A deal came up for a Louis L’Amour book on Kindle, and I thought, “It’s been a long time since I’ve read L’Amour. I really dug him, way back when I was in radio. Let’s see how he holds up.”
Sadly, for this reader, Monument Rock didn’t stack up all that well.
The book is actually a collection – six short stories plus the novel, Monument Rock, which is the final installment in the “Kilkenny” series. This volume is billed as the final published collection of previously unpublished L’Amour western stories.
I was a bit disappointed. My first complaint was the seemingly formulaic quality of the stories. Each of them (at least in memory) was built on the same basic plot – a mysterious, dangerous stranger rides into town (or onto the ranch), where bad guys are doing bad things. Often a woman is threatened. Often the stranger has a secret connection to the place, to be revealed at the end. The stranger (who is exactly like all the other stranger heroes in all the stories) is dangerous and fast with a gun, and can’t be intimidated. The climax is a shootout, where he triumphs.
Of course, there’s a reason narrative formulas exist. They work. It’s just that when you clump them all together like this, the upholstery looks a little threadbare.
Also, the writing wasn’t as good as I hoped. L’Amour was a great storyteller, but he wasn’t a top wordsmith. (I suppose I’ve become a literary snob in my old age.)
The final novel, Monument Rock, pleased me more than the stories. The longer form provided scope for some narrative variety.
There’s nothing really wrong with Monument Rock. L’Amour fans will enjoy it.
As Northumbria’s lord, Eric Håkonsson continued to use the Norse title of jarl, and this was the first time the title was used in England. It eventually came to replace the Anglo-Saxon title of ealdorman, and continues to be used in England today in its current form—“earl”.
It’s amazing to me that just when I’m mapping out my epic novel about Erling Skjalgsson and Saint Olaf Haraldsson, an invaluable book on this very subject shows up. Divine appointment? Maybe, but I try to confine my personal grandiosity to self-mockery. However it is, Tore Skeie’s book, The Wolf Age, is just what I was looking for, not to mention being an excellent popular historical work in its own right.
The epistemological elephant in the room in any book dealing with the North Sea region in the period under discussion (in particular the reigns of Aethelred the Unready, Svein Forkbeard, and Knut the Great in England, and the two Olafs in Norway) is the question of the reliability of the Icelandic sagas, our sole source of information for much of Norwegian history at the time. Author Skeie tries not to trust the sagas too much, yet the story doesn’t veer far from them either. The book actually begins by talking about Snorri Sturlusson, author of Heimskringla, the sagas of the Norse kings, in order to provide perspective.
Much has been written over the years about the dramatic events leading up to the Norman conquest in 1066. But the tale of the Knut Sveinsson’s Danish conquest is equally fascinating, and arguably more dramatic. It teems with interesting, enigmatic, maddening characters, fateful accidents, and tragic decisions. I suppose it’s only because the Danish dynasty didn’t last that attention has turned away from it.
I was surprised to note that King (later saint) Olaf Haraldsson, about whom we don’t know a lot for certain (especially if you exclude the sagas), still comes off as the most intriguing character in the book. This is similar to my own experience in research.
The book is full of useful information that will be of great benefit to me. But anyone interested in Viking Age history will also learn much. There are details I might disagree with. The author states categorically that the men who rowed Viking ships wore rowing gloves – I’m not sure how he knows that for sure. He states that infant baptism wasn’t generally practiced in Norway in Olaf Trygvesson’s time – I find that dubious. He suggests Erling Skjalgsson wasn’t even present at the battle of Nesjar. I doubt that too.
But all in all, The Wolf Age is a treasure trove. It was a relatively fast read, and well translated. I highly recommend it.
She made a movement then—just a small one, very subtle. A little nod of the head while her hand tugged gently at the edge of her skirt. That was all. But to Winter it was clearly suggestive of a curtsey, a gesture so ladylike and anachronistic that it seemed to strike clean through him like a saber thrust. When she returned to her table to gather her overcoat and her purse, he felt as if she had left a jagged hole of loneliness at the center of him, front to back.
The paragraph above is as good a description of a certain male experience (one of our nobler ones) as I’ve ever read. Which is just the kind of writer Andrew Klavan is. He’s the best at what he does. We American conservatives (and Christians) aren’t worthy of his talent.
But be that as it may, we are the happy recipients of another book in Klavan’s Cameron Winter series, which is cause for rejoicing. The first Cameron Winter book, When Christmas Comes, was released around this time last year, and it floored me. I prayed there’d be more, and A Strange Habit of Mind, just released, is my Christmas miracle for 2022.
Cameron Winter, you may recall, is an English professor at a college in an unnamed midwestern state. (I was pretty sure it was Indiana while reading the last book, but we learn now that it borders Minnesota, so I’m guessing Wisconsin.) He’s independently wealthy and working at a job he loves, but he’s also lonely and depressed.
So he sees a psychologist, an older woman. To her he confides the causes of his depression and isolation. Partly they come from his tragic childhood, but much of it is due to his previous career. He used to work for an organization called the Division, which trained him to be an assassin. Not like in the movies. Their methods were far more subtle than the silenced pistol or the garotte in the dark. They knew ways to destroy people by exploiting their personal hungers and weaknesses, and to kill them in ways that looked like natural death, or accidents.
Cam recently got a text from a former student who’s been living in San Francisco. Just two words – “Help me.” Cam called back immediately, but got no reply.
Later he learns that the young man threw himself off the roof of his apartment building shortly after sending the text. Cam is troubled and looks into it. The young man had left school under a cloud, and his subsequent history said little for his character. A drug dealer. A girlfriend abuser. Really, he was no loss to the world.
But Cam can’t let it go, for some reason. He has, as he tells his counselor, “a strange habit of mind,” a gift that was useful to him in his work for the Division. When he ponders an event, his mind unconsciously reorganizes data, enabling him often to discern underlying crimes. And as he looks into the student’s world, he finds that the girlfriend he beat up just happens to be a sister to Molly Byrne, “the Cinderella girl,” the woman who married Gerald Byrne, the richest, most powerful man in the world. (Think Jeff Zuckerberg, but crazier and with more power.)
That leads him into Byrne’s personal history, and a pattern begins to emerge. People who hurt people Byrne cares about tend to have bad accidents. Not only that, but people who oppose Byrne’s social and political causes tend to suffer similar fates.
And something else is plain to Cam. These are exactly the kind of “accidents” he and his colleagues in the Division used to orchestrate. And now, with a few more strategic deaths, nothing will stand in the way of Byrne fundamentally transforming the global order.
So the showdown is inevitable – Cameron Winter vs. the Most Powerful Man in the World.
There wasn’t a moment of slack in this plot. I was riveted from the first page to the last. Not only that, but the bare act of reading was a pleasure, because the prose was so perfect, so evocative and satisfying, like a delicious meal. I may read it again soon, just to savor it.
I recommend A Strange Habit of Mind as highly as is humanly possible. Thanks, Andrew Klavan.
My relationship with the Nordic Noir genre, as you may recall, is troubled. Though I’m generally a Scandinavian booster, I have my pet hatreds (Ibsen and Stieg Larsson, to name a couple), and I’m cold to Nordic mysteries overall (except for Jørn Lier Horst’s Wisting, probably because I worked on two seasons of the TV miniseries). I’ve read one of Kjell Ola Dahl’s Oslo Detectives books before, and didn’t care for it a lot. I found it depressing and distasteful. But I bought Little Drummer on a whim (it was on sale), and I liked this one a little better.
Lise Fagernes is an Oslo newspaper reporter. She finds herself, to her shock, part of a news story herself when she discovers a woman’s body in a car in a parking garage. The police consider the death an accidental overdose, as the fatal needle is right there. But one of the brass, on a hostile whim, assigns the case to his enemy, Inspector Gunnarstranda. And Gunnarstranda, on a hunch, asks for a toxicology test. Turns out it wasn’t an accidental overdose after all. The woman was chloroformed before being injected.
Together with his partner, Frank Frøhlich, Gunnarstranda starts looking into the woman’s background. Turns out she was friends with a student from Kenya who has just been reported missing. When he proves to have fled the country, Frøhlich will have to travel to Africa. There he encounters Lise, who’s still on the story. They circle each other warily before forming a temporary alliance – both in business and personal terms.
The case will lead to international medical conglomerates, African relief, and the general fecklessness and corruption of Western aid to the Third World.
About the highest praise I can give to a Nordic Noir novel is that it didn’t make me want to kill myself. Little Drummer was better than most in that regard. But it was hardly cheery, and I suspect the political underpinnings are anti-capitalist.
Still, not bad, and the translation is good. Cautions for the usual.
Sometimes somebody has an idea that just works. When an author comes up with a series character who engages mind and heart, and places him or her in stories that mean something to the reader, he’s got gold. James Scott Bell has produced gold in the Mike Romeo series, about a one-time cage fighter and certified genius on a quest for virtue. Romeo’s Rage entertained me and moved me.
Mike Romeo gets a call from a friend, a reformed gang member who now does Christian ministry with urban youth. It’s a hush-hush thing – the friend knows about a “package,” a child being delivered for prostitution purposes. He doesn’t have to ask twice for help in intervening. Mike and his friend execute a professional extraction and get the little girl to an “underground railroad” site.
Then things turn bad. The girl is taken again, and Mike’s friend is killed. They underestimated the bad guys.
Mike was mad about this criminal operation from the start. Now he’s really mad. And they won’t like him when he’s mad.
As Mike makes his plans and implements them, he’s assisted and restrained (somewhat) by his boss, Ira Levin, a wheelchair-bound ex-Mossad agent and current lawyer. Also he’s reevaluating his relationship with his girlfriend Sophie. He truly loves her, but feels her being close to him will make her a target – if not now, someday. If he loves her, he feels, he’s got to break it off.
Of course, Sophie might have something to say about that herself.
I want to be Mike Romeo when I get younger. Romeo’s Rage was thrilling and moving. I shed manly tears. Highly recommended.
Rick Dewhurst, I have it on good authority (Phil’s), is a good guy. He’s also a good – if quirky – writer. And I can only assume he has masochistic side, because he keeps sending me his books to review, even though I can sometimes be hard on them.
His Joe LaFlam series is particularly challenging to me. In the first book, Bye Bye Bertie, we were introduced to Joe as a delusional young Christian man. His real name was John Doe, he didn’t know what city he lived in, and he thought he was a private eye when he was actually a cab driver.
Through his subsequent adventures, he has become Joe LaFlam in fact, and has been united with his real parents, who are billionaires. So as Halo Dolly begins he is living and working in a penthouse (in a big city “a lot like Seattle”), running a detective agency with his friends Alfred (a former hit man, now a Christian) and Abner (a former drunk, now a conspiracy-minded Christian). A beautiful (and rich) young woman named Grace (also a Christian, of course) walks into the office saying she needs protection from a kidnapping threat. Joe immediately takes the job (not unmindful of the fact that Grace is very good marriage prospect), and it doesn’t take long for Grace to be kidnapped from right under their noses. So begins a series of implausible and slapstick developments which lead them to his old menace, the sinister Spelunkers International organization. And to even more evil forces, including demons from the pit of Hell. Or maybe not.
As with Bye Bye Bertie, I was mostly perplexed as I read Halo Dolly. I never know how to take these books. Bertie is less delusional now than he used to be (probably), but the Christian self-talk in his narration makes me uncomfortable. I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to laugh at it. It’s so much like my own self-talk, frankly, that it seems hypocritical. Or else I just don’t get the joke.
I think it may go back to what I call the Aunt Midge Syndrome. That name refers to my own late Aunt Midge, who reacted almost violently once at a family gathering, when the Carol Burnett Show was on. Carol was playing a character with low self-esteem, who talked too much and apologized too much and self-deprecated all the time. I noted that this was precisely what Aunt Midge was like and reasoned, based on her reaction, that people in general aren’t amused by jokes dealing with their own quirks and hang-ups, even ones they’re not aware of. (This is possibly the only insight into human psychology I’ve ever had.) So it may be that I’m just too much like Joe to appreciate the joke.
Anyway, there’s nothing offensive in this book, and much mirth is derived from lampooning popular conspiracy theories – except that they seem to be generally correct here. The joke’s on all of us, I guess.
If the originator of the insult failed to respond to the challenge to fight he was considered an unmanly, false and unreliable coward. The punishment for that was to be outlawed, which meant that anybody could take his life without having to pay a fine. If the offended party declined to fight, the penalty was less severe, but he had lost the trust of society and could no longer speak at the ting or swear an oath.
Now and then a book comes along in the field of popular Viking studies that makes me want to stand up and yell, “Hey! Read this one!” to my fellow reenactors. Such a book is Vikings at War by Kim Hjardar and Vegard Vike (both of them Norwegian scholars. Hjardar is also a reenactor). Vikings at War is a great big book, and it’s packed with stuff you’ll want to know if you’re into Vikings.
Various sections of the work cover: 1. The Vikings (that is, who they were and where they came from), 2. The Art of War, 3. Viking Fortifications, 4. Viking Ships, 5. Viking Weapons, and 6. Viking Invasions (covering the various theaters of action in which the Vikings fought, from the Middle East to America).
Embarrassing as it is for an old know-it-all like me to admit, I learned a lot from Vikings at War. Particularly interesting (to me) was the examination of the Vikings’ activities in France, where their infamous depredations were often carried out at the invitation of the French nobility, who enlisted them as allies in their internecine fights.
Long ago, on my web page, I wrote that too much had been made by 20th Century scholars of Vikings being essentially peaceful. That they had their peaceful side I had no doubt, but I felt the theme was being oversold. If the recent movie, “The Northman,” hadn’t already convinced me that this is no longer a problem, Vikings at War would have done it. Hjardar and Vike understand that being a merchant doesn’t necessarily make you peaceful (especially when slaves are your major merchandise), and that a Viking man, whatever his occupation, was always prepared to defend his honor with the weapons he carried at all times.
Every student of the Viking Age will find things to quibble with here, as in any book. The description of the “incident” at Portland which opens the book is imaginative, and includes details which (I think) are not necessarily supported by the record. Viking feminists will find fault with the authors’ reluctance to wholeheartedly embrace the idea that shield maidens were a common phenomenon in the Viking Age (I agree with the authors). Although the authors cite one of the books written by Prof. Torgrim Titlestad (for whom I’ve translated), they don’t entirely endorse his theories.
But there’s a treasure trove of information here, which will make every reader richer and wiser in knowledge of the field. This is a book that belongs on the Viking shelf of anybody who has a Viking shelf. A magisterial work. Well written and highly recommended.
One of the rare real pleasures on TV in recent years has been Amazon’s Bosch miniseries, in which Titus Welliver perfectly embodied the spirit of Michael Connelly’s driven LA police detective. Because of the character’s age in the books, they had to update everything, and they made some major character changes. Nevertheless, the project as a whole was very true to the atmosphere of the stories.
Now Netflix has taken on Connelly’s other major series character, Mickey Haller, in its The Lincoln Lawyer series (in the books, Mickey is actually Harry Bosch’s half-brother). Haller (turns out it rhymes with collar; I always assumed it rhymed with pallor) is a younger character than Bosch, so less radical changes were necessary in cast and setting. All in all, I was pretty pleased with the production.
There has been a Lincoln Lawyer movie already, starring Matthew McConaughey. McConaughey gave an excellent portrayal (in my opinion), but he didn’t look like the character. In the books, Mickey Haller is half Mexican, and dark-haired. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, who plays him here, is a better physical fit. I didn’t entirely like his portrayal, though, I’ll confess. He sometimes has a mumbling way of speaking – I’m not talking about his slight Mexican accent; there are lots of very articulate actors with accents. Instead, the indistinct delivery made him seem kind of diffident to me; and Mickey Haller hasn’t got a diffident bone in his makeup. I don’t think any good criminal attorney does.
That’s not to say that Garcia-Rulfo gives a bad performance, as such. He was watchable and sympathetic all the way through.
As the series begins, Mickey, formerly an up-and-coming lawyer, is stuck. He was injured in a surfing accident and got hooked on pain medications, which killed his practice. But suddenly he learns that a friend of his, a very successful defense lawyer, has been murdered, and has left his entire practice – all his cases – to Mickey. Knowing that this is his one big break, Mickey pulls his team together (including his second ex-wife and her boyfriend, a biker-cum-private eye) and jumps in cold, sometimes showing up in court without even time to prepare. In one of his first cases, he gets a female client off entirely, and she agrees to pay his bill by driving him around. (If I remember correctly, she was a guy in the book, but here she’s a lesbian, so I suppose they split the difference.) Mickey likes to do his thinking while working in one of his Lincoln cars, hence the title. I think the Lincolns were big, white sedans in the books, but here he alternates between a red convertible and a Navigator. The scenes where he talks to his driver in the car provide great opportunities for dramatic exposition.
His big case, the make-or-break one, is the matter of Trevor Elliott, a hotshot Silicone Valley game developer who’s charged with shooting his wife and her lover to death. Unfortunately, all Mickey’s predecessor’s files have disappeared, so he has to improvise, hunting for weaknesses in the state’s case. Most annoying is Elliott’s insistence that he doesn’t want a continuance, he wants a quick trial – to clear his name before a big business deal goes through. The time pressure is immense, and Mickey is sometimes tempted by his old addiction.
The main weakness I saw in the script was as it was leading up to the “big surprise,” when Mickey finally explains the most damning piece of evidence in the state’s case. Unfortunately, I knew what was coming before I was supposed to (granted, I’ve read the book, but I’d forgotten that particular point).
Nevertheless, overall, the storytelling in The Lincoln Lawyer was outstanding. The dramatic tension constantly ratcheted up, and the characters engaged me.
As an extra-special treat, there was a not-so-subtle poke at bullying Wokeism toward the end. And the final scene involved a Christian reference – even better, the doctrine was entirely correct.
Recommended. Cautions for language, violence, and sexual situations.
I am and mean to remain a big booster of the author John D. MacDonald, especially his Travis McGee novels. That doesn’t mean, however, that I like all his books equally well. The Crossroads, published in the Murder Room series, is not (in my opinion) one of his stellar achievements.
Back in the early 20th Century, old Papa Drovek, cheerful and parsimonious, invested every dollar he could save up in buying land along the highway. In time it became a major intersection. He built a gas station. Then a café. And as the crossroads experienced increasing traffic, his little empire grew – a truck stop, hotels, strip malls. Today he’s retired, still living in his little cottage, keeping an eye on his beloved children as they carry on the business. He’s old school in his habits, and keeps his money in cash, in a safe deposit box at the bank.
But his children are not entirely happy. His oldest son Charles (Chip) has a good head for business, and is ambitious and hard-working. But his home life is tragic. The woman he married is now a barely functioning alcoholic. Chip loves another woman, but the doctors have told him that any major change in his wife’s situation will certainly lead to her rapid decline and death. So he sticks.
His sister Joan is equally smart and energetic. But she married a drone who seems content to go fishing and live off her money.
Their youngest brother, Pete, has never grown up. Given work in the company, he soon loses interest and turns his attentions to golf. He married a pretty girl, a former model, who shows no sign of any brain wattage whatever.
What none of them knows is that they have an enemy. A man with a deep grudge and a twisted plan to get his hands on Papa Drovek’s money. The plan will involve taking a couple lives, but that’s a sacrifice he has no trouble making.
The Crossroads seemed to me essentially a tragic soap opera. There are no real surprises in the story, and no real hero. Just fairly ordinary people making fairly ordinary mistakes and – in the end, if they’re lucky — learning from them. I’m afraid I found it all kind of dreary.
One thing I noticed in this book – and I probably should have noticed before in reading this series – is that it’s set up in British orthography. “Gas” is always “petrol.” “Gray” is spelled “grey.” “Dispatch case” is “despatch case.” Turns out the Murder Room series is published by an English company, and they must be using text from English editions of the books.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It just makes the American dialogue awkward at times.
The narrow stairs creaked a little, but they were carpeted now. It hardly seemed like the same house. The chilly bareness of the disused top floor had gone, replaced by the smell of someone else’s children, like cheese rinds and warm flowers.
When you pick up books by unfamiliar authors based on online deals, as I do, you read a lot of pretty amateurish prose. As you may have noticed, I do a fair number of negative reviews here.
But now and then you find a gem. John Barlow’s Right to Kill is a superior novel, worthy to stand proudly in any genre.
Detective Sergeant Joe Romano is a cop in Leeds, North Yorkshire. Once a promising officer, he got his career stalled during a stint in Interpol, and now he’s back in Leeds, reduced to missing persons cases, no promotions in sight.
When a mother calls in to report her son, Craig Shaw, missing, no one is very concerned. First of all, Craig is legally an adult. Secondly, he’s a known drug dealer, no loss to anybody but his distraught mother. But Joe has principles about these things. He investigates seriously.
When Craig turns up dead, bizarrely murdered by a pencil in the eye, the cops have to take it seriously. But there’s still not much enthusiasm. The working theory, as we’re repeatedly reminded, is that some people just don’t rate the effort. The formula is 1-66 – that one person out of every 66 causes all the trouble in the world, and we’re better off without them.
But Joe can’t get Craig’s mother’s grief out of his mind. And when a second pencil murder is discovered, the media start paying attention. Too much attention, from Joe’s point of view, as his picture goes viral on Whatsapp in an embarrassing context. Soon he’s off the case, on the edge of dismissal.
And still he won’t give up. He’s no super-cop. He makes mistakes and pays for them. And in the end he’ll pay a high personal price for imperfect justice.
John Barlow is an excellent writer, a genuine wordsmith. It’s a delight to read his prose. On top of that he’s very good with characters, finding the hearts of even the worst offenders.
I had some problems with the story on a personal level, though it could have been much worse (and would have been in the hands of a less professional author). Social issues come up constantly, and we deal with some right-wing groups and characters. Although the author does a pretty good job humanizing people he disagrees with, he can’t shake the liberal (I assume he’s a liberal) conviction that all conservatives must be racists. He does his best to be fair to the racists, though.
Some statements surprised me along the way, though they probably shouldn’t have. He speaks of the famous English grooming gangs as if they were no big deal – something only a racist would worry about. Jordan Peterson is spoken of as obviously some kind of fascist. Joe finds it hard to comprehend a statement that there are things we’re not allowed to say anymore. (Maybe he’s just too young to remember.)
But he has clearly made an effort to play fair. And mostly it works.
Highly recommended. Cautions for language and stuff.
