My sister has directed my attention to “a modernized adaptation of the classic Jane Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice
Do people actually make money off the Internet? That is so 90s.
A False Dawn, by Tom Lowe
There’s a rather pathetic sub-group among mystery fans (I’m part of it) that’s always on the lookout, without much hope, for the author who will truly fill the shoes of John D. MacDonald and his private eye, Travis McGee. Randy Wayne White’s Doc Ford comes the closest so far, in my view, but he doesn’t quite hit the mark.
When I started Tom Lowe’s A False Dawn, I thought I’d found the successor at last. For a few chapters. Then it kind of fell apart, but that first impression was strong enough to give me hopes for this author.
Sean O’Brien resembles Travis McGee in his Florida east coast location (on the St. John’s River in this case), and in living—at least part of the time—on a boat. Also in his relations with his neighbors at the marina. But the great resonance is found in Sean’s narration, in his wry and world-weary decency.
Sean is a retired Miami police detective. He left the job after his wife died of cancer, and devotes himself to restoring his house and his boat. Also to looking after his dog, a dachshund named Max. He has no intention of interfering with police matters until he discovers a dying girl lying on a river bank. She expires in his arms, speaking words in a language he doesn’t know.
Although two of the cops who come to investigate seem decent and competent, one of them appears determined to pin the girl’s murder on Sean. Sean’s desire to clear himself, as well as a feeling of obligation to the dead girl, impels him to put his own detective expertise to work, leading him to discover a festering swamp of human smuggling, sex trafficking, and political corruption.
Although Sean O’Brien has the makings of a great character, in my opinion, he didn’t impress me so much as this story went on. His penchant for walking, eyes wide open, into ridiculously dangerous situations struck me as simply self-destructive. And frankly, I’m tired of stories (SPOILER HERE) where wealthy industrialists turn out to serial killers. How many millionaire serial killers have there been in real life? How many have you encountered in novels, movies, and TV shows? The final showdown didn’t work well for me either. I found it far-fetched.
There’s an element of mysticism in this book which I’m not sure how to take. A spiritualist makes a prediction which comes true, but Sean has nothing good to say about her and seems to find her occult practices repellant. There’s also a mysterious Native American character, who may or may not be a ghost. At one point, at a grave, Sean makes the sign of the cross.
All in all, I give A False Dawn a mixed review. Still, on the basis of the strong opening, I think I might be willing to give Tom Lowe another chance. I think he has the potential to become a strong and successful detective writer.
Cautions of language, violence, and sexual situations.
The Truth? How Inconvenient.
Daniel Darling talks about the writing life in this post on inconvenient truths. ” For example:
4) You must fight for space to do your work. Because you will not get rich writing, it’s likely that you will have to write in the margins of your daily life. This means you’ll have to create time and space to do it, in between your job, your family obligations, and your church responsibilities. Jon Acuff, in his book Quitter
, calls this “hustling at 5am.” In other words, if you really want to do this, get up early and write (or in my case, stay up late). And you’ll have to constantly discipline yourself and fight for it.
Stephen Fry on Words and Stuff
Our friend, Brendan of Digital Sextant, reviews Stephen Fry’s English Delight, a BBC radio show on English words. He likes it a good bit. Get Fry Audio on Amazon
On an mostly unrelated note, here’s a patriotic sketch from Fry and Hugh Laurie.
Memorial Day, 2012
I have only known one person in my life who died in war, that I’m aware of. His name was Gordon Gunhus, he graduated from high school with me, and he died in Vietnam. We weren’t particular friends, but I have every reason to believe that the life he laid down was a life of considerable promise. Blessed be the memory.
‘The Star Spangled Banner’ and ‘Taps’
Have a happy, God-blessed Memorial Day.
For the origins of “Taps,” the military song at the end of the day, see below. Continue reading ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ and ‘Taps’
What Would You Do with Two Free Hours a Day?
See some of the possibilities here. Apparently, one-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. 42% of college graduates never read another book after college. 80% of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year. (via Mental Floss)
I wonder exactly what “read another book” means.
Literary notes
Our friend Dale Nelson informs me that this year is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, which most American readers know from The Tolkien Reader. J. R. R. Tolkien wrote it at the request of his aunt, Jane Neave.
So, I finally read The Great Gatsby. I was motivated to do this by two circumstances. One is that I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie version, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. I won’t embed it, because frankly it doesn’t look all that promising. The second reason was that I finally found a cheap Kindle edition.
Some years ago, someone told me I ought to read Gatsby, because I had a lot in common with the title character. I guess that’s true, with the caveat that I’m not generally considered either glamorous or mysterious.
Anyway, it’s superbly written. I’m glad I waited till I was a grownup to read it. I might have appreciated it in college, but I’m not sure.
There’s a rumor abroad in the land, spread mostly by college literature professors, that Gatsby is a critique of the American dream. This is balderdash. It’s a critique of the human heart, and the illusions we build for ourselves, and the idea that money can remake the world to our personal specifications.
Great book. Hurt like the devil.
(Here’s something odd. If you see the trailer, you’ll note that the actress is playing Daisy Buchanan as a blonde. And Mia Farrow, in the Redford version, was also a blonde. I don’t know what the actress looked like in the Alan Ladd version. Anyway, in the book Fitzgerald says she had dark hair. I guess the mystique of the American Blonde trumps the text.)
A blessed Memorial Day holiday to you all.
Review: Groupthink Can Run Both Directions
Nutrition news is ripe for overstatement. You might say there are fruit flies of hyperbole swarming many popular reports on select health benefits. Take this example from a site I won’t name (not naming my source would be in keeping with many health reports): “In parts of China where people eat a lot of vegetables such as garlic and onions, villagers have one-quarter as many cases of cancer as people in the rest of the country.” Perhaps that’s true, but it doesn’t mean that the health claim the writer makes in using this example is true or as strong as he says it is. There are likely many combined reasons that guard these Chinese from cancer.
In popular news, nutrition reports can be maddening. Often, the news will simplify a report too far, like saying coffee is linked to hallucinations when the report is actually inconclusive. Or a report may be accurate and the study reported on simplistic. So when I began reading Ty Bollinger’s book, Cancer: Step Outside the Box
The first thing Bollinger wants us to believe is that pharmaceutical companies and certain medical groups do not want us to heal from cancer or find its cure. They want to make money off of our disease, so they have stifled real cures like apricot seeds in favor of their money-making treatments: surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. He argues that the FDA and other agencies are pressured by lobbyists to ban nutrition and promote manufactured drugs. Some leaders are pressed to promote something regardless of clinical evidence and others are steeped in a groupthink that prevents them from questioning the promotion. Continue reading Review: Groupthink Can Run Both Directions
Badge of Evil, by Whit Masterson
Badge of Evil is chiefly memorable as the source text for Orson Welles’s film Touch of Evil. It’s a competent mystery/thriller, written in the 1950s in a style that would be considered pretty languid today.
The film writers made a number of changes in the basic story, written by “Whit Masterson,” a pseudonym for the creative team of Wade Miller and William Daemer. In the movie, Charlton Heston played Miguel Vargas, a Mexican drug enforcement officer, married to an American woman played by Janet Leigh. This was a reversal from the book, whose hero was Michael Holt, an assistant district attorney in an unnamed California city, married to a woman of Mexican heritage.
In the book, Michael is assigned to assist in the prosecution of an heiress and her fiance, charged with the dynamite murder of her father. Michael is unsatisfied with the detectives’ case, and his own digging soon uncovers a different suspect who immediately confesses.
Michael becomes suspicious of the two detectives—heroes in the city—and begins to research other cases they’ve “closed,” to see if they’ve planted evidence before. Before long both he and his wife are under attack.
For a contemporary reader, there’s not a lot of punch here. The idea of corrupt cops who plant evidence was shocking in the 1950s, but has become a cliché in today’s fiction. Also, a district attorney with these kinds of suspicions would get a lot more support from a police department nowadays.
I was intrigued by the portrayal of Michael’s marriage. The authors make a special point of noting that Michael’s co-workers joke about his wife being jealous of his career, but in fact she’s extremely supportive. Michael’s marriage is portrayed as a genuine partnership, and his wife as a good friend as well as a lover. It strikes me that a modern writers would have given her her own career, and would have also ramped up the conflict between the spouses. What does that say about marriage, then and now?
Badge of Evil should be approached as an artifact of its time, and the reader had best not bring contemporary expectations to it. I found the prose a little flaccid, and the action a little tame, but that’s probably typical of the style of the times. Suitable for most readers, teens and up.