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Authors, Non-fiction, Reviews

‘A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War,’ by Joseph Loconte

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I’m not sure C. S. Lewis would have approved of this book. He maintained, on numerous occasions, that an author’s biography should be of no interest to the reader. Studying the lives of Milton or of Spenser, he insisted, would provide no insight into the meanings of their works beyond what an intelligent reader can gather from reading the plain texts.

Still, I think Joseph Loconte’s A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War serves a useful purpose. Amidst the tremendous popularity of the works of Tolkien and Lewis all these decades after their deaths, there’s a lot of misunderstanding about their artistic motivations (particularly in Tolkien’s case. I’m pretty sure a lot of fans of the movies think the books are about environmentalism). Loconte follows the two men’s lives, concentrating especially on their experiences in the First World War, and explains how the experience of battle (Lewis remembered thinking, “This is war. This is what Homer wrote about”) impressed itself on their memories and their imaginations. In the midst of the great disillusionment that swept Europe after the armistice, Tolkien kept his bearings, because he’d never fallen for over-optimistic enthusiasms like eugenics but had put his faith in eternal things. And in time he was able to help his friend Jack Lewis to understand as well.

For fans unfamiliar with the lives and the thought behind the books of these two men, A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War may be very illuminating. It’s well written and well researched. I recommend it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Sin Walks into the Desert,’ by Mat Ingwalson

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I’m not entirely sure what to say about Sin Walks into the Desert by Matt Ingwalson. The book’s concept was interesting enough to persuade me to download it, and I read it to the end (something I’m less and less willing to do with sub-par books). So this is a well-crafted and interesting novel. Very noir, in a modern vein, which is to say, kind of goth.

Sin (short for Anderson, his first name) is a… well it’s hard to figure what he is. He’s a loner. He looks and dresses and has tattoos like any ordinary punk, and he’s fairly neurotic. But he has special skills. As a boy (not that long ago) he was on the verge of murdering someone when his uncle (an FBI agent) summoned just in time by his worried parents, swept him up, took him home with him, and began training him to turn his natural gift for violence to useful purposes. But Sin never joined the FBI, or even the military. It isn’t made clear how he makes his living, unless I missed it.

Anyway, his uncle, whom he calls el Viejo, has disappeared, and friends fear something bad has happened to him. So Sin sets out to track the captors, employing the formidable skills he learned from the old man. This leads to a pretty shattering revelation, when all is said and done and a few people are dead.

If you like your books dark, you’ll like this one. I found Sin himself hard to like, but the writing and characterization are good, laid down in spare, downbeat prose.

Cautions for the usual. Moderately recommended, only because of my ambivalence about the main character.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Three Hostages,’ by John Buchan

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It was around 1980 that I caught a production of John Buchan’s The Three Hostages on PBS. The dramatization was a one-off; I don’t think that particular actor ever played Richard Hannay again. But it intrigued me enough to motivate me to read The 39 Steps, the first novel in the series. That made me a lifelong Buchan fan, but oddly enough I never read The Three Hostages until just now.

It’s good. I’d say it’s one of the stronger entries in a classic series.

In The Three Hostages, World War I is recently over. Richard Hannay, British intelligence agent extraordinaire, has settled down on a farm in Oxfordshire with his wife Mary (also a retired agent), and their small son. He looks forward (or thinks he does) to living the quiet life of a country squire. But then he receives an appeal for help. Three people, one of them a small boy, have been taken hostage. There is no clue as to the perpetrator. Reluctantly, Hannay agrees to look into it. Gradually he begins to suspect the last person anyone would suspect – a rising young politician who has endeared himself to nearly every influential person in London. A hopeless-seeming but successful investigation (hypnotism features strongly) is capped by a deadly man-to-man showdown in the Scottish highlands.

I was surprised – once again – by what a fine author John Buchan was. Among all the writers of the English “bulldog” school, nobody came near him when it came to writing readable prose. Richard Hannay is a vivid and likeable character, and all his friends are just as believable (his enemies, perhaps, a little less). He especially distinguishes himself in his descriptive passages, which are wonderfully done (this pleased me especially in the short section set in Norway).

Modern readers will be put off by racial and ethnic slurs which were a normal part of English life at the time. For some reason Hannay makes much of the villain having a round head, which he sees as un-English and sinister. On the other hand, those same readers will appreciate the active part Mary Hannay takes in the action.

If you’re open-minded enough to tolerate temporal diversity, The Three Hostages is great fun.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Last Train Out,’ by E. Phillips Oppenheim

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In the wake of my enjoyment of E. Phillips Oppenheim’s The Great Impersonation (reviewed a few inches below), I bought another of his vintage thrillers, Last Train Out. I enjoyed it quite a lot. Unlike Impersonation, which came near the beginning of the author’s career and involved the beginnings of World War I, this book was written about 1940 and is set at the start of World War II. I’m happy to report that the author’s eye had not dimmed, nor his natural force abated in the intervening years.

Charles Mildenhall is a young Englishman in the diplomatic service. He’s been found to be valuable in troubleshooting crises, so he flits about and puts his hand in wherever trouble pops up. In that capacity he enters Vienna around 1938. He makes the acquaintance of Leopold Benjamin, an immensely wealthy and much respected Jewish banker. Charles is invited to a dinner party at Benjamin’s palatial home, hoping to get a look at Mr. Benjamin’s fabled art collection. Alas, he is told that it’s not available to view at the moment. Mr. Benjamin’s American secretary, Patricia Grey, explains to him, confidentially, that efforts are being made to get the treasures out of the country before the Nazis march in. He almost meets Marius Blute, a mysterious international dabbler who is assisting Mr. Leopold.

Returning to Vienna a few months later, Charles finds both Patricia and Marius in desperate conditions, penniless, cut off, and with their job unfinished. Charles immediately puts his own funds at their disposal, and happily volunteers (partly because he’s fallen in love with Patricia) to assist them in the desperate enterprise of getting the paintings, packed in coffins, to Switzerland by rail. Both Germans and organized crime figures are hot on their heels.

The realism level isn’t very high, but it never is for this generation of thriller (come to think of it, all thrillers are unrealistic. Different generations just demand different kinds of realism in different subject areas). The final resolution might be seen as a kind of deus ex machina, but it’s been fairly set up by the author, though it’s perhaps a little far-fetched. (But certainly no more far-fetched than Bruce Willis driving a truck into a helicopter in flight.)

It should also be noted, for those who care, that the two main female characters in this book are more active and assertive than the women in his earlier work.

Pretty high quality fun. Nothing objectionable. Recommended.

Reviews

Amazon Prime Video Review: ‘Fortitude’

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Frankly, if I’d known the kind of show Fortitude was, I probably wouldn’t have watched it. I took it for a police procedural, sort of an extreme Broadchurch, but it turned out to be more like science fiction/horror (though the Wikipedia article calls it a “psychological thriller”).

It is sort of an extreme Broadchurch, though. Extreme in every way – more violence, more blood, more sex, less plausibility, and a far more extreme geographic location.

“Fortitude” is a fictional mining town on the Norwegian arctic island of Svalbard (though the filming was done in Iceland). It’s illegal, we are told, to die in Fortitude, because any pathogens in a body would be eternally preserved in the permafrost. Times are hard. The mines are playing out, and the governor is trying to interest investors in the idea of a “glacier hotel” to bring in the tourist trade.

There’s a heavy element of soap opera in the production. The central character seems to be the “sheriff,” a seemingly decent man with a dark secret. He’s obsessed with the hot Spanish waitress in town, but she’s having an affair with the rescue pilot, a married man. He sneaks out for a few minutes from watching his sick son to have a slap and tickle session with her. When he gets home he finds that the boy has wandered out into the snow. When he gets home, he’s covered in blood, which turns out to be that of a local scientist, who was murdered with a potato peeler and a cleaver.

Meanwhile, a couple local miners have discovered a frozen mammoth, which they hide away, hoping to sell it for a fortune. A detective from Scotland Yard (why would a Scotland Yard detective work in Svalbard? Something to do with mine ownership. It gets worse – he’s an American) comes to town to investigate the murder (a different one) of a mining engineer. A local photographer, who is dying of cancer and due for sanitary deportation, knows something about the death, but isn’t talking.

As I said, if I’d known the sort of story it was I probably wouldn’t have watched it, but by the time I figured that out I was seven episodes in (there are twelve in all) and too interested to stop. The mystery is intriguing, the acting excellent, and the visuals stunning (I was very impressed with the effects the cinematographer achieved with snow).

There’s lots to warn you about here. Sex, nudity, violence, graphic blood and guts, lots of foul language. But it caught me up, I’ll admit it. Not only the Icelandic locations, but the interesting character interactions. There’s some dialogue that questions the goodness of God. But the character dynamics actually argue to the contrary, it seems to me.

So it’s a good series, from the technical point of view. I can’t recommend it to our readers on moral grounds, but you can make your own judgments.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Great Impersonation,’ by E. Phillips Oppenheim

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Reader Nigel Ray recommended E. Phillips Oppenheim to me as an author, so I downloaded The Great Impersonation. I was pleased. This is an author I mean to get to know better.

Oppenheim had a long career, spanning the first half of the 20th Century. I’m embarrassed to have been only vaguely aware of him, because he was very good at his craft.

In The Great Impersonation, we follow Leopold Von Ragastein, a German agent operating just before World War I. He can easily pass as an Englishman, since he spent many years there and was educated at Oxford. While there he met Sir Everard Dominey, a disreputable and alcoholic young Englishman who, everyone noticed, looked enough like Leopold to be his twin. A chance meeting in Africa years later gives Leopold a perfect opportunity. All he has to do is dispose of the real Everard, assume his identity, and return to England (financed by German gold) to pay his debts and resume his place in society.

Most people are taken in. The only two people in England who seriously doubt his identity are a jealous old lover – who may mean real danger – and Everard’s wife. She went mad on a terrible night when Everard (she believes) killed a man who was obsessed with her. But that has nothing to do with Leopold, she insists, as he is not really her husband.

Leopold is an interesting character – a patriot and a man of honor torn between feeling and duty as Lady Dominey gradually regains her faculties, and he comes to love her.

The climax offers a very neat plot twist.

Although The Great Impersonation is technically a thriller, there’s actually not much action in it. And that’s fine with me – the drama is in the increasing tension between Leopold’s conflicting duties of honor and love. Modern readers will probably find the main female characters stereotyped, especially the childlike Lady Dominey, but I put up with that sort of thing just fine myself.

Well written, well plotted, and morally unobjectionable, The Great Impersonation was a pleasure to read. Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Red House Mystery,’ by A. A. Milne

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Roy Jacobsen suggested that I improve my education in classic mystery stories by reading The Red House by A. A. Milne (yes, that A. A. Milne). My previous knowledge of it was confined to the analysis contained in Raymond Chandler’s essay, “The Simple Art of Murder.” He found it wanting in almost every respect.

I didn’t hate the book, but I tend to agree with Chandler overall. I think that might be largely a function of history, though. The book’s central “trick,” surprising to readers in 1922, seemed fairly obvious to me, having read pretty extensively in the corpus of detective fiction from before and after this work. Also I may have gotten the solution from Chandler, but I’m pretty sure I’d forgotten it.

Mark Ablett, wealthy owner of The Red House, which sits on a large estate in England, receives a surprise visit from his long-lost brother, a wastrel recently returned from years in Australia. Voices from his office indicate a fight between the brothers, there is a gunshot, and when the locked door is opened by his secretary, the rascal brother is found dead. Mark, meanwhile, has vanished.

By pure chance, Tony Gillingham, a friend of one of Mark’s house guests, Bill Beverly, shows up just after the murder. More or less to amuse themselves, Tony and Bill stay on to play Holmes and Watson, and figure out what happened to Mark.

My main problem with The Red House, as I said, was that I figured out the trick of the thing well before the end. After that, I got impatient with the amateur sleuths, who talked, and talked, and talked, and operated in the most leisurely fashion imaginable.

The Red House is worth reading for its importance in the history of detective fiction, and it’s amusing enough at times (though not, I think, as amusing as the author thinks). There’s nothing whatever in the way of objectionable content – on the contrary, everyone is irreproachably proper in speech and deportment, except for the small matter of shooting someone.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Retaliators,’ by Donald Hamilton

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This vintage novel showed up as an e-book bargain on Amazon. I’d enjoyed previous books in the Matt Helm series, so I downloaded it.

Disclaimer: If you’ve ever seen the Dean Martin Matt Helm movies, put them out of your mind. The movies have only the most tenuous connection to the original books.

At the start of The Retaliators, Matt Helm, professional government assassin, finds himself in his home town of Santa Fe, the beneficiary of a suspicious windfall. Somebody has deposited $20,000 into his checking account, without his knowledge. It’s an old trick – clearly someone wants to discredit him, to make it look like he’s taken a bribe. His suspicions run to the director of a rival government security agency, who has a personal vendetta against his group. Meanwhile, he learns that one of his fellow agents, a man he trusts, has been arrested. Matt heads south to Mexico both to avoid the same fate and to carry out an assignment, but finds himself dodging agency enemies and “friends” who may or may not be trustworthy. There are also, of course, a couple of beautiful women in the mix.

Hamilton was a fine writer, and he told a lean, vivid story. Matt Helm is an interesting, if not always appealing, character, very much in the James Bond mold. He’s not quite a machine, but he’s a consummate professional. He’s largely cut himself off from close human relationships, and all considerations must take second place to doing the job, which is killing. If he gets the chance to right some wrongs along the way, that’s gravy, but it’s not his focus.

The Retaliators, like all the Matt Helm books, is an entertaining story in the “moral holiday” mode. Adult themes, but not extreme by today’s standards.

Reviews

Film review: ’13 Hours’

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Is it a political movie? Absolutely not.

Does it raise political questions? No way it couldn’t.

13 Hours is a harrowing (144 minutes) film, perhaps (I speak, of course, as someone whose entire battle experience has been with blunt weapons) as realistic a picture of combat as you’re likely to encounter in civilian life. The central character is Jack Silva (John Krasinski), whom we follow as he arrives in Benghazi and gets to know the security team at the “secret” CIA facility. We get a look at what you might call the Warrior Culture, the brotherhood of men who’ve developed a taste for living with danger, doing a job they believe makes a difference. Civilian life seems stale to them.

They’ll get all the action they want on September 11.

There are no speeches about the administration in this movie. When the guys talk, it’s mostly either talking trash – guy talk – or (sometimes in a weary, private moment) meditating on the meaning of it all. The question of where’s the cavalry, and whether the team can hold out long enough to get relief, is discussed in practical, immediate terms. Questions of final responsibility are conspicuous by their absence.

13 Hours is not for the faint of heart. The violence is graphic, the language often foul.

More than anything else, the film is a memorial to the dead. It’s deeply felt, and serious, and well worth your time if you can handle it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Bulldog Drummond,’ by H. C. McNeile

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In my ongoing quest to live in the past, turning a blind eye to the harsh truths of the modern world, I’ve been experimenting with reading some of the old classics in the mystery and adventure fields. I’ve long been a fan of John Buchan. I tried E.C. Bentley and Marjorie Allingham, and wasn’t overwhelmed. I thought I’d sample the Bulldog Drummond series, by H. C. (Sapper) McNeile, and I bought this inexpensive Kindle collection.

It’s pretty much what you’d expect. Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond is a big, unhandsome, wealthy Englishman, bored with civilian life after surviving World War I. One day he takes out an ad in the Times, offering to do any job as long as it’s dangerous. He has no objection to breaking the law in a good cause.

One of the numerous replies he receives stands out. A young woman, Phyllis Benton, asks him to investigate the group of men with whom her father has gotten involved. She fears that they’re dangerous, and are getting him into something illegal. Drummond promptly falls in love with the girl, and quickly starts interfering with the criminals (as indeed they prove to be) in various clever and annoying ways. He gradually comes to understand that it is no ordinary crime being planned by this international group, but an act of sabotage on a national scale.

It’s interesting that Drummond falls in love in this, the very first book in the series, and stays with the same girl through all the sequels. In our time that would probably seen as a drawback, limiting the hero’s sexual options. But in 1920, when the book came out, standards were different, and it probably served as a sign that while there would be violence to come, erotic hijinks would not be on the menu.

The book was entertaining in a sort of schoolboy way, but I found it a little naïve. Perhaps my tastes have been corrupted by modern mystery stories, but I like a little more complexity in my heroes. Hugh Drummond talks piffle quite in the same vein as Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey, but Sayers does it better, and Lord Peter has a deeper heart.

Still, it was a ripping enough yarn for the sort of thing it is. Mindless entertainment, competently delivered. Nothing particularly objectionable on the moral side.