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Fiction, Reviews

‘The Paddington Mystery,’ by John Rhode

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The world of mystery fiction, as you’re probably aware, is divided (broadly speaking) into the subgenres of “Cozy” (think Miss Marple) and “Hard-Boiled” (think Mike Hammer). But nothing in life is ever that simple. Hard-boiled has devolved over recent decades (mostly) into the Thriller genre, and that’s all we’ll say about that today. But sub-genres exist within Cozy . I had never heard of the “Humdrum” subgenre before I looked up John Rhode (a pseudonym for Cecil Street), author of The Paddington Mystery. At first I thought the descriptor “humdrum” a little dismissive, but gradually I came to understand the point.

The central character in The Paddington Mystery, set in 1925, is Harold Merefield, a young London gentleman. Harold grew up as a close friend to Dr Lancelot Priestley, a retired mathematician and amateur detective. He was even close to being engaged to Priestley’s daughter April. But then he came into money and decided to sample the high life. He joined a shady gentleman’s club and even wrote a scandalous novel – which sold well.

One night Harold he comes home drunk to his apartment in the early hours to find a dead man, soaking wet, in his bed. The police suspect him at first, but let him go when the medical examiner declares the death due to natural causes. Nevertheless, the mystery remains. Who was the old man? How did he get into Harold’s apartment in the first place?

Harold is suddenly concerned about his reputation, and the only person he can think of to approach for help is Dr Priestley. Dr Priestly, it turns out, is still kindly disposed, and he welcomes the mystery as a chance to exercise his powers of logical deduction.

It was at that point that the story, I must admit, began to drag. At the beginning I was quite taken with The Paddington Mystery. I liked the characters, and the morality was purely bourgeois. I felt right at home.

But what made the book “humdrum” was that pages and pages were spent on exposition of the puzzle, as various characters explained the mystery, and Dr Priestly went on and on, explaining every step in his logical deductions. It did get tedious.

Especially because I figured out whodunnit fairly early in the process.

So, I must say, with regret, that I can’t entirely endorse The Paddington Mystery. On the plus side it was old-fashioned and non-objectionable, but it was also kind of… how shall I put it? Elementary.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Bad Weather Friend,’ by Dean Koontz

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She was about five feet eight, slim, with ink-black hair cut short and eyes as green as the plastic on certain Memorex high-density diskettes, which were still in use in those days.

One of the delights of being a Dean Koontz fan is the constant surprises. Far from writing the same book over and over (as some authors tend to do), Koontz keeps obsessively changing it up. Some of his books are terrifying. Some are suspenseful, some plaintive and melancholy. And sometimes he just likes to have fun. The Bad Weather Friend is Koontz in sheer fun mode.

When Benny Catspaw loses his job, gets dumped by his girlfriend, and has a bank loan turned down all in one day, it’s not even the worst day of his life so far. Benny has been through a lot, but he faces it all with his customary optimism and good humor. Benny is a nice guy.

Then he gets a message from a great-uncle he never knew he had. The old man says he is sending Benny a shipment, his inheritance. It will be alarming, he says, but Benny should not be afraid.

Benny will be afraid, though, when the shipment turns out to be a muscular giant with superhuman powers and a deep hatred for postmodern interior decoration. His name is Spike, he says, and he’s a “craggle.” Craggles are supernatural beings entrusted with the protection of the world’s nicest people, of whom Benny is one. Along with Harper Harper, a charming young woman training to be a private investigator, Spike listens to the story of Benny’s day, and concludes that there’s a conspiracy to destroy him. These conspirators must be hunted down and stopped (Spike never kills anyone). The three of them set out on the quest. Along the way, Benny will recall the strange course of his unusual life up to now, and will fall in love with Harper.

Dean Koontz is a practicing Roman Catholic, and many of his books shows traces of his faith. I can’t say that element is very apparent in The Bad Weather Friend. This story is all about “niceness,” which has (correctly) been denounced in countless pulpits as inferior to the righteousness God demands. I don’t think any conclusions should be drawn on that score. This is a fun book, not intended to be taken very seriously.

The Bad Weather Friend was a pleasure to read, and I wished it were longer. Highly recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Written In Bone,’ by Simon Beckett

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It’s always a pleasure to read a book by a professional who knows his business (better than I do, to tell the truth). And yet a professional can carry his craft to the point of manipulation, and that can be annoying. That’s my take on Written In Bone, by Simon Beckett.

Dr. David Hunter is an English forensic scientist. He has a girlfriend he’s trying to build a relationship with, and he’s planning to spend some time with her when he gets an emergency call for help. A body has been found on the island of Runa in the Hebrides, and all the other crime scene investigators are tied up. Could he go and check it out? Shouldn’t take long, it’s probably nothing criminal. David agrees, raising doubts both in his girlfriend and himself about his commitment to the relationship.

When he arrives in the small, close-knit community, he goes to see the body, that of a woman, lying in a ruined cottage in the hills. It looks like an unusual, but most often innocent, phenomenon, “spontaneous human combustion,” which is actually the result of a wicking effect on clothed, burning corpses. But a closer examination of the skull proves this was no accident. The woman was murdered.

At that point, David ought to call in the professionals, but a sudden freak storm descends on the island and lasts several days, disrupting communications and making travel impossible. Meanwhile, more bodies start turning up…

Good characters. Good pacing. Good prose. Lots of rising tension. Written In Bone is plotted in a masterly fashion, and it kept me fascinated all through.

And then we got to the end, and (for this reader) the author kind of spoiled it.

This is one of those stories where you have a solution, and then you find out that solution is wrong. And then you find out the revised solution is wrong too. And finally there’s a twist that leads to a cliffhanger.

A cliffhanger.

That’s excessive, in my estimation. Aside from the fact that I don’t like cliffhangers (I consider them a cheat), when an author gets cute and keeps second-guessing solutions, it violates the principle of Occam’s Razor. Solutions that get too complicated grow decreasingly interesting.

So there it is. The writing is great. The resolutions were disappointing. For me, anyway.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Hills Be Shaken,’ by Michael Stewart

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When I encounter a poorly written Christian novel, I tend to assume it comes from an Evangelical Protestant author. As an Evangelical Protestant myself, it’s one of the things I have to live with. I instinctively expect better things from Roman Catholic writers, probably because I mostly read good ones (Undset, Buckley, etc.) Nevertheless, there are badly written Catholic novels, and Michael Stewart’s The Hills Be Shaken turned out to be one of those. Which isn’t to say the author doesn’t show some promise.

The premise is original and engaging. An act of terrorism destroys a large swathe of Manhattan, Kansas. Just before the explosion, police officer Sam McGuire stops a woman who’s jogging in the park, carrying (legally) a pistol and an AR-15. Though she seems to have no connection to the disaster, Sam can’t shake a feeling that something was off about her, and he studies his dash cam footage of the incident obsessively.

Immediately after the event, engineer Moses Haley was arrested by the FBI, simply because he happened to be taking a break on the roof of his workplace at the fatal hour. He was soon released, little guessing that he’d soon be recruited by that same agency. His new career will put pressure on his family life and demand courage of him he never knew he had.

My reaction: First of all, I did finish the book. I don’t always do that. The plot was interesting enough (though far-fetched), and kept me interested. I liked the characters. The values were good.

But the writing was amateur hour. All the characters talked the same way, and they spoke like someone writing a book, not like real people talking. The religious passages were awkward, too long, and preachy. The action (as in so many novels nowadays) was more cinematic than realistic.

Also there was a long sequence involving action in a very high place, with an escalating danger of falling. I hate scenes like that for personal reasons, though it certainly kept my interest.

Anyway, The Hills Be Shaken was an admirable story, awkwardly told. But we might look for better things to come from the author.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Recital,’ by Gregg Hurwitz

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Occasionally a short story shows up on Amazon, and occasionally I’ll buy it, if it’s from an author I like. But I usually won’t waste a blog review on one.

But an Orphan X story by Gregg Hurwitz is another proposition altogether. The Recital is definitely worth a notice here.

As you may recall, Evan Smoak is Orphan X, a former assassin for a super-secret government agency, now (for all practical purposes) Batman. He has taken a young woman under his wing as a sort of foster daughter, the hacker Joey Morales. Joey is attending music school now, and she tells Evan she’d like him to come to her first recital along with a few of his friends, about the only people she knows in the world. Evan, whose whole life is focused on staying anonymous, has some difficulty wrapping his mind around the concept of a recital. She wants him to watch her training? Even more difficult is recruiting his friends to come along to the event – his friends being a nine-fingered illegal gun dealer, a retired cartel kingpin, and an uber-sexy female assassin. But Evan has acquired enough minimal empathy to understand this is important to Joey, so he goes to work on the problem.

It will involve trading some favors with people, not entirely legal stuff. And his friends won’t exactly fit in with the conservatory audience. But in their own ways they all care about Joey, and they’ll support her or die (maybe kill) trying.

I’m confident The Recital will be the most touching, endearing story about assassination, gunrunning, and personal security you’ll read all year.

Fiction, Reviews

Steelheart, a Superhero Thriller, by Brandon Sanderson

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“You’ve said it yourself—we can’t kill every Epic out there. The Reckoners are spinning in circles. The only hope we have, the only hope that humankind has, is to convince people that we can fight back. For that to happen, Steelheart has to fall by human hands.”

Ten years ago, an undefined cosmic entity called Calamity eradiated the Earth, causing some people to develop superpowers. These people were quickly labeled Epics and they began to claim territory for their own kingdoms. Some areas, in what became the Fractured States, were completely wasted as Epics fought over them, but Newcago, the city claimed by the title villain, Steelheart, was at least functioning under new management.

Epic powers range from standard (invincibility, premonition, illusion-making) to non-standard (the ability to fire a handgun without running out of ammo). Power sets and limits are discussed in detail throughout the book, as you might expect but also in a way that raises questions. More on that later.

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson is a compelling sci-fi story. David Charleston, the young main character, witnesses the cataclysm that began Steelheart’s reign and becomes the sole survivor of the only time their invincible overlord has been injured. “I’ve seen Steelheart bleed,” he says at the beginning, and though he doesn’t know why this man who typically deflects all attacks was superficially wounded, he’s confident something in his memory will lead them to his fatal weakness.

This is the first of three books in The Reckoners series. It stands well as a single book, but with the open ending to one problem clearly to be addressed in book two (as can be seen in that book’s title), I’m eager to pick up the other books. But this one is not without problems.

I hesitate to much because maybe I’ve thought about this kind of sci-fi/fantasy too much and am in danger of complaining about reasonable choices I wouldn’t have made. For instance, Epic powers and weaknesses can be anything, and the heroes discuss how they defy scientific understanding. Thus, we have a character who can shoot a handgun indefinitely but not a rifle or any other weapon. That’s . . . silly. It reminds me of a guy in My Hero Academia who can use the lines on a street as weapons. Maybe the visual medium (manga) and the level of crazy at that point in the story makes such a power seem normal enough. It’s a long story with tons of power sets, so perhaps silly gets lost in diversity. In Steelheart, the handgun character is one of the first Epics we meet.

Plot tension and main characters are strong throughout. The conclusion is satisfactory, if somewhat forced.

Photo: Aaron Bean on Unsplash

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Case of the Careless Kitten’ by Erle Stanley Gardner

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Picked up another Perry Mason mystery by Erle Stanley Gardner. I enjoyed the first one I read. The Case of the Careless Kitten didn’t please me quite as much, but it offered some interesting looks at some of the characters.

Helen Kendal wants to marry a soldier (the book is set in 1942), but her guardian, her aunt, is opposed to the match. If the aunt’s husband, Helen’s uncle, who disappeared ten years ago, were declared legally dead, Helen would have money coming from his will, and would be able to afford marriage. But the aunt insists her husband is still alive.

Then one day, Helen’s pet kitten shows signs of poisoning. She rushes the animal to a veterinarian. But that same evening, the aunt suffers poisoning too, and has to go to the hospital.

Meanwhile, Helen has gotten a call from a man who identifies himself as her missing uncle. He wants her to hire the lawyer Perry Mason, and go with him to meet a man at a seedy hotel. That man will lead them to a meeting with the uncle. Thus the mystery begins.

If it all seems a little convoluted, I thought so too. This was a complicated story, and I found it a little work to keep up.

On the other hand, I was intrigued to see the Perry Mason characters in a pre-Raymond Burr light. I’ve often read that author Gardner rarely described his characters, but this book was richer in character description than most. And it contradicts the later TV portrayals. I wonder if Gardner didn’t make it a point to eliminate descriptions after the show started, in order to promote it.

Perry Mason was, we are informed here, a tall man. I don’t think Raymond Burr was notably tall. (I remember reading, in one short story, that Mason was slender-waisted. Definitely not true of Burr.) Mason and his secretary Della Street also seemed much more romantically involved here than they would on TV.

We’re told here that Hamilton Burr was a big, bullish man. Not much like William Talman.

Lieutenant Tragg, the police detective, was the greatest surprise. He’s a young man, we’re told here, and well-dressed. The TV casting people definitely went another way with Ray Collins.

I found the final solution of the book pretty complicated, and Mason’s choice for explaining it all a little disappointing. Nevertheless, The Case of the Careless Kitten was professionally written and highly readable.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Barrier Island,’ by John D. MacDonald

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John D. MacDonald, who had a business degree, occasionally strayed from conventional mystery scenarios to write a business story. I don’t think Barrier Island was a publishing blockbuster, but MacDonald had the clout to get it published, and it’s effective.

Our hero is Wade Rowley, a real estate broker on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He has a partner, Bern Gibbs. Bern is an old friend, but their different business styles (and willingness to skirt legalities) are beginning to strain their association. Wade is especially concerned about a recent deal Bern took them into with Tucker Loomis, a swashbuckling local property developer. Bern assisted Tucker with land purchases for an extravagant new development on a barrier island. But now the government is seizing the island for environmental protection, and Tucker is suing for lost profits. Wade has a sneaking suspicion that the whole thing was a scam from the start. Tuck Loomis must have known the island was fragile and unstable. He probably leveraged his assets to buy up the land cheap so he could profit big from the government settlement.

Wade goes to visit one of the “property owners” listed in the development records, and discovers that the man is both poor and a Loomis employee. So he goes to a friend in the government and gives him the information, just in case the whole thing blows up on them. When Bern finds out about that, they get in a fight and agree to dissolve their partnership.

But that’s all before a murder happens.

Barrier Island was John D. MacDonald’s last novel, published in 1986. It reflects the author’s long-standing concern for environmental preservation, as well as (I suspect) the influence of the “Dynasty”-style prime time soap operas that were popular at the time. There was the same fascination here with the lifestyles and peccadillos of the rich, but at its heart the story is a morality tale. All the main characters are fully fleshed out, and even when we don’t like them. we’re permitted to observe their motivations, which are not always base.

Barrier Island wasn’t John D. MacDonald at the top of his game, but he was incapable of writing a bad story. Cautions for adult situations.

Fiction, Reviews

Saga reading report: ‘Gisli Sursson’s Saga’

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Gisli, his wife Aud, and their foster-daughter from Dasent’s 1866 translation. The weird headdress is (I believe) based on a much later Icelandic folk costume.

Today, we return to the world of the sagas as I report on Gisli Sursson’s Saga from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. It’s one of the more popular sagas, though the manuscript versions we have (there are three) exhibit a fair number of textual problems.

The story begins, as so many sagas do, with the hero’s ancestors in Norway. One of those ancestors, also named Gisli, borrows a sword from a thrall (how did a thrall get a sword? Outside of one of my novels, I mean?). He refuses to return the sword, he and the thrall kill each other, and the sword ends up broken. The shards are kept, and are later forged into a spearhead. But the metal carries the thrall’s curse.

The family relocates to Iceland, where Gisli is born. He grows up to be a tall man and a great warrior. But he finds himself in a classic honor dilemma – his sister’s husband kills his wife’s brother (who is also his best friend), and Gisli is torn between loyalties (Note: this line has been edited, thanks to a correction by Matt McKendrick). He finally kills his sister’s husband, in his bed, with the cursed spear.

This is an odd element in the saga for me, because I’ve often read that a murder at night was considered shameful murder among the Norse. However, in this translation, it’s explained that if the weapon is left in the body, that mitigates the crime.

In any case, eventually the truth comes out, and Gisli is outlawed. He manages, with the help of a couple rich friends and (especially) his wife, to avoid the avengers for many years – surviving second longest of any Icelandic outlaw, after Grettir the Strong. His last stand is legendary, and his killers go home without honor.

Gisli’s Saga has a high reputation among Icelanders, though there are elements that make it hard for the modern reader to appreciate. Part of the trouble is moral. Gisli (and he’s not alone among saga heroes) has a sense of humor that looks pretty cruel to us. In particular, on two occasions he switches clothes with a thrall to confuse avengers – in one case getting the thrall killed. In both cases, the thralls are described as very stupid – to the original saga readers, the killing of a stupid thrall seemed a triviality.

Another problem is story gaps. At one point, we’re told that Gisli drops his sword as he’s fleeing his enemies. Later on, he has it again. How that happens is not explained. Twice Gisli receives leg wounds under identical circumstances, but they lead to nothing.

What sets the saga apart for the modern reader, I think, is the prominence of Gisli’s wife Aud in the plot. That’s especially remarkable considering that Gisli killed her brother. Aud is utterly faithful, even refusing a large bribe to betray him, and he acknowledges at one point that he wouldn’t have lasted so long without her help.

Gisli Sursson’s Saga is an important outlaw saga, but I don’t think it’ll ever be one of my favorites.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Darker Than Amber,’ by John D. MacDonald

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She sat up slowly, looked in turn at each of us, and her dark eyes were like twin entrances to two deep caves. Nothing lived in those caves. Maybe something had, once upon a time. There were piles of picked bones back in there, some scribbling on the walls, and some gray ash where the fires had been.

Revisited another Travis McGee book by John D. MacDonald, because they never do get old. Darker Than Amber is one of the best, I think. The story works out as dark as the title promises, but that makes the moments of grace shine all the brighter.

Trav and his friend, the economist Meyer, are fishing under a bridge in Marathon, Florida when somebody drops a girl, wired to a cement block, off the deck above. Trav being Trav, he leaps into the water immediately, managing to get her back to the surface in time to save her life with artificial respiration.

She turns out to be a beautiful young woman named Vangie, but she’s no innocent damsel in distress. She’s a prostitute who worked her way up to a very nasty con game in which they not only robbed, but murdered, selected men. Because she experienced a moment of sympathy for one victim, her partners decided to kill her. But she’s “case-hardened,” as Travis puts it, and in the end she can’t be saved, either morally or physically. After a second murder attempt succeeds, Trav makes up his mind to balance the scales for her.

I first encountered Darker Than Amber in its movie adaptation, on TV (I reviewed that film here). The book, needless to say, is a lot better. What is portrayed as an extended, improbable slug-fest between Rod Taylor and William Smith in the film is in the book a very neat gaslighting sting that works, not perfectly, but well enough to satisfy the reader.

Darker Than Amber was published in 1966 and shows its age, but that’s part of its value, it seems to me. Trav’s sexual mores will satisfy neither today’s conservatives nor liberals, but they weren’t remarkable for his time – except perhaps for his admission that he can work up no attraction whatever to Vangie’s shopworn charms.

There’s a scene where a black character delivers a little lecture about civil rights. It must have sounded sophisticated at the time, but it too hasn’t aged well.

Still, that’s how the world looked in those days. The best thing about the book, as always, is Trav himself – he picks up the Philip Marlowe tradition of opening up to the reader about his inner life. But he takes it further. And the reader can’t help liking his self-deprecating manner.

Highly recommended. Cautions for mature subject matter.