When a free (or cheap) British mystery, in a series new to me, shows up, I’m inclined to give them a try. I like the settings, and sometimes the books can be good.
Made a Killing by Zach Abrams had some things going for it, but ultimately I wasn’t pleased.
DCI Alex Warren of the Glasgow police goes to view a grisly crime scene. Scott Stevenson, a local antique dealer with a bad reputation, has been stabbed to death with a bizarre weapon – a carved elephant tusk. Nobody, except for the victim’s old mother, is mourning him. The man was widely hated, and Alex has personal knowledge of his deceiving and defrauding numerous people.
But murder is murder, and when potential witnesses start dying by stabbing soon after, the investigation ramps up. Meanwhile, Alex is also increasingly aware of the sexual interest of an attractive co-worker.
The story was all right, the setting interesting. But I did figure out the culprit before the end. And Alex’s affair with a colleague struck me as professionally dubious.
But most annoying was a writing problem, dangling modifiers. Sentences like, “Being the weekend, it could take time…” and “Although cold and dark, they found a bench to sit on…” appear again and again. There were other problems with diction too, like, “The flat itself comprised of an entrance hallway….” And “She bade them to sit on the couch….”
One of the most outstanding figures of the Dark Ages was St Adomnan. Much more than merely the biographer of St Columba, he was a politician and intellectual of considerable power. Perhaps his most notable initiative was the Law of the Innocents. At the Synod of Birr in central Ireland held in 697, he proposed that women, children and clergy be protected from the brutal realities of Dark Ages warfare. Nothing else like it had been promulgated in Europe.
I bought Alistair Moffat’sThe Faded Map on a sort of a whim. It’s not directly related to my central interests, but it seemed intriguing, and it relates to all that Arthurian stuff I’ve always been drawn to. And I’ve got to say, the book proved to be more than I hoped. Fascinating stuff, and written in a lively style.
“The principal focus of this book is failure,” the author writes. The subject is what we currently know as lowland Scotland and northern England, which until the early medieval period was generally occupied and ruled by British Gaels related to the Welsh. Threatened by Picts and Scots from the north, Anglo-Saxons from the south and east, and eventually Vikings (though they made shifting alliances with all these groups as circumstances dictated), these kingdoms were gradually pushed back and subsumed, so that their southern territories became parts of British Northumbria and their northern territories parts of Scotland.
The story is a fascinating one (at least to me), as it touches on much legendary material, and provides perspective on the Viking Age at the end. I was particularly gratified that the author entirely subscribes to the historical view endorsed by Prof. Titlestad in his (wonderfully translated) book, Viking Legacy, that ancient legend and poetry ought to be considered (cautiously) by historians:
But why should word of mouth be more untrustworthy than a written source? Who would rely on the British tabloid newspapers of the last thirty years as an honest record of anything? The bards of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries are to be trusted no less – and no more – than the scribes of the same period.
In short, I found The Faded Map a delight to read. Highly recommended.
Mitch Turner is a criminal defense lawyer, I’m not sure where (either author Dan Decker didn’t say, or I just didn’t notice). His practice is new, but he’s aggressive and doing well for himself.
As The Good Client begins, Mitch gets a call in the middle of the night from his office intern, Timothy Cooper. Mitch hasn’t been impressed with Timothy’s work. He considers him too shy and nerdy to ever succeed in criminal law. But now Timothy is knee deep in a criminal case of his own. His roommate, he says, has been shot to death, and the police are there. He thinks they suspect him of the crime. Mitch instructs him to say nothing more to the cops; he’ll be right over.
He finds that the police have, indeed, already homed in on Timothy as the killer. No one else was in the apartment, and there are no signs of forced entry. It isn’t long before Timothy is arrested, and Mitch has his investigator looking into the young man’s movements that night. This proves harder than expected — Timothy proves to be an uncooperative, and surprisingly temperamental, client. Also, his parents are strangely unsupportive, and they start looking suspicious in their own right. But that makes no sense – would they frame their own son? Mitch discovers evidence the police overlooked, which both surprises him and puts him in an ethical dilemma. The evidence is damaging to his own case, but professional ethics force him to turn it over anyway.
The whole thing is complicated – and somewhat improbable, in my view. Some of the legal and police actions taken strike me as implausible (of course, I’m not a lawyer). The final solution also seemed like a stretch, though the culprit was no big surprise.
The book wasn’t terrible. The writing was okay, with only minor syntax errors compared to most books I see nowadays. But it lacked spark. The characters seemed kind of dull (nobody had a sense of humor).
On the plus side, the occasional mentions of religion were fairly positive. No major cautions are needed for language or sexual content.
Last month, one of the showrunners for Amazon’s The Rings of Power enthused about the series, saying it wasn’t their story but Tolkien’s. I think that’s how deeply deceived fan-fiction writers feel about their stories. This isn’t Tolkien’s story by a far cry.
I watched the remaining episodes of The Rings of Power yesterday, and all the wind has been taken out of my sails. Reading a bit from the showrunners has depressed me. Hearing from a few critics has soured me. Spoilers ahead.
I wasn’t hoping or expecting the show to become awesome in the last three episodes, but some errors hit you differently than others. You can roll with some lines of dialogue, some character motivations, and with others you can’t. Others just rattle the wheels right off your wagon and leave you on the hillside, wishing Santa would make things that last for a change.
They make up an origin story for Mithril to compel Elrond to push Duran IV to mine for it, because King Duran III believes it’s too dangerous to continue digging for it. They say a tree with the light of a silmaril is fought over by an elf and a balrog, is struck by lightning, and creates mithril by sending all the light into the rocky mountain earth. The elf king pulls out this story in episode 5 to say another tree that’s tied to the life of all elves is dying all of a sudden and if they don’t get that mithril stuff, all elves will be forced to flee to Valinor. It was a point in which the king seemed deceptive and manipulative. And the whole thing was dumb.
At the end of episode 8, they handle the creation of the elfin rings like any other TV drama. A main character, regardless of supposed skill, has to suggest the solution to the master craftsman. They hint that this craftsman is being manipulated, but please. There’s no strategy working here. It’s a line, a plot point, a touch of authenticity to say they know Tolkien’s history and are telling his story. The rings themselves look like trinkets (image via LOTR Fandom).
In episode 7, there’s a battle, and the “good” villagers give up their most defensible position for one that trained solders would have difficulty defending. And in doing so, they give the enemy the freedom to unlock an old plan that would nonsensically ignite Mt. Doom. Which is a big problem, but it doesn’t come before they mop the floor with their enemies because the elves and Númenórean men, whom Galadriel has been attempting to rally for half of the series, finally show up on the horses they brought overseas. How this cavalry knew the Southland village would be under siege at that moment is not important. What is important is that had the villagers stayed in the defensible outpost they fled to days ago, the cavalry would not have been able to charge in like they did.
I finally finished this book. I can’t have enjoyed Scott W. Cook’s Choices a whole lot, because I sure found it easy to put it down. But on the other hand, I kept with it to the end, which must mean something.
Apparently, Scott Jarvis is an established Florida private eye character (there are a lot of those; John D. MacDonald left a great big void in his wake), and Choices is the first book Cook wrote about the character. But it wasn’t published until now (I can see the reasons). Nevertheless, he’s worked it over now and released it as a prequel.
It… still needs work.
Scott Jarvis is a police detective in Orlando, Florida. He has high ideals about making the world a better place (the author goes on an on about this), and is frustrated by the legal limitations the job places on him. Finally, after he’s badly wounded and a vicious gangster gets released, he accepts friends’ advice and goes into business as a private investigator. In time, this gives him the opportunity to go after that same gangster in a big way, from a different angle.
The plot of Choices is pretty far-fetched, in my opinion. Jarvis gets away with a lot of stuff that I’m pretty sure wouldn’t go in the real world (including taking a couple of the classic Hollywood shoulder wounds without being permanently disabled). He carries a “silenced” Colt 1911 .45, which will make gun guys laugh. The text includes a number of textual errors such as mistaken homophones and missing section breaks. And sometimes the author forgets he’s writing in first person and slides into third.
But the biggest problem is a simple beginner’s problem, one most authors make and get over. Cook overwrites. He tells us things multiple times. He explains what he means too much. He likes to say someone “quipped” this or that, when it’s not really a quip, and you shouldn’t have to explain that to the audience anyway. If you want the audience to know it’s a joke, make it a better joke – don’t explain to them how they ought to be amused.
Still, I thought there were signs of good writing here. I might read the next book, to see if the author has learned anything.
Herminia was a refined, intelligent, sensitive woman but that was no defense against self-deception. Miss Prim had a theory about self-deception: the female sex seemed particularly and cruelly vulnerable to it.
I read this 2014 novel with friends over the past month. It inspired moderate complaint and, after a bit of reflection, delivered a welcome finish. The Awakening of Miss Prim was originally written in Spanish in 2011, so we read the English translation by Sonia Soto.
The story takes place in the fictional Spanish village of San Ireneo de Arnois, an idyllic community of independent folk making their living by doing what they love. It’s implied that everyone here lives humbly, but you can’t tell from the wealth of flowers, cozy homes, tea cakes, fresh bread, and hot chocolate flowing every other page. Village business is bustling, but shops are only open for as long as they want to be, because people have healthier priorities than making as much money as they can in a day.
Miss Prim comes to San Ireneo to inquire into a job opening as a private librarian to one of the most important men in town. The advertisement states those with many credentials need not apply, and Prim has many credentials, but when asked about that and the possibility that she may be trying to escape a former life, she bristles and almost turns the job down–never mind that she implies she is seeking a refuge.
She accepts the job of organizing the library for six months, and in that time meets the wonderful village folk, the curious children folk, and seems to be unable to have a conversation without being offended. She frequently tells herself how proper and level-headed she is and frequently catches someone’s choice or opinion that clashes with her own. The quote above comes late in the book and it couldn’t be clearer that she’s talking about herself.
But after talking over the whole book in a group, I put my initial complaints aside. It’s possible this novel leans into the idea that beauty is truth and will save the world. Prim awakens to the idea that slowing down, breathing fresh air, meditating on old poetry, rejecting a narcissistic view of everyone around her, and particularly dwelling on the Gregorian chant coming from the crypt at St. Benedict’s is real living. One friend suggested this as a specifically Christian theme. It isn’t explicit in the book, but a few lines point to it.
From this perspective, the novel is worth reading. It can easily come across as the story of a young feminist longing for something better in the world while undermining every effort to take her there. Maybe instead it’s a gentle story of a woman who needs and finds Christ.
Four cars were parked in a line, with two side-by-side overhead doors: a gunmetal gray Lexus SUV, a red Ferrari, a black Mercedes SUV, and a reddish-orange Porsche Carrera Turbo. A group of cops were discussing whether the Ferrari and the Porsche should be seized as evidence, and if so, who’d get to drive them to the impound lot.
I’ve been a big fan of John Sandford’s exciting and amusing “Prey” series for a good percentage of its long history (the hero, Lucas Davenport, would be retired and out of action long ago in real life, but fiction permits active employment for the life of the author [at least]). Today, hero Lucas Davenport, long with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, is sort of a freelance US Marshal. He gets to work on only the jobs that interest him, due to his immense personal wealth and Washington connections. In Righteous Prey, he teams up (again) with his buddy Virgil Flowers, who’s still in the BCA, to deal with a domestic murder ring.
One thing I’ve always appreciated in the series is the author’s ability to set aside his personal politics (which I’m pretty sure must be far to the left of mine) and present fairly balanced pictures of conservatives and liberals. And he’s generally avoided controversial subjects.
This book is less evenhanded, though I’m sure he made an effort.
What’s happening here is that a group of anonymous individuals, all of them Bitcoin billionaires, have formed a group called “the Five.” Their purpose is to kill “a**holes” (hereinafter to be called “targets” in this review). People they consider evil, who do only harm to the world, and who are personally hateful. Each of them will kill one of the five targets, after which they will distribute a news release, and then make a generous donation to some charitable organization whose work counteracts whatever harm they think the target has done.
When one target is murdered in Minneapolis, Lucas and Virgil get involved. They’ll be traveling around the country playing catch-up with these billionaire killers, and it will all culminate in a running fight in Long Island, New York.
Generally, Sandford is as evenhanded as usual. He does one thing that’s uncharacteristic, though, if my recollection of the previous books is correct. He throws in a message this time – the evils of bump stocks.
Now, I’ll confess I’m pretty ignorant about bump stocks. No personal experience. The sources I’ve read have generally defended them, saying they really don’t translate into anything drastically new and lethal. But the way Sandford describes them, they turn an AR rifle into the equivalent of a tommy gun, spraying death all around, turning a lone gunman into a one-man commando team against whom the police are helpless.
I don’t know. I’m skeptical.
Other points of interest – Virgil is now writing a novel, and he complains that he “only” expects an advance of $2,500.00 or so. This proves John Sandford lives in a different universe than the one I’m in.
I believe I read he no longer lives in Minneapolis. One piece of evidence for that development is that he thinks the Bakers Square in Highland Park is still open. Sadly, it closed down forever, early in the Lockdown.
There’s a vile conservative talk show host in the story, who may be very loosely based on the late Rush Limbaugh. However, he’s such a caricature that I found it hard take offense. Liberals, no doubt, will think the portrait spot on.
On the plus side, there’s a Travis McGee reference.
Recommended, except that strong gun rights activists probably won’t like it. Cautions for foul language and violence.
I picked up another Dave Barry book, offered at a bargain price. Short review: I enjoyed Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down. I had a suspicion it would be funny, and it was. (The title, by the way, refers to a couple essays on modern, low-flow toilets.)
It was odd that, though this book only came out around the turn of the millennium (which doesn’t seem that long ago to me at my age), it describes a palpably different world. This was before 9/11. Before Covid-19 and the Lockdown. Many of the everyday annoyances that Barry jokes about here seem to come from a long-ago, golden age when you could be annoyed when little things went sour, because they usually went okay. Most of the time.
Memories, memories.
Here’s a few excerpts:
So your school is having a science fair! Great! The science fair has long been a favorite educational tool in the American school system, and for a good reason: Your teachers hate you.
**
The reason Congress did not get around to ordering an audit any sooner is that it has been extremely busy with its primary functions, which are (1) spending money; (2) declaring National Cottage Cheese Appreciation Week, and (3) authorizing the IRS to hammer taxpayers for inadequate record-keeping.
**
Q. When should I arrive at the airport?
A. You should arrive two hours before your scheduled departure time, so that you will be among the first to know that your flight has been delayed due to mechanical problems.
**
The most stressful part [of registering for a baby shower] is picking out the stroller. Today’s baby stroller is an extremely high-tech piece of equipment, comparable in complexity to the B-1 bomber, but more expensive.
As I read John D. MacDonald’s A Deadly Shade of Gold, which I reviewed yesterday, I was reminded of the 1970 film production of another Travis McGee book, Darker Than Amber. I found that it was on YouTube (in a somewhat muddy recording), and figured I’d watch it. I’d seen it before, on television sometime in the ‘70s, I think. I remembered I liked it. I wondered how it held up.
The answer is, not very well. In my opinion, it should have been called Darker Than Camembert, because there’s a whole lot of cheese goin’ on here.
The movie plot follows the book fairly closely, I’ll give it that. Travis McGee (played by Rod Taylor) is fishing with his friend Meyer (Theodore Bickel) when a girl (Suzy Kendall) drops off a nearby bridge with a weight tied to her ankles (if I recall right, it was a concrete block in the book; here it’s a bodybuilder’s weight). This is the sort of thing that happens to McGee all the time, of course, and he is quickly overboard, diving to free the girl and bring her back to the surface alive. She turns out to be named Vangie, and she’s pretty messed up. She ignores Travis’ safety warnings, and is soon in trouble again. Which puts McGee on a collision course with Terry (the great heavy William Smith in his best paranoid mode), a bodybuilder (probably on too many steroids) who has been working a badger game with Vangie. The film culminates in a brutal fight between McGee and Terry on a cruise ship. (According to Smith’s own statement, Taylor hit him in earnest and he hit back, so the fight you see is genuine. Taylor broke three of Smith’s ribs, while Smith broke Taylor’s nose. Or so the story goes. I can’t imagine hitting William Smith at all, let alone hard enough for him to notice.)
John D. MacDonald hated this movie, and never tired of saying so. He felt that its emphasis was on violence rather than human beings and feelings.
What didn’t I like? For one thing, Rod Taylor wasn’t the right physical type for McGee (Robert Culp, who was also considered for the role, would have been closer to MacDonald’s descriptions). And we see little of the thoughtful McGee in this script, which concentrates on action. Miss Agnes, McGee’s Rolls Royce pickup, is here approximated by an RR with a sort of camper rear-end, clearly built over an intact vehicle.
But the worst part was the whole aesthetic of the thing, I think. 1960s styles, colors, camera angles, music. And to top it all, a particular makeup appliance worn by Smith at the end just looks silly.
Still, if you’d like to see a Travis McGee story on film, you can find it on YouTube. The only other attempt was a TV pilot called Travis McGee, which couldn’t be saved even by the deathless Sam Elliot in the lead. Among its sins – McGee wears a mustache, his houseboat has become a sailboat, and the whole setting has been moved to California.
I didn’t embed the film in this post, because I suspect there may be copyright problems and the whole thing’s likely to be pulled any day now. Cautions for violence and brief nudity.
I motioned him back and had him get himself a shot glass. I filled it from my bottle. I held my glass up and said, “Drink to me, my friend. Drink to this poisonous bag of meat named McGee. And drink to little broken blondes, and a dead black dog, and a knife in the back of a woman, and a knife in the throat of a friend. Drink to a burned foot, and death at sea, and stinking prisons and obscene gold idols. Drink to loveless love, stolen money and a power of attorney, mi amigo. Drink to lust and crime and terror, the three unholy ultimates, and drink to all the problems which have no solution in this world, and at best a dubious one in the next.”
He beamed without comprehension, and said, “Salud!” We drank and bowed and I filled the glasses again.
I have favorites and less favorites among John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series. I would not list A Deadly Shade of Gold as one of my favorites. It’s dark and convoluted, and unfortunately contains several authorial thoughts that annoy me. Still, it’s McGee, and I wouldn’t be without it.
Travis McGee, Florida houseboat-dwelling beach bum and “salvage specialist,” gets a call from his old buddy Sam Taggart, who’s been gone two years. Sam wants to know if Trav still “operates like he used to.” That means recovering stolen property for people and keeping half the value. He invites Trav to his seedy motel room and shows him an ugly golden statuette. There are 23 more like that, he tells Trav. Somebody took them from him and he wants them back.
Trav tells Sam that Nora wants to see him. That takes him aback. Sam was engaged to Nora before he ran off. Sam then says he’s changed his mind. If Nora will take him back, forget the salvage job. He says he’ll just dispose of this statue, and then Trav should bring Nora to see him tomorrow.
But when Trav and Nora show up, Sam is dead – killed with a knife in an ugly way.
Now it’s more than a salvage. It’s personal. Trav makes a trip to New York to talk to dealers and find out who might have owned the collection of gold statuettes. That leads him to a trip to Mexico (Nora comes along), to surveille the home of a reclusive, exiled Cuban government official.
Then things start getting complicated and violent, and it grows difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys. It will all culminate in a fiery showdown in a billionaire’s home in Beverly Hills.
None of the Travis McGee books are exactly cheery, but A Deadly Shade of Gold is particularly dark. I think the author must have been depressed that year (1965). Aside from people dying in ways they don’t deserve, MacDonald expresses opinions which (in my view) have not largely held up well. He disses religion, and takes an entirely gratuitous swipe at all hunters. He warns of overpopulation. He talks about the dangers of right-wing extremism without even considering (apparently) that there might be an equal and opposite danger on the other side.
However, the story is consistently anti-communist. And a large part of the plot involves attempts by Communist agents to influence American politicians and entertainment people through sexual blackmail. That’s a theme right out of the headlines (or rather, the buried ledes).
If you’ve never read a Travis McGee novel, I wouldn’t recommend A Deadly Shade of Gold for a starter. Otherwise, buy it. Cautions for sex scenes and violence.
