Christopher Bollen

Since reading Orient a few years ago, I’ve kept Christopher Bollen on my radar. His narrative style is oblique, but highly personal and particular. He goes into detail, but not enough for it to become repetitive and boring. The opening scene in this novel is quite effective - it’s a short con that’s really a test to see if Nick can pull off the long one. It’s a little nail-biter once we come to the end, but it’s a thing of beauty as far as cons go. I know we should all deplore them show more as terrible cheats and liars, but successful con artists have a strange place in the human heart. We want to believe that their victims deserved it somehow; that they walked into the trap or fell for the most blatant lies when we know that we would probably do the same. I think we also want to reward such brazenness because it’s so skillful and something 90% of us just couldn’t imagine doing or be good at if we tried. So that’s our set-up, Nick and Clay are here to deprive some poor fool of his money.

But not so fast. Is our victim really deserving? It takes a while to get to that part, but when it comes, I wasn’t convinced and thought Clay was being a bit of a jerk and certainly childish. And given that we don’t see the relationship much from Richard West’s POV it’s hard to say his treatment of Clay was so vicious. We also don’t get to see far into Clay’s relationship with van der Haar and whether he wormed his way into the old Queen’s heart just to game an inheritance. He is masterminding the long con on West so it’s likely, but unproven. Overall Nick comes across as more sympathetic than does Clay, although he seems a natural swindler more than Clay.

Venice itself stands out as a character and one that’s being slowly strangled. A sub-current in the story is that of Venice itself and how it’s relentlessly turning into Disneyland. There are fewer and fewer actual residents of the city because no one can afford to say, be a dentist or run a dry-cleaner because so many of the city dwellers have left because of the tourist onslaught. It’s a vicious cycle - how can you live anywhere without grocery stores or veterinarians? How can you stand the taxes and the crowding and the noise? So many people turned their homes into B&Bs or vacation rentals and left for the mainland. Anyone hanging on has to put up with too many people and too few services. In the book the latest Mayor is blamed as a corrupt politician (redundant I know) who uses bribery as a way to bulldoze and raze homes and businesses and build hotels and mask shops.

It ends sort of oddly. Nick has to run on the heels of a violent fight with West and the resulting probable charges of attempted murder. The plot to sell the toothpick pallazzo Il Domitorio fell through because West saw Clay didn’t have clear title to it and set a trap to get both of them on fraud. Because West’s assistant saw he was being used and got really mad, he went ahead to warn Clay that he shouldn’t show up for the sale meeting. Since he actually didn’t go through with it, Clay gets to hang onto his half-ownership out of prison. Eventually he catches up with Nick who is on the remotest island you can be on and still be in Italy. Will they live happily ever after? Most likely not, but it's a nice dream. I was always worried that Nick would end up with the short end of the stick and was happy when he asked Clay how exactly Nick would benefit financially if absolutely everything was in Clay's name. This goes for the silver and the house. Clay never offers to open a Swiss Bank Account for Nick, so I don't think he ever intended to share and I think Nick knows that now. But they're basically all the other has and so...

Bollen writes that Clay’s role as an intern at the Guggenheim in Venice is based on his own experience being one. His love of the museum, the city and his time there is palpable and enviable. I’m not sure Venice can live up to its past so it’s nice to have it encapsulated here.

Some terrific writing -
“As a teenager, Nick feared he would eventually become something like his quietly miserable father, fixing radios in a Dayton basement. Then Nick feared he would turn into a version of his unhappy, Ohio-trapped sister. In New York, he worried he’d end up whispered about like this young man for his behavior around older men. Nick’s entire biography could be summed up by the people he feared he’d become.” p 36

“Like most zillionaires, West didn’t want to be remembered for how he’d earned his money but for how he spent it. Many lives might have been ruined in the amassing of his wealth, but now he was bent on uplifting lives by means of culture and taste.” p 134 show less

The Short of It:

Quirky. Fun. Batshit Crazy.

The Rest of It:

Eighty-one-year-old widow Maggie Burkhardt came to the Royal Karnak to escape. But not in quite the same way as most other guests who are relaxing at this threadbare luxury hotel on the banks of the Nile. ~ the publisher

A luxury hotel on the banks of the Nile? Yes, please. Except, the Royal Karnak is dusty and threadbare and coming out of a pandemic shutdown. It has lost its luster, but for Maggie, recently widowed, she considers the show more staff her family, and the hotel, her home. It still possesses all the charm she needs, and the people within it are an added bonus.

Except, Maggie isn’t all that she seems. Older, yes, sweet, certainly can be, but she has a nose for trouble and has no problem sticking it into people’s business if she sees a reason to do so. Here, I will tread carefully so as to not give anything away.

If she sees a married couple whom she suspects is not happy, Maggie to the rescue. Inquisitive children seen with a single parent? What’s the story there? Where is the father? She befriends these folks as a service of sorts, whether it’s welcomed or not but this gets her into trouble.

As endearing as she is to the hotel staff, and loyal too, she is carefully warned by her beloved hotel manager, that she is 80 and should be living a life of peace and calm. Not running around in the ungodly heat. She takes these warnings lightly and does what she sees fit to do.

I can’t go into more without giving the story away. This is definitely a wild, crazy read and the title is fitting. HAVOC is what you will experience while reading this one. It’s very well done, in my opinion, but I’d put the book down and say to myself, “Phew, that is outright crazy” and then pick it right back up again.

The characters are very well drawn. My book club chose this book for discussion this month and at first I wasn’t sure there would be enough to discuss but oh boy, there’s plenty. There are two main characters in this book and both are off kilter which makes it a wild, fun read.

Highly recommend.

For more reviews, visit my blog: Book Chatter. show less

After his wealthy but estranged father dies, leaving him no inheritance, Ian steals $9,000 from a family account and travels to Patmos, Greece, to ask a rich childhood friend, Charlie, for a job. Charlie agrees to make Ian second-in-command in his chapter business, but then disappears, leaving Ian to work out what Charlie has been up to and where he has gone.

This novel was very long, but mostly gripping. I struggled with the fact that "Sonny" was a female character, and also with the show more excessive use of strange and complicated descriptions, similes and metaphors, e.g.:

"Light moves aquatically across the ceiling, and dust motes Milky Way through it. The patio door is scythe-blade-streaked with glass cleaner."

There were many passages like this where it took me a couple of goes to work out what on earth the narrator was saying. I found the plotting fairly good, apart from a slight confusion as to

SPOILER

exactly when and under what circumstances Charlie and Miles agreed that Miles would murder Stefan.

All the characters were unlikeable, including Ian, who seemed to believe he had a real heart for the underprivileged, but regarded $9,000 as a negligible amount of money and had no interest in doing a decent day's work. Despite this, I found myself rooting for him as he investigated. A satisfactory ending. show less

Bollen’s psychological thriller plunges readers into a gritty urban landscape where power and desperation collide. The story unfolds with a tension that builds like a symphony, each twist adding to the crescendo. Bollen’s nuanced characters grapple with moral ambiguity, making their choices feel painfully real. The book’s exploration of ambition and human vulnerability resonates deeply, offering more than just a thrill ride—it’s a profound look at the cost of survival in a world show more that demands too much. show less