I’m quite taken with Colin Conway’s The 509 series of police procedurals, set in eastern Washington state. It deals with cops in the Spokane area, and the cast of officers tends to change from book to book. In The Value in Our Lies, we have a new hero – or at least a new main character. If he’s shown up in the series before, it was only as a minor player.
James Morgan works on the Spokane PD Criminal Task Force. He’s corrupt, but not by his own standards. If he pockets some of the drugs found at a crime scene, it’s not for his own use or profit – it’s to pay off informants. If he takes a sexual favor from a prostitute, who does that hurt? If he cuts procedural corners, that’s just part of the game. In his world there’s only Us and Them – working cops vs. the crooks (and often the Brass). For Morgan, there’s pretty much nothing in his life but the Job.
Word on the street says a new gang has moved into town, but nobody seems to know anything tangible, not even his snitches. A prostitute informant of his is being beaten by her pimp, and Morgan cares about this more than he ought to. A friend of a friend is getting blackmailed and comes to Morgan to get him out of the jam. And Internal Affairs is giving him heat.
Morgan is a liar. Lying is part of the way he does his job. But the lies are starting to pile up on him. Will they get somebody killed?
The writing in The Value in Our Lies is sometimes rough. An editor would be a good investment. But the characterization in the book is big league. Morgan isn’t a likeable character, and he’s clearly self-destructive. But one can’t help sympathizing with him sometimes, and occasionally he even earns our fleeting admiration. The plot was pretty gripping too.
I recommend The Value in Our Lies, with cautions for language and mature subject matter.
Sean Freeman, a central character in Kerry J. Donovan’s police procedural Perfect Record, is a master locksmith, one of the best in spite of his youth. He also has computer skills. So when he arranges to come to the attention of DB Parrish, a London gangster with a weakness for diamonds, Parrish quickly recruits him as his security chief. Sean has personal reasons for needing the kind of money a job with Parrish’s organization will bring in. But he soon learns that working for Parrish means selling your soul. He’ll be required to do things way beyond the limits of his fairly flexible ethics, and the price of failure is a serious beating – if he’s lucky.
So he starts putting out clues for the police, hoping there’s a detective out there smart enough to figure them out. Finally this brings him to DCI David Jones of the Birmingham Serious Crimes Unit. They begin a cautious dance in which jewelry of great value – and innocent lives – are at stake.
I wasn’t entirely happy with Perfect Record, but that was for purely personal reasons. The character of our hero, DCI Jones, is an interesting one (all the characters are good, in fact), but he’s supposed to be an aging curmudgeon and Luddite. The kind of man who won’t have a computer in his home and dislikes the new building he works in out of loyalty to the old one, despite the fact that it’s more comfortable and efficient than its predecessor.
And yet when it comes to Political Correctness, Jones toes the line. He will stand for no sexist language or use of unenlightened titles (like Mrs.) among his officers. If you’re looking for crude cop banter, á la John Sandford, you won’t find it here. I think I can speak with some authority on the subject of curmudgeons as a class, and PC talk is one of the things we tolerate least in real life.
Nevertheless, I have to admit the story is neatly told, with some very nifty (and delightful) surprises at the end. Neat twists generally involve diminished believability in any story, which is the case here. But as pure entertainment, Perfect Record is very close to perfect. The language is relatively mild.
I suppose it’s a lack of imagination that drives me more and more to YouTube for videos these days. I could probably think of some contemporary issue to complain about, but… what’s the use? As far as I can tell, we’re dancing on the edge of the volcano. I have lots of opinions, but little cheerful to say.
Anyway, I don’t think I’ve shared this old, old video before. Didn’t actually know it was out there. It’s a video produced by a brewing company (not sure what the connection is), offering footage of my Viking group’s combat activities in several locations on several occasions. This was back when I was new to “live steel” combat. Since then I’ve declined, retired, and sold my mail shirt (you can recognize it at the beginning and end of this video by the red material around the collar, where my padded gambeson protrudes) to a younger man.
Most of the guys in this video, to the best of my knowledge, have retired from the sport, like me. Some are old friends who are no longer friends. One that I know of is dead.
But on the bright side, I finished my translation job — for which I turned in a substantial invoice — and now they want a little more work, on some touching up they’re doing on the script. Happy to oblige, friends. Happy to oblige.
Kormak, as this old illustration shows, was not shy about public displays of affection, even with married women.
When the brothers put out from their place of anchorage, a walrus surfaced beside the ship. Kormak fired a weighted staff at it, hitting the animal, so that it sank. People thought they recognized Thorveig’s eyes when they saw it. The animal did not surface from then on; and it was reported of Thorveig that she was dangerously ill, and people say that she died as a result.
When we think of troubled poets today, we tend to imagine languid aesthetes wasting away with alcoholism or drug addiction. Troubled poets in the Viking Age seem to have been rather different sorts – pugnacious types and psychopathic killers. We discussed the greatest of them, Egil Skallagrimsson, a little while back. Today our topic is a lesser poet in a lesser saga, Kormak’s Saga, as published in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, but available in other formats as well.
Kormak’s name, I might mention, is the same as the Irish name Cormac. This is yet another testimony to the heavy infusion of Irish and Scottish elements into Icelandic society and culture (the same is true of the saga hero Njal’s name, which is the Irish Niel). Like Egil, Kormak is big and strong, though less ugly.
Kormak first notices Steingerd Thorkelsdatter of Tunga when he catches a glimpse of her foot through a doorway. Immediately he dedicates a poem to the foot, and when he sees the rest of the girl he’s not disappointed. He pursues her, and their marriage is arranged. However, when the wedding day occurs, he doesn’t show up. Yet when her family tries to marry her off to other men, Kormak routinely makes war on them – in some cases killing them. This behavior looks like prolonged adolescence and fear of commitment to the modern reader, but the saga explains it as the consequence of a witch’s curse. One looks in vain here for the kind of psychological insight we find in Egil’s Saga.
The most interesting character in the saga, in fact, is not Kormak himself but Bersi the Duelist, who dominates the middle part of the story. Though a famous man-killer, he’s far more sympathetic than Kormak, something like the Old Gunfighter trope in Western movies.
Kormak’s Saga is believed to be one of the oldest ones that’s been preserved, but that’s no guarantee of artistic quality. The episodes in the story appear to have been reconstructed (rather freely) from hints in the poems the hero left behind. And the hints look very much as if they’ve been misinterpreted a fair amount of time. Many of the incidents, frankly, make little sense.
Kormak’s Saga is interesting for its age, and also – in particular – for accounts of dueling customs in the Viking Age. As a piece of art, it’s fairly middling.
I should mention that a couple of Kormak’s love poems include pretty explicit descriptions of sexual organs.
A new form of religious community appeared for the first time in history: not a nation celebrating its patriotic cult, but a voluntary group, in which social, racial and national distinctions were transcended, men and women coming together just as individuals, before their god.
It’s done at last. I have successfully worked my way through the Marathon length of Paul Johnson’s A History of Christianity. And I have to tell you from the start, it wasn’t what I expected or hoped for. The late author, of whom I’m a big fan, started out (like many thinkers on the right) on the left, and gradually worked his way to conservatism. This book was an early work, published in 1975 when he was (I assume) still in transition. And conservative politics doesn’t necessarily entail Christian faith – I don’t know what Johnson believed. This book didn’t give much clue.
Also, the book is somewhat misnamed. It’s not a history of Christianity, but of western Christianity. Once Rome breaks with Constantinople, the Eastern Church (as well as all the smaller eastern groups) drops off the stage except for when they interact with the West.
He starts well, arguing that it’s silly to question whether Jesus actually existed. Even better, he seems fairly sure that we have a fair idea what He taught. But his description of the formation of the canon and of orthodox doctrine is thoroughgoingly naturalistic. By this account, the scriptures were assembled through chance and politics out of a selection of wildly variant alternate manuscripts (I’m pretty sure this is not true). And the fights over doctrine were wholly political, decided in the end by brute power. The author’s greatest admiration seems to be reserved for certain heretics and the marginally orthodox – Arian, Pelagius, Erasmus. “Sensible” Christians who concentrated on good works rather than abstract doctrine and faith.
Then follows the long, sad chronicle of how the persecuted church (not so much persecuted most of the time, he insists) gradually rose to imperial power in Rome, and organized – on a model invented by St. Augustine – a unitary civilization in which Church and State were one thing. And corruption inevitably set in. The system gradually broke down, leading in time to the Reformation and the Enlightenment, and to the decline and challenges of the modern world.
It’s a depressing read, to be honest. Which is not to say I didn’t learn valuable stuff. I was particularly interested in the account of the decline of papal power in the 12th Century. It helped illuminate my reading of Norwegian history and the way King Sverre was able to ignore a ban and excommunication (as his contemporary King John did in England).
He ends in the “present” (1975), expressing optimism that the ecumenical movement can lead to a more flexible, dynamic church in the world (and we all know how well that’s worked out).
The oddest part, for this reader, was the author’s epilogue, in which he explains that he actually does consider Christianity a force for good in the world:
The notions of political and economic freedom both spring from the workings of the Christian conscience as a historical force; and it is thus no accident that all the implantations of freedom throughout the world have ultimately a Christian origin.
My big problem with A History of Christianity is that it takes him 516 pages to get around to mentioning that. The impression the reader gets from plowing through his long catalog of persecutions, heresy trials, witch hunts and religious wars must certainly be that Christianity has been a greater force for suffering and evil than Nazism and Communism combined. And I’d wager most readers have quit before they get to that epilogue.
Near the beginning he tells an anecdote about Bishop Stubbs, professor at Oxford, who, when he met a young historian, noticed he was carrying a book of which he disapproved, and said to himself, “If I can hinder, he shall not read that book.” He emphasizes the importance of not being like Stubbs, of listening to all ideas and making up one’s own mind.
That’s a noble sentiment, and I approve as a reader. But as a Christian concerned with souls, I would have to say, “Keep A History of Christianity out of the hands of young and impressionable Christians. If they’re looking at all for reasons to walk away from the faith, they’ll find plenty of them here.”
Ack. I’m only about 60% done with The Book That Never Ends (for review, not one I’m writing), and I’ve got lots of translating work to do, so what shall I post? Hm. It’s May now, which means that Syttende Mai (May 17), Norway’s Constitution Day, is coming up. Find some music about that. Anything from Sissel I haven’t seen?
Well, what do you know? Here’s Sissel singing Edvard Grieg’s “Våren,” (Last Spring). It seems to have been filmed 10 years ago for a Constitution Day celebration at Eidsvoll. That’s significant because Eidsvoll is a Norwegian national monument – the place where an assembly of delegates drafted and passed the country’s constitution in 1814. Which is what the holiday is all about.
Spring finally seems to have come to Minneapolis, and I’m enjoying it when I have time to pay attention. (I much prefer that to having no time because I’m out of work.) Spring’s been late in coming, but that makes it all the more enjoyable. I earned this spring, blast it!
In the video above, Dr. Matthew Roby discusses Egil’s Saga (which I reviewed the other day), filming at some of the precise Icelandic sites where the action occurred. I found it atmospheric and fascinating.
I was also interested to note that the large blue book from which he reads Egil’s poem to his dead son is the very volume I’ve been reading myself (thanks to Dale Nelson’s generosity) from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders.
Our friend Dave Lull, ever generously aware of my fascination with the late author D. Keith Mano, sent me to this 1997 article he wrote for National Review.
The article builds on new medical information, shared by Oliver Sacks, concerning what happens to blind people when they are given (or even regain) their sight. Lacking the experience sighted people have acquired from childhood in recognizing visual clues, these people (he cites a patient named Virgil) see the world as an incoherent jumble of shapes and lines. They can tell color and movement, but all the rest of the data confounds them. Depth and perspective are particular challenges.
Mano relates this information (never available before modern times) to the biblical account of Jesus healing a blind man at Bethsaida in Mark 8:22-25:
“And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought.”
And the blind man (in what I had always considered a poetic image) replied to Jesus, “I see men as trees, walking.”
Mano notes the sequel, where Jesus touches the man a second time to enable him to process all this new information, and then draws the conclusion:
So let us suppose a man like Virgil, blind since childhood because of traumatic shock. Let us also suppose that Jesus, Messiah-as-therapist, came along and healed Virgil in a non-miraculous way. That does not (and cannot) explain Part Two. Whether Virgil’s blindness was physical or psychosomatic, still his brain would have been deprived of the visual exercise and constant drill essential to clear three-dimensional sight. Only by a miracle could Jesus provide that necessary crash course in visual recognition. Charismatic therapists may be able to unblock sight –but they cannot infuse a human brain with that lifetime of visual experience necessary for normal sight.
Okay, I’ll just start this semi-review by mentioning (in case you’re new here) that I have a dysfunctional relationship with the genre called “Nordic Noir.” Much as I love Norway, I find myself unable to get in the spirit of the boom in Scandinavian mysteries that persists today. I find Nordic Noir – in general – depressing and nihilistic. I’ve tried to enjoy Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole mysteries, but I have trouble sympathizing with – or even believing in – a police detective who’s so desperately alcoholic that it interferes with his work, and who yet manages to keep his job and even be an asset to his department.
But I checked out the 2017 film adaptation of the Harry Hole book The Snowman on Amazon Prime. It’s not a film I did translation for (indeed, it’s not even a Norwegian production, but Swedish along with other countries), so I can say what I like about it.
I gave the novel a less than negative review (for a Nordic Noir) here. I guess I feel pretty much the same about the movie. Which seems to mean I liked it better than most people.
How very odd.
Michael Fassbender plays the role of Harry, whom we first observe, after a prologue, sleeping off a binge in a bus shelter in mid-winter. When he gets to work he meets a new partner, Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson), whom he finds annoyingly fresh and spunky. They investigate the disappearance of a young mother. Over time they discover that there have been a string of such disappearances, in different places over a long period of time. When the bodies are discovered, they are decapitated, the heads placed on snowmen. Harry’s difficult relationship with his ex-girlfriend’s son, who sees him as a father figure, provides a subplot that will eventually merge with the main plot.
The best part of the movie – as is often the case when they’re filming in Norway – is the scenery. There’s some spectacular footage here, especially as characters drive along the causeways of the famous Atlantic Road. J.K. Simmons, who always elevates any production, is on hand as a sleazy businessman/politician, an easy character for good Socialists to hate.
I can also see the problems in the film. One is a very dark plot, including one particularly awful surprise. Another is the odd presence of Val Kilmer, playing a now-dead character in flashbacks. He looks barely functional, and indeed was recovering from a stroke during filming. All his dialogue is dubbed but still hard to understand.
My big problem was a fairly heavy-handed message about abortion.
Still, I found the movie watchable, and it kept my interest.
Semi-recommended, but with cautions (language, sexual situations, brief nudity, disturbing violence) and without great enthusiasm.
I am a busy man. Busy, busy. Like a bee. Or a beaver. Or some other animal that starts with a “b.” Busy as a butterfly? Busy as a badger? Busy as Behemoth?
Anyway, I’ve got translation work today. Sweet translation work on a project which (as usual) I can’t tell you anything about. I will tell you (because it’s redundant) that it’s in Norwegian and I need to run it through the processors between my ears, extruding in the end an English script of rare beauty and grace.
It’s a good script, too. One I’m happy to be involved with. I will tell you that. I don’t think the lawyers will object.
Also, I’m only about a third of the way through the hypertrophied book I’m reading for review, so there wouldn’t be a review tonight anyway.
Instead, I found the video above. It’s by a guy I know nothing about, and my sharing it implies no endorsement of any kind. But he was at the Avaldsnes Viking Festival last summer when I was. So you can get the flavor of it. He missed a great opportunity, though, in not getting a shot of me in my Viking togs.
