Three Great Books #52

Including a love story that's still haunting me.

Culpability, by Bruce Holsinger

Can a novel be chewy? That’s how I’d describe this one — it reads easily but gives you a lot to think about. “Culpability” opens with a car crash; the Cassidy-Shaw family is en route to their son’s lacrosse tournament when their autonomous minivan hits another car. All five family members — parents Noah (a lawyer) and Lorelei (a brilliant AI expert), older brother Charlie (on the verge of a Division I athletic career), and younger twins Izzy and Alice — are OK, but the older couple in the other vehicle both die. As the family recuperates in a vacation home on the Chesapeake Bay, the authorities start investigating the cause of the accident. Was it the vehicle’s autonomous driving system? Charlie, who was at the wheel? Noah, who was working on a laptop in the passenger seat? Meantime, the billionaire tech tycoon who owns a compound nearby is showing what seems to be more than a neighborly interest in Lorelei, while his daughter and Charlie are making horny eyes at each other. This is a propulsive family drama studded with interesting questions about the role tech plays — or soon might play — in our lives.

Moscow X, by David McCloskey

I get a very particular kind of joy from discovering a new-to-me author with several books out. “Moscow X” is the second of former CIA officer David McCloskey’s three published spy thrillers — a fourth is out late this month — and while it’s probably ideal to read them in order, I didn’t feel like I missed any crucial context by starting with this one. It begins with Artemis Proctor, CIA Chief of Station in Tajikistan, getting her cover blown in dramatic fashion. Back in the U.S., she runs Moscow X, a secret operation meant to throw a little chaos into Putin’s world, if not to overthrow him completely. The Secretary of the Security Council, Vassily “Goose” Gusev, has “repatriated” a bunch of gold from the bank owned by his rival Andrei Agapov as part of a campaign to hobble him. Agapov’s daughter, Anna, is married to a nasty piece of work named Vadim, one of Putin’s money men. The CIA thinks she might be convinced to help them get revenge on her family’s enemies — though unbeknownst to them, she’s also an undercover Russian intelligence officer. On the other side of the cat and mouse game are Sia Fox, a CIA officer operating under a fake civilian identity as a lawyer at a shady firm in London, and Max Castillo, who runs a thoroughbred farm in Mexico and who does the occasional favor for the CIA. I don’t want to reveal anything more about the twisty plot, but I feel compelled to pass along this mild spoiler to my fellow readers who get very stressed out about the fate of fictional animals: Penelope the horse lives!

Slanting Towards the Sea, by Lidija Hilje

This is such a beautiful, complicated love story. Ivona and Vlaho fall in love as students, and get married amid optimism about both their future together and the prospects for the new democracy of Croatia. But the dream fades. There are few jobs outside of the tourism industry available without government connections, and bureaucracy strangles young people’s opportunities. Their relationship is challenged by these economic realities, and by the fact that Ivona can’t carry a biological child, which has big implications for Vlaho’s family. Years later, the two are divorced, Vlaho is remarried and has two children, and Ivona is a part of their life even as she pines for her ex. When Ivona, who is living with and caring for with her ailing father, has to sell the family’s partially renovated estate, the agent for the buyer becomes the first significant man in her life since her divorce. Alternating between Ivona and Vlaho’s courtship and early life together and the present day, the painful reason behind the end of their relationship is revealed. This broke my heart, though the end is ultimately hopeful. It’s still haunting me.