NONFICTION:ILLICIT SOVIET AIR CARGO
Under the Radar and on the Black Market With the World’s Most Dangerous Smugglers by Matt Potter (Bloomsbury)
This book fascinates even as it annoys. Matt Potter, a veteran British print and television reporter, has a great subject: the freewheeling, cheerfully amoral cargo-plane pilots from the former Soviet Union who, as he puts it, “fueled the growth of the global black market, the rule of warlords, and the rise of the mafia in Eastern Europe and far beyond.” Yet he goes way over the top, spewing out breathless, hyped-up prose that, over the course of the book, veers toward self-parody. And why is he packing a couple of guns in the author’s photo on the dust jacket?
But when Potter documents more dispassionately his 15 years of observing these smuggling operations up close, it’s great reading. Much of the book focuses on Mickey, a pilot on one of those giant Il-76 Soviet cargo planes that have turned up in practically every trouble spot of the past 20 years. The pilots might officially carry aid from an NGO to a disaster-stricken country, but stashed away in their planes’ many secret hiding places could be guns on their way to warlords or terrorists, drugs, illicit diamonds and the like. These pilots aren’t circumspect souls. Not to worry about such things as arming murderous thugs; the money is great, and they can go on living the life of the half-crazy danger junkie.
In the end, Potter seems ambivalent about the pilots and the milieu in which they live. He can’t ignore the bad actors they deal with, but he clearly admires their chutzpah and derring-do. Maybe he should have talked more to their victims.
FICTION:SALVAGE THRILLER
Operation Napoleon by Arnaldur Indridason (Minotaur Books)
In the waning hours of World War II, a covert German bomber carrying both German and American officers crashes in the snow in Iceland. Little is known about the plane, or why enemy officers would be on the flight.
As the passengers slowly die, the plane disappears into a glacier, leaving its exact location a mystery. Decades later, the plane is discovered, and an effort by the U.S. to remove it secretly begins.
That’s the premise of Arnaldur Indridason’s new novel, “Operation Napoleon,” a thriller that plunges the reader into the fast-paced plot set in an exotic landscape of long dark nights and deadly weather.
In a land where the frigid winter climate is frequently a danger to residents, some young rescue volunteers on a training mission disappear after they break off from their group for a bit of joy riding on their new snowmobiles.
One of them calls his sister on the way to the glacier where the training exercise will be held. He’s checking out his new phone and promises to call the next day. His sister, Kristin, hears from him again, but the call is garbled and she can just make out his panic-stricken words about armed soldiers and a plane.
Her brother and his friend unknowingly drove their snowmobiles close to the mission to salvage the plane and got too close to a killer determined to protect its secrecy at all costs. Kristin is determined to find out what happened to her brother. But she suddenly finds herself on the run, and saving him has become secondary to trying to find out what’s going on and dodging a pair of killers who are after her.
Indridason has won some of the biggest fiction awards in Scandinavia, including the Glass Key award for the best Nordic crime novel two years in a row. His series featuring detective Erlendur has been immensely popular there.
Like the late Stieg Larsson, Indridason has a knack for Nordic noir.
FICTION:MEDICAL TRANSORMATION
Second Nature by Jacquelyn Mitchard (Random House)
The idea of a full-face transplant used to be the stuff of science fiction. Now it’s an exciting medical breakthrough — and the timely subject of Jacquelyn Mitchard’s provocative new novel. Sicily Coyne, the narrator of “Second Nature,” needs a new face. The 25-year-old burn victim is so disfigured that she scares people. Several reconstructive surgeries have had little effect.
But Sicily is a survivor. She could’ve died in the Holy Angels fire 12 years earlier on Chicago’s West Side. Several of her classmates were lost, as was her firefighter father. With the help of her Aunt Marie, Sicily built a life for herself that includes a good job, strong family ties and loving friends.
When she’s offered a transplant, she initially resists, arguing that the risks outweigh the benefits. But then she reconsiders. “I could no longer close my eyes and instantly summon the splendid young girl’s face that once was mine. … I was becoming one of my distant memories.”
The novel covers the arduous process of transplant procedures and medical politics. But nothing is as difficult to negotiate as the result of the transplant itself: Sicily is suddenly a beautiful woman. And so depressed that she can hardly get out of bed.
“I’d lost my family and my face but had never been in a book club. While I could speak Italian, I couldn’t cook it. … Now that my life didn’t need to be compact, I had no idea how to expand it.”
Mitchard has always turned an unflinching eye toward catastrophe in her work. Her first novel, “The Deep End of the Ocean,” about a kidnapped boy, climbed up the best-seller list and was the first book featured in Oprah’s Book Club. Mitchard’s latest will not disappoint fans, though its second half is largely predictable. Her distinctive voice is strong throughout and includes ironic and even funny observations about the human condition in the face of tragedy.
