All posts by Lars Walker

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.

Fiction, Reviews

‘In Good Faith,’ by Scott Pratt

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In Good Faith

This is the second novel in Scott Pratt’s Joe Dillard series. In In Good Faith, Tennessee lawyer Joe Dillard, disillusioned with criminal defense law, joins the district attorney’s office. Right out of the chute, he draws a horrific crime – the murder of a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses at a rest stop. Soon after that a retired high school principal and his wife are murdered. All the killings include a signature mark – a shooting or stabbing wound to the right eye.

This book skirts the edges of supernatural horror – the concepts of mental telepathy and telekinesis are part of the story and taken seriously. At the center of the crimes is a beautiful young black witch. And as an ally against her power, Joe discovers a psychically gifted young woman who has a strange link to the witch.

The question of religion is particularly strong in this book. Joe’s troubled sister is living with a “Christian” man, a pillar of the church, who turns out to be a violent addict (hint to all women thinking of getting involved with a “Christian” man. If he wants to shack up, he’s a hypocrite). “Black” and “white” witchcraft are central to the story, which is problematic for the Christian reader. Joe, a lifelong atheist, has a breakthrough of some kind of faith, but it’s not clear exactly what he believes in.

But still, a harder line could have been taken against Christianity if that were the author’s purpose, so I can’t criticize the book much on that score.

In Good Faith was exciting and well written, and I cared about the characters. Recommended, with cautions about the supernatural stuff. Also, language and adult themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Judgment Cometh (And That Right Soon),’ by Scott Pratt

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Judgment Cometh

It wasn’t until I’d finished Judgment Cometh (and That Right Soon) by Scott Pratt that I realized I’d read a previous book in this series. That was An Innocent Client, which introduced the continuing character of lawyer Joe Dillard of Tennessee. I clearly remember composing a review, but if it was ever posted, it’s disappeared altogether from the internet.

In this eighth installment, defense lawyer Joe Dillard takes the job of defending a young man accused of the murder of four judges. He was stopped for driving drunk, and a pair of coolers containing the disarticulated and frozen body parts of the latest victim were found in the back of his pickup. Joe believes the man innocent, and gets the case thrown out.

But that’s not enough for Joe. The real killer is out there, and is very bad news, so Joe starts looking for him himself. He uncovers a pair of the most monstrous murderers he’s ever encountered.

This is a compelling story, and Scott Pratt is a good author. He gives us interesting characters, good writing, and sharp dialogue. Joe’s dealings with his wife (who has been battling cancer) are presented with insight and empathy. His attitude toward religion, which comes up more than once, is hard to gauge – which is probably a good approach.

I disliked some elements of the first Joe Dillard mystery, and read no more. But I’ve picked the series up again with Book Number Two, which I’ll review soon. Scott Pratt has earned another chance with me. He’s good at what he does.

Cautions for language and intense cruelty and violence, though it isn’t overly graphic in presentation.

Fiction, Reviews

‘A View to Die For,’ by Richard Houston

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A View to Die For

I was looking for something a little less intense than the books I’ve been reading recently, and A View to Die For, by Richard Houston, seemed to fit the bill. And it did, more or less. It was an amiable little mystery. A little too amiable, perhaps.

Jacob Martin is a recently divorced Coloradan, who lost his job in computer programming and has been getting with handyman work. When his mother calls and tells him his sister has been arrested for the murder of her husband, he sets out home for Missouri to help out, along with his golden retriever, Fred. His sister is a promising suspect, as her two previous husbands have both died suddenly. She is sure Jacob can help, because he always used to figure out the murderer when they used to watch “Murder, She Wrote”(!).

The story kept me reading to the end, but it seemed a little loose and meandering. The writing was generally OK, though artless, but occasionally words were misused (such as “prolong” for “postpone”).

There are a couple sequels out there, but A View to Die For didn’t grab me enough to persuade me to download them. Your mileage may vary. Cautions for adult themes and language.

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Calamitous day

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A day of woe. A day of calamity.

First of all, it was announced that the Dragon Harald Fairhair, the largest Viking ship replica in the world, which sailed all the way from Norway, is ending its American tour at Green Bay. It will not be coming to the Tall Ships Festival in Duluth, where I had hoped to see it.

The problem was that someone failed to plan for the cost of pilot’s fees in the Great Lakes. Funds were raised, much of them through the Sons of Norway organization, to pay for pilotage. But they couldn’t raise enough to get them to Duluth.

Second, when I got home I found that my air conditioning had failed. This isn’t supposed to happen — I pay a company to come out and inspect it every spring. And the unit isn’t very old. But so it is, and I sit here with the windows open. The service company, of course, was closed by the time I got home and discovered this. But I do have a message on their answering machine. Along, no doubt, with about 800 from other, equally deserving, people.

And to top it off, the republic appears to be doomed.

And how was your day?

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘The Viking Spirit,’ by Daniel McCoy

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The Viking Spirit

For that matter, these two poles [of friendly and hostile magic] were often two sides of the same coin; to help one person often meant to harm another. This was especially the case for the Vikings, who believed in an “economy of fortune:” there was a fixed amount of luck in the world, and when one person’s luck changed for the better, someone else’s luck must have changed for the worse.

A Facebook friend asked me about this book, and I was embarrassed to say I’d never heard of it. So I acquired The Viking Spirit, by Daniel McCoy, and read it. I was impressed.

Kevin Crossley-Holland’s The Norse Myths has long been a standard introduction to the subject, and it remains valuable, but I think The Viking Spirit might supersede it. The book is divided into two sections – first an overview of the sources, scholarly views of those sources, and the nature of the Norse world view. The second section provides short synopses of the myths that have been preserved to us. The author attempts to strip them down to something like their “original” essences, while making it clear that much has been lost, that it’s possible to have more than one “original” version, and that our critical editing is necessarily a matter of guesswork.

My chief fear when I started the book was that it would be full of New Agey spiritual fluff, but nothing could be further from the case. Author McCoy is very hard-headed about his scholarship. He makes some fresh contributions that will be surprising even to old Viking buffs – for instance his view that the Norsemen did not see history as a cyclical phenomenon, but as linear. That contradicts a lot of 20th Century scholarship, but he makes a good case.

I caught McCoy in a few small errors, I thought, especially in his descriptions of Viking life. But I’d be hesitant to challenge him, because he clearly knows his stuff (and I’ve been known to be wrong).

If you’re interested in Norse mythology, I highly recommend The Viking Spirit. Not for young kids, if you want to shield them from some of the earthier facts of life.

Reviews

Imminent Islam

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I have a vague idea I may have written on this subject here before. But the scenario looks even more likely to me today than it did then (whenever that was).

I consider it highly probable that the mainline Protestant churches will convert, en masse, to Islam. Very likely within my lifetime.

Here’s my reasoning. Continue reading Imminent Islam →

Fiction, Reviews

‘Murder Upstream,’ by Mark Hazard

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Murder Upstream

If you think a book is well written, but it still didn’t work for you, do you give it a positive or negative review?

I guess I’ll go negative, because I’m a small, vindictive man. But I’ll be honest about my reasons, so you can make adjustments for that.

Murder Upstream is set in a small fictional city called Harding. The rich people live upstream, on the high ground, and the poor people live downstream, where it’s flooding right now, after a period of heavy rains. A beautiful young woman, heir to one of the city’s top real estate developers, is found bludgeoned to death outside her family home. Detective Kyle Villante is sent to investigate, getting assistance from Det. Solomon Aduwo, on loan from the state police. Their investigation pokes into social tensions, environmental concerns, and local organized crime (with which Kyle has connections thanks to prolonged work as an undercover officer).

Murder Upstream was competently plotted and well written (though there were too many typographical errors). My only real objection was that I didn’t care much for the hero. Kyle Villante is metrosexual in his personal grooming, arrogant in his musical tastes, promiscuous in his sexual habits, and inclined to cut legal corners on the job. In real life, I think, a guy like this wouldn’t last long on an honest force, even if his motives were good.

I should mention in his defense, though, that the author inserted one or two of what I’d call “moments of grace,” where he showed real compassion and human empathy. But – for a stuffy moralist like me – it just wasn’t enough. Your mileage may… you know.

Cautions for language, violence, and sexual situations.