“…They even make virtues out of ‘humility’ and ‘turning the other cheek’ and ‘loving everybody.’ Because it alleviates their guilt. It’s much nicer to pretend to yourself that your passivity makes you a saint, rather than just another gutless puke who won’t take a stand for what’s right.”

The passage above kind of encapsulates my ambivalence about the novel HUNTER: A Thriller, by Robert Bidinotto. There’s much to enjoy and appreciate in the book, and it promotes some ideas with which I strongly agree. But in my view it’s taken a little farther than I, as a Christian, can endorse. It’s not merely that I disagree with the Randian point of view on display here; I think the treatment weakens the argument (and the story) in some ways.

I usually do a synopsis of a novel’s opening chapters when I write a review, but the peculiar structure of this story makes that hard to do without spoiling the central surprise (if surprise it is). So I’ll mostly talk about the concepts underlying the story.

The central problem of this book is the early release of dangerous felons into society. Our justice system, as Bidinotto paints it (and he says all the atrocities in the story are based on true events) is that in order to take pressure off the courts and prisons, we’ve set in place a system that automatically pleas down criminal charges, and then shortens even those abbreviated prison sentences through early release for “good behavior.” This early release is facilitated by a naïve network of social service agencies staffed by do-gooders eager to let the prisoners out, proud of their “success” in rehabilitating them. But when those prisoners kill again, these do-gooders feel no responsibility. Continue reading Hunter: A Thriller, by Robert Bidinotto →

First of all, I’ll just start by saying thumbs up on this one. Killer Swell isn’t the greatest private eye story I’ve ever read, but it drew me in and kept my interest. The characters were well-drawn and realistically layered, for the most part.

In this first novel of an ongoing series, Noah Braddock, San Diego surfer/private eye, is approached by the mother of his former girlfriend. The girlfriend, whom he had deeply loved, broke up with him years ago under pressure from her parents, when she went off to college. But now she’s gone missing, and they’re desperate enough to come to Noah for help.

And he, of course, can’t resist the appeal, even coming from them. But things get messy very quickly, and soon he’s forced to delve deeply into his lost love’s personal life, discovering things he’d much rather have never learned.

I’ve often written about the archetype of the American private eye. Particularly the fact that he’s often a figure of male fantasy. What guy, in his heart, doesn’t sometimes dream of living unfettered, setting his own hours, having uncommitted sex with a series of dangerous dames, and being the Spillaneian Jury?

Noah Braddock seems like a prime example of this paradigm. He combines two occupations that appeal to every guy’s inner Peter Pan—the P.I. and the surf bum.

And yet, Noah is an oddly responsible man. I thought his strength of character, oddly, a weakness in his character, if “character” is understood in its purely literary sense. It seemed odd to me that a guy this mature would choose a lifestyle that might as well have a sign reading “Perpetual Adolescent” taped to it. He seemed to me more suited to conventional police work (though he tells the reader he tried that and got bored) and a traditional marriage.

But that’s just my quibble. Others may disagree. I enjoyed Killer Swell, and will probably return to the Noah Braddock series.

The usual cautions for language and adult themes apply.

What was it really like, living in England in the days leading up to World War II? Judging by Mark Chisnell’s novel The Fulcrum Files, it was a time of great confusion and self-delusion. I suspect that picture is accurate.

Ben Clayton, our hero, is an engineer for a British aircraft company, but has been assigned to work on preparing a racing yacht for the America’s Cup race (aeronautics and shipbuilding being sister enterprises). Ben was, as a teenager, one of Britain’s best prospects as a boxer, but he nearly killed another boy in a fight. Horrified, he gave up boxing and became a pacifist.

Pacifism is highly popular and respected in England in 1936. As author Chisnell deftly portrays the era, everybody’s got an ideology—pacifism or communism or Labour or Fascism or Aristocracy, and almost everybody has good intentions. The one thing almost everyone agrees on is that there will not be another war. Impossible. The people wouldn’t stand for another bloodbath like the Great War. Hitler has some legitimate grievances, so throw him a bone and everything will settle down.

But when Ben’s best friend is killed in an accident while fitting a new mast, and that friend is found to have been deeply in debt and involved with shady people, Ben sets out to clear his name. He learns things he’d rather not learn, and eventually has to make choices he’d rather not make. It does no good to avoid the war. The war will not avoid you.

I particularly liked the characters in The Fulcrum Files. They seemed authentic and complex, doing very different, even appalling, things out of a desire to do right. We tend today to see World War II (properly) in very black and white terms, but nobody knew those things in 1936, and Chisnell excels at psychological realism. There’s a love story for the ladies, and lots of boats for those who (like me) enjoy reading about the sea.

The Fulcrum Files does not rise to the heights of the thriller genre, but I enjoy a book that tells a smaller story well. Mild cautions for language, violence, and adult subject matter, but the book is suitable for teens and up.

Here’s a very good, very professional, very engaging first novel, a police procedural, from a promising writer. I enjoyed reading it, and wish the author well, but I won’t be following his work any further, for petty ideological reasons.

Tyler Dilts’s A King of Infinite Space tells the story of Danny Beckett, a Long Beach police detective. He and his partner, a Japanese-American woman who predictably has a black belt and can beat up any man, are called to a high school to view a crime scene where a pretty, popular teacher has been viciously murdered with a knife, her left hand taken as a trophy. The woman seems to have had no enemies, so suspicion immediately falls on a man she dated recently, although Danny doesn’t “like him” for the crime.

As the investigation goes on we learn about Danny’s personal demons (I love detectives with personal demons), and he and his partner dance around a growing sexual attraction, something that seems a poor idea from a professional point of view. The final reveal seemed a little predictable to me.

Although I liked the writing and was intrigued by the characters, Dilts managed to alienate me through frequent political comments. I’ll grant that Danny is supposed to be cynical and bitter, but his utter contempt for the military, for evangelical Christians, and for business sent what seemed to me a clear message about what the author thought of me, personally. So, regretfully, I won’t be stopping at his shop again.

Otherwise, a great cop story. Cautions for language, violence, and adult situations.

Here’s a book I got for free from the publisher, for reviewing purposes. They’ll probably be sorry they asked me. I didn’t hate it, but I find at the end that I don’t have a lot of good things to say about it, though I have several bad things.

Asgard Park, by Ronald Simonar, is a novel about Intelligent Design, but not the kind you’re thinking of. In the imagination of the author, there is some kind of intelligence guiding the universe and human life, but it’s not the God of the Bible. To the limited extent that it involves itself in human affairs, it does so through various Chosen Ones, born with special inherited genetic traits, and through the world-wide organization these Chosen Ones lead, the Midgard Group. Kind of like the Illuminati, but in a good way. The Norse god Heimdallr, the guardian of the gods who can hear grass grow, has had his most recent avatar up until now (now being 1991, the year when the novel is set) in a psychologist named Dr. Karl Leamus, who runs Asgard Park, an insane asylum in upstate New York. But Leamus is getting older, and the god has chosen a new vessel, a young Swedish neurologist named Birger Wallenberg who is, more or less, the hero of the book.

Dr. Wallenberg is not happy about having his brain inhabited by a heathen god (a sentiment with which I highly concur), and much of the story centers on his gradual acquiescence in the possession. It also involves an American spy and a beautiful Albanian widow who gets into big trouble with the corrupt government of her up-till-recently-Communist country. Most of the reader’s sympathy will center on her.

There’s also the rather nasty plot element of the widow’s friend, an underage prostitute with whom both the male heroes sleep (though Dr. Wallenberg, to be fair, does it unwittingly, thinking it’s someone else).

Aside from my objections to the theology of the story, and the creepy prostitute angle, I can also complain about the author’s style. Ronald Simonar is an Icelander, but he seems to have a pretty good grasp of English. Unfortunately, it’s not up to the challenge of writing a novel. He has trouble with his diction, confuses English and American slang, and sometimes doesn’t seem to know how to use a contraction. He also misses a big opportunity in his presentation of the whole back story of the Midgard Group and the business of Intelligent Design. It’s all just summarized as something Dr. Wallenberg reads about in a scholarly paper. A more dramatic reveal would have been possible, and would have improved the story.

So, although it could have been worse, I can’t really recommend Asgard Park.

But I was angry. For seven years, I had been angry. Ever since my daughter disappeared, anger was the only real emotion I carried with me and the only way that I got rid of it was through violence. I would hold it in for as long as possible, but when I found an outlet, I let it go. I’d been in more types of fights than I could count and I couldn’t recall losing one. I had yet to meet anyone who carried the kind of anger I did.

What a pleasure it is to discover a new writer who truly delivers the goods! It doesn’t happen very often. Barring unpleasant surprises when I check out his other work, I am for the moment an enthusiastic fan of Jeff Shelby, author of Thread of Hope.

Aside from writing a pretty good mystery, Shelby provides that rare pleasure, a new hero who’s entirely original, complex, human, and sympathetic.

Joe Tyler makes his living searching for lost children. In the seven years he’s been at it, he has never failed to find a child, except for one—his own daughter. She was snatched from his family’s front lawn just before Christmas, virtually under his and his wife’s noses.

The experience changed Joe forever. He left his wife, who still loves him. He left his career as a cop on Coronado Island, near San Diego, California. He looks for lost children, and has no other life. He has no relationships, and does not communicate with old friends. In many ways, he’s a jerk. He cares nothing for tact. He asks the questions that need to be asked, regardless of the feelings of the people he’s talking to. Because it’s not about human relations. It’s about finding the kids.

But when he gets a call telling him that his oldest and best friend back on Coronado has been attacked and left in a coma, and that before the attack the friend was accused of beating up a teenage girl, he sucks it up and goes home. Everything he sees and all the old acquaintances he meets open the wounds for him, but he owes this guy—and before long there’s a kid missing.

I loved this book. Every line was deeply felt. Joe Tyler is a compelling character, tragic and aggravating, yet sympathetic. The other characters are rounded too—many of them prove to be something other than they appear at first glance, always a good thing in a novel.

Highly recommended. Cautions for language and mature material.

I downloaded Steve Robinson’s In the Blood because the Kindle edition was cheap, and because I’ve always been intrigued by the kind of story where a modern investigator digs out an old mystery, through documents and (sometimes) the memories of the old.

I found In the Blood, generally, a satisfying read. It’s not in the first rank, and I have some complaints, but for a first novel it’s promising.

The hero is Jefferson Tayte, an American genealogist. There’s an irony in his career choice that he’s very conscious of—he himself is an orphan, and has no idea who his parents were. But he’s become one of America’s most successful genealogists, and when a wealthy client demands he travel to England and Cornwall to clear up a blank spot in a family tree, he does it, in spite of his terror of flying.

Once in Cornwall, he discovers the reason why information has been lacking. A lot of it doesn’t seem to exist, and he can’t locate even the graves of the highborn people he’s searching for. A noble family who should be able to help him stonewalls him. Then he starts getting beaten up, and then there’s a murder and a kidnapping, and the whole thing gets out of hand.

Parts of the book didn’t work for me. Jefferson is described as tall but a little fat, and he doesn’t give any impression of physical courage. Yet he chooses to keep dangerous facts he learns to himself rather than going to the police, for reasons that seem inadequate to me (hey, I know how cowards think!). And his final act of heroism seems contrived, far-fetched, and too lucky by half.

Also the back-story, the account of the original crime that created the mystery, presented both in the form of old documents and in scenes narrated from the omniscient point of view, struck me as both too neat and too messy. Too neat in the sense that everything is solved by what I call “a Castle Aaaargh document” (hat tip to Monty Python and the Holy Grail), in which someone takes time in the midst of a moment of deathly danger to leave a written record for later investigators to discover. Too messy in that it involves several deaths of innocent children, with more detail than I care to be given.

There was also a moment when Tayte meditated on the causes of good and evil, and confidently ascribed them mostly to genetics. I find that jejune, but others may disagree.

Still, I think Mr. Robinson is a promising novelist, and if this kind of story appeals to you, I recommend it moderately.