Any readers living in the Bemidji, Minnesota area may be interested to learn that I will be lecturing on Viking Legacy to the local Sons of Norway lodge this Sunday, Feb. 26 at 2:00 p.m. The location will be Calvary Lutheran Church, 2508 Washington Ave. SE.
Today I was interviewed on a local radio station, KB101 FM. Through the magic of modern technology, you can enjoy the interview right here, even if you’re not privileged to live in the Bemidji area.
‘The shoreline is the perfect metaphor. It shifts moment by moment, wave by wave, grain by grain. People used to ask why I was always photographing the same places but I never was. Living here, I’ve seen more sunrises than most people do in their whole lives but I’ve never seen two the same.’
D. C. Smith, retired detective from the police force in the fictional city of Kings Lake, Norfolk, is enjoying his quiet retirement on the coast, living with his partner Jo, a true crime writer, and their dog. But he’s allowed himself to be recruited by the private investigation firm of Diver and Diver. However, he’s in a position to turn down most of the cases they offer. Now, though, in The Camera Man, they’ve got something that piques his interest.
Gerald Fitch had been the owner of a struggling marine equipment business. One day five years ago he disappeared, leaving an estranged daughter and his second wife, generally believed to be a gold digger. Now the gold digger wants him declared dead so she can liquidate his property. But an insurance company underwrote a large policy on Gerald’s life, and they want Diver and Diver to look for proof of death – or life – before they pay out.
Smith agrees to look into it, and encounters a rather sad story about a man not really cut out for business who tried his best to be responsible but got out of his depth. Did he kill himself? Did he run away to a new life? Or – and this looks increasingly likely when Smith learns who the wife’s family is (they are “well known to the police” as they say over there) – was he murdered?
The D.C. Smith books are low-key, atmospheric and cerebral. Character is always at the heart of the story, and it’s Smith’s broad and humane sympathy that serves him as his best investigative tool. It’s a challenge poking into people’s lives without the authority of the law at his back, but that just makes it more interesting.
I profoundly enjoy all the D. C. Smith mysteries. Author Peter Grainger has branched out with other books about the younger detectives Smith trained as they carry on at Kings Lake, but there’s nobody like Smith for this reader. The Camera Man is a fine, rewarding book and I recommend it highly.
A Facebook friend alerted me to this article in Christianity Today by Philip Yancey, in which he announces his diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease.
I have to admit I don’t think I’ve read any of Yancey’s books — which makes me nearly unique, I think, in my generation of Christians. But I know nothing but good of him, and I know he’s been a tremendous blessing to many over the years. He’s one of the good guys, not afraid to face the hard questions. And he does not disappoint us in his article:
In my writing career, I have interviewed US presidents, rock stars, professional athletes, actors, and other celebrities. I have also profiled leprosy patients in India, pastors imprisoned for their faith in China, women rescued from sex trafficking, parents of children with rare genetic disorders, and many who suffer from diseases far more debilitating than Parkinson’s.
Reflecting on the two groups, here’s what stands out: With some exceptions, those who live with pain and failure tend to be better stewards of their life circumstances than those who live with success and pleasure. Pain redeemed impresses me much more than pain removed.
Today has been quiet for me – in a sense – and busy in another sense. I’ve not stirred abroad nor moved from my habitation this day, even to go to the gym. The gym is, in fact, closed, but I didn’t plan to go there anyway. We’re enduring the Great Blizzard of ’23 – or so the Chickens Little of the media would have us believe. What it’s been doing, in actual fact, is snowing. The winds haven’t been all that strong in Minneapolis, nor the snow especially heavy (thus far). What this storm is, is long. It started the night before last, and is supposed to drag on till late tomorrow.
But I have enough food to get me through, and I had some work to do, which brightens any day. I wish I could tell you about the latest project, which I just turned in. It contains elements that please me. I can’t say more than that. But it helped to warm the winter in my aged heart.
Above, a little video about George Washington’s face – since it’s still Washington’s birthday for a few hours as I write. The near-apotheosis of Washington in our early Republic was probably a political necessity, but it’s regrettable that the reaction to it – which has become malignant paranoia in recent years – has turned many people against him. Washington was (according to my reading) in fact a fascinating, complex man who worked hard at appearing one-dimensional.
I love historical reconstructions like the ones in the video above. But I happen to know that even this one is glamorized. The real Washington was (like a large percentage of his contemporaries) heavily scarred by smallpox. (Andrew Jackson was the same.) Blemishes as common as that were, I suppose, generally overlooked. Smooth complexions were much admired – especially in women, who made it a point to stay out of the sun – but you couldn’t insist on them.
Washington was also – or so I’ve read – very vain about his “figure.” He (like me, I must confess, though I’m not nearly as tall) was built rather broad at the hips. But he refused to believe it, despite what his mirror, and his tailor, told him. He insisted that his breeches be cut to the width he believed they ought to be, rather than what they were. Kind of like reverse anorexia. Thus his pants were always tight and uncomfortable.
But he had a purpose in concentrating on his appearance, in always being “in character,” in never relaxing in public. He felt he was setting a precedent for his nation. Nobody knew how the elected leader of a republic was supposed to comport himself. Washington had to make it up as he went along. As a schoolteacher makes it a point to be very strict during the first few weeks, to set a tone for the class that he can ease up on later, Washington established precedents for the presidency. Later chief executives, like Lincoln, were able to ease up on the dignity a bit, because Washington had left behind such a weight of reverence.
I fear the reverence is about gone now – it’s not all the fault of the present incumbent, either – but Washington did a pretty good job in his time.
I’ve got translation work today (loud cheers from the gallery!), so I’m going to just drop this semi-review of True Conviction, a book I didn’t complete. I quit reading before the end because it annoyed me in a number of ways, and I figure I ought to warn you against it. But I won’t post the cover because I don’t want to rub it in. The thing is, trashing a book I didn’t like can be an exercise in self-righteousness (even when the author’s way more successful than I am).
Here’s the setup – Adrian Hell (that’s his name) is a professional hit man and (we are told) a legend in the field. He is (he claims) an ethical assassin. He’ll only kill bad guys.
And yet, the first job he takes at the beginning of True Conviction is to kill a businessman who backed out on a land deal with a Nevada mob boss – the guy may be corrupt, but does that deserve death? Then Adrian gets in a fight with his employer and ends up on the run, and he meets an attractive female assassin, and… I lost interest.
First of all, I didn’t believe the Adrian Hell character. He’s always talking about how tough he is. That’s a sure sign – in literature, anyway – that he’s not as tough as he wants you to think. (In real life, I suspect it may be quite common for really tough guys to be loudmouths, but in literature we’ve learned that it’s cool reserve that earns the reader’s respect.)
Secondly, the book was overwritten. The author doesn’t trust the reader to figure out what he’s saying, so he explains EVERYTHING. Including his little jokes – which might work as little jokes if he didn’t inflate them to the bursting point.
Maybe you’d like True Conviction better than I did. Apparently they sell a lot of copies.
I’ll say at the outset that I do not love the Roper-Hooley detective series, set in London. I don’t hate the books; I just have no problem putting them down. But I bought a set of four (got them for free, actually), they are readable, and times are tough, so I’m reading them.
In The Case of the Dirty Bomb, brilliant autistic detective Jonathan Roper is back at headquarters, having completed his time with a national security agency. But his partner Brian Hooley is concerned about him. He seems to have lost his way; he’s having trouble analyzing information and is worried he’s “losing it.”
With Hooley’s help, he changes his approach and soon realizes the reason he’s been having trouble. They’re facing an unprecedented problem. Someone is gathering fissionable nuclear material cached in secret locations across Europe and smuggling it into England to set up the extortion scheme to end all extortion schemes.
There’s nothing all that wrong with these books; they simply don’t ring my bells very loudly. The autistic character, Jonathan Roper, is really the most interesting one here. I guess that’s not surprising; he is the “exotic.” But the others could have been made more colorful, in my view. I didn’t find myself caring about them a lot.
Toward the end, the author takes an opportunity to make a dig at anti-Communists, but the political side wasn’t really intrusive. One Russian character’s name was inconsistently spelled. The book was okay, though, though I thought the plot a little far-fetched. Maybe you’ll like it better than I did.
“This man, he sounds like a force to be reckoned with. And it seems … it seems he got his first taste of wisdom. It can be intoxicating. There’s so much to see that you were blind to before. The problem? He thinks he has it. Wisdom. But no one has it. We just wear it from time to time when we’re lucky.”
I wonder if other people enjoy Gregg Hurwitz’s Orphan X novels as much as I do. For this reader, these books are more than well-written. They possess a solidity. A punch. No energy is wasted, just as the hero wastes no energy when he fights: “People think of a superpower as going fast when everyone else moves slow. But that’s not as useful as going slow when everyone else is moving fast.” It could be that I respond viscerally to the character’s OCD, his feelings of alienation, of being separated from the rest of humanity. Or maybe the powerful prose works the same for everybody. The books certainly sell well enough.
The Last Orphan, the latest entry in the series, begins with our hero, Evan Smoak, in Iceland, where he has traveled for no other reason than to sample a local vodka in a bar on a glacier. Vodka is one of Evan’s few, small indulgences – taken in strictly controlled quantities, and only the best. Iceland recurs as a reference point again and again in The Last Orphan, indicating something pure, refined, cold and remote. Evan Smoak’s personal, unachievable ideal for life.
But life is messy, and even Evan Smoak, the Nowhere Man, the freelance hero no one can find, can’t keep himself out of its mess. In The Last Orphan, a very carefully planned and executed government operation manages (just barely) to capture him. Confined in restraints, he is offered an assignment by the president of the United States herself (she’s a woman in this alternate universe). She wants him to take out an international wheeler dealer named Luke Devine. Luke Devine has pulled political strings to stall an environmental bill the president wants passed. But he also controls dangerous agents suspected of very bad acts. If Evan can eliminate him, she’ll give him a full pardon.
Evan couldn’t care less about the president’s bill, but he soon learns that Devine’s personal security men have been doing some horrific stuff, and seem to be guilty of at least two unsolved murders. Once Evan (with the help of his teenaged hacker ward, a girl named Joey) understands the kind of surveillance power Devine wields, he’ll have to figure out how to keep an innocent family safe as a side job.
There are echoes of The Great Gatsby in the descriptions of the wild parties (actually orgies) Devine holds at his Long Island estate. We get to see how several of the regular series cast members are doing now, which is gratifying. And Evan Smoak, against his will but with a sense of moral obligation, is forced to move a little further out of his protective shell as he attempts to outthink and outmaneuver the most intelligent – and dangerous – adversary he’s ever faced.
The Last Orphan is a wonderful book, expertly written. Author Hurwitz even includes one of my favorite author’s tricks – one that should only be attempted rarely, and by a master – a one-line chapter.
I loved it. I wish it were twice as long.
Tony Dunbar’s Tubby Dubonnet series has often been recommended to me, but I’ve resisted. Not sure why. After reading Crooked Man, I still haven’t made up my mind how I feel about it, but I liked the book better at the end than in the early stages.
Tubby Dubonnet, for those of you who (as I was) are unaware of him, is a divorced criminal lawyer in New Orleans. That in itself suggests he’s no moral paragon, but he does maintain two rules of ethics in his practice – never screw a client, and never lie to a judge. By the standards of the place, that makes him pretty upright.
He has a colorful cast of clients. Right now he’s negotiating a malpractice settlement for a transvestite stripper who got a bad skin-darkening treatment from a doctor, and trying to coax payment for divorce work from a buxom blonde who may be available for a different kind of transaction. But when Darryl Alvarez, a nightclub manager, asks him to keep a locked sports bag in his safe for a couple days (he swears there’s nothing illegal in it), Tubby goes against his own better judgment and accepts it. This soon puts him in an awkward ethical position, not to mention a dangerous one. Tubby is a clever man, and he’ll need all his cleverness to stay alive.
I prefer my heroes a little more principled than Tubby Dubonnet, but by the end of Crooked Man – which was a lighter concoction than I expected – I was enjoying the story. I bought a whole set of the novels, so I’ll be reviewing more.
I get the feeling, as I read David Crosby’s Will Harper series, that the author wants to pay homage to John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee – Will, after all, lives on a boat in a marina in Florida. Instead of “taking his retirement in installments,” he lives the good life on an inheritance. Frankly, except for the sentiment of the thing, I almost wish he wouldn’t. Will Harper is a very different character from McGee.
In the previous installment, journalist Will saved his neighbors from being fleeced by land developers exploiting eminent domain. His girlfriend Sandy, about whom he was getting serious, rewarded him by sailing away to a new life in the Caribbean.
So as Guilty Money begins, he’s rebuilding his life (along with his boat, which got shot up in the action). He’s also acquired a new girlfriend, a girl who wants no commitment and likes to hang around the boat naked (a curiously 1970s plot element in a 21st Century book). But then a friend asks his help in getting someone out of the jail in nearby (fictional) Grove County. There the sheriff’s department, under financial pressure and tempted by plain greed, is milking the jail system for cash – particularly through failing to notify defendants of court dates, then pocketing the forfeited bail. Also they skimp on prisoners’ food, and brutalize them on top of it. There are one or two deaths, which get covered up.
With the help of a friendly (and attractive) ACLU attorney (she brags about how the ACLU defends people of all political beliefs, another dated element in the story), he plans a campaign to expose the corruption. It will get ugly – and fortunately a new ally appears, a young man who knows how to fight. A much needed addition to this cast.
At least in these early books in the series, author Crosby hasn’t yet mastered his instrument, in my opinion. His prose could use some pruning. And the politics lean left (as you no doubt guessed from this review). The theme of the story is the over-incarceration of criminals — something I’m pretty sure isn’t a problem anymore.
But there’s only one more book in the collection of three that I got for free, so I imagine I’ll read it. Guilty Money wasn’t bad.
If you are (or were) a fan of Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion, you’re familiar with the town of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota.
Lake Wobegon is (we are reliably informed) a cover identity for Anoka, Minnesota. Anoka is a northern suburb of Minneapolis today, but it was a quiet rural community when Keillor was growing up. (It also boasts of being the Halloween Capitol of the US, for some reason I haven’t discovered).
Anyway, you may recall Keillor talking about the Sons of Knut lodge in Lake Wobegon. The Sons of Knut are obviously based on the Sons of Norway. And there is indeed a Sons of Norway lodge in Anoka. It’s called, not the Sons of Knut, but “Vennekretsen,” which is Norwegian for “circle of friends.”
I told you all this to sidle around to the fact that I spoke to Vennekretsen Lodge last night. It went great. The people were very kind and hospitable, and receptive to my presentation. They also bought a fair number of books. And they served a great big cake, because it was the 100th birthday of one of the lodge members. Haven’t seen a cake like that in a long time.
Anyway, what I mainly wanted to write about tonight was the adventure of preparing for that event. Because it wasn’t any walk in the park (except in the sense that parks nowadays tend to be places where you’ll get mugged).
When I do a presentation, I generally prepare by rehearsing several times, and also by pulling out things I think I’ll need to take along, and piling them somewhere so I won’t forget them on the date.
What I didn’t expect was that I’d trip on a laptop cord and yank the thing down onto the floor on Sunday. The screen was ruined. I’ve always found it difficult to use a computer without a working screen.
So – although it’s my general policy not to do commercial transactions on a Sunday, but this was an emergency – I ran to Micro Center, the best computer store in these parts, and quickly found several inexpensive laptops there. I had to wait around a while to get sales help, because Sunday’s a big shopping day for people less spiritually-minded than myself. When I finally got hold of a salesman, he actually recommended the least expensive machine on the shelf. “Does everything the others do, and it’s cheaper!” he said. Sounded great to me.
What I hadn’t noticed – and it would have meant nothing to me if it had, because I’m ignorant – was that what I was buying was a Chromebook. I didn’t know (then) that Chromebooks are the Trabants of the computer world, minimalist machines that only do a few things. Perfectly fine for their target market, but I’m not that market.
I even asked the salesman if it would run Microsoft 365, and he said yes. This is technically true, but it will only run it through the Chrome browser. IT IS USELESS FOR TAKING AWAY FROM HOME AND GIVING A POWERPOINT PRESENTATION.
I even mentioned to him that I needed a laptop for a PowerPoint presentation. At that point he was (understandably) eager to get rid of me, and he said nothing. I hold him morally culpable for this.
Anyway, I took the thing home and tried to get it set up, growing increasingly frustrated. A couple posts on Facebook got me the information I needed – Chromebook was wrong for me.
On Monday I took the thing back to Micro Center, returned it, and got an HP, which turned out to be pretty much identical to the one I broke.
But I got it set up at last. And I was able to head out on schedule for Lake Wobegon in the evening.
One last insult remained, however. When I got to the church where the lodge met, we found that my new machine would not communicate with the digital projector on site. I ended up having to borrow somebody else’s laptop and run the presentation from a file on a thumb drive (I always bring a backup copy on a thumb drive, because experience has taught me that something always goes wrong). The upshot was that this laptop, which I’d gone to such pains to acquire and prepare, was redundant, and my beautiful, carefully selected title fonts, not loaded on the borrowed machine, did not appear.
Now I’m worrying about projector compatibility in the future.
So it goes in our little town.