Resumo de The Black Sun - James Twining

This is the second mystery/thriller in James Twining?s
series starring Tom Kirk, the brilliant (aren?t they all?) international thief,
good-hearted but mostly solitary, who used to work for the CIA. This one has
Neo-Nazis in it (as I suspected from the Iron Cross on the front cover, spine
and back cover). It begins with three items being stolen, in a different
country each?an Auschwitz survivor?s arm from a London hospital, an Enigma
machine from the National Cryptologic Museum in Maryland, a painting from a
Prague synagogue. A man from the British Foreign Office asks Tom and his
partner-in-crime to help investigate. All the items appear to be part of a complicated
trail of clues laid by an order of SS knights. The mystery takes them from the
rural mountains of Idaho to the gritty, gang-ruled streets of St. Petersburg,
Russia.

There is not much that is original about this novel?neither
the plot, nor the subject matter, nor the characters. I find myself, perhaps
cynically, wondering if (in this and the previous book) Twining is carefully
repeating plot elements, characters, settings, and writing techniques from
other bestsellers, especially plot elements, et cetera, that have worked many
times in many bestsellers. (To be fair, maybe he?s copying the elements that he
loves in other people?s thrillers.) However, even if that?s true, in some ways
at least he?s not lazy. Judging by both the amount of detail (both visual and
informational) in the books, and the sources of information credited in the
acknowledgments, he does his homework. He fills his books with the details he
gets from his research. This book (and The Double Eagle, the previous
one) is vivid and sometimes cinematic.

The characters are two-and-a half-dimensional?there is
nothing really farfetched about them, but little that is original either. Tom seems
less interesting than in The Double Eagle, maybe because he was less
familiar in that book, and he got to do more climbing up and down well-guarded
buildings, breaking through skylights, etc. in that book. In The Black Sun
he gets to know the nice but tough Dominique de Lecourt better; she is his co-worker
in the antique store which is his cover business. He learns that in some ways
she knew his father better than he did?which was less clichéd than many other
things that happened with his characters, but still didn?t engage me. I didn?t
find Archie, Tom?s talented partner-in-crime, very interesting either, although
at least he has the original mannerism of speaking in an accent that mixes ?the
street-speak of the market stall? with ?the rounded vowels and clipped Ts
of a more middle-class background.? Details like that suggest to me that
Twining is putting some effort into his characters, but not enough to keep me
engaged with them. Although it helps that they are likeable. I was more
interested in Raj Dhutta, a nervous safecracker whose workshop is concealed in
an embankment in Zurich, a hypochondriac who drinks a lot of cough syrup.

(Twining uses two ongoing series characters sparingly:
Jennifer Browne, the love interest from the previous novel, does not appear in The
Black Sun, although she is mentioned. I assume she will reappear in later
books?maybe Twining is working on the principle that ?absence makes the heart
grow fonder.? And Kyle Foster, a hit man, was in a few chapters in the first book,
and appears briefly in this one. Maybe Twining is building him up to be the
major villain several books later.)

The plotting is mostly competent. However, there is some violence
in Idaho which was explained afterwards, but the reason given for the villains?
actions there didn?t seem like much of an explanation. It seemed more Twining
put something dramatic in Idaho just to show how evil the villains are, and to make
it more international. I often found myself bored during the action scenes,
including the climax. The Double Eagle was better plotted?everything
mysterious was explained; when people saw strange things happening we learned
exactly why pretty soon.

There is one surprising and unusual revelation that is very
similar to The Giraffe, a late-90s German thriller. I wonder if he?s the
first writer to borrow that twist? (As it happened, I had seen The Giraffe
a few days before I started this book.)

This book was not as enjoyable as The Double Eagle. In
that book, the main characters were new (while in Black Sun they have
become familiar). And there was one
fairly original villain?(minor spoiler of The Double Eagle) a
real estate developer who killed people who wouldn?t sell land. And Double
Eagle?s use of rare coins as a motive for the action is less familiar than Black
Sun?s Neo-Nazis. Also, I personally preferred The Black Sun?s lower
level of savagery.

So, while The Black Sun was not badly written, I
didn?t enjoy it, for the most part. But if Twining can add more original
characters and plot elements to his competent-but-somewhat-hackneyed stories, I
would be eager to read his future books.

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