Lynch’s newest novel truly sings

No question about it, Brandon Vanderkool is the oddest U.S. Border Patrol agent in Blaine, Wash.

The fictional Vanderkool ignores his dispatcher, preferring to respond loudly and vigorously to bird calls. He builds driftwood sculptures on the beach in full uniform. He has the wingspan of a heron – the guy is six-foot-eight. He also has an uncanny ability to swoop down on illegal immigrants and drug smugglers on Washington’s northern border.

Vanderkool provides the vivid center to Jim Lynch’s marvelous, funny and gentle new novel, “Border Songs” (Knopf, $25.95).

Lynch made a splash in the fiction world in 2005 with his debut novel, “The Highest Tide,” set on the Olympia tideflats.

Spokane readers may remember him for another reason: He was a reporter for The Spokesman-Review for many years. He now lives in Olympia.

Lynch excels in creating lyrical word-pictures of his settings – in this case, the gorgeous dairy lands and forests between Bellingham and the Canadian border. You can smell the towering cedars and hear the songs of the warblers. It’s a beautiful part of the world, but Lynch isn’t writing a tourist brochure; his characters are struggling with the area’s increasingly unsustainable dairy industry and are tempted by the increasingly brazen smuggling culture.

The setting allows Lynch to explore a number of fascinating issues: Illegal immigration, America’s homeland security mania and the smuggling of the potent marijuana strain B.C. bud.

Vanderkool gets wrapped up in all of these issues, and, yes, he proves mysteriously adept at catching border-runners. Yet don’t imagine for a moment that “Border Songs” is a fast-paced thriller. Mostly, it’s a quiet, gentle character study, more interested in the emotional plight of Vanderkool’s dad, a Lynden dairy farmer, than in high-speed chases.

And frankly, I found that more compelling – and certainly more intelligent and humorous – than a thriller. Lynch does an outstanding job of fully fleshing out the two Vanderkools.

Oddly, the only place the book lets down is in the secondary characters, of which there are plenty — other Border Patrol agents, eccentric neighbors and British Columbian pot runners. Not all of them came vividly to life. Lynch’s descriptions were often so sparse, I found myself unable to picture them. I especially wanted to picture the two key women in the story – Madeline and Sophie — but they never quite came into focus for me.

This is easily forgivable in a book that creates such memorable primary characters. When you have Brandon Vanderkool at the center of your story, it’s almost churlish to ask for more.