The Laughing Monsters

July 7, 2014
Best known for writing about Vietnam (Tree of Smoke won the National Book Award) and America’s dispossessed (Jesus’ Son; Angels), Johnson sets his new literary spy thriller in Africa. Roland Nair, a Scandinavian with a U.S. passport, returns to the continent where he once made a fortune when his longtime friend Michael Adriko invites him to Freetown, Sierra Leone. The stated reason is to attend Michael’s wedding to his newest fiancée, Davidia, but because both Roland and Michael have spent their lives working for various government and military organizations, Roland has reason to suspect that Michael has a hidden agenda. Soon Roland, Michael, and Davidia are traveling deeper and deeper into Africa, their destination a mystical place called Newada Mountain in the Congo: Michael, a war orphan, remembers it from his chaotic, violent childhood. NATO, the U.N., Mossad, and Interpol get wrapped up in his dangerous plan. Much of the novel follows the shifting military and political loyalties in a post-9/11 world, and there is plenty of subterfuge and secrecy, but Johnson’s at his best when describing the pervasive, threatening strangeness of Roland’s life in Africa. Huge insects, dangerous bogs, something called “Baboon Whiskey,” a dining room that only plays Nat King Cole’s “Smile” over and over, and even, toward the end, some effective nods to Heart of Darkness all help to make the book’s setting its strongest character.

September 1, 2014
And for his next trick, Johnson delivers a taut, Conrad-by-way-of-Chandler tale about a spy who gets too close to the man he's shadowing in Africa. Johnson may be the hardest major American writer to pin down: He's written potent short stories about down and outers (Jesus' Son, 1992), a ruminative domestic novel (The Name of the World, 2000), a hefty Vietnam epic (Tree of Smoke, 2007) and a hard-boiled noir (Nobody Move, 2009). With this novel, narrated by a seen-it-all NATO agent, Johnson revisits some of the itches previously scratched in Tree of Smoke, particularly the moral compromises that are inextricably linked to war and spycraft. Roland arrives in West Africa with orders to connect with Michael Adriko, a former anti-terrorist colleague who's apparently deserted. Roland is no exemplar of moral upstanding himself: In Sierra Leone, he cuts a side deal to sell NATO secrets, self-medicates with alcohol and prostitutes, and once he finally connects with Michael, falls for Michael's fiancee, Davidia. Michael wants Roland to join him in a scheme to sell a chunk of unprocessed radioactive material, a plan that takes them deeper into the continent, to Michael's hometown in the Congo. (The novel's title refers to a mountain range there.) As in any good double-agent story, Johnson obscures whose side Roland is really on, and Roland himself hardly knows the answer either: Befogged by frustrations with bureaucracy, his lust for Davidia and simple greed, he slips deeper into violence and disconnection. Johnson expertly maintains the heart-of-darkness mood, captured in Roland's narration as well as in the increasingly emotional messages he sends to his lover and colleague back home.Johnson offers no new lessons about how dehumanizing post-9/11 lawlessness can be, but his antihero's story is an intriguing metaphor for it.

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September 15, 2014
Johnson's latest offers more proof of the range and impressive talent of one of America's finest novelists, although this is far from his best book. After his brilliant early work, Johnson has in recent years taken on Vietnam (Tree of Smoke, 2007) and the underside (his specialty) of the American West (Train Dreams, 2011). Here we are in contemporary Africa, from Freetown (Sierra Leone) to Uganda, an unsettling continent, with two unsettling but fascinating major characters: Roland Nair, a part-Danish operative for an uncertain international organization, and Michael Adriko, a secretive, charismatic, and frighteningly capable African of otherwise questionable ancestry and motivation. Michael's well-educated American fianc'e, Davidia, and a cast of shady characters of diverse lineage contribute to what is very much a twenty-first-century stew, despite its clear similarity to the work of Graham Greene or even Joseph Conrad. As one character says, Since nine-eleven, chasing myths and fairy tales has turned into a serious business. Though what business that is remains murky, Johnson's manipulation of its elements is testimony to his mature power as a writer.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

Starred review from September 15, 2014

Roland Nair is a NATO intelligence operative assigned to report on his old comrade-in-arms Michael Adriko after Michael, currently an attache with a Green Beret unit in the Congo, mysteriously summons him to Africa. Arriving in Sierra Leone, Roland soon hooks up with Michael and his fiancee, Davidia St Claire, an American college girl and daughter of Michael's commanding officer. Michael wants Roland to accompany him to his home village to get his clan's blessing to marry Davidia and to participate in scamming Mossad about a flight load of highly enriched uranium rumored to have disappeared in a plane crash many years earlier. Their adventures take them from the Congo and capture by American special forces to the crazed remnants of Michael's clan and finally back to Sierra Leone, where Roland has his own bit of illegal business to transact. VERDICT In a work that's part spy novel and part buddy tale, Johnson aptly locates his portrayal of a shadowy world of complicated relationships and ever-shifting alliances in one of the more broken places on the planet. This is what you might get if you combined Casablanca's cynicism and sense of intrigue with a touch of Heart of Darkness post-9/11. [See Prepub Alert, 5/12/14.]--Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2014

The National Book Award-winning author of Tree of Smoke can be expected to deliver literate and insightful suspense as Roland Nair returns after ten years to Sierra Leone, where he had made a lot of money with his friend Michael Adriko. Michael, who calls himself a soldier of fortune, introduces Roland to his American fiancee, and together they travel to the Uganda-Congo borderland to meet Michael's clan. Not surprisingly, this trip reveals dark secrets and divided loyalties in a fractured post-9/11 world.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2014

Roland Nair is a NATO intelligence operative assigned to report on his old comrade-in-arms Michael Adriko after Michael, currently an attache with a Green Beret unit in the Congo, mysteriously summons him to Africa. Arriving in Sierra Leone, Roland soon hooks up with Michael and his fiancee, Davidia St Claire, an American college girl and daughter of Michael's commanding officer. Michael wants Roland to accompany him to his home village to get his clan's blessing to marry Davidia and to participate in scamming Mossad about a flight load of highly enriched uranium rumored to have disappeared in a plane crash many years earlier. Their adventures take them from the Congo and capture by American special forces to the crazed remnants of Michael's clan and finally back to Sierra Leone, where Roland has his own bit of illegal business to transact. VERDICT In a work that's part spy novel and part buddy tale, Johnson aptly locates his portrayal of a shadowy world of complicated relationships and ever-shifting alliances in one of the more broken places on the planet. This is what you might get if you combined Casablanca's cynicism and sense of intrigue with a touch of Heart of Darkness post-9/11. [See Prepub Alert, 5/12/14.]--Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.