Category Archives: Reviews

Fiction, Reviews

‘Who’s Killing All My Old Girlfriends?’ by Jon Spoelstra

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Being an old writer, I had the privilege, at the very beginning of my novel-writing career, of getting my manuscript vetted by a genuine, old-school editor/publisher, Jim Baen. When I read books written by today’s crop of self-published novices, I am continually reminded to thank God for that privilege.

Who’s Killing All My Old Girlfriends? by Jon Spoelstra is one of those books that screams for an editor. The author shows signs of talent, but his poorer instincts need restraining.

Charlie North, the hero of WKAMOG?, is, according to his own account, a successful blogger in Portland who makes a decent retirement income off posting once a week (he’s a little vague on what his winning formula is. It certainly isn’t the quality of his prose). He’s a widower whose beloved wife died of cancer not long ago. One day while talking with his ex-cop friend Bert, he comes up with the idea of going to see the three women he dated seriously before getting married. To see if he could have been happy with any of them, or something.

He goes to Los Angeles to see the first. She dumps a bowl of yogurt on his head. Then, shortly after they part, he learns she’s been murdered with a blunt instrument. Charlie is a Person of Interest in the case.

Saddened but undeterred, he goes to Chicago to visit the second. He doesn’t speak to her, but observes her in a restaurant with her husband. They seem prosperous and happy. Soon after, she is killed with a blunt instrument, too.

Finally, he goes to see the third, in Miami. He has a pleasant dinner with her and her husband, but while she’s in the ladies’ room, the husband (who is apparently a mobster) quietly threatens to kill him if he blogs anything further about them.

And shortly after, she is killed with a blunt instrument.

Now Charlie is a Person of Interest for the police in three cities. Fortunately, he has his ex-cop friend, who calls in other ex-cop friends to help, and Charlie concocts a plan to discover the real killer. Or killers. And clear his name.

If all this seems far-fetched, it seemed that way to me, too. The book started out lightly and likeably, but kept getting darker and darker, though the tone never got serious enough to match the body count. And when the final showdown produces a pile of bodies like the last scene of Hamlet, all plausibility flew out the window.

Each chapter opens, for some reason, with stale “old people jokes” – the ones you see posted on Facebook, over and over. The author admits he borrowed them. I have no idea why he thinks they enhance the reader experience.

Also, the writing is just bad in a lot of places. Author Spoelstra offers lines like, “bleeding like a sliced carotid artery in the neck” (where else are you likely to find a carotid artery?). Or “The end of my Lost Loves Saga hadn’t played out yet, of which it might never play out.”

I stuck with it to the end, partly because of conservative opinions expressed or implied. But I don’t really recommend this book.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Gaudy Night,’ by Dorothy L. Sayers

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She paused. “I know what you’re thinking—that anybody with proper sensitive feeling would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well. I don’t see why proper feeling should prevent me from doing my proper job.”

I have reached the penultimate installment in Dorothy L. Sayers’ immortal Lord Peter Wimsey series. Gaudy Night is probably not Miss Sayers’ best mystery novel, nor by any means her most popular. But it carries the satisfaction of finally bringing the Harriet Vane cycle to its proper culmination (though she’s in the final book too, and rightly so).

Harriet Vane is a popular mystery novelist who once stood in the dock on trial for her life. Lord Peter Wimsey saved her from the gallows, and ever since he has been courting her in a low-key manner, aware that she has a low opinion of herself and is chary about new relationships.

In this book, Harriet goes back to her college (the fictional Shrewsbury – a sly choice of name – a women’s college at Oxford University) for a Gaudy Night – a school reunion. She’s nervous about her reception, but it goes surprisingly well. The only real blot on her experience is a nasty note someone tucked into the sleeve of her academic gown – but she shrugs that off.

Soon after, she gets a letter from the Dean, inviting her to the opening of the new library. She also wants Harriet’s advice on a problem they’re having. Crude notes like the one she received are showing up more and more frequently, and there’s been minor vandalism. Harriet is a mystery writer – maybe she can ferret out the culprit – discreetly, of course.

Harriet is delighted to go, and plunges into the scholarly life. She even takes up research with an idea to earning her Master’s degree. But the poison pen writer is getting more and more aggressive – even to the point where lives are put in danger. In the end, it will take Lord Peter to come in and, with an objective eye, resolve the mystery.

The theme of the book is Dorothy Sayers’ recurring theme in all her work – vocation. She believed strongly that there was a moral obligation for a person to work at whatever God has best equipped them to do, rather than what society says they should do. (She and C. S. Lewis differed on that subject, and lived the consequences out in their personal lives.)

As one who knows the British university system only second-hand, I found some matters confusing. And I also had trouble keeping the scholarly characters straight. Nevertheless, I enjoyed watching Harriet’s journey to greater insight. This book is mostly Harriet’s, after all. Lord Peter only comes in at the end.

Recommended, of course.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Final Alibi,’ by Simon King

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Fairly often, when I don’t like a book, I just drop it. But sometimes I feel it necessary to write a bad review as a warning to the unwary. That is the case with Simon King’s The Final Alibi.

Jim Lawson is a psychiatrist in Australia in the early 1950s. But once he was a cop, and he participated in the arrest of “the Devil,” a monster who kidnapped young women and ate them alive (there is no lack of graphic description). The experience shook him so much that he left the police and went into psychiatry. He also wrote a couple bestselling true crime books about the case.

Now he gets a request to come back to the town of Cider Hill, where it all happened. Somebody has taken up where “the Devil” left off – the murders occurring now are identical. And the convicted killer is still locked up in prison. Could they have been wrong about him all this time? Is there some way he could be getting out to kill again?

Jim joins forces with an attractive young female police officer to try to figure things out – which will lead them to more encounters with mangled bodies. Also, Jim takes up again with the girl he rescued from the Devil back in the day, with whom he had an affair before he left town. But it turns out she has secrets, and she’s not the only one covering things up.

There’s a point where the thriller genre crosses over into plain horror, and (as I’ve often stated) I don’t like horror. This book portrayed far too much plain suffering and awfulness, far too explicitly, for my taste. (I think the intention is to tap the Silence of the Lambs vein). Also, the writing was sometimes weak, the author making bad word choices. And the central psychological diagnosis is one which, I believe, is no longer considered valid.

On top of all that, we’re left with a cliff-hanger, which always annoys me.

If you have a stronger stomach than I do, you may enjoy The Final Alibi. It was certainly a fast-paced, high-tension story. But they couldn’t pay me to tackle the next two books in this trilogy.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Bubble Screen,’ by David Chill

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I’ve been reading and reviewing David Chill’s Burnside detective novels for a few weeks now. Bubble Screen is third in the series.

Burnside is, as you may recall, a former pro football player, a former LA cop, and now a private investigator. Sometimes his football credentials, from USC and (briefly) the pros help him get work. In Bubble Screen he’s hired by Miles Larson, the owner of a cable installation company, who’s a rabid USC supporter and large donor. Cable boxes have been disappearing from his warehouses, and he wants to know who’s pilfering. He suspects the union rep.

The problem turns out to be bigger than some inventory shrinkage. Larson’s grown kids are a dysfunctional bunch, and there’s also been trouble at a warehouse in Las Vegas. And Las Vegas suggests a lot of sinister associations.

Meanwhile, Burnside is also trying to figure out what to do about his girlfriend Gail, who has finished law school now and is considering relocating to San Francisco to take a good job offer.

As I’ve mentioned before in these reviews, I’ve enjoyed the characterization in these books. The plots are okay. The writing is fairly bush league; Author Chill is prone to solecisms. This book includes such treats as: “moving behind the largess of his impressive desk,” and “I… knew the area intricately.”

Lines like that are good for a chuckle, but this time out the author seemed to take a couple of pokes at Christians too. So I figure I’ll break off with this series. I’m not all that invested in it.

Your mileage may vary. It was entertaining, and had a couple heartwarming moments.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Haymaker in Heaven,’ by Edvard Hoem

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As the midges devoured them, they hummed and sang, and worked harder. They wandered like flocks of singers on their way toward some destination. In truth, it was more a lamentation than a song because the midges bit so terribly. And you needed two hands on your scythe. As in a pilgrimage, great peace attended them when they finished.

Of all the pilgrimage paths our Lord prepared, the one that runs through hay is the most beautiful. You pace with the scythe until you reach the neighbor’s fence, then you walk back. That route is the Lord’s way. The midges are a work of the devil.

Up until now, the greatest novel about the Norwegian immigration to America has been Ole Rolvaag’s Giants In the Earth. (It used to be kind of a big deal. I don’t know if anyone reads it anymore, except for my ethnic group.) I haven’t read GITE since college, but as I recall it, it’s depressing in a very Norwegian way. Everybody is unhappy until they die.

Now there’s a new great novel in translation about what we call the Innvandring – Edvard Hoem’s Haymaker in Heaven. I’m happy to report that, on top of being lyrical and captivating, it’s also somewhat less oppressive in tone than Rolvaag’s book. Wodehouse it ain’t, but it’s a brighter journey.

Knut Hansen Nesje is a poor cotter in Norway in the second half of the 19th Century, a widower with one son. Everyone just calls him “Nesje.” His great point of pride is that he’s the head haymaker on the big estate in the neighborhood. He works hard and long and with skill, taking pride in his work. When he’s finished at the estate, he has to work his rent out for his landlord. When there’s time left over, he works on clearing the parcel he rents high up on the mountain, which he hopes – eventually – to be able to purchase.

When a widow named Serianna shows up one day looking for work, they take an interest in each other, and eventually sleep together. Marriage follows after she becomes pregnant. They have several children, and cherish great hopes of all those young hands to help with the labor in the future. But the future will not be quite as they planned…

Serianna’s sister Gjertine eventually shows up. Gjertine is a “Reader” – that is, a Haugean, a pietist, one of my people (though these are apparently a later aberration of Haugeanism, which I have trouble recognizing. Gjertine dresses in a more provocative way than most Haugeans I ever knew would approve, and we’re told that she has been taught a “spell” by them – an incantation to magically stanch bleeding. I hope the author is exercising artistic license here).

Gjertine is beautiful and has many suitors, but insists on choosing her own husband. The man she chooses seems an odd choice — “the Saddle Maker,” who has a reputation with the ladies. She demands two years of continence from him before she will accept him, and surprisingly he complies. They seem to be happy together, but the world is changing…

Things are changing in Norway. Industrialization is coming in; labor and reward are now related in new kinds of ways. And the greatest change of all is the lure of America. It’s in the back of everybody’s mind. Lots of land. Wealth to be won. A more egalitarian society. Gradually, as families and one by one, people start departing for America, and we follow their various destinies on the North Dakota prairie. (It’s interesting to contrast the reaction of the wife in Giants In the Earth, who is oppressed to the point of agoraphobia by all the open space, and Gjertine, who’s delighted by the life and the colors.)

Nesje is a man perfectly attuned to the world he was born into. He’s  not introspective; he takes life as it is. Which makes it all the harder for him to deal with a world that will never again be the way he feels it ought to be.

These are my people, of course, so Haymaker in Heaven may not speak to you as it did to me. I found it engrossing and deeply moving. Especially because Nesje, although physically very different, was almost a portrait of my father in his personality and character.

The translation by Tara Chace is good, but has some dead spots. I wish I’d had a chance to put my own hand to it.

Highly recommended. The author treats religious matters respectfully, in general, though I’m not sure he always understands. However, he doesn’t do a bad job of it either. The story, he tells us, is based on the lives of his actual ancestors. You may have trouble keeping the names straight.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Fade Route,’ by David Chill

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The second book in David Chill’s Burnside series is Fade Route (I’m pretty sure all the titles come from football plays, but I’m fairly ignorant in that area). Once again he offers an engaging story about an interesting private eye looking into an intriguing mystery. Once again, some of the writing drove me nuts, but not enough to drop the book.

Burnside (no first name), briefly a pro football player, then a cop, and now a Los Angeles private eye, has time on his hands because his girlfriend is up in San Francisco studying law. So he’s taken to doing counseling work at a center for the homeless run by his friend, Wayne Fairborne. Wayne is a good guy who cares about helping street people learn skills that will make it easier for them to go back to work. He’s also running for mayor of Bay City (really Santa Monica; it’s an alias that goes back to Raymond Chandler), apparently as a Republican(!).

And then he’s murdered.

Who would want to murder Wayne Fairborne? Turns out there’s a fairly long list. His resentful brother-in-law. The string of women he’s had affairs with, or their husbands or boyfriends. And – not least – the incumbent mayor, who’s as crooked as a subdivision street.

Burnside will learn a lot about his friend Wayne, and much of it he doesn’t want to know. I followed the story with great interest, even in spite of lines like, “Dignity is a commodity that illuminates the trail.” And “Opportunities have a way of availing themselves to those who persevere.”

Recommended, as a fun read. Nothing terribly objectionable.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Post Pattern,’ by David Chill

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I am not reluctant, in my old age, to drop a book unceremoniously when I find the writing poor. Sometimes, if my sensitivities are outraged enough, I’ll tell you about it.

The case is somewhat different with Post Pattern, by David Chill. I found the writing very bad in places – especially in the area of word choice. However, I liked the character and the story enough to stick with it.

Burnside (yet another one-name private eye, in the Spenser tradition) is a Los Angeles private investigator. He was a star football player in college, and then became a cop. He was a good, by-the-book policeman until one day he gave a break to someone who didn’t deserve it. As a consequence he became a laughingstock on the force, and he quit to go private.

A wealthy young man, Norman Freeman, comes to Burnside’s office to hire him. Someone took a shot at him in his car the night before. Only he’s not sure the shot was meant for him. It could be – he’s a former pro football player who is heir apparent to a big auto dealership. He could have business enemies. But he also has a ne’er-do-well brother who hangs out with some sketchy people, and he was driving his brother’s car.

Soon there will be a real murder, and Burnside will wade into a whirlpool of personal motives, business motives, and dangerous dames. The world of ex-jocks is a major element here, which doesn’t do much for me personally, but it didn’t put me off. I liked that Burnside believes strongly in being armed at all times, and there wasn’t a lot of political correctness in view.

What author David Chill does well is create good characters. And good characters make up for a lot with me. I wish he’d had a better copy editor, but I still enjoyed Post Pattern, and went on to buy the next book in the series.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘The CEO of the Sofa,’ by P. J. O’Rourke

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“Children,” says Mrs. Clinton, “are like the tiny figures at the center of the nesting dolls for which Russian folk artists are famous. The children are cradled in the family, which is primarily responsible for their passage from infancy to adulthood. But around the family are the larger settings of paid informers, secret police, corrupt bureaucracy, and a prison gulag.”

I added the last part for comic relief, something It Takes a Village doesn’t provide. Intentionally.

The late, lamented P. J. O’Rourke had something to do with my transition from liberalism to conservatism, back in the ‘80s. Not a determinative influence, but a step along the way. I would have become a conservative anyway, because liberalism was pulling its rug quietly out from under me, like Douglas Fairbanks in an old swashbuckling scene, though slower. But O’Rourke’s Give War a Chance was a book I picked up as I was coming to terms with the situation. I couldn’t buy his whole stoner-libertarian shtick, but a lot of the stuff he wrote made sense to me. And he always made me laugh, which counts for a lot.

CEO of the Sofa is a collection of his essays written around the turn of the millennium. He explains in his Acknowledgments that the title was suggested by Oliver Wendell Holmes’ classic The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, and he frames the essays with imagined vignettes from his home life, in which he cross-talks with his wife, his assistant, his godson (who apparently lives with them), their babysitter, their daughter (later two daughters) and the Political Nut (who is himself), along with occasional others.

It’s been a while since the early 2000s, and some of the material hasn’t aged well. And, of course, O’Rourke is himself gone now, which is a bummer. But it’s still a fun ride, touching on a miscellany of subjects from the UN to childbirth, from Hunter S. Thompson to the indignities of middle age. I didn’t always agree with the points, but it was always funny. Great lines were everywhere – “Two hundred and fifteen dollars for your story, ‘Chewing-Mouth Dogs Bring Hope to People With Eating Disorders.’”

I wish I’d written that.

Recommended, with major cautions for obscenity, drug humor, and general bad taste.

Blogs, Socials, Reviews

Reviewing Books on the Socials, Wuthering Heights, and Disney Nightmares

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All the faults of Jane Eyre … magnified a thousand fold

from The North British Review, 1847

A reviewer for a Scottish magazine, The North British Review, used the words above to dismiss Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. He didn’t believe the work would find a broad audience, but as the Narrator says, “Little did he know.”

The Examiner called it “strange.”

We detest the affectation and effeminate frippery which is but too frequent in the modern novel, and willingly trust ourselves with an author who goes at once fearlessly into the moors and desolate places, for his heroes; but we must at the same time stipulate with him that he shall not drag into light all that he discovers, of coarse and loathsome, in his wanderings …

The Spectator seemed to think it a well-written but ugly story. “The success is not equal to the abilities of the writer; chiefly because the incidents are too coarse and disagreeable to be attractive, the very best being improbable, with a moral taint about them …”

And yet Brontë’s book endures. (I found these reviews on a site dedicated to the book.)

Book reviewing takes many forms today. A few weeks ago, an executive at Barnes and Noble noted upswings in sales according to the buzz on TikTok, which they call BookTok. Some authors have linked the success of a book to single BookTok videos.

On YouTube, reviewers call themselves Booktubers. Occasionally I think about recording videos or doing a podcast in order to boost this blog, but I have yet to justify the time. Anyone can jump into the video side of social media, and I think I have a good voice for it. But it takes a certain talent and good lighting to gain attention, not to mention all the visuals and actually having something to say.

Merphy Napier appears to be doing it right. Here she talks about books that live up to their hype, a follow-up to a video about hyped books she didn’t like.

Petrick Leo asked his network to nominate overrated fantasy series, talked over five of them, and shared his own list of five.

Elliot Brooks talks about good adult fantasy series with soft magic systems and hard magic systems.

Disney Nightmares: Speaking of fantasy, Helen Freeh talks about reasons parents should have been wary of Disney long before now.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s excellent essay, “On Fairy Stories,” addresses the very problem that Disney had from its inception: the notion that fairy stories are exclusively children’s stories. They are not. They are stories allowing adults to examine the world from a new perspective to find a better way to live. Tolkien asserts that people connect “the minds of children and fairy- stories,” but “this is an error; at best an error of false sentiment, and one that is therefore most often made by those who, for whatever private reason (such as childlessness), tend to think of children as a special kind of creature, almost a different race, rather than as normal, if immature, members of a particular family, and of the human family at large.”

Elsewhere in shared videos, a view of the side of Glastonbury Tor in Somerset.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Save the Dragons,’ by Dave Freer

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He has a long, double-barreled English name, but is generally known as “Squigs.” He is very tall and thin, has big feet, and is extremely awkward with girls. He studied Alchemy at an English university, which led him, through complex circumstances, to find himself on a watery planet called Zoar, where he’s completely out of his element – and he was never all that at home even on earth. Also, his right hand is missing. He finds himself rescued by a beautiful young girl in a boat, with whom he falls immediately in love. She finds him beneath contempt. Now, Crum the Barbarian, big, blond, dumb and handsome – that’s a guy she could go for.

The girl’s big, pugnacious father is looking for help hunting poachers. Zoar is inhabited by dragons, and dragon teeth are a coveted natural resource. But unfamiliar, interstellar vehicles have been showing up recently and killing dragons way over the hunting limits. Eager to impress the girl, Squigs volunteers to help pursue the poachers. He doesn’t seem well equipped for the quest, but he has qualities nobody has ever appreciated, and he acquires a faithful friend in a fearless dwarf. And the new hand he acquires – black, with eight serpentine fingers, turns out to be useful in surprising ways.

Save the Dragons is by Dave Freer, and showcases his punning, likeable, and satirical style. Lots of fun.