Some friends of mine at a previous Midwest Viking Festival, in Moorhead, MN.
In case you’re keeping track, I passed the 60,000 word count on The Baldur Game this morning. Since I anticipate a final length in the neighborhood of 100,000 words, I feel as if I’m making progress. I’ve wrapped up Ailill’s and Erling’s adventures in Caithness, Scotland with Jarl Thorfinn the Mighty (a whole lot more happened there than I expected), and now I’ve got them in the Orkneys, preparing for the crossing to Norway.
If you’re in the Green Bay area, you’ll find me (God willing) at the Midwest Viking Festival on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Friday and Saturday. They have a Viking house there, which will anchor our encampment. I’ve been to this festival before, but only in its former venue in Moorhead, Minnesota – a somewhat shorter drive. I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll satisfy the authenticity standards.
I’ll have some books to sell, but get there early. Supplies are limited.
(Note, I know Green Bay is an odd place to hold a festival for Vikings. Another of God’s little jokes, I suppose.)
If you know boldness, you know mercy too, because they are like sisters;
boldness is lighter than all things on earth, but compassion is lighter than anything.
It’s not my custom to review poetry on this blog; I write it poorly and read it with only middling comprehension. But the description I received of Olga Sedakova’s recently released volume, Old Songs, intrigued me enough to accept the offer of a free review copy. As might be expected, the poems baffled me a little, but they nevertheless left an impression. The translation is done by Martha M. F. Kelly, and seems excellent so far as I am able to judge.
Olga Sedakova is a Christian Russian poet, a survivor of the Underground in Soviet times and today a major critic of her country’s war in Ukraine. Old Songs was published only a few weeks ago, and still awaits its first Amazon review.
Speaking from my limited perspective, these poems seemed resolutely Christian in a realistic way. No easy answers. No assumption that rewards will come to us in this world. The poet knows suffering and placidly expects to suffer more. All temporal hopes are likely to fail; we believe anyway.
I felt like a child trying to follow an adult conversation through most of the poems (it’s not a long book), but certain passages definitely resonated. I particularly liked the one I placed at the head of this review. Here’s a couple other good ones;
Ah, I’ve watched people a long, long time, and strange things have I learned: I know that the soul is an infant, an infant until its final hour,
that it believes absolutely everything, and it sleeps in a den of thieves.
The dead don’t need a thing,
not houses nor dresses nor hearing.
There’s nothing they need from us.
Not a thing, save everything on earth.
Those are good lines. Recommended. I was impressed.
We’re dealing here with a book I got as a free sample (not an uncommon thing). Madison P.I. is the third book in a series by Brian Clements starring Joe Bamberg, a former local news reporter in his home town of Madison, Alabama. Having solved a couple crimes in previous books, he’s now set up as a private eye.
The first client to come to his office is an eighteen-year-old girl named Riley Evans. Riley is concerned about her mother, who’s been missing for three days. Turns out the woman is a degenerate gambler with a drinking problem, and Riley has been more or less mothering her mother. She came to Joe because her mother told her she’d dated him briefly as a young woman. This is true, but it doesn’t make Joe any more comfortable.
Things get puzzling when the local sheriff, instead of cooperating or even giving him the cold shoulder, actually bars Joe from having any contact with the police. Joe will have to intrude on some of the seediest locations in the area in order to find Riley’s mother. And the girl insists on accompanying him most of the time. Surprisingly, she’s actually helpful sometimes.
The writing in Madison P.I. wasn’t bad. The plotting was a little rough, but also not bad. I did have trouble with some moments when Joe seems to act out of character, as when he subdues a professional thug with a few moves learned in a self-defense course.
Still, this wasn’t a bad book. I probably won’t read any more in the series, due to the author’s somewhat sanctimonious liberalism, as when he repeatedly denigrates the Second Amendment, yet has his hero save his life more than once with a concealed carry weapon. Also, I disliked Joe’s opinion that it’s always okay to steal from insurance companies.
Oh yes — it ends in a cliffhanger, which annoys me.
But Madison P.I. isn’t bad at all for a self-published mystery.
(Back from Høstfest in Minot. No incidents to report, and my book sales were excellent. Remind me to tell you someday about being a “Høstfest VIP,” which isn’t as good as it sounds.)
I have complained more than once about novels that seem intended to compete with mindless Hollywood thrillers – stories where the hero races from one violent confrontation to another, shrugging off “flesh wounds,” shaking his head and recovering immediately from head trauma, crashing cars and blowing up buildings rapidly enough to prevent the reader from pondering the improbability of the whole frothy concoction.
However, it’s possible for the Hollywood thriller novel to work as light entertainment – if the author has writing skill and a sense of humor. Those qualities won me over almost immediately as I read The Supremacy License.
Our main character is Manny Martinez, code name “Sinatra,” whom I knew previously from author Lee’s Mackenzie August novels (which I also like very much). Manny is an improbable character, a former gang member, drug addict and convict who has cleaned his life up to become the most gung-ho, super-American US Marshal ever. He has devils he wrestles with, but his friendship with Mack, his job, and his love of country keep him on the straight path. He is also, we are reminded, devastatingly attractive to women and a deadly fighter.
As the story opens, Manny is summoned to a meeting with high-level FBI agents. They offer him a job – not full time but sort of on-call – as a special agent for a super-secret domestic black ops group. He would be helping to eliminate criminals so dangerous the government can’t even acknowledge their existence. His partner, oddly, would be Noelle Beck, a demure Mormon data analyst who harbors a secret crush on him.
Manny’s all in from the word go. Anything he can do to serve the USA he’ll do, and the more dangerous the better. His first job is one for which he’s uniquely qualified – to arrest or kill a powerful Honduran terrorist who happens to be his former girlfriend.
Two things made The Supremacy License a lot of fun – Manny’s personality, a blend of tongue-in-cheek arrogance and genuine moral nobility, plus his complete, reckless fearlessness in action. I liked Manny a lot, and I look forward to following his further preposterous adventures. Well done.
This will be a short review – probably shorter than the book deserves. But I’m busy playing Viking in Minot, snatching a few minutes before bedtime, and I’m kind of tired (the festival is going fine; thanks for asking). Anyway, I love all the Mike Romeo books, so what is there new to say about Romeo’s Justice?
Mike Romeo, erudite Los Angeles private eye working for Ira, an ex-Mossad attorney, beats up an obnoxious type at the very start of the book, just to set the tone. The guy deserved it. Then he has a date with his girlfriend Sophie, who is learning to coexist with Mike’s forceful ways.
Ira asks Mike to take on a case from Noel Auden, a mother whose son recently (ostensibly) committed suicide. He had left their Catholic faith to explore spirituality at a school called the Roethke Spiritual Center, out near the Salton Sea. According to his suicide note, he did it because of global climate change, but Noel wants to be sure, in light of the seriousness of suicide in Catholic doctrine.
Mike goes out and starts poking around, asking questions. As you’d expect, there is pushback from some nasty characters, as well as from the police, most of whom are in the pay of a local energy tycoon. But that’s all in a day’s work for Mike Romeo.
Romeo’s Justice was not full of surprises, but it was full of Mike’s personality and Bell’s prose, the things that bring us back. Important issues are addressed. A resolution is found in the end.
I’ve written mixed reviews of Peter Rowlands’ Mike Stanhope novels in the past, and my criticisms of his plotting actually attracted the author’s personal attention in our comments. So I’m happy to report that The Concrete Ceiling, the fourth novel in the series, is (in my opinion) far better than the previous offerings.
Mike Stanhope, freelance English journalist in the Logistics field, is troubled on two fronts. First of all, he’s convinced his relationship with his girlfriend Ashley is dead on its feet. Not only do they seem to be avoiding each other lately, but his commute between Wales (where he’s moved to be with her) and London, where his work is centered, is interfering with his ability to support himself. His second concern is with his self-published novel, which resolutely refuses to leap onto the bestseller lists. (I hear that.)
He’s also thinking more and more about Samantha, a girl he met on another of his adventures. But she’s engaged now, to a go-getting young man who seems to be on his way to bigger things.
Mike is contacted by a cousin of Samantha’s, who has also self-published a novel. He’s wondering whether he should hire a web-based service that promises to promote his book. Mike looks into the service, finding that it looks too good to be true. Nevertheless, in a moment of desperation, he signs on with the service himself. Time passes, and nothing seems to happen. But when Mike goes to see the service’s owner in his home, to try to find out what’s happening, he finds the man dead – and the police suspect him.
This is just the beginning of a complex story, in which many threads converge at last. Author Rowlands does a pretty good job of bringing it all together logically, and I’m delighted to report that this plot depends a whole lot less on “dumb luck” to rescue the hapless hero than previous stories did. One plot twist actually made me laugh in pleasure. Also, as always, the prose is very good.
It’s a personal thing, but I always dislike it when a series hero meets the love of his life in the first story, then drops her for another woman. This probably says more about my personal hangups than about the real requirements of a good story. I’m just mentioning it.
All in all, I was pleased with The Concrete Ceiling, and I recommend it. Only minor cautions for rough language.
And I suddenly realized that I had gone well beyond the point of choice. Even if I changed my mind and decided to fall in step with everybody else, it was now too late. Only in the animated cartoons could a small creature fall off a mountain, look down, register surprise, and climb back up through the empty air to safety.
As great a fan as I am of John D. MacDonald’s work, there are some of his books I’m not going to read again. Some of them are his explicitly environmental stories – though much of what he says is true, especially in deploring the over-development of Florida. But in that regard I’m like the people who say, “My parents dragged me to church every Sunday when I was a kid, and I’m never going back.”
The other MacDonald books I avoid are ones that just left too intense an impression. Dark stories with dark accounts of the suffering of the innocent. MacDonald is never a slasher writer, but his very skill makes the sorrow and the pity harder to bear.
The End of the Night is a book I hadn’t read before now, and I won’t be reading again – for that reason alone. But it’s still an excellent story of its kind. Part thriller, part horror tale. Dark, but excellently done.
The End of the Night opens in a way that informs you from the start exactly what you’re in for. We read a description of the executions, by electrocution, of four young people – a quirky, maladjusted mastermind, a big, thuggish Hispanic man, a slatternly girl, and a nice-looking young man from a “good family.” We learn that they were captured in the midst of a multi-state murder spree during which they killed several men and kidnapped and murdered a lovely, wealthy young woman a few days before her wedding.
The story is told in the words of several story participants, but mainly through the self-conscious memoir of the defense attorney and the final written confession of the “nice” young man. Chapter by chapter the story unfolds, evoking a rising sense of horror in the reader.
I half expected this book to be a plain condemnation of the death penalty, but it’s more complex than that. Although we know the ending, the road to that ending includes more than one surprise. What look, to the modern reader, like echoes of the Manson Family killings are actually unwitting prophecy, as the book was published in 1960.
Recommended, with cautions for intense, mature situations.
I was not aware until a couple days ago that the great Roger Whittaker died Wednesday, Sept. 13, at his home in France. At a certain time in my life, his music meant a whole lot to me, and I still listen to it with a thrill.
The song, “The Last Farewell,” was actually the result of a contest on a TV program Whittaker hosted. Audience members were encouraged to write and submit songs, and the best would be performed on the air. TLF, of course, possessed special magic.
The song itself is about a sailor during the 20 Years’ War, who falls in love with a West Indian girl and has to go back to sea.
By the way, I might mention that I’ll be at Norsk Hostfest in Minot, ND next week. Look for me in the Viking Village. My posting after Monday will be sporadic or nonexistent.
Former football star, current private eye Burnside (no first name given) once vowed never to take a job just for the money. But that was before he fell in love with a woman whom he’s now planning to marry. And weddings cost money. At the beginning of Safety Valve, Cliff Roper, an arrogant and abrasive sports agent Burnside has tangled with before, offers him $10,000 to find out who fired some shots at his former partner, Gilbert Horne, with whom he broke up publicly and angrily. The police suspect Roper, and he’s got the NFL draft coming up; no time for this. So Burnside swallows his pride and agrees to look into the matter.
What he finds is a hive of southern California drama. The rich and beautiful are seducing one another, cheating one another, jockeying for status, and nurturing all the criminal motives any crime writer could ask for. And when Horne turns up murdered, even Burnside comes under suspicion. Now solving the crime is a matter of survival.
I’ve read other books in the Burnside series. Safety Valve is only the fourth, and it seems to me author David Chill still hadn’t quite hit his stride yet. The prose isn’t bad, but he occasionally falls into errors like “a myriad of” or “hold the reigns.” There’s some lazy phrasing too, that could use closer editing.
I also thought the plot in this one a little loose. Still, I enjoyed the book as I’ve enjoyed the others in the series. Burnside is a sort of cut-rate Spenser, but the books are competent and entertaining. And they get better as they go along.
“it’s like they say, a small world,” Jeranna said. They both stood and smiled at him. Though the mouths and the faces were in no way alike, there was a chilling similarity in the smiles. They looked at him with a kind of joyous malevolence, an innocent evil, like two small savage boys—one holding the cat and the other holding the kerosene.
Before he struck gold with Travis McGee, the great John D. MacDonald wrote a variety of novels in paperback. He could – and did – work in several genres, and some of the product is astonishing in terms of its market(s). Your average paperback in those days was full of sex and violence (though tame by our standards today), with a gaudy cover. Aimed at male readers (back in the days when men read books, just so long as they weren’t too highbrow).
But MacDonald smuggled some pretty impressive literature into that market. One of his best novels, I think, is Slam the Big Door, which was published in 1960, three years before Travis McGee appeared. It’s a kind of novel very few authors are able (or interested enough) to write – a business thriller.
Mike Rodenska first met Troy Jamison in a military hospital during the war. They bonded as only war buddies can. After the war, Mike became a successful journalist, while Troy went into advertising, also doing well. They lived near one another and socialized often, with their wives. Then alcohol and infidelity destroyed Troy’s career and marriage, and he wandered off to Florida, where he became a builder and married a second wife, a rich woman.
When Troy learns that Mike’s beloved wife has died of cancer, he invites him to come down and stay in their home. Heal up in the Florida sunshine. And it is good there.
But Mike suffers from “the Rodenska curse,” some character trait that impels people to confide their problems to him. And Troy, it turns out, has plenty of problems. He’s drinking again. He’s cheating on his beautiful wife. And the development project he’s sunk their money into is being nibbled away at by avaricious local real estate sharks – he and his wife could lose anything.
Mike can’t help trying to intervene, to save Troy. But can you help a man whose personal devils are driving him to self-destruction? They didn’t talk about PTSD back when Slam the Big Door was written, but that’s the problem here. There will be trouble. Trust will be betrayed, lives will be lost, but some kind of peace will be achieved in the end.
I was very impressed with Slam the Big Door. It demonstrated – it seemed to me – that MacDonald could have done anything he wanted to in the literary world. He could have been up there with Hemingway. But you know what? I think we would have lost something if he had. MacDonald elevated his genre – paved the way for other writers who aspired (and aspire) to produce genuine literature in the mystery/thriller form.
Another thing I liked about this book is that – although there’s a fair amount of sex – there’s no swinging philosophy apparent. Sex is taken seriously, and adultery condemned. I suppose that was just an expression of the times.
Also, Mike Rodenska is a really good point of view character.
In short, I highly recommend Slam the Big Door. This is a fine novel.
