I may or may not be posting here tomorrow night, contingent on circumstances. I’ll again be in beautiful, scenic Brainerd, Minnesota for the Crow Wing County Viking Festival. Last year’s local news report on the festival is posted about — though reluctantly, as their cameraman completely blew the opportunity to capture the excitement of my presence.
If you’re in the area, here’s the web site. The festival is held at the Crow Wing County fairgrounds and begins 9:30 a.m. Saturday.
Storytelling is an art distinct from, but not incompatible with, literary quality. Sometimes you’ll find a book that contains a fair number of flaws, but it still pulls you in.
That was the case for me with Darren Sugrue’s Shred of Doubt. Lately I’d been afraid that increased viewing of YouTube videos (Jordan Peterson and others) was damaging my ability to enjoy fiction. But Shred of Doubt grabbed me and held on all the way.
Jimmy Quinn is an Irish marine biologist. He hasn’t been in Hyannis, Massachusetts in 25 years. Back then he was a student working in a diner, earning money for University back home. That year he fell in love with Chelsea Thomas, a local girl who also worked at the diner. Just before he was due to go home, Chelsea disappeared, never to be seen again. Evidence pointed to another worker at the diner, a fellow with an unrequited crush on Chelsea, and he went to prison for life.
But now Jimmy is back in Hyannis, attending a conference. He goes to the diner to see an old friend who still works there. The friend, hesitantly, gives him something he’s been holding on to. It’s Chelsea’s diary, which he found hidden in the locker room long after the case had been closed. Jimmy reads it through and discovers things he never knew about her. Suddenly he’s obsessed. He forgets the conference and his duties. He has to discover the truth about what really happened to Chelsea. Could she still be alive? Did an innocent man go to prison?
There were many points in this book where I thought the author was reaching a bit. Some of the plot points seemed forced. The psychology, I think, was more TV movie than real life. There were homophone errors.
Also, he talked about a safety on a Glock (they don’t have them. [Full disclosure, I made the same mistake in a manuscript myself once, but a friend corrected it for me.])
Nevertheless, the pure storytelling was masterful. I had a hard time putting Shred of Doubt down.
Cautions for language, adult situations, and fairly explicit sex.
I feel a little guilty reviewing Jay Heavner’s Can’t Depend On Murder. My impression is that the author is a good guy with the best intentions for telling an inspiring story. A Christian story. But like so many other Christian writers, he hasn’t figured out how to do that.
However, the thing is, the book is set in Brevard County, Florida in 1988. As it happens, I was living in Brevard County in 1988, and the little town where I was living even gets a mention here. So I read the thing. And now, because I need to post something tonight, I pretty much have to review the poor book.
Roger Pyles is a semi-hermit living in an old house trailer. He is apparently part of the police department in his little town in North Brevard County, but they pay him next to nothing and he doesn’t generally have any duties. He was once a college professor, but suffered a tragedy and fled to Florida. He lives with his dog and a stray donkey he rescued, but an ex-girlfriend and the son she bore him live nearby.
Then an old Indian called Shaman shows up to deliver a cryptic message about approaching danger. A tree accordingly falls on Roger’s trailer, just the start of a series of catastrophes. There’s some talk of Roger consulting on a serial killer investigation, but that gets solved before he has to move a muscle. Various dangers to himself and his loved ones are hinted at, but everything blows over in the end.
If that sounds like not much of a story, well, that’s what we’re dealing with here. Mysteries and perils are hinted at, but never come to anything. Instead there is dialogue – lots and lots of dialogue. Now I like good dialogue. It brings characters alive. But it’s got to be good dialogue. One element of good dialogue is efficiency. You don’t waste the reader’s time with every hello and goodbye. You know when to end a joke, and you don’t have to tell the reader that people laughed at it.
Most of all, you don’t preach. (I confess I’m hesitant to raise this point, since I fear I sin in this regard in my own books, but I’m the reviewer here, so it must be said.) The author incorporates repeated conversations, sometimes with an actual preacher character and often improbably motivated, about God and the meaning of life and the problem of evil. Our hero Roger is portrayed as a respectful agnostic, but the Christians score all the debating points.
I agree entirely with the points, but I don’t think they were very effectively dramatized.
Once you finish the book you realize there’s a larger context – greater powers than Roger and his friends are manipulating the world around them. That might have been an effective plot device in a better-written book. But it’s not effective here. It just left me scratching my head.
Also, Roger has a cell phone. How many people had cell phones in rural Florida in ’88?
Also, the character of the Shaman is just silly. He talks like Tonto.
I can’t recommend Can’t Depend On Murder.
Noah Sutherland is an investigator with New York’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation. He’s taking a much-needed vacation in Florida when he gets a visit from a colleague, who informs him that his twin brother, a sheriff’s deputy in their home community of High Peaks in the Adirondacks, has been killed in the line of duty. He was found shot to death next to his car on a deserted country road – and drugs from the evidence locker were found in his trunk.
So begins In Cold Blood, by Jack Hunt (not to be confused with Truman Capote’s book, and I’m fairly sure it won’t be). Noah doesn’t believe for a minute that his brother was into anything shady, but he knows it’s none of his business. He isn’t assigned to this part of the state, and they would never let him investigate his own brother’s death even if he were. Except that they do let him do it, due to a somewhat improbable concatenation of circumstances. Now he’ll have to navigate all kinds of old relationships and small town rivalries as he tries to discover what kind of shadowy local forces have conspired to destroy an honest cop. On top of all this there’s his difficult father, who’s never forgiven him for not joining the sheriff’s department himself, in the family tradition.
The story here wasn’t bad, though there were several improbabilities, notably Noah’s assignment to the case in the first place (as mentioned), and the fact that an officer shoots and kills someone without being placed on temporary desk duty. Also, the prose is rough – the author is prone to word confusions and sheer clunkiness of expression – “He crouched down and touched his finger against the smallest amount of glass.”
In the great bell curve of literature, there’s some that’s very good, some that’s very bad, and the vast majority is somewhere in the middle. One shouldn’t be too disappointed if a book possesses both strengths and weaknesses. I thought the characters and dialogue in In Cold Blood were good, but the writing was spotty (though I’ve seen worse). I did finish the book, and I got it for free, so I won’t trash it too much.
Sorry about not posting last night. I got back from Moorhead pretty late, having burned both gasoline and élan vital.
My “new” car ran just fine – wait a minute, I don’t think I’ve written about the new car here. It’s a 2005 Subaru Forester XT. Burgundy in color. Been wanting a red car for a long time, and the word on the street is these are pretty reliable. Which will make for a nice change. Also lots of room for Viking impedimenta. Anyway, she ran fine. I call her Sigrid the Haughty.
Fargo-Moorhead is about a four-hour drive from here. Although my speaking engagement was in Moorhead, Minnesota (which we like to call the Soviet Zone), I’d made a motel reservation in Fargo, North Dakota (the American Zone), just across the state border. Because I just sleep better knowing the taxes are lower. I had no complaints about the motel room until 2:00 a.m., which my phone rang. The clerk said my neighbors were complaining about the noise. This confused me, as I was asleep, and alone. It only occurred to me later that they might have been talking about my snoring. Naw, what are the chances of that?
The bygdelags are a Norwegian-American institution. Originally, as I understand it, they were organizations allowing people who came from particular regions of the old country to maintain contact over here. Nowadays they concentrate more on genealogy and keeping traditions alive. They meet for annual gatherings known as stevnes. I’d lectured to the Tre (Three) Lag Stevne twice in the past. This year a couple more lags had joined in, so it became the Flere (Several) Lag Stevne, and we were meeting in Moorhead.
I arrived in plenty of time for my 10:45 time slot, and set up my book table. When the room cleared after the previous speaker, I hurried in to set up, only to encounter something I’d never experienced before when lecturing –
Everything worked. The first time.
I plugged my laptop into the projector line and there was my image on the screen. No problem. You have to understand, I always bring my own projector in case of technical emergencies – because in my experience, something always goes wrong with projection systems. Belt and suspenders is my motto.
But they’d been running the stevne for two days already, and they had everything taped down, ready to plug and play. It was too good to be true, I thought. Surely I was being set up by fate for disaster.
But no, there was no disaster. My lecture went great. The room was nearly full. The audience was attentive, and they laughed in the right places. My talk was basically a condensed version of the account of my trip to Norway I posted here a little more than a year ago. I was worried it might be self-indulgent, too much like a neighbor’s home movies.
But you can tell when your audience is with you, and I had this bunch, apparently, at God dag. The only thing that bothered me was a distinguished-looking gentleman in the front row who seemed to be dozing off. But he came to me afterwards, when I was selling books, and told me he’d attended both my previous lectures and was a big fan. Said he enjoyed my talk very much. We discussed Haugeanism.
I figure he probably just dozed off because somebody kept him awake with their snoring in the next room the night before.
Another audience member told me that what made my lecture enjoyable was that I supplemented my photographs with stories and history. Stories make all the difference. That makes sense to me.
Anyway, it was a good day, and I sold a reasonable number of books. I’m very grateful to the Flere Lag Stevne.
One does not look for great variety in Bruce Beckham’s Inspector Skelgill novels, set in England’s Cumbria. Skelgill himself is a thoroughly eccentric country detective, not a linear thinker but intuitive, his instincts honed by time spent in nature. Nor do his subordinates surprise us much. DS Leyton, a London transplant, is stolid but loyal and dependable, the Watson of the team. DS Jones, an attractive young woman, is smart and can be expected to rise in the service. There’s also deep but private attraction between her and Skelgill.
In Murder on the Farm, their publicity-hungry superior agrees to lend Jones to a team of television documentarians who are re-examining an old unsolved murder. Back in the 1970s, a young man was murdered with a shotgun while making a delivery to a posh country estate. Later, two local criminals were arrested and convicted in the case. But their conviction has been overturned, based on police misconduct. There is another possible suspect, an unpleasant fellow who served ten years for a later, similar shotgun killing. The star of the documentary team, a celebrity criminologist, is certain this man is the true killer. He has a plan to unmask him in front of the cameras, producing amazement and high ratings.
Skelgill is concerned, first of all, that the criminologist has sexual designs on DS Jones. But more than that, he thinks the criminologist’s scenario is simplistic. He himself perceives deeper and more sinister possibilities and a wider range of suspects.
Murder on the Farm offers all the usual pleasures of this series: Skelgill’s disingenuous simplicity, political and departmental pressures, Cumbrian food and dialects, wheels within wheels. I enjoyed reading it. No bad words that I recall or gratuitous sex or violence.
Your humble correspondent is at loose ends tonight. Haven’t finished reading my next book for reviewing. Tomorrow I’m driving up to Fargo, so I can speak to the Flere Lag Stevne (Several Society Gathering). It’s an assembly of bygdelags, which are organizations of descendants of immigrants from particular regions of Norway. They do genealogy and try to preserve traditions. Every lag holds a stevne annually, but some now pitch in and do their stevnes together. This group used to be the Tre (Three) Lag Stevne, but others have joined in this year, so now it’s the Flere Lag Stevne. And I’ll be giving a lecture on my trip to Norway last year to visit the Hafrsfjord Jubilee. It’s the third time I’ve lectured for them.
And, oh yes, I’ll be selling books.
Actually, I’ve just been hired as the editor of the magazine of the Valdres Samband – which is a lag, but not one of the lags at this particular stevne. But I expect I’ll be attending their stevne in the future. They’re the oldest lag in America. Being their editor won’t make me rich but it pays a little, and it’s work I believe I can do decently.
Above, a short video showcasing the work of the Norwegian painter Adolph Tidemand (1814-1876), who is famed for romanticizing the lives of Norwegian peasants. It seems a little sentimental to us today, but at the time it was a social breakthrough – poor people were acquiring some dignity in the eyes of the world. The Haugean movement, of which I wrote recently, had a lot to do with that.
Tidemand’s most famous painting is the one in this video where a man stands on a stool, preaching to a group in a house. It’s called “The Haugeans,” and the preacher seems to be Hauge himself.
You’ll note several paintings featuring young women in bunads (national folk costumes) with golden crowns. These are bridal crowns, a Norwegian tradition. Every bride got to be a queen for a day in Norway.
Probably less so for the remainder of her life.
Had a pretty good weekend at the Antique Power Show at the Little Log House Pioneer Village, near Hastings, Minn. This is the third year my Viking group has been there – though nobody’s quite sure why we’re even around at a steam engine and tractor event. It amuses me that we have no apparent connection to the event theme, but people still like to see us there. The weather was cooler than we’ve been experiencing lately, and we were in the shade, so we didn’t suffer much from the sun smiting us by day nor the moon by night. And my book sales were good. But as always when I sit long hours on my Viking chest with no back support, I came home creaky. That’s the price you pay for staying alive into old age. By the way, it’s my 100th birthday today. Approximately. In round, subjective numbers. Close enough for freelance writing.
My work on The Baldur Game, the epic final volume of my Erling saga, continues apace. I’ve come to the part where Erling meets King Knut the Great of Denmark/England, and I figured I’d better bone up on that fellow’s life (did you know he was at least half Polish?). Having a weekend of Viking reenactment to fill, I pulled up my old Kindle version of Laurence M. Larson’s Canute the Great and the Rise of Danish Imperialism during the Viking Age. I’ve reviewed it here before, but it’s more interesting (in spite of its age) than the other Knut biography I own.
Knut (or Canute, as it’s spelled here) is a fascinating character in English history, despite the fact that his complete failure to provide an heir with survival skills doomed his accomplishments to be overshadowed by those of other kings. Still, he started out as a disfavored son of King Svein Forkbeard of Denmark (who conquered England first, then died, leaving Canute with all the weary work to do over again), knocked about as a pirate for a while, and finally fought his way up (Conan-like) to the throne of a great kingdom. His union of Denmark with England, Scotland, Norway and bits of what is now Poland could arguably be called the first British Empire.
Scholarship has advanced quite a lot since Larson wrote this book (1912), but in my opinion it’s sometimes advanced in the wrong direction. So I generally like Larson’s saga-friendly approach. It does skew the narrative a bit, I think, though, since the author spends a lot of time on Norway and St. Olaf, probably just because the sagas have described that business more completely than the English chroniclers recorded other aspects of Canute’s reign. As the drunk who hunted for his car keys under a street lamp said, “I lost them over there, but the light’s better here.”
My main complaint is the author’s uncritical acceptance of the traditional view that Olaf was somehow the “legitimate” king of Norway, and that his opponents (like Erling Skjalgsson) were rebels, bought by Canute’s treacherous “bribes.” In fact they were defenders of the land’s organic constitution, and Olaf was the usurper trying to overturn the ancient laws. And giving gifts to supporters was what overlords did in those days. Olaf did it himself, as I plan to point out in my book.
But other than that, I liked Canute the Great and the Rise of Danish Imperialism during the Viking Age, and found it useful. I recommend it. It’s out of copyright and cheap. Watch out for OCR typos.
Today is the anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach‘s death in 1750, making it his day of commemoration in the Lutheran calendar (for Lutherans who tend a little higher church than I do). As good a reason as any to post some Bach music, as if I needed a reason. My intention was to find some footage of E. Power Biggs playing Bach on the organ, but there don’t seem to be any live performances on YouTube.
However, I found the clip above. It’s Air on the G String, performed on original period instruments by the Early Music Ensemble of a group called Voices of Music. If you go to their YouTube channel, you can contribute to their work if you like.
Somebody also said it was National Chocolate Day. I can get behind that too.
Tomorrow and Sunday, for those in the area, the Vikings and I will be at the Antique Power Show at the Little Log House Museum in Hastings, Minnesota.
On the beach at Southend, England, a ragtag group of young “guerilla filmmakers” is shooting a movie, one they hope will lead to their big break. Their “star,” a washed-up, alcoholic TV actor, appears to be dozing by the pier. But he’s not dozing – he’s dead. It looks as if he fell asleep there the night before and froze to death. But the crime scene investigator notices suspicious signs. This brings in the police team – Inspector Joe Hogarth and his younger subordinates, Detectives Palmer and Simmons. Then, when Hogarth’s oldest, greatest enemy appears, a villain who’s now a member of Parliament (Tory, of course), Hogarth’s back is well and truly put up—for better or worse. So begins The Poison Path, by Solomon Carter.
I’ve read one Inspector Hogarth book before. I found it well-written but rather dreary; the hero is solitary, depressed, and has a drinking problem. This is a later book, and he seems to be doing a little better – there’s some subdued flirtation with his female subordinate, Palmer. Still, he remains driven, lonely, and obsessed. He’d fit in well in a Scandinavian Noir story, I think. One interesting and unusual element was that our hero is not always right, like so many fictional detectives. In fact, he’s wrong quite a lot of the time. Mostly, he lets his feelings run away with him.
So, all in all, The Poison Path wasn’t bad. Not my favorite kind of story, but I’ve got no real complaints.