The Never Game - Jeffery Deaver

 

Jeffery Deaver broke through in the UK around the time I took a twenty-year break from contemporary American crime fiction, albeit I did catch his breakthrough book The Bone Collector.  Now I picked up this, from 2019, the first in a trilogy about reward hunter Colter Shaw.  Shaw was brought up a survivalist.  His father Ash was a brilliant academic who suddenly headed for the California wilderness and sealed himself and his family inside a compound.  The adult Colter now uses his wilderness skills to track down missing people, sometimes killers.  He does it for the reward money although sometimes he doesn't bother to collect.  He travels all over the US.  His actual home is in Florida but he has a luxury RV and will go anywhere the trail leads him.

In this case a young woman has gone missing - but not the young woman Shaw is trying to rescue in the teaser (which shows straight off how clever a storyteller Deaver is).  The case leads him into the dark heart of the Silicon Valley and its hardcore gaming community.  Shaw has never used his computer for anything other than work so we learn about gaming with him.  Meanwhile Shaw plays his own complex mental game, the titular Never Game, which was Ash Shaw's method of instilling survival skills into his three children.  Never do this, never do that ... etc.

Also slowly unravelling in the background is the mystery of Ash Shaw's death fifteen years ago and the disappearance soon after of his eldest son Russell - arcs which are clearly going to complete over the trilogy.

I was impressed.  Deaver has an easy style, informal yet always controlled.  His story skills are superb and he has clearly done his research.  This we can tell because he names his sources at the end - citing one of my favourite books, The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling (reviewed on this blog something like five years ago).  His supporting characters are multi-faceted and therefore able to drive the narrative when necessary and hold our interest at other times.

The Third Reich - Roberto Bolano

Like virtually everyone else, I first heard of Bolano when he died ridiculously young in 2003. Like lots of my fellow literati I bought his final novel 2666 when it came out. And like a large proportion of my peers I struggled to love it.

However it turns out 2666 was not the last of Bolano. He left archives, drafts and outlines. He left The Third Reich, which seems to have been written towards the start of his career and, for whatever reason, discarded. It finally appeared in 2010 (2011 in English). This I absolutely loved.


Bolano was Chilean but he lived most of his adult life, such as it was, in Spain. In fact the lived in a minor resort on the Costa Brava, just like the one where The Third Reich is set.


The title naturally suggests the Nazis, and our anti-hero Udo Berger is indeed German, as is his girlfriend Ingeborg, her holiday friends Charly and Hanna, and the owner of the hotel, Frau Else. But The Third Reich is actually a war game. This is the 1980s when war games came in boxes rather than downloads and Udo is the German champion, lined up for a big match in Paris, who is developing a new strategy for publication.


The Germany Bolano actually plays with is that of Kafka. When Charly goes missing Udo's exceptionally ordered life starts to crumble. Even though he doesn't like the louche and feckless Charly he becomes overwhelmed by the need to stay on, long after Charly's body has been found and repatriated, long after the season has ended and the hotel around him is steadily heading for hibernation.


Udo fills his days by playing The Third Reich in his room with El Quemado, a disfigured beach bum of unknown origin who lives inside a pile of his own pedalos. El Quemado knows nothing about gaming but is "a quick study" - very quick. Soon Udo finds himself in retreat...


Like Kafka, nothing is really resolved. Mysterious linkages appear and fade. All that really matters is the carefully documented narrative of Udo's disintegration. Found among the papers is not usually a great indicator of quality, but in this instance it really is.


I am usually snitty about blurbs. Fair's fair, though. The cover blurb here - from the now defunct Independent on Sunday - couldn't be more right:

Overflowing with Bolano's exuberance, dark humour, and sarcasm, The Third Reich is a good introduction to this great and disquieting novelist.