Alvah's Books

A World I Never Made
By James LePore
The Story Plant
272 pages
$24.95

In A World I Never Made, the debut novel by James LePore, readers will read about lost and newfound love, betrayal among colleagues and lovers, terror, and thrilling fast-paced action and edge-of-your-seat suspense.

The story opens with Pat Nolan in a Parisian police station, reading his daughter Megan’s suicide note. He has come from the United Stated to identify and claim her body.  However, the corpse at the morgue—that of a young woman with advanced ovarian cancer—is not his daughter.

Nolan recognizes immediately that Megan has set up this faux suicide because she is in danger, and it is up to him to find and help her. His task is complicated when he is attacked by two Middle-Eastern men, but lucky for Nolan he is saved by Catherine Laurence, a French detective who has been assigned to trail him.

Laurence and her superiors discover that the body in the morgue is not Megan’s and that she is suspected of working with a group of terrorists who bombed several locations in Casablanca. The hope is that Nolan will lead them to Megan and the terrorists and prevent a potential 9/11 scenario in France. However, it’s not all that simple when Catherine realizes that something is awry and goes on leave to help Nolan find Megan.

The story is juxtaposed with Megan’s own story that takes place almost a year earlier and how she disappeared via her fake suicide. A college drop-out, who decided to acquire her education by living in Europe and in the beds of wealthy men, Megan Nolan is a journalist who primarily writes for women magazines, but a sudden intellectual interest in terrorism develops, and she travels to Morocco to do some research. There she meets Abdel Lahani, a Saudi businessman, and becomes his mistress. A few months later and pregnant with Lahani’s child, she discovers that her lover is more than a businessman, but a terrorist with grand plans to attack European countries.

Meanwhile, Nolan’s and Catherine’s quest to find his daughter has them following Megan’s leads, which ultimately leads them to a group of Roma– an intriguing element that convincingly moves the story forward–in Paris and later to the Czech Republic. However, these are the same leads that the terrorists follow with the hope of finding Megan and killing her.

LePore keeps the fast pace of the story by switching back and forth between the search for Megan and with her life in Morocco with Lahani. Readers learn through the back stories in each of the sections of the strained relationship between father and daughter. LePore balances this estrangement by having Nolan and Catherine fall in love, but this love affair surfaces too quickly in the story and slows down the pace.

LePore’s strength lies in his descriptive detail, which mostly likely can be attributed to his skill (according to his bio) as a photographer in which he captures the image he has seen through the viewfinder and composes scenes that show the reader the actions and locales in Paris and Morocco.

However, LePore seems to lose his way when it comes to characterization. Of all the players, Megan is the only one who is fully fleshed out, and it seems the one character that the author has spent the most time developing and analyzing. LePore provides a solid foundation of Megan’s psyche and brings to life a manipulative woman who has contempt for her father and men in general.

Unfortunately, JePore fails to bring any of these strong personality traits to both Catherine and Nolan. Readers never get an adequate explanation of why Catherine hated—a strong emotion in itself–her husband so much. LePore offers a stock explanation, but the reaon isn’t sufficient and doesn’t add much to the story. Like Catherine, Nolan comes across as somewhat insipid. He is meant to be sympathetic–a strong and silent type—a man who experienced the tragedy of losing his wife in childbirth and who is left alone to take care of his daughter, but readers with an interest in the father/daughter dynamics will want to know more of the wedge that drove Megan and Nolan so wide apart.

In spite of  its few flaws, as a fast-moving suspense story with various twists and turns, A World I Never Made succeeds in keeping readers interested until its satisfying and realistic conclusion.

After reading A World I Never Made, I had the honor and great privilege to interview James LePore. Below is my interview with Mr. LePore.

About James LePore, lawyer, photographer and writer:

Rebeca Schiller: It seems that lawyers who become writers are fairly adept in writing suspense genre novels. Is this your niche and will you stick with it or have you written in other genres?

James LePore:I am drawn to the suspense genre probably for the same reason I was drawn to trial work as a lawyer. The drama inherent in both seems to stimulate my imagination in ways that other genres—and other legal specialties—do not. I think something has to be at stake for a story to be interesting; the higher the risk, the more likely it is the reader will start to root for a character. This being the case, I will likely stick with the suspense genre for a while. It seems to be in my blood.

RS: Years ago, a novice writer told me that he wanted to take up photography because he felt that composing a picture would help with his writing–to show rather than tell. Do you find that your skills in photography have given you an edge in describing scenes, characters, and action?

JL: I do. For many years I looked at the world either through an actual or an imaginary viewfinder, and asked myself, what information does this piece of the world—this potential image—convey? That was how I learned what the elements of a good photograph are, and it is that experience that has been invaluable in helping me to describe scenes and settings in my writing in a way that (I hope) put a vivid picture in the reader’s mind. I would recommend to any writer to take a basic photography class and to play with the camera. The two disciplines are not as far apart as they seem.

 About A World I Never Made:

RS: As one of the lead characters in the story, Megan Nolan is not very sympathetic. Was that your intention when you fleshed her out or did she take shape as you kept writing?

JL: Megan was always going to be a character who was difficult to like, but who would change, even act heroically, when she realized where her bad decisions had led her. When the stakes were high enough, Megan went all in. Her courage, at least, could not be doubted.

RS: The Roma play important roles in the novel, what inspired you to include them?

JL: There was a gypsy family that lived in my neighborhood when I was growing up. The boys my age were unbelievably clannish and unfriendly. One day I woke up and they were gone and they have fascinated me ever since.

When Megan needs a place to really hide, it came to me that the Roma would be a realistic answer. They have a disdain for the wider culture and a fierce privacy ethic that I felt would make them ideal for Megan’s purposes.

RS: You mention the Madrid bombings, did they spark the idea for A World I Never Made?

JL: I had been to Morocco a few years before the bombings so when they happened I was very interested. They did not spark the idea for A World I Never Made, but they are a historical fact around which I felt much of the plot and the personal story lines could revolve.

About Writing and Books:

 RS: If you read through writers’ blogs, it seems that procrastination is one of the big hurdles they encounter on a daily basis. Are you disciplined writer with a schedule or do you fall in the trap “that tomorrow is another day” and do something else?

JL: I have been lucky. When I engage with a story and a core group of characters, procrastination is not possible. I write every day, taking the occasional day off to rest or to attend to iron-clad obligations.

RS: Once you decided to write, did you join any writing groups, take classes, buy books on the craft of writing etc?

JL: I did not write well at first, but I met an editor who must have recognized some potential and who’s work with me was very informative and formative. That was my training.

RS: Who are you currently reading?

JL: I am re-reading John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series. There is something about them, a sense of excitement I think, that I wanted to re-experience.

RS: Which writers do you admire and why?

JL: I love knock-out mystery and noir: Raymond Chandler, P.D. James, Patricia Highsmith, James Ellroy, Walter Mosley, Elmore Leonard, and a few others. I admire them because they have mastered all or a great deal of a very difficult craft. Who is more noir than Chandler, more eerie than Highsmith, more down than Mosley?

For those who don’t follow me on Twitter (and shame on you, if you don’t) that’s my handle. However, this post isn’t about Twitter or me (well, a little about me, but really more about books). It’s all about that favorite pastime that many bibliophiles have and that’s the beach read or the pool read, or the cabin read. We’re five days away from the Summer Solstice and it’s time to do some thinking of what might be good reads for the summer.

For yours truly, I have an esoteric list that might make some eyes glaze over or maybe roll up to the ceiling–that’s what my husband does accompanied by a muttered, “Fun stuff, Boo.” But then again HE’s reading a book about the Romany (which does seem fascinating).

For  the next three months, my reading will focus on the Spanish Civil War, the history of Communism and two classics, but don’t fret I do have some “fun stuff” thrown in between the serious subjects. So here’s a rundown of my Beach Reads:

June (fun stuff in italics)

Men in Battle, Alvah Bessie

The Un-Americans, Alvah Bessie

A World I Never Made, James LePore

If the Buddha Came to Dinner, Hale Sofia Schatz

July

The Spanish Civil War, Hugh Thomas

A Passionate War, Peter Wyden

The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction, Helen Graham

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

From Where the Rivers Come, Terin Tashi Miller

The Last Dickens, Matthew Pearl

August/September

The Rise and Fall of Communism, Archie Brown

The Roots of Amercan Communism, Theodore Draper

The Communist Party of the United States, Fraser M. Ottanelli

Black Boy, Richard Wright

Stardust, Joseph Kanon

Fun stuff,eh? I think so…

My attempts to assign myself books to read is an utter and dismal failure. I start one book, put it down, and then start another.  And then there are those “Come Hither” books that seduce you to reading them although they were not on your reading list at all. Damn you, Audrey Niffenegger and The Time Traveler’s Wife!

As much as I am enjoying Ms. Niffenegger’s book, I have set it aside. My list remains the same as last week’s:

• A World I Never Made, by James LePore
• The UnAmericans, by Alvah Bessie
• Men in Battle, by Alvah Bessie
• The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction, by Helen Graham

I’m getting  little better at completing my reading goals. I managed to complete:

• Spain Again, by Alvah Bessie
• A Spy by Nature, by Charles Cumming

Still working on:

• A World I Never Made, by James LePore

Since it is Alvah Bessie Month this week’s books include:

• The UnAmericans, by Alvah Bessie
• Men in Battle, by Alvah Bessie
• The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction, by Helen Graham

I’m still behind on reviews, but Lush Life and A Spy by Nature will be posted later this week.

I am still very behind of reading and reviews. To make matters worse, I went to our local library’s booksale and stocked up on some beach reads.

In any event, this week’s reading includes:

• A Spy by Nature, by Charles Cumming

Still reading:

• Spain Again, by Alvah Bessie
• A World I Never Made, James LePore

I completed:

• Lush Life, by Richard Price. Review will be up on Wednesday

I’m in the middle of several books, but this week I plan to tackle and finish the following three:

• A World I Never Made by James LePore
• Lush Life, by Richard Price
• Spain Again, Alvah Bessie

. . . two new books. Hooray. It feels like my birthday all over again.

A World I Never Made by James LePore

and. . .

Ratio: The Simple Codes behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, by Michael Ruhlman

Thanks to Story Planet and Scribner!