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Reviews

Netflix review: ‘Norsemen’

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Norsemen

I really wanted to like Norsemen, a Viking Age comedy produced by the Norwegian NRK network. The series is filmed at the reconstructed Viking farm at Bukkøy, which is associated with the North Way Interpretational Center at Avaldsnes, Karmøy, Norway. Avaldsnes is the parish where my great-grandfather Walker was born and baptized. I’ve been to the Viking Farm, so when I watch this show I’m looking at a familiar place.

In the first episode, a shipload of Viking raiders under the command of Chieftain Olav return to their home in Norway. Olav’s brother, Orm, has been in charge in his absence, and he’s so bad at it that old men are reduced to jumping off a cliff to reduce the number of mouths to feed. Orm’s wife, Frøya, was along on the raid as a warrior, while Orm himself is pretty much useless with weapons. She despises him. Olav’s chief warrior is named Arvid. Olav arranges for Arvid to marry a widow – or rather, she becomes a widow after he’s killed her husband. But they find themselves incompatible. Meanwhile, the chief slave, Kark (saga fans will recognize that classical reference), gives instruction to the newest slave, Rufus of Rome, a professional actor who seems to think he’s on a pleasure cruise and keeps complaining about the accommodations.

What you’ve got here, essentially, is the History Channel’s Vikings series, crossed with The Office. The costumes and hair are intentionally similar to those on the Vikings show (which is to say, even worse. Black leather, which real Vikings never had, abounds). But the dialogue is straight out of The Office, with people talking in 21st century jargon. That dialogue concerns a lot of killing, which is played for laughs, and it’s also very smutty. The program was filmed in both Norwegian and English, so what you see on Netflix is neither dubbed nor subtitled.

I watched three episodes. The first two, which mostly introduced us to the characters, seemed to me kind of rudderless. But the plot began functioning at the end of Episode Two, and I went on to watch the third one. I could probably continue, because the story got more interesting once I detected a plot, and realized that the characters I’d felt sorry for were pretty much as awful as the characters I’d hated. What it boils down to is that this is one of those shows about appalling people whom I don’t care about at all. And considering the level of profanity (very, very) black humor, and casual violence, plus a little nudity, I don’t think I’ll continue with it. And I don’t recommend it to our readers.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Brass in Pocket,’ by Stephen Puleston

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Brass in Pocket

The idea of an obsessive-compulsive detective is not a new one. Most of us are familiar with the American TV series, “Monk.” The difference with Stephen Puleston’s North Wales detective, Inspector Ian Drake, is that Drake’s OCD isn’t played for laughs. His affliction puts a genuine strain on his relationships, his career, and his personal safety.

In Brass in Pocket, Inspector Drake is called to a crime scene where two policemen have been murdered – with a crossbow. An array of traffic cones has been arranged by their car, forming the number “4”. And then the killer sends the police a message, consisting of the lyrics of a 1970s rock song.

Struggling with lack of sleep and his need to carry out his personal, calming rituals, Inspector Drake, with his team, follows every lead they can find to stop a killer who’s constantly a jump ahead of them, as the numbers count down and the rock lyrics keep coming in. The solution, when they find it, is almost unthinkable.

The OCD element in the book is intriguing, but it wasn’t enough to make it work for me. Drake and the other characters just didn’t come alive. Physical descriptions were rare, and the players were hard to tell apart. The suspects completely blended into one another, for this reader.

My perceptions may be skewed, however. It’s possible that, since I have certain obsessive characteristics myself, I just found Drake’s character too close to home, and reacted against it. But I found the plot hard to keep track of, and the story undistinguished.

So I can’t recommend it. Your kilometerage may vary.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘The Vikings: A New History,’ by Neil Oliver

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The Vikings: A New History

Another history of the Vikings. This one, by Neil Oliver, a Scottish archaeologist and TV presenter, is more subjective than, say, The Age of the Vikings by Anders Winroth, which I reviewed recently. I don’t rate The Vikings: A New History as highly as Winroth’s book purely as a scholarly work, but I expect it might be just the gateway book for some readers.

The Vikings: A New History takes a generally chronological approach, which is a useful thing. Books on the Vikings, even histories, tend to separate various geographical spheres of interest into watertight sections. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I think there’s also a need for a work that displays the sweep of Viking activity overall, decade by decade. So author Oliver has done a service in that regard.

The execution is a little idiosyncratic. The book begins (apart from personal reminiscences by the author, telling how he came to be interested in the Vikings) with quite a long survey of Scandinavian history beginning in the Ice Age. In compensation, perhaps, it seemed to me the later stages of Viking history got treated in a somewhat perfunctory manner. As if the author was running out of pages and needed to compress. Continue reading ‘The Vikings: A New History,’ by Neil Oliver →

Fiction, Reviews

‘A Fragile Thing,’ by Kevin Wignall

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A Fragile Thing

“I worry about you, that’s all. And I want you to be happy.”

He smiled, but said no more because he didn’t want to lie to her again, not about something so unimportant.

There is a class of authors whose work just flies over my head. I don’t get them. I accept their greatness based on the testimony of readers smarter than I.

Kevin Wignall is an author I sometimes don’t understand, but I like him anyway.

A Fragile Thing is a challenging book presented in disarmingly simple form. I enjoyed it, but I’m not sure how to evaluate it.

Max Emerson is an international money man, and fabulously rich, living in Italy. He invests money for some of the wealthiest, most powerful, and most evil people in the world – dictators, crime lords, drug kingpins, human traffickers. He tells people (frequently) that he never breaks the law. And that’s technically true. But he has facilitated and turned a blind eye to a number of crimes. Now he’s under pressure from the FBI, and hackers are threatening his records.

Max is alienated from his older brother and sister, and their families. His brother in particular is ashamed of Max’s reputation. This makes family events awkward, and Max generally visits his parents, in their Swiss mansion, only when his siblings aren’t around.

But when his parents are killed in an accident, and Max gets a posthumous letter from his mother, saying that if they die suddenly they’ve probably been murdered, Max is the one family member with the knowledge and resources to hunt down and punish the killer. Which he does, in a very surprising way. Continue reading ‘A Fragile Thing,’ by Kevin Wignall →

Fiction, Reviews

‘Time and Tide,’ by Peter Grainger

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Time and Tide

As you’ve probably noticed, I have a fondness for British police procedural mysteries. Of all the series I’ve sampled, I think I like Peter Grainger’s DC Smith mysteries best.

It’s probably mainly the central character I enjoy. Detective Sergeant D.C. Smith is a curmudgeon, an older cop who conceals an essentially kindly nature behind a crusty exterior. He uses his dry sense of humor as a tool to keep his opponents – both professional and criminal – off balance. He’s nearing retirement as Time and Tide begins. Police work is changing. He’s never warmed to the use of the computer (though he’s happy to have his underlings take advantage of them), and recent force reorganizations have played hob with his carefully trained and organized team. Although he’s only a sergeant (he rejected promotion; it would confine him behind a desk), he’s effectively the leader of that team.

In Time and Tide, a body is discovered floating in the sea off the Norfolk coast by a party of seal-watching tourists. The deceased was a large, tough-looking specimen dressed in an expensive suit, without any form of ID. In time he’s identified as a London businessman, once a gangster but now “legitimate.”

DC Smith is (or feels himself to be) as much hampered by the police bureaucracy as by the villains. He has a new detective inspector over his head, and he happens to be a man who once questioned Smith in connection with a murder. On the civilian side, he faces the challenge of a small community looking after its own – confident it can take care of its own problems, and resentful of official interference. And in the background, there’s a mysterious elderly woman of great natural beauty, a one-time pop star who has been living in obscurity on the coast for decades.

There’s a valedictory quality to Time and Tide. Smith has given his resignation and named the date of his retirement, and everything happens in the shade of that deadline. But there’s a couple months left, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if author Grainger doesn’t find a way to squeeze one or two more mysteries into that window of time.

Some people may find this book slow, because it’s pretty realistic about the amount of time and effort paperwork and legwork take up in any investigation. But I enjoyed it immensely. Only mild cautions for language and mature themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dead Eyed’ by Matt Brolly

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Dead Eyed

This one runs counter to the trend I observed (or thought I observed) a few days ago – that English mystery writing is tending toward rural and small town settings. Dead Eyed, by Matt Brolly, is a fully urban mystery, dividing its time between London and Bristol.

Michael Lambert is a London detective chief inspector. For several years he has been part of a secretive special division, but now he’s on compassionate leave following the death of his young daughter. He originally went into police work in the wake of the torture murder of a college friend, one of a series of such murders that remain unsolved.

Now, about 15 years later, another man is found murdered the same way – his eyes cut out of his head, and a Latin phrase meaning “The eyes are the windows of the soul” carved into his chest. Although he has no official standing, Michael pulls strings to be allowed to participate in the investigation. It’s not only a matter of closing a cold case; it’s perhaps an opportunity to exorcise some personal devils. The killer is extremely clever, always a step ahead of the investigators – and the murders are continuing.

Dead Eyed is an example of a book that was well done in many ways, but was clearly not for me – in the sense that the author doesn’t want people like me for readers. Author Brolly (what a perfect English name!) approaches the world from a very modern perspective. Abortion is morally neutral. Homosexuality is absolutely laudable. And religion is an aberration, a weird activity catering to a few weak-minded people, largely bigots.

The writing is good, the characters interesting, the dialogue professional. I thought the resolution of the book a little disappointing – the killer’s motivations are never really explained. But it’s a good novel, especially considered as a first novel. Recommended on its merits, but not really meant for Christians.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cold Land,’ by John Oakes

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Cold Land

Another mystery set in Minnesota. I keep buying these things. Was John Oakes’s Cold Land more satisfying to me than the previous suspects? Read on and learn…

Jake Adler is a proud Texas Ranger. But he loves his wife, who left him, taking their two daughters, to go home to Minnesota. So Jake bit the bullet and drove north, lured by a job opening in Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

But this isn’t the elite, professional BCA so many of us know from John Sandford’s Prey novels. The BCA in this novel is a moribund organization, crippled by budget cuts. Just a few agents wander its empty office building, and those are mostly low achievers dumped by other agencies. This shocks Jake, but what’s worse is that he’s told his application (despite his credentials) will have to go in the queue with others, and he must wait a couple weeks for a decision.

But there’s a secretary in the center of the wreck of BCA, one of those indispensable, competent women who keep organizations afloat. She tells Jake, confidentially, that if he goes along to help Jerry Unger, a veteran agent, with a petty fraud case, she thinks she can find a way to get him hired. So Jake accompanies Jerry on that not-very-promising assignment. Only they discover a body, which makes it a murder investigation, and Jerry and Jake are now competing with other cops to thwart what gradually is revealed to be a major hijacking plot. Along the way, Jake will make shocking personal discovery.

I guess the portrayal of Minnesota is only fair. In so many novels, we see the south through northern eyes, and get an endless vista of gap-toothed, inbred rednecks. In this book, we have Minnesota viewed through southern (Texan) eyes, and the prospect is no more appealing. Minnesota seems to be full of trailer trash too. In fact we see little of the state here besides blighted neighborhoods, and the weather’s cold to boot.

I didn’t take these descriptions personally (though I wondered what Oakes has against Anoka, for which he reserves special derision. I always thought Anoka kind of a yuppy, arty place). I also found the plot a little hard to follow (which may be only a comment on me).

My real problem was with the tone of the thing. The book has a sort of a black humor voice, with serious crimes yoked to light dialogue. John Sandford finds a balance when he writes this kind of story, but Cold Land didn’t entirely gel for me. The various plot elements seemed to work against each other.

But author Oakes shows promise. I think he’ll improve with time. Cautions for the usual stuff. Some themes seemed conservative to me, but a couple shots were taken at Christians.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dead Hill,’ by John Dean

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Dead Hill

In the previous John Dean novel I read, To Die Alone (reviewed south of here), I came away kind of cool to the main character. Detective Inspector Jack “Hawk” Harris operates in a fictional small town in northern England. He seemed a fairly garden variety literary detective in the Inspector Morse mode – eccentric, poorly socialized, and rude to everyone (including his superior). His chief virtue was his love for animals, especially his black Labrador, Scoot, who accompanies him pretty much everywhere.

In this novel, Dead Hill (actually an earlier installment in the series), I got a better opportunity to know Inspector Harris, and I liked him better. He’s even admirable at times.

A man is found dead at the bottom of a cliff in an old quarry. However (as Harris immediately suspects) the man did not fall by accident. He was struck on the head and pushed, according to the medical examiner. Suspicion falls on a couple of visitors in the area, shady types out to steal the eggs of golden eagles for collectors. But witnesses report a third man with them – though they deny that.

A lot of people are telling lies about a lot of things, and Harris’s investigation leads him back into his own past. Many of the villains in this complex case were fellows he went to school with as a boy – and he himself came within an inch of following on their path. But he didn’t know them as well as he thought he did, and he will see many of his memories and assumptions turned upside down before all is done.

Harris’s moral character is more on display here than in the last book I read, and that improved the story immensely for me. I enjoyed it quite a bit and recommend it. With mild cautions, of course, for language and disturbing themes.

Reviews

Netflix viewing report: ‘Hell on Wheels’

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Hell on Wheels

The series “Hell on Wheels” was recommended to me.

I must explain, or apologize, for the title of the series – not for inventing it of course, but for not rejecting out of hand a show with a curse word in its name. “Hell on Wheels” is actually a historically bona fide term. When the Intercontinental Railroad was being built, there was a mobile town that moved with it. Whenever End of Track got out of sight, they’d load the town up on wagons, move it a couple miles, and rebuild it at the new railhead. They called it “Hell on Wheels,” which is where the expression comes from. As the name suggests, it was a town devoted to vice.

We follow former Confederate soldier Cullen Bohannon (Anson Mount). He has come west, not for his fortune, but for revenge. A group of Yankee soldiers violated and murdered his wife during the war, and he’s hunting them down one by one. Cullen is an interesting antihero – a man with great capabilities, but hollowed out by hate. When denied his vengeance, he collapses into a bottle.

Through circumstances I’ll skip over, Cullen becomes foreman of the Union Pacific work crew. He commands both white workers and black workers, chief among them Elam Ferguson (played by the rapper, Common) with whom he strikes up a fragile and hostile alliance. His boss is “Doc” Durant (Colm Meany), a pure huckster out for the biggest of scores. Cullen’s nemesis is “The Swede” (Chris Heyerdahl), the head of security (he confides that he’s actually a Norwegian), a man who seems to combine piety with tremendous corruption and contempt for human life.

But there are (and I salute the producers for this) actually decent, decently portrayed Christians in this series. The preacher who ministers to Hell on Wheels (Tom Noonan) delivers a pretty good explanation of the gospel as he tries to minister to Cullen’s hollowed out soul. Or at least as far as I’ve watched so far—four episodes.

Last night, after watching that fourth episode, I had what seemed like an epiphany, an attack of what I might call Writer’s Disease. I realized that, given the arc of the plot, it’s almost inevitable that something really awful is going to happen to the most sympathetic character in the series. The story kind of demands it.

And I’m not sure I have the courage to go on watching, and see that.

Writer’s Disease? Or just an old man’s moral cowardice? I’m wrestling with the question.

“Hell on Wheels” is not bad if you can handle the language and adult themes. No actual nudity so far.

Fiction, Reviews

‘To Die Alone,’ by John Dean

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To Die Alone

Without going to all the bother of doing a serious, scientific survey, I get the strong impression that British crime fiction is becoming heavily “Midsomerized” just now. By that I mean that nobody really wants to read about what’s going on in the urban centers, so people are opting for stories about crime in small English communities, where the suspects are generally white and the situations less fraught with political deadfalls.

There are several such series to choose from, and I’ve reviewed books from a few. This time I gave a shot to John Dean’s (not the American Watergate figure) Inspector Harris series. And it wasn’t bad at all.

Jack Harris (his nickname is “Hawk,” but don’t do it without his permission) is a detective chief inspector in the fictional hamlet of Levton Bridge in the northern Pennines region. A former soldier, he’s smart and strong and shrewd. He worked for a time in London, but eagerly took the opportunity to return to the village where he grew up, because his deepest love is for the nature of the region, and for wildlife. Each book in the series, I gather, involves some crime against animals.

In To Die Alone, a man does just what the title suggests. He’s found dead in the woods, possibly struck by a tree in a windstorm, but in fact stabbed to death. Soon after that his dog is found, terribly mauled by some animal, probably another dog. That suggests to Harris a connection to a dog fighting ring which he knows to be operating locally. And that leads to illegal gambling, and the world of exotic animal smuggling. All the time Harris tries to keep his commander (whom he despises) in the dark while directing his two subordinates – a transplanted Cockney who yearns for the bright lights and a callow young female detective.

Jack Harris should have been more annoying to me than he was. I dislike people who care more for animals than humans, and Harris is clearly one of those. However, he isn’t painted as a paragon, and he came off quite sympathetically (most of the time). The writing is very good as well.

Recommended, with mild cautions for the usual suspects.