Dragon Day
By Lisa Brackmann
(Soho Publishing; 2015;
2013; 2010)
ISBN-10: 1616953454
ISBN-10: 1569475403
ISBN-10: 1616952342
I like a lot of the hardboiled female characters I have read
by women crime writers in the last couple of years: Gran Batch or the twisted grifter Melissa in
Patti Nase Abbott’s terrific Home
Invasion; Eve Moran, the psychotic mother in Abbott’s novel,
Concrete
Angel; Sherri Parlay in Vicki Hendricks’s Miami
Purity; Cinda, the streetwalker girlfriend of handicapped vigilante
Dean Drayback or Orella Malalinda, the crazed Mexican Mafia doyenne who has
targeted Dean and his simian helper, Sid, in Elaine Ash’s Hard
Bite and Bite
Harder.
Not that the tough, no-nonsense women created by male
writers are inferior. Most are quite good–Selena
by Greg Barth, Sweet Melinda Kendell in Eryk Pruitt’s Hashtag, Janet,
the gun-toting dead-eyed blonde in Todd Morr’s Jesus
Saves, Satan Invests. All are as capable, cool and
daring as their male counterparts—and some are ready, willing and able to maim,
torture or even kill.
But for a badass chick, you really want that woman’s touch.
Female authors somehow add that little something that brings their protagonists
right up off the page. These are femmes
that are almost invariably fatale.
One of the best female crime authors working in print right
now is Lisa Brackmann, whose three books featuring ex- G.I. Ellen (Ellie) McEnroe
kept me turning pages like a salt-deprived alcoholic downing beer-nuts with
Qingdao and well bourbon.
Here a bit of back story is required:
Ellen is a former National Guard medic who fell for a
schmuck intelligence officer while stationed in the red zone of Iraq. The
romance went as sour as the war did, but not until Ellen got blown up while trying
to help Iraqi prisoners survive brutal interrogation by her boyfriend and other
red-white-and-blue thugs.
She recovers at an Army hospital in the D.C. area and
the two get married. He becomes contract muscle for a private contractor that collects intel
for U.S. spy agencies then drags her with him to his new posting in Beijing.
There she finds him in bed with a Chinese girl and the two are
splits Ville. The husband, Trey, wants a divorce. Ellie stubbornly refuses to
sign the paperwork he needs to get one.
She becomes adept at dodging her ex, and spends her time
traveling, learning Chinese and becoming involved with Chinese artists.
Some of those artists are sincere activists who support
freedom of speech and action, criticize Chinese society under the new
capitalism and openly create whatever their consciences dictate. Among them is
Lao Zhang, a father figure within Chinese art circles. Ellie becomes one of his
trusted friends and eventually his agent—which makes her a target for multiple spy
agencies including the contract hooligans who employ her husband.
Many others, however, are sell-outs looking for enrichment
in the emerging oligarch economy, selling mediocre work to millionaires and
foreigners.
Ellie’s problem is trying to
figure out who is real and who is fake—while staying ahead of the posse of
alphabet soup agencies that are watching her every mood, tracing her Internet
visits, reading her email and ransacking her home and personal effects.
Brackmann does a good job of putting herself in Ellie’s
shoes, drawing on her own extensive visits to China for the kind of detail that
breathes verisimilitude into her stories. She makes Ellie a little crude, less
a Chinese culture expert than an ex-G.I. with a sense of humor, even under
dire circumstances.
For example, in Rock, Paper, Tiger, Ellie hides out from
pursuers in a farmhouse, wearing borrowed clothing. Just before some of the
villains appear, looking for her, she uses an outhouse to relieve herself. As
she takes a dump, one of the farmers’ pigs peeks through a hole and the
building’s side and helps itself to some of her excretion.
“Pigs eat shit.” Ellie thinks to herself. “Who knew?”
While trying to learn who killed a waitress
doubling as a prostitute during a decadent party held by a billionaire's kids in Dragon Day, Ellie
visits an artificial town where costume dramas are filmed.
One of the suspects,
an American who helps the wealthy children launder money in violation of
Chinese law, offers her a bit part in a film his client is making.
“You want a part? I’m supposed to have a wife?" he asks. "She’s
dreadfully unhappy and addicted to opium. I bet you’d kill it.”
“I don’t tell him to go fuck himself,” Ellie thinks. “And
people say I have no self-control."
McEnroe is not Wonder Woman. Ellie knows no martial arts and
often finds herself on the verge of tears in the face of danger. When she falls
under the control of some of China’s vast army of spies, she is sensible enough
to be afraid for her safety but snarky enough to bait her captors and take
whatever punishment they may administer.
She may not be a female Liam Neeson, but as the novels
progress, we learn that she is familiar with firearms, took her Army training
seriously and, like any other G.I. whose primary Military Occupational
Specialty is infantry, she can shoot with accuracy and a cool head. But Ellie
is not rough trade: her main assets as a protagonist are her nerviness and her
ability to read the personalities of those she encounters.
These three books show McEnroe’s progression as an adopted “China
hand,” resisting government bureaucrats, the ultra-wealthy among the country’s
parasitic oligarch class, run-of-the-mill police and all manner of security
men. As was the case in Getaway,
her thriller set in the narcotraficante-ridden
world of Mexican drug cartels, the most brutal thugs she encounters are
Americans.
Brackmann is masterful at conjuring a paranoiac atmosphere in
which even those who win her trust are not completely trustworthy. While her heroine has no training as a
detective and little ability in self defense, there is plenty of action in
these three volumes—Ellie gets kidnapped, imprisoned, roughed-up and chased
through a variety of locales, including shabby restaurants and karaoke joints,
the homes of the super rich, run-down neighborhoods, out-of-the way tourist
stops and all-but-deserted “new cities” that are more like ghost towns than
real communities.
And her path is littered with dead bodies.
Are Brackmann’s books thrillers in the classic “Mask of
Dimitrios” or “Third Man” sense? Not exactly. For one thing, Lisa is far to the
left of classic conspiracy-oriented thriller writers. Her stories have a
populist flare and an optimistic attitude about people that is unusual for
someone whose fiction tilts toward the paranoid.
They aren’t traditional noir tales, either, though there is
plenty of transgressive guilt in her plot lines and a thin vein of nihilism
that runs through all three books.
Mainly they are sharp-edged reads with an immensely likeable
heroine, some really repulsive villains and a host of major characters whose personalities
and motivations are as opaque as marble. These are less “whodunits” in the
classical sense than they are “who-are-they-working-fors.”
Like the best of John Le Carre, Brackmann’s stories are
steeped in betrayal. At their core is the police state mentality of the Chinese
authorities—people who decide you are a threat then look for a reason why.
Ellie’s history is threaded through the three novels like gold
silk embroidered in the accent band of an expensive silk Qipao. Read all three novels, one right after another in the order
published. If you do, you’ll be rewarded with many hours of enjoyment. This is
gripping stuff.
