Soft Target, by Stephen Hunter

As a hardcore fan of Stephen Hunter I am willing to stipulate that he’s pretty shameless as far as the concepts for his novels goes. He stretches credibility with the insouciance of a Hollywood producer, mixing westerns and samurai stories with the basic thriller form, and messing with his own chronologies whenever it suits him. But I think Soft Target is his first actual allegory (he admits it in the Afterword). That, my friends, takes guts. Especially when the allegory works against the current party in power.

This isn’t a Bob Lee Swagger story, but the old Marine sniper’s DNA is all over the thing. Bob Lee’s recently discovered natural son, Ray Cruz, now retired as a Marine sniper himself, just happens to be inside “America, the Mall,” a huge (but fictional) mall in suburban Minneapolis, when Somali jihadis start shooting shoppers and herding the survivors, about 1,000 of them, into the amusement park at the facility’s center. Soon, overhead, who should show up but his half-sister Nikki Swagger, now a TV reporter for a St. Paul station, in a broadcast helicopter?

Ray, of course, can’t stay hiding in the Victoria’s Secret store where he and his fiancee have taken refuge. He has to go and scout out the enemy, see what damage he can do. He’s his father’s son, a congenital hero. And having a hero there means a lot – not only to the hostages in the amusement park, but to the mastermind of the attack, who has dark motives of his own, different from those of the clueless Africans he’s exploiting.

But an even greater threat may be the head of the Minnesota state police force, a man incompetent on a massive level, who will look pretty familiar to most readers.

Bottom line – if you’re a Democrat you’ll hate this book. If you’re a Republican you’ll probably love it. I loved it. It’s not deathless work (I caught Hunter in a couple rookie writing errors – using “enormity” wrong and writing “stridden” [is that a word?] as a past perfect form of “stride”), but Soft Target is a lot of fun, with plenty of Hunter’s trademark thrills and improbabilities. Recommended.

Cautions for language, violence and adult topics.

Poor but honest thoughts



“The Pinch of Poverty” by Thomas B. Kennington (1856-1916)

Like many of my generation, I grew up with parents who had stories about the Great Depression. My mother, in particular, had experienced genuine want, cold, and hunger.

There was one thing she said again and again. “We often had to wear patched clothes. But they were always clean. My mother made sure of that.”

Mom was harkening back to a social phenomenon that began in the 18th and 19th Centuries, largely (but not entirely) motivated by Christian pietism – the ideal of the Honest Poor.

Nowadays we’re so accustomed to being told that the poor are naturally virtuous that we don’t see how shocking that ideal was in its time. Jesus Christ, of course, had said “Blessed are the poor…” but the full quote is “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” a rather different thing. The disciples were expressing more conventional wisdom when they responded to Jesus’ encounter with the rich young ruler (Matthew 19). “It is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,” He said, and His disciples “were greatly astonished,” asking, “Who then can be saved?”

The disciples were expressing what most people have believed throughout history – that wealth and virtue went hand in hand. Everyone understood that poor people sometimes had to steal to survive, but if a rich man – who could presumably afford to be honest – didn’t have an easy road to heaven, what chance did regular joes like they have? Continue reading Poor but honest thoughts

Killing Hope, by Keith Houghton

There’s much to enjoy in Keith Houghton’s thriller Killing Hope, the first in a series about Los Angeles police detective Gabe Quinn. Too much, in fact.

The story’s exciting, the main character interesting, the dialogue generally sharp and satisfying. Gabe Quinn, a cop with a personal tragedy in his past (they all do nowadays, don’t they? I used to like that, but it’s getting to be a trope), is cynical and has a good noir voice: “Like I say, I don’t believe in coincidences – especially when it comes to homicide. Coincidences are for people who think the universe is cute. It isn’t.”

But the whole thing is loose. Too many plot branches, too many characters who show up for a while and then never appear again (or do after so long that you’ve forgotten who they were). And the prose needs editing. Bad imagery like, “Flung my eyes wide open.” (Imagine doing that.) Misuse of the word “enormity.” Misplaced hyphens. Consistent misspelling of words, like “devises” for “devices.”

Also he inserts a plot point in which the FBI, most of whose agents are depicted here as thugs, beat a suspect nearly to death to get a confession, something that would have the ACLU on their backs with grappling hooks in the real world. Points lost for believability.

I have an idea – I’m not sure from where – that the author is an English native. The prose definitely supports that. He spells “gray” with an “e,” and calls a yard a garden and a scarf a muffler. But if that’s true I have to generally praise his command of American idiom. Only a few slips come through. Mostly the dialogue is note-perfect.

My uninformed judgment is that Houghton is a writer with great talent, much in need of an old fashioned editor. Such an editor would have instructed him to cut this very long book down by about a third, remove extraneous scenes and characters, and focus, focus, focus. There’s good stuff here, but I got tired of it after a while.

Oh yes, consolidate chapters. There’s too many very short chapters in Killing Hope.

Still, worth reading if you have the patience for it.

Cautions for language, violence, and adult situations.

My “absolute moral authority.” True story

It was a late summer afternoon in Minneapolis. The year was 1980. Business had been quiet at the Hiawatha Motel (not its real name). I was working the afternoon shift. Motel clerking was a good job for a student. The money wasn’t great, but it was only a short distance from my apartment, and I could sit at the desk and just read a book with a clear conscience. I’d have to do my end-of-shift report in a few minutes.

The door buzzer went off and a young man came in. He wore jeans and a tee-shirt, and a short jacket. I couldn’t see his eyes well because he was wearing a blue bucket hat pulled down, but the rest of his face was long. Kind of horsey.

He stepped up to the counter, pulled a semi-automatic pistol (about a .38, I thought), and said, “Open the door.”

This was where I nearly got myself killed. I thought he said, “Open the drawer,” meaning the cash drawer under the counter. I realized later, when it was all over, that he could have easily thought I was going for a gun, and plugged me right there. But when I pulled the drawer open, he repeated himself. “Open the door!” Then I heard his friend rattling the knob of the office door to my left.

I opened the door for him and stepped back, my hands up. Both young men came in, and the guy with the gun said, “We want money and drugs. Give us all you got.”

“There’s no drugs here,” I said. “The money’s there.” I pointed to the open cash drawer.

The sidekick went for the money, while the gunman repeated, “Where’s the drugs?”

“There’s no drugs here.”

At that point someone else stepped into the office. It was my relief, the guy on the next shift. Another student, somewhat younger than me. He raised his hands too, and the gunman gestured us back into the unoccupied manager’s apartment behind the office.

“Get down on your faces,” he said. We did, side by side on the carpet. The gunman told his sidekick to find something to tie us up with.

While waiting, the gunman said, “We just want money and drugs. Nobody needs to get hurt.”

I told him there weren’t any drugs, but otherwise didn’t argue.

His friend came back after a minute with a couple power cords from electrical devices. They tied our hands, and the guy with the gun held it to each of our heads in turn, asking one last time for drugs. I said once again that there weren’t any drugs there. “Let’s kill ‘em,” said the sidekick.

“Nah,” said the gunman. “They’ll be good. You guys’ll be good, won’t you?”

We said we’d be good.

They twisted my high school class ring off my finger, and took my relief guy’s watch. “You stay here for half an hour,” the gunman said. “We’ll be watching. If you get up before half an hour we’ll kill you.”

Then they left.

We lay there not saying much for a few minutes.

“I think we can get up now,” I said. “Can you help me get untied?”

“I’ve got some friends coming in a few minutes,” the relief guy said. “They’ll untie us.”

I got up and looked around in the office. The relief guy stayed where he was. I struggled with my bonds, but couldn’t get loose. Shortly the relief guy’s friends did show up, and they untied us and I called the police. And the owner.

After that, cops, and telling the story. Finally I went home. Didn’t sleep well. I was pretty shaken for a few weeks. Felt like a target. I loaded up my replica Civil War Navy Colt and wore it under a sport coat for a couple weeks when I went to work. I’m pretty sure that was illegal, but the wisdom of the saying, “Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six” had taken on new meaning for me.

And never – never – for one split second did I waver in my support for the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

Four Points from The Intellectual Life

Trevin Wax draws out four points from The Intellectual Life, by A.G. Sertillanges, which may resonate with you.

  1. Recognize the Intellectual Life as a Calling.
  2. Submit Your Intellectual Pursuits to Truth.
  3. Understand the Intellectual Life Requires Considerable Discipline.
  4. Remember the Goal of the Intellectual Life is Virtuous Character.

Read his thoughts on these points here.

Cold news

The fate of the Greenlanders has long interested me, in a melancholy sort of way. If you’re not familiar with the story, the place was settled by Erik the Red around 986, and prospered for a time as an exporter of valuable merchandise like walrus hides and narwhal ivory. Eventually, after Norway become a province of Denmark in the 14th Century, interest in the far-off colony waned, and the last ship sent to check on them, after a long period of neglect, found the settlement deserted.

There’ve been many theories over the years about what happened to them, most of them pretty depressing. Some thought they assimilated with the Inuit and lost their identity (unfortunately there’s no evidence for this). Others thought they succumbed to the Black Death or some other disease, or just starved due to the increasingly cold weather. Some historians pointed a finger at Portuguese or English pirates, suggesting they kidnapped all the Icelanders and sold them as slaves. (I particularly hated that theory.)

Now there’s a theory being touted as new (though I’m pretty sure I read something very like it in a book years back). It’s suggests that the Icelanders got sick of having nothing but seal to eat, and went back to Iceland and Norway. They seem to have some evidence. This article doesn’t mention it, but I’ve read elsewhere that they suggest that land was opening up in Iceland and Norway at the time, and the Greenlanders just went back there.

I’m all for this theory. Maybe some of the dozen or so people I’ve met in my life who informed me they were direct descendents of Leif Eriksson were right. Right by accident, but right nevertheless.

Tip: Archaeology in Europe.

In other news about frigid places where nobody wants to live, somebody over at Threedonia mentioned the Minnesota state flag in comments today:

Continue reading Cold news

“For the children”

You know what bugs me about the president’s public relations event today? (Aside from the fact that I’m a “Nazi” NRA member, and thus an enemy of the people. Plus the fact that the Bill of Rights has somehow become suspicious.) It’s the use of the kids.

He brings out these kids who apparently wrote letters to the White House asking him to do something about gun violence.

Does anybody really believe these kids wrote those letters on their own initiative? That they pondered the options and decided they were morally obligated to bring their concerns to the highest office in the land?

No. You and I both know they were assigned to write these letters in school classes. After a class discussion, carefully orchestrated by the teacher to come to the approved conclusion, they were assigned to write letters, which the teacher then posted for them.

For some reason that sort of moral exploitation really offends me.

It offends me on our side too, by the way. There’s a pro-life organization around here that puts up billboards along the highways. It also runs radio ads. And the ads consist of little kids reciting lines written for them by adults, like, “My mommy says that I could suck my thumb before I was even bo-orn!”

It’s cute, I suppose. And the organization does a good work (the billboards, in my opinion, are less manipulative.) But the point of the radio ads seems to be that these are children speaking simple truth out of their innocent hearts. When it’s nothing of the kind.

Just like the presidential show today.

By the way, a lot of Sunday Schools and parochial schools have sent letters to the president over the years (40 years now), protesting abortion. I’m eagerly awaiting the press event where the president brings those kids out for the cameras.

Killer in the Wind, by Andrew Klavan

See, I’d seen that look before. That wrinkled nose, that laughing sparkle in the eyes. In the movies, evil guys laugh out loud. Bwa-ha-ha. Or they chuckle suavely, swirling their drinks in their glasses. But this is the real deal, the real look most monsters have. A sort of cute, dainty, delicate recoil from speaking the thing out loud. The forbidden joke of it.

Are we being naughty now?
I know you’re used to seeing me review Andrew Klavan’s books, and I know you’ve come to expect me to praise each one to the skies. Nevertheless, I want you to believe me when I say that it’s been a long time since I actually stayed up late in bed with a book, unable to put it down except by a strong effort of the will.
Killer in the Wind is one of the most compelling thrillers I’ve ever read.
The hero, Dan Champion, is a former commando, a former New York City police detective, and a certified hero. Now he’s part of the police force in a small town in downstate New York. He’s dating a local waitress, a nice woman whose love he’d like to return. But he can’t commit. He can’t commit for a reason he himself knows is crazy. Three years ago, in the course of an undercover investigation, he had a hallucination under the influence of drugs. In the hallucination he encountered a woman named Samantha, whom he can’t get over. Even though he knows for a fact that she doesn’t exist.
Except that one day Samantha shows up in the flesh. She says one thing to him – “They’re coming after us” – before disappearing again.
Is this a real-world mystery, or a supernatural thriller? The borderline seems vague sometimes, and that’s no accident. Klavan likes to explore those boundaries. Some of the reviews on Amazon suggest that certain readers don’t get this. They take the uncertainty as over-the-top storytelling. But it’s not. It’s the author’s way of exploring the wonder of life itself – that all of us are living in an improbable world, a world impossible to explain by purely rational methods. For good and evil.
My own reaction to Killer in the Wind may not be yours. I’m pretty sure I was emotionally affected by the way it dealt with areas of human evil of which I have some personal experience.
But even if that’s the case, I can still recommend Killer in the Wind without reservation. It’s a tight, tense, deeply moving thriller with characters as real as your own family.
Cautions for rough language, sex, and violence.

Take No More, by Seb Kirby

Getting free book offers for my Kindle has expanded my opportunities for writing snarky reviews. Take No More by Seb Kirby is far from being the worst written e-book I’ve read, but I can hardly recommend it.

James Blake, a London radio executive, comes home to his apartment one day and finds his wife dying just inside the door, shot in the head. Not only can he not imagine why anyone would have killed her, but he didn’t even know she was in town. She was supposed to be in Florence, looking for lost art masterpieces.

Naturally he comes under police suspicion, but he manages to flee to Florence where he discovers that his wife has crossed immensely powerful people, and he soon becomes a target himself.

I’d say the problem with Take No More is that the author is an OK storymaker, but an amateur storyteller. He often commits the sin of having his narrator inform us what other people are thinking, something he can’t know for sure. And the prose is… maddeningly pedestrian. There’s plenty of danger and action, but the words don’t serve the story. It occurred to me that the book read like a second-rate translation – all the words are right, but the music is absent. One of the reviewers on Amazon actually said something about it being originally written in another language, but “Kirby” sounds like an English-speaking name to me.

There was one trick employed for losing a tail that did impress me, though.

Cautions for the usual stuff, but nothing radical. If you can get it free like I did, you might care to give it a try if this sort of thing interests you. Otherwise, I’d say pass.