Deliver Us from Evil by David Baldacci

In short: This is not a book for your granny, your adolescent son, or anyone the least bit squeamish, impressionable, or inclined in certain ways. It is an interesting, thought-provoking read for emotionally stable adults, well-written, action-packed, possibly the basis for a new series on the model of the Camel Club set. Only darker.

It's hard to write about this book. I enjoyed Baldacci's usual high-standard of writing. I enjoyed his characterization. The intertwining of plotlines is complex and masterfully handled, the timing so tight you have few natural breaks in the momentum to take a break from the story without losing the sense of it. From all those perspectives, it's a great read, an excellent book from an excellent author.

But there were things I did not enjoy, that left a taste in my metaphorical mouth, and stuff in my head I didn't want there. Up until now, Baldacci's books have been free of much in the way of described sexual encounters, and haven't eroticised violence. They also haven't been terribly graphic in the description of violence. In Deliver Us from Evil, the sexual detail is mild (and a little awkward) by comparison to most authors, but the descriptions of violence and torture are not, and there is potential for the violence to be erotic for some readers. This is a risk that has to be taken if some issues are going to be addressed in anything resembling a direct fashion. This didn't give me nightmares, but it has given me a good deal of afterthought, not all of it welcome.

That said, and as I'm not really all that squeamish and nothing in here can match the level of horror contained in The Theory and Practice of Hell by Eugene Kogel (the definitive study of the Nazi death camps; a book that I don't recommend outside of academic necessity, which is where I encountered it and which did give me nightmares - for years), I do have misgivings about some of the content in Deliver Us from Evil. Besides a slide onto the greasy slope of realistic horror, Deliver Us from Evil has something of the roman a clef about it - Individuals and places symbolic of larger modern political issues. You can figure it out if you watch the news. Baldacci is often saying more than he says. Maybe I'm wrong about that, it's just my opinion, but I've always felt Baldacci knows how to load content into the words that make up the story the way a pastry chef puts that delicious cream inside a cannoli. You need the shell to hold it together.

The obvious issue the book explores is torture. I'm confident that the vast majority of us will agree there is a difference between forcing someone to stand on a stool for several days and flaying them alive. The remaining question is whether the two practices belong on the spectrum of what constitutes torture or whether they belong in different categories of thing altogether.

Is waterboarding torture? Sen. John McCain (nobody's liberal), who has been waterboarded, says it is. He's also not too big a fan of stress positions, having lost the full use of his arms to stress positions. And we have called him a hero in part for enduring torture - so are these things torture when done by some but when done by others? When someone has unlimited power and no oversight (as was the case with Kuchin in the Ukraine), the darkest fantasies easily find thier way into reality. Forcing someone to stand, kneel, or sit in a stress position for days in order to get information you hope will save lives may be torture, but it's not the same as flaying someone alive just because you can. But what is the difference? Is the difference one of inherent nature or of degree? Does the reason for the action come into consideration? Should it? Are some things just wrong no matter what?

Does the freedom to do the less horrible lead to the freedom to do the worse thing?

These are questions you will have to answer for yourself.

In Deliver Us from Evil, we are back in the world of Shaw, whom we met before in The Whole Truth and again in First Family. Shaw is big (6 and half feet tall - which beggars the imagination for a person in a line of work where blending in is necessary) and in constant motion; secure enough in his masculinity not to be threatened by a strong female counterpart; and as able to follow as to lead, as long as it's a good idea or an order. Shaw is capable of violence, but not driven to it, and still grieving Anna.

The primary plot of Deliver Us from Evil revolves around a character (one shudders to call him a man as that requires the realization that there are in fact humans just exactly like this) born Fedir Kuchin, now known as Evan Waller, Canadian businessman. Kuchin's father was Ukrainian and mother French (from Gordes, where some of the action takes place; in real history, Gordes was an Resistance community, awarded the Crois de guerre as a community for its actions between 1939 and 1945); as an adult member of the KGB Kuchin was responsible directly and indirectly for the deaths of thousands during his work in the Ukraine under the old Soviet regime. Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kuchin reinvented himself as a new sort of blot upon humanity, Canadian businessman Evan Waller, selling hordes of young women into the short-life expectancy of the global sexual slave trade. He lives a life of palatial luxury in absolute anonymity. Yet he yearns for the old days, for being known as someone to fear when he walks down the street, an odd balance to the elaborate measures he takes to isolate himself at an almost Dr. No level of privacy. You can't just drop by Kuchin's house for dinner, and there's no reason a sane person would want to.

Kuchin is the target to two groups, neither of them given names. One is British, private, off-the-shelf, and managing on donations and a little old-fashioned (but effective) in their methods. They began as Nazi hunters and have moved on to target men like Kuchin, for termination with extreme prejudice. This group knows about his re-invention of himself as Waller, and his trafficking of humans for sex slavery, but this isn't what attracted them - they are after Kuchin as Kuchin, the "real" Butcher of Kiev, not as Waller, faux Canadian flesh-peddler. Getting a major trafficker in humans off the street is gravy, but he did enough in Ukraine to make him a worthy target. Their strike teams are led by various agents, the one we see in action is Reggie, a woman with a dark past of the sort that creates a killer. She's a good counterbalance for Shaw, but not as completely realized as Annabelle Conroy, from the Camel Club series, but we have gotten to see Annabelle over more than one novel. (Baldacci and Mankell are the only male authors I can think of who are able to write fully credible female characters. )

In a parallel mission, Shaw and his group are after Canadian businessman Evan Waller, and have no idea of his true past. They want him for one thing, and one thing only. Waller has attracted their attention by being involved in a deal to move uranium into dangerous hands. They know Waller is into other nasty business, but their vision is focused like a laser on the one thing and only the one thing.

Naturally, the streams cross.

I'd like to say more, but I don't want to give away any of the plot, which is especially well-constructed, and full of surprises that actually surprise, from characters who develop yet remain in character. Why spoil it for you?

Having read Lost: A Search for Six among Six Million, Child 44, and Deliver Us from Evil, I would like to see someone intelligently address either in a fictional or non-fictional setting, the effect the Holodomor had on the severity of the Holocaust in the Ukraine. The two are deeply related, and no one that I'm aware of has ever taken a look at this interplay of evil begetting evil. We try to keep the lessons of the Holocaust in front of our eyes, to not forget, so we don't let it happen again (even though it has). We should take the lesson a step or two further into the past. History is a game of dominoes - nothing ever happened in isoaltion or just because.