Collected Miscellany

Faith Whitney, the protagonist in THE RIFT ZONE, is an unusual character. She’s a smuggler as comfortable crossing the Iron Curtain as the average person is driving into Canada; her life on the knife-edge of east-west tension seems to suit her. Faith comes by her craft naturally; her mother is a fundamentalist Christian operating in the old Soviet Union. Her father is a figure of mystery, rumored dead or imprisoned in the gulag. Faith keeps an apartment in West Berlin; her roommate, Hakan, is an expert document forger.

In the novel’s set-up Faith is grabbed off the street by agents of the East German security service, the STASI. They want her to deliver a package to Moscow; to make sure she understands, they torture her, starve her and nearly drown her in the Spree. There’s more at stake than black market Marlboros or Uzbek china; the STASI want Faith to smuggle a bomb into Russia.

THE RIFT ZONE is a debut novel, although you’d never know it by the crisp writing, steady stream of wit and well-chosen action scenes. Ms. Hillhouse takes the eastern sector of divided Berlin and makes it come back to gritty life, deftly delivering Faith the field craft necessary to survive. The introduction of Summer, her former lover, SEAL and explosives expert, allows for banter and sexual tension while they prepare to outwit their opponents. The trip to Moscow is suitably hair raising; Faith has an uneasy alliance with a seductive KGB agent named Zara.

The author has great fun at the expense of ponderous Soviet-era slogans and institutions. She also manages to convey a sense of life in Berlin, West or East, during the tense decade of the Eighties. For all the machinations of the forces of evil the plot is a simple one, and if the novel has a weakness, it’s the hint of high-concept, Faith Whitney versus the combined intelligence services of the DDR and Soviet Russia. A few scenes are too long, but you probably won’t notice or care. This is a spy novel with a twist of irony and a fine eye for official hubris.

Having lived in Germany for four years when the Cold War was at its height, THE RIFT ZONE made me laugh with recognition and shudder when Faith was east of the wall. Let’s hope we hear more from Raelynn Hillhouse.

I am working a review for tomorrow, but in the meantime read this excellent Dan Green post that discusses the influence of film on novels and its connection to realism past and present. Here is a teaser:

In a previous post, I observed that what seemed most notable about the rush to adapt certain “chick lit” novels to the screen was that it seemed these novels had been written to achieve such film deals in the first place, that fiction was only the first step in a process that led to the most important accomplishment–having one’s story made into a movie, with all of the glamour and the publicity and the talk about grosses that this entails. I didn’t exactly suggest that they had been written as if they were actually movies, but that much contemporary fiction–beginning with the popular potboilers, but extending as well to many of the novels that are praised by ostensibly serious reviewers in newspaper book reviews–does indeed leave the impression that it seeks to emulate the storytelling and character-creation conventions of film seems to me, at least, undeniable. Perhaps this comes from the actual influence of film on the authors of such fiction, perhaps unconsciously from the assumption that these conventions are the ones with which even most readers of fiction are now most familiar. At any rate, too many novels I read (or choose not to read, because the reviews make it clear it will be a book of this type) proceed as if what the author really has in mind is the movie version the story at hand merely transcribes into prose; few of them manifest any particular qualities that couldn’t also be achieved on screen.

Plus Tom Wolfe comes up. So check it out.

As you can see I took the long Thanksgiving weekend off from blogging. It was fun just to relax and not think about anything except food, football, and friends. It might take me a little bit to get up and running again so here is an interesting article to chew on: The Spy Who Loved Me: What’s real in espionage fiction?

Former FBI agent Jim Ohlson takes a look at two recently released works on espionage and fiction. Alan Furst’s The Book of Spies and Frederick Hitz’s The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage Fiction. Here is a teaser:

The Report of the 9/11 Commission has put the CIA and related services in an unflattering spotlight and provoked an unprecedented debate over the structure of the U.S. intelligence program. But for every American who reads the report, a hundred will head to the local multiplex to see The Bourne Supremacy or The Manchurian Candidate. At home, they may have a copy of Absolute Friends, the latest novel by John le Carré, or Dark Voyage, the new book from Alan Furst, who has supplanted le Carré as the reigning master of espionage fiction. It is from such stories, in print or onscreen—from John Buchan’s Thirty-Nine Steps and the exploits of James Bond in all his guises; from Eric Ambler and William F. Buckley, Jr.; from Len Deighton and Robert Ludlum and Charles McCarry and all the rest—that most of us, however sophisticated we imagine ourselves to be, have formed our notions about the shadowland of “intelligence.” Even spies, after all, read spy fiction.

But how much—or how little—do these notions correspond to reality? Two recent books shed light on this question. In The Book of Spies, Alan Furst has compiled a lively anthology of literary espionage. And in The Great Game, Frederick Hitz—formerly inspector general at the CIA—attempts to sort out the hard reality of espionage fiction from the confabulations of myth. Both books belong on the shelf right next to the 9/11 report.

I used to be a avid reader of spy thrillers and have read most, if not all, of Deighton, Le Carre, Buckley, Ludlum, and quite a few others. I still enjoy a good spy story, I have Furst’s Dark Voyage on the TBR pile, but my tastes range wider these days so I read fewer in any given genre. I think I will put these two works on the Christmas list, however, as they seem like interesting reads as well as valuable resources.

This morning, waking up from a night of strange dreams–lost to the netherworld now–my fiance and I lingered in bed drinking coffee and watching the Early Show on CBS. This is so far removed from our normal lives, lives filled to the brim with work, house tasks and animal care (one large hairy german shepard and a fluffy, not fat, 11 year old cat), that it was some time before we (I) realized what we were watching wasn’t The Early Show at all.

It was Jane Pauley. Jane Pauley, for the uninitiated, is the former Early Show anchor, and…wife of Pulitzer prize winning cartoonist, Garry Trudeau, of Doonesbury fame. So, sue me for not knowing ABC from CBS from NBC. I know the WB…especially when Smallville is on!

Back to the cozy bedroom…even in the chill of the early morning, before the heat has kicked in. Tom and I are reading the paper, at least HE is reading the paper. I’m fixated on Jane Pauley and Tom Brokaw, her one and only guest. Finally, I turn to Tom and say, “I could have been Jane Pauley.”

I could have been. Except for lack of opportunity.

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I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving today. Hopefully it will be filled with family, friends, food, and football (if you like that sort of thing).

If not, may you find a good book and a comfortable chair (and maybe a drink).

I have a habit of frequenting these discount bookstores at outlet malls. They often have a special in addition to the discounts; like buy four books get the fifth free, etc. So I end up buying four or five fiction books. Usually I have no knowledge of the book except what I read on the cover and flap jackets (is that the term?). I go for interesting and thin. Something that I can pick up and read rather quickly. It is sort of like a palette cleanser for my mind. Through this little habit I have stumbled on some interesting works, like David Foster Wallace, Kevin Wignall, and Brock Clarke, and some less interesting – like Ian Rankin.

On a recent excursion I stumbled upon The Man Who Turned Into Himself by David Ambrose and was intrigued. This week I decided I needed a quick pick-me-up read and chose Ambrose.

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