Category Archives: Reviews

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Code of the Woosters,’ by P.G. Wodehouse

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I stared at the young pill, appalled at her moral code, if you could call it that. You know, the more I see of women, the more I think that there ought to be a law. Something has got to be done about this sex, or the whole fabric of Society will collapse, and then what silly asses we shall all look.

The first Jeeves and Wooster book I ever bought was The Code of the Woosters. That was about 50 years ago. I recall pausing a moment, in the B. Dalton’s aisle, to wonder whether I’d like the book. I was young then, I need hardly say, and knew nothing.

The Code of the Woosters is Wodehouse (as he himself might have put it) at his fruitiest. It’s such a tightly plotted farce that I, for one, was forced to pause my reading every few pages, just to get my breath back.

The plot, even in a broad sketch, requires some setting up. So curl up on the nearest chesterfield and pour yourself a restorative libation.

The tale begins with Bertie Wooster getting a call from his Aunt Dahlia, asking him (for once) to do what seems to be a fairly simple task. He is to go to a particular antique shop and sneer at a silver cow-creamer. Her husband, Tom Travers, a silver collector. yearns to buy that creamer. Aunt Dahlia hopes Bertie’s scorn will demoralize the shopkeeper, who will then knock down the price for Uncle Tom. Then she can touch him for a loan for the insolvent magazine she publishes.

The upshot is, of course, disastrous. On arriving, Bertie finds Sir Watkyn Basset, a retired judge, already at the shop. Sir Watkyn is Uncle Tom’s rival, also coveting the cow-creamer. He and Bertie are acquainted, as Sir Watkyn once fined him for stealing a policeman’s helmet on Boat Race Night. Accompanying Sir Watkyn is the gorilla-like Roderick Spode, leader of an English Fascist party. Caught unprepared, Bertie ends up stumbling over a cat in a manner that convinces Sir Watkyn that he’s attempting to steal the creamer.

Back in his flat, Bertie gets a telegram from his fatuous friend Gussie Fink-Nottle, who wants him to come to the country estate where he’s staying. The estate just happens to belong to Sir Watkyn, as Gussie is engaged to Sir Watkyn’s daughter Madeline. Except that Madeline, Gussie reports, has broken the engagement off, This horrifies Bertie, since Madeline has conceived the erroneous idea that Bertie is in love with her, and threatens to marry him if it doesn’t work out with Gussie.

Then there’s a visit from Aunt Dahlia, who reports that Sir Watkyn has now acquired the cow-creamer. So she needs Bertie to go to the same estate and steal the thing. If he refuses, she’ll bar his access to the cooking of Anatole, her incomparable French chef.

Clear so far?

After that it gets complicated.

Oh yes, I need to remember Stephanie “Stiffy” Byng, Sir Watkyn’s niece, who is also on site. She is engaged to an old friend of Bertie’s, whom she is pressuring to steal (recurring theme here) the local constable’s police helmet.

It’s all hilarious. Brilliant. Incomparable.

Most highly recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

Rise of the Merlin: The King of Maridunum

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We see brutal melee in the fourth episode of The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin as Merlin, Pelleas, and Uther travel north to rally lesser kings to fight for Aurellius against the Saxons.

First, Merlin recommends the High King take refuge in Ynys Avallach, the realm of former Atlanteans, now considered fairies or elves by men. King Avallach is hailed as the Fisher King, because they find him fishing, but I don’t know if the writer is teasing us with Arthurian easter eggs or intends to identify him as the Fisher King who keeps the Holy Grail. It could be the latter, because Avallach is wounded as the Fisher King is wounded and his kingdom is in decline.

Thinking Merlin may be raising an army for himself, Uther insists on travelling to Maridunum with him. When they arrive, we learn more of Merlin’s past and why Uther has good reason to fear him. In the image above, Finney Cassidy as Aurellius is in the foreground, Myles Clohessy as Uther behind him.

A lot more fighting this one, some of it brutal. About half of it had me wondering what a real melee would look like. I’d think there’d be more shield usage and no cracking someone’s helmet with your sword hilt and pushing them behind you. Aurellius goes against a brute in one scene that leaves you feeling the blows.

I didn’t talk about the power-hungry Morgian before. She appears again in this episode, having established herself as the wife of one of the lesser kings (and, of course, rooting for the Saxons). It’s clear she was a bad egg from the start. She sought out the deal Taliesin rejected at the start of the series. I’d love for it to turn Faustian on her because she’s earned that, but I doubt that’s where the story will take us.

Speaking of that, I assume this seven-episode series will leave us somewhat hanging. This is only the first part of a longer story. Will they attempt to wrap it up, believing they can’t afford a second season?

Fiction, Reviews

‘Murder On the Menu,’ by Bruce Beckham

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Strands of cotton wool cloud stretch like forsaken laundry across Skiddaw’s darkening lower slopes.

Yet, like a split time zone, the setting sun spotlights the great fell’s scree-capped summit – and overhead, at some indeterminate altitude (but not so high) rays incandesce in a layer of fine golden mist.

I’ve read most of Bruce Beckham’s Inspector Skelgill novels. I can’t say I actually love them, but they’re uniformly satisfying. The great virtue of the books is probably their prose. The author spends a lot of time describing the landscape and weather of England’s lake district, which he obviously loves.

In Murder On the Menu, Skelgill and young female detective Emma Jones are looking into some non-fatal poisonings at restaurants in the area. It appears that their region is a hotbed of fine dining (Skelgill generally cares more about quantity than quality), and the restaurants that have seen the poisonings are contenders for an important magazine award. Could somebody be trying to nobble the frontrunners?

In a rather comic subplot, Sergeant Leyton, the citified London transplant, finds himself slogging around the countryside, stalking a man he suspects of being a poacher.

Murder On the Menu is notable for the fact that Inspector Skelgill himself spends quite a large part of it out of commission – and yet manages to save the day.

Quite entertaining, especially if you’re a lover of the outdoors. No cautions I can think of.

Fiction, Reviews

Rise of the Merlin: A Fatherless Child

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The third episode of Jeremy Boreing’s The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin continues in the series’ strengths. Tom Sharp as Merlin (shown above) brings appropriate gravity to the role of a 75-year-old mage who has been an established legend for many years, according to all the people who meet him.

It begins with Merlin in the wilderness and a voiceover telling us what people say about him — that he was mad, that he was a king of renown, a bard, a prophet, and a slayer of hundreds. A figure and voice reminiscent of the old man who confronted Taliesin charges him to “go back the way you came.” And so, our man with falcon eyes returns to the land of the living.

The easiest way for me to review each episode would be to simply recap what happens. I don’t want to do that. I want you to enjoy the show yourself, whether it be on DailyWire+ or on another method of release (surely they will sell DVDs). Still, I’ll share what I can.

Merlin delivers the episode’s theme when telling Aurellius, “First, there is a sword, a sword of Britain and the sword is Britain.” Aurellius is of Roman decent and aims to reclaim his father’s land from the Saxons (or Saecsens, as the show spells it). One historical account says he was the one who directed the building of Stonehenge, which would be an impressive real-world tie-in. Right now, he is avenging his father’s murder and rallying other warlords to his banner.

Aurellius’s brother is Uther Pendragon, who appears as his more pessimistic partner in the fight. The story makes it clear Aurellius is in charge, but Uther looks to be his equal in many ways.

This series isn’t going to put the cookies on a low shelf. Viewers may ask if they are supposed to know who someone is or how to read Welsh, and if you’ve taken a course in Arthurian legend, then yeah, you should know. The rest of us will need to get comfortable with ignorance. I haven’t felt lost yet, and most of my knowledge of Camelot comes from the musical.

I love what they’ve done with magic, so far. Episode one got gritty with the pagan stuff, but when our leading men exercise power, it’s natural and sometimes marvelous.

And there’s a scene in this one that is a bit more thrilling for its close resemblance to the hobbits hiding from the Black Riders. I almost stopped it to stare at the tree roots. It’s not the same forest, but when you see it, you’ll know what I’m saying.

Fiction, Reviews

The Pendragon Cycle: Taliesin Episodes

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DailyWire+ has released its beautiful, 7-episode series The Rise of the Merlin, based on The Pendragon Cycle, Stephen Lawhead’s six book series, to regular members last Thursday. The first two eps are up along with a podcast that explains some of the details.

The first episode introduces Charis of Atlantis and the destruction her civilization. It’s an impressive scene in a Greek-style arena. Charis is the head of a seven-person team, male and female, who summersault over running bulls (see the photo of a Minoan fresco above). It isn’t just sport. It’s ritual for the bull god, Bel, to whom Charis is praying when we first see her.

The Atlanteans speak a language invented for the show by Spencer Klavan. It has a great, authentic sound. I picked up notes of Indo-European and Phaffinnic intonations under a clear faux-Latin influence. (I say this as a guy who can spot the subtle flavors in a Hersey’s, so I know what I’m talking about. Don’t get me started on peanut butter blends.)

Twenty years after their home is destroyed, the Atlanteans have established a kingdom in southern Britain, where the Cymry find them, having fled their land to escape barbarian raiders. Taliesin, a bard, is the adopted son of King Elphin. On the first evening, we hear him sing for King Avallach, Charis, and the other Atlanteans a moving song about the Welsh king Pwyll meeting the fairie lord of Annwn in the forest. It’s the first of two songs Taliesin sings in these episodes, and I like them, though they aren’t 4th century ballads. (I assume Lawhead wrote them.) This one in particular has been stuck in my ear for days.

The theme of this part of the series is the move from paganism to Christianity. Both main characters reject offers to sell themselves completely to their pagan gods, and at the end of episode one, the Lord catches Taliesin by surprise. “Look upon me then, Shining Brow!” It’s marvelous.

I love the look of this series so far. The actors are wonderful. (James Arden looks and sounds great as Taliesin.) Dialogue is strong. My one criticism is that a few scenes feel clipped. A dramatic scene at the start of episode two could use a few more minutes of explanation. Or maybe it lacks a foundation. They do explain why everyone is angry in that moment after the scene, but I could use three more minutes of talking it over—maybe hearing the offer put on the table and hearing it rejected before tempers flare.

Episodes drop every Thursday. I’ll try to review the next ones as they come out.

Non-fiction, Religion, Reviews

‘The Early Lives of St Dunstan’

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I don’t expect this review will sell many copies of The Early Lives of St Dunstan, edited and translated by Michael Winterbottom and Michael Lapidge. The book is expensive (I got it as a gift from a generous friend), and it’s pretty specialist stuff. Invaluable for me, though, as I am thinking out my coming book on King Haakon the Good of Norway.

The calculation goes like this: Haakon was raised at the court of King Athelstan of England. Athelstan was a patron of Glastonbury Abbey, a major center of learning at the time. So it makes sense that he would have sent Haakon, along with several other princes he fostered, to Glastonbury for training (I’m assuming Haakon was literate). Dunstan was known to have been trained at Glastonbury around the same time. Ergo, it’s artistically plausible that they were schoolmates. Glastonbury’s reputation as a center of spiritual power and mystery adds a numinous atmosphere, irresistible to the fantasy writer.

The Early Lives of St Dunstan consists of two translations of Latin hagiographies (saints’ lives) of Dunstan, from the late 10th and early 11th centuries, along with extensive notes and explanatory information. Such books were commonly written in the Middle Ages, for liturgical use in church during the saints’ festivals.

Being early hagiographies, written within living memory of the subject himself, these two “Lives” are surprisingly prosaic compared to what one might expect. There are many legends about St. Dunstan, but the miracles in these accounts are relatively prosaic. Both describe what sounds like an incident of somnambulism during his boyhood, in which he left his bed and climbed onto the church roof, then came down unhurt, without any memory of what he’d done. There are stories of his harp (he was a noted musician) playing by itself as it hung on a wall. Various accounts of prophetic dreams and visions and answered prayers. Falling stones that just missed him. Not a lot of healings.

Later on, his legend grew. Traditionally, he’s been remembered as the bishop who caught the devil’s nose in a pair of tongs (he was a blacksmith too). The poem (which I lift from Wikipedia) runs:

St Dunstan, as the story goes, 
Once pull'd the devil by the nose 
With red-hot tongs, which made him roar,
That he was heard three miles or more.

Another legend says that the devil once came to his smithy to have his cloven hoof re-shod. Dunstan nailed on a plain horse’s shoe, which hurt the devil badly. He only agreed to remove the shoe when the devil promised to never again enter a building with a horseshoe nailed over the door – which is, supposedly, the origin of the lucky horseshoe superstition.

I cannot say the two lives of Dunstan were great entertainment. You know how annoying it can be in Christian books, when the writer lapses into preaching? These authors had no storytelling purpose at all; preaching was their sole purpose. It gets pretty sanctimonious.

But useful for my purposes. For instance, Dunstan seems to have had a lot of trouble with slanderous enemies throughout his lifetime, which got him repeatedly expelled from bishoprics. I think I can assume from this that the man may have had a small problem with tact. I can use that.

Below is a famous picture from an old manuscript, believed by many to have been painted by Dunstan himself, as a book illustration. The large figure is Christ, but the kneeling monk in the lower right-hand corner appears to be Dunstan. A self-portrait. All the stories say he could draw.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Friend of the Family,’ by Dean Koontz

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The world of her fiction was our world in every respect, but it was made better and more interesting by her perspective on it. There was much honest sentiment in her work but no sentimentality, compassion without the indignity of pity, forgiveness that required penitence, righteous indignation but not acidic anger regarding those who were foolish or ignorant.

The passage above, from Dean Koontz’s The Friend of the Family, just released, describes the work of a character in the story, but applies pretty well to this book too. I wonder how many other people experience Koontz the way I do. If a man can’t (as the philosopher said) enter the same river twice, certainly no two men ever enter the same river at all, and no two people ever read the same book. All Koontz’s books don’t work the same way for me. The books he writes that deal with abused children are the ones that really get me – because that’s a subject he knows personally, and I share that knowledge. Maybe these books don’t touch more fortunate people the same way.

In any case, The Friend of the Family is that kind of book, and I found it not only moving but heartbreakingly beautiful. This is one of my favorites of his works – right up there with the Odd Thomas novels – and I’m sure I’ll return to it again and again.

Addie is a “freak” in a sideshow act. She feels rather fortunate in her manager, or owner, or whatever he is, because he feeds her, doesn’t beat her, and steals books for her to read. But he subjects her to daily humiliation through displaying her nearly naked to crowds, showcasing her deformities (which are not actually described till late in the story).

Then one day Franklin and Loretta Fairchild show up to rescue her. Frank and Loretta are a couple of the decent people in Hollywood (such creatures do exist). They live in a mansion, and already have three children. But Addie is welcomed to join them as a full family member, and Frank and Loretta adopt her. She enters into a magical life, full of love and fun and creativity.

But all along, Addie is having prophetic dreams. They warn her of a dark enemy approaching to threaten her and these people she loves. A housemaid’s warning sticks with Addie – to enjoy her life, but to “stay alert.”

I was, frankly, expecting more darkness and violence than actually showed up in The Friend of the Family. The darkness and violence were there, but most of this story is about the magical life of a blissfully happy family. I wish it were 300 pages longer.

I give The Friend of the Family my highest recommendation. It made me laugh and cry. Kudos to Dean Koontz.

Fiction, Reviews

‘House of Cards,’ by Stanley Ellin

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Reno Davis, hero of Stanley Ellin’s House of Cards, is an expatriate American in Paris. He was a boxer for a while, and now works as a bouncer at a nightclub. One night he handles a bad situation with considerable tact, and as a result gets offered a kind of dream job. He’s to be a tutor for a young boy, scion of one of France’s most prestigious families. The boy’s father was a war hero. His mother recently got out of a mental hospital, but she’s also stunningly beautiful. The job seems too good to be true, which – of course – it is.

Reno likes the boy, a sensitive child who’s been through a lot and mostly needs a little toughening up. But he soon realizes that almost everything he’s been told about the boy’s family is a lie. Only with time will he learn that there are lies beneath the lies, sinister and dangerous lies that threaten not only the boy and his mother, but Reno himself and even the post-war political status quo.

Robert Mitchum would have been a good choice to play Reno Davis in a movie of House of Cards. Reno’s a good character – most of the other characters didn’t impress me as particularly original. There was plenty of dramatic tension and a fair amount of violence, but I thought the book a little slow and implausible, and it could have been shorter. Also, it showcased the standard assumption that all political danger springs from the right. I was ready for the book to be over long before it actually ended, but I did see it through to the conclusion.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Key to Nicholas Street,’ by Stanley Ellin

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“The fact is that Kate is bigger than anything she owns. It’s a subtle point, but if you strain you’ll begin to get it. She’s bigger than her furs, or her car, or her pretty house on Nicholas Street, or anything else she holds title to. She herself is the big thing. She’s an accepted artist who’s doing good and will do better, and she can say, ‘I’m big, and therefore I have these things,’ not, ‘I have these things, and therefore I’m big.’ It’s only little people without any real meat to them who have to say, ‘Don’t look at me, look at what I own.’”

I’ve enjoyed Stanley Ellin’s novels recently, but I wasn’t really prepared for The Key to Nicholas Street (set in 1951). Dorothy Sayers called Gaudy Night “a love story with detective interruptions,” and Nicholas Street is a sort of domestic drama with detective interruptions. It’s also kind of a Rashomon story, where we observe events from various points of view.

The story is set in a fictional, wealthy neighborhood in one of those communities where professionals commute to New York City. We see it first through the (pretty superficial) eyes of the housemaid, who sees everything in movie and magazine terms. She’s the one who discovers the body of the neighbor – a successful, beautiful commercial artist – at the bottom of the cellar steps in her home.

Then we get the perspective of her employer, an autocratic matron who’s been disappointed by the business failures of the rich man she married. She is a judgmental woman, obsessed with social status. She strongly disapproved of the late neighbor, and makes a plausible murder suspect.

But everybody’s a plausible suspect. There’s the matron’s husband, a man without much character, who’s having an affair. Her daughter, who’s dating a man her mother doesn’t approve of, a man who has been involved with the victim and might have been jealous. Also the son, going through an awkward adolescence.

I thought at one point that this was the kind of book that justifies adultery, but it’s more complicated than that. In the end, we find a surprising hero and a strong affirmation of moral truths.

I have to say I figured out whodunnit, but only for authorial structural reasons, not because I deduced it from the clues.

The Key to Nicholas Street wasn’t exactly my kind of book, but it was pretty good.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Vengeance,’ by Stuart M. Kaminsky

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The Round-Up was one of the many odd-ball restaurants in Sarasota, a town known more for its well-heeled tourists and wealthy retirees who lived on the offshore Keys than its cuisine. There are some good restaurants and there is a h*ll of a lot of variety, including the Round-Up, which boasted a red-on-white sign in the window, “The Best Chinese Tex-Mex in Florida.” Few challenged this claim, especially not the homeless who wandered past every day.

Revisiting an old favorite, one of Stuart M. Kaminsky’s Lew Fonesca mysteries. My fondness for these books rests largely (in my perception) on the degree to which I identify with the hero, so I was astounded, on this second reading, to realize what a very good book Vengeance is – and what a dynamite twist ending it features.

Lew Fonesca is a process server living in Sarasota, Florida. He settled here when his car broke down. Three years ago, he was a district attorney’s investigator in Chicago, but his wife’s death in an auto accident put him into a tailspin, leading to his despairing drive south. Now he rents a small office and lives in a little room behind it. He gets around town by bicycle, and reads books or watches old movies on VHS for entertainment. He’s a small man, balding, middle-aged, and depressed. He has one friend, old cowboy Ames McKinney, whom he once helped to locate his old partner, who’d stolen a fortune from him. It ended in a classic six-gun showdown.

Lew isn’t a private eye, but people are starting to come to him to find people for them. In Vengeance, he’s first visited by Beryl Tree, a middle-aged woman from Kansas whose 14-year-old daughter has run off. Beryl is pretty sure she’s in Sarasota with her father. She’s also pretty sure he’s molesting her.

He also has a second client, a wealthy man whose trophy wife has disappeared, after cleaning out their bank accounts. The man swears he just wants Lew to give her a message, an offer of reconciliation. Lew finds the man a little fishy, and is less interested in this case.

The Lew Fonesca books aren’t exactly hard-boiled, but they’re certainly not cozies either. Perhaps they should be called over easy. Lew isn’t a tough guy (he’s lucky to have gun-toting Ames to back him up), but he’s tough in his own way – just because he doesn’t give a rip. Death doesn’t mean much to him anymore.

Except that he’s just met a woman – a social worker – who sparked his interest for the first time since his wife’s death. Fortunately, he has a good psychologist to talk these matters over with.

I loved this book. The Lew Fonesca series is my favorite section of Stuart M. Kaminsky’s considerable literary portfolio. Highly recommended, with cautions for very dark, mature themes.