A Couple o' Reads

Since hitting the higher levels of the Minnesota state police agency, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Lucas Davenport has handled criminal cases that touched on political matters. But in Silken Prey, he finds himself in the middle of a case in which the apparent crime not only has political elements, it could decide a United States Senate race.

Incumbent senator Porter Smalls is cruising to re-election despite the wealth, political savvy and media-friendly looks of his opponent Taryn Grant. But then a campaign volunteer discovers child pornography on a computer in his campaign office, and even though Smalls denies any involvement his chances for re-election are plummeting fast. The Minnesota governor isn't convinced Smalls is guilty, so he asks Davenport to investigate quickly and quietly -- he has no love for Smalls but he dislikes the idea a campaign can be influenced this way. Lucas' trail winds through computer experts, political gamesmanship and an assortment of the usual thugs and ne'er-do-wells he'll need to brace for information. And it begins to point in a direction that will have him facing off against one of the more ruthless opponents he's encountered in his career.

Sandford cruises through Davenport's investigation with the fluid style that's won him many awards, both in fiction and in print journalism. Writing this smooth takes work, practice and skill, and he has all three. He's allowed a little rust in Lucas's armor as the investigator nears his mid-century mark, and he for some reason includes a major role for Kidd, the master computer hacker character he's used in a less-popular series originally written under his own name. Kidd's inclusion doesn't really add to the story -- my personal thought is that Sandford is setting up a two-part crossover tale to finish up in a Kidd novel, but we'll see -- but it doesn't do any notable harm, either. Detractors may complain that the Davenport novels are just another cop series, but there are literary novels that are worse-written than the Prey series and not nearly so much fun to read.

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Although only two nuclear weapons had ever been deployed in wartime, frequent testing of more and more powerful bombs left many people wondering how much of the world would be left after a full-scale nuclear conflict. Science fiction novelists began the supposing the earliest, with journalist Harry Hart "Pat" Frank's 1959 entry Alas, Babylon as one of the first. Later understandings may have revised projections about the world after a nuclear holocaust -- mostly downward -- but Frank's novel remains one of the standards.

It does so not so much from its prose or characters, since Frank wrote in a mostly matter-of-fact style and it's hard to tell his cast apart except when he specifically identifies them. But his triggering cues, in which one superpower comes to believe it can win a thermonuclear war and an accidental misfire provides the excuse for the conflict, were frighteningly realistic. Frank was working for the Civil Defense department during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and probably had more than one question tossed his way about how things might work out, since his triggering incident started out just as small.

Alas tells the story of the people of Fort Repose, a fictional Florida town unhurt in the bombings and left mostly free of radiation by weather and a few lucky misses. Over the course of the novel, borderline alcoholic Randy Bragg becomes the de facto leader of the community at Fort Repose and realizes he can't ignore the responsibilities the situation places on him. His brother Mark, a high-ranking Strategic Air Command officer, sent his family away from Omaha when war looked likely and Randy must now care for them.

Most of the novel is taken up with survival strategies adopted by the folks of Fort Repose, physically unharmed but cut off from the rest of the country. Intermittent broadcasts let them know that there is a functioning United States government, and Randy bases much of his authority on that, as well as his ability to organize his neighbors for their own defense. The Reposians have to adapt their diet to avoid radiation-heavy foods, set up working medical and care systems and defend against raiders.

Frank touches lightly on what The Day, as the Reposians call it, means for racial relations in the late 1950s southern United States, but doesn't dig into it deeply. He also works with 1959 knowledge of radiation, a global nuclear exchange of weapons and their effects, which is incomplete according to modern standards. Subsequent end-of-the-world stories might have a more lurid style or more up-to-date science, but Frank's clarity of plot and implication have kept Alas, Babylon on high school reading lists for years as a good novel to try to learn how to read for meaning and idea as well as to find out what happens.