who ensures that the teenager is reunited
with her parents. Frank becomes a hero,
and Leslie refers him to another set of parents seeking help in locating their missing
daughter, 16-year-old Miriam Gregory.
As he searches for Miriam, Frank must
spin an ever-murkier web of lies to conceal
his activities from his friends and the
authorities. Frank constantly makes bad
choices, and Swinson keeps the outcome
in doubt to the end. He also does a fine job
portraying the varied neighborhoods of
contemporary Washington. Agent: Jane
Gelfman, Gelfman Schneider/ICM. (June)
; Shadow War
Sean McFate and Bret Witter. Morrow, $25.99
(368p) ISBN 978-0-06-240370-4
At the start of army veteran McFate’s
smart, exciting first novel and series
launch—written with Witter ( The
Monuments Men , with Robert M. Edsel)—
mercenary Tom Locke and his team
rendezvous in
the Libyan
desert with a
tribe of Tuareg
who have two
trucks full of
antiaircraft
missiles and
other valuable
weapons to sell.
When bandits
suddenly attack,
Locke knows the Russians in Ukraine will
try to stop him, and the time frame is only
five days, but this is the sort of mission
impossible that he loves. Locke’s careful
planning and the resulting battles combine
to elevate this book well above the standard
military thriller. Readers will look forward
to seeing a lot more of Locke. Agent: Peter
McGuigan, Foundry Literary + Media. (May)
Boar Island
Nevada Barr. Minotaur, $26.99 (384p)
ISBN 978-1-250-06469-1
In bestseller Barr’s fast-paced but
sometimes predictable 19th Anna Pigeon
difference between Wand’s articulate
first-person narration, possibly his older
self reflecting back on his life, and his
dialogue throughout the book in the
voice of his illiterate, street-urchin
beginnings. Wand has an intriguing life
story but Hough’s telling doesn’t fully
do it justice. Agent: Jackie Kaiser, Westwood
Creative Artists. (May)
Mystery/Thriller
The Second Girl
David Swinson. LB/Mulholland, $26 (368p)
ISBN 978-0-316-26417-4
PI Frank Marr, the narrator of this highly
original noir from Swinson (A Detailed Man),
has a big problem: he’s a cocaine addict.
When the former Washington, D.C.,
police detective breaks into a house in
search of a stash he hopes to score, he finds
Amanda Meyer, who can’t be more than
15, chained to the floor in the bathroom.
Instead of calling 911 or taking Amanda
to the hospital, per standard police procedure, he delivers the girl to his sometime
employer and lover, attorney Leslie Costello,
The Man Who Saved Henry Morgan
Robert Hough. House of Anansi (PGW/
Perseus, U.S. dist.; UTP, Canadian dist.),
$19.95 (352p) ISBN 978-1-77089-945-2
Hough, whose 2013 novel, Dr. Brinkley’s
Tower, was nominated for the Governor
General’s Award and the Scotiabank Giller
Prize in Canada, creates a fictionalized
account of a real-life 17th-century swashbuckler. Benjamin Wand is a chess-playing
hustler deported from London to Port
Royal, Jamaica. He joins the crew of the
ship Pearle, captained by the Englishman
Henry Morgan and tasked with loosening
Spain’s grip on its Caribbean territory.
After a successful and treasure-rich mission, Morgan takes an interest in Wand
as a chess tutor, and the pair strike up an
unlikely friendship, which continues
even when Morgan is appointed governor
of Jamaica. Hough, a former journalist,
based his text on Wand’s autobiography
and his own extensive research. Wand
and his relationship with Morgan are
fascinating, but Hough spends too much
time spent incorporating tidbits from his
research that slow the pace and don’t
serve the story. There is also a distracting
; Born on a Tuesday
Elnathan John. Grove/Black Cat, $16 trade paper (256p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2482-1
This sweeping debut novel by Caine Prize–finalist John is poignant and compelling. In a rural Nigerian com- munity called Bayan Layi, an inquisitive teen named Dantala has joined a group of homeless youths. He
must flee, however, when a political election sparks a riot
resulting in the death of one of his friends. Dantala goes
on a harrowing journey to find his mother, Umma, in
Dogon Icce. He inevitably settles in the northwestern city-state of Sokoto, at a mosque headed by Sheikh Jamal and
Malam Abdul-Nur Mohammed. Over seven years, Dantala
befriends Abdul-Nur’s younger brother, Jibril, and falls in love with the sheikh’s
daughter, Aisha. External conflicts surround the protagonist as he grows into a
thoughtful and conscientious man. Told through a blend of first-person narration
and diary pages, John skillfully employs Dantala’s probing voice to pose crucial
questions and explore collisions between modernity and tradition, Arabic and
English, rhetoric and action. The narrative depicts political and spiritual division:
the nation’s political parties are in heated opposition, and Abdul-Nur’s brutal
jihadist movement opposes the sheikh’s peaceful view of Islam. This turmoil
echoes the internal conflicts raging inside Dantala. He wrestles with his identity,
sexuality, morality, and faith, while struggling to navigate violent clashes that
threaten to destroy all he knows and loves. John has written a stunning, important
coming-of-age story. Agent: Toby Mundy, Toby Mundy Associates. (May)
