Category Archives: Reviews

Non-fiction, Reviews

Political Thought: A Student's Guide, by Hunter Baker

Leave a comment


Order is not any kind of moral ultimatum. The only reason to desire order is to make something else possible. Order is a means to an end. If what order gives us is not good, then we should not continue to uphold that order. For example, a dictator may give us order, but his order may not be worth preserving as we perceive ourselves to lose more by it than we gain. This takes us in the direction John Locke went with his work. Order is there only to secure something else, and something more than mere protection from violent death. What is that something more? Is it freedom? Is it justice?

Mark Twain once wrote a story called “Political Economy,” which is what they called Political Science in his time (in that more humble age political thinkers didn’t pretend to be scientists). I memorized it at one point and used to recite it to my friends when we got together, in a bargain-basement Hal Holbrook style. It told how the author sat down to write an essay on the subject (“the dearest to my heart of all this world’s philosophy”) but kept getting interrupted by a lightning rod salesman, who eventually prevailed to the extent that Twain bought his entire stock of rods and had them mounted on his roof, so that all the lightning in that region of the heavens was attracted to his house, setting off the greatest pyrotechnic spectacle ever seen.

Our friend Hunter Baker has written a short book called Political Thought: A Student’s Guide. Though not as funny as Twain’s story, it’s one of the more lively books you’ll find on the subject. Instead of doing a historic overview, telling how philosophical ideas developed through the work of various thinkers, he starts with things that most readers have experience with – families. He describes his own and his wife’s families, and how their different habits of interaction and discipline worked in different ways. Then he imagines two very different kinds of families – a tyrannical family and a loving one – and relates them to the ideas of the great political thinkers of history, especially Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke.

If you’re looking for an effective Christian primer on politics for young people, you could hardly do better than this. In fact, even I learned a few things, and it’s well known that I know pretty much everything. The only fault I can find with this book that I’m not quoted in it, a failing common to a surprising number of books on Political Science (or Economy).

Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

Henry Wood Detective Agency, by Brian Meeks

Leave a comment

You’ve probably noticed that, from time to time, I review a novel and tell you that I admired the writing, but did not like the book, either because of the characters or the values, or just the author’s attitude.

Henry Wood Detective Agency by Brian Meeks presents precisely the opposite situation, and I don’t recall this happening before. I didn’t think the writing was great, but I liked the book immensely, like a friend who never combs his hair and isn’t very articulate, but is still a lot of fun to be with.

The story starts on New Year’s Day 1955. Henry Wood is a Manhattan private detective. He’s a quiet man whose great pleasures are reading and woodworking.

A beautiful young woman comes into his office and asks him to help her find a journal belonging to her father, an accountant who has disappeared. He takes the case. Soon after another beautiful young woman comes to him and asks him to find the same journal. She’s the daughter of an inventor, who has also disappeared.

This is kind of fishy, but things are about to get fishier still. There’s a mob connection, and there’s a fire and a murder, and cryptic clues lead to strange – make that improbable – discoveries.

There’s also a science fiction – or fantasy — element. Henry has a closet in his house which periodically dispenses “gifts” – magazines dated in the future, woodworking tools, even a DVD player with a disk (and, thankfully, instructions).

It’s all very bizarre. I kept being reminded of Alice in Wonderland, though this isn’t the same kind of story at all. Through all this strangeness Henry Wood maintains his quiet, earnest character. He does right, and he works most of it out in the end.

Brian Meeks’ writing style is odd. It’s extremely understated. That could be a brilliant stylistic choice on the author’s part, though a fair number of common writing errors scattered through the story suggest that it isn’t. But I wish more new authors would opt for plain, simple prose instead of trying to dazzle us and failing. The dialogue is odd – the characters generally avoid contractions, saying “I will” instead of “I’ll,” and “do not” instead of “don’t.”

But reading Henry Wood Detective Agency was a very pleasant experience. The prose was almost incantatory. It relaxed me.

I enjoyed this book and plan to read the others in the series.

Recommended. It has subdued violence, no sex, and one obscenity that I noticed.

Non-fiction, Reviews

Viking Warfare, by I. P. Stephenson

Leave a comment


A few years back, an author named Paddy Griffith wrote a book called The Viking Art of War, which has since been cordially disliked by Viking reenactors all over the world. Griffith held an essentially low opinion of Viking tactics and strategies, and (as I recall) of Viking intelligence in general.
Now I. P. Stephenson has written a new book on the subject, Viking Warfare. Paddy Griffith ought to welcome its appearance, since it will provide a new target for the hate. Reenactors will hate this book just as much, but for different reasons.
Stephenson’s first sin (in my view) is to utterly reject the Icelandic sagas as a source of historical information. If he has read Prof. Torgrim Titlestad’s defense of saga reliabiliity, he dismisses it out of hand. The sagas were written centuries after the events, he says, for the purpose of glamorizing the authors’ ancestors. For that reason they cannot be trusted at any point.
But he nevertheless maintains that we have enough information to provide material for a book. Unfortunately, he fails to demonstrate that contention. He analyzes the history of Viking activities, their battle strategies, and their equipment, and all the way through he ends almost every discussion with the equivalent of, “But we don’t really know for sure.” If you enjoy seeing an author admit his ignorance over and over, this is the book for you.
He also makes a number of summary judgments which I, as a reenactor myself, find doubtful. Shield walls were only loose formations, he tells us, not solid lines of overlapped shields. The “swine” formation was a simple column, not a wedge. Leather helmets are purely fictional. Scramasaxes were seldom carried. Hundreds of reenactors around the world, me among them, will disagree on several of these points, not on the basis of academic research, but through experience on the field.
It’s only at the very end, where he examines the Battle of Maldon, that Stephenson breaks out and actually makes an interesting contribution to the historical discussion. He does his best to rehabilitate Byrhtnoth Byhrthelmsson, the English commander at the poetically immortalized battle, whose leadership was condemned by no less a scholar than J. R. R. Tolkien. Stephenson argues – persuasively – that if you consider the battle from the perspective of Byhrtnoth’s primary objective – to prevent the Vikings’ escape – everything he did makes good sense. He just had the bad luck to get killed.
Scholarly types will want to read Viking Warfare just for its unconventional arguments, but I don’t think it has much useful to offer the average reader.

Fiction, Reviews

Unlimited, by Davis Bunn

Leave a comment

Simon Orwell is a bartender who used to be an electrical engineer. When we first encounter him in Davis Bunn’s novel Unlimited, he’s in a Mexican ditch, fleeing an assassin, trying to protect a device he helped invent.

Simon had a promising career before he self-destructed and betrayed his closest friend, a professor from Mexico. Professor Vasquez’s great dream was to find a way to salvage the energy wasted in electric generation and transmission, to provide cheap energy for the poor. Now he’s been e-mailing Simon, telling him he’s made a breakthrough and wants him to come and join him with his version of the device.

Simon was eager to come. Not so much for the project, though that interests him, but for a more personal reason. To ask Vasquez’s forgiveness.

When he finally reaches his goal, the village of Ojinaga just south of a desolate stretch of the border, he finds that Prof. Vasquez has been murdered. Injured and still pursued by the assassin, he finds refuge in a Christian orphanage, where the director, Harold Finch, a former NASA scientist, has drained his personal fortune caring for the children. He’d like to see Prof. Vasquez’s dream realized as a way to subsidize the orphans’ care. But as much as that, he’d like to see Simon find the answer to his personal torment.

Simon is also befriended by two of Harold’s co-workers, Pedro and Sofia, both of whom grew up in the orphanage. Pedro is assistant to the town mayor, a rising politician who is dating Sofia. Sofia feels obligated to marry the man for the sake of the good he can do the orphanage. But she doesn’t love him, and gradually – against her will – she finds herself drawn to Simon, whom she doesn’t even trust.

Meanwhile drug cartels are interested in Prof. Vasquez’s device for some reason. Simon finds himself in a cross-fire, terrified that he’s bringing danger on the first people to care about him in a long time. And he’s not even sure he wants to go on living, bearing the weight of guilt and self-loathing. His new friends offer an answer, but could there really be a power so unlimited?

Unlimited genuinely moved me. The story, if you accept its science fiction premise (which is not that outlandish), is believable, and the characters live and breathe. I wouldn’t rank Bunn in the top tier as a stylist. It seemed to me that time and again he chooses almost the right word, rather than the right word that would really have sung. But your taste may differ. I also suspect that Mexican government corruption, though certainly addressed in the story, is underestimated.

Recommended. Unlimited will go on sale September 1. (A movie of the same title, starring Fred Thompson, is scheduled for release in October.)

Full disclosure: I received a free advance review copy of Unlimited.

Fiction, Reviews

Last Chance Lassiter, by Paul Levine

Leave a comment

I’ve reviewed one or two of Paul Levine’s Jake Lassiter novels before. The books irritate me a little, but they also entertain me a great deal, and I generally recommend them.

Last Chance Lassiter is a prequel. It goes back to tell the story of how Miami lawyer Jake Lassiter came to be in practice on his own.

When the book begins, he’s a round peg in a square hole. A former pro football player whose lasting fame comes from making a wrong-way run on national TV, he’s earned his law degree and joined a high-priced firm, which values him primarily for his contributions to its touch football team. He refuses to dress like a lawyer, refuses to decorate his office like a lawyer, and is not beyond getting physical with a prospective client who offends him.

Soon he’s no longer working for that firm.

So he sets up in a tiny, windowless office in a parking ramp, and screens a string of unpromising clients. Then a woman comes in, the granddaughter of a famous but impoverished blues singer, asking him to help them sue a rap star who seems to have plagiarized one of the old man’s songs. This is a case Jake believes in and he throws himself into it, even though he’ll be up against his old employers, and knows them to be smart, ruthless, and very well capitalized, unlike himself. Jakes first case just might be his last.

Last Chance Lassiter was a fast read, and I enjoyed it a lot, even though I wanted to slap Jake upside the head occasionally. His “loose cannon, plays by his own rules” act has been done a thousand times, and I grew bored with it long ago. Jake even sets it up as his professional motto: “I live by no laws but my own.” This is moral hooey. It never seems to occur to him that his corrupt former employers live by exactly the same motto.

Still, plenty of fun, and lots of fighting for the underdog. Cautions for language and sexual situations.

Non-fiction, Reviews

The Vikings: A History, by Robert Ferguson

Leave a comment

But, while all of these [various morally relative assessments of the Viking Age] are entirely valid perspectives, the pendulum may have swung too far: as one modern historian puts it, the revisionist view has come close to giving us an image of the Vikings as a group of ‘long-haired tourists who roughed up the locals a bit.’ Among the aims of this book is to restore the violence to the Viking Age, and to try to show why our understanding is incomplete without it.

I’ve already referred to Robert Ferguson’s The Vikings: A History twice on this blog, here and here, having found it an informative and instructive book. If I’d been disappointed or offended, I’d have more to say. As it is, I’ll offer a short review of quite a good general history of the Viking Age.
Why a new history of the Vikings? Because we keep learning stuff. You’ve got to run to keep pace with our knowledge of the early middle ages nowadays. People like me, especially, who take it upon ourselves to lecture on the subject, need to take the initiative to keep our reading up. I thought what I learned about the Oseberg ship, linked above, was worth the price in itself.
Author Ferguson makes the considerable contribution of including something I’ve written about here before, and which was perhaps introduced in English-language history books by my friend Prof. Torgrim Titlestad, in a work that didn’t get the attention it should have – the new (actually old) theory that the Viking raids were initially sparked by Charlemagne’s brutalities against the Saxons. Having shared that useful idea, Ferguson does little more with it, which I think is appropriate. It seems to me that, even if the original spark was religious, the Viking raids continued for plain reasons of profit. There are no images of peace-loving, put-upon Viking victims here, and that suits me just fine.
Ferguson spends what seems to me adequate time, within the limits of a single (if long) volume, following the activities of the Norse through all their major fields of activity around the world, and through the three centuries of that activity. I caught one or two small errors of fact, ones I knew to be fact, but that’s inevitable in a work of this scope.
Highly recommended for all who are interested in the subject, and especially for curious newcomers.

Reviews

'Who' is a hero

Leave a comment

The big news items of the past week, to judge from the comments of my Facebook friends, was the choice of actor Peter Capaldi as the new Doctor Who. I’m fairly unmoved myself, as I stopped watching that series around the time of the Great Hiatus (though I’ve seen most of older episodes). I don’t trust the new production team; the people who produce it are prominent promoters of the Gay Movement, as Torchwood demonstrates.

But the name Peter Capaldi rang a bell. Couldn’t place it at first. Then I remembered. He played Johnny Oldsen, the geeky young Scots linguist, in one of my very favorite movies, Local Hero. It was, I am informed, his first major movie role.



Capaldi (right) with fisherman Alan Mowat in “Local Hero.”



Local Hero is a Bill Forsyth movie. Forsyth was a rising star back in the early ‘80s. He made several well-received comedies about the lives of urban young people in Scotland. His success got him the opportunity to work with Warner Brothers, and so he wrote and directed what I consider his best film (though Anthony Sacramone prefers Gregory’s Girl. What does he know?)

The main character in Local Hero is “Mac” MacIntyre (Peter Riegert), who works for Knox Oil, a major corporation in Houston. His life is all about communications at a distance (“I’m really a telex man”) and shallow or broken relationships close at hand. He gets chosen to go to Scotland and negotiate the purchase of an entire fishing village, along with its bay and adjacent acreage, for a refinery and storage facility, because he has a Scottish name – even though he’s actually of Hungarian descent. Admitted to the other-worldly Presence of his boss, Mr. Happer (Burt Lancaster) he finds that the old man doesn’t actually care much about the acquisition at all, but is insistent that he keep his eyes on the sky – his real dream is to discover a comet he can name after himself. Continue reading 'Who' is a hero →

Fiction, Reviews

Thread of Suspicion, and Thread of Betrayal, by Jeff Shelby

Leave a comment


One of the delights of owning a Kindle is that often, when you’ve finished a book in a series and just have to find out what happens next, you can go online and download it in a couple minutes. That’s what I did when I’d finished Jeff Shelby’s Thread of Suspicion, and went on to Thread of Betrayal.
I reviewed the first book in this series, Thread of Hope, last year, and gave it high praise. It was the story of a driven man, Joe Tyler, a former San Diego cop whose life got upended when his daughter was kidnapped from his front yard just before Christmas. He stopped being a cop and he stopped being a husband. Instead he became an investigator searching for lost children. He found every one he looked for – except for the one who mattered most.
But at the end of Thread of Hope he got a surprise – a cop friend handed him a photo taken from a seemingly unrelated missing child file. The photo was taken in Minneapolis, and showed two little girls, one of whom was clearly Elizabeth, his own daughter.
Thread of Suspicion finds him in Minneapolis in the bitter mid-winter, trying to locate the family of the other girl in the picture. When that trail fades out, he’s referred to a local woman who’s devoted her life to helping street kids. She agrees to use her contacts to help him, but in return she wants a favor. A homeless boy she’d been particularly close to has disappeared, and because of his very special family situation he may be in serious danger. Solving that problem, Joe discovers a new trail of his own to follow. But he also gets a surprise that causes him to suddenly mistrust people he’s believed in up to now.

In Thread of Betrayal he teams up with his ex-wife Lauren in Denver, again on the trail of a daughter who now seems to be on the run from something. Repeated near-misses and disappointments make this one a real nail-biter. It ends with a kind of a resolution, but unanswered questions remain, so I suspect there’ll be at least one more book in the series.
I highly recommend all the books in Jeff Shelby’s Thread series. I agonized with these people and sometimes wept with them. Jeff Shelby creates characters with blood in their veins, and that blood sometimes gets shed. Also I may have missed something, but I thought the language was pretty restrained.
My highest recommendation. Loved them.

Fiction, Publishing, Reviews

'Hard Case Crime' mysteries

Leave a comment

It’s our usual practice here at Brandywine Books to post cover art for the books we review, but I’m going to skip that in making a reading report on a selection of mystery novels from Hard Case Crime. Their publishing strategy, which I applaud in the abstract, is to try to recreate the substance and spirit of the old hard-boiled paperback detective novels of the 1950s (many of which were published by Fawcett Gold Medal, a publisher born in the town where I live). In order to do this, they put out reasonably priced reprints of out-of-print classics (including, bizarrely, The Valley of Fear by “A. C. Doyle”), and also publish new works in the pulp tradition. This extends to racy cover art with lots of blazing handguns, fistfights, and half-naked women. Which explains why I’m not posting any covers.

Having some Amazon gift card money to spend, I bought five of Hard Case’s titles. Alas, I must report that I probably won’t be patronizing them again soon. I encountered some very good writing here, but I don’t think the stories will appeal much to our audience.

The first one I read, and one I rather liked, was 361, a classic by the great Donald E. Westlake. This is a story of a man who comes back from World War II service to unlooked-for peacetime carnage. Maimed in an assassination attempt, he learns that his family is not the family he thought it was, and sets out on a vendetta.

Baby Moll, by John Farris, is also well-written. It’s about a Florida man who used to be an enforcer for a crime boss, but has given up that life and gotten engaged to a “nice” girl. But, as you’d expect, they “drag him in again,” and he goes back into a world of murder, seduction, and betrayal, and gets a taste of it all. There is some heart in this book, but the body count is awfully high.

Songs of Innocence, by Richard Aleas, left me very cold. Excellently written, it’s the story of a young private detective investigating the apparent suicide of a female friend. This is a book that should be confiscated – by force if necessary – from any person prone to depression.

Fifty-To-One, by Charles Ardai, is a very bizarre book, a novelty piece. It was written to celebrate the fiftieth book release by Hard Case, and to mark the occasion Ardai produced a novel of fifty chapters, each using one of the Hard Case book titles, in sequence of publication, as its chapter title. The story of a young girl from South Dakota in big, bad New York City, this book has sort of a lighthearted, Perils of Pauline quality, but is more interesting as an exercise than as a compelling narrative. Fifty chapters of this were too many.

And finally, The First Quarry, by our old friend Max Allan Collins. This is the first in a series of novels which constitute a kind of departure for Collins. In place of his usually more sympathetic heroes, Quarry (an alias) is a professional assassin based in the Quad Cities of Iowa and Illinois. Collins does an expert job massaging the plot so as to make us root for a fairly repellant man in an even more repellant situation. Lots of violence, lots of quite explicit sex. Very well done, but not the sort of thing we generally boost around here.

So there you are. My advice is to be cautious with Hard Case Crime novels. Aside from the subject matter, there’s a very noir sensibility here, a consistent attitude of nihilism – or so it seemed to me. Pretty much all the elements (except for bad writing) that I generally warn readers about can be found in these books.

Fiction, Reviews

Season of the Witch, by Arni Thorarinsson

Leave a comment

I am brought out of my musings by Jóa, who produces a plastic bag from the roadside café in Varmahlíd. She takes from it two small chocolate eggs and offers me one.
“It’s a bit early, isn’t it? A week before Easter. Aren’t they for Easter Sunday?”
“That’s so last century,” answers Jóa like a continuation of my thoughts at the wheel. “Now everything is allowed, always.”

Back in 2008, I posted a reading report on an Icelandic play called “The Wish,” by Johann Sigurjonsson. It’s a drama about a young man who throws his life away in pursuit of power and self-gratification in magic. Oddly enough, that play (under an alternate title, “Loftur the Sorcerer”) is at the heart of a mystery novel I just read, Season of the Witch by Arni Thorarinsson. I’ve been dipping into Scandinavian mystery novels for a while now, and as often as not haven’t been much impressed. Season of the Witch, I’m glad to report, pleased me quite a lot.
Einar (I’m not sure if his last name is ever given. Can’t find it) is a recovering alcoholic and a reporter for an Icelandic newspaper. He used to cover crime in Reykjavik, but a recent management shake-up sent him up to the small northern town of Akureyri. Here, along with a couple of colleagues sent into exile with him, he’s reduced to reporting on petty crime and local politics, and asking “Questions of the Day” to people on the street. He hates it. He also hates his local editor. He’s attracted to the female photographer who is the third exile, but she turns out to be unavailable. Also he’s separated from his daughter, the only person he really cares about.
But then things start happening. The wife of a local industrialist is killed in a kayaking accident, and her old mother insists she was murdered. Then a popular high school student who was to star in a school production of “Loftur the Sorcerer” is found murdered in a junk yard. There are rumors of drug dealing, and tensions rise between native Icelanders and immigrants (this book was written back before the Icelandic financial crash).
Einar isn’t the kind to settle for easy answers. He keeps poking at the evidence after everyone else is satisfied.
But he does more than that. Einar also acts as a dispenser of grace. He performs kindnesses for people he doesn’t like, and covers up evidence in cases where the law would only add to the tragedies.
Not at all a Christian novel, Season of the Witch is a Christ-haunted novel. Einar walks in a culture full of the old landmarks of the Faith, and the absence of faith is always conspicuous in his mind. Without offering specific answers – aside from allusions to Jesus and to the Christian play “Loftur the Sorcerer” – this story asks all the right questions.
Cautions for rough language, adult situations, and earthy humor. I liked the book, and I especially liked the hero Einar. Recommended.
Kindle here. Paperback here.