Category Archives: Reviews

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Redemptive Return,’ by J.R. and Susan Mathis

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Book Number Three in the Father Tom Mysteries is The Redemptive Return. This review ought to be taken with a grain of salt, though, because my emotional reaction to it probably colors my judgment.

Father Tom Greer, as you may recall from my previous reviews, is a priest who entered the ministry late in life, having been a husband and a widower already. Before that, he was engaged to Helen Parr who (by one of those coincidences which are a little too common in this series) is now a police detective in the town of Myerton, Pennsylvania, where Father Tom also serves, in his own way. The fact that they are still attracted to one another is a complication in both their lives.

One day Tom gets a call from his sister Sonya, with whom he rarely communicates. It sounds like she’s running away from someone, and she desperately wants Tom to find something (he can’t hear what) and help somebody named Chrystal.

Tom isn’t sure what to do about this call. Sonya is a drug addict (supposedly in recovery now), and he’s gotten such calls from her before. They’ve never meant anything. He lets it go.

Shortly thereafter he hears from his mother. Sonya is dead. Her body was found in a dumpster.

And it’s all his fault.

Tom doesn’t want to go home, with all its unresolved issues, but he knows he must. What surprises him is that Helen shows up next to him on the plane, having taken personal leave to help him out.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Because of my own personal history, I found The Redemptive Return hard to read. So I’m incapable of saying whether this element (dysfunctional family dynamics) of the story is handled well or not.

However, it seemed to me the book suffered from what I’m sure others before me have called “Bond Villain Syndrome,” where the villain pauses long enough in the process of killing the hero to explain his/her criminal genius at length – giving the cavalry time to show up and save the day.

Finally, my big problem with the book was the resolution (at this point in the ongoing saga) of Father Tom’s relationship problem with Helen. An arrangement is worked out with the approval of his bishop. I’m not a Catholic, but I found it improbable in the extreme. Both ecclesiastically and psychologically.

I won’t pan The Redemptive Return, but I think it’s relatively weak. Readable, though.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Value in Our Lies,’ by Colin Conway

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I’m quite taken with Colin Conway’s The 509 series of police procedurals, set in eastern Washington state. It deals with cops in the Spokane area, and the cast of officers tends to change from book to book. In The Value in Our Lies, we have a new hero – or at least a new main character. If he’s shown up in the series before, it was only as a minor player.

James Morgan works on the Spokane PD Criminal Task Force. He’s corrupt, but not by his own standards. If he pockets some of the drugs found at a crime scene, it’s not for his own use or profit – it’s to pay off informants. If he takes a sexual favor from a prostitute, who does that hurt? If he cuts procedural corners, that’s just part of the game. In his world there’s only Us and Them – working cops vs. the crooks (and often the Brass). For Morgan, there’s pretty much nothing in his life but the Job.

Word on the street says a new gang has moved into town, but nobody seems to know anything tangible, not even his snitches. A prostitute informant of his is being beaten by her pimp, and Morgan cares about this more than he ought to. A friend of a friend is getting blackmailed and comes to Morgan to get him out of the jam. And Internal Affairs is giving him heat.

Morgan is a liar. Lying is part of the way he does his job. But the lies are starting to pile up on him. Will they get somebody killed?

The writing in The Value in Our Lies is sometimes rough. An editor would be a good investment. But the characterization in the book is big league. Morgan isn’t a likeable character, and he’s clearly self-destructive. But one can’t help sympathizing with him sometimes, and occasionally he even earns our fleeting admiration. The plot was pretty gripping too.

I recommend The Value in Our Lies, with cautions for language and mature subject matter.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Perfect Record,’ by Kerry J. Donovan

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Sean Freeman, a central character in Kerry J. Donovan’s police procedural Perfect Record, is a master locksmith, one of the best in spite of his youth. He also has computer skills. So when he arranges to come to the attention of DB Parrish, a London gangster with a weakness for diamonds, Parrish quickly recruits him as his security chief. Sean has personal reasons for needing the kind of money a job with Parrish’s organization will bring in. But he soon learns that working for Parrish means selling your soul. He’ll be required to do things way beyond the limits of his fairly flexible ethics, and the price of failure is a serious beating – if he’s lucky.

So he starts putting out clues for the police, hoping there’s a detective out there smart enough to figure them out. Finally this brings him to DCI David Jones of the Birmingham Serious Crimes Unit. They begin a cautious dance in which jewelry of great value – and innocent lives – are at stake.

I wasn’t entirely happy with Perfect Record, but that was for purely personal reasons. The character of our hero, DCI Jones, is an interesting one (all the characters are good, in fact), but he’s supposed to be an aging curmudgeon and Luddite. The kind of man who won’t have a computer in his home and dislikes the new building he works in out of loyalty to the old one, despite the fact that it’s more comfortable and efficient than its predecessor.

And yet when it comes to Political Correctness, Jones toes the line. He will stand for no sexist language or use of unenlightened titles (like Mrs.) among his officers. If you’re looking for crude cop banter, á la John Sandford, you won’t find it here. I think I can speak with some authority on the subject of curmudgeons as a class, and PC talk is one of the things we tolerate least in real life.

Nevertheless, I have to admit the story is neatly told, with some very nifty (and delightful) surprises at the end. Neat twists generally involve diminished believability in any story, which is the case here. But as pure entertainment, Perfect Record is very close to perfect. The language is relatively mild.

Fiction, Reviews

Dark Comedic Mystery “City of Angles”

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You’ve been devoted to the Church. As you know, we like to say that we don’t have followers. We have lenders. You give us your love and passion devotion, and we’re obligated to pay back the debt.”

Lars reviewed Jonathan Leaf’s debut novel, City of Angles, earlier, and with it being a mystery novel, that’s about as much of the plot as you’ll want to know before reading. What you don’t get from reviews is the style of humor Leaf employs.

[Disclaimer: I picked up the novel in response to the author’s request, having seen a friend’s referral days before.]

City of Angles isn’t a dark story. It’s standard fare for a character-driven murder mystery, and from almost every character you read something like the quotation above: “We don’t have followers. We have lenders.” Also from this same church context, we get this: “Selva had attained the status of FUP. This mean a fully unrepressed person. Those who opposed the Church were EMEs, or enemies of man’s emergence.” An FUP. That’ll catch on.

This actually rings true with my experience, in that some folks like to make acronyms and others like to use terms, and the Church of Life in this story resembles Scientology, which is probably just as debauched and oppressive as the Church is depicted. But in a way, everyone in this novel is debauched. Everyone is friendly, while it serves their purpose, and they drink sexual allure from the tap. Everything they can control they will try to control. And when a character finds himself at a dead end with all of his plans disassembled, he tells himself all PR is good PR and begins to wonder if he can sell his story. Even the cops are thinking this next thing could be their big break.

I enjoyed reading this book and look forward to Leaf’s success with it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Kormak’s Saga’

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Kormak, as this old illustration shows, was not shy about public displays of affection, even with married women.

When the brothers put out from their place of anchorage, a walrus surfaced beside the ship. Kormak fired a weighted staff at it, hitting the animal, so that it sank. People thought they recognized Thorveig’s eyes when they saw it. The animal did not surface from then on; and it was reported of Thorveig that she was dangerously ill, and people say that she died as a result.

When we think of troubled poets today, we tend to imagine languid aesthetes wasting away with alcoholism or drug addiction. Troubled poets in the Viking Age seem to have been rather different sorts – pugnacious types and psychopathic killers. We discussed the greatest of them, Egil Skallagrimsson, a little while back. Today our topic is a lesser poet in a lesser saga, Kormak’s Saga, as published in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, but available in other formats as well.

Kormak’s name, I might mention, is the same as the Irish name Cormac. This is yet another testimony to the heavy infusion of Irish and Scottish elements into Icelandic society and culture (the same is true of the saga hero Njal’s name, which is the Irish Niel). Like Egil, Kormak is big and strong, though less ugly.

Kormak first notices Steingerd Thorkelsdatter of Tunga when he catches a glimpse of her foot through a doorway. Immediately he dedicates a poem to the foot, and when he sees the rest of the girl he’s not disappointed. He pursues her, and their marriage is arranged. However, when the wedding day occurs, he doesn’t show up. Yet when her family tries to marry her off to other men, Kormak routinely makes war on them – in some cases killing them. This behavior looks like prolonged adolescence and fear of commitment to the modern reader, but the saga explains it as the consequence of a witch’s curse. One looks in vain here for the kind of psychological insight we find in Egil’s Saga.

The most interesting character in the saga, in fact, is not Kormak himself but Bersi the Duelist, who dominates the middle part of the story. Though a famous man-killer, he’s far more sympathetic than Kormak, something like the Old Gunfighter trope in Western movies.

Kormak’s Saga is believed to be one of the oldest ones that’s been preserved, but that’s no guarantee of artistic quality. The episodes in the story appear to have been reconstructed (rather freely) from hints in the poems the hero left behind. And the hints look very much as if they’ve been misinterpreted a fair amount of time. Many of the incidents, frankly, make little sense.

Kormak’s Saga is interesting for its age, and also – in particular – for accounts of dueling customs in the Viking Age. As a piece of art, it’s fairly middling.

I should mention that a couple of Kormak’s love poems include pretty explicit descriptions of sexual organs.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘A History of Christianity,’ by Paul Johnson

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A new form of religious community appeared for the first time in history: not a nation celebrating its patriotic cult, but a voluntary group, in which social, racial and national distinctions were transcended, men and women coming together just as individuals, before their god.

It’s done at last. I have successfully worked my way through the Marathon length of Paul Johnson’s A History of Christianity. And I have to tell you from the start, it wasn’t what I expected or hoped for. The late author, of whom I’m a big fan, started out (like many thinkers on the right) on the left, and gradually worked his way to conservatism. This book was an early work, published in 1975 when he was (I assume) still in transition. And conservative politics doesn’t necessarily entail Christian faith – I don’t know what Johnson believed. This book didn’t give much clue.

Also, the book is somewhat misnamed. It’s not a history of Christianity, but of western Christianity. Once Rome breaks with Constantinople, the Eastern Church (as well as all the smaller eastern groups) drops off the stage except for when they interact with the West.

He starts well, arguing that it’s silly to question whether Jesus actually existed. Even better, he seems fairly sure that we have a fair idea what He taught. But his description of the formation of the canon and of orthodox doctrine is thoroughgoingly naturalistic. By this account, the scriptures were assembled through chance and politics out of a selection of wildly variant alternate manuscripts (I’m pretty sure this is not true). And the fights over doctrine were wholly political, decided in the end by brute power. The author’s greatest admiration seems to be reserved for certain heretics and the marginally orthodox – Arian, Pelagius, Erasmus. “Sensible” Christians who concentrated on good works rather than abstract doctrine and faith.

Then follows the long, sad chronicle of how the persecuted church (not so much persecuted most of the time, he insists) gradually rose to imperial power in Rome, and organized – on a model invented by St. Augustine – a unitary civilization in which Church and State were one thing. And corruption inevitably set in. The system gradually broke down, leading in time to the Reformation and the Enlightenment, and to the decline and challenges of the modern world.

It’s a depressing read, to be honest. Which is not to say I didn’t learn valuable stuff. I was particularly interested in the account of the decline of papal power in the 12th Century. It helped illuminate my reading of Norwegian history and the way King Sverre was able to ignore a ban and excommunication (as his contemporary King John did in England).

He ends in the “present” (1975), expressing optimism that the ecumenical movement can lead to a more flexible, dynamic church in the world (and we all know how well that’s worked out).

The oddest part, for this reader, was the author’s epilogue, in which he explains that he actually does consider Christianity a force for good in the world:

The notions of political and economic freedom both spring from the workings of the Christian conscience as a historical force; and it is thus no accident that all the implantations of freedom throughout the world have ultimately a Christian origin.

My big problem with A History of Christianity is that it takes him 516 pages to get around to mentioning that. The impression the reader gets from plowing through his long catalog of persecutions, heresy trials, witch hunts and religious wars must certainly be that Christianity has been a greater force for suffering and evil than Nazism and Communism combined. And I’d wager most readers have quit before they get to that epilogue.

Near the beginning he tells an anecdote about Bishop Stubbs, professor at Oxford, who, when he met a young historian, noticed he was carrying a book of which he disapproved, and said to himself, “If I can hinder, he shall not read that book.” He emphasizes the importance of not being like Stubbs, of listening to all ideas and making up one’s own mind.

That’s a noble sentiment, and I approve as a reader. But as a Christian concerned with souls, I would have to say, “Keep A History of Christianity out of the hands of young and impressionable Christians. If they’re looking at all for reasons to walk away from the faith, they’ll find plenty of them here.”

Reviews

Amazon Prime film review: ‘The Snowman’

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Okay, I’ll just start this semi-review by mentioning (in case you’re new here) that I have a dysfunctional relationship with the genre called “Nordic Noir.” Much as I love Norway, I find myself unable to get in the spirit of the boom in Scandinavian mysteries that persists today. I find Nordic Noir – in general – depressing and nihilistic. I’ve tried to enjoy Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole mysteries, but I have trouble sympathizing with – or even believing in – a police detective who’s so desperately alcoholic that it interferes with his work, and who yet manages to keep his job and even be an asset to his department.

But I checked out the 2017 film adaptation of the Harry Hole book The Snowman on Amazon Prime. It’s not a film I did translation for (indeed, it’s not even a Norwegian production, but Swedish along with other countries), so I can say what I like about it.

I gave the novel a less than negative review (for a Nordic Noir) here. I guess I feel pretty much the same about the movie. Which seems to mean I liked it better than most people.

How very odd.

Michael Fassbender plays the role of Harry, whom we first observe, after a prologue, sleeping off a binge in a bus shelter in mid-winter. When he gets to work he meets a new partner, Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson), whom he finds annoyingly fresh and spunky. They investigate the disappearance of a young mother. Over time they discover that there have been a string of such disappearances, in different places over a long period of time. When the bodies are discovered, they are decapitated, the heads placed on snowmen. Harry’s difficult relationship with his ex-girlfriend’s son, who sees him as a father figure, provides a subplot that will eventually merge with the main plot.

The best part of the movie – as is often the case when they’re filming in Norway – is the scenery. There’s some spectacular footage here, especially as characters drive along the causeways of the famous Atlantic Road. J.K. Simmons, who always elevates any production, is on hand as a sleazy businessman/politician, an easy character for good Socialists to hate.

I can also see the problems in the film. One is a very dark plot, including one particularly awful surprise. Another is the odd presence of Val Kilmer, playing a now-dead character in flashbacks. He looks barely functional, and indeed was recovering from a stroke during filming. All his dialogue is dubbed but still hard to understand.

My big problem was a fairly heavy-handed message about abortion.

Still, I found the movie watchable, and it kept my interest.

Semi-recommended, but with cautions (language, sexual situations, brief nudity, disturbing violence) and without great enthusiasm.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dead of Night,’ by Robert McNeill

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Maurice Hillard is a French scholar teaching at the University of Edinburgh. He has a reputation as a ladies’ man, not discriminating between his own students and other men’s wives. So there’s no lack of suspects when he’s found dead in the Union canal, his neck broken. But all the chief suspects seem to have good alibis. Meanwhile, Inspector Jack Knox is under pressure from his superiors to solve the crime quickly, without scandal.

Meanwhile, his colleague and fiancée (how do they work that out?) Yvonne Mason is bedeviled by someone vandalizing her car and apartment door. Little does she know that this harassment is just part of a plot by a clever criminal, for whom she’s a means to a sinister end.

I’ve read previous volumes in the Jack Knox series. I like them but don’t love them; they’re well written.

What I personally disliked in this book was a very modern view of marriage. A highly nasty character invokes the Christian view of matrimony for evil purposes (though nothing is actually said about Christianity per se), and divorce is treated lightly – as it tends to be in any book written nowadays. And, of course, the Scottish Presbyterians have a history of easy divorce, as is well known from British history.

But these matters aren’t actually harped on. Dead of Night was professionally written and enjoyable to read. Moderately recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Preacher’s First Murder,’ by K. P. Gresham

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Pastor Matt Hayden of Wilks, Texas is a new creation in more than the spiritual sense. Once a Miami police detective, the hero of The Preacher’s First Murder entered the federal witness relocation program after a horrible day in which his brother and father, both cops, were killed. He changed his name, went to Lutheran seminary, and then the church sent him here. He has learned that the town and the church have their own strict rules of behavior. One of those is that the pastor needs to stay away from the Fire and Ice House, the bar just across the river from his church. It’s run by the beautiful Angie, daughter of Maeve, the owner, who suffers from Alzheimer’s.

Maeve goes missing, and Matt recruits some church members to help with the search – to the outrage of the Wilks family, which owns the town and runs the church. Their matriarch nurses a particular hatred for Maeve, but Matt feels a responsibility as a Christian.

When Maeve turns up dead, shot by a stupid Yankee hunter farther out of town than she should have been able to walk on her own, Matt’s old cop instincts tell him something’s fishy. And when the sleazy local gas station owner is murdered and Angie is arrested for it, Matt has no choice but to start his own investigation. Especially because he’s Angie’s alibi, and she refuses to let him reveal it, for the sake of his reputation in the church.

I’ve often said that I avoid novels written by women; my experience is that they tend to write their male characters poorly. I didn’t realize that author K. P. Gresham was a woman when I read this book, but I’m forced to admit – much against my will – that she didn’t do a bad job. And the writing in general was well done, which counts for a lot in the depressed world of Christian fiction.

I did have a few problems with the story, though. The picture of the Lutheran church in the book was surprisingly negative – the domination of church business by women was certainly realistic, but (although I grew up in a very puritanical church) I never encountered a church as judgmental as this one. We always understood that you can’t ostracize sinners – you have to reach out to them.

Also, I was a little puzzled by the theology. This does seem to be a Christian novel (the complete lack of dirty words is kind of a tip-off), but I wasn’t sure what theology was being promoted. Pastor Matt’s concern with doing good to others was perfectly consistent with Christian morality. But Christian morality seemed to be all he had. There was no mention of God’s grace or of the cross. A reader might get the impression that good deeds are all the Faith is about.

Still, The Preacher’s First Murder was pretty good, all in all. I might be persuaded to read the second book in the series.

Fiction, Reviews

‘A Killing Game,’ by Jeff Buick

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Curtis Westcott is Chief of Homicide in Boston in A Killling Game, first book in a series by Jeff Buick. In this story, a rich and powerful man’s daughter is kidnapped by a criminal who doesn’t want money, but revenge. And to show the police how smart he is.

As the story proceeds, Curtis realizes that the killer is leaving a series of messages for him. These messages contain hidden riddles which – if he can solve them – will make it possible for him to stop the murder.

That’s really all I think I’m going to tell you about the plot. Because frankly, I don’t think this book deserves a lot of description.

It follows a formula you see often in thrillers – the super-smart criminal mastermind plays a game with the police, confident that his superior intelligence makes him unassailable, but longing at the same time for “a worthy adversary.”

I’m pretty sure this never happens in real life. A writer can make it work, but it takes a lot of skill.

Also, the plot involves a trail of obscure brain puzzles, which the detectives have to solve before the clock runs out.

I’m confident that this never, ever happens in real life. I did not believe this aspect of the story for a single moment.

Also, it struck me as ironic that the plot calls for the interpretation of ridiculously obscure verbal clues, while the author himself didn’t trust the reader to understand his plain words – the book is in fact overwritten. It would benefit from a great deal of cutting.

This happens when an author assumes his audience is too stupid to understand him, or when he doubts his own narrative power, so he reiterates everything he says.

[Here’s a Deathless Principle from Walker’s School of Writing: Good writing is like leading a friend along a path to see a beautiful vista. Once you’ve led him to the ridge where he can look out and see it, don’t keep informing him what he’s seeing. If you led him to the right spot he’ll see for himself.]

So I didn’t care much for A Killing Game. Though I have to admit I powered through to the end, just to see how it came out. Which, I suppose, means the author actually did his job, even if he didn’t do it the way I’d have liked.