somewhat understandable by the fact that most other accounts of Champlain have been lost to the rigors of time, I was left with the feeling that Mr. Fischer wasn't much interested in cross-examining Champlain's claims. He appears to be as much a fan of the man as the reader is by the conclusion of the piece. Perhaps this is all there is of Champlain's history and Mr. Fischer has been completely fair, but this is not the impression conveyed by this chronicle which effectively argues that Samuel Champlain was a man almost entirely above the destructive prejudices of his own time.

However sympathetic, this is a readable and lyrical biography of one of the formative figures in Canadian history. A deeply compelling narrative. (3/5 Stars)