All posts by Lars Walker

Fiction, Reviews

‘A Crime of Passion,’ by Scott Pratt

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A Crime of Passion

“I got the impression they’re friends, but not the kind of friends you and I have. This is Nashville, Caroline. The state capitol. The seat of power and money in the state. Friendship here means something entirely different than it means back home. I’m out of my league.”

And now at last I come to A Crime of Passion, the last book in my current reading of Scott Pratt’s Joe Dillard legal mysteries. It’s not the last book in the series to date, though. The next book is Judgment Cometh (and That Right Soon), which started me off on reading this series. But I’ve reviewed that one already.

This time around, Joe, defense lawyer from northeast Tennessee, is summoned – to his great surprise – to Nashville by a beautiful former Country music star. Her husband, a record company owner, has been accused of murdering a young female singer who was a rising star in his talent stable. Joe has been recommended to her, she says, by a friend who says he’s smart, honest, and relentless. Joe is uneasy about moving into an alien environment where he doesn’t know the power structure, but she makes him a money offer he can’t refuse.

He finds himself in a snake pit. His client is a womanizing crook. His client’s wife is a devious seductress. Everybody has their own agenda, and everybody is lying to him. The district attorney casually suggests a way he can fix the trial, for a price. A certain party is considering murdering Joe. Nobody expects him to be able to play in this league. But country boy Joe has a trick or two of his own in his repertoire.

Scott Pratt gets better and better as a novelist. I liked A Crime of Passion very much. Cautions for the usual adult stuff. Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Blood Money,’ by Scott Pratt

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And I continue through Scott Pratt’s Joe Dillard series of legal thrillers. This one was a particular pleasure. An attractive new character has been added to the cast, and the story is almost old-fashioned in its moral purpose.

Charleston Story, the central character in Blood Money (it was originally written as a stand-alone, but author Pratt revised it to fit into the Joe Dillard series) is a young lawyer who’s had a rough life. She lost her parents young, and grew up in some poverty, living with an eccentric uncle. But she has persevered, and is now starting out as a lawyer. Joe Dillard, defense attorney, likes her (his son Joe likes her even better) and takes her on as an associate. She takes the case of an elderly man whose son is trying to get him declared incompetent. Suddenly and dramatically, “Charlie” finds herself the old man’s heir, after his unexpected death. But he hasn’t just left her his modest property. He left her an old family secret, the key to unimaginable riches. But the riches come with a curse. The old man’s greedy and ruthless son is the least of her worries.

Charlie is an appealing, spunky character, and there are a lot of thrills in her story. I thought the book’s final resolution a little predictable, but it was none the less satisfying. I had fun reading it. Mild cautions for language and adult themes.

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For your Spectation

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My latest essay for The American Spectator Online is here.

In fact, the real question — the actual historical anomaly — is why, after everybody else had got the question wrong from the beginning of time, the Christians suddenly figured the answer out, and abolished slavery. Nobody else did that. Not the Egyptians. Not the Chinese. Not the Aztecs or the ancient Greeks. I understand the Greek Epicureans rejected slavery, but one of the distinctions of the Epicureans is that they never tried to build a civilization.

And building a civilization is the precise nub of the historical problem.

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Elegy for a tree

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[If you’ve been trying to access Brandywine Books, or waiting for updates, we apologize. We suffered a malicious denial of service attack. The problem has been addressed, at least for now.

This piece was meant to be posted Thursday evening. lw]

The most impressive thing about my property is now gone. Fortunately I’m not talking about my house.

I had a great big tree, a pine or some kind of fir, at the back of my lot, in a space between my garage, my neighbor’s fence, and my retaining wall. It was very tall and wide. It was even older than I am. My neighbor on the downhill side told me the previous owner had planted it just after World War II, when he got back from the service.

Unfortunately, it had utility lines running through it, and that same neighbor asked me, as a personal favor, to get it taken out. So I found a guy who’d do it for a reasonable price, and his crew finally made it here late this morning, and set to work with chain saws, climbing gear, and a chipper.

It took them several hours, but they finally left some time after 5:00 p.m. I didn’t actually realize they were gone. I thought they’d knock on the door and give me a bill when they’d finished, but they just made like a tree and leaved (the owner called later to make arrangements for me to pay him. Trusting fellow). I stepped out onto the back porch, and nobody was there. Except there was a pile of mulch about the size of a Volkswagen piled in my uphill neighbors’ driveway.

I had a moment of panic there, but the neighbors, when I went over to inquire, told me they’d asked the tree guys to leave it for them. Free mulch for their gardening endeavors. Blocking their garage, at the moment.

So my great tree’s story is told. It is gone like the summers of my youth, leaving a lonesome place against the sky (points for anyone who can identify that reference).

Reviews

Reviews: ‘Gisli’s Saga:’ Book and movie

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Outlaw: The Saga of Gisli

I’d been meaning to check out the 1981 Icelandic film, Outlaw: The Saga of Gisli, for some time. Not a great film by any means, it has genuine pleasures and rewards for the saga enthusiast.

Gisli Sursson’s Saga is one of the best sagas, and offers interesting distinctions when compared to others. It’s a tragedy of fate, like all good sagas, but in this case the legal and ethical rules by which the Norsemen lived create unintended (and insoluble) problems for a decent man. If your blood brother and your kinsman get into a fight, whom do you support?

Gisli has sworn blood brotherhood with his friend Vesteinn. But Vesteinn is murdered by Gisli’s brother-in-law. Gisli feels obligated to avenge him, thus keeping his honor (as he sees it) but turning almost the whole world against him. He is outlawed, which in Iceland meant that any man could kill him without penalty, and no one was permitted to assist him.

There are a few people who help him, though, notably his faithful wife. And with their help he manages to survive as an outlaw — without fleeing the country – longer than any other man, except one (Grettir, who also has a saga). Continue reading Reviews: ‘Gisli’s Saga:’ Book and movie →

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Stranger thoughts

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I’m taking a vacation week this week. It wasn’t supposed to be a stay-cation, but it turned out that way. I had planned (along with the other Vikings) on being at the Tall Ships Festival in Duluth, as part of the penumbra surrounding the visit of the Draken Harald Fairhair replica Viking ship. But the Norns had other plans. So I’m hanging around the house, catching up with maintenance stuff, working (in a preliminary way) on my next novel, reading, and watching Stranger Things on Netflix.

I was reluctant to try Stranger Things. It’s basically horror, a genre that does not entertain me (I was a traumatized child. There’s no thrill for me in fear). But descriptions made it sound interesting. I gave it a shot. So far, so good. There are plot weaknesses, but the characters are good and the writers keep it interesting.

It got me thinking about the whole phenomenon of the Evil Government Conspiracy in fiction and entertainment. It seems to me strange that so many Hollywood productions, created by confirmed liberals who theoretically love government, are based on the idea that the government is secretly running massive projects aimed at enslaving us all and destroying the very fabric of the universe, unleashing unspeakable horrors. Offhand, you’d think that people who believe government can never be too big or too powerful would be incapable of imagining such a thing.

Part of it might be an impoverishment of the imagination. The liberal writer looks for some great force that might be capable of doing really cosmic evil. And the only great force he/she can imagine is the government, because he/she believes in nothing higher.

But perhaps it’s also a question of comfort. The liberal writer imagines a huge government conspiracy because he/she considers the very idea fantasy. Everyone knows the government is good, so an evil government is pure fantasy. Willing suspension of disbelief. There’s no existential dread for them in the mix.

I, on the other hand, consider big government a very real threat in the world. For that reason such a conspiracy is threatening to me. I prefer not to think about it. And so I avoid such stories most of the time.

These are preliminary thoughts. And probably wrong in large part.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Conflict of Interest,’ by Scott Pratt

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Conflict of Interest

Another Joe Dillard legal thriller from Scott Pratt. I’m going through them pretty fast, and growing fond of the regular cast of characters. This one, I thought, was the best I’d read so far.

In Conflict of Interest, Joe (who is back in private practice) is retained as an attorney by a couple whose young daughter has been kidnapped. They tell him the police have been treating them as suspects in the crime, and they want someone to look after their interests. Joe explains that working for both of them could cause an eventual conflict of interest for him, but they assure him they’re in this together and it won’t be a problem. Little do they know.

Joe ends up acting as the bag man, carrying the ransom money (raised by the mother’s wealthy father) to the drop site. A plan by the grandfather’s security people to catch the kidnappers fails, and Joe comes under suspicion. But the greatest suspicion falls on the father, who is arrested, and Joe gets thrown off the case. But he has a passion for the truth, and he goes after the kidnappers himself. Joe is not a man to underestimate.

Conflict of Interest is an excellent entry in a great series. I particularly liked that this one spent a little less time on derring-do than the previous book, and concentrated more on legal maneuvers and relationships. Again, Joe’s wife’s battle with cancer forms one of the subplots.

Recommended. Cautions for language and adult themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Reasonable Fear,’ by Scott Pratt

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Reasonable Fear

I’m still reading Scott Pratt’s Joe Dillard books, and so far he hasn’t hit me with the ideological pies in the face I feared at the beginning. I’m finding the books highly enjoyable, though this one gave me moments of genuine distress.

In Reasonable Fear, Joe Dillard, District Attorney General in northeastern Tennessee, takes an interest in the discovery of the bodies of three young women, found drowned in a lake. Evidence points to a real estate tycoon, who turns out to be much more than that. The man is a drug smuggler, closely tied to the Colombian cartels. He feels himself invulnerable, because if someone displeases him he can call on a notorious, merciless assassin to solve his problem. Right now his problem is Joe Dillard. Unless Dillard can come up with a way to stop him, he and his family, already facing cancer, alcoholism, and an unplanned pregnancy, face a horrible fate.

Reasonable Fear was fast and gripping. I enjoyed it. Cautions for the usual. Not for the faint of heart.

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Road day

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I spent the day mostly on the road, to and from a meeting of the Georg Sverdrup Society Board in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. James Lileks would have taken Highway 10 and commented on the quaint charms of small towns along the way. I took Highway 94, so I have very little to tell you.

So here’s an article about Viking horses, featuring the Icelandic horses I got acquainted with this spring.

Most likely the first gaited horses appeared in medieval England and were then transported to Iceland by the Vikings. Horses have existed in Iceland since 870 BC. In contrast, no European (Scandinavia included) or Asian horse of the same period carrying the mutation for the alternative gaits was found.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Injustice for All,’ by Scott Pratt

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Injustice for all

I’m powering my way through Scott Pratt’s Joe Dillard series of legal thrillers. Book number 3, Injustice for All, is exactly what the title advertises. The world is full of injustices, and Joe, now District Attorney General in his corner of northeastern Tennessee, is doing everything he can to try to protect a few of the innocent.

There’s a man on death row, a former client of Joe’s, who’s scheduled for execution soon. New DNA evidence could free him, but Joe can’t get a judge to look at it.

There’s one of Joe’s oldest friends, a fellow lawyer, who angers a petty and narcissistic judge. Soon he finds himself with his license suspended and headed for jail. And that’s just the beginning of his troubles.

There’s a lovely young woman, liked by everyone, who hides secrets of past victimhood. More victimhood lies in store for her.

It’s a tribute to author Pratt’s skill as a novelist that a story with this much tragedy and unfairness in it isn’t a complete downer. But he manages it. I’m impressed.

Recommended. Cautions for the things you’d expect. It can get pretty intense.