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Fiction, Reviews

‘The Forgotten Children,’ by James Hunt

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James Hunt, author of The Forgotten Children, is the kind of writer who knows the story he wants to tell, but hasn’t worked out yet how to tell it. The story itself kept me reading, but the writing had me tearing my hair.

Jim North is a Seattle police detective who, with his partner Kerry Martin, works missing persons cases. The worst are the missing kid cases. When they’re called out to a family home one morning, the scene is doubly bad – the two parents have been shot to death, while their son – a foster child they’d been in the process of adopting – has disappeared.

But it gets worse. Soon there are two more double murders, with attempts to abduct the children – though one child escapes. What links them together is that all the children were adopted from a particular local orphanage. When Jim and Kerry arrive there, they encounter defensiveness and veiled hostility from most of the staff.

For Jim, cases like this are personal. He was himself a foster child and carries great bitterness about the things he suffered in the system. When his birth father – who was an evil man – died and left him a fortune, Jim entrusted the money to a foundation for foster kids, the management of which he leaves to its staff.

Jim’s empathy for the kids helps him identify clues that will in time lead them to a shocking truth.

Author Hunt is clearly passionate about his subject. But the story would have been more effective with better writing. His major failing, in my opinion, is overwriting. Like many insecure writers, he doesn’t trust the reader to take a hint. He has to lay everything out, then explain it again to make sure we get it. The characters’ personalities are described rather than demonstrated through words and actions (though, annoyingly, very little physical description is provided). The phraseology is often awkward, as in “And their city was just one cog in the giant wheel churning orphans through a revolving door.” Also, the dialogue was pretty stilted – even awkwardly theatric in the dramatic scenes.

Also, the author handled the solution in an odd way – the true culprit turned out to be no surprise at all, though there was a surprise twist afterward.

But… I did read The Forgotten Children all the way through. So the book wasn’t a narrative failure. All things considered, though, I don’t recommend it very highly.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything,’ by John D. MacDonald

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“Sit over there,” she said, indicating a fake Victorian couch upholstered in shiny plastic under a fake Utrillo upon an imitation driftwood wall.

***

He was a loose, asthmatic, scurfy man with the habitual expression of someone having his leg removed without anesthetic.

If the lines above remind you a little of P. G. Wodehouse, I think that’s intentional. The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything is a unique work in John D. MacDonald’s corpus – basically a sex farce wrapped around a lighthearted science fiction/fantasy plot. I loved it as a young man. Re-reading it now (I had a sudden compulsion to do so) I still found it amusing – though elements that troubled me on my first reading are even more troublous today, so much has the world changed.

Kirby Winter’s uncle Omar, eccentric Miami inventor and financier, has died, leaving his nephew in something of a pickle. Kirby is a presentable, rather dull young man whose main personal problem is utter shyness and panic in the presence of girls (generally with slapstick consequences). On his death, Uncle Omar left Kirby his pocket watch and a letter to be opened a year after his passing, and ordered all his records destroyed. Now his business partners and the authorities are looking for 12 million missing dollars, which Kirby was the last one to have in his possession. His (true) protestations that he’s been giving the money away to charities and the poor, on Omar’s instructions, are not believed. So the police are looking for him.

To his rescue – ostensibly – come sexy Charla O’Rourke and her slick brother Joseph, who offer Kirby a means of escape on their yacht. Before long, Kirby realizes that their plans for him are not friendly. They want to get him somewhere where they can torture him until he tells them where the money is.

Kirby escapes them, and through a couple chance connections ends up in a swinging Hollywood director’s vacant apartment. There – to his complete surprise – he finds himself in bed one night with Bonny Lee Beaumont, a free-spirited young stripper with whom he quickly falls in love. But Kirby is concerned about Wilma, Uncle Omar’s only other employee, who will certainly be another target for the O’Rourkes. His plans to rescue her seem hopeless, until he discovers the secret of Uncle Omar’s watch, a way to make time stand still. Literally.

The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything is intended as a fun book, and it is. I loved it when I first read it (around 1980, I think). The central problem of the book is not in fact Kirby’s legal trouble, but his shyness with women. This appealed to me very much at that time in my life. But I had trouble with some of the practical gags in the book, employed as tactical diversions – particularly ones involving stripping women while time is stopped, so that they suddenly find themselves naked in public. That struck me as pretty cruel, even in those swinging times (though it’s Bonny Lee who usually plays the gag, which makes it a little less creepy). In today’s Me Too environment, of course, a writer couldn’t get away with that stuff at all.

The sex element in the book was generally more prominent than I remembered. Not explicit sex, but a fair amount of bed time and nakedness. Also a lot of Swinging Sixties pseudo-philosophy about how sex ought to be free and natural, untrammeled by traditional taboos and mores and legalities. That stuff was pretty much boiler plate in paperback literature at the time, but it has aged poorly. (Though I’m not sure things still weren’t better then than what we’ve got now.)

As an addendum, a TV movie was made of this book in 1980, starring Robert Hayes (of Airplane!), Pam Dawber (of Mork & Mindy), and Jill Ireland. The sex and nudity were toned down, of course, but what disappointed me was that they completely cut out what I considered the true heart of the story – Kirby’s overcoming of his shyness. This is precisely why MacDonald hated pretty much all filmed adaptations of his works.

In summation, I highly recommend The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything as a light read for grownups – with cautions for vintage adult material.

Fiction, Reviews

Two Books in Which Alien Armlets Give Anyone Amazing Abilities

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A review of Meta and The Second Wave by Tom Reynolds

Connor Connolly, 16, didn’t actually want to be at the party deep in the woods, because that crowd never accepted him. His only friend talks him into it, but after a couple conversations, he leaves. That puts him nearby as a murderer drags a child away to her death. He tries to intervene, gets stabbed, and wakes up a few minutes later with alien wristbands that grant enhanced abilities.

Meta bands are the source of all superpowers on Earth. No one knows where they came from, and maybe a few people know how they work. They made their first public appearance over a decade ago, but after a cataclysmic event called The Battle, the public story said they all went dead. When Connor wakes up with a new set, he realizes he can take another shot at that murderer.

In Meta, the teenaged hero narrates his story of finding power, keeping secrets, finding a mentor (a Batman-type), testing his abilities, and confronting threats. Compelled to act when he sees people in trouble, he stumbles through increasingly difficult trials before fighting a creatively powerful villain at the end. His Meta bands don’t give him just one power but a variety of them, including an ability to freeze which comes up conveniently and isn’t mentioned again. The media dub him Omni, because of his multiple abilities, and you’d think new ones would come later, but by the end of the book, you’ll have seen everything he can do. I enjoyed it as a standard origin story.

The Second Wave picks up a few months after the first book with some observations on the practicalities of superness. Many new people have Meta bands now, and many of them don’t want to do hero work. Connor continues to make a name for himself as Omni by spotting these new criminals and taking them down efficiently.

Silver Island, the prison for people who misuse their Meta bands, has been working overtime to lock them away for good. The organization that manages it uses traditional government logic to handle the volatile people they catch and the Metas they work with. Some of them would like to just execute anyone they’ve prejudged as being a Meta who has misused power. We see the same rationale at street level with armed, volunteer SWAT teams patrolling their neighborhoods, looking for criminals who have powered down. The city has become a powder keg, and the good guys may be striking matches.

In this book, some significant events happen off-stage, and when they are revealed through heated accusations, they can come across as fabrications. That was my first impression, since I had nothing with which to verify them. Having gotten into the third book now, I assume the accusations are true, but it seems a bit much to roll with it. The story we have does a good job increasing the danger of villain confrontations, so I wouldn’t call these side events a plot hole.

The biggest deficit to both books is the first-person narrative. The sixteen-year-old narrator sounds realistic, sure, by stating the obvious frequently and overexplaining. Sometimes stating the obvious is played as a joke, but in the context of so much overexplanation, it isn’t funny. But the sequel doesn’t repeat the plot points of the first, such as Kid Super makes dopey mistakes with his new powers but prevails in the end, only to return to dopey mistakes in the next book. This young man is slowly maturing.

Both Meta and The Second Wave are fun books, and I’m already into the third one.

(Photo by Scott Evans on Unsplash)

Fiction, Reviews

‘Denial of Credit,’ by Peter Rowlands

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We’ve had an interesting time in recent weeks with Peter Rowlands’ Mike Stanhope novels. I read and reviewed the first two in the series, giving my opinion that the prose is good, the characterizations so-so, but the plotting weak. I had a surprise when author Rowlands himself showed up in our comments, a little stung by my criticisms but encouraging me to try the next book. So I bought and read Denial of Credit. It was, indeed, a better story – though I still have quibbles.

Mike Stanhope is an English journalist in the field of transportation and logistics. In the first book, he met and fell in love with Ashley, who lives in Cornwall, and he moved there to be near her. But they both have cold feet now about their relationship, and the problems of working remotely, far from London, add to the friction. Mike’s income has decreased, and he’s feeling the pinch.

Then he hears from a famous business mogul named Alan Treadwell. Treadwell is supposedly retired, and he wants a ghostwriter for his autobiography. It’s not an appealing offer, as Treadwell is famously hard to work with. But Mike isn’t in any position to turn work down.

The man proves just as difficult as the rumors say. He has definite ideas about how he wants the book to go, and specific instructions about whom Mike should talk to – and not talk to. But Mike is incurably – somewhat self-destructively – curious. He sniffs around in forbidden places, and what he learns will put him and others in danger.

My major complaint about the last book – the repeated need for lucky passersby to scare Mike’s attackers off before they kill him – was less of a problem here. Mike does have a couple fortuitous escapes, but they’re more complex than before, which makes them more acceptable in narrative terms. I think the characterizations are still a little underbaked, but I can’t deny the book held my complete attention all the way to the end.

One thing I like in these books is that they deal with the business world in an informed, nuanced way. Very few novelists are in a position to do this (John D. MacDonald was a sterling exception).

The book ends in a cliffhanger, but it’s part of a subplot line, so I don’t object to that.

Denial of Credit wasn’t perfect, but I enjoyed it and recommend it.

Fiction, Non-fiction, Reviews, Writing

‘Orkneyinga Saga’

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This book review will, on closer examination, turn out to be a sort of bait-and-switch, a partial review embedded in an author’s journal post. I’m still plot-wrestling, and I continue in PAUSE mode, learning the geography and trying to figure out what happens next as I send Erling Skjalgsson home from England by way of the Orkneys (and possibly the Shetlands. Haven’t worked that out yet).

As I told you, I realized the other day that Erling’s journey home to Norway has to bring him into a confrontation with Jarl Thorfinn the Mighty of Orkney, who had a problematic relationship with King (Saint) Olaf Haraldsson, Erling’s enemy. Thorfinn had submitted to Olaf as his overlord, but he felt Olaf had broken their understanding by awarding part of the jarldom to his brother Brusi. He might very well be willing to listen to Erling’s suggestion that he transfer fealty to King Knut of Denmark/England.

However, I discovered a further complication. In reading the Penguin edition of Orkneyinga Saga, the saga of the earls (jarls) of Orkney, I was reminded that Thorfinn ruled not only the Orkneys and Shetland. He also ruled Caithness, the northeastern part of Scotland, an area heavily settled by Norwegians.

And Caithness brings us close to Moray, which was the home of Macbetha – whom I included, you’ll recall, under the name Macbetha, in my last Erling book, King of Rogaland. Macbetha, who wouldn’t have been king yet at this point, would almost certainly have been an enemy of Thorfinn’s. (Though I always think about Dorothy Dunnet’s novel, King Hereafter, which is based on the theory that Thorfinn and Macbeth were the same person. She notes that the annals telling about Macbeth never mention Thorfinnn, and Orkneyinga Saga never mentions Macbeth [well, it mentions an earlier King Macbeth, but he’s a different guy]. In the saga, Thorfinn does fight a mysterious Scottish king named Karl Hundarsson, whom some historians have identified as Macbeth.) Anyway, it would be impolite to my readers not to reunite them with Macbetha while we’re in the neighborhood.

So how will I work all this out? I’m thinking about it. I have some ideas.

In any case, I’ll review the portion of Orkneyinga Saga that I read. I confess I didn’t finish it (this time through), because it covers a lot of history much later than the period I’m dealing with. Some of it, I should note, is very intriguing, especially the conscientious objection of (Saint) Magnus Erlendsson during a raid on Wales, and his subsequent martyrdom.

But my concern was with the career of Jarl Thorfinn. Thorfinn is an intriguing character, bigger than life. Sometimes he’s sympathetic, sometimes emphatically not. His climactic conflict with his charismatic nephew, Rognvald Brusisson, involves some very nice plotting (indicating – probably – a fair amount of fictional embroidering) and dramatic irony. One also notes the appearance of the name “Tree-beard,” very likely where Tolkien found it. The saga also includes one of our sources for the disputed practice of the “Blood Eagle,” a cruel method of execution which showed up in the History Channel “Vikings” series. (I myself incline to the view that there never was such a practice, but that it came from the saga writers misunderstanding a poetic metaphor.)

Orkneyinga Saga is one of the most striking and vigorous of the sagas. It’s not up to Snorri Sturlusson’s literary standards, but it still packs a punch and lingers in the memory.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Butcher on the Moor,’ by Ric Brady

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“My son Graham,” the old woman says over the phone. “I think he’s killed someone again.”

Henry Ward is a retired police detective in North Yorkshire. In Butcher on the Moor, the second novel in a series by Ric Brady, he’s awakened in the night by a call from a Mrs. Thomson, who says the words above. waking him up fully. He has no memory of Mrs. Thomson or of Graham, the son to whom she’s referring, but he met a lot of people in his years on the force, and gave out a lot of calling cards.

When he arrives at her house, he finds that she does indeed have an old card of his. She’s clearly mentally confused, slipping in and out of the present. But he grasps enough to know that she’s seen something that troubled her. He goes down into her cellar to investigate, and finds what looks very much like butchered human remains. Then Graham himself shows up, and Henry barely makes it out with his life, while Graham runs off into the moors, his personal stomping grounds.

Normally, this would be where Henry could drop the whole business in the hands of the working police, but they are severely understaffed and (apparently) generally incompetent. The only one he really trusts is DI Barnes, a woman detective who was badly injured in their previous adventure and is not quite healed up yet. Along with Henry and his bad hips (it’s a long wait for a replacement under National Health Service), they make less than a full-strength team. But Barnes gets approval to bring Henry on as a consultant, and he plunges into the case recklessly.

Henry’s frustration with retirement, along with the fecklessness of the working cops, combine to put him in a lot of places where angels would fear to tread. I found his disregard for his own safety when faced by younger, larger, armed opponents a little hard to swallow. But the story moved right along, the dramatic tension was high, and the characterizations and prose were good.

I wouldn’t rate Butcher on the Moor as top detective fiction, but I’ve read a lot worse.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Deficit of Diligence,’ by Peter Rowlands

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I’m ready now to keep my promise to review the second book in Peter Rowlands’ Mike Stanhope mystery series, Deficit of Diligence.

I think this book was a little better-plotted than the first, which is a good indication. Nevertheless, my overall impression was the same – good prose, but the storytelling leaves room for improvement.

Mike Stanhope, you may recall, is an English journalist working in the transportation and logistics field. He fell in love with a girl from Cornwall last time out, and now he’s moved to Truro to be with her. He got a semi-permanent job with the logistics company she works for, but he does freelance work as well (which will get him into some trouble).

When he hears from a lawyer that a woman in Newcastle whom he never heard of has left him her entire estate, he travels up there to learn more. And while he’s at it, he can do some reporting work there. But he allows his reporter’s instincts to confuse his professional loyalties, putting his Cornwall job in jeopardy. Also, he discovers that there’s a competing heir contesting the will, a desperate man who won’t stint at threats and violence.

Meanwhile, he begins to glimpse the outlines of a massive insurance fraud scheme, which puts him in conflict with still more dangerous men.

Deficit of Diligence includes several weaknesses in plotting, from my viewpoint. One is that our hero, though supposedly a seasoned professional man, makes a series of rash decisions, both professional and personal. He doesn’t seem to learn from his mistakes (I can say, from experience, that a few good beatings teach most people some measure of caution).

Much of the plot in this book, as in the previous book, hinges on his recognition of someone he only knew briefly, many years ago. I realize I have a poor memory for faces, but this seemed a little far-fetched to me.

Finally, there’s the matter I blogged about last night – the plotting technique of allowing a “helpless hero” to blunder into a life-threatening situation, and then rescuing him through sheer dumb luck. I mentioned yesterday that it happened twice here, but lo and behold, it happened a third time. That’s just lazy.

Still, the prose was good, and I think the plotting was improved. (Though the book could still have been trimmed back without much loss.)

Fiction, Reviews

‘Alternative Outcome,’ by Peter Rowlands

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Sometimes one great virtue in a book, especially if it’s a virtue that’s grown rare and is much missed, will outweigh a few flaws. That’s the case I have to present for Alternative Outcome by Peter Rowlands.

Mike Stanhope, our hero, is an English journalist in the field of transportation and logistics (think trucks and containers). He makes a fair living, but is not fulfilled. For fulfillment, he wrote a mystery novel, which he self-published as an e-book. The book was sparked by a chance encounter in a railway station, when he ran into a woman who reminded him of a girl he’d known as a boy. He met that girl at a coastal resort where his family vacationed, and had a crush on her, but only spoke to her once. He combines this memory with another event that occurred around the time he knew the girl – a big jewelry robbery nearby. One of the robbers was never caught, and it’s rumored that some of the loot was never recovered.

Then someone burgles and searches Mike’s apartment. That’s only the beginning of his troubles, as he realizes that someone has read his book and assumed that his description of the crime is based on actual knowledge – which is not the case. Now wholly engaged, Mike makes a real effort to find the girl he remembers and learn what really happened with he robbery. This will lead him into genuine mortal danger, but also into a new romantic relationship.

I thought Alternative Outcome lagged at times, and some of Mike’s decisions seemed implausibly rash. Nevertheless, this book had one supreme virtue that I prize and rarely see anymore: Author Rowlands, who is in fact a journalist in the transportation and logistics field, can actually spell and write a grammatical, coherent English sentence. I reveled – I luxuriated – in the clean, comprehensible prose. The weaknesses in the story weren’t enough to put me off as long as I had this good writing to enjoy.

Recommended. Cautions for language and sexual situations.

Fiction, Reviews

‘A Winter Grave,’ by Peter May

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And he wondered how something as full of nothing as emptiness could weigh so heavily.

What do you say about a book that was well-written, one which you enjoyed, when you believe that book to be effectively (if unintentionally) in the service of evil? That’s my problem with Peter May’s A Winter Grave.

Actually it’s not that big a problem. The answer is to tell the truth and let the reader make up his or her own mind.

The year is 2051, and climate catastrophe has struck the earth. The tropics are uninhabitable now, and the loss of the Gulf Stream has turned Scotland into a subarctic wasteland. Addie Sinclair, a weather monitor, climbs a mountain near Loch Leven to check her equipment and discovers the body of a man, frozen in the ice.

Cameron Brodie is a Glasgow police detective. When his superior tells him to go up to the village of Kinlochleven to investigate, he begs off at first. He explains, truthfully, that he’s just been diagnosed with terminal cancer and will be retiring from the force. But when he hears Addie Sinclair’s name he changes his mind, saying it was a false alarm. Because Addie is his own daughter, from whom he has been alienated a long time.

Cam boards an electronic, self-piloting helicopter with a friendly forensic scientist. But when they arrive, murder quickly follows, and Cam is soon fighting for his life in the midst of blizzards, while trying to find a way to explain to his daughter – after all these years – the real cause of her mother’s death.

Peter May is one of the best mystery writers out there, and A Winter Grave showcases all his virtues. The prose is excellent, the characters interesting, the setting vivid, the mystery confounding.

But it’s all in the service of the Green religion. The message of this book, when you get down to it, is, “Wake up! If you don’t surrender all your liberties to the government without delay, so they can implement draconian regulations on every area of your life, future generations will be cursed, and it will be all your fault.” It’s a fascist book, though I’m confident the author is a true believer and intends nothing of the sort.

One thing I found ironic was the book’s depiction of the Green movement as a beleaguered, embattled little cause with diminishing political power, rejected even by the news media.

I can only dream.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Bloodshot,’ by Mac Fortner

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I gave a mixed review to Knee Deep, Mac Fortner’s first Cam Derringer book, yesterday. I thought I’d give the series one more chance, so I bought Book 2, Bloodshot. My mind is made up now.

Cam Derringer, our hero, big, handsome and irresistible to women, has left Key West temporarily to spend a year in New York City (where he apparently had no trouble obtaining a concealed carry gun permit). The deal is that if he works at his friend Chad’s law practice for a year, he can get his own law license reinstated. Then he figures he’ll go back to the Key. As another inducement, his girlfriend Robin, an FBI agent, has also been assigned to New York.

He’s pleased when Chad announces his engagement to a beautiful heiress, but less happy when he learns that the woman’s father has a questionable legal record. Then a sniper starts shooting and wounding members of the fiancée’s family and circle, and Cam and Robin find themselves facing a dangerous, skilled opponent with an astonishing agenda.

It gradually dawned on me as I read Bloodshot that these books are – from my perspective –   creepy in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. There’s Cam’s ambivalent relationship with his beautiful adult “daughter,” whom he raised but who is clearly in love with him. Then there’s one of the major characters, whom we’re apparently supposed to see as spontaneous and charming, but whom I found psychopathic.

There was also a lot of sex – not explicit, but the author sure kept some of his characters naked a lot of the time.

There were also logical oddities here. Our hero gets shot, in the traditional style, with a .45 caliber slug to the shoulder. This requires (of course) nothing more than in the way of treatment than a sling for his arm, and he’s soon using the arm again. His police detective friend smokes a cigar in his office and drinks on the job (I’m pretty sure that doesn’t fly in today’s NYPD).

More essentially, the writing was weak, with a fair number of mistaken word choices. I thought the plot here was less disjointed than in Knee Deep, but it was still complicated and improbable. The plot resolution failed to satisfy me from a moral perspective (perhaps I’m a legalist).

Personally, I’m done with Cam Derringer.