Review: The Boys from Brazil, Ira Levin

The Boys from Brazil

Ira Levin

Kindle edition, first published 1976

Goodreads

Alive & hiding in South America, the fiendish Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele gathers a group of former colleagues for a horrifying project--the creation of the Fourth Reich. Barry Kohler, a young investigative journalist, gets wind of the project & informs famed Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman, but before he can relay the evidence, Kohler is killed.

Thus Ira Levin opens one of the strangest & most masterful novels of his career. Why has Mengele marked a number of harmless aging men for murder? What is the hidden link that binds them? What interest can they possibly hold for their killers: six former SS men dispatched from South America by the most wanted Nazi still alive, the notorious Angel of Death? One man alone must answer these questions & stop the killings--Lieberman, himself aging & thought by some to be losing his grip on reality.

Ira Levin has a knack for making the implausible seem plausible. More than that, he has a knack for horror. The same creeping horror - insidious rather than jumpy, but no less monstrous and twice as unsettling - that permeates his two most famous novels, Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives, is put to good use here, this time with old Nazis as the target.

Ensconced in South America, the ruthless doctor of the Nazi regime, Josef Mengele, has hatched an intricate, elaborate plot. He sends out his best former SS men - his best assassins - to kill a list of men across Europe and America, all men of the same age, all civil servants. The man that stands between Mengele and his audacious plan is Yakov Lieberman, an aging Jewish man with a reputation for hunting down old Nazis and bringing them to justice. Tipped off by a young American investigative journalist, Yakov is in a race to try and stop the murders - and figure out the bigger plan that lies behind them - before Mengele can proceed too far with his evil intentions.

As ever, Levin's writing is taut, and the plot unfolds carefully, never revealing too much, intriguing and fascinating all at the same time. The big picture comes into view slowly, and then all at once, as Yakov realises the intent behind the seemingly bizarre orders that Mengele has sent his men out with. From the opening scene, when Mengele gathers his SS men in a Japanese restaurant to impart his instructions, you can't help but be hooked into the story. The ending is no less gripping - once again, Levin manages to raises more questions than he answers, with Yakov left to make a decision between morality and the prevention of future evil. The tense showdown close to the end of the book is so brilliantly done, so finely executed, that there was no putting the book down until the end.

Overall rating: 8/10

Book source: Bought from Amazon.

Review: The Stepford Wives, Ira Levin

The Stepford Wives

Ira Levin

Kindle edition; first published 1972

Goodreads

For Joanna, her husband, Walter, and their children, the move to beautiful Stepford seems almost too good to be true. It is. For behind the town's idyllic facade lies a terrible secret--a secret so shattering that no one who encounters it will ever be the same.

At once a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a savage commentary on a media-driven society that values the pursuit of youth and beauty at all costs, 'The Stepford Wives' is a novel so frightening in its final implications that the title itself has earned a place in the American lexicon.

This was a re-read for me, and one that I think was actually better the second time around. Joanna and Walter Eberhart and their family have moved to the idyllic town of Stepford, leaving behind a city that Joanna in particular loves: New York. A professional photographer and active member of the women's movement, Joanna is keen to meet like-minded neighbours, only to find that Stepford is not exactly a bastion of progression. While Walter ingratiates himself at the local Men's Association, Joanna is left dealing with women who'd rather buff their floors to within an inch of their lives than venture beyond their own doorsteps.

The Stepford Wives is fantastic and disturbing and, above all, chilling. Levin doesn't need monsters and things that go bump in the night: he just needs to create a situation that is both ludicrous and not ludicrous enough to dismiss. As Joanna starts to piece things together and gets closer to unravelling the mystery of Stepford, he conclusions seem both ridiculous and... possible. It is that hint of the possible that makes The Stepford Wives work, and makes it so effective in the process.

On a second reading, I was able to spot the seeds that Levin plants from the very beginning, all of which come together later in the plot to great effect. The Stepford Wives deals in the limits of a society's views on women and their 'place', in the value we place on beauty and youth and silence, and (as Chuck Palahniuk points out in the introduction) is still as relevant today as when it was written.

And that final chapter is still like being punched in the stomach.

Overall rating: 9/10

Book source: Purchased from Amazon.co.uk.

Showcase Sunday #30

I finally cracked. After eight months of using my Kindle to read free classics and eARCs and articles and a fair amount of (free, again) Sherlock Holmes tales, I ventured into the Kindle sale and came out doing a happy little dance at the surprise bargains I'd managed to track down.

The Stepford Wives - Ira Levin
The Boys From Brazil - Ira Levin
A Kiss Before Dying - Ira Levin
Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin

I've read The Stepford Wives and Rosemary's Baby before, a few years ago, and thoroughly enjoyed both (particularly The Stepford Wives). Levin writes chilling, unsettling stuff, and these are all 99p at the moment - too good to pass up!

Big Brother - Lionel Shriver

I've read a few of Shriver's books now - starting with We Need To Talk About Kevin, but I haven't picked up the last two or three that she's written. This one is about a woman whose older brother comes to live with her and her husband, and how she's forced to choose between the two of them.

Diary of a Nobody - George Grossmith

This is my mum's favourite book. I've never read it, but it's free to download at the moment - about a man who, despite not being notable, decides to publish his diary.

I also picked up three books from the library:

The Inspector and Silence - Håkan Nesser
Another Inspector Van Veeteren mystery, this time focusing on a religious sect and the murder of a young girl.

Midwinter Sacrifice - Mons Kallentoft
The first book featuring detective Malin Fors - ambitious, unpredictable, and chasing a small town killer.

Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death - Gyles Brandreth
I've been intrigued by these books for a while - a mystery series featuring Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle as the investigators - so thought I'd give this a go.

Recent posts:

Don't forget to check out Jamie's A-Z Book Survey over at The Perpetual Page Turner - I posted my answers on Friday, and it was a lot of fun!

Life After Death: Eighteen Years on Death Row by Damien Echols
The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino
Potter Redux: The Goblet of Fire

And, if you missed it, the #CatchUpClub completed its first mission - to read Cinder / Scarlet by Marissa Meyer. You can read my review of Scarlet here (and my earlier review of Cinder here), and see a round-up of all our thoughts over here on Emily's blog. Our current book is Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo - come join us!

Showcase Sunday is hosted by Vicky at Books, Biscuits and Tea.

Halloween Horrors: Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

This week's theme is Top Ten Books to Get You in the Halloween Spirit. I haven't done a TTT in a while, and I don't read a lot of scary/creepy books as a rule, but then I read this short piece in The Guardian last night, about one of my favourite short stories, The Landlady, by Roald Dahl. This particular story has made The Guardian's list of 'Scary Stories for Halloween', so using that as my jumping off point, here are a few more I think would be worthy of a Halloween re-read!

1. Kiss Kiss, Roald Dahl
The collection that The Landlady appears in. Not all the stories are as creepy as this one, but they're all very black, rather unsettling and a little bit macabre! The real horror isn't monsters, it's other people.

2. The Stepford Wives, Ira Levin
A bright young woman moves to the suburbs with her family. Unfortunately, this suburb has more secrets than most. Incredibly creepy - I read this all in one go as I couldn't put it down!

3. Rosemary's Baby, Ira Levin
Another Levin book, this time about a young couple who are befriended by their neighbours, only for the neighbours to concoct a fiendish plot with the husband to hijack Rosemary's pregnancy.

4. The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters
I definitely tend towards creepy, slow-burning horror, rather than jump-out-of-your-seat-scary, it seems. A village doctor gets sucked into the dramas of a woman and her two daughters who live in a large - and, it seems - haunted house. a psychological ghost story that leaves you wondering even when it's finished!

5. The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
Classic ghost story, in which a governess begins to see ghosts... maybe.

6. Twins, Caroline B. Cooney
And now for some classic horror from my teen years! This is the book I would hide in the wardrobe because it creeped me out so much (especially the cover). I'm sure by adult-reading standards, it's not that scary, but at the time I was terrified by the whole thing.

7. Flowers in the Attic, Virginia Andrews
Not technically a horror story, although there are plenty of horrific things going on here. Mostly remembered for being dubious and incestuous, but for all that I still remember it being genuinely unsettling (and not just because of That Scene).

8. The Silent Scream, Diane Hoh
Another Point Horror, like Twins, and another one that I remember being on my shelf. I remember being marginally scared of this at the time - girl moves into dorm room where another girl once hanged herself, and starts to hear her screaming through the walls. I remember that this book had some classic suspect-the-janitor action going on...

Have you read any of these? Thanks for stopping by!