It’s always embarrassing to admit that I just don’t get a book. But honesty requires me to say that Bye Bye Bertie by Rick Dewhurst pretty much mystifies me. It’s a parody on hard-boiled detective novels, but also a parody on evangelical Christian culture, by a Christian writer. For me, it raised more discomfort than laughter. Maybe I don’t get it because I’m too close to the subject.

Joe LaFlam, the hero and narrator, is a Seattle private eye. A Christian private eye, who lives with his mother and makes his living as a cab driver. Except that his real name is John Doe, and he actually lives in Vancouver, BC, which he insists is Seattle. One day a beautiful (Christian) dame named Brittany Morgan walks into his office, to ask him to find her sister Alberta (Bertie), who has been kidnapped by Druids. He takes the job largely in the hope of winning Brittany as a Christian wife. The hunt leads him on an improbable, slapstick search through Seattle’s (Vancouver’s) back streets, where he encounters a hit man working for a world government conspiracy, who keeps trying (unsuccessfully) to kill him. As well as several other guys who may have been his father (before they were Christians).

It’s all very strange. Lots of jokes are made about popular American Christian culture, which certainly has earned a lot of ribbing.

But I didn’t know how to take the story as a whole. Joe is a sympathetic character, but he’s clueless and heavily delusional. He doesn’t even know what country he’s in. I’m kind of uncomfortable with seeing him set up – it would seem – as some kind of representative evangelical. Maybe we deserve that. But it seemed excessive.

But maybe I just don’t get it.

Suitable for most readers. I can’t either recommend it or dis-recommend Bye Bye Bertie.

This is the third Sean O’Brien novel by Tom Lowe that I’ve read, which tells me that I must like the books. Yet I see all kinds of flaws in them. So I guess the takeaway must be that, for me, Lowe is a natural storyteller with a genuine talent. But he could use some seasoning.

The Butterfly Forest opens, after some preliminaries, with hero Sean O’Brien, a former Miami detective with some kind of mysterious military background, observing a man stalking two women in a mall parking lot. He intervenes to save them from kidnapping, but the assailant gets away. Both women, mother and daughter, are quite attractive, and Sean (a widower) becomes their friend, even pondering asking the mother out. But the predator from the parking lot was not just a crime-of-opportunity pervert. He has the daughter, a student entomologist, in his sights because she saw something she doesn’t even know she saw.

Sean O’Brien is an interesting and engaging character – low-key and laid back, but capable of very efficient violence when it’s needed. Author Lowe has endowed him with a very appealing habitat, dividing his time between an old cabin on the edge of Ocala National Forest and the marina where he keeps his fishing boat, and where good and faithful friends live. He also keeps a pet dachshund, Max, whom he cares for with appealing devotion.

The weaknesses are in the writing. I thought the plotting was better this time than in at least one of the previous books, but I was troubled by repeated infelicities in the prose. People say things like “as you know” in conversation, which real people almost never say. And the exposition is sometimes just awful, as in “His physical periphery subtly spoke of a body language that was rough but understood.”

I blame our times, in a way. In the old days, a good storyteller like Lowe would have paid his dues in the pulp magazines, getting ruthlessly red-penciled by carnivorous editors at 3 cents a word. Then he’d have worked with an equally pitiless editor at a publishing house. But nowadays, publishing his own work, he’s missed professional boot camp, and has no one to tell him when he’s right and when he’s wrong.

And yet I’ve read all three novels. That’s got to mean something.

Another strange thing about the Sean O’Brien series is that the author openly appeals to the spiritual and supernatural. Sean himself says that he’s learned to value his gut feelings above the evidence, which seems strange by the standards of traditional mysteries. He sees visions too, from time to time. I’m not sure if I like this or not.

Moderately recommended. Cautions for language, violence, and adult themes.