When men are weary they fall into anarchy; but while they are gay and vigorous they invariably make rules. This, which is true of all the churches and republics of history, is also true of the most trivial parlour game or the most unsophisticated meadow romp.

We are never free until some institution frees us; and liberty cannot exist till it is declared by authority….

This may be the most delightful of all G. K. Chesterton’s fictional romps. Many love The Man Who Was Thursday, but Manalive is perhaps the distillation of the author’s philosophy of life; a comedy that makes his most serious point.

The central character of Manalive is Innocent Smith, a huge but oddly graceful gentleman who leaps into a suburban London garden one day, chasing his hat in the wind. He is not at all irritated by having his hat blown away; he declares to the people present that hat chasing is one of his favorite sports. He then proceeds to shoot a physician’s hat off with a pistol, an action which sparks the story’s odd action.

Soon three young men have proposed to three young women, and had their proposals accepted. Then authorities come to take Innocent Smith away. He is, according to information received, an attempted murderer, a burglar, and a bigamist, believed to be dangerously insane. Through one of those odd plot contrivances that could only happen in a Chesterton story, a hearing on his sanity is held in that very house. Evidence against Smith is heard, and explanations given.

Without giving away the details, the whole point is that Smith is a man who has discovered how wonderful life is, and is determined to make himself forever aware of the wonder of living through finding new ways rediscover its beauty. He seems insane because he’s eminently sane. He looks like a murderer because he imparts life wherever he goes. He is a walking paradox, Chesterton’s perfect brain-child.

If you’re looking for realistic fiction, this is not the book for you. Chesterton, as is his wont, stretches probability as wide as Innocent Smith’s waistcoat. He plays with ideas, plays with his characters, and plays with the reader. He is endearing and maddening—just like his main character.

Recommended without reservation.

Stephen Lawhead has never been a conventional Christian author, or even a conventional fantasy author. He writes by his own rules. Sometimes I like what he does, sometimes not so much. But all in all I was pleased with his novel The Skin Map, and look forward to the continuation of the series.

The main character is a generally unremarkable young man, Kit Livingston, who lives in contemporary London. One day he gets lost and wanders into an alley, where he meets a man who claims to be his great-grandfather, Cosimo Livingston. Cosimo claims that there are invisible paths and portals (“ley lines”) throughout the world, by which knowledgeable travelers may travel through time, space, and dimension.

Kit tries to explain to his girlfriend Wilhelmina why he missed their date. To prove his story to her, he takes her back to that alley and successfully makes a jump to the historical past—17th Century London. But he gets separated from Wilhelmina, who finds herself (we learn later) in Bohemia at about the same time. (One of the pleasures of this book is the Wilhelmina subplot, in which an unhappy 21st Century feminist finds personal fulfillment as a businesswoman in 17th Century Prague.)

Kit finds Cosimo, who agrees it’s important to try to locate Wilhelmina and send her home. But to do that they need a map. There is only one map of the ley lines, the “Skin Map,” a piece of parchment made from the tattooed skin of the first explorer to chart the space-and-time-byways. (He had the map made on his own torso so that he could never lose it.) That map has been cut into several pieces, and the single piece Cosimo and his friend Sir Henry Fayth possessed has been stolen. Before long they learn they have more serious problems than the disappearance of Wilhelmina. A very dangerous and resourceful enemy is doing his best to assemble the Skin Map for his own megalomaniac purposes, and he will stint at no crime to get what he wants.

I found The Skin Map a very engaging fantasy entertainment, suitable for teens and older. Good values are taught, and Christianity is presented in a serious, positive light. I think Stephen Lawhead was wise to move away from medieval fantasy, at least for a while. He seems to have grown uncomfortable with the kind of sword-and-armor violence that such stories demand, and this idiosyncratic adventure gives him scope for other kinds of action. Recommended.

Good writing and good storytelling are two distinct qualities, and don’t necessarily reside in the same practitioner. Bestselling Minnesota author Vince Flynn is a classic case in point.

In terms of storytelling, his performance is flawless. Transfer of Power begins, after some brief preliminaries, with super-secret operative Mitch Rapp leading a commando raid into Iran (this is before 9/11) to kidnap a terrorist ringleader. Then the focus shifts to one of that ringleader’s proteges, Rafique Aziz, who is planning an audacious attack on the White House itself, intended both to kidnap the president and to humiliate the United States. Information the CIA extracts from its prisoner (through torture; Flynn makes no bones about it) allows enough warning to enable the Secret Service to get the president into a safe bunker before the terrorists take possession of the building. But the terrorists have a drill and a weak vice president with whom to negotiate.

The tension never lets up. Hero Mitch Rapp employs all his formidable commando skills, and often defies his superiors, in a dangerous operation to infiltrate the White House and impose summary justice on the attackers. He is ruthless and his actions are viscerally satisfying. Also he gets the girl.

As a piece of prose writing, the book is less successful. The force of the narrative pulls the reader along so quickly that he barely notices frequent infelicities, like “Warch, who was more entrusted with the president’s life than any other person in the Secret Service…,” and “…he wondered if he wasn’t being overly paranoid,” and my personal favorite— “the two junior officers fell in astride their senior.” Best to just move along and not inquire too closely into these careless turns of phrase.

As an entertainment, Transfer of Power is a great success. As a statement of a viewpoint on how the War On Terror should be fought, it deserves respectful attention. As a piece of literature, it’s… a successful entertainment.

Cautions for language, violence and adult themes.

Max Allan Collins is probably best known for having written the graphic novel on which the movie The Road To Perdition was based. I myself know him as the author of a very fine mystery novel, True Detective, set in Chicago in the 1930s. Turns out he’s written more books about his Jewish-Irish private eye, Nathan Heller, that I didn’t know about. These include Chicago Lightning, a collection of short stories covering a period of about twenty years.

Nathan Heller differs from the standard fictional private eye in that he’s ethical but not technically “clean.” He does occasional, cautious business with organized crime, and those associations are often useful to him in his investigations. His relations with the police are about as equivocal, as some of them bear him a grudge for helping to expose some crooked cops in the past. The assumption throughout is that both groups are about equally corrupt. Continue reading Chicago Lightning, by Max Allan Collins →

Do you know what I was? The Knight of the Unholy Grail.

In times like these when everyone is wonderful, what is needed is a quest for evil….

“Evil” is surely the clue to this age, the only quest appropriate to the age. For everything and everyone’s either wonderful or sick and nothing is evil.

Honesty comes first. I’m not at all sure I understand Walker Percy’s novel Lancelot. I think I understand some of it, but it’s one of those books that I come away from pretty sure I’ve encountered something written for people smarter than me.

But it was a fascinating read, and I’ll tell you what I thought. For whatever that’s worth.

The main character and narrator is Lancelot Lamar, formerly the scion of a fine old Louisiana family, owner of a handsome estate, successful lawyer with a record of civil rights advocacy, and loving husband to a beautiful wife.

Now, as he narrates the text of this book, he is a patient in a mental hospital, having been declared insane after blowing up his home, killing his wife and her movie industry friends. His confidante is his friend Percival, a priest (or a former priest; it’s never made clear) who never contributes a word to the narrative. Continue reading Lancelot, by Walker Percy →

It’s generally a pleasure for me to read novels set on my home turf. Not only do I enjoy being able to visualize known locations as I follow the story, but for some reason I have a childish conviction that places are somehow validated, made more interesting, because they’ve been laminated between the covers of a book.

There was lots of that for me in Deadly Stillwater, by Roger Stelljes. The action ranges around eastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin, but most of it happens in the Twin Cities, and the climax is set near Stillwater, just to the east.

The hero is Mac McRyan, a St. Paul police detective. As one of the police chief’s “boys,” a decorated group of smart and effective cops, he’s called in from a vacation day (this all takes place over the Fourth of July holiday) when Shannon Hisle, daughter of one of the city’s most prominent—and wealthy—attorneys, is kidnapped. There’s added urgency because Shannon is a Type 1 diabetic. The police are already going all out when the criminals up the ante—they kidnap the police chief’s daughter as well. These are smart and organized villains who plan with military precision. It will take hard work, some luck, and a lot of ruthlessness to save the girls and bring a very motivated gang to justice. Continue reading Deadly Stillwater, by Roger Stelljes →