Brad Frame and Nick Argostino are the heroes of an ongoing mystery series by Ray Flynt. Inkblot Killer is the 11th of these.
The background is that Brad Frame is a Philadelphia billionaire. Some years back, his mother and sister were abducted and killed, and he inserted himself into the investigation. Once it was solved, he set himself up as a private investigator. He developed a relationship with police detective Nick Argostino, and they came to trust one another. As Inkblot Killer begins, Nick is newly retired from the force, and has joined Brad’s agency. But he finds himself uncomfortable with the new work atmosphere.
A new client comes in. She is a rich woman, the entitled daughter of a reclusive tycoon, and she wants them to prove her husband is cheating on her. But when she interferes with the investigation, Brad severs their association. Then she herself disappears, and her equally repellant father retains the agency to locate her.
Meanwhile, Nick becomes increasingly concerned as several of his old police colleagues are strangled to death by a mysterious killer who leaves behind index cards bearing blots of blood, like the patterns in Rorschach tests. Nick grows increasingly convinced that he is on the killer’s to-do list.
Inkblot Killer was a competent enough mystery in terms of plotting. But the writing was pedestrian and the dialogue clunky. It had the flavor of something knocked off quickly for the market. There’s no harm in it, but I won’t be back for another.
First I’ll tell you what’ s going on in my thrill-packed life. Then I’ll tell you about one of my cosmic revelations. Those are always good for a chuckle.
There’s a shrink-wrapped pile of roofing material sitting in the driveway behind my house. I had hail damage last year and my insurance company authorized a full replacement. But one complication after another has delayed the actual job. First it was supposed to happen today. Then tomorrow. Now it’s all in flux – it may or may not happen tomorrow, like Schroedinger’s Shingles. What makes it annoying is that the contractors are going to be parking a dumpster in front of my garage when finally they get to work, which means I have to park on the street tonight on the possibility that work will start tomorrow.
Even more annoying, my air conditioning is out, and has been for about three weeks now. I have a sort of insurance for that, too – a home warranty. The HVAC tech who autopsied my unit said the compressor had burned out, and it couldn’t be replaced. A new AC unit would have to come in. And that shouldn’t take long.
The warranty company, however, has ideas of its own. They opted to replace the compressor. They have a source for replacements which (apparently) they get at a discount. But that source is not a fast source. So we’re still waiting for the part to be delivered.
Thankfully, we’ve had relatively cool weather recently.
Which is supposed to end tomorrow.
Ah, well. I grew up without air conditioning. And hey, it keeps my electric bills down.
A pack of blessings lie on my head, as the Friar said to Romeo (not long before Romeo killed himself).
And what is my revelation?
It wasn’t a full-fledged revelation, of course. Just one of those moments when two ideas inhabiting separate pigeonholes in my brain suddenly link, and I have an ah ha! moment.
It started out with Jordan Peterson. I’ve grown quite taken with Jordan Peterson videos. He’s not right about everything, but he can see correctly what the problems are. He exhorts me to do things I don’t want to do, which is generally a mark of truth.
Anyway, Peterson was talking about Cain in Genesis 4. Peterson’s interpretation of the story of Cain and Abel is that it represents the Easy Way and the Hard Way in life. Cain sacrificed vegetables, which were (as Peterson sees it) an easy sacrifice. Abel sacrificed animals, which means blood and pain. God was pleased with Abel because he took the Hard Way. The right thing in life almost always means blood and pain.
The spark, the circuit that closed, for me was a comparison to the parable of the talents, of which I think I’ve written here before. There are two versions of the parable. In Matthew 25, the master gives talents (sums of money) to three servants – five to one, two to another, and one to the last. In Luke 19, he calls ten servants and gives them ten talents each. In each case, the servants are told to do business with (invest) the money for him while he’s away. In each case, only one servant fails – the one who, instead of investing the money, hides it safely. He returns the full amount to his master, and his master is furious. He didn’t want security. He expected a profit.
The point in both stories – looking at it this way – is that God expects his servants to stretch their horizons. Do bigger things. Move outside their comfort zones. Break new ground, at least personally.
This isn’t about salvation, of course. Salvation is by grace. This is about our earthly lives – what God expects us to do with the talents He bestowed. We’re not here just to wait passively for Heaven. We’ve been given gifts – for the sake of our families, for our neighbors, and (especially) for the church.
And always God expects the bloody sacrifice, the dying to the self. Taking up the cross.
It all makes me feel tremendously guilty. But even I can recognize the truth of it.
There was a king named Dumb. He ruled over the gulfs that stretch north across Helluland and are now called Dumbshaf after King Dumb. He was descended from giants on his father’s side, a good-looking people and larger than other men; but his mother was descended from the tribe of trolls….
When I made my one visit to Iceland involving more than a stopover in the airport, I took a day trip out to the Snæfellsnes peninsula, to see locations I’d be using in West Oversea, which I was working on at the time. At one point we visited the construction/statue shown on the cover of the book shown above (which is not the one I’m reviewing). Our guide told us this was a guy named Bard, who did things like wading across fjords. I’d never heard of this Bard, and it meant nothing to me at the time.
Years later, Bard came up again in some material I translated for Saga Bok Publishing (not likely, alas, ever to see publication now). Bard, it turned out, was the subject of one of Iceland’s legendary sagas – a late saga full of folkloric elements.
The saga opens with the regrettably named King Dumb mentioned in the quotation above. Dumb and his wife have a son named Bard, the hero of this saga. Bard is, for a time, foster son to the giant Dofri, for whom Dovre Mountain in Norway is named (Dofri features in certain legends concerning the youth of King Harald Fairhair, legendary uniter of Norway, which Snorri Sturlusson quite understandably omitted from Heimskringla), but eventually, unable to get along with that same King Harald, he emigrates to Iceland and settles on the Snæfellsnes. Later, unable to live at peace with lesser men, he retires to dwell in a cave in the mountain, becoming a legendary figure (“the god of Snæfell”) who comes at the nick of time to rescue friends when they are in need. In time he has a son named Gest who is effectively identical to himself and performs the same kinds of feats.
In the end, Gest goes to Norway to meet King Olaf Trygvesson. The king exhorts him to adopt the true faith, but he resists. Later, in a scene reminiscent of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an armored troll (or giant) shows up at Olaf’s court and challenges him to send a hero to claim his (the troll’s) treasure. Gest accepts the challenge, traveling in company with a priest, who eventually baptizes him. But Gest (perhaps because of his other-worldly family roots) cannot survive long as a Christian.
It’s a peculiarity of the Icelandic sagas that the genre did not generally improve with time. Later sagas (and Bard’s Saga is one of the latest ones we have) lack the verisimilitude and psychological insight of the classic sagas. Bard’s Saga is interesting for its legendary elements, and also for the geographical assumptions that seem to be in play (the author appears to think North Norway and Greenland are close to each other).
We tend to think of Norse mythology as a sort of closed canon, as in Christian theology. Stories like Bard’s Saga offer abundant clues to whole branches of pre-Christian belief that are remembered, if at all, only in fragmentary or distorted form.
Rex Dalton is the hero of a series of action thrillers by J. C. Ryan, The Fulcrum being its first volume. Here is another example of that trope I’ve been noticing lately – thrillers about super-secret, completely deniable government assassins who take lethal care of those special cases normal diplomacy, espionage, and warfare can’t handle. It seems to me this trend must express some public hunger for more robust, aggressive action to be taken against a rising tide of terrorism and crime in the world.
Our hero, Rex Dalton, lost his family to a terrorist event years ago. After that he cast off all his human ties, enlisted in the Marines (later Delta Force and then something even more hush-hush), and began turning himself into a living weapon, a sort of warrior monk committed to killing terrorists to the exclusion of all else. At one point he meets a woman he finds attractive, but his focus is elsewhere.
The prose in The Fulcrum wasn’t the worst I’ve seen, and the occasional political comment usually suited my prejudices. But the problem with this book was that it wasn’t really a story. There was no narrative arc. All we had was a sequence of accounts of various actions Rex carries out – invariably with perfect efficiency. He never makes a mistake. He never meets an enemy he can’t overcome. His plans of action always survive contact with the enemy. This author knows nothing about building dramatic tension.
Which is not to say the book was dull. It was interesting to watch our hero at work. But it just wasn’t a story.
I can’t say you shouldn’t read The Fulcrum. There’s entertainment value here. But I can only deplore the absence of narrative craftsmanship.
I am proud (in a suitably humble way) to announce that my first article has appeared in Religion & Liberty Magazine, published by the Acton Institute.
Its topic, a sure crowd-pleaser, is the story of Professor Georg Sverdrup, Augsburg Seminary, and the Lutheran Free Church. Readers of this blog have enjoyed my accounts of the antics of the Free Lutherans for many years (as I’m editor of the Sverdrup Journal), but now the whole wide world can marvel at the story. The passion. The pathos. The pietism.
Getting back to the real world, I’m well aware that the saga of the Free Lutherans is pretty tall grass stuff, even for people generally interested in church history. And we Norwegian Americans do love our schisms, which complicates matters. Hot dishes and schisms, that’s how you can tell Norwegian-American Lutherans.
The obscurity of my topic was brought home to me in a surprising way when I received my copy of the magazine, opened it, and found that it had been illustrated with an image, not of the Georg Sverdrup I wrote about, but of his namesake great-uncle. I can sympathize with the artist – I wrote an article about the Reformation kings of Denmark for the Sverdrup Society newsletter a while back and got my Fredericks and Christians completely mixed up. Had to print a correction in the next issue.
The R&I editor, when I pointed the lapse out to him, was very apologetic, and the artist quickly produced a corrected version, which will be used when the article goes online next month. And I appreciate that.
But these are details. The important thing is that the article serves its higher purpose – the great cause for which I labor with unwearying toil.
The cause of me getting paid.
And, of course, contributing to public knowledge of the history of the Christian faith. That too.
He was one of those guys who look around when you talk about money because they can’t imagine any legal way they might earn it.
I reviewed another of Stuart M. Kaminsky’s Toby Peters novels the other day. Toby, a low-rent Los Angeles PI in the 1930s and ’40s, tends to be hired – under seriocomic circumstances – by various movie stars and celebrities to clear their names.
Down For the Count begins with Toby looking down at a murdered man on the beach – and up at Joe Louis, heavyweight champion of the world. Louis explains that he saw the man being beaten and ran up to help, but the killers got away before he got there. Toby, who is a fight fan and respects Louis, believes him. He advises the champ to run off before the police get there, and then undertakes to find the real murderer for him, so he won’t be implicated in a scandal.
Toby knows who the dead man is, because his widow (who happens to be Toby’s ex-wife) just hired him to locate the man. Investigation reveals that he had gotten involved in investing in boxers and arranging “cards.” Losses in such enterprises had gotten him involved with some of the nastiest characters in the LA underworld. There is no lack of suspects – or of tough guys (including cops) eager to rearrange Toby’s face, at best.
The Toby Peters books are always amusing. I enjoy the characters and the period flavor of Down For the Count. This one has a darker ending than most in the series. Recommended.
Morse had got it wrong, of course. Morse nearly always got things hopelessly, ridiculously wrong at the start of every case. But he always seemed to have thoughts that no one was capable of thinking. Like now.
I think I’ve read all Colin Dexter’ Inspector Morse novels already. But one of them showed up cheap for Kindle purchase, and I figured I’d re-read it – especially as I’ve been watching episodes of the old John Thaw BBC TV series recently. The book was The Daughters of Cain, and I recognized it as one that – though I enjoyed it – I thought included one ridiculous plot element.
Morse is put in charge of a case concerning an Oxford don who’s been murdered in his home. The chief suspect is the “scout” (the servant) in the college building where he worked. That scout had been found to be dealing drugs to students. He also (we learn) had been brutalizing his wife.
But that man has disappeared. Soon Morse begins to suspect that he too has been killed, by a conspiracy of nice women – his abused wife, her teacher friend, and his stepdaughter (also abused), who is now a prostitute.
As is customary in the Morse novels, we have no moments of Sherlock Holmes super-ratiocination here. Morse, fighting a bad cold and fueled by beer and cigarettes, makes one wrong guess after another, until by a process of elimination (and inspiration) he hits on the truth. Which is pretty much how it works in real life, which may explain the charm of the series.
What is harder to explain is the charm of Morse himself. I have an idea that author Dexter’s original conception of Morse was not much like the actor John Thaw (Shaun Evans of “Endeavour” may have been closer). As I recall, the first Morse novel features women commenting on how “dishy” the detective is.
But as the series continued, Dexter threw in with the TV show entirely, and his Morse and the video Morse became pretty much the same. Yet Morse seemed to possess the same attractiveness to women.
In The Daughters of Cain, one of the central characters is Ellie, the abused stepdaughter of the missing murderer, who is now a prostitute. Although Morse finds her repellant at first, he finds himself increasingly attracted to her. And then – and this is what I really don’t get – she reciprocates the feeling.
Why? What is there about Morse as we know him that would appeal to a young woman who has romantic options? He’s much older, he’s out of shape, he’s short-tempered, he isn’t rich.
This element of the story simply made no sense to me. (Not to mention that most cops have more sense than to fall for prostitutes.) It seemed to me as if the author was forcing his characters into unnatural behaviors, and that’s a major sin in fiction.
Otherwise, The Daughters of Cain was quite a good novel. You might feel differently about the romantic element.
I’m late posting tonight, because I got in late, and anyway it felt like a Saturday to me. I was doing a Saturday thing, in my subjective world.
I think I’ve mentioned that I’m now editing the magazine of the Valdres Samband, one of many US organizations composed of descendants of immigrants from various regions of Norway (I’m not a Valdres descendant myself, which will tell you how desperate they were for an editor). Today, in that capacity, I attended their annual Stevne, which means their annual get-together, in Minneapolis. I also delivered my world-renowned lecture on Viking Legacy, and sold some books.
The video above does not represent what we were actually doing today. There was no dancing, though I’m sure it would have been welcome. But we did have a fiddler entertaining us during dinner on a Hardanger Fiddle, the instrument being played in the video, which (appropriately) was actually posted by the Valdres Samband several years back.
If the tones of the Hardanger Fiddle sound vaguely familiar, that may be because (at least according to what I was told) one was used for the theme music of the Riders of Rohan in the Lord of the Rings movies.
The Hardanger Fiddle is a uniquely Norwegian instrument. Below the usual four strings, it is strung with four or five more. These lower strings are not played directly, but resonate harmonically with the main notes, producing a weird, haunting droning sound sometimes compared to the bagpipes.
My Haugean pietist ancestors, by the way, would have been shocked by this, and might have smashed the fiddle if they could get their hands on it. They believed that dancing was bad in itself, but that Hardanger Fiddle music was positively demonic. Master fiddlers were regarded as a kind of wizard.
…the Divine Nature wounds and perhaps destroys us merely by being what it is. We call it the wrath of the gods; as if the great cataract in Phars were angry with every fly it sweeps down in its green thunder.
I wonder what J. R. R. Tolkien thought of Till We Have Faces. I can’t seem to find any information about that online. Tollers and Jack were, of course, somewhat estranged by the time this novel was published; not turned enemies, but their friendship had cooled through the circumstances of life. I have an idea Tolkien thought Lewis had lost interest in their mythopoeic project, their shared endeavor to write new myths foreshadowing the gospel for modern pagans.
But that’s very much what Till We Have Faces is – though the myth isn’t a new one (Tolkien specifically wanted English myths) but a retelling of a classic Greek one, the myth of Cupid and Psyche. The central mythopoeic idea that myths are “good dreams” that anticipate the gospel is here, richly and beautifully realized.
Orual is a princess in a fictional barbarian kingdom, apparently sometime in the early Iron Age. She is the oldest – and ugliest – of three sisters. Redival is pretty and frivolous. Istra, the youngest, is so beautiful and sweet that people treat her like a goddess. “The Fox,” the girls’ Greek slave tutor, calls her Psyche, and Orual dotes on her.
But when famine and pestilence come to the land, the people turn on Psyche, accusing her of blaspheming the gods, causing all this evil. It is determined by the priests that she must be taken to the Mountain and sacrificed to the Beast who dwells there. Orual is injured trying to defend her sister, and so is unconscious when the ceremony is carried out.
Later, Orual travels with the chief of the king’s guard up to the Mountain, to gather her sister’s bones for burial. To her astonishment and joy, she finds Psyche there, alive and well. But the girl tells her a crazy story about being married to the Beast of the Mountain, who is actually a sublime god. Orual, certain that Psyche has gone insane, conceives a plan to bring her to her senses. And great evil will come from this.
I first read Till We Have Faces a lifetime ago, when I was in high school and the book was fairly new. It was the second Lewis book I read, after The Screwtape Letters. Callow as I was, I recognized it for a book full of depths, but I couldn’t see very far into them.
Reading it now, as an old man, I found much more in the story. It moved me deeply. Has any book ever dissected the human heart as this one does, bringing to light all the petty possessiveness, jealousy, and even hatred that we humans often mean by what we call love?
Great book. Read it if you haven’t yet. If you have read it, read it again.
How desperate am I for work, you ask? How low would I stoop for money?
Would I sell a kidney? Flog condo time shares in Florida? Peddle my body on street corners?
Ha! Kids stuff.
I’ve been reduced to watching the History Channel Vikings series.
Yes, in spite of all my railings and denunciations against the thing, I’m watching the first season through now. I think I’ll need to watch more seasons, and I think the most economical way to do that will be to revive the Netflix subscription I dropped. As a business expense, though I don’t think I can deduct it.
Here’s how coming to this pass, uh… came to pass:
I have a friend who works with a web magazine that actually pays non-trivial money. I suggested to him an article I might write for it, one having to do with Vikings.
He countered that he’d like to see my topic related to the Vikings series.
I seem to recall I dickered my fee up a little at that point. Then I agreed to take the thing on. So I now have to watch enough of the series to enable me to speak with some authority.
I mentioned my plight on Facebook. Some friends suggested I might find I enjoy it.
This has not come to pass, so far.
What do I dislike about the Vikings series?
First of all – and I’ve written about this before – they get Norse society completely wrong. The Vikings in this production live in an autocracy, where the chieftain (the “earl”) calls the shots. He claims all the booty from raids. He kills people without consequence.
Sigh. Read Viking Legacy, for pete’s sake. The Norse had a grassroots democracy. Leaders were obligated to submit to election, and could be booted out if they got too big for said boots.
Armor and costumes – perhaps we reenactors overdid it, making “Vikings did not wear horns on their helmets!” our battle cry for so many years. The props people at the studio answered, “Got it! The Vikings didn’t wear any armor at all!” And that idea came to rule all their decisions, stuck fast in their consciousness like an axe in an unhelmeted skull.
There are plenty of fights here, and as far as I can see they’re entirely chaotic. Aside from the lack of armor, neither logistics, troop numbers, nor tactics matter at all. Victory is bestowed by the favor of the scriptwriting gods. Ragnar Lothbrok and his men (by the time of episode six, which is as far as I’ve gotten now) seem to be about to conquer the English kingdom of Northumbria with three ships’ crews).
I could go on and on. I’ll just mention one more thing. Clunkiness.
I’ve often said that one thing I’ve tried to avoid in my novels – and I hope I’ve avoided somewhat it through using Father Ailill as a bridge character – is clunkiness. Old time heroes, clunking around in funny costumes and heavy boots, ranting about honor and the old gods, in awkward sentence constructions. Making little psychological sense to modern readers/viewers.
I have an idea (bear in mind that I’m often mistaken) that Vikings will not age well. It seems clunky to me. When the haircuts stop looking cool, our grandchildren will laugh at it.
But I carry on with my “research.” If I’m going to sell my soul, I mean to give value for money.
Websites store cookies to enhance functionality and personalise your experience. You can manage your preferences, but blocking some cookies may impact site performance and services.
Essential cookies enable basic functions and are necessary for the proper function of the website.
Name
Description
Duration
Cookie Preferences
This cookie is used to store the user's cookie consent preferences.
30 days
These cookies are needed for adding comments on this website.
Name
Description
Duration
comment_author
Used to track the user across multiple sessions.
Session
comment_author_email
Used to track the user across multiple sessions.
Session
comment_author_url
Used to track the user across multiple sessions.
Session
These cookies are used for managing login functionality on this website.
Name
Description
Duration
wordpress_logged_in
Used to store logged-in users.
Persistent
wordpress_sec
Used to track the user across multiple sessions.
15 days
wordpress_test_cookie
Used to determine if cookies are enabled.
Session
Statistics cookies collect information anonymously. This information helps us understand how visitors use our website.
Google Analytics is a powerful tool that tracks and analyzes website traffic for informed marketing decisions.
Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests
10 minutes
__utmb
Used to distinguish new sessions and visits. This cookie is set when the GA.js javascript library is loaded and there is no existing __utmb cookie. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to the Google Analytics server.
30 minutes after last activity
__utmc
Used only with old Urchin versions of Google Analytics and not with GA.js. Was used to distinguish between new sessions and visits at the end of a session.
End of session (browser)
__utmz
Contains information about the traffic source or campaign that directed user to the website. The cookie is set when the GA.js javascript is loaded and updated when data is sent to the Google Anaytics server
6 months after last activity
__utmv
Contains custom information set by the web developer via the _setCustomVar method in Google Analytics. This cookie is updated every time new data is sent to the Google Analytics server.
2 years after last activity
__utmx
Used to determine whether a user is included in an A / B or Multivariate test.
18 months
_ga
ID used to identify users
2 years
_gali
Used by Google Analytics to determine which links on a page are being clicked
30 seconds
_ga_
ID used to identify users
2 years
_gid
ID used to identify users for 24 hours after last activity
24 hours
_gat
Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests when using Google Tag Manager
1 minute
_gac_
Contains information related to marketing campaigns of the user. These are shared with Google AdWords / Google Ads when the Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts are linked together.
90 days
Marketing cookies are used to follow visitors to websites. The intention is to show ads that are relevant and engaging to the individual user.
A video-sharing platform for users to upload, view, and share videos across various genres and topics.
Registers a unique ID on mobile devices to enable tracking based on geographical GPS location.
1 day
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
Tries to estimate the users' bandwidth on pages with integrated YouTube videos. Also used for marketing
179 days
PREF
This cookie stores your preferences and other information, in particular preferred language, how many search results you wish to be shown on your page, and whether or not you wish to have Google’s SafeSearch filter turned on.
10 years from set/ update
YSC
Registers a unique ID to keep statistics of what videos from YouTube the user has seen.
Session
DEVICE_INFO
Used to detect if the visitor has accepted the marketing category in the cookie banner. This cookie is necessary for GDPR-compliance of the website.
179 days
LOGIN_INFO
This cookie is used to play YouTube videos embedded on the website.
