The Outsider, by Stephen King / ****

In some ways, Stephen King’s The Outsider is the logical follow-up and continuation of what he began doing as a writer with Mr. Mercedes. With that book and the rest of the Bill Hodges trilogy, King started writing crime novels – well, crime novels a la King, which aren’t quite the same thing. But what it showed was that King was just as capable of playing in other genres, and in many ways, all the things he does so well – great characterization, superb pacing, excellent tension-building – were things that were also needed for a great thriller.

Now, as the Bill Hodges books continued, King started to bring more of his supernatural and horror elements into the books, with mixed results. The Outsider continues that trend, but by virtue of having been designed as a crime/horror hybrid from the get-go, the resulting novel feels smoother and more cohesive than, say, End of Watch, which felt a bit bumpy.

It doesn’t hurt, of course, that The Outsider starts so incredibly well, alternating between the very public arrest of a beloved small town figure with the unquestionable evidence that ties him to the brutal murder of a child. And in that early going, King manages a notable feat, keeping the audience constantly uncertain as to whether what we’re reading is an innocent man being framed or a nightmarish killer’s facade of innocence. By sliding constantly between the police and the accused, doling out information carefully and methodically, King is near the top of his game, giving us one of his most enthralling first halves in a long, long time, all culminating in a setpiece that plays to all of his strengths.

It’s a bit disappointing, then, that the second half of The Outsider doesn’t measure up to the first. That’s not to say that it ever becomes bad, mind you; the introduction of an old friend of Constant Readers gives the book a nice second wind, and there’s something satisfying about how King applies his mystery-writing strategies to a supernatural event (even if that old friend gets used in some deus ex machina ways). But the answers we get are disappointingly bland, especially given King’s unique take on so many horror tropes, and while there are aspects of the finale that are interesting – more the implications and hints conveyed during that sequence than any true revelations – it doesn’t soar in the way that the best King climaxes can.

Mind you, I still absolutely devoured The Outsider, and couldn’t put it down. No, it may not be among the top tier of King novels, but neither is it anywhere near the bottom – for whatever blandness and iffiness along the way, it’s more consistent and focused than End of Watch, and more gripping and propulsive than Sleeping Beauties. And if nothing else, there’s nothing like King for books that are so easily and constantly readable, and allow me to lose myself so deeply in their pages.

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Black Panther: Avengers of the New World / Black Panther and the Crew: We Are the Streets

I was a big fan of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ inaugural run on Black Panther, subtitled A Nation Under Our Feet; more than the way it reminded me how much I enjoyed comic books and opened up my interest in a character I knew so little about, I was riveted by the way that Coates married superhero action with a dense, layered story that asked questions about the nature of power, the responsibilities that come with being in charge, the complexities of governing, and the disconnect between the private and public self of a ruler. Doing any of those things is complicated enough; doing all of them while simultaneously telling a superhero story is incredible, and the result was an absolute knockout.

So it’s no surprise that I went ahead and picked up Volume 4 of Coates’ run, Black Panther: Avengers of the New World. Now, had I realized that this was the first half of a longer arc, I might not have read it as soon as I did – I might have waited to pick it up when I could continue – but nonetheless, I rocketed through this one every bit as much as I did with Nation Under Our Feet. And once again, Coates has found a way to mix superheroics with something more substantial – in this case, the nature of faith and doubt, and how we reconcile suffering with our belief in higher powers.

The hook here is simple enough – the Wakandan gods are no longer responding to the needs of the people, and evil supernatural forces are attacking Wakandan villages – but Coates refuses to plot in an easy or simplistic way. (That being said, having the villains be an external and inhuman evil allows him to cut loose with action sequences in a way that Nation never did, leading to some great sequences.) Coates deals with the ramifications of this plot, from the resurrection of old beliefs to the questions about reality, and does so in a way that makes the discussion itself as important as – or maybe more so – any answers we can get. It’s hard to judge an arc on half of its length, mind you, but for now, this is a worthy and riveting follow-up to Coates’ incredible debut. Rating: **** 1/2

Even as Coates was bringing Black Panther to such heights, he was being given a free hand on other titles as well, including the sadly short-lived Black Panther and the Crew, whose entire run is contained in a collection subtitled We Are the Streets. Leaving behind Wakanda for Harlem, We Are the Streets follows Misty Knight, a New York police officer, as she looks into the mysterious death of a civil rights activist in police custody. As the series goes on, the Crew – made up of Luke Cage, Storm, Black Panther, and Manifold – begin to come together and look into what happened here, trying to quell the tensions and unrest that are rapidly arising in Harlem.

Now, make no mistake: this is still a Marvel story, one with big comic book trappings. There are battles aplenty, a Big Bad that’s iconic to even casual Marvel fans (or those who only know the MCU), and so forth. At the same time, though, there’s no denying that Coates uses We Are the Streets to take on contemporary issues in a head-on fashion. This is an all-Black superhero team dealing with police militarization and brutality, racial unease and tension, and more – not exactly neutral fare. Coates handles it perfectly, though, turning it into the text of the story while never letting We Are the Streets become a polemic. Is this a political comic? Undoubtedly and unabashedly. But it’s also a superhero comic, and Coates never forgets that as his plot develops and his mystery twists and turns.

I really loved Black Panther and the Crew, and it’s sad to me that it couldn’t find an audience; what Coates has done here is even more interesting and thoughtful than what he did in A Nation Under Our Feet, and his ability to mix insight with action makes this a complex, satisfying story that reminded me what comics could do. Here’s hoping the Crew can find more adventures somehow in the pages of Black Panther, but more importantly, that Coates gets the chance to bring his Harlem back to comic pages again sometime soon. Rating: *****

Amazon: Avengers of the New World Volume 1 | Black Panther and the Crew: We Are the Streets

The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi / **** ½

When I first learned about The Quantum Thief (courtesy of Tor.com’s amazing free monthly ebook newsletter), it couldn’t have spoken to me more directly if it tried. A science-fiction gentleman thief heist novel? And one whose main character’s name is an allusion to a classic French noir? YES PLEASE.

But what I got was something very different than I expected. That’s not to say that what I got was bad, mind you; indeed, The Quantum Thief’s richness, complex world, and great plot absolutely engaged me, giving me so much more depth and complexity than I planned on. But while I expected the light, breezy fun of something like a Scott Lynch book, what I got was something far more challenging and complex.

Many reviewers have commented on author Hannu Rajaniemi’s approach of throwing the reader and expecting them to swim, and it’s a true observation. Rajaniemi throws a lot at the reader with a minimum of exposition, and given how dense some of the concepts he’s taking on are – a post-human society, a game theory-based prison system, a city where every interaction is governed by cryptographic programming – that’s a big gamble. Indeed, I ended up making my through the first several chapters of the book and then deciding to start over, now that I was beginning to understand some of Rajaniemi’s ideas – and I found that the book flowed much better now that I was learning how to comprehend what I was seeing.

That can be a high bar for many readers, so the question is, is the final product worth it? For me, the answer is a firm and enthusiastic “yes”. The Quantum Thief may take on a lot, but it does so with style and fun, never forgetting that, at its core, it’s the story of a gentleman thief who’s competing against his past self to recover the memories that he hid away years ago. That all of this stretches to incorporate masked police forces, gamer clans, sentient ships, shifting realities, and so much more – well, that’s just part of the richness that makes the book so engaging. In other words, Rajaniemi isn’t being dense just to show off; he takes all of these ideas and runs with them, turning them into not just world-building, but wrapping up his plotting in them and using it all to explore fascinating and interesting ideas.

Yes, The Quantum Thief is challenging, and it’s going to push you a bit to stay caught up. No, it doesn’t hold your hand, and it’s throwing a lot at you. But the result is all the more rewarding and engaging for that, immersing you in this world without the distraction of an audience surrogate, and delivering a layered, complex story that absolutely tears along. There were definitely a few points that got a bit challenging (and at least one big reveal that I stayed confused about until doing some reading afterward), but on the whole, I really enjoyed and admired this one a lot. And maybe the best indicator of my feelings? I’ll definitely be moving on to book two quite soon.

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The Late Show, by Michael Connelly / ****

I’ve been reading Michael Connelly’s books for years now – more than two decades – and it’s always a treat to see him expand the world he’s created with new characters. It’s not just the variety of stories that allows him to tell; it’s the fact that it means he’s not planning on retiring anytime soon, which means I have years more Connelly in my future.

And yet, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I approached The Late Show with some trepidation. Detective Renée Ballard is the protagonist here, which means that for the first time, Connelly is essentially repeating a profession in his stable of main characters. Now, that makes sense within the world, to some degree, with the aging of Harry Bosch and his constantly shifting role within Connelly’s stories; introducing Ballard allows Connelly to keep a set of stories in the LAPD, without betraying Bosch’s characterization. But would Connelly have enough new characteristics to make Ballard her own person?

The answer, it turns out, is both yes and no. In some ways, Ballard feels a bit like Bosch-lite; she’s a bit independent and headstrong, a bit of a loner at times, fiercely dedicated to her cases even in the face of bureaucracy and superiors, and so forth. But there are also more subtle touches that make Ballard a bit different, from her beach-dwelling lifestyle to her younger age, to say nothing of her gender, which forces Connelly to deal with problems like sexual harassment and predatory suspects.

The result is a solid, if imperfect read, one anchored by Connelly’s reliably rich and vibrant depictions of Los Angeles. Putting Ballard on the overnight shift gives us a chance to see Los Angeles from a different perspective than Bosch’s detective-driven procedurals, as Ballard constantly reacts to the various cases that pop up and basically serves as a law enforcement triage officer overnight. That allows Connelly to cover a wide variety of cases, from the beating of a transsexual prostitute to an identify-theft burglary to a club shooting, giving The Late Show a bit more range and variety than the typical Bosch book. And if I could do without the way one of the stories turns into a “female cop in peril” moment, at least Connelly handles it the right way in its conclusion.

The Late Show isn’t an unqualified success, but it’s every bit as compelling and easily readable as everything else Connelly has done, and it bodes well for the character’s future. There’s enough variety here to justify a new character and a new series, and the book is engaging and enjoyable enough to leave me more than satisfied. Here’s to many more years of Connelly novels to come.

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The Perfect Nanny, by Leïla Slimani / **** ½

Don’t let the marketing fool you; no matter how much people try to tell you that The Perfect Nanny is the next Gone Girl, that’s simply not true. What’s more, going into French author Leïla Slimani’s novel (originally published under the title Lullaby) with those expectations would make you hate the book. This isn’t anything like Gillian Flynn’s twisty, perverse thriller; instead, what Slimani has done is create a thoughtful, dark novel about broken people, in which an awful tragedy occurs and all we want is answers – which we might never be able to get.

The outcome of The Perfect Nanny is never in doubt; opening with the chilling line “The baby is dead,” the novel wastes no time in letting the reader know that this story ends in the death of one child, the probable death of a second, and a suicide attempt by the woman responsible. What we have is not a novel about what will happen; it’s a postmortem, in which Slimani starts at the beginning and tries to see what chain of events could possibly lead to such a nightmarish end. Opening with the decision by couple Myriam and Paul to hire nanny Louise so that Myriam can return to the workforce, Slimani follows the slow development of tensions, unease, and discomfort among the adults, constantly leaving the reader wonder if this event or that one could be the trigger that leads to that inevitable outcome.

But Slimani doesn’t think that there are easy answers here, and doesn’t plan on giving any to us. Does this situation arise from the way that Paul and Myriam can’t decide whether to treat Louise as part of the family or as hired help, and blur the lines in confusing ways? Is it because of Louise’s damaged nature and extreme codependency, driving her need to find a place for her own life? Does it happen because of the way society defines the roles of women – particularly immigrant women – and forces them to figure out if they can be women or they can be mothers, and allows no overlap? Maybe it’s all of these; maybe it’s none; but whatever the case, Slimani explores all of it carefully and through the inner lives of her characters, letting all of this conflict unravel in the subtext, while constantly keeping up the social pretext that everything is fine.

That all means that The Perfect Nanny is an oddly subtle novel, albeit one infused with dread and unease. But it’s never a thriller; instead, it’s a character study, one whose horrifying end is known from the beginning, and which then just leaves the reader trying to understand what happens. That can make for a frustrating ending, I don’t doubt; without getting into spoiler territory, suffice to say that the book ends before you think it will, and unrepentantly refuses to draw explicit conclusions. And yet, in so many ways, that’s the right choice for this book, which is less interested in creating a standard thriller or suspense story, and more interested in exploring how human lives can be pushed to this breaking point.

The result, then, is a book that’s not as easy to pigeonhole as a publisher or marketer might like, impressive literary prizes notwithstanding. It’s got the feel and structure of a thriller, and a mood of unease and dread that’s impossible to shake. And yet, it’s not interested in standard payoffs, or tight plotting, or any sort of expected arc. There’s no big climax, no denouement, no visceral horrors. And for all that, it’s undeniably a richer, more haunting book for those choices. The Perfect Nanny is a book that lingers far more than anything pulpier ever would, because what it loses in narrative momentum, it gains in complexity and casual, complicated insight.

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The Obelisk Gate, by N.K. Jemisin / *****

I was a huge fan of N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, the first volume in her “Broken Earth” trilogy, in which she created a lush, compelling, diverse, nuanced fantasy world – and then ripped it apart, kicking off her book with an apocalyptic event that sends her characters into survival mode. More than that, though, there was the way that Jemisin used her unusual structure – interweaving three stories with different narrators and time periods – into one cohesive whole, building not only a lush world but also engaging in rich characterization.

The Obelisk Gate, the second volume in the trilogy, picks up almost immediately after the end of The Fifth Season – in one way, anyways. About half of the book follows Essun, the woman we met in The Fifth Season chasing after her husband – the man who murdered her son and kidnapped her daughter. By the time we ended The Fifth Season, we understood Essun to be so much more than she appeared – a powerful orogene (this series’ version of magic users, whose abilities to control the energies of the earth are both this world’s salvation and its biggest threat), a survivor of unimaginable trauma and grief, and a fiercely independent woman who has weathered the world’s attempts to wear her down. That serves her well in The Obelisk Gate, as Jemisin steers the book into territory it touched on in the first novel – the question of whether orogenes, with their supernatural abilities, can even be counted as human – and explores that in complicated terms, questioning what humankind’s relationship is to the earth, and to the other creatures that live there as well. More than anything else, Jemisin asks this question: would the earth be better off without humankind? And what did we do that could cause something like these horrific Seasons?

That’s half of the book. Once again, though, Jemisin interweaves through those chapters a second story – that of Essun’s daughter, on the run with her murderous father. This is an unexpected choice, but a richly rewarding one, one that allows Jemisin to look at how we pass down intolerance or strength to our children, how children learn to define themselves as separate from their parents, and what it means to come to terms with your heritage. More than that, there’s the way that Jemisin is echoing the stories of these two women off of each other, doing a constant compare/contrast that’s equal parts great plotting and rich characterization.

In short, then, The Obelisk Gate is every bit as good as The Fifth Season and then some. Once again, Jemisen’s worldbuilding is unreal, but more importantly, so is her characterization, which gives every character nuance, depth, backstory, and a richness that’s impossible to ignore. There are no easy villains here, no pure heroes, and Jemisin forces us to make tough choices constantly. More than that, though, there’s the way that Jemisin uses modern issues – intolerance, racism, xenophobia – in quiet ways to structure her conflicts, creating obvious parallels with modern society that never turn the fantasy into pure allegory. Instead, Jemisen manages the remarkable feat of creating an incredibly human fantasy novel – one that uses its fantastical elements not as an end unto themselves, but as a way of exploring her characters and their relationships with the world (to say nothing of questions about power, authority, society, and more). I can’t wait to read The Stone Sky and see how this story ends, but more than that, I’m just glad that there’s a lot more Jemisin out there to read.

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Baby Teeth, by Zoje Stage / *** ½ (Advance Review)

I’m not going to deny that Baby Teeth got its hooks in me fast and never really let go. Alternating between the perspective of a lonely, isolated mother and her increasingly unsettling young daughter, Zoje Stage’s debut novel moves like an absolute rocket, one that will have you constantly saying to yourself, “Well, one more chapter couldn’t hurt.” That alternating chapter structure works like gangbusters, letting us see both the intense, vicious mind of little Hanna and the effects it all has on mom Suzanne, constantly shifting our reads of the situation. We know when Hanna is bluffing, or when she’s every bit as dangerous as Suzanne fears; we also know how Hanna’s actions are exacerbating Suzanne’s fears both as a mother and as a woman trying to figure out how to define herself now that she has a child.

And trust me, this is a nasty little novel in terms of making your sympathies hard to pin down. Do you prefer little Hanna, whose devotion to her father has her wondering if the best plan would be to kill her mother, and who acts out against the world – and other children – in increasingly disturbing, amoral ways? Or do you side with Suzanne, a woman whose sense of self is almost non-existent, driving her to need more and more time to herself and away from her child in an effort to figure out who she is? Sure, that’s a feeling that almost any parent understands – but Suzanne has a way of making it really, really hard to really like her, even as we understand how hard it would be to deal with Hanna.

Really, Hanna is the novel’s best feature, in so many ways; a truly unsettling, focused, amoral creation, Hanna takes a page from The Bad Seed and absolutely runs with it. Even Damien from The Omen might be a little freaked out by Hanna’s icy approach to the world and indifference for anyone who doesn’t understand her, doesn’t let her live as she wants, and isn’t her father. By the time we’re watching Hanna’s chilling interactions with some special needs children, we are all too aware that this isn’t just a case of a child acting out – this is something far more disturbing.

So, yes, Stage does a fantastic job alternating between these two, playing them off of each other in incredible ways, ratcheting up the tension throughout the novel as we see how far the two of them can push each other. It’s twisted, compulsively readable, and gleefully nasty…

…so why did it leave me so unsatisfied by the end?

Part of it comes from the book’s absolute whimper of an ending, which feels not so much as like a great climax so much as a great beginning to a final act that we never see. Stage’s tension all just sort of peters out, ending in a set of scenes that feel pretty unsatisfying on almost any level. (There’s a little bit of interesting subtext to the final chapter, but not enough.) More than that, though, Baby Teeth feels incredibly fun while you’re reading it, but ends up feeling like empty calories when you’re done. Sure, it’s a fun, nasty little story, but is there any “there” to it? It doesn’t feel like it, when you’re done, and it has a way of making the book feel pretty unsatisfying and even a bit irritating in how it squanders all of the tension and momentum it has going.

When Baby Teeth comes out, later this summer, I guarantee that there will be a lot of Gone Girl comparisons made – it’s twisty, dark, twisted, and has a dark humor to it. But trust me when I tell you that it doesn’t compare to Gillian Flynn’s sick masterpiece – not with an ending that leaves you unsatisfied and a general feeling of “there’s nothing here” that begins to sink in as you hit the book’s final chapters.

A final side note: After I finished this review, I ended up reading Leïla Slimani’s The Perfect Nanny, which I feel like is a better version of this book in so many ways, despite the numerous differences; both are books that grapple with the disconnect between parenting and being an individual, particularly for women, and both use the guise of a psychological thriller to get to those issues. That being said, Baby Teeth is a far pulpier novel, if that’s more your speed, while The Perfect Nanny is far more oblique and literary, for lack of a better word, to say nothing of getting to a much darker place in some ways. (For those interested, I’ll have a review up of The Perfect Nanny in a couple of days.)

Amazon (Available July 17, 2018)

The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by George V. Higgins / *****

The 40th Anniversary Edition of George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle opens with an introduction by Dennis Lehane, who’s one of the greatest noir novelists writing today. To have Lehane praise the novel is no small thing; to have him cite it as an inspiration for the great Elmore Leonard sets the stage even more; but to have Lehane say, as he does here, that it’s “quite possibly one of the four or five best crime novels ever written” sets expectations pretty astonishingly high for a newcomer to Higgins’ iconic book. (Oh, and it turns out, the aforementioned Elmore Leonard? He thought it was the best crime novel ever written. No small thing, that.) Could the book live up to that introduction? Heck, could any book live up to that?

Somehow, The Friends of Eddie Coyle does, largely by defying every expectation of what you think it’s going to be. Yes, it’s a crime novel, but it’s one in which we see very little crime actually happen, and even what we get is often limited by our perspective. Yes, it plunges you into a Boston underworld of mobsters, made men, stool pigeons, and gun runners, but rather than giving us the drama of The Godfather or even the lived-in grime of The Sopranos, this colorful collection of hoods and rogues are ridiculously inept at times – self-involved, fearful, self-preserving, and ultimately less threatening than they are dangerous to each other.

But more than anything else, what you don’t expect about The Friends of Eddie Coyle is how much of the novel consists of nothing more than characters talking. There’s little action in the novel, little narration; instead, Higgins lets his characters just talk to – and at – each other in rambling monologues, digressions, casual slang, and a constant stream of bluffs, brags, and confessions. It’s a novel almost entirely constructed out of these conversations, with what plot there is largely unfolding in the background – and what’s more, often behind the layers of deception coming out of the mouths of our characters, who are interested in nothing so much as they are preserving their own lives and looking tough in the progress.

The result is a bit hard to describe casually, because this isn’t the crime novel you expect. Yes, there’s a story unfolding here – about bank robbers, a criminal desperate not to go to jail, a gun-runner, and some very paranoid mafia men – but that’s hardly the point, nor is it the joy of the book. No, what makes The Friends of Eddie Coyle so great is living next to these characters and listening to their patter, all of which tells you more about them in seconds than any amount of narration ever could. If I tell you that a character says the following, don’t you instantly know everything about their personality and worldview, without me saying another word?

I’m getting older. I spent my whole life sitting around in one crummy joint after another with a bunch of punks like you, drinking coffee, eating hash, and watching other people take off for Florida while I got to sweat how the hell I’m going to pay the plumber next week.

Or what about this incredible monologue?

“I heard a guy on television the other night,” Dillon said. “He was talking about pigeons. Called them flying rats. I thought that was pretty good. He had something in mind, going to feed them the Pill or something, make them extinct. Trouble is, he was serious, you know? There was a guy that got shit on and probably got shit on again and then he got mad. Ruined his suit or something, going to spend the rest of his life getting even with the pigeons because they wrecked a hundred-dollar suit. Now there isn’t any percentage in that. There must be ten million pigeons in Boston alone, laying eggs every day, which will generally produce more pigeons, and all of them dropping tons of shit, rain or shine. And this guy in New York is going to, well, there just aren’t going to be any of them in this world any more.” 

No, The Friends of Eddie Coyle isn’t what you expect, and that can be a bit distracting at first. But it’s pretty amazing in its color, its life, its wry humor, and its incredible voice, and there’s no denying how simply rich, entertaining, and engrossing it is. That this book somehow lives up to that introduction? That’s no small thing.

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Method 15/33, by Shannon Kirk / ** ½

You can’t deny that Shannon Kirk’s Method 15/33 has a great hook, no matter what else you think about the book. It’s the story of a pregnant teenager who’s been kidnapped for reasons she’s only beginning to understand, but is assuming will end with her death – and the theft of her unborn child. And this teenager will do anything to protect her child. ANYTHING. Because, you see, this teenager seems to have the ability to literally shut down her emotions think incredibly rationally and dispassionately – indeed, one could basically mark her up to be a sociopath, capable of coldly, viciously rational actions without any fear, guilt, or shame. And that makes her a very dangerous “victim” indeed, one that’s only waiting for the right time for some serious payback.

That’s a great hook for a novel, right? So why did Method 15/33 leave me so bored so quickly, after a relatively solid start?

Part of it has to boil down to Kirk’s first-person narration, which is so excessively “rational” as to become cartoonish. I love the idea of a kidnapper grabbing what amounts to a pregnant, teenage Hannibal Lecter, and watching as the tables get turned, but our narrator here is basically a robot superhero, to the point where the things she “deduces” become laughably over the top. What should be fun about this is the suspense between getting caught and getting payback, but the scales are so tilted here as to be ridiculously obvious; there’s never any sense that these kidnappers have the slightest chance of winning, and that makes the long wait for her plan(s) to go into motion a bit dull and overlong. Worse – and more importantly – there’s never a sense of a “person” underneath all of this for us to root for; all we get is this mechanized revenge machine, with no personality or traits to hook onto and invest us in her fate. (The fact that Kirk’s writing is pretty blah doesn’t help anything here; it only adds to the sense that this isn’t a character or a person so much as it’s an authorial construction of tropes shoved into this world.)

That last word – “overlong” – gets to the other big issue with the book. Even at only 245 pages, Method 15/33 drags. There’s a secondary plot line about FBI agents working to track the kidnappers that never really becomes much more than padding for the novel – a plot thread that could easily have been excised. And then there’s the last few chapters; without getting spoilery, there’s definitely a sense that the book goes on longer than it needs to, hitting a big climax and then just continuing on for far longer than you’d like it to before just sort of sliding to a stop.

Method 15/33 is a great pulp hook for a novel, and there are some fun ideas at play in here. I don’t even doubt that one day, someone will turn this into a really fun movie. But as it stands now, the middling writing, overly contrived and constructed characters, and dull padding all pretty much left me pretty unimpressed with what I got.

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A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator’s Rise to Power, by Paul Fischer / *****

It’s hard to pigeonhole Paul Fischer’s bizarre, fascinating, informative, and incredibly compelling A Kim Jong-Il Production. Over the course of his meticulously researched non-fiction work, Fischer tells a number of stories. On the one hand, there’s the rise of Kim Jong-Il, the spoiled son of North Korea’s “Dear Leader” who came to power by understanding how to appeal to his father’s ego, and who made North Korea what it became with a love of propaganda and a passion for Western filmmaking techniques (and how the two could be used together). On the other hand, there’s the rise and fall of Shin Sang-Ok, the greatest South Korean film director of his day, and his wife Choi Eun-Hee, who was his match, as the most beloved South Korean actress of the time.

But more than being their separate stories, this is the story of how Kim kidnapped Shin and Choi, using them to build a North Korea film industry and to turn the nation’s laughable cinema into something respectable and greater – and how, in some ways, that was both the worst and best decision Kim could make.

Fischer’s book is compelling on any number of levels, even before you get to the truly bizarre saga of the kidnapping and Shin and Choi’s time in North Korea. Clearly having researched North Korea as much as humanly possible, Fischer gives us a portrait of this isolated, secretive land, and what it was like to live under first Kim Il-Sung and then under Kim Jong-Il. From food shortages to mandatory propaganda screenings, Fischer never lets us forget what’s going on while the Kims rule, and that gives A Kim Jong-Il Production a gravity and weight that its surreal story might not suggest. It’s impossible to ever forget what these men did to the people of North Korea, or how their egos devastated an entire country, and Fischer immerses us in a world that few of us know anything about.

That same level of research goes true for all of his principals, but again, it’s hard not to dwell on his portrait of Kim Jong-Il. For a Western audience, it’s hard to think of Kim as anything beyond the symbolic figure he created in his own image, and Fischer’s ability to peek beyond the curtain is fascinating, giving us a look at a compellingly strange combination of characteristics. Equal parts lazy and ruthless, narcissistic but oddly aware of the illusions he’s created (there’s a great moment where he reminds Choi that really, all these citizens praise him only because they have to), fiercely isolationist but passionate about Western cinema, and surprisingly funny, Fischer reminds us that Kim is a human being – albeit a dangerous one, and no less dangerous for his humanity.

For all of that, though, the appeal of the book is in that central story: a once-proud South Korean film director who had fallen on hard times, and who finds himself kidnapped and held in North Korea – but given the chance to make films again, and on his own terms. I couldn’t help but think of Stephen King’s Misery so often as I read A Kim Jong-Il Production, with that book’s strange connection between suffering and creativity, and as Fischer explores Shin’s new dichotomy – he’s a prisoner, but given the chance to do the thing he loves on a scale that he no longer could in freedom – I found myself fascinated by the blurring of lines. Yes, Shin and Choi were prisoners, and yes, they mouthed along with the propaganda and statements that Kim asked them to do. But Fischer keeps their situation fascinatingly off-kilter, with their desire to escape constantly weighed against the fact that, against all odds, they were finding success in North Korea – just at a cost neither was willing to live with.

All of this combines to make one of the most compulsively readable, compelling, and astonishing books I’ve read in a long time. A Kim Jong-Il Production unfolds like a great thriller novel (there’s definitely a touch of Truman Capote’s “non-fiction novel” approach here), all while immersing you in its place and time. It’s informative about North Korea and Kim Jong-Il, to say nothing of South Korean cinema, but it’s also gripping as a bizarre piece of kidnapping fiction, following the victims as they learn to manipulate the ego of their captor and work toward their freedom. And if that’s not enough, there’s the way Fischer writes it all, moving it all like a rocket while never letting his research lapse or fade away. I can’t recommend this enough, both as great non-fiction and just a great read in general – and that goes doubly if you’re fascinated by North Korea or have a love for cinema.

Amazon