Category Archives: Reviews

Fiction, Reviews

‘An Honest Man,’ by Michael Koryta

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“The past wasn’t all a lie, and the future isn’t all hopeless,” he went on. “That’s the way people on that island feel now, like they’re in one camp or the other. Either everything was bad or everything will be bad, right?”

It’s pretty rare for me to embrace a book whose message I’m not sure I like. But such is the power of Michael Koryta’s An Honest Man. (I reviewed another book called An Honest Man the other day. This was the result of a confusion on my part, when I was attempting to buy this one.) It’s a beautiful book that will linger with the reader.

Israel Pike went to prison some years back for killing his own father in a fit of rage. Now he’s paroled and back in his home, the moribund community of Salvation Point Island off the Maine coast. He has almost no friends there, not even his uncle, the assistant sheriff, who in fact hates him and is trying to find an excuse to send him back to prison.

One morning Israel sees a yacht drifting offshore, and rows out to check on it. Inside he finds the bodies of seven men, all shot to death. Naturally, Israel’s uncle points to him as the most likely suspect, but he can’t pin it on him.

But there are things Israel isn’t telling the police. He has secrets, and he knows more than he’s telling. But then, the whole community is hiding its own wicked secrets.

Meanwhile, a young boy named Lyman Rankin is living on a smaller, nearby island with his alcoholic, abusive father. When Lyman discovers a wounded young woman hiding in an abandoned house nearby, he puts himself at risk to help her and keep her secret. A bond develops between the two, even as his father grows increasingly suspicious and brutal.

An Honest Man is not only an exciting and well-constructed thriller. It’s also a heartbreakingly beautiful story about truth and beauty. It moved me deeply.

It also troubled me. One theme of this story seemed to be that lying is not only permissible, but admirable, in the right situation. (I’d like to hear the author debate Jordan Peterson, who says lies invariably come back to bite you.)

On the other hand, another theme seems to be that big, widespread, agreed-upon lies are wicked and must be brought to light.

In any case, An Honest Man was an amazing book to read. I give it the highest recommendation. Cautions for all you’d expect.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Choice of Evils,’ by Morley Swingle

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Can a former district attorney find love with a woman he once sent to prison for manslaughter?

That slightly implausible puzzle is one of several in Morley Swingle’s Choice of Evils, first in a series of legal thrillers featuring attorney Wyatt Blake.

Wyatt Blake, of Panorama Springs, Colorado, lost his way after the death of his wife in a skiing accident, an accident for which he still blames himself. His concentration slipped, and an ambitious rival managed to beat him in his race for reelection. Now he’s set up as a defense attorney, but the word is out that Wyatt has lost a step.

So it’s a surprise when a friend refers a heavyweight client to him – Ryker Brando, a tech and legal-marijuana multimillionaire. Ryker doesn’t deny that he cut the rope tying him to his business partner while rock climbing, sending him plunging to his death. But he argues that he had no choice – if he hadn’t, they’d have both been killed.

Ryker’s claims are weakened by the fact that the man was having an affair with his wife.

Ryker is kind of an Elon Musk caricature – he’s autistic, arrogant, demanding, and unlikeable. Wyatt will have a job to do, convincing any jury to buy his arguments. He’ll need to bring his A game – and these days he’s not the lawyer he used to be.

He doesn’t know if it’s a good thing or bad when he runs into Harper Easton, a female former police officer, now a private eye, whom he sent to prison for shooting an unarmed suspect. She hates his guts, and he feels guilty about it. But there’s a spark there, and he could use an investigator…

First of all, I need to say that I enjoyed Choice of Evils. The prose was good. I liked the characters. I was caught up in the mystery.

However, I thought there was a certain… lack of self-confidence in the writing.

Years ago, I read an interview with a TV comedy writer who’d written for Milton Berle. He recalled how Berle had always asked him to make the jokes “lappier.”

What does “lappier” mean? the writer wanted to know.

Berle explained that he wanted the jokes to fall into the audience’s laps. Nothing subtle. Push the joke in their faces like a cream pie.

I felt that way reading Choice of Evils. It seemed the author didn’t trust his own powers. He was telling me how to feel about everybody and every situation – even, to some extent, the big plot twist that was coming further along

Take, for instance, this passage:

Aside from a cordial hello, Harper hasn’t said a thing to me. No reason she should, though. I had a hand, obviously, in causing a great deal of unpleasantness in her life. The help I’m giving her regarding her mother is small compensation.

There’s nothing wrong with those lines in themselves – except that they tell us nothing we don’t already know. We’ve been told numerous times that Wyatt caused Harper “unpleasantness.” We’ve seen how he’s helping her mother out. The last two sentences are thus entirely superfluous, and could have been cut, moving the scene along.

Well, it may be author Swingle is learning his craft, and will do better in time. Taken all together, Choice of Evils is a commendable and highly readable effort.

In spite of being written in the present tense.

Recommended, with cautions for language and some steamy sex stuff.

Fiction, Reviews

‘An Honest Man,’ by Simon Michael

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There are plenty of legal thrillers out there. Simon Michael’s An Honest Man recommended itself to me through being set in London in the 1960s, and through authenticity (as far as I could tell) and general good writing.

Charles Holborne was, not long ago, a rising criminal defense barrister. In spite of prejudice – both class prejudice and antisemitism (he changed his name from Horowitz, to his mother’s annoyance), Charles’ legal and persuasive skills brought him success. Until he was accused of the murder of his wife. The story of how he cleared himself of that charge was the subject of the first book in the series, and An Honest Man is the second.

Charles has come down in the world. It doesn’t matter that he was innocent of the murder – the London bar is a small, parochial community, and Charles lives under a cloud now. He’s struggling for money, and contemplating taking a job with a large legal firm, losing forever the courtroom work he loves.

Then, to his surprise, he gets a request for representation from a very wealthy and prominent client – Harry Robeson, a criminal solicitor who’s helped defend some high-level organized crime figures. Charles is leery at first, unsure why a man with so many options would choose him. But Harry is charming and thoughtful, and Charles is soon convinced of his innocence. It doesn’t hurt that a corrupt policeman with whom he’s tangled before seems to have been playing some shady tricks.

Many surprises and twists lay ahead. An Honest Man is a cynical enough book to be realistic about the world, but just positive enough to satisfy the reader’s inner idealist. I liked it a lot.

Cautions for violence and a little more sexual detail than I considered necessary.

But overall I was very pleased.

[I note, once again, to my minor annoyance, that this book was written in the present tense. I seem to be hitting a string of those lately. I suppose it’s what the cool kids are doing these days.]

Fiction, Reviews

‘No Turning Back,’ by Steve Frech

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I have announced that I’m cutting back on my reading of thrillers, just because I’m getting too old for the stress. But that doesn’t mean I’ve given up on thrillers altogether. When I do read one, I prefer the smaller, more intimate kind, where the focus is as much on character as on bangs and kabooms.

Which is precisely what I found in Steve Frech’s No Turning Back. I got it through an online deal, knowing nothing about the author or the story. But I had a treat in store.

Our hero and narrator (the book, I regret to say, is written in the present tense) is Lucas Walker, a young man who moved with his wife Julia to Los Angeles from their small home town in Pennsylvania not long ago. They found the streets meaner than they expected, but they were getting by when they learned that Julia was pregnant. They agreed they wanted the baby, and somehow they’d figure out a way to pay for it. Then Lucas lost his job. Concerned about stressing Julia, he did not tell her about this. Instead, when he’s not job-hunting, he now drives for a ride share service. It doesn’t help to pay their debts, but it allows him to maintain insurance coverage.

Lucas thinks he’s in a bad spot.

But he has no idea how bad a spot can be.

When he picks up a man named Damon, on a dark road in the Hollywood Hills, he figures he can squeeze one more ride into his night. Maybe he’ll get a decent tip.

Instead, Damon – who is spattered in blood – pulls a gun on him and tells him to drive to a certain address. There he will kill someone, and then they will drive to another address where he’ll kill someone else. He has a whole night of homicide planned out, and Lucas will be his chauffeur.

If Lucas does not cooperate, Damon says, he will kill him. Then he will go to his apartment and kill Julia.

Over the course of the night, Lucas will learn what fear and desperation really are. But he will also discover courage and resource within himself that he never knew he had.

And he will learn a few things about Damon – who is not exactly what he seems, and somehow grows increasingly sympathetic, in spite of the blood on his hands.

No Turning Back is fast, intense, and compelling. It grabbed me like the best work of Andrew Klavan or Gregg Hurwitz. It also had a very satisfying twist at the end. This is an expertly plotted and written story. It would make a great movie. Like all thrillers, it contains a few implausibilities, but they’re well handled.

I happily recommend No Turning Back. Cautions for language, violence, and adult themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘All Hallows Eve,’ by Charles Williams

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(Sorry for the late post tonight. I had an eye exam, preparatory to cataract surgery [to which I very much look forward], today. They dilated my eyes, and I’m only now regaining the ability to see my computer screen clearly.)

What had looked at Lester from Evelyn’s eyes, what now showed in her own, was pure immortality. This was the seal of the City, its first gift to the dead who entered it. They had what they were and they had it (as it seemed) forever.

Lester Furnival (Lester, in this case, a woman’s name) is a ghost. As All Hallows Eve begins, the war is over, but she fell victim to a freak accident, a commercial plane dropping from the sky near Westminster Bridge. She has now entered a parallel but different City – the City of God. But she’s still disoriented.

With her is her “friend” Evelyn, a petty-minded and voluble woman who happened to be with her when they died. But as they wander the familiar streets, now strange and strangely unpeopled, Lester finds herself drawn into the troubles of another friend – Betty. Betty is the daughter of Simon Leclerc, a charismatic healer and preacher of peace who is now attracting a world-wide following. No one guesses that Simon is in fact the Antichrist, a magician. He has a plan to make contact with the eternal through killing his daughter and using her spirit as a messenger, to bring him news of the future. He’s already been sending her on such journeys in trances, and it’s in that state that she encounters Lester, who feels a divine compulsion to help her before she can move on into higher Heaven.

Meanwhile, Lester’s husband, Richard, is mourning her and lamenting his failures as a spouse. Lester’s friend Jonathan, a renowned painter, wants to marry Betty – unaware of her father’s plans for her. To please Betty’s mother, he paints a picture of Simon – one which infuriates the mother, but – surprisingly – pleases Simon himself.

That’s the setup for All Hallows Eve, Charles Williams final novel. Like all his books, it’s eccentric and challenging. I’ve always enjoyed it, and I quite enjoyed re-reading it.

Williams was a writer utterly at odds with modern literary fashions. Where we all (I include myself) struggle to be terse and precise in our prose nowadays, Williams unleashes a flood of words on the reader. But he does it the right way. He is not – like so many bad writers – just throwing words at his ideas, hoping a few will stick. Rather, he revels in an abundance of words, saying the same thing over and over in different ways, faceting his (often surprising) spiritual insights.

I would say, in fact, that Charles Williams’ fiction was just another stream of his poetry. Almost literally a stream – more like a torrent. One launches one’s boat into it and drives with the current.

Some people like Williams; some can’t stand him. I like him a lot (as a writer, not necessarily as a man). If you haven’t tried this strangest member of the Inklings, All Hallows Eve is a good place to start. But be prepared to wrestle with it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Death Trap,’ by John D. MacDonald

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Realization was a long time in coming, and when it came in all its intensity, I knew that the world seldom saw as great a fool as I. She had magic, integrity, passion and a rare loveliness. And I had gone at her the way you go at one of those coin machines where you try to pick up the prize with a toy crane. I could have had the whole machine, with all the prizes and all the candy. But I had settled for gilt and glass.

Hugh MacReedy, hero-narrator of John D. MacDonald’s Death Trap, has never gotten over the mistake he made two years ago, when he was working as an engineer on a highway project near the town of Dalton (no state given). He had met the lovely Victoria Landry, and dated her. He then treated her as a score on a card and cast her off, hurting her deeply. Now he knows he blew the best thing that ever happened to him. But he also knows he’ll never get another chance with her. Until, back in Chicago from a job in Spain, he happens to pick up a newspaper and read that Vicky’s brother Alister, an awkward and arrogant genius, is scheduled to be executed for murder in a few days.

On impulse, Hugh cancels a vacation he’d planned and drives to Dalton instead. He finds Vicky, a shadow of her old self, devastated by her brother’s tragedy. At first she refuses Hugh’s help, still hurting from his rejection, but at last she offers him a deal. If her brother is executed, she says, she knows she’ll never be able to be any man’s wife. But if Hugh can find evidence to prove him innocent, she’ll give him another chance.

Hugh is strong and healthy, bright enough, and not shy. He can afford to spend money on an investigation. He’s in.

I call that a pretty good set-up for a mystery thriller. Death Trap was written in 1957, when author MacDonald was hitting his stride as a novelist, and Death Trap, it seems to me, is right up there with the very best. The town of Dalton is realistically portrayed, a town that’s experienced tragedy and corporately settled on a unanimous narrative, in which the truth is secondary. The girl Alister is supposed to have killed is remembered as a sweet, lovely child. In fact she was prematurely promiscuous, openly defiant of authority, and casually manipulative. Anyone questioning the accepted narrative, though, has to expect pushback – and Hugh gets it in spades, though he gives as good as he gets.

The book involves several vicious fights, but – interestingly – it’s psychology and a smart trap that nail the real murderer down in the end. Few things in literature age as poorly as old psychology – and the analysis does creak a little here – but all in all it works.

Death Trap is a top-notch, old-school pulp action mystery with added class. Recommended, with cautions, as you’d expect, for violence and non-explicit sexual situations.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Foundational Laminate,’ by Jay Maynard

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This book was promoted on Instapundit. I suppose it must have qualified because of certain libertarian elements in the story. Personally, although I finished Jay Maynard’s Foundational Laminate, I’m a little ashamed of myself for doing so.

We begin with Alex Sullivan, a young man who’s been arrested and convicted of punching out a cop during a street demonstration. He got a pretty good deal – a couple weeks of jail time, plus probation – on the condition that he undergo therapy at the Laminatrix Mental hospital in rural Missouri. This hospital’s novel approach is to encase the patient (as well as the therapist) in a latex suit, which is then encased in a crystal sphere. The two, each in their suit and sphere, then engage in intense conversation over a period of weeks – through telepathy – as the patient is helped to re-process their old traumas, gaining perspective and clarity.

How is this possible? Through magic. The hospital is run by a sorceress whose legal name is “The Laminatrix.” She invented the latex suits, which fully support all physical needs and remove waste. Full-time employees at the hospital are permanently sealed in their suits, voluntarily becoming fully committed, lifetime caregivers.

The story then continues, telling how Alex himself decides to become a caregiver, surrendering his face (all suit-wearers are masked) and his name (he becomes Red 24, after the color his suit and his hiring sequence). We follow as he eventually encounters a patient who, unwittingly, will round out his personal story. And we also follow as the state of Missouri discovers, to its horror, that there’s an institution here they haven’t figured out a way to regulate, so they diligently try to find a way to get it on a legal leash.

First, in fairness, I should state that Foundational Laminate is pretty well written. The prose was professional, the grammar and punctuation good – something fairly rare these days. Characterization was all right – though Maynard is one of those annoying authors who avoids almost all description of characters.

What I did not like was, first of all, that we’re dealing with a false gospel here. It’s the Freudian belief that all our problems come from unconscious traumas, and that if those are solved, we’ll become fully virtuous. I believe our faults go much deeper than that, and that a man without neuroses may still be a wicked man. Therapy has its place, but we have deeper problems.

Secondly, the suits creeped me out. We’re talking about a latex suit with a masked helmet. A life without faces and names is presented here as in some way superior. I like seeing people’s faces. I like names better than numbers, too. (Call me old-fashioned.) Also, the suit-wearers cannot procreate.

What’s more, we’re told that these suits are genuinely skin-tight – so tight as to show all details of the body. More like body paint than a wet suit. The suit wearers, even as they lose their faces, shed all sense of bodily shame. Not only that, but much is made of the tubes that the suits magically insert into all the body’s orifices. This struck me as a little perverse.

In other words, Foundational Laminate reads a lot like a sex fantasy in which a latex fetishist imagines saving the world through his kink.

That may be unfair. But it looked that way to me.

I can’t recommend Foundational Laminate.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Nightshade,’ by Michael Connelly

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Catalina Island must be a nice place. Mystery writers seem to like to set stories there, and it sounds like a beautiful, laid-back community, where people tool around in golf carts and the weather is almost always nice.

Michael Connelly has created a new detective character and set him down on Catalina in his latest novel, Nightshade. “Stilwell” (no first name given) works for Los Angeles County, and used to operate in LA itself. But a beef with another detective ended with Stilwell drawing the short straw and getting exiled to the island. Only he was surprised to discover that he quite likes it there. He’s starting to feel at home, and has a new girlfriend.

Then one morning a yacht maintenance man reports what seems to be a body in a garbage bag on the harbor bottom, weighed down with an anchor. Stilwell dives down to check it personally, and finds it to be a woman – with a distinctive purple streak in her dark hair.

The woman proves to have been a server at an elite local fishing club, one who has a reputation as a gold digger. No matter – for Stilwell (as for Harry Bosch), a murder is a murder. Everybody matters, or nobody matters.

The trail will lead to the highest levels of California society, and to the lowest depths of civic corruption. It will bring him into conflict with his colleagues and superiors. Before he’s done, Stilwell will risk losing, not only his career, but the life of someone close to him.

I must admit I didn’t like Nightshade as much as I had hoped I would. Stilwell is no Harry Bosch. To me, he was kind of one-dimensional, with only three clear character traits – he is passionate about solving murders, he cares about his girlfriend, and he thinks he’s always right. This last trait seems most prominent – when Stilwell gets orders that are inconsistent with his detective instincts, he just ignores them. In the world of the story, he’s usually justified – but in the real world, there are usually reasons for the rules. And cops who make their own rules tend to go very wrong.

But the book was all right. It moved right along, and the writing was good, as you’d expect from Connelly. The usual cautions for language and mature themes apply.

Reviews

Film review: ‘The Accountant 2,’ plus some whining

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I saw The Accountant 2, on Amazon Prime, and my purposes tonight is to write about that.

But first, a little about my aches and pains. Because I’m old, dadgummit, and I find the spectacle of my personal deterioration endlessly fascinating.

And since I’m such a transcendent wordsmith, it must surely fascinate you, too.

What I mean to say is, yesterday I was moving around in considerable pain. The pain was in my lower back. I felt like I’d fallen and bruised it (I hadn’t), or I’d strained a muscle (not to my knowledge), or I’d overworked myself lifting and carrying heavy things (ha ha ha).

I had done none of those. Sunday was a quiet day for me, and I’d spent it mostly reclining on my couch or (for a touch of variety) on my bed.

The point is, I did nothing.

And the following day I felt like Sisyphus on one of his bad mornings.

To put it another way – I am now at a point in my life where I can hurt myself by doing nothing at all.

And behold, a great fear came upon me, yesterday. “This affliction befell me for no reason, in the manner made popular by Job the patriarch. So if it came from nothing, maybe there’s no way to get rid of it, either. Maybe this is my new normal. I’m old. Anything can happen!”

But I’m better today. Stiff, but I can walk sort of normally, and I went to the gym. Which is a great relief to me, as well as to all my legions of admirers.

Just needed to get that off my chest.

Anyway, The Accountant 2.

I liked the first Accountant movie very much. I seem to respond well to any story about autistic characters, which leads me to suspect I’m probably on the spectrum myself.

But not like Christian Wolff, our hero (Ben Affleck) is. Christian can do the most complex math in his head. He lives a strictly regimented life, dwelling in a surgically clean and neat Airstream trailer (though he’s fabulously rich), eating precisely the same foods every day, wearing precisely the same clothing. He craves order and peace, but happens to be a deadly martial artist. (Just another way of ordering chaos.)

He makes his living doing the books for various illegal enterprises – criminal gangs, drug smugglers. He seems to have no conscience about such matters, but does feel strong bonds of loyalty to old friends, and to his brother Braxton – though he never calls him and does not miss him in his absence.

As the movie starts, an old friend of Christian’s is murdered, in an incident involving a mysterious female assassin, Anaïs. He is called in by Marybeth Medina, director of the FBI division FinCEN, to help her find the murderers. Christian in his turn calls on his brother Braxton, who’s a professional assassin. We get to observe a lot of amusing sibling dynamics as these two strange men revert to childhood patterns. Braxton, who is relatively “normal” (for a killer), is frustrated by his brother, but also protective of him.

The partnership with Marybeth has to be ill-fated – being a good Fed, she has lines she won’t cross in an investigation. Christian isn’t even aware of such lines. They then proceed on separate paths, until they reconverge in a confrontation with vicious human traffickers and the mysterious Anaïs, who carries a dangerous secret.

I enjoyed The Accountant 2 fully as much as the first film. (Ben Affleck was born to play an autistic character.) But I have ambivalent feelings about the story, from a moral point of view. Here we have a character who seems to possess no moral sense – only a personal sense of order. And we pair him with another character (his brother) who’s almost equally deadly and has suppressed his conscience. Yet both are intensely sympathetic and relatable – I suspect we’re all growing a little autistic in the modern world, which is what makes these movies so compelling.

Interestingly, there’s a scene in The Accountant 2 that mirrors one of the most memorable scenes in Gregg Hurwitz’s latest Orphan X novel, Nemesis. Both scenes involve an autistic person getting into Country line dancing, and finding themselves unexpectedly in happy synch with other humans. Both scenes work very well, though they come out differently.

So, in conclusion, I’m not sure what to make of The Accountant 2 in moral terms, but I sure had a good time with it. Especially recommended for the socially awkward. Cautions, needless to say, for language and violence.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Small Favor,’ by Jim Butcher

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I kept wondering, as I read Jim Butcher’s Small Favor, the 10th volume in his Harry Dresden urban fantasy series, why I don’t like these books more. I’d read one before, and wasn’t over the moon about it. But I watched the short-lived cable series loosely based on the books, and found that amusing, so when a deal came up, I figured I’d try another one. Alas, no joy. It just didn’t work for me. And yet everything’s there – good writing, vivid characters, plenty of action, and even a palpable penumbra of Christianity (fairly explicit in this book).

In Small Favor, Chicago wizard Harry Dresden gets a call from his female cop friend Murphy, who asks him to consult on yet another bizarre crime. This time the front has been knocked off a downtown building, presumably by supernatural means. Harry soon realizes that the building had contained a magical safe room – a place for a wizard to hide from spells and powers – yet some unimaginable force has pried the safe room open. Its occupant, Chicago gangster and magical hanger-on “Gentleman” Johnnie Marcone, has vanished.

This constitutes a crisis worthy of a meeting of the Wizard’s Council, of which Harry is a member. Action must be taken. The Enemy here is sinister enough that Harry is called on to rescue Marcone. For help he turns to his friend Michael, a member of the Knights of the Cross.

As an added complication, Harry has offended some powerful Faeries, who send a weird iteration of the Three Billygoats Gruff after him – no laughing matter.

There’s nothing wrong with the Harry Dresden books. I recognized, even as I read, that I was dealing with quality material. And yet, somehow, I couldn’t get into it.

First of all, I guess wizardry just doesn’t appeal to me. Gandalf’s all right, because he’s essentially an angel and does most of his wonders through his words alone. But more than that, pentagrams and sigils and spells, those things just creep me out.

Also, the level of action was Tom Cruise movie high. Harry caromed from one deadly peril to another, each more dire than the last, with only a few pages in between for rest and character development.

That kind of story just wears this old man out. I like a more sedate pace.

But your mileage is very likely to vary. These books are highly popular, and if you like this sort of thing I think you’ll like Small Favors a lot.