EXIT PARTY by Emily St. John Mandel: Timely, Compelling, Suspenseful

Is a dystopian novel automatically a form of mystery? Will any meaningful plunge into human quandary, loss, and occasional success result in chasing answers to crime, disaster, unfair aspects of being alive?

EXIT PARTY (301 pages, none of them wasted) is the seventh from the bicoastal Emily St. John Mandel. It opens in the year 2031, just five years from now. You can get a prime sense of the book from the opening sentence:

In the first spring after the collapse of the United States, the blossoming of the jacaranda trees felt to Ari like grace.

An easy comparison for the book would be to call it a closer-in-time sideways approach to Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale: It evokes the same sense of "we knew this could unfold next, didn't we?" Lives are less obviously at stake, but personal freedom belongs only to those that the State doesn't much notice. Surveillance is a fact of life. (My app-developing older son told me about 20 years ago that there was no longer privacy in our world. I've taken him seriously.)

Mandel shapes a double dystopian here: each with a version of what could take place in the next few years in our nation, our global community, our lives. Ari, short for Ibari, keeps being pinned by her own rebelliousness, which in one mirror could be independence and assertiveness, so a very good thing, and in another could reflect as anger and dangerous to the social order -- and to herself and the people connected with her.

Look for the threads that pull this book from spring blossoms and grace, to a finale that resonates like the warning bell and grief of Le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Are we already seeing the Berlin Wall of our time, the leaders who self-sort between sacrifice and accumulation of wealth, and the forces ready to kill to preserve political assertions?

Don't miss this book. 

THE NINTH CIRCLE, New Billy Boyle World War II Mystery from James Benn

 Released today (Sept. 1, Soho Press), THE NINTH CIRCLE is a fast-moving wartime thriller that takes Captain Billy Boyle, Boston Irish cop chasing criminals for General Eisenhower, into the wildest parts of Cuban life during the Second World War. Thank goodness for his long-time investigative partner, Lieut. Piotr Kazimierz: The two are assigned to figure out the funny business behind the murder of a naval intelligence officer.

But Billy and Kaz quickly discover they'll need local allies too, and in this case, the offer from the British Legation in Havana isn't enough -- considering that part of the network of nasties involves action at the Gran Casino Nacional, what could be the peril of accepting backup from gangster Meyer Lansky?

With this strange collection of allies (strange might be an understatement for Lansky), life gets even more complicated for the team when Kaz clearly develops an understanding of passion with one of the locals, the lovely and intelligent Solana. Although this leaves Billy as a third wheel at times, it also nudges him into deep reflection:

I thought about all the guajiro [good friends] in other lands, their peaceable meals and traditions shattered and destroyed by war. A war that was still being waged, even here in this land of sun and palm trees. It was fought in hidden rooms and dark alleys, but it was war all the same. A war of spies, betrayals, and deceit.

These moments deepen Benn's page-turner, which spins crisis and conflict at a quick pace. The clever writing allows enough of these diversions to keep the body count in perspective. There's also the peril of becoming pals with a gangster who's got to protect his own investment first. Billy sees it:

I sort of trusted Lansky. Trusted him to act in his own interests, which coincided with ours in that he clearly didn't wish Hitler and his goods well.

Brace for battle, explosions, a touch of love and plenty of loss. This is book 21 in the series, and we readers can assume Billy will survive to the end of the war, as Benn keeps unearthing fascinating twists of history to enliven Billy's assignments. But there are no guarantees for his friends, are there?

Need a reminder of Dante's ninth circle of hell? It's the one for traitors. 

[For more reviews of the books in this enjoyable series, click here.]