I had actually thought that Peter May had wrapped up his Enzo Macleod mystery series with the previous installment. But Enzo rides one more time (if a little gingerly) in The Night Gate, which is advertised as the series finale.
Enzo, a Scotsman resident in France, has slowed down since the last book. He’s 65 now, and constantly on guard against the Covid-19 virus. He’s retired as a forensic science teacher and consultant, but when a skeleton is uncovered in the roots of a fallen tree in a picturesque town in the French Pyrenees, and that skeleton is dressed in the remains of a German officer’s uniform, the skull containing a bullet hole, Enzo is asked to take a look. He travels to the town with Dominique, his wife, and notices crime tape across the door of the house next door. There has been a murder there recently – a prominent art critic died inside of a slashed throat – but the local police ask Enzo to give them the benefit of his expertise. Though the culprit seems to be obvious – a German art broker was seen fleeing the crime scene covered in blood.
Enzo, however, is not sure about the man’s guilt. As he looks into the history of the murder house, he discovers that a former resident was involved in an audacious scheme to protect no less an artwork than the Mona Lisa, during World War II. A series of flashbacks tell us the story of Georgette Pignal, a young woman tasked by General de Gaulle himself with substituting a perfect copy for the original.
The Night Gate provided an enjoyable ride, relating a harrowing World War II adventure, along with the present-day heroics of a hero somewhat diminished by age and quarantine. I was left unsatisfied at the end, though – the resolution of the mystery was kind of a downer, and the extra surprise at the end was ambivalent.
If you’ve been following the series, you’ll want to read this one to cap things off. If you haven’t, this isn’t the place to start.
[Reading Dune for the first time] Update 2: Dune opens just before a scene you’ve probably seen from a movie trailer. Paul Atreides, 15, stands before a revered, old woman for some kind of test that is rarely given to boys. He rehearses “the Litany against Fear” that his mother taught him from her background in the Bene Gesserit rite.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
The test he endures is brutal but clean–no blood spilled, just scorching pain. Paul reveres the old woman less by the end because he begins to see she doesn’t have the answers she claims to have.
This introduction to Paul could have gone the direction many lesser stories have gone by having Paul become very proud of withstanding a severe test as well as his acute perception and begin blowing off all responsibility because, darn it, he’s the best. He may think he’s the best, but he hasn’t allowed himself to think it yet, because he is the son of Duke Leto. The family is moving to the sand-planet Arrakis to assume a role given to the duke by the emperor, and at least one other royal house opposes it. The Harkonnens have been ordered to vacate, so Leto Atreides could take control.
Plus, Arrakis is a difficult planet to live on. Everyone wants the spice harvested there, but the harsh environment and sandworms, some of which could swallow a harvester whole, roam the dunes. The worms may even create the spice (if that’s revealed later in the book or other books, I don’t know).
Paul could be a huge jerk in the first book (section) of Dune, but he isn’t. He’s a serious-minded, young man, mature beyond his years. He will be duke one day, if he and his family can survive the treat of this new planet.
A lot of characters are introduced in Dune‘s first book, and though Paul is a central focus, he isn’t the leading man yet. That would be his father. a man of many admirable qualities but perhaps not enough skill to navigate a galaxy of ruthless politicians. I think the story has told us that at this point, but I’m not sure it’s fair to say that a man who is overwhelmed in a shark-eat-shark world lacks governing skills. Maybe he lacks ruthlessness. Maybe survival means cruelty. Maybe surviving, in this case, isn’t the greatest good.
On the other hand, fighting fear and training others to fight it as well may be the greatest good. By fighting the mind-killer, no matter who survives, you may still win.
I was very much impressed with the Mark Pryor’s first Hugo Marston novel, The Bookseller. I liked the second one, The Crypt Thief, with certain reservations. Number three, The Blood Promise, lost me completely. I say it with regret.
In a rural house in France, an old woman is murdered by a burglar, who makes off with an antique sailor’s chest. Not long after, Hugo Marston, head of security at the US Embassy in Paris, is assigned to “babysit” a visiting US senator scheduled to negotiate a minor dispute with the French government at a palatial country chateau. Hugo isn’t enthusiastic about chaperoning Senator Charles Lake, an unvarnished character who may have been intended to suggest Donald Trump. But a minor crisis arises when the senator insists that someone has entered his room in the night, and insists that the invasion of privacy be investigated. Their noble French host, insulted, refuses more than the minimum cooperation, and the talks break down.
But to everyone’s surprise, one fingerprint found in the room turns out to match one left behind at the earlier murder scene. Soon Hugo, along with his CIA friend Tom, his policeman friend Garcia, and his journalist girlfriend Claudia, are on the hunt for a ruthless killer who will blow their lives apart.
I liked the characters in this series, and the writing wasn’t bad (except for Americanisms in the use of the word “like” that don’t really work well in a French setting). But there were also elements I liked less. One was certain suggestions of progressive political leanings – which up to now were not made explicit. This time out, in a plot choice that will shock readers, author Pryor removes one beloved character and replaces them with a new character who has an Agenda – one which a fair amount of word count is spent explaining. This is an Agenda I don’t really care to spend time with, and that means I’m dropping the series on grounds of a fun deficit.
But a second problem is non-ideological. I noticed it before, in The Crypt Thief – the villain’s motivations make no sense to me. The plot involves a blackmail threat over a secret that I can’t see as scandalous in the least, and I don’t think anyone would care much about it in the real world.
So I’m done with this series, which started out with a lot of promise.
I’m not a big fan of modern wizard books (you may have noticed I failed to succumb to the charm of Jim Butcher’s Dresden novels) generally, but someone suggested I check out Dan Willis’s Alex Lockerby novels. I read the first, In Plain Sight, and found a lot to like.
Alex Lockerby is a private eye/rune writer in 1930s New York City, but in an alternate universe. In this universe, magic substitutes for science. Pretty much everything runs on electricity, and the electricity is provided by a small number of great sorcerers, who are the plutocrats of the day (Rockefeller is one of them). Rune writers like Alex are far more common, doing smaller-scale magic at various levels of expertise.
One day a beautiful young woman comes into Alex’s office to ask him to locate her brother, who has disappeared. He was a rune writer too, and she fears he might have gotten into magical trouble he couldn’t handle. Alex takes the job, and falls for the girl.
Meanwhile, a personal tragedy strikes, in the form of the mysterious deaths of a number of people in a church homeless mission, including the priest. That priest was the man who raised Alex, and the police (reluctantly) allow him to consult on the case. He lends his expertise to the hunt for a secret journal belonging to Leonardo Da Vinci, rumored to contain a few complex runes that would give their owner almost unlimited power – power for which certain foreign agents are hunting.
I liked In Plain Sight much more than I expected. It transposed a lot of good old hard-boiled tropes, and there was a pretty neat surprise at the end, involving a major character. The tension with Christian theology that tends to go with books about magic is softened here by the fact that Alex is close to a Catholic priest who has no objections. Apparently the rules are different in this universe. Here magic is like science, and spiritual beings don’t seem to come into it.
If you like urban fantasy and hard-boiled mysteries, In Plain Sight is a pretty fun way to spend your reading time. Recommended.
The second offering in Mark Pryor’s Hugo Marston series, about a US embassy security head in Paris, is The Crypt Thief. I liked it, but not as much as the first book.
On summer night in the famous Pére Lachaise cemetery, near the grave of Jim Morrison, a young couple is shot to death. One of them is an American man from a prominent family; the woman is a dancer who turns out to have connections to a suspected terrorist. It is also discovered that a grave has been robbed – part of the skeleton of a famous Paris dancer has been taken. Where others see a terrorist act, Hugo Marston, whose background is in criminal profiling, sees the grave desecration as the central point. He suspects – and fears – that this may be the beginning of a string of serial killings. Since he’s the hero, we know he’s going to be right.
Once again Hugo is joined by his CIA friend Tom (who is showing troubling signs of a serious drinking problem) and his girlfriend Claudia, a plucky reporter with (as is common in fictional females) no rational sense of danger whatever.
This story didn’t work for me as well as The Bookseller. I thought it fell into a lot of common thriller tropes. The serial killer was certainly an original type, but extreme; I had trouble believing in him. And I’m a little weary of stories where the hero is sure he has to rush into danger personally, because the police don’t understand the truth the way he does.
But it wasn’t bad. I’ll still continue reading the series. Cautions for very disturbing subject matter.
You’ve likely seen other bloggers writing about the first time they read Lord of the Rings. It seems appropriate to treat Dune the same way. With a new movie adaptation coming up (though I usually don’t see movies until months after they release, if then), I wanted to read the book that’s been sitting on my shelf a while.
I didn’t know anything about the world of Arrakis beyond a few images from the 1984 movie. Having reviewed a bit of the trailer from that movie, I don’t think I’ll spend any more time on it. I watched Zardoz as an impressionable youth. I don’t need anymore rank garbage like that.
I’ve just learned there are 19 books in the series and apparently more on the way, but only six of them are by original author Frank Herbert, so I doubt I’ll make it through even that many.
What I’ve read so far is book one of three in the original book. It’s a great part one, ending on a cliffhanger after all the foreshadowed conflict has crashed on the beach, leaving readers to wonder what happens next.
That foreshadowing though. Granny telling Little Red Riding Hood not to stray from the path easily sets up the idea that she will at least be tempted to stray. But Herbert doesn’t foreshadow as much as foretell. The narrative doesn’t stick to a single point of view but flits between characters, sometimes only for a moment, revealing their hidden motives. I thought I would hate it after a while, but I didn’t. Herbert’s style carries the story pretty well, but I have to wonder why he felt the need to quickly reveal this or that betrayal, when half the time it could have remained unsaid or supposed by one of the two especially perceptive characters.
“He nodded. ‘Of course.’ And he thought: If only there were some way not to do this thing that I must do.“
Well, for starters, you could consider avoiding loud whispering that everyone can hear.
That doesn’t touch on the quotations from backstory books that begin each chapter, saying one character is super, super bad or another one is going to die later on. No spoiler alert labels either. The main thing these quotations communicate is that Herbert is working on something of epic length. This won’t wrap up soon, gentle reader; note the gravitas of Princess Irulan’s history.
Despite this, I found book one to be compelling. The gifted, young Paul Atteides, only son of Duke Leto and his mistress Jessica, is remarkably perceptive, asking serious questions an adult should ask. His father works hard to gain and sustain loyal for his royal family, and he has a measure of success, but it becomes plain (that foretelling again) that the deck is stacked against him. A gifted observer or historian may be able to critic the Duke’s decisions and point to critical weaknesses or failures, but the story reveals a man who is trying to do his level best.
While reading, I thought I would see far more similarity to Star Wars, but so far the two stories are not alike. Paul is not some untrained kid hoping to get off his desert planet, and while the Empire is in the background and doesn’t look too good, it isn’t hunting down rebels. The story pits two ruling families against each other with a third, not-entirely-neutral party, a labor union that’s so large it could be an empire of its own. Add to this the free tribes of Arrakis, whom the Empire calls Sand Pirates (not at all like Sand People or Jawas).
I look forward to the rest of it and maybe even a sequel.
Harry Starke is a high-end private eye working in Chattanooga. (No doubt Phil Wade has run into him). Son of a successful personal injury lawyer, he works out of a nice office and owns a beautiful home. He’s dating a woman police detective. As Harry Starke, the first book in this series begins, he watches a beautiful young woman flee a couple of tough guys in a seedy bar, tries to rescue her as she flees over a bridge on the Tennessee River, and watches helplessly as she plunges to her death.
In the tradition of fictional private eyes, he immediately vows to find out who’s responsible for her death. The girl turns out to be the daughter of a prominent surgeon, who immediately hires him to investigate. With the help of his highly competent staff (though he does the dangerous stuff alone, of course), and in cooperation with Kate, his police squeeze, he follows the clues to the offices of a local drug dealer, who appears suddenly more prosperous than he should be, and a corrupt local politician. With occasional stops to investigate a secret sex club.
Harry Starke kept me reading to the end, but I didn’t really like it a lot. It seemed superficial to me, assembled from shiny parts like a TV series pilot, with nothing behind the facades on the set. I especially thought Harry’s relationship with Kate, the cop, was implausible. Would any real-life police department allow a private operator whom a detective was dating to consult on a case and run around with her, chasing suspects?
The language, I should note, was fairly clean for this kind of novel. There were several sexual encounters, but they weren’t described explicitly. However, there was one sexual moment that was just creepy for this reader. It was that creepy moment, though not that moment alone, that decided me that I probably won’t be investing in any more Harry Starke books.
Outside the car’s window Paris flashed by, the sluggish river Seine appearing and disappearing beside them, seeming to slow their progress with her magnetic pull, a seductress winking through the plane trees, teasing them with glimpses of her silvery skirts, and with the threat of more death, more bodies hidden within their deadly folds.
Along the river Seine in Paris, there is a class of booksellers known as bouquinistes, occupants of much-coveted stalls. Hugo Marston, head of security for the US embassy, is fond of browsing their offerings, and has made particular friends with an old man named Max. As The Bookseller opens, Hugo asks Max for something special, out of his private stock – a conciliatory gift for his girlfriend, who recently abandoned him and returned to the US. Max offers two rare books – an Agatha Christie first edition, and a rare copy of the poet Rimbaud. Before he leaves, Hugo witnesses Max being bullied by a thug, who forces him down to the river bank. Max is shoved onto a boat, and Hugo is unable to do anything to prevent it. When he reports the abduction to the police, they seem uninterested – and quickly drop the investigation.
Meanwhile, Hugo discovers that the Rimbaud book is an extremely rare signed copy, worth hundreds of thousands of euros. Why did he sell it to Hugo for less than a thousand? Was he trying to send a message, leave some kind of clue behind? When Hugo learns that Max was once a Nazi hunter, and when other bouquinistes start turning up dead in the river, Hugo begins his own independent investigation. His friend Tom, a CIA operative, comes along to watch his back and help out with the rough stuff. And Hugo meets a charming female journalist with a shocking secret.
The Bookseller was a first novel for author Mark Pryor, and for my money it was a home run. (Our commenter Paul alerted me to it.) The writing was superior, and I liked the characters very much. Hugo and Tom have great rapport, and they’re fun to watch in action. I look forward to reading the next books in the series.
The usual cautions for language are in order. Some time is spent on Hugo’s agnosticism, but he himself is forced to admit occasionally that it’s inconsistent with his actual life experience.
I was pretty happy with this book at the beginning – A Wolf At the Gate, by Lexie Conyngham, offered pretty good prose, along with evidence of some serious research on Viking Age life. But as I read on, I grew less happy with it.
Ketil, the apparent hero of the book, is in the service of Earl Thorfinn of Orkney (which sets the story in time a little later than my Erling books). Ketil generally operates outside of Orkney, and he’s about to sail away, but the earl calls him back to investigate a murder. Ketil solved a previous killing for the earl, so he’s assumed to be good at that sort of thing.
Secret murder is rare among the Norse, and this murder is all the more puzzling because the victim, a man in the earl’s service named Steinar (recently back from Colonia in Saxony, which I take to mean Cologne) seems to have been universally liked. He was a devout Christian, rather strict about church rules, but harsh only with himself. Someone split his skull with an axe in front of his own house.
I said that Ketil was the apparent hero of this book, because he is in fact just the Inspector Lestrade here. The real detective is a woman named Sigrid, a childhood friend of Ketil’s who now lives as a widow in Orkney. She was the one who actually solved the previous murder. Gradually she and Ketil renew their friendship – there’s some suppressed attraction there, but both of them deny it. Together they consider the multiple puzzles that face them – does the murder of a man just back from Colonia have anything to do with the fact that an abbot from Colonia is visiting the island? Does someone covet Steinar’s beautiful wife? Or was the killer Ketil’s follower Lambi, who seems to be a sneak thief?
The further I read in this book, the more disappointed I grew. First of all, the characterizations were fairly flat, especially the male characters. Author Conyngham seems to have a problem I’ve often noticed in books by women – she doesn’t get men at all. There’s a famous line (unjust but funny) in (I think) the movie, As Good As It Gets, where Jack Nicholson, asked how he writes women so well says, “I think of a man. And I take away reason and accountability.” Conyngham writes men by thinking of a woman, and taking away any clue.
Also, the story began to bore me. Although the plot gets sweetened by further murders, I never felt any sense of urgency, any idea that great things were at stake.
Also, the narrative falls into what I believe to be serious factual falsehoods about the Christian church. It’s not an anti-Christian book as such, since most of the serious Christians are depicted sympathetically. But the author states and reiterates – and this is a major plot element – that the Catholic church denied baptism to the children of slaves, and to deformed babies.
I had never heard of this before. It entirely contradicted my own understanding of the matter. Now maybe author Conyngham, whose biography says she’s a historian, knows something I don’t know. But my online searches find documentation directly contradicting these contentions.
On the issue of slaves, this article from Christianity Today, by Rodney Stark, is behind a paywall. But the passage I need is right there above the barrier — “That the Church willingly baptized slaves was claimed as proof that they had souls, and soon both kings and bishops—including William the Conqueror (1027-1087) and Saints Wulfstan (1009-1095) and Anselm (1033-1109)—forbade the enslavement of Christians.”
I also found numerous references online to the historical fact that the early Christians made it a practice to hunt through the dumping sites where the Romans – quite legally – habitually discarded their unwanted babies. The Christians would baptize these infants, adopt them, and raise them in the church. One of the primary excuses the Romans gave for “exposing” babies this way was that they were born deformed.
So in the end I was both bored and irritated by A Wolf At the Gates. Too bad. It showed promise.
Temperature around 50 today. This pleases me. I left the house three times – to the gym, to the grocery store, and to pick up pizza. All the trips were satisfactory, except for the grocery store, because I forgot to get pizza. Which isn’t so bad, because I’d planned to get carryout today anyway. I can get a large Domino’s for about nine bucks with a coupon, and I get four meals out of it. Which turns an indulgence into an economy.
Something about that scheme doesn’t seem right, though. I’m still waiting for the universe to rain justice down on me, for my hubris.
Watched an amusing old English movie this afternoon. Castle In the Air, from 1952. Based on a stage play. It’s slightly Wodehousian, in having a mix of classes, romantic misunderstandings, and competing prevarications.
The Earl of Locharne is played by David Tomlinson, who seems to American eyes a strange choice for a romantic lead (he’s best remembered for a later role, as the father in Mary Poppins). I have an idea that the British film industry was slightly short on talent in those days, and had to cast less-than-beautiful people just to fill the roles. The same is true – to an extent – of Helen Cherry (Mrs. Trevor Howard), who plays “Boss” Trent, the earl’s assistant and love interest. She’s just slightly less than beautiful, but I can easily imagine falling in love with her anyway.
In any case, the earl’s great cross to bear in life is the ownership of Locharne Castle, which is falling apart faster than he can afford to fix it. He operates it as a residential hotel, for tenants who constantly complain about the cold drafts and the lack of hot water. And oh yes – there’s a ghost, a beautiful phantom named Ermyntrude, who is actually good-natured and helpful. (Filmmakers loved superimposing ghost images in movies back then. It was a special effect that was easy, cheap, and didn’t look cheesy.)
A man from the National Coal Board arrives to assess the property. The board is considering acquiring the castle (by requisition, not purchase), so everyone is doing their best to impress him with the castle’s ruinous condition and unsuitability for habitation. But when a rich and beautiful American divorcee shows up, pondering buying the place for good money, he has to talk it up to her. Meanwhile, a genealogist with Jacobite sympathies (played by Margaret Rutherford) is on site, working out charts to prove that the earl is the rightful king of Scotland.
All very silly, and pleasant, and the ending’s happy. Enjoyable fluff, in the tradition of… did I mention Wodehouse? Cautions for sometimes incomprehensible Scottish accents.
