Music, Religion

“Den Himmelske Lovsang”

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Tonight, as is so often my lazy wont, I share with you a Norwegian hymn, performed here by a volunteer pietist men’s choir. But this hymn is different, in a highly insignificant way.

The hymn is called “Den Himmelske Lovsang,” which translates, “The Heavenly Song of Praise.” (“Lovsang” does not mean “love song,” however much you might want it to. “Lov” is Norwegian for “praise.”)

I can’t find an English translation, and that’s kind of the point of this post. The gist of the lyrics is that it’s all about the joy of Heaven, embodied in music. The idea that all nature and the heavenly host are having a wonderful time singing God’s praise, and that through Christ we can hope to join in the fun ourselves someday.

Once a month I get together with a small clutch of old men, most of whom are retired pastors from my church body. At the last meeting, one of them mentioned this hymn, commenting that it’s the most popular hymn among the Lutherans of Madagascar.

(The reason for this goes back to the 19th Century, when international mission organizers “assigned” part of the Madagascar mission field to the Norwegians. These missionaries came not only from Norway, but from the Norwegian-American immigrant church.)

In our gathering, we noted that the hymn has never caught on in the US. Nobody was sure why. I thought it might be because no one had ever done a satisfactory English translation.

You can guess what came next. I decided to give it a go myself.

I’m not working at it full-time; I’ve got several other projects demanding my attention. But I’ve been noodling with it in odd moments, and I’m generally pleased with my progress.

Translating verse is a particular challenge. The only way I can figure out to do it is to first study the text closely, trying to figure out what the poet is attempting to convey, and how. Then I proceed to do my own original poem on the same theme, in the same meter, touching base with the original text whenever I can.

I have no idea where it’s all going.

Anyway, do you think this hymn would be interesting to American Christians?

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Path of Progress,’ by Colin Conway

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“That’s a lot of pre-planning,” Johnson said.

“This isn’t the fifties, man. Planning a murder is fairly easy now because of TV and the movies. All anyone has to do is pay attention and take notes. Hollywood has done the heavy lifting for them.”

I’ve recently rediscovered Colin Conway’s 509 series, about law enforcement in eastern Washington state. Most of the stories take place in Spokane, but rural areas come into it at times. My personal favorites are the Dallas Nash stories, but all the main characters are good.

The Path of Progress plays out against the backdrop of Camp Faith, a homeless encampment in a distressed part of Spokane. Both political parties are doing their best to exploit the situation, but the neighbors are increasingly unhappy and demonstrative. Lately, area businesses have been experiencing a string of burglaries.

Leya Navarro is a detective on the Property Crimes squad. She’s a conscientious cop, a married working mother (and a church member), not sure what to think about Camp Faith. She’s assigned to the burglaries and given a partner to work with – a detective named Damien Truscott. This doesn’t delight her. Everyone’s suspicious of Truscott, because he used to be in Major Crimes and then transferred to Property. Nobody goes from Major to Property, a step down in status, unless they’ve screwed up somehow.

Their investigations gradually home in on a local pawnbroker, but all his records seem solid. In time the situation escalates to murder, and then the Major Crimes guys enter the story. The chief MC detective here is a somewhat driven fellow named Andrew Parker, and the focus mostly shifts to him.

There are no gunfights or car chases in The Path of Progress. Just realistic police work performed by well-rounded, believable, and sympathetic characters. I like this approach very much.

I also appreciate that, although no preaching is done, Christian characters are treated with respect. You might think a book focused on the homeless problem would involve a lot of politics, but the ordinary people in The Path of Progress seem mostly troubled and confused. Like the rest of us.

I recommend The Path of Progress, along with the whole series. I really can’t think of any content warnings, though I may have missed some rough language or something.

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Avaldsnes, yet again

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I had a great topic for my blog post tonight. A brilliant intellectual insight. But I wanted to review the last couple books I read while my memory was fresh, so I postponed posting it. Tonight, when I need the topic… nothing. Memory wiped. I know there were two points, but I’ve got nothing to spear them into.

No doubt that lost post would have changed the world. Darkness will now fall on civilization, and millions will die, because I didn’t take the trouble to make a note of my transcendent brainstorm.

My bad.

As a substitute, I’ve got the tourist video above, telling you about Avaldsnes in Norway, a place about which I’ve wearied you multiple times already. This video concentrates on the North Way historical interpretative center, which I visited on my last trip.

Avaldsnes played a major role in my Erling books, and it ought to feature largely in the Haakon the Good book I’m working on now, too. Also I have family roots there, so if I can steer some tourist traffic that way, it’s all to the good.

I don’t even get a kickback.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Bail Out,’ by Jeff Shelby

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I recently discovered that the Noah Braddock detective series by Jeff Shelby is still a going concern. So I had a couple books to catch up with. Bail Out comes ahead of the last one I reviewed, in sequence. But that’s not a problem; they stand alone pretty well.

Noah Braddock, San Diego surfer-cum-private eye, needs money to get repairs done on the house on Catalina he inherited from his murdered girlfriend. His massive friend Carter, who is smarter than he looks, says he has a prospective client, but he knows Noah won’t like it.

The prospective client is Darren Van Welker, an old schoolmate who was Noah’s greatest enemy in his youth. Now he’s a successful businessman with a not entirely savory reputation. Darren is getting married (for the third time), and he wants his adult son Aaron to be there, only he’s in Las Vegas and won’t return his father’s calls. He wants Noah and Carter to go to Sin City and drag the young man back.

Noah doesn’t like Darren any more now than he did in the old days, but he takes the job – making it clear that he’s not going to kidnap Aaron if he doesn’t want to go. In Vegas, they get a line on Aaron’s girlfriend. Going to her apartment, they run into a group of not very impressive gangsters, who are looking for her for their boss. Noah and Carter find themselves helping the two young people escape a serious and dangerous problem related to unpaid gambling debts.

The story is essentially pretty fun, almost a comedy. The Noah Braddock books are not comic as a rule, but author Shelby had fun with this one. The gangsters are somewhat laughable, and Carter alone is such a force of nature that nobody ever seems in great danger.

I enjoyed Bail Out immensely. Jeff Shelby is an entertaining storyteller, whether he goes dark or light. Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Johnny Careless,’ by Kevin Wade

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She scanned the room and landed on Johnny and just stayed pinned on him, like waiting for the heat from her stare to set his shirt on fire and get his attention.

This one surprised me pleasantly. When I got to reading and realized that Kevin Wade’s Johnny Careless was a story about a middle-class boy moving among the privileged kids of Long Island’s North Shore, I prepared myself for an homage to The Great Gatsby, with maybe a little Marxism mixed in. But it wasn’t like that. Or not mostly like that.

“Jeep” Mullane is the chief of police, the son of a policeman, but the circumstances of his childhood threw him together with the wealthy Johnny Chambliss and his girlfriend (later wife and ex-wife) Niven, so he began to live in two worlds. Johnny had all the irresponsibility of his class, but was aware of it, and kept Jeep close – in part – to ground himself. He could be a jerk, but was always a good friend.

Now Johnny is dead, washed up on the beach with what appear to be contact wounds from a marine engine prop on his body. But what was he doing in the water at that time of night, in that place? Johnny’s powerful father wants it explained, and Jeep wants to understand too.

There’s also pressure from the mayor for the police to stop a string of thefts of high-end automobiles in their supposedly crime-free community.

Jeep will learn – to his shock – that the thefts have a connection to a secret out of the late Johnny’s past.

The writing in Johnny Careless was very good (though author Wade, who’s been a writer for the TV show “Bluebloods,” uses “flaunt” when he means “flout” at one point). An interesting narrative device was employed – the whole story is told from Jeep’s point of view, but events in the present are given in the third person, while flashbacks are in the first person. The characters were interesting and layered. The mystery intrigued me. And it all worked out entirely differently than I expected.

Jeep is an admirable character, though (no surprise here) his morality is not quite Christian as far as sex is concerned. I recommend Johnny Careless, with only the usual cautions.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Fate of Our Years,’ by Colin Conway

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I was reading Colin Conway’s 509 series, about policing in eastern Washington state, for some time, and enjoying the books. I’m not sure why I lost track of the series – maybe because the books feature revolving main characters and I had trouble keeping track of them. But I need to get back to them. They’re really good. I liked The Fate of Our Years a lot.

Dallas Nash is a detective. He lost his wife a while back, and is mourning hard. He talks to her (when no one’s listening) and avoids music generally, because so many songs remind him of her. But this doesn’t interfere with his work – in fact, he works obsessively, because it’s the only thing that keeps his mind off his grief. Nevertheless, he’s afraid the other cops will learn that he’s seeing a psychologist – it marks you as weak and unreliable.

In The Fate of Our Years, he has to investigate the stabbing death of an old man who was once accused of rape, and the beating death of a homeless man. Neither of these cases are the work of super-criminals. We’re dealing with plain, unromantic police work here, the grinding away until something comes loose.

But the real interest is in the characters. I particularly like it when characters surprise you with unexpected character facets – there are a couple such instances in The Fate of Our Years.

Also, it featured a born-again Christian character who is presented in an entirely positive way. There’s no incentive to do that in today’s publishing world, so I was grateful.

Recommended, with cautions for mature material.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Coyote Hills,’ by Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman

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Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware novels are books I enjoy and make a point of reading and reviewing. He also collaborates on novels with his son Jesse. I reviewed one of Jesse’s solo books here before, but didn’t recommend it highly. I thought it was well-written, but morally kind of empty. However, I figured I’d see how he works with his father, so I bought Coyote Hills, book 6 of his Clay Edison series.

Clay Edison used to be an investigator for the Alameda County, California Coroner’s Office. He left that job for reasons which are doubtless explained in earlier installments. Now he’s a private eye, specializing – by preference – in boring desk work.

But there’s another PI named Regina Klein, who prefers more colorful and dangerous work, and she asks Clay to collaborate on a new case. There’s a very wealthy couple whose adult son was found drowned on a beach. The police judged the death accidental, but they are sure he was murdered. Clay uses his police contacts to learn all he can, then goes on to fresh lines of inquiry, including an expensive computer-generated map of coastal currents. But the final truth he uncovers will reveal darker currents yet – the murky ones within the human heart.

I thought (echoing my response to my previous reading of Jesse Kellerman) that Coyote Hills was well-written. The characters were rounded, the dialogue good. Sometimes it was funny.

But I can’t recommend the book to our audience at Brandywine Books. It comes out of another moral world. It’s not only a matter of the casual acceptance of homosexuality, which is pretty much a given nowadays. This book goes deeply into the realm of sexual kink. It made me uncomfortable. You may, of course, respond differently, if you’re more broad-minded than I am.

Also, the authors make it clear that Regina Klein is a very attractive woman, yet Clay’s wife shows no sign of jealousy or concern about their collaboration. I’m the most ignorant man in the world when it comes to marriage issues, but I found this kind of implausible. It read to me like a story from some alternate universe where men and women have slightly different natures.

I have praise but no recommendation for Coyote Hills.

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Mortal musings

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Photo credit: Pablo Merchán Montes. Unsplash license.

The longer you live, the more buildings you know your way around get torn down, and the more people you used to know get buried. They may be good friends, and you parted in friendship but moved to another state. You may only brush elbows and part ways, and you never see or hear from them again, but you remember them for some odd reason.

A while back I did a web search for a woman I once asked out on a date, decades ago when I lived in Florida (she turned me down). She had died of Covid.

The other day, I recalled a fellow I knew only slightly, in one of the three colleges I attended (I won’t say just which one). I wondered what kind of life he’d lived, because his prospects hadn’t looked good from where I stood.

The main thing I remembered about him was his name. I won’t tell you his surname, but it’s one of those Germanic monikers that basically waves a flag and whistles, inviting mean little boys to make a dirty joke out of it. I pitied him for having such a name hung on him at birth, and always assumed the name probably had a lot to do with his personality. Because he was, to put it mildly, a “difficult” guy. Rebellious against the rules. Touchy. Quick to anger. Vicious with an insult. He wasn’t popular with his classmates at all.

I remember making a conscious choice to be civil to him. To speak to him pleasantly, and with respect. And (at least as I remember it), the last time he spoke with me, he treated me in a civil way also. I took some satisfaction in that. The list of social situations I’ve handled well in my life is, after all, a short one.

Anyway, it turns out he’s dead too, just a few months ago. The obit didn’t say what he died of, but I studied it with interest. He seems to have found a place in the world. A steady, long-time job, family, friends, pets.

The obituary said nothing about a marriage or children, though.

I suppose we were brothers, in a way. He didn’t fit in in one way, I in another.

Anyway, I hope he found grace.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Caught Inside,’ by Jeff Shelby

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I hadn’t realized that Jeff Shelby was still putting out Noah Braddock novels. I like these books. Noah, a laid-back California surfer and private eye, mostly works when he feels like it, though he’s growing more responsible. There are shades of Travis McGee here – Noah is less contemplative than the Florida salvage expert, but his character (unlike Trav’s) changes and grows.

I seem to have missed a novel in the series sequence – I’ll have to look for the missing one – but as Caught Inside begins, we find Noah in a not-unfamiliar place. He’s decided to move into the house on Catalina Island that was left to him by Liz, his murdered girlfriend. He’s also reached the point where he wants to ask his longsuffering new girlfriend, Shannon, to move in with him (I suppose it would be too much to hope for marriage). Home ownership means house repairs, and Noah needs to get work to pay for them. His bodybuilder friend Carter has a suggestion… but he won’t like it.

The prospective client is Charisma Lugo, head of a feared female(!) street gang. She doesn’t want him to do anything illegal, she assures him. Her younger brother Xavier, whom she had sent off to a fancy private prep school, has disappeared. She just wants Noah to locate him.

When the boy turns up murdered, she then wants Noah to find out who killed him. (I was never quite clear why he agreed to stay on the job at this point, knowing what Charisma must certainly do to the killers.) Suspects include Xavier’s former friends from the streets, the snooty parents of his WASP girlfriend, and some mysterious tough guys who show up to deliver a good, professional beating. Noah, of course, is not about to be scared off.

Caught Inside was a pretty good novel. Noah Braddock is an ingratiating character. Well worth the price of admission.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Pale Gray for Guilt,’ by John D. MacDonald

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The shape of larceny is, in time, written clearly enough on a man’s face so that it can be read. Constant greed and sharp little deals and steals had left the sign on Preston LaFrance. There is the old saying that God and your folks give you the face you’re born with, but you earn the one you die with.

Ah, the joys of settling down with another Travis McGee novel. Even when author John D. MacDonald’s philosophy rings a little tinny, and the predictions have proven wrong in hindsight, Travis himself remains the best of friends – not only highly entertaining but reliable. Pale Gray for Guilt came out in 1968 and is one of the best in the series.

Tush Bannon is one of Travis McGee’s best old friends from his football days. He’s a big, cheerful, uncomplicated fellow, running a small business, raising a nice family. He has everything Trav can never have unless he alters his lifestyle, and Trav knows it. Then somebody decides to take Tush’s business away, and they take his life along with it. Travis is guilty that he wasn’t there to help. So he makes up his mind to get something back for the widow and the kids. And if a bad guy happens to get in the way of justice, he won’t hesitate to extract some blood too.

With the help of his economist friend Meyer, Trav sets up a neat and appealing con. The author of the book had a business degree from Harvard, and this sting, involving inflating a stock and getting out ahead of the pigeon before it crashes, was a little complex, but convincing. Along the way, McGee and Meyer have ample opportunity to look into the Abyss themselves, and glimpse it looking back at them.

Pale Gray for Guilt has the added element, in retrospect, of setting up a poignant plot element that will only bear fruit years later, in the last book of the series, The Lonely Silver Rain.

An outstanding entry in a classic series, Pale Gray for Guilt gets this reader’s highest recommendation. Cautions for adult situations, somewhat racy for the quaint old days of the 1960s.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture