The Bezzle

 The Bezzle by Cory Doctorow (2024 Tor Books eBook 249p)

 

In the last few years Cory Doctorow has become a new favourite author of mine. Of the same age as me he combines a similar political sensibility with razor-sharp descriptive prose and a style that mixes what we used to get in future-focussed cyberpunk fiction with issues that are very present day.

His recently created character (this is his second outing after 2023’s “Red Team Blues”) forensic accountant Marty Hench seems to be a conduit for the author to rail against the ills of modern technology, the financial system. government and society in general. Instead of just venting into the void, Hench offers direct action solutions.

“The Bezzle” actually set prior to “Red Team Blues” (which was billed as the character’s last case) begins with our hero being invited by a friend to a series of exclusive parties on the island of Santa Catalina off the California coast near Los Angeles. Along with meeting beautiful fascinating women, Hench also uncovers a local Ponzi scheme involving local workers dealing hamburgers like they were drugs – fast food chains being banned on the island. In the process he draws the ire of one “Junior” a man with fingers in many dodgy financial pies.

Some time later, perhaps years, Marty’s friend Scott is imprisoned for possessing cocaine and is sentenced to what seems like an unreasonable sentence in prison. This leads to an unusually interesting info-dump as, along with the character, we discover exactly who or what actually runs the Californian prison system in these days of privatisation and austerity.

As Scott’s treatment inside gets worse Marty gets to work subverting the system and bringing to justice those responsible. Soon it appears a familiar spider from the beginning of the book is at heart of the web. Hench risks his own life and limb to bring about change and many times it seems all is lost.

Even though it is paced like a thriller and has thriller elements not a huge amount of action actually happens in this book. Much of it is Marty’s thought processes and his interactions with the technology and bureaucracy in his way.

Like its predecessor, this book may age badly as things change rapidly but I think this is the superior of the two, Hench is much more of the everyman hero rather than the all-conquering womaniser of “Red Team Blues”. The story entertained me greatly and I was disappointed when it came quickly to the end.

I understand Doctorow wrote several of these Marty Hench books in one massive exegesis, I hope they just keep getting better like this example.

 

The Premonitions Bureau

The Premonitions Bureau by Sam Knight (2022 Faber and Faber paperback 249pp)

I’ve always had an odd, uneasy intellectual relationship with things that may be classed as ‘paranormal’ or ‘supernatural’. The rational part of me wants to be a hard-nosed sceptic and dismiss it all as rubbish and fantasy and for the most part I do. However, for the last 40 or so years I’ve also found myself drawn to study many of the same liminal ‘Fortean’ topics. I gives me a sense of wonder and a feeling of ‘what if?” that I can’t easily dismiss. Perhaps just a form of entertainment but sometimes there’s just enough evidence and testimony to keep the sceptic at bay and make me think there must really be something going on here or indeed out there.

Although ostensibly about the subject of people telling the future, Sam Knight’s excellent book wisely keeps the speculation to the minimum.

Starting with the 1966 Aberfan disaster, this book is really the story of one ordinary man, his extraordinary interests and how they intersected to eventually change his life.

On October 21 1966 a pile of coal mine waste products which had, despite warnings, been piled upon the hillside above the Welsh town of Aberfan collapsed and came racing down the hill in a black slurry that submerged much of the town. 144 people lost their lives including 116 children who were at two schools on the edge of town that took most of the impact.

Into the aftermath came psychiatrist John Barker. At the time writing a book about people dying from shear fright and shock he was attracted by stories of victims of the disaster surviving the physical trauma only to die suddenly later. This led to him uncovering multiple accounts of people, some children, who seemed to have had premonitions of what was about to happen. Fascinated by this possibility Barker decided to study the topic of premonitions and general. Contact with Evening Standard science reporter Peter Fairley led to the pair setting up an experimental ‘Premonitions Bureau’ at the newspaper. They encouraged readers to send in examples what they thought were predictions of disasters and world events and then reviewed them to see which correspondents had the best ‘hit-rates’

Two individuals stood out and Knight’s book only really focuses on them when it comes to the bureau’s successes. Lorna Middleton and Alan Hencher seemed to be able to visualise coming events and had almost physical reactions when these would involve significant death or disaster. Neither Barker or Knight’s book really explain how this could possibly happen apart from a few lines about the nature of time being different than what we imagine and so on.

The book diverges into equally interesting accounts of the other topics taking up Barker’s professional and private life. The state of mental health care and the patients in the UK system in the 1960s take up a large chunk of this book as Barker struggles to work at and then help run crumbling facilities with outdated policies. Barker continued his work on the physical effects of fear publishing several papers and a book which drew disdain from his colleagues and employers. At the same time, he was attempting to provide for a young family and something had to give. His own physical and mental health suffered and soon the bureau’s star correspondents were warning him of dark things around the corner.

I found this book most fascinating and engaging as it covered several topics that personally interest me as well as introducing me to things like the grubby world of 1960s newspapers and the so-called nocebo effect. This is much more than a book on the paranormal field of precognition, it is about human lives and is more interesting as a result.

Saga Volume Eleven

Saga Volume Eleven by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (2023 Image Comics Inc. softback 160pp) 

 

This is going to be brief because there’s simply not a great deal to say about this, the eleventh collected volume of an on-going comic book series. Saga has been going since 2012 and I’ve been collecting these softback versions for about a decade. This volume is certainly not the place to start reading if you’re new. I understand all previous volumes are still in print and are readily available. All volumes are also available in digital form and I surprised myself by discovering I had volume 1-9 as pdfs already as part of a larger set of Image Comics publications that were offered by the Humble Bundle website recently.

To the uninitiated, Saga has been telling the tale of Alana and Marko, soldiers on opposite sides of a galactic war who fell in love, created a family and then went on the run as the authorities, media and other interested parties decided to hunt them down.

There was a major development a couple of volumes back that took Marko out of the story followed by a four-year hiatus of the comic series. Now it has resumed I’m not sure the story-telling has really resumed the momentum. Although things still happen, it feels like its treading water somewhat but perhaps the author is just laying the groundwork for big things that are still to happen.

In this volume we find Alana and the family seemingly stranded on a backwater planet scrabbling to raise money to survive and perhaps find their back way off-world. Alana is working with assorted aliens in an Amazon-like warehouse while the children beg on the streets and look for their own hustle.

Meanwhile the mercenary ‘The Will’ is having adventures which involve his former girlfriend and their associates while Landfall government agent Gale has found new leads which brings him closer to finding the family but puts his own life in danger.

Alana discovers a possible way out but then has to rescue the children who have essentially gone looking for magic beans to bring back Marko.

Overall, there are not huge developments in this volume but you can’t fault the writing – Vaughan can generate emotion from the reader in a couple of panels while Staples remains on top form with her artwork.

Good but are we still 10 volumes away from any resolution?