I must have enjoyed The Ethics of Magic, the first book in Robert Arrington’s “Haunted Law Firm” series. Because I bought the second book, The Pathways of Magic, and read it in one day.
Our hero (though, oddly, he’s not part of the law firm), college instructor Mitch McCaffrey, has a surprise visit from a strange woman – a very strange woman – at his office. She wears a shirt of mesh mail and is carrying a short sword, which they use together to dispatch a werewolf that’s following her. Then the woman makes the werewolf disappear.
Her name is Alyssa McCormick, and, like Mitch, she has magical skills. She is in fact the niece of Mitch’s magical mentor, and she’d like to look at the books of magic her uncle left to Mitch. He’s happy to show them to her. It turns out they’re very rare and valuable.
In fact, they’re so valuable that both the FBI and the CIA (who employ magic in their investigations) want to get their hands on them, and are willing to break all the rules to secure them. Which only gets Mitch’s and Alyssa’s backs up, and they fight back, both with spells and lawyers (this is where the Haunted Law Firm comes in). The stakes get even higher when Monica Gilbert, Mitch’s old Woke enemy from the first book, shows up as an FBI consultant.
The story moves right along, alternating legal give-and-take with scenes of action and spell-casting. The prose remains unremarkable (with an annoying number of typos), but the storytelling worked. And the values are conservative.
Here’s a light, fun novel, aimed primarily at conservatives and Christians. And it works pretty well.
Mitch McCaffrey, hero of The Ethics of Magic, teaches at a community college in rural North Carolina. He enjoys his work and is dating a woman he hopes to marry.
But he has an enemy. Monica Gilbert, the Compliance Officer at the college, has it in for him. He’s a white male, in the first place, and he teaches the classics in his courses. She suspects him of holding the “wrong” opinions, something she feels must not be tolerated in higher education.
But her motivations go deeper. First of all, she once made a pass at him and he turned her down. Nobody does that. Worse, his girlfriend is a woman she knew as a girl, and hated.
But worst of all, Mitch is a magic practitioner. Monica can tell because she is one herself. She’s eager for a showdown, to awe him with her power.
When a few students make a complaint about Mitch, he’s soon facing a hearing to determine whether he’ll be dismissed. That’s when he retains the services of lawyer Kathryn Turner. All this begins the first adventure in Robert Arrington’s “Haunted Law Firm” series.
I had some quibbles with The Ethics of Magic. The prose was adequate, but there were frequent misspellings and typos. I thought the villains were painted a little broadly – they reveled in evil too much. Most people – even the Woke – honestly believe they’re doing the right thing.
And, although most of our good characters here are Christians, and attend church, Mitch and his girlfriend are sleeping together outside marriage. I suppose that sort of thing flies in some churches nowadays.
But outside of those things, I must say I enjoyed reading The Ethics of Magic very much. It was a lot of fun, sort of John Grisham meets Harry Potter.
Okay, I’ve capped my superhuman achievement of watching the Vikings series all the way through, by watching all 5 seasons – plus the final 2-hour movie – of the Netflix series, The Last Kingdom.
As I opined in a previous post, The Last Kingdom benefits from a previous viewing of Vikings, because it looks better by that comparison. But, as is the way of this world, things deteriorated as they went on.
The first two seasons followed Bernard Cornwell’s original novels fairly well – or so I’m told. (I haven’t read the books myself.)
Starting with Season 3, one seems to discern the influence of the Vikings series. One imagines studio executives gathering the writers in a shadowy dungeon, threatening them with racks, iron maidens, and thumbscrews, and telling them, “Make it more like Vikings. Which means more like Game of Thrones. Give us more treachery. More betrayal. The shortest distance between any two points ought to be through a knife wound in the back.”
Thus (aside from the obvious – such as the hero Uhtred’s adoption of Ragnar Lothbrok’s ahistorical rooster’s comb haircut), we see characters changing their personalities abruptly, for no particular reason. They make unreasonable demands, tell lies for the fun of it, and choose suicidal policies guaranteed to make enemies out of friends. The point is not realism, but the maximum possible treachery. I said that it’s Uhtred’s idiotic life choices that propel the plot in the early seasons. Later on, Uhtred becomes the voice of reason, restraining a succession of kings from one disastrous, counterintuitive caprice after another.
I was particularly disappointed, in the later seasons and the final movie, of the treatment of King Athelstan, one of my personal favorites. I’m fond of Athelstan because he raised Norway’s King Haakon the Good at his court, and made him a Christian.
[Spoiler alert] In the final movie, Seven Kings Must Die, Athelstan, who’s been a decent fellow up to now, suddenly murders his brother treacherously (something that absolutely did not happen in real life), and is also portrayed as a homosexual.
Yeah, I should have seen that coming. Athelstan never married or fathered a child, so obviously he must have been homosexual. As you can probably understand, I take that canard personally.
Interestingly, Paul Anderson, in his novel, Mother of Kings, makes Athelstan’s foster son, Haakon, a homosexual.
Fictioneers have treated this admirable pair very shabbily.
And it occurred to me then that somebody ought to write a good novel about Haakon’s life, emphasizing his education (there’s a good chance he might even have been literate) at Athelstan’s court.
Eric Schumacher has written a series of books on Haakon, but I read the first one and didn’t like his treatment.
And then I thought of a Bridge Character for a Haakon story. Which means I’ll have to write the book now.
I’ve mentioned more than once that I attribute the success of my Erling books (success as literary works, not financial success, obviously) to the insertion of Father Ailill as a bridge character. A bridge character is a character with a relatable enough personality that he can explain a very alien, antique culture to modern readers. (Hobbits are the classic bridge characters in Tolkien, which is why The Lord of the Rings is so much more accessible than the Silmarillion.)
This bridge character came to me almost in a moment. He won’t be anything like Father Ailill. In fact, he’ll be a Viking himself.
How can a Viking be a bridge character to the Viking Age?
This will not be your ordinary Viking.
Watch this space for the next couple years, for more information.
As the first installment in a series of mysteries starring Miami police detective Remy Ferguson, Mystery of L’inconnu introduces us to the detective and his team. For this reader, it wasn’t a very impressive debut.
“L’inconnu” (French for Unknown) is a very large, state of the art luxury yacht owned by a yacht manufacturing company. As a sales inducement, the company periodically offers free cruises to small groups of the super-rich, so they can enjoy the service, food, and amenities. But this voyage goes very, very bad.
The first part of the book concentrates on the story of the voyage, in which we gradually learn that one of the crew has made a deal with smugglers to take drugs on board at sea, to be delivered in Miami. Then the deal goes very, very wrong, and soon there are cartel gunmen rampaging through the vessel while the crew and passengers try to devise ways to either hide or defend themselves. They do surprisingly well, and the reader is rooting for them.
(Spoiler coming up.)
Then we switch to the investigation, led by our hero, Detective Remy Ferguson. And we are abruptly informed that pretty much all these people we’d been rooting for are dead. Remy’s investigation is subjected to pressure by his superiors, who are being pestered by the (very influential) yacht company to wrap the case up.
Then we get a final section, where we are presented with a Big Plot Twist (admittedly not a bad one), and a perilous situation from which our hero escapes only through a deus ex machina.
In my opinion, this is a very poor way to tell a story.
On top of that, the prose was weak. The author often misuses words, confusing “Cavalry” with “Calvary,” “flare gun” with “flair gun,” and other such errors. He appeared (I wasn’t quite sure because the prose was confusing) to confuse a rifle with a shotgun. He thinks Multiple Personality Disorder is the same as schizophrenia. And he delivers clumsy lines like, “’Whatever works,’ Brewer mumbled his simplistic estimation.”
Mystery of L’inconnu was a disappointing novel. I did finish it, though, so I suppose it wasn’t a total narrative failure.
What does an amateur Viking scholar do once he’s finished watching the interminable, insufferable “Vikings” series from the History Channel and Netflix?
He watches “The Last Kingdom,” as a man who’s had his joints dislocated on the rack might feel some relief at merely having an arm broken.
“The Last Kingdom” is, of course, based on a series of novels by Bernard Cornwell. That provides a sort of tether for the whole project, keeping it from flying off into the clouds as the “Vikings” series did.
The hero of the story is Uhtred of Bebbanburg, who (as far as I know) is a fictional character. Starting out as the unloved son of an English nobleman, he is kidnapped by Vikings (“Danes” as the English always called them) and adopted into their family. Later, when his adopted family is murdered by other, treacherous Danes, he finds himself joining the forces of King Aethelred of Wessex, and after his death, his brother Alfred (soon to be the Great).
What drives the plot is mainly the fact that Uhtred is an idiot. At every juncture, he ignores sensible advice and chooses the suicidal grand gesture. But because he’s a great fighter, he manages to survive, careening from one misadventure to another but always frustrated in his main goal – to reclaim his ancestral domains.
I watched one episode some years back, and was disappointed with the inaccuracies. Bad costumes (the leather and fur that look so good on screen but are impractical in real life). Bad weapons and armor – Uhtred’s sword has an anachronistic double-handed grip with a round pommel, and he carries it in a back scabbard (you never see him draw the sword, because back scabbards don’t work that way, and nobody used them in the 9th Century anyway).
In the third season, Uhtred suddenly shows up with a Ragnar Lothbrok haircut, which seems to indicate the malign influence of the “Vikings” series. Wikipedia suggests that the series begins deviating heavily from the books at that point. We’re seeing more female warriors (you can make a case for Aethelflaed of Mercia, I suppose, though I don’t think history says she actually swung a sword as a warrior herself). The plots – it seems to me – are a little less plausible now than during the previous seasons.
I respect Bernard Cornwell as a fine writer, though I’ve always found him cynical about Christianity – it must be admitted, though, that there are some admirable Christians in “The Last Kingdom” to balance the hypocrites and grifters.
But all in all, I can’t find an excuse to quit this series after having slogged through the No Man’s Land of “The Vikings.” “The Last Kingdom” isn’t bad. Comparatively.
Yes, it’s my birthday, thank you. I guess I was a little obscure about that yesterday.
Aside from his Travis McGee novels, John D. MacDonald was a prolific author of stand-alone thrillers. Today’s pick is April Evil, from 1956.
The setting is the town of Flamingo, Florida, whose most eccentric resident is old Dr. Paul Tomlin. It’s well known that Dr. Tomlin keeps all his money in cash, in a safe in his big stone house, as he doesn’t believe in banks.
This eccentricity attracts interest. Naturally his ne’er-do-well nephew Dil Parks is interested, as is Dil’s sexy, scheming wife, Lenora. And then there’s a more distant relation, young Joe Preston, who came to visit with his wife, Laurie. Dr. Tomlin despises Joe, but he likes Laurie, and so allows them to stay with him, while he teaches Laurie about books and music.
But even more darkly, a man named Harry Mullin has come to town. He’s on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, and he’s heard a rumor about a lot of money in an old man’s house. He’s assembled a team of specialists, and they’re planning a quick, easy job and a clean getaway.
Lawyer Ben Piersall is not involved in any of this. When Dil’s wife, Lenora, tried to get him to help them have the old man declared incompetent, he laughed her off. What he doesn’t know is that the criminal Harry Mullin has moved in next door, and his own son has developed a powerful curiosity about these secretive strangers.
It’s a powder keg situation, with several different fuses burning to it, and it’s all set to go off on one terrible afternoon.
April Evil is not the best of John D. MacDonald’s novels (I found it a little melodramatic), but it’s well-written and fairly representative. As always, the characters are the great strength. They’re varied and believable, and they sometimes surprise the reader.
Recommended. Cautions for violence and sexual situations.
A deal came up on a Toby Peters mystery by Stuart M. Kaminsky, and I bought it. Turned out I’d read it before, but it was fun to read again, and it turns out I haven’t reviewed it here. So, Tomorrow Is Another Day.
It’s 1943. Toby Peters, small-time Los Angeles private eye, gets a call to meet with Clark Gable. Gable is supposed to be overseas with the Air Force, where he’s trying to get himself killed in his grief over the death of his wife, Carole Lombard. But he’s briefly on leave, and somebody has been sending him threatening notes. It all seems to harken back to an incident during the filming of “Gone with the Wind,” where an extra was accidentally stabbed to death with a saber. The notes are cryptic, but they seem to indicate that the dead man was the note-writer’s father, and that he blames a group of people who were present on set – including Gable. And he means to kill them all, finishing up his murder spree with an attack on the Academy Awards banquet.
Though Gable is clearly a tragic character, the story as a whole is farcical, in the great Toby Peters tradition. Why a star of Gable’s magnitude would hire a PI who can do no better for a security team than his fat dentist, his retired wrestler landlord, and his “little person” best friend is a very good question, but they bring it off in the end, with only a few innocent bystanders lost along the way.
Light entertainment from a master mystery writer. Recommended.
I’ve been pretty happy with the Anthony Horowitz novels I’ve been able to pick up on special deals. His Hawthorn and Horowitz novels are an intriguing twist on the classic Holmes & Watson template – author Horowitz writes himself into the stories, and Hawthorne, his detective, is secretive and unsociable, a mystery in his own right. Hawthorne works for an equally secretive – and slightly sinister – private agency. Although the books were his idea in the first place, he is often reluctant to cough up the facts.
In Close to Death, it’s been a while since Hawthorne has produced a case for Horowitz to follow, and Horowitz’s agent is pressing for a new book. Hawthorne comes up with an old case that he worked back in 2014 with a different sidekick, about whom (of course) he is reluctant to say much.
The crime took place in Riverview Close, an expensive, gated cul-de-sac in a posh London suburb. The residents of the close were friendly and congenial until the Kentworthy family moved in. Giles Kentworthy was wealthy and ostentatious, and also right-wing (so obviously racist. Is flying the Union Jack actually considered offensive in England? Sad.) Their children are loud and occasionally destructive. They hold loud parties late at night and block a shared driveway with their vehicles. And now they’re planning to build a swimming pool that will ruin a view that means the world to one of their neighbors, a woman dying of a lingering disease.
When the neighbors call a meeting to air grievances, the Kentworthys don’t appear, which only raises tensions. Then Giles Kentworthy is found murdered with a crossbow, and the police call in Hawthorne and his old partner Dudley to consult.
I must give author Horowitz credit for masterful plotting. He’s a “fair play” mystery writer, providing the reader everything he needs to know to figure it out for himself, but diverting attention with expert sleight of hand. And the final solution was extremely clever – I didn’t see it coming at all. Then there was a dark coda that lent gravity to the whole exercise.
Holmes laughed. “Watson insists that I am the dramatist in real life,” said he. “Some touch of the artist wells up within me, and calls insistently for a well-stated performance.”
The last Sherlock Holmes novel (as opposed to short stories) that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote was The Valley of Fear, which was serialized in the Strand Magazine during 1914-1915. Doyle set the story well back in time, before Holmes’ “death” in a fight with Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls. Doyle places Moriarty in the story’s background, laying some preemptive groundwork for the story, “The Final Problem,” where Moriarty, one must admit, appears a little suddenly for an arch-enemy and nemesis.
In The Valley of Fear, Holmes gets a cipher message from an informant inside Moriarty’s organization, warning him of danger to a man at a country place called Birlstone House. Soon after this, a police detective named MacDonald arrives to ask him to help solve a grisly murder at that very place.
They arrive at Birlstone, which is a stately house surrounded by a moat, whose drawbridge is drawn up every night. So it’s virtually impossible that anyone sneaked into the house during the night. But some time that night, the owner of the house, Douglas, was murdered in his study, his face destroyed by a blast from a double-barrelled shotgun. The circumstances make suicide unlikely, but in that case how did the murderer get away? Holmes, of course, goes over the crime scene carefully with his magnifying glass, and it’s not long before he hits on the solution.
I have to admit that The Valley of Fear is one of my least favorite Holmes stories. It follows the pattern Doyle used in A Study In Scarlet, where you have half the story describing the investigation, and the other half consisting of the killer’s confession, in which he explains his back story and motives. (Borrowed loosely in this case from the story of the radical American labor group, The Molly McGuires.)
Doyle seemed to believe (and perhaps he was right in terms of his audience at the time) that people would enjoy stories about far-away, exotic places like the American West or India. I find Doyle a pretty pedestrian writer in these narratives. He tends to get the local details wrong – his American slang here is pretty clumsy, for instance. When I read a Holmes story, I want Holmes, and London. Or at least Victorian England.
So I can’t say I love The Valley of Fear. But if you’re a Holmes fan, you’ll want to read it.
Back in the 1960s, before he became a bestselling thriller writer (The Eagle Has Landed, etc.), the English author who wrote under the name Jack Higgins produced mysteries under his real name – Harry Patterson. Among them was a short series featuring London police detective Nick Miller. As The Graveyard Shift, the first entry in the series, begins, our hero has just been promoted to detective, after some special training. He is young for a detective, and well-educated. He’s also rich and likes to dress fashionably. Not a natural fit for the Crime Squad, but his extreme self-confidence never wavers, and he operates with a James Bond-like cool.
Meanwhile, Ben Garvald, a convicted robber, is being released from prison. He’s barely on the street before a couple of thugs attack him with a message to stay away from his ex-wife, now married to their boss, a crime lord. It takes more than that to intimidate Ben, who casually cripples them both and leaves them with a message for their boss. He has business to attend to, and then he’ll be on his way. If they want to stop him, they’ll need to kill him. Which they’ll try to do.
The ex-wife’s sister asks the police to find Ben and warn him off. This will lead to a trail of mayhem and death.
I was a big fan of Higgins/Patterson back in the day. He was a good storyteller, and set a good scene. His prose was adequate. As time went on (in my opinion), he got formulaic and predictable in his storytelling. But this is early work, and pretty fresh.
The book definitely shows its age in many ways. The cops are all men. Most everybody smokes, and they smoke in the office. The language is assuredly un-PC. I generally liked all that. I feel at home in that world.
I did figure out whodunnit, though.
The Graveyard Shift was intended to be dark and gritty by the standards of the time, depicting the hopelessness and desperation of the denizens of the rougher districts of London. Little did they know that it would only get worse with the coming years.
Not a bad book. Cautions for violence and insensitivity.
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