Bull Dance by Willard Thurston
What's It About?
This espionage thriller follows the Kniaźnin-Stolbanov sisters — a Russian spy and an exotic dancer — as well as a memorable cast of other characters surrounding the discovery of Abler, a sentient computer capable of predicting the future.In Bull Dance, Willard Thurston’s follow-up to Anastasia (our review here), we are treated to yet another prismatic rendering in the complex tale of the fates and fortunes of the Kniaźnin-Stolbanov sisters and the constellation of memorable characters swirling in their wake.
There’s Anastasia Kniaźnin, a Russian spy deep undercover working as an engineer at the American megacorporation Paleomena under the alias Dr. Frieda Van Eerden. There’s Zoya Stolbanov, Anastasia’s half-sister, a gifted but impudent exotic dancer on the run from jihadists and Russian operatives. And finally, there’s Catherine Whyte, Zoya’s long-lost twin, a svelte investigative reporter whose exposé of a Russian mafia boss lands her in a pile of danger and intrigue.
Bull Dance peels the onion of Anastasia’s plot, revealing events that had been lying just under the surface of the previous novel. In it, Paleomena art curator David Abercrombie Willardson finds himself the pawn of corporate espionage and intrigue when he is assigned to keep an eye on the denizens of Thirteen, a research complex housing a sentient computer named “Abler” that can, among other things, predict the future.
One of Willardson’s higher-ups suspects that certain members of the Abler research team are working against the corporation to foil its attempts to obscure Abler’s abilities and keep its prognostications a secret. You see, Abler’s predictions are extremely useful in patenting new technologies and positioning the megacorporation for dominance in future enterprises.
Willardson soon finds his sympathies lie with the research team, however, and he finds himself drawn into a swirl of intrigue surrounding Dr. Frieda Van Erden (aka Anastasia), whose mysterious disappearance creates further waves of suspicion. Willardson cannot help himself but to investigate.
Return to the Vivid & Bizarre “Thurstonverse”
Meanwhile, other pieces of plot from previous novels begin to align themselves with each other, revealing new insights. Former Nazi doctor and geneticist Dr. Felix Muerner’s arrival to the States as a Paleomena executive. The reporter Catherine Whyte and her stepsister, Margaret, who finds her new modelling gig a dangerous affair. Paleomena security chief Stanton and his burgeoning infatuation with his beguiling secretary, Daphne.
Most of the characters in Bull Dance are familiar denizens of what I like to call the Thurstonverse, a sprawling series of novels that include Anastasia, Apsara, What Made Thee, and (to a less integrated degree) Fail Safe. And while it further knots together some of the many loose threads we find dangling enticingly throughout Thurston’s work, it does not draw the series to a close. In fact, I would argue that we haven’t seen how far the rabbit hole — or its maze of burrows — goes.
Thurston’s many obsessions with identity, cultural constructs, perversion and idealism are all at play in Bull Dance, and his erudite wit punctuates many amusing scenes (including one particularly bizarre dinner party). His world, as ever, feels removed from our own on several levels: heightened language, bizarre circumstance, futuristic vision. It’s a place full of lushly drawn detail on the one hand and an undercurrent of foreboding on the other, a vivid and unending dream — one that’s hard to shake after awakening.
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This is a pre-publication review; meanwhile, learn more about the author on his website.
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About Willard Thurston:
Willard Thurston lives in British Columbia. One of the Sixties “floaters” … eventually a photographer and printer (retail advertising), illustrator and writer. He holds a degree in English and Early European History from the University of British Columbia.
