Author: Andres Kabel

There is so much space opera sci-fi out there but few authors can sweep you away like Asimov, for example, once did. Frank Kennedy is three books into his “The Impossible Future” series and “The Reversing Tide” doesn’t just sweep you away, it pummels you and spooks your mind and so much more. If the first two books were fast-moving, “The Impossible Future” is a rocket and you’ll need barely a day or two of engrossed reading to relish the latest high-concept thrills and spills as Samantha, part of the Collectorate nobility, and her lover Michael, irreverent loose cannon, battle the seemingly implacable rise of their former friend James, infused with the power of one of the Jewels. The action scenes are knock-me-down, the dialogue is sharp, the vast Collectorate world is astonishing, and Kennedy is a superb stylist. I particularly enjoyed the twisty, treacherous politics, on a par with the machinations in the novels of John Scalzi. Highly recommended.

My first Meg Gardiner serial killer thriller, “The Dark Corners of the Night,” the third in a series featuring FBI behavioral analyst Caitlin Hendrix, lives up to her reputation. This time Caitlin races to catch the Midnight Man, who terrorizes the suburbs of Los Angeles by slaughtering a house’s adults while leaving the children as shattered witnesses. Gardiner has a winner in her protagonist and she is a surefooted writer adept at maintaining pace. The plot journey is murky and fascinating and the extended character set is diverse and well-drawn. If there is a sense of deja vu in the storyline, that seems to matter little over the course of an evening’s breathless reading.

Indiana Jones is alive and well, if more scabrous, and he is in cahoots with two beautiful deadly women … Charlie Newton is one of the most propulsive, immersive thriller writers in town and in “Privateers,” he embraces and updates the mystery quest idea, with wonderful results. Bill Owens, a Chicago hustler of knockdown character and a hidden heart of gold, becomes enmeshed in a quest, using clues from lines of hidden doggerel, to track down a ransom’s fortune of gold looted from Haiti a century ago. A pell-mell plot careens through the Caribbean towards a finale that grows, incredibly, ever more fraught. Newton inhabits his characters, the exotic locales spring to life, and the dialogue is a treat. There is an element of those boys’ own adventures from my childhood but it’s such a pleasure to surrender to the pleasures of “Privateers” for an evening or two. Grab this and hold on for the ride.

What do you read about global warming? More facts and prognostications? For me, definitely yes. Nihilistic doom tomes? Again, yes for me. Rousing calls to action? Yes from me but most such seem to fall limp in my hands. So it is with great delight that I proclaim that “The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis” is a heartfelt, well structured polemic that strikes home. Perhaps the reason the book succeeds is the fulsome pedigree of both authors, key architects and on-board managers of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement. Christina Figureres, with the aid of Tom Rivett-Carnac, were instrumental in succeeding, beyond any expectation, in extracting commitments almost across the globe. They know about despair but they choose hope and they acted towards hope and they made it work, at least for that precarious moment in time. Now, in this book, the two of them present a stark choice over the next decade and then offer three “mindsets” to spur purposeful action and then ten chiming, broad-category actions. “The Future We Choose” is a pulsing froth of exhortation that, at least for me, rings intensely true. A wonderful book for this dark age.

Famous for the Dexter series, Jeff Lindsay now turns his attention, beginning with “Just Watch Me,” to a hero as equally unlikely and theoretically repulsive, namely Riley Wolfe, a juggernaut robber, a thief who can parkour across roofs, defeat any security system, and engage in elaborate disguises. In his debut outing, Riley accepts the challenge of heisting a mega jewel on show in New York. Much of the book is the fascinating unraveling of Riley’s tactics. As a counterfoil, we follow in the footsteps of an FBI agent patiently tracking Riley, in particular unpicking his murky past, in scenes welcome for a freshness of perspective. Lindsay is a zesty writer, not afraid to switch points of view and time periods while he presents the unvarnished Riley Wolfe (this man is not, repeat, not nice) in an unhurried fashion that paradoxically aroused this reader’s sympathies. (Is that how Dexter became kind of lovable? I don’t recall the first few books in the series.) The climax of “Just Watch Me” is a frenetic flurry of revelations and triumphs that seems both movie-ready but also subtly clever. Look, if I lay it on the line, this novel can read like pure-James-Patterson-plot-and-nothing-else but it worked at a second level on me, and I’ll be returning for Riley Wolfe #2.