violent | Seattle Book Mama

David Baldacci is a veteran mystery writer, but the Walter Nash series is brand new. I was not one of his faithful readers, but I wasn’t sure why, exactly; perhaps in the past, I’d tried picking up one of his books, become distracted by something else, and not gone back to it. So when I was approached by NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing to read and review the first book in this series, I welcomed the opportunity. My thanks go to them even though I didn’t come away enthralled.

Our premise is this: Walter Nash is a high placed executive. He’s courteous and loving, and he works way too many hours at Sybaritic Investments. However, following his father’s funeral, Nash is approached by the FBI. Unbeknownst to him, Sybaritic serves as a money launderer. There’s a lot of money involved. Nash can work with the FBI to expose the two top criminals—his boss, Rhett, and his boss’s boss, Victoria Steers, who heads an international criminal syndicate. Or, he can go down with the ship after the Feds move in, and that will mean a great deal of jail time.

This story reads like the fever dream of a nerdy guy that wishes he were a mean, lean fighting machine. Good ole Walt would never commit an act of violence of any kind, but now, gosh, shucks, he just has to. He gets a new name, is sent out to train himself in martial arts and every other sort of physical badassery; his head is shaved, and it and nearly every other part of his physique is covered in tattoos. The new Walt is bad, bad, bad, and darn, isn’t this fun?

Meanwhile, let’s look at the female characters in this tale. His daughter, whom he loved but I did not—entitled, wealthy brat—dies. The bad guys get her, and that becomes his justification for everything that follows. (This happens early on.) His wife, it turns out, has been sleeping around and isn’t all that attached to him, despite the vast resources he has placed at her very fingertips. Victoria Steers, the boss lady, is a sociopath, ordering people tortured and/or killed without her pulse quickening. It’s just business. And then we have two side characters, Walt’s stepmother—also immoral, having slept with Walt while married to his dad—is one, and the other is Rhett’s little sister, who is intellectually disabled. In short, we have a number of women that have no redeeming qualities, and none that are both capable and decent.

So, what’s not to love here? (Eye roll.)

The end of the book isn’t an ending, and while I get it that Baldacci is starting a new series and wants to keep readers invested, I’m ready to climb off the bus. Now that I know this author’s general trajectory, I know enough.

So if you enjoy this sort of thing, don’t care even a little about plausible plots and scenarios, and have little enough regard for women that you don’t mind these Madonna/whore characters, then good for you. Pull out your plastic and dive into this series. As for me, I need a shower and some mouthwash.

American Spirits is a collection of three short stories that take place in the fictional New England town of Sam Dent. My thanks go to NetGalley and Alfred A. Knopf for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

I wasn’t sure this book would be up to Banks’s usual standard, as it was published posthumously, more than a year following his death. Sometimes a successful author will have a book that isn’t their best, and they’ll toss it in a drawer in hopes of improving and publishing it later. When they die, their heirs find the book and seeing dollar signs, send it off to a publisher. Still, though, Russell Banks’s sloppy seconds are still going to be vastly better than your average successful author’s best effort, so I decided to take a look. And holy crap, it’s actually one of his finest!

One thing any uninitiated reader must know is the Banks is brutal. If the story seems to be leading up to something pretty bad happening, the unwary might anticipate that the author will pull it out of the water at the last minute in order to send the readers away with smiles on their faces. Banks doesn’t do that. With stories by Banks, the main question is whether all of the important characters are going to die, or only some of them. He is unflinchingly brutal, but oh honey, he does it so well that I wish I could thank him for it!

One of the things that underlies everything Banks writes is his deep knowledge of, and appreciation for, the working class. His own hardscrabble background most likely plays a role, but one way or the other, the struggles of the ordinary man or woman, usually living in rural parts or small towns in New England are depicted with such care, distilling vast amounts of tiny details into the briefest of spaces that I believe the character and I believe the setting. Banks is also, to the best of my knowledge, the first to set a story in a manufactured home or mobile home court.

The first story, “Nowhere Man”, is about a man that sells off part of his land to a newcomer, partially because of a private agreement that the two make, but that isn’t ever codified. The new owner eventually goes back on his word; the original owner is having none of it; and then all hell breaks loose.

The second, “Homeschooling,” is about an average family whose life is changed when newcomers with a somewhat bizarre parenting style move in next door; when the emaciated children sneak over at night to beg for food, they become involved.

The final story, “Kidnapped,” is about a couple of senior citizens that are kidnapped and held until the drugs that their grandson’s addicted mother has filched are returned.

When I read Banks, I tell myself not to get attached to the characters, but he’s smarter than I am, so I can’t help myself.

There is something deeply satisfying in reading an author that has the confidence to buck literary trends. I wish that Banks, who was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, could have lived and written fiction forever, but the legacy he has left us is the next best thing. Highly recommended.