Category Archives: Reviews

Fiction, Reviews

‘Knee Deep,’ by Mac Fortner

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I went through three phases in my reading of Mac Fortner’s novel, Knee Deep. At first, when I discovered that the detective hero Cam Derringer lives on a houseboat in Key West, I had a pleasurable moment of imagining there’d be some Travis McGee pleasures in the mix. In this I was disappointed. Then I was less disappointed, but also less than enamored.

Cam Derringer used to be a lawyer. Then he lost his license, and his home. And then his wife disappeared aboard her boat. He suspects she fell victim to boat-jackers, and has devoted his life ever since to discovering her fate, eking out his living through private investigating.

When a woman hires him to look for her missing husband, Cam finds himself once again on the trail of the boat-jacking gang. Along the way he meets a beautiful, mysterious woman who may herself be part of the gang, which is awkward because he’s falling in love with her. It becomes increasingly difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys as a massive terrorist plot hurtles toward its consummation.

Cam Derringer is, as it turns out, nothing like Travis McGee. Which isn’t a sin – there’s more than one good kind of detective. Sadly, Cam isn’t any of those. In contrast to the McGee novels, this book departs from first person narration now and then to show us what the bad guys are doing. Which doesn’t make our hero look particularly smart. In fact, he’s generally a few steps behind them, and his own guesses and actions aren’t very successful. He isn’t even the rescuer at the climax, which employs a rather cumbersome and improbable technical trick.

Author Fortner’s plot is kind of loose and meandering, as well as complicated to follow. The writing is fair – I’ve seen worse, but I wouldn’t call it tight prose. The dialogue lacked tension, I thought. There was a fair amount of sex – not explicit, but Cam turns out to be the kind of detective beautiful women keep throwing themselves at, which can get annoying. For me. OK, I’m jealous.

Still, I bought the next volume in the series. I can’t have disliked it that much. I can state that Knee Deep was sometimes an amusing read.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘In Forkbeard’s Wake,’ by Ben Nimmo

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Our friend Dan Nelson, in a comment, mentioned a book about sailing in King Svein Forkbeard’s wake, and I was reminded that I owned the book and ought to consult it on my current project. It’s a 2003 release called In Forkbeard’s Wake, by Ben Nimmo. I remembered it as a good book, and my review confirms that judgment.

Ben Nimmo is (or was, according to his bio) a British scuba instructor. He had written one previous book and – as far as I can tell – that’s the end of his output. That is a great pity – he’s an engaging writer. An internet search suggests that nowadays he’s involved in combatting online “disinformation.”

I can’t claim that I re-read In Forkbeard’s Wake in full – I only reviewed the parts dealing with the places I’m writing about in this book – Sweden and Denmark. Information on sailing conditions was especially useful to me.

But as a bonus, the book’s general pleasures were notable. Nimmo excels at describing landscape and weather. He relates well to the people he meets, who – except for government functionaries (occasionally) – are almost always friendly, interested, and accommodating. A sailing voyage, even in our day of satellite navigation, remains a risky project, especially when you’re sailing solo in a small boat. So there are some genuine thrills here too.

Ben Nimmo is a fine writer. I appreciated his wit, as in passages like this: “I’d also been warned that Danes have a real problem welcoming strangers; this, coming from a Norwegian, was a fine case of the pot calling the Ketill black.”

Anyway, In Forkbeard’s Wake is a first-rate sailing book, and I recommend it. Not available, alas, in electronic form.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Return Fire,’ by Tom Barber

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Tom Barber, author of Return Fire (part of the Sam Archer thriller series) is apparently a very young man. So I suppose I should cut him some slack in criticizing his prose. He seems to have been pretty successful as a novelist (which I certainly can’t claim), so he must be doing something right.

Return Fire, which I got through a free offer, is another example of the genre I call… what do I call it? I forget. Tonight I’ll call it Movie Thrillers in Print. The idea is to give readers the same irrational thrill they get from a John Wick kind of movie. The story won’t stand up to much logical analysis, but there will be thrills galore.

Sam Archer, our hero, is a former London policeman who moved to America (he has dual citizenship) to join the FBI, then joined an antiterrorist unit in the New York City Police Department. He is engaged to Alice Vargas, a member of the same squad (how did they work that?), but she went on vacation to Spain after a lover’s quarrel. Now she’s been kidnapped, and evidence suggests she’s being held in London. Sam and several of his friends from work are assigned to fly to London and assist in the investigation (we’re supposed to believe a cop would be allowed to work a case involving his fiancée). But little do they know they’re all being maneuvered into a kill zone by a vengeful master criminal.

Plausibility is not a high priority here. As in action movies, our hero and his friends suffer incredible physical punishment (including one guy being technically dead for a couple minutes) and just keep on fighting. About a ton of lead gets expended through firearms, both Glocks (all handguns are Glocks) and automatic weapons, but somehow only peripheral characters get killed, at least at first. Cars get shot to pieces before – eventually – somebody thinks of shooting out a tire to stop one. A pistol shot is used to open a padlock (safety tip: you can’t generally do that).

Aside from logic problems, the prose was weak. The author has a university degree in English and should know not to misplace his modifiers. Example: “Dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a sweat-stained t-shirt, blood was spattered on a white wall.” (You’ll note that the sentence is telling us how the blood was dressed.) There are awkward lines like, “Before long, what had been lying just under the surface between them had quickly caught fire.”

And finally, the author has an annoying tick of not knowing when to quit. He likes to close chapters with a zinger, which often doesn’t zing but just weakens the previous line with a redundancy. For instance, he says of the kidnap victim, who has spent a terrifying day in brutal captivity:

She’d never been to London before and so far the jury was out on whether she’d ever want to come back.

Today hadn’t exactly been the most pleasant of welcomes.

Now re-read that passage without the last line. Works better, doesn’t it?

However, I did finish Return Fire, so I can’t claim it wasn’t readable. Author Barber is young enough that he might possibly someday refine his craft.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Tale of Sarcastic Halli’

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Stained glass image of Harald Hardrada in Kirkwall Cathedral, the Shetland Islands. Credit: Colin Smith.

Tonight, another tale from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. This one is called The Tale of Sarcastic Halli. It’s a little longer than the last one’s I’ve read and offers several points of interest, though there are a few problems as well.

Halli is an Icelandic poet who has a string of adventures in Norway and elsewhere during the time of King Harald Hardrada. His adventures tend to involve rather coarse jokes and tricks.

Halli first meets Harald while sailing up the Trondheimsfjord. With amazing impudence – especially considering King Harald’s well-known temper – he takes an insult from him (an insult, by the way, which was particularly offensive to Norsemen), and turns it back on the king. Harald is apparently in a good mood, because when he returns to the town he accepts Halli into his household. He seems to keep Halli around as a kind of a jester (along with a dwarf about whom I’d never read before), permitting him quite a lot of leeway. He even lets him get away with an ambivalent insult to his wife (Thora, Erling Skjalgsson’s granddaughter), using the opportunity to score off her himself.

Some of the references to Halli’s poems are hard to understand. At one point, in the court of King Harold Godwinsson of England (who would later defeat Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge), he gets away with a reward for a poem which he privately admits is just a load of rubbish. Apparently we’re meant to understand that the English were so unsophisticated about skaldic poetry that you could unload anything on them at a profit.

Two of the stories prominently feature what we like to call the “f-word.” No doubt this is faithful to the text – however, such earthy subject matter harmonizes rather poorly with the sometimes stilted quality of the literalist translation.

Still, this was an intriguing tale, showcasing the famously ruthless Harald Hardrada in a surprisingly genial light.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Downeast Enigma,’ by Charles J. Thayer

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When I started reading Charles J. Thayer’s Downeast Enigma, I thought it very poorly written, but I figured I’d give it a chance. Now that I’ve finished it, I’m of two minds. I still think it wasn’t well written, but the story was effective in its way.

Steve Wilson, our hero, is a former bank auditor who took early retirement to become a private investigator. He calls his agency Paradox-Research (ignorance of proper hyphen use is a writing red flag, in my opinion). He lives aboard his Maine lobster boat, where he’s often visited by his girlfriend Amanda, an FBI agent.

When a Boston banker’s private plane crashes in the Gulf of Maine, killing him, his bank asks Steve to look into his affairs. There was a suspicious intrusion on his computer after the accident, and they fear the dead man might have been involved in something illicit. His death might even be murder. Steve goes to work with the help of a hacker friend, and Amanda seems to have lots of freedom to help him out in her spare time.

I found Downeast Enigma a strange mystery novel. Most of Steve’s investigation seems to be carried out through phone calls and online (though he does interview some people). All the violence (and there is some) happens offstage. You might even call this book a cyber-cozy mystery.

My greatest problems were with the prose. The book is written in the present tense, which I consider an affectation – though I can’t honestly say it interfered with my reading. The dialogue was remarkably wooden – all the characters speak as if writing a report, and everybody pretty much talks the same way.

Still, I read through to the end, and the plot kept my interest. I’m not panning it entirely, but I don’t think I’ll rush out and buy another book in the series.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Tale of Mani the Poet,’ and ‘The Tale of Ottar the Black’

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My friends Einar and Tore-Ravn with the statue of King Magnus Erlingsson in Etne, Norway.

Tonight, a couple more tales of skalds (poets) from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, through which I’m working my way at my own stately pace.

The first is The Tale of Mani the Poet, frankly one of the least impressive stories I’ve run across here. The best argument for its historical authenticity is its sheer banality.

The story isn’t even told in sequence. First we hear how Mani the Poet composed a poem for King Magnus V (also known as Magnus Erlingsson, 1156-1184, son of a different Erling from the one in my novels. I visited his birthplace in Etne, Norway last summer. Photo above) while their ship was becalmed in a harbor awaiting a favorable wind, and was rewarded with a shirt.

Then we learn how Mani first met the king. He showed up at the Swedish border, returning from a trip to Rome. His head was shaved (I assume he was a pilgrim), he was thin, and he was near naked. But he knew how to act in front of a king, and better yet, he knew how to compose poems. Then we’re told about a couple poems Mani composed for Magnus. We’re also told the king’s nickname for him. It’s a play on words in Old Norse that doesn’t really translate well.

After that comes The Tale of Ottar the Black. This one is more interesting — especially for the best kind of people, those who read my novels. Ottar the Black was a poet in the court of King (Saint) Olav Haraldsson. He composed a poem in praise of Olaf’s wife Astrid (whom you may recall from King of Rogaland), a boneheaded move which had to offend Olav. So he was thrown into a dungeon, awaiting judgment and execution. Then Sighvat the Poet (whom you may also remember from my novels) shows up to give him advice, resulting not only in his life being saved, but in his being rewarded. The story provides an interesting, rare insight into Olav’s domestic life.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cozy Up to Blood,’ by Colin Conway

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I’m very fond of Colin Conway’s 509 police procedural series, so I thought I’d try out one of his Cozy Up series. Cozy Up to Blood is third in a fairly bizarre series of “Cozy” mysteries. Imagine a cozy whose hero is Murray Lee, a 6’ 3” former biker, covered in tattoos (he does, however, like to knit). He’s on the run from Satan’s Spawn, a biker gang he betrayed for the sake of a woman. Now he’s in the FBI witness protection program, but he keeps blowing his cover because he gets involved in murder mysteries. So the Spawn get word of where he is, and he has to flee again.

In Cozy Up to Blood, Murray turns up in Belfry, Oregon, an island town, just before the bridge washes out in a flood. The town is flooded with tourists who’ve come for a festival celebrating a series of books and movies about sparkly vampires, clearly based on “Twilight.” There’s really no murder mystery in this story, but Murray does investigate a couple thefts (styling himself a “salvage specialist” in the Travis McGee tradition) while trying to figure out how to escape his biker pursuers, who are waiting to roar into town as soon as the flood subsides.

This book didn’t work at all for me. I got the impression that it was supposed to be a comic story, but the jokes didn’t work. I liked Murray okay, but I have no interest in reading more of his adventures.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Einar Skulason’s Tale’

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Sigurd the Crusader in procession through Constantinople.

It’s been a while since I reviewed one of the sagas from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. I’ve come near the end of Volume I, where we find a collection of short stories about Icelandic skalds (poets). Just a couple pages long each. These stories aren’t complex – they’re more in the character of celebrity anecdotes. The old poets, home on their farms after years of adventurous living, tell stories to their grandchildren – “I met this or that king, and this is what he was like.”

Tonight’s story is Einar Skulason’s Tale. Einar was a skald in the court of the kings Sigurd the Crusader (1089-1130) and his brother Eystein (circa 1088-1123). These two brothers ruled jointly under the old Norse laws of succession, and did it without going to war with each other – which later kings generally failed to do. Sigurd is best remembered for going on a crusade, the first European monarch to do so. The saga accounts of their reigns offer fascinating personality contrasts.

Those personalities are apparent in this series of three anecdotes. First of all, Einar (who seems to be renowned for quick composition) shows up late for dinner with King Eystein, and is required to compose a poem before the king has finished draining his goblet of wine. He succeeds (the poem is preserved here) and Eystein is pleased. The end. It’s a good-natured story.

The next two stories involve King Sigurd, a rather different character. In the first, King Sigurd catches a thief who happens to be a companion of Einar’s, and tells him the man will be beaten until Einar completes a new poem. Einar finishes in time to stop the strokes at five. Again, the poem is included in the text.

The final story is a little more complicated, and Einar gets a bit of his own back. Sigurd orders him to compose a poem before a departing ship has passed a certain holm, and Einar demands a reward if he succeeds, which he does. And yes, the poem is here as evidence.

I was reminded, as I read, of a couple friends I have in my Viking reenactment group. They like to tell stories of meeting celebrities. One managed to spend time with celebrities at Høstfest in Minot (something that doesn’t happen much anymore, security being tighter). He’s met Victor Borge, the Mandrell Sisters, and Willie Nelson, among others. Another ran into Lee Marvin and Richard Boone (not at the festival). Which goes to show you, Vikings don’t change much, even after a millennium.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Rogue,’ by Alex Parman

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This is not a proper review. I quit half-way through Alex Parman’s (the name is a nom de plume for a male/female writing team) Rogue. This is the first novel in a series about a loose cannon FBI agent. Ordinarily I’d just pass by a book I didn’t finish, but I felt I ought to leave a warning about this one… which I readily admit is well written.

Cyrus Jennings had a brilliant career at the Washington DC office of the FBI, until his sense of justice led him to stray out of bounds. That led to his transfer to Denver, a much less desirable posting. His true specialty is cybercrime, but his investigator’s instincts incline him to get involved in hands-on investigations.

When a highly popular politician (party not stated, but clearly a Democrat) running for Senate drops dead while jogging, Cyrus is suspicious. He particularly suspects her bodyguard, whose responses just seem a little off. This leads him to ask questions that aren’t supposed to be asked, getting him suspended by his boss. But he has resources of his own, and won’t be deterred…

It was around this point that it became pretty clear to me that this book was about a right-wing conspiracy to undermine our democracy, financed by super-rich oligarchs. I found it particularly ironic that the things the right wing is accused of doing here are pretty much things the left wing is actually doing in the real world. So this story seemed to be projection, pure and simple.

I dropped it. It was well written. The characters were good. The dialogue was good. The dramatic tension was well orchestrated.

But if, like me, you’re tired of being called a fascist, you might not want to buy Rogue.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Last One Left,’ by John D. MacDonald

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For half the journey she thought of Staniker. There had been just enough toughness, just enough greed, just enough brutality for him to manage it. But now his eyes were wrong and his mouth was changed. He had expended something he’d never regain. It was, she thought, like what happened to a man who experienced a truly professional, cold, savage beating. It left him with all those little apologetic mannerisms, bob of head, ingratiating smile, a wariness very like shyness.

On the long shelf of John D. MacDonald’s non-Travis McGee novels, pride of place must probably go to The Executioners, which would be filmed twice as Cape Fear. But The Last One Left must certainly rank high. It is complex, with many outstanding qualities, and only one small flaw that I can detect.

Sam Boyleston is a Texas lawyer. He’s principled and ethical. He’s also a hard man, rigid and impatient with human frailty. He can’t understand why his beloved wife has separated from him, taking their son, afraid that the gravity mass of Sam’s personality will warp the boy’s own nature. And he’s baffled by his sister’s decision to marry a do-gooder relief worker with no prospects of wealth. So he pressured them into a deal – they would spend a year apart, and he’d pay for the wedding. Jonathan, the young man, will work on one of Sam’s friends’ ranches, while Leila spends the year on a luxury cruise in the Bahamas with his friend Bix and his family, on their yacht.

How was he to know that Bix was using the cruise to smuggle payoff money to the islands? Or that Staniker, his captain, would get wind of the scheme and murder them all for the loot?

All Sam knows is that Staniker showed up marooned on an island, burned and dehydrated, apparently the last survivor. With uncharacteristic sentimentality, Sam bankrolls Jonathan in a quixotic effort to search for Leila in the islands and atolls, a project in which he has no faith. For his own part, he’s learned about the money. He’s going to find out who planned the murders, and when he knows, he’ll do whatever he has to do.

MacDonald was on top of his game when he wrote The Last One Left. This book is especially strong in terms of characterization. Sam Boyles is a familiar sort of MacDonald hero, a lot like Travis McGee except for a lack of self-awareness, but his journey to wisdom is fascinating.

Perhaps the most memorable character is Crissy Harkinson, the femme fatale of the story. I think she may be the most fully realized dangerous dame I’ve ever encountered in a hardboiled novel. She is at once fascinating, repellant, and oddly pathetic.

But for me the most interesting member of the cast was Sergeant Corpo, a brain-damaged war veteran hermit struggling to survive in a world he no longer understands. He wants nothing more than to do what’s right, and mostly he succeeds.

MacDonald himself must have had a fondness for this book, because he took the boat Munequita, which plays an important part in the plot, and gave it to Travis McGee himself in the books that followed.

I wasn’t entirely happy with the final payoff here. I considered that scene slightly rushed and dubious. But that’s my only complaint (except that there are intense episodes of bad things happening to good people, which is hard to avoid). The Last One Left is one of MacDonald’s best novels, and I recommend it highly. Cautions for mild sex and intense situations.

Oh yes, this Kindle version seems to be converted from a British edition, as Britishisms like “tyres,” “petrol,” and “aeroplane” are used. I’m pretty sure the original American edition did not have those.