Category Archives: Reviews

Fiction, Reviews

‘Man In the Water,’ by Jon Hill

Leave a comment

Jack Green, hero of Man In the Water, is a Pennsylvania salesman and spare-time conspiracy theorist. He married out of his league, and he and his beautiful wife Stacey have a five-year-old boy they adore. When Stacey gets some troubling medical news, her mother pays for them to take a Caribbean cruise, so they can have a carefree time together before facing whatever challenges will come.

It’s great until they’re attacked in their cabin one night, and Jack finds himself struggling for his life, only to return home alone and find his son missing. Realizing that the authorities are unwilling to do much about the case, Jack turns to a cop friend, who refers him to an FBI agent he knows. And suddenly all those conspiracies Jack has been talking about about take on new – and personal – meaning.

I suppose the first thing I should say about Man In the Water is that it was a page-turner. I kept with it to the end, in spite of elements I didn’t much care for. So the book succeeded in that respect.

But even as I read, I was nitpicking. The writing was pretty slapdash. Words are used imprecisely, as for instance, “qualms” where “doubts” is wanted. This is one of those stories where an ordinary guy gets thrown in among professional killers, which always raises the problem of how to get him out alive without overdoing the luck factor. In my opinion, the luck factor did get overdone here. And the action itself seemed cinematic and implausible.

Even worse, the book ends with a cliffhanger, its central plot problem unresolved. I don’t like that. Ongoing secondary plot threads are fine in a series, but you need to resolve this book’s main plot problem in this book. So that annoyed me.

I think this series is working on having a Christian theme. Jack is an agnostic, and he often spends time thinking about the God question. I would expect him to possibly come to faith further down the line.

But I won’t be reading down the line. Man In the Water wasn’t awful, and I did finish it. But I didn’t like it enough to spring for the sequel.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Cursing Stones Murder,’ by George Bellairs

1 Comment

I’ve read and reviewed one of George Bellairs’ Inspector Littlejohn novels before. I found the book likeable but not outstanding. That’s pretty much my reaction to The Cursing Stones Murder too.

Inspector Littlejohn and his wife are planning a “holiday,” (as they say in England), but a plea from a friend persuades them to change their itinerary. Archdeacon Kinrade, a clergyman in a town on the Isle of Man, is concerned about one of his young parishioners, who has been arrested on suspicion of murder. A local womanizer’s body has been dredged up by scallop fishermen, and circumstantial evidence points to the young man. But Kinrade is certain he’s innocent. Littlejohn feels obligated to the archdeacon for past favors, and Man is a pleasant place to visit, so they change their plans.

Littlejohn has no actual authority on Man, but the local police detective seems happy to have his unofficial help. The young accused man is soon released, but the case proves to be the kind where there are too many people with motives. On top of that, people who know secrets are deliberately trying to mislead the police, in order to protect others.

The Cursing Stones Murder is a decent mystery, but written for an audience now dead (around 1950). It’s more of a cozy than a police procedural, and suffers (I would suggest) from containing too many nice characters. I like a book that keeps the violence low, but in this case I was sometimes in danger of losing interest altogether – until the end, when stuff started happening, leading to one of those classic cozy endings where the decent people who’ve made mistakes are allowed to die rather than face the law.

Inspector Littlejohn himself is not a very vivid character, and characterization isn’t author Bellairs’ forte. Mrs. Littlejohn seems to have almost no personality at all – she is endlessly supportive and never complains about the continual changes her husband makes in their plans. She’s almost the perfect pre-feminist wife, but I’m not sure such women actually ever existed.

The writing is good, and the Manx landscapes well exploited. If you’re looking for a quiet mystery without a lot of bad language or violence, The Cursing Stones Murder may be what you’re looking for.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Inside Man,’ by M. A. Rothman

Leave a comment

The year’s almost over, so I think I can safely say that, in all likelihood, M. A. Rothman’s The Inside Man boasts the weirdest scenario I’ve come across in a novel all year. It’s effectively written and entertaining, but bizarre.

Levi Yoder, our hero, is a young man who was originally Amish. Somehow (I guess it’s explained in the first novel in the series – this is the second) he got involved with the New York Mafia, which became a second family to him. He was even declared a “made man,” an “honor” usually restricted to Italians. Then he got cancer, but had an unexplained remission. After that, he grew stronger, faster, and was endowed with certain extra talents, like eidetic memory. He continues to work with the Mafia, but he’s allowed to do only jobs he wants to do. He has a sideline in rescuing young girls from human traffickers.

A request comes to his bosses from the Japanese Yakuza. One of their leaders has an American granddaughter, a little girl. She has been kidnapped. The grandfather has heard of Levi’s skills, and will be very generous if he can find and rescue the girl. Levi is happy to take on the job.

But then there’s an interruption. Levi is arrested and interrogated by the FBI. He’s rescued by a shadowy figure who says he works for an independent, non-government agency that fights human trafficking by any means necessary. They’ll help Levi if he’ll help them.

He also meets – and cooperates with – a Chinese double agent, a beautiful woman with a penchant for nudity and a phobia about being touched.

I think this is what’s known as a “high concept” story. It takes place in the real world, but has over-the-top elements. The plot rolls right along, dispensing lots of action and suspense, but for this reader it had a kind of a Hollywood, CGI feel. I should probably have approached it more as fantasy than as an ordinary mystery/thriller.

I also have to admit I have trouble with the depiction of Mafiosi as decent, honorable fellas. I believe that tradition is long past, and was grossly exaggerated even in the old days.

You may like the book, though. It certainly was entertaining. The Inside Man earns full marks as a page-turner.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Paris In the Present Tense,’ by Mark Helprin

Leave a comment

Music asked nothing, required nothing, needed nothing, betrayed nothing. It appeared instantly when called, even in memory. It was made of the ineffable magic in the empty spaces between – and the relation of – its otherwise unremarkable components.

“Wow,” I thought. “There’s a Mark Helprin novel I haven’t read yet.” A bargain deal had appeared, and I checked on Amazon and found I hadn’t bought it. So I did. Only then did I discover that I’d read Paris In the Present Tense before. I must have gotten a free review copy or something. However, I was only briefly discomfited by this. A Helprin novel always bears – and rewards – re-reading.

Jules Lacour is a septuagenarian Jewish music instructor in Paris. He is neither rich nor famous, though he is one of the geniuses of his generation – because this generation cares nothing for genius. But Jules has lived content with his art, except for missing his late wife.

But now his grandson has leukemia, and Jules wishes he had money to get him treatment. An offer from an American insurance conglomerate, to write them a signature tune, gives him brief hope, which they then dash callously.

So when Jules discovers that he has a previously undiagnosed brain aneurism that could kill him at any moment, he concocts a plan to make the company pay, and thereby to give his grandson a chance at life.

My big problem with Paris In the Present Time, you’ve probably guessed, is that our hero is an unapologetic fraudster. I don’t approve of fraud, no matter how bloated and greedy the target. However, that’s a question the book scarcely considers. The story is about love – Jules’ love for his parents, murdered by Nazis. His love for his wife, who died too soon. For his daughter and his grandchild. For a beautiful young student who is transparently smitten with him, and for a woman of more appropriate age whom he meets too late. But equally it’s about his love for Paris, and especially his love for music. The book is lush with gorgeous description and meditations on the meaning of it all. This is a book for reading slowly and savoring. It sweeps the reader into realms of transcendence.

Also, it meshed with – and helped to feed – my recent delusions of glimpsing some kind of Unified Theory of Existence. Helprin seems to have had some of the same thoughts I’ve had – maybe I stole some of them from him.

Insurance fraud aside, Paris In the Present Tense is a wonderful book. You ought to read it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Case of the Terrified Typist,’ by Erle Stanley Gardner

1 Comment

Like every child of the 50s, I know Perry Mason in the form of Raymond Burr on TV. (I hated the show when my mother watched it, but now I find it quite delightful in reruns.) And I’ve read a couple of PM short stories over the years. But I’d never read a Perry Mason novel before. Critics indicate that Erle Stanley Gardner, the author, was not big on characterization, which usually means a book won’t be my kind of thing.

But I got a deal on The Case of the Terrified Typist and I tried it anyway. And you know what? I now know why the Perry Mason series was so popular. Gardner knew how to spin a tale.

Trial attorney Perry Mason has a big document that needs retyping, and his secretary Della Street is having trouble finding a competent typist. She calls an agency, but they can’t promise much. Then a woman shows up in their office and, asked if she’s the typist, she says yes. She turns out to be a whiz at it, and gets a lot of work done very quickly, very accurately. Then she disappears as mysteriously as she appeared.

When Perry and Della learn that the police are in the building, looking for a woman who robbed a diamond import business, they do a search and find a clump of chewing gun attached to the bottom of the typist’s desk. Inside that clump are valuable diamonds.

That’s the neat hook that opens The Case of the Terrified Typist. As the story proceeds, Perry will be hired to represent one of the diamond company’s employees against charges of murdering a diamond smuggler. Surprisingly, Hamilton Burger, the district attorney, chooses to bring murder charges without a body being found.

The whole story was complex, but it was also lively and suspenseful. I had a good time reading it. It made few demands and entertained me thoroughly. I just might read more Perry Mason.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Mysteries,’ by Graham Wilson

1 Comment

Here’s the scenario: Jim, an Australian man, purchases a very old house in an out-of-the-way corner of Sidney. While doing renovations, he notices a basement concealed and sealed off beneath the floor of one room. He assumes this feature might have historical significance, so he notifies the government, which sends an assessor, a young woman, to look at it. To his astonishment, Jim discovers that this woman is his long-lost daughter, with whom his wife ran off long ago. Though he searched for them, he never found them, until now.

On top of that, they soon realize that the house he has purchased was built by an ancestor neither of them ever guessed they had.

If all this sounds a little far-fetched, I entirely agree. But it’s a tribute to the storytelling skills of Graham Wilson, author of The Mysteries, that I was entirely swept up in the book and overlooked its gross improbabilities.

We learn about Jim’s life and his struggles to rise from poverty. We learn of his ancestor Michael, who built the house – how he was transported as a convict from Ireland, served his time at hard labor, and built a semi-legal fortune along with his stone house. As his descendants discover his story, the reader learns it too.

I thought the story slowed somewhat toward the end, and perhaps too many details about Michael’s life come to light. But I read The Mysteries all the way through, and quite enjoyed it.

There were orthographic errors – word confusions, and sometimes quotation marks missing at the start of a paragraph. But I’ve seen far worse.

Sexual morality here is conventional contemporary, and attitudes toward Christianity tend to be critical, though few in number. Still, the storytelling was top-notch, and the book had undeniable charm. I do recommend it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Traitors Gate,’ by Jeffrey Archer

2 Comments

I got a deal offer on Jeffrey Archer’s latest novel, Traitors Gate. I figured that since I’d never read any of his books, I might as well give one a chance.

Verdict: I can understand why Archer is a popular author. But Traitors Gate never really gripped me.

William Warwick is a high-ranking officer with the London police force. Among his duties is serving as part of the security detail that transports the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London to Buckingham Palace on state occasions. Another member of the detail is Ross Hogan, his best friend. A further thing they share is a common enemy – a high society con man named Miles Faulkner. Warwick and Hogan have stopped Faulkner’s schemes before, and early in this story they foil him in an attempted art theft. Faulkner vows revenge and hits on a plan to steal the Crown Jewels – not to sell them, but simply to publicly humiliate Warwick and Hogan, and ruin their careers.

Traitors Gate was technically impeccable. It delivered the kind of thriller excitement advertised on the cover. But for this reader, it all seemed pretty superficial. I didn’t really believe in the characters, and it all seemed kind of overprocessed, like white bread.

This book is part of an ongoing series. One challenge series authors always face is whether to describe characters who’ve been described in previous volumes. It’s always been my practice to assume the reader has started with this book, and provide new descriptions. It doesn’t take long, and it’s not hard to make it natural. But Archer doesn’t bother with that. Only new characters get descriptions, and even attributes like racial identity – not entirely irrelevant to this story – may be withheld until half-way through the book.

So, I’d say all in all Traitors Gate is a good airport book, one that will keep you entertained and not bother you at all with any deeper themes or moral challenges.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dead In the Dark,’ by Stephen Booth

Leave a comment

I got a deal on Dead In the Dark, which proved to be the 17th volume of an 18-book police series by Stephen Booth. The series, as best I can discern, centers on the relationship between Inspector Ben Cooper and Detective Sergeant Diane Fry, but at this point she’s been reassigned to a sort of major crimes unit in a different area (they both live and work in Devonshire, England). There seems to be some friction between them at this stage.

Ten years ago, a man named Reece Bower was accused of murdering his wife, who had disappeared without a trace. The police were ready to arrest him on circumstantial evidence when a plausible witness reported seeing the victim alive. The case went no further, but public opinion condemned Bower. Now he too has disappeared, equally inexplicably.

Meanwhile, DS Fry is part of a team investigating the murder of a Polish immigrant, found dead in his flat after being stabbed in an alley. Suspicions naturally turn to nationalist groups resentful of immigrants.

I think my unfamiliarity with the series left me at a disadvantage in reading Dead In the Dark. The characters seemed somewhat unfocused in my mind. The story seemed kind of wide-ranging and scattered, and the ultimate solution of Bower’s disappearance struck me as implausible.

There were political elements too. I think author Booth made some effort to be evenhanded, but in the usual English style he tends to equate the right wing with racism.

Still, the writing was good. Dead In the Dark wasn’t a bad novel, but it might be better to start reading the series closer to the beginning.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Fire Pit,’ by Chris OUld

Leave a comment

In the Faroes you’re overshadowed by mountains wherever you go, and now – in their absence – I realized I’d got used to their overbearing presence, like a stern father, always looking on disapprovingly.

I’ve raved about the previous two novels in Chris Ould’s Faroes series, and I’m happy to report that The Fire Pit is just as good. Maybe better. It is unclear whether the series is intended to go on from here, as most of the unresolved plot threads from the previous books get tied up here. But I hope there will be more.

Suspended English detective Jan Reyna is still in the Faroes when The Fire Pit begins, but he’s preparing to leave. He needs to go home and settle his problems on the job, one way or the other. But first he’s stopping off in Denmark, to see the place where his mother committed suicide when he was 5 years old, and see if he can spark any memories. While he’s there, his autistic Danish researcher will discover that his mother worked at a secretive mental institution, which she fled suddenly just before her death.

Meanwhile, his Faroese detective friend Hjalti Hentze must investigate the apparent suicide of a reclusive man. Then he’s called to the site of an abandoned hippie commune from the 1970s. There two skeletons have been discovered in secret graves – an adult woman and a female child. This is the same commune where Jan’s mother lived for a while – and before long Hjalti will be joining Jan in Denmark, their mysteries having merged.

The Fire Pit (and all the Faroes mysteries) are exactly the kind of detective novels I like best. Although there is action and suspense, the emphasis is on character and motive. There’s even a moment of Christian wisdom (though provided, sadly, by a woman pastor).

I was also pleased that Horsens, Denmark, where my Danish ancestors hailed from, gets a couple mentions.

I highly recommend The Fire Pit along with its predecessors. Top-notch Scandinavian Noir, unmarred by nihilism.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘A Short History of Nearly Everything,’ by Bill Bryson

3 Comments

There seemed to be a mystifying universal conspiracy among textbook authors to make certain the material they dealt with never strayed too near the realm of the mildly interesting and was always at least a long-distance phone call from the frankly interesting.

Back in the 1970s, one of the most fascinating programs on television was broadcast (in the US) on PBS – a short English series called “Connections,” hosted by James Burke. Burke, a somewhat odd-looking fellow in a sort of leisure suit, took the viewer on a journey through time, tracing how some remote phenomenon in history, like a variety of medieval cargo ship, led through various permutations to the invention of plastics. What made the show work was that Burke kept it down-to-earth (often funny) and related his science to intriguing personalities, events, and places.

I thought of “Connections” often as I read Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, which I’d been meaning to read, but hadn’t gotten around to until its 20th anniversary of publication (I got a deal on it; it pays to be patient). The book is a history of science, very, very long, but fascinating from front to back.

Author Bryson alternates his chapters between descriptions of the universe and its laws as we understand them, and the pageant of how humans discovered those laws. What makes the book work is, first of all, his knack for helping the non-scientist think about counterintuitive concepts and massive numbers (“you can get some idea of the proportions if you bear in mind that one atom is to the width of a millimeter line as the thickness of a sheet of paper is to the height of the Empire State Building”), along with no reluctance at all to showcase the eccentric or petty sides of revered scientists (to his credit, he also likes doing justice to researchers who’ve been elbowed aside by the spotlight-seekers).

The overall goal seems to be to wow the reader with how amazing and complex our universe is (and to admit how much we still don’t know about it). The book is full of Wow! moments. Bryson clearly loves his material, and he’s eager as a kid to share his delight. 400 pages worth.

Being me, I found some things in his narrative that he probably didn’t intend. The incredible complexity of life and its structures seems to me to suggest intelligent design (though Bryson carefully avoids that subject, seeming to pooh-pooh any idea of a Creator. But that approach leaves a lot of questions unanswered – surely as many questions as faith leaves unanswered).

The big problem with A Short History of Nearly Everything – for this reader – was sheer input overload. The information provided includes a lot of doomsday talk – we’re told how likely it is that we’ll collide with an asteroid, or suffer another extinction-level pandemic. When he tried to raise our enthusiasm for environmental causes, I felt more inclined to sit back and say, “Yeah, well, you just told me the Yellowstone Caldera is long overdue to erupt and kill us all; it hardly seems worth the effort.”

Nevertheless, A Short History of Nearly Everything is a tremendous book and well deserving of its classic status (even if some of its science is outdated now). I recommend it highly. You’ll find a lot of arguments for Intelligent Design here, even if that wasn’t the intention.