I’d read one J. A. Jance novel before, I think, and hadn’t been terribly impressed (I thought I’d reviewed it, but can’t find it in the archives, so I guess I didn’t). If I remember correctly, it had a male protagonist and, like so many female authors (in my opinion) she didn’t write a guy very well. No doubt we male writers have the same trouble with female characters.

But Web of Evil is one of Jance’s Ali Reynolds books, stories about a woman amateur detective, and I found it a lot of fun.

Ali Reynolds is a former Los Angeles news anchor. Today she lives in a double-wide mobile home (though a nice one) in Sedona, Arizona, where her parents run a diner. She’s in the midst of a bitter divorce from her husband, Paul, a network executive, and also an unfair dismissal suit against her old TV station (the two facts are not unrelated).

One day she gets in her car to drive to L.A., where she’s going to sign her final divorce papers. But there will be no signing. Her husband turns up dead, locked in the trunk of a car which was then left on the railroad tracks to wait for the next train.

As it happened, the murder occurred near the highway Ali was driving, just about the time that, by her own account, she was passing through the area. Suddenly the police are looking very closely at her movements and personal affairs.

This mystery was one of the most tech-savvy I’ve read. Ali is a blogger, and her blog, as well as her cell phone, are important parts of the plot.

I especially liked Ali’s parents, who bear the fine Scandinavian name of Larson. They are decent, caring people and unabashedly conservative (how often do you see that in a novel these days?).

Ali herself is a classic female detective. She’s smart, beautiful and spunky. Like all amateur detectives, she goes where the police say she shouldn’t go, and does what the police say she shouldn’t do, and yet doesn’t get locked up long enough to keep her out of the action. When you sit down to analyze the plot, the whole thing is a little far-fetched, and Ali’s close involvement with the investigation improbable, but Jance keeps the story moving so skillfully that you don’t notice. She kept me turning the pages, and I found it a very entertaining read.

Not great literature, but a lot of fun. Worth the price.

Thanksgiving went just fine. My turkey was once again a success, and nobody got food poisoning (or if they did, they’re thoughtfully keeping the fact from me).

At the end of the day my brother Baal and I found ourselves alone here, and we decided to see a movie. So we went to see “No Country For Old Men.”

Brilliant writing, brilliant dialog, brilliant acting. And an ending designed to make ordinary people want their money back, while critics at Cannes applaud their manicures loose.

My one-line review goes like this: “No Country For Old Men” is an elegant, three-hour shaggy dog story.

And do you think Tommy Lee Jones will ever get tired of being the Texan Steppin Fetchitt? I’m sure there’s a lot of money in being the go-to guy whenever Hollywood wants to show how bigoted, hateful or irrelevant (irrelevant in this case) white Texan males are (Billy Green Bush made a good living in the same gig back in the 70s. Maybe you’re required to have three names to get the job), but do you think he ever feels a little embarrassed about it?

If you want to read a good Viking novel, your choices are pretty few. There’s me, of course, but I’m out of print. Bernard Cornwell is doing a series about Vikings and Saxons in Alfred’s England (I’m avoiding them, though, because, from what I read, he’s trashing Christianity again. I wish he wouldn’t do that. I really like Cornwell otherwise). There’s Tim Severin’s new series, which I haven’t gotten around to reading yet, mea culpa. You can sometimes find a copy of the English translation of Frans Gunnar Bengtsson’s The Long Ships here or there.

But the field is pretty sparse. Which is why I’m delighted to welcome Judson Roberts to our small but elite club.



Viking Warrior is a Young Adult novel which will be enjoyed by older readers as well. It begins the story of Halfdan, who, as the story opens, is a young slave on a large farm in Denmark. He is actually the natural son of the chieftain who owns the farm, but his mother is a slave from Ireland. So all his life he has known only hard work and bitterness.

Everything changes when his master and the master’s son return from an abortive raid in England. His master is dying. On his deathbed, he makes a bargain with Halfdan’s mother—he will acknowledge Halfdan, free him, and make him an heir. But in return Halfdan’s mother must make a terrible sacrifice. She does this willingly, in a deeply moving but troubling segment of the story.

Suddenly Halfdan’s life is changed out of recognition. Harald, his master’s freeborn son and chief heir, befriends him and begins to teach Halfdan the skills of a warrior. Harald is extremely likeable, and Halfdan grows in character as he learns to set aside old angers, even as he is learning a whole new way of living.

One thing Harald does not need to teach Halfdan is the use of the bow. Halfdan has been learning the arts of the bowyer and the fletcher for years, and has been hunting in secret. His skill with a bow is already formidable, and it’s a skill he’ll come to need very much, very soon.

Because there is an enemy out there—a vicious and ruthless enemy who wants the whole family dead; one who cares nothing for honor or fair dealing, nor for how many murders it takes to achieve his goal.

I can hardly think of a way this book could have been better. If I’d written it, I’d have taken pains to anglicize the speech a little more—to avoid words with Latin roots, but that’s my own bugbear, and probably means little to the average reader. The prose was tight, the characters well-rounded, the emotions rang true, and the plot was compelling. I wished it were longer—but fortunately there’s a sequel for me to order.

References to Christianity were generally negative, but that was appropriate to the story. Although Halfdan’s mother is a Christian, she doesn’t seem to have conveyed much of it to her son, so Halfdan’s opinions are those of the average Scandinavian heathen of the time. There is a ceremonial matter toward the beginning of the story that was extremely conflicting for me to read, but it was in no way unreasonable in the time and place.

The only false note (in my opinion) was a scene later in the book, where Halfdan, having killed his first man, is troubled not to feel any guilt about it. I think that’s a projection of modern and Christian values. I don’t believe a Norse pagan in the 9th Century would have been bothered by that at all. I think he would have been pleased.

But that’s the sort of thing it’s almost impossible to avoid, when moderns write about the past. I’m sure I’ve done the same in my own books.

I strongly recommend Viking Warrior. Cautions for violence and sexual references (but no explicit sex scenes). It would make a much-valued Christmas gift for that Viking aficionado on your gift list (and who doesn’t have one of those?).

Another negative review for you today. I’ve found a reason in my old age to finish books I dislike. The pain of reading them is balanced (at least somewhat) by the pleasure of insulting the authors, at a safe distance. The petty vengeance of the failed novelist.

Proof Positive is a legal thriller written from viewpoint of the defense side.

It led this reader to root for prosecutors even more than a Robert K. Tanenbaum novel could.

It’s one in a series of novels starring a young female defense attorney in Portland, Oregon named Amanda Jaffe. She’s the daughter of a prominent criminal lawyer.

The story starts with the execution of a convicted murderer by lethal injection. His lawyer, Doug Weaver, observes the death of his gentle, not-too-bright client, consoling himself that the man must have been guilty, because a forensic expert found his fingerprint on the murder weapon.

Later, mobster Art Prochaska is arrested for the murder of a drug dealer. Amanda, whose father has often represented Prochaska’s boss, is retained to represent him.

There’s damning forensic evidence against Prochaska, but by now the author has revealed to us that the forensic investigator who documented the evidence is in fact in the practice of planting manufactured clues.

At the same time, Doug Weaver is retained to defend a psychotic young man accused of murder, also the victim of falsified forensics.

As the attorneys seek the truth, the crooked CSI begins to commit murders of his own, in order to protect himself.

If this synopsis seems a little dry, it’s because I DIDN’T CARE FOR ANY OF THESE CHARACTERS FOR ONE SINGLE MOMENT!

That’s an exaggeration. I found two human scenes in the book. One was where the young psychotic meets with his parents in the jail, and they finally make a connection after many years. The other involved a moment of sexual banter between two lovers.

Other than that, author Margolin took apparent pains to keep us eternally at an emotional distance from his characters. One of his irritating techniques was to always convey his characters’ thoughts at a remove, saying (for example), “He thought that he made a mistake…” rather than, “He thought, ‘I made a mistake.’”

And all the characters do this tedious thinking in the same way. Men and women. Cops and civilians. Professional criminals and solid citizens. There was nothing to distinguish them in their characterizations. They all thought and reacted (at least to my perception) in precisely identical ways.

This was especially annoying in regard to the gangsters in the book. Margolin didn’t seem to care at all that these were very bad guys who make their livelihoods off human suffering. They were targets of the rogue CSI, so they were treated as charming and slightly amusing tough guys.

Margolin obviously wants us to realize that police power can be abused, and that even forensic evidence isn’t always solid. True enough. There have been cases like this, where the system has been abused.

But he undercuts his argument by whitewashing the crooks and (especially) by BORING ME WITH A DULL NARRATIVE.

Margolin is apparently a very successful novelist. I have no idea why, on the basis of this book.