Category Archives: Reviews

Fiction, Reviews

‘Romeo’s Fire,’ by James Scott Bell

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I was tired. Tired of thinking about death. I remembered something Kafka said, that the meaning of life is only that it stops. I wanted to punch Kafka in the face. But he’s dead too.

James Scott Bell’s Mike Romeo books are pleasant, fairly light action mysteries in the hard-boiled genre. James Scott Bell, a top-level Christian novelist, knows his business. His main character here is a former cage fighter who now works as an investigator for a wise old Jewish attorney in Los Angeles. Mike is a great reader, always quoting the classics.

In Romeo’s Fire, they have a new client, a homeless boy who killed another homeless man with a knife. He claims self-defense – it’s the use of a knife in California that got him in trouble. Mike’s boss thinks he can plead down to manslaughter and get the kid off with no jail time. They get him remanded to a group home, from which he promptly disappears. Now it’s Mike’s job to find their client.

One amusing element in this story was that after Mike gets arrested (of course he gets arrested. Doesn’t every private eye get arrested in every private eye novel?), he solves the problem the old-fashioned way, by just bulling through a police guard. He makes it work too.

Also notable is the realistic depiction of today’s Los Angeles, especially its homeless problem and impotent police protection. There are also Christian themes, which author Bell renders more palatable through making Mike a seeking agnostic.

The Mike Romeo mysteries are always fun. I recommend Romeo’s Fire, and James Scott Bell is a fine storyteller.

Fiction, Reviews

‘A Woman Underground,’ by Andrew Klavan

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Since in Winters’s interior world, it was always the year 1795, he did not like to curse in front of a lady, so he swallowed his first reaction and said, “That’s awful.”

I wish Andrew Klavan’s Cameron Winter novels were two or three times longer than they are. It’s a gift of God that a writer of Klavan’s caliber has become a Christian, thus permitting the creation of amazing books like these (though the Christian subtext is always kept sub). I suppose not everyone reacts to them as I do. Some people don’t like them, after all. And perhaps I respond viscerally to the main character himself, because I identify with him.

In any case, A Woman Underground begins with one of our English professor hero’s stories from his past, as told to Margaret, his psychologist. It’s a disturbing story about a colleague of his from his days as a government assassin, the straightest arrow of all straightest arrows and a devout Christian, who disappeared on assignment in Turkey and Cameron was sent to find out what happened to him….

But Margaret interrupts him. She wants to know whether he’s phoned the woman he met in the last book, the one with whom he had a mutual attraction. No, he hasn’t. Why not? Well, he’s been dealing with some things…

Yes indeed, he has. He’s still obsessing about Charlotte, the girl he fell in love with as a child. She learned some shocking things about her family years ago, and just went off the rails, running off with a fringe political group.

You need to find Charlotte, to get some closure, Margaret tells him. And almost immediately, Charlotte appears – sort of. Cameron goes home to his apartment and smells her childhood perfume in the air. An examination of his building’s security recordings shows that a woman did come to his door. It looks like it might have been her. She’s carrying a book. That book will be the clue that leads Cameron on a trail into the shadowy world of the right-wing underground, to lies and betrayals and shattered illusions.

The previous Cameron Winter books have run on a formula – Cameron’s “strange habit of mind” kicks in – his brain enters a sort of fugue state, where he intuits a crime that the police can’t see. And so he goes in to meddle and see that justice is done. This time, the big mystery is his own, and though the “strange habit” makes its appearance, this time it’s to help him solve mysteries rather than to discover their existence. This way works just as well.

I know I’ll read it again. I read them all again. A Woman Underground is a stellar addition to one of the best mystery series going.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Sins of the Fathers,’ by James Scott Bell

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But then the guy smiled. His teeth were like pylons coated with ocean grime.

I’m a great fan of James Scott Bell, one of our best Christian thriller writers (after Andrew Klavan, of course). But for me at first, Sins of the Fathers labored under a few handicaps.

First of all, there’s a female protagonist. I just avoid them in these days of Mary Sues (not that a male writer is likely to write a female Mary Sue.)

Secondly, the setting is early in the 21st Century, when conditions in our country (and specifically in Los Angeles, where this story is set) were somewhat different from today. This was the days of tough, lock ’em up LA prosecutors (I believe one of our current presidential candidates was part of this). It was a very different environment from what we see in California today.

Finally, this is an expressly Christian novel. It’s not the kind I generally prefer, where the Christianity is mostly subtextual (though Heaven knows I don’t practice what I preach in my own books).

So I was a little slow getting into Sins of the Fathers. But it won me over, decisively.

Lindy Field is a defense attorney, but she hasn’t worked in a while. She suffered a bitter defeat in the case of a minor she defended, and she suspects a police cover-up. She actually suffered a psychological breakdown, and hasn’t worked for a while.

But her legal mentor asks her to take on a fresh case. It’s a high profile one, concerning a boy who opened fire with a rifle on a middle school baseball game, killing several boys and one coach. Public anger is high. A powerful victims’ advocacy group is calling for the maximum penalty.

Even worse, the assistant DA who beat Lindy on the last case will be prosecuting this one.

But her mentor thinks she can win. Get a sentence of mental incapacity for the kid. He says he believes in her. So she takes the case.

It will lead to frantic social pressure, media scrutiny, and an attempt on her life. But Lindy – for personal reasons that are only gradually revealed – needs to hold on. She needs to save this kid.

In terms of characterization and plot, I’d say Sins of the Fathers is as good as any thriller novel I’ve ever read, whatever the intended audience. There were delightful surprises, and I was moved by the book’s resolution.

I’ll admit I thought there was a little too much “God talk.” People bringing up Christ and faith in casual conversation, so that the message of the book could be explicitly stated. Of course, this was nearly 20 years ago. Society was different then. You could probably discuss such things in an LA courthouse in those bygone days.

Anyway, if you’re looking for an overtly Christian thriller, written at the very highest level, I can wholeheartedly recommend Sins of the Fathers.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘The Road to Middle-Earth,’ by Tom Shippey

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This was Tolkien’s major linguistic heresy. He thought that people could feel history in words, could recognize language ‘styles’, could extract sense (of sorts) from sound alone, could moreover make aesthetic judgments based on phonology. He said the sound of ‘cellar door’ was more beautiful than the sound of ‘beautiful’. He clearly believed that untranslated elvish would do a job that English could not.

I didn’t really know what I was getting into when I bought Tom Shippey’s The Road to Middle-Earth. I had read his Tolkien biography, Author of the Century, and generally enjoyed it. When I stopped to see my friend Dale Nelson recently, he praised TRTME as one of his most prized books. So I thought I’d give it a try.

And it is a fine work. A deep-diving overview of J. R. R. Tolkien’s ideas, work life, and achievements. But it may have been more of a book than this reader was qualified to handle.

I was pleased that the author seems to have moderated his comments about Augustinianism and Manicheanism, which (in my opinion) went too far in his Tolkien biography, where he actually labels C. S. Lewis a Manichean. What he’s actually talking about is our conception of evil – is it (as Augustine – and C. S. Lewis, whatever Shippey says – insisted) a lack, a corruption of the good, or does it have existence in itself? He seems to be convinced that if you believe the Augustinian view, you can’t really embody evil in a character. I’ve never accepted that – it’s enough to have a character submit to evil and live out its qualities.

My personal difficulty with the book, I’m afraid, was that I haven’t read enough of the post-Rings Tolkien material. I’ve read the Silmarillion, and several of the books involving single stories, but I couldn’t make it through the books of Lost Tales, and never even tried to read The History of Middle Earth. That means that a lot of the material Shippey deals with in the later chapters of this book was unknown, or only vaguely known, to me.

But if you’re a true Tolkien geek, I would say this is a book you absolutely ought to read. It’s been revised twice, and the author conscientiously corrects previous errors (mostly errors of ignorance).

Highly recommended, for its proper audience.

Fiction, Reviews

Well-Crafted Start to a Series: Memory Man by David Baldacci

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Guest Review by Adam H. Douglas

Memory Man is the first book that launched a best-selling series of novels by David Baldacci back in 2015. It’s a tight, expertly crafted novel that effectively achieves what it sets out to do—to give us a creepy, thrilling read that keeps you guessing until the end.  

Amos Decker, a former football player turned detective, suffers a life-altering tragedy when he discovers the brutal murder of his wife, Cassie, his young daughter, Molly, and his brother-in-law, Johnny, in their home. Returning from a fruitless stakeout, Decker finds Johnny with his throat slit, Cassie shot in the head, and Molly strangled. Baldacci’s well-honed writing skills describe the scene with a haunting efficiency.  

Fifteen months later, we find Decker living in a state of emotional numbness, his life in disarray, drifting in and out of homelessness. He desperately wants to die but cannot seem to find the will to kill himself. 

Not sure what else to do with his broken existence, he becomes a private investigator and scrapes by on low-paying cases. The trauma of losing his family never leaves him, intensified by his unique condition—hyperthymesia—which forces him to remember every detail of his past. He can’t forget anything, including the faces of his dead family.

As Decker struggles with the weight of his loss, his old partner—a great tough-as-nails supporting character named Mary Lancaster—tracks him down to let him know that a man named Sebastian Leopold has walked into police custody and confessed to the murder of Decker’s family. 

The confession sparks conflicting emotions in Decker—anger, suspicion, and a desperate need for closure. Decker questions the man’s motivations and credibility while revisiting the crime that destroyed his life.

Worse still, the chaos of the situation is intensified by a nearby high school shooting that leaves several dead. Incredibly, the shooter escapes and is still at large. Local police are baffled by the crime and are strained almost to the breaking point. Based on Lancaster’s recommendation, they take on Decker as a consultant to help solve the case. 

But Decker is beginning to suspect that the cases are linked. And that Decker himself might be the ultimate target of the mass killer.  

Bestselling author and former lawyer David Baldacci is widely known for his thrillers and suspense novels featuring complex characters, fast-paced plots, and legal or political themes. His debut novel, Absolute Power (1996), was adapted into a film starring Clint Eastwood. He’s written over fifty novels in almost thirty years.

In short, Baldacci knows his stuff. And it shows here. 

Memory Man is a solid, tight thriller that keeps you turning pages and guessing almost the whole way through. It’s no wonder why this novel—with its complex, gritty lead character—launched a best-selling series of seven books so far (Note: the eighth is due to drop sometime this year). 

The book’s main failing appears when we finally learn the solution to how the school shooter escaped. Rather than a revelation, the killer’s motives and methods come across as a somewhat unnecessarily intricate plot point that confuses more than entertains. 

True, this is a common problem with villains in American thrillers, which the public demands must create ever-increasingly complex and psychopathic plans to torture our heroes both mentally and physically. So, I’ll easily overlook this minor hiccup in what is ultimately a very worthy read. 

Guest Bio: Adam H. Douglas is a full-time writer and ghostwriter with over two decades of experience in nonfiction, science fiction, speculative fiction, and horror fantasy fiction. Adam’s award-winning short stories have appeared in various publications, including the Eerie River Publishing anthology “It Calls From the Doors,” I/O Magazine, Forbes, Business Insider, and many more.

Photo by Klim Musalimov on Unsplash

Fiction, Reviews

‘Right Ho, Jeeves,’ by P. G. Wodehouse

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“You have a splendid, chivalrous soul.”

“Not a bit.”

“Yes, you have. You remind me of Cyrano.”

“Who?”

“Cyrano de Bergerac.”

“The chap with the nose?”

“Yes.”

I can’t say I was any too pleased. I felt the old beak furtively. It was a bit on the prominent side, perhaps, but, dash it, not in the Cyrano class. It began to look as if the next thing this girl would do would be to compare me to Schnozzie Durante.

I suppose there must be a time when it would be a mistake to read a P. G. Wodehouse novel, but I can’t think of one offhand. And for this reader, the Jeeves and Wooster stories are supreme. It’s Bertie Wooster’s narration that makes all the difference.

Opinions differ, naturally, on what is the best J&W novel, but I think Right Ho, Jeeves must be in anybody’s top two or three. John Le Carre called it one of his all-time favorite novels. An internet poll in 2009 voted it the best comic novel ever penned by an English writer. Published in 1934, RH,J was Wodehouse’s second full-length Jeeves novel. Critics have noted that these first two books share the common theme of Bertie attempting to assert himself in the face of Jeeves’ intelligence and personality; that element was reduced in later stories. But it can’t have been because it was ineffective as a plot element – it’s irresistible.

When we join our heroes, Bertie has just returned from a holiday in Cannes. He soon clashes with his valet Jeeves over his new dinner jacket – a “white mess jacket with brass buttons” that was all the rage on the Riviera that summer. Bertie insists that he will wear the garment, creating a coldness between master and servant.

So when Bertie gets word that his cousin Angela Travers has broken her engagement to his old friend Tuppy Glossop, he refuses to appeal to Jeeves to solve the problem, but comes up with a plan of his own. Similarly, when his old school chum Gussie Fink-Nottle tells him he can’t work up the nerve to propose to Madeline Bassett (a girl Bertie considers too goopy to live, but just right for the feckless Gussie) he hands him a scheme of his own (based on “the psychology of the individual”).

Needless to say, all Bertie’s plans lead to disaster, and in the end only Jeeves’ fantastic brain can bring about a resolution – a resolution that will involve a considerable amount of discomfort for Bertie himself. One notes a certain refined vindictiveness in Jeeves here, but it’s the affectionate vindictiveness of a parent who wants to teach an errant child a lesson they won’t forget.

No review of Right Ho, Jeeves would be complete without a mention of the classic scene when Gussie, drunk as a lord for the first time in his life, distributes prizes to students at Market Snodsbury grammar school. Here is farce raised to Olympian heights.

What a treat. If you haven’t read Right Ho, Jeeves, do yourself a favor.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Forest of Lost Souls,’ by Dean Koontz

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He owns four billion dollars’ worth of abstract expressionist paintings so meaningless and ugly that, displayed in one gallery, they would render connoisseurs of such art suicidal with delight.

Dean Koontz’ colossal success as a novelist, combined with his quirky Catholic faith, have made it possible for him to take risks most writers wouldn’t. The Forest of Lost Souls is clearly experimental in nature. Although I enjoyed it, I’m not entirely sure how successful the experiment is.

Vida, the heroine of the book, is a young woman of rare beauty and even rarer gifts. Orphaned young and raised by a kindly uncle in his mountain cabin in Colorado, she makes her living mining and polishing precious stones for sale. She has a strange gift for finding gems, but that’s only one of her talents. She sees hidden beauty everywhere, and lives in harmony with nature and its animals, who do not fear her.

She recently lost the love of her life, a local schoolteacher and activist who was trying to stop a development plan for a mountain meadow near her home. Supposedly he died in a freak accident, but it was murder. Anyone who gets in the way of the plan will be targeted for similar murder.

Author Koontz performs a very neat maneuver in this story – he enlists all the reader’s sympathies for nature under threat from ruthless capitalists, but then turns that sympathy against the progressive policies that actually drive much of that threat (wind power in this case). He introduces us to close-to-the-soil, spiritually sensitive Native Americans, and then uses them in a way we hadn’t looked for.

And he does not neglect to include a couple of heartwarming love stories.

But I wasn’t sure it all worked in the end. This is a story about Heaven taking a hand in human affairs, providing rescue through supernatural powers. If that’s what it’s gonna take to save us, I’m not sure we’re likely to be so favored.

Also, I found the love stories (both of them) too good to be true (here speaks the bitter old bachelor).

But The Forest of Lost Souls is certainly an enjoyable book. I do recommend it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘A New Prospect,’ by Wayne Zurl

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I have returned safely from my annual pilgrimage to Minot, North Dakota for Norsk Høstfest. I’d planned to post a report tonight, but my slow computer is taking time uploading my photos, and I want you to enjoy the full splendor and pageantry of the spectacle. So I’ll try to do that tomorrow.

I will tell you that it went very well, and I have only good things to say about the festival.

Tonight’s review, then, will be A New Prospect, by Wayne Zurl.

Sam Jenkins, our hero, is former New York City police detective, now retired the town of Prospect, in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. He’s found retirement a little boring, so when the current chief of police retires under pressure, Sam applies for the job, for which he’s (theoretically) overqualified. Obviously he doesn’t expect the kind of action he used to see in the Big Apple. Except that, on his very first day on the job, there’s a puzzling murder.

The victim is a rich local resident, a nasty drunk who was widely hated. He was stabbed to death in his folding chair, next to his vintage Rolls Royce, during a classic auto show. It soon becomes apparent that a lot of people – including the not-so-grieving widow – do not appreciate having an “outsider” investigating the murder, and pressure is put on Sam to hand the case off to the state police or the FBI. But this is just the sort of mystery Sam has always been best at, and he keeps at it.

The writing was okay. This is an older book, and I assume author Zurl had to actually satisfy a publisher’s proofreaders. But the book never really grabbed me. I thought Sam, as narrator, revealed a somewhat condescending attitude to the southern people he’s dealing with. Especially annoying was the heavy use of dialect in the dialogue. The occasional “y’all,” and such, is plenty to suggest an accent. You don’t have to spread it on thick.

All in all, I could take or leave A New Prospect.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Now You See Me,’ by Chris McGeorge

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Impossible crimes are an interesting mystery subgenre. I’m fond of them. That was one of the things that kept me reading Chris McGeorge’s Now You See Me.

Robin Ferringham, hero of the story, is the author of a successful memoir about the disappearance of his much-loved wife Samantha, whose body has never been found. One day he receives a call from a young man named Matthew, who has been arrested for the murders of five of his young friends. They went into a canal tunnel in the town of Marsden, a tourist attraction, in a long boat, and when the boat was found later, only Matthew was in it, claiming to have no memory of what happened to the others. Everyone is convinced of his guilt (though I find it hard to understand what kind of a case the prosecution could make). Robin is inclined to dismiss the young man’s pleas, except that he claims to have gotten his name from Samantha, who “called him” around the time she disappeared. And he knows things that only she could have told him.

So Robin must go to Marsden, where (in classic mystery style) he finds the locals hostile. But he also finds an ally. Together they get close enough to an incredible conspiracy to put their lives in danger.

And when I say “an incredible conspiracy” I mean just that. This is one of those fictional criminal schemes that is so complex and has so many moving parts that it’s impossible to believe in it. I think the author shows some potential as a writer, but his plotting is uneven, and his writing only fair. The story showed signs of his coercing the characters into actions that don’t seem quite natural to them.

And the violence was more graphic than it needed to be.

In the end, in spite of the author’s apparent potential, I found Now You See Me disappointing.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Late Lord Thorpe,’ by Peter Grainger

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Over the years I have become very fond of Peter Grainger’s DC Smith novels, set in England’s Norfolk. Smith was a police detective in the fictional town of King’s Lake. But he grew old, and some years back author Grainger made the decision not to defy real-world time, and allowed Smith to retire – more or less. He now lives in a marsh-side house with his partner, a (female) author and fellow former police detective. He keeps his hand in by working as an investigator for the security firm of Diver and Diver, run by a young brother and sister team whom he met on the job.

I’ve got to confess – I’m not enjoying Smith’s retirement as much as I hoped. But more about that later.

As The Late Lord Thorpe opens, Smith accepts a new assignment. Lady Caroline Thorpe, a member of the landed aristocracy, wife of a member of parliament, has asked Diver and Diver to look into the death of her brother, Lord Thorpe, some time earlier. He was found drowned in a swimming pool after a wild party at an estate famous for scandalous goings-on. A witness reported he’d been taking drugs, and drugs and alcohol were found in his blood.

But now she has heard rumors from some of her brother’s friends, who have a different story to tell. Her brother had been trying to clean his life up, and if something nefarious happened, she wants to know about it.

The investigation will involve dealing with some powerful and dangerous people. But the final outcome is really no great surprise, and I have to admit I found the story a little slow.

I don’t know why Smith has lost so much of his charm for me. Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t surprise me much anymore. As a cop he was always showing unexpected talents and capacities.

Also – I think I have to admit that I’m finding the books increasingly conventional in terms of its political correctness. It’s gotten to the point where most of the professionals we encounter in these stories are female, and most of the competent ones are female as well. The few dullards we encounter are uniformly male. You’d think the book was written by television script writers.

As always, the book was well-written (though the author was guilty of misplaced modifiers on two different occasions – a disappointment). But not a scintillating read in my opinion.