Category Archives: Reviews

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘The Splendid and the Vile,’ by Erik Larson

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Diarist Phyllis Warner found that she and fellow Londoners were surprised by their own resilience. “Finding we can take it is a great relief to most of us,” she wrote on September 22. “I think that each one of us was secretly afraid that he wouldn’t be able to, that he would rush shrieking to shelter, that his nerve would give, that he would in some way collapse, so that this has been a pleasant surprise.”

Author Erik Larson has found himself a useful and profitable niche, writing about famous characters and events in historical accounts that combine the actions of famous persons with the lives of ordinary people, to give us a many-faceted picture. The Splendid and the Vile is his account of London during the Blitz; mostly set in the crucial year of 1940. The spotlight is, naturally, on Winston Churchill and his closest circle – his cabinet ministers and department heads, and his family. But we also get to see events through the eyes of ordinary citizens. And from time to time he looks across the channel to see how Hitler and his henchmen – who couldn’t understand why Churchill repeatedly snubbed their “friendly” peace offers — reacted and responded.

And meanwhile, the ordinary public suffered, died, and (most of them) survived.

It was a harrowing time, and this is a harrowing book. But also fascinating, informative, and sometimes even darkly comic. Historical figures come alive through their own words. The great drama and surprise in the book is something neither Hitler, nor even Churchill, really foresaw – the amazing courage of the English people; what they were willing to endure to defend their civilization.

What troubled me most as I read was something not in the book – the knowledge that this epic crusade for western civilization would end in the abandonment of eastern Europe to Stalin. Plus the knowledge that the children and grandchildren of these brave people would happily accede to the demolition of that civilization in our time.

Still and all, The Splendid and the Vile is an excellent look at a pivotal point in history. Highly recommended.

Religion, Reviews

Amazon Prime film review: ‘Mully’

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The story of Charles Mulli, chronicled in the documentary, Mully, would have offered a remarkable story even without its amazing second act. But that second act is nothing less than astonishing.

I was late in seeing this film, which I’ve known about since its release in 2017. One of its co-producers, Lukas Behnken, happens to be the son of one of my oldest friends, my college roommate Dixey Behnken. I should have believed what Dixey told me about it.

Charles Mulli was born in poverty in a village in Kenya. One morning when he was six, he woke to discover his family had disappeared overnight – they’d just moved away, leaving him behind. Then followed years of living on the street and begging, until he finally found work. He worked hard and made his way up the corporate pyramid, eventually owning his own bus company and becoming regional distributor for an oil company. He was a genuinely rich man in a genuinely poor country.

Then one day some street boys hijacked his car. Riding home on one of his own buses, Charles couldn’t keep himself from thinking about the boys who robbed him. They were himself, he realized, as he might have been. As a Christian, he felt a divine call to do something about it.

So he went onto the streets, found a couple homeless kids, and took them home with him. Then more. Then even more. He never stopped. His wife and children didn’t know how to deal with it, especially when he sent his own kids away to boarding school in order to make room for more orphans. Finally they all moved to a big new facility, and they established Mully Children’s Family, a wide-ranging enterprise that raises food and earns profits which are then poured back into several large children’s homes.

“Mully” relates this moving story through dramatic recreations and filmed interviews. It’s all fascinating and riveting – sometimes hardly believable. Inspirational. Deeply challenging.

Highly recommended. I watched it on Amazon Prime, but you can see it for free here.

Reviews, Uncategorized

Amazon Prime film review: ‘The Outfit’

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I watched an interesting movie, on a friend’s recommendation, and I think it’s worth reviewing.

The Outfit, which I watched on Amazon Prime, is a production that looks as if it was adapted from a stage play, because pretty much everything happens on just one set. But it’s not; it’s just an extremely focused drama, and it works effectively that way.

Leonard Burling (Mark Rylance) is an Englishman who runs a tailor shop in Chicago in 1956 – though he insists he’s not a tailor, but a “cutter.” Tailors, he says, just mend clothing.

His shop is located in the territory of an Irish criminal gang. The big boss is his most important customer. Although some of the people he makes suits for are anything but savory, Leonard is a complete professional, treating them all as gentlemen, studiously ignoring what they do for a living.

But what they do for a living doesn’t ignore him. They’ve installed a sealed drop box in his shop, and from time to time they leave letters and packages there for retrieval. Leonard pretends it’s not there. A worse intrusion is the attention the big boss’s son Richie (Dylan O’Brien) has been paying to Leonard’s young receptionist, Mable (Zoe Deutsch). Leonard has paternal feelings for her, and is concerned.

Then one night one of the other gangsters, Francis (Johnny Flynn) shows up with a wounded Richie. Richie has been shot by a rival gang, and he needs to lay low until their enemies have gone away. Francis demands Leonard stitch Richie’s wound up, and demands he hide a briefcase. He says the briefcase contains a tape recording made by some “rat” who’s betrayed them all. He leaves Richie there with Leonard, and the two talk.

That’s all I’ll tell you about the plot. Speaking as a writer, I wasn’t entirely happy with the plot. It’s one of those stories where a character creates an intricate plan that fools both their opponents and the audience. However, just one small miscalculation here would have been fatal, and in real life something always does go wrong. Too tight a battle plan is a recipe for disaster, as any good general knows.

Nevertheless, if you suspend your disbelief on that point, The Outfit is very impressive. Ryland is pitch-perfect as the cutter – one of those quiet men who’s got a lot more going on under the surface than anybody guesses. All the performances are excellent, though.

Cautions for language and violence. Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Kiss My Assassin’ by Dave Sinclair

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The blurb says, “You’ve never met a spy like this before!” That’s false advertising. Charles Bishop, hero of Kiss My Assassin (apologies for the title), is almost indistinguishable from James Bond. He does the same job, has the same way with women, and gets into the same kind of scrapes as Bond (at least the movie Bond). I suppose the author’s attempts at witty dialogue are intended to make the atmosphere a little lighter than a Bond story, but I didn’t find the wit very sharp, myself.

When the Turkish ambassador to Great Britain is arrested on Westminster Bridge after a naked male body flies out of his car trunk, Bishop is sent to talk to him at his residence (diplomatic complications have delayed his being detained by police). The ambassador tells Bishop that it doesn’t matter what he does – he’s going to be dead by the end of the day. He says he got an opportunity to participate in a highly secret illegal arms auction, but since the dead man, the sellers’ agent, died – accidentally – the arms brokers, who are not understanding sorts, will certainly kill him and his family.

Fireworks ensue, and soon Bishop is off to Marrakech, where he meets a seductive woman and a brutish Russian agent, who turns into an unlikely ally. In the honored tradition of movie action heroes, Bishop will kill an improbable number of enemy agents, and though he’ll suffer several traumatic injuries, including gunshot wounds, he’ll still drag himself out his hospital bed to give it one more go.

I’ve read a lot of improbable action thrillers, so I could have gone happily along for the ride if I’d liked the main character. But I took a dislike to Charles Bishop almost from the start. The dialogue, I think, was meant to be clever, but it didn’t amuse me. An attempt at one point to make Bishop sensitive to male sexism struck me as both false and a little prissy.

The writing isn’t awful, but I don’t recommend Kiss My Assassin. As you might expect, there was quite a lot of sex, some of it pretty kinky.

Authors, Reviews

Video review: ‘The Most Reluctant Convert’

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I finally saw it. I touted the film, The Most Reluctant Convert when it first appeared in theaters, but didn’t get around to going myself. Because I’m old, and there’s Covid, and it would have been a long drive, etc., etc. But now I’ve got the DVD, and I must say I was impressed. Better even than I expected.

Essentially, this production is a dramatization of Lewis’ memoir, Surprised by Joy, with some The Weight of Glory thrown in. Originally a stage play, the film adaptation takes an interesting approach. We start with the filming preparations, as makeup people finish their work on the actor Max McLean. Then he seems to nod off, and when he lifts his head he’s Lewis. He walks out of the studio and directly into the Museum of Natural History at Oxford, all the while discussing how he moved from atheism to Christianity. As we follow, the film alternates between the “present” – Lewis talking to the camera – and recreations of dramatic scenes from his life. Often Lewis sits on the sidelines, watching his younger self, a dramatic element I rather like.

The production is really very well done all around. It has an authentic look; the acting is excellent. Good costumes and sets. The actors even vaguely resemble the people they’re playing. And the story is presented with what I think is considerable power. Some memorable parts of Surprised, like Lewis’ miserable time in public school, are skipped over as the narrative sticks with the main topic.

Max McLean is good – I won’t say great – as Lewis. In makeup he resembles the man, in a sort of rubber-faced way. Having never met Lewis, I can’t really say more with any authority, but I still think the definitive portrayal is Joss Ackland’s in the original BBC version of Shadowlands (which had the same director as this film). Ackland looked less like Lewis, but had the physical bulk and booming voice. And he’d clearly studied Lewis’ mannerisms. He also wore his hat with the brim turned down all the way around, which McLean neglects to do for some reason. (Somebody must have told him about this, I would think.)

But these are quibbles. All in all, The Most Reluctant Convert is a highly successful and impressive adaptation. I’m glad I bought it.

Fiction, Reviews

For your Spectation

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I continue to yammer to all and sundry about the novel The Last of the Vikings. Today The American Spectator printed a second review by me.

There’s a fascinating section in The Last of the Vikings where the fishermen ask Lars to read to them from A Happy Boy, and they’re all transported by the story: “It had never struck them before that a house and land can be so beautiful despite their being small. They did not know that poor people could have so much sunshine.”

And then another fisherman comes in carrying a radical newspaper called the Dawn. He’s been bringing copies in periodically for Lars to read aloud, and they’ve all enjoyed reviling the greedy capitalists. But now the fishermen’s attitude has changed. They tell the agitator, to his shock, to get out and take his paper with him…

Read it all here.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Comes the Dark Stranger,’ by Jack Higgins

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Back in the late Jack Higgins’ heyday, I used to buy all his novels as they appeared, because he wrote a tight, compelling story, and when Christianity came up it was generally treated respectfully. As time went on I got the feeling he was starting to phone it in, telling the same story over and over with different settings and only superficially different characters.

But it had been a while since I’d read a Higgins, so I took advantage of a bargain on one of his early books, Comes the Dark Stranger. I don’t think he’d found his stride yet at this point in his career, but the book was entertaining.

Martin Shane shows up in the English town of Burnham, looking for an old army buddy. But not in a good way. He’d been with a commando group in Korea, all from the same town, and he and his friends were taken prisoner and tortured. One of them, under threat of execution, had broken and given the interrogator what he wanted. Then Martin’s best friend was executed. Martin vowed revenge, but then suffered a brain injury that kept him hospitalized for eight years. Recently he got his memory back. He needs brain surgery to remove shrapnel before it kills him, but before he goes under the knife, Martin is going to identify the Judas and kill him.

Of course, it isn’t as easy as that. Everyone has a story. Somebody’s lying. As Martin endures recurring, crippling headaches, he questions and threatens and gets people angry, hoping the culprit will give something away. At some points, he’s not even sure the things he remembers actually happened. In the end, he’ll get an answer he doesn’t want.

Comes the Dark Stranger touched all the bases as far as thriller plotting is concerned. My problem with the book is that I didn’t really believe in the characters. I didn’t think some of them were responding naturally, but were just doing what was necessary to advance the plot.

Still, the book wasn’t bad. Moderately recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Hidden Voices,’ by Dan Willis

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I’ve been following Dan Willis’ Arcane Casebook series about hardboiled runewright/detective Alex Lockerby for some time. The books aren’t high literature, but they’re a rare example of modern urban fantasy that I find entertaining. The latest book is Hidden Voices.

Alex Lockerby is thrust into the turmoil of European affairs when William Donovan, creator of the OSS, asks him to transport to Austria and rescue an alchemist who possesses a valuable secret formula the Nazis want. The job – of course – turns out to be more dangerous than expected, but Alex manages to bring the alchemist home. And then it goes wrong on this end.

Meanwhile, he’s also hired to investigate the murder of a famous vaudeville musician, beaten to death with his own mandolin.

Supported and assisted by his girlfriend, the sorceress Sorsha, Alex comes through (even battling the Aryan Superman) to champion the cause of freedom and identify the guilty.

I wish the author had worked harder to master 1930s diction – he thinks, for instance, that Alex would have called the “#” symbol a “pound sign” rather than a hash mark. But most people can’t remember how they talked in the old days anymore, so I suppose it’s not important. The story was fun and there was no objectionable material. Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Deadly Welcome,’ by John D. MacDonald

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As you’ve noticed, I am working my way (happily) through the old John D. MacDonald paperbacks re-issued for Kindle by The Murder Room. Deadly Welcome was a particular pleasure, because it’s one I hadn’t read before.

Alex Doyle works in sort of troubleshooting capacity (never really explained) for the US State Department. But one day he’s ordered to the Pentagon and informed he’s now on loan to the military. They have an assignment for him, one he’s uniquely qualified to carry out.

There’s a Colonel M’Gann who’s been doing important defense work. A while back he got married to a woman named Jenna Larkin, originally of Ramona Beach, Florida. She seemed to be a good wife, and nursed him back from a stroke. They moved to Ramona Beach together. Then she was murdered, strangled on the beach. Now Col. M’Gann has withdrawn from the world. The military wants him back. They’d like Alex to go down there and see if he can solve the murder. That might bring the Colonel back.

Alex doesn’t want to do it. The very reason they chose him is because he originally came from Ramona himself. He even knew Jenna Larkin (all the boys did). Back there he was considered white trash. He got framed for a theft and only avoided prison by enlisting in the Army. He expects no great welcome in his home town.

Indeed, once he arrives, pretending to have money he wants to invest in a local business, almost his first encounter is with the deputy sheriff, who works him over with a truncheon just to show him who’s in charge. Alex pretends to be properly cowed, but he’s not the same guy who got run out of town so long ago. He’ll get his own back in his own time. Along the way he’ll meet Jenna’s sister, a beautiful woman with a traumatic past. And he’ll uncover a possible motive for the murder, which helps him come up with a way to trap a killer.

Deadly Welcome isn’t a terribly memorable book. There’s a little too much amateur psychology here, perhaps. But it’s a well-crafted, plausible story with a satisfying conclusion. Journeyman work, and well worth the price.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Last of the Vikings,’ by Johan Bojer

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They worked in the herring fisheries in the autumn, and in the winter sailed hundreds of miles in open boats up to Lofoten, perhaps tempted by the hope of gain, but perhaps too because on the sea they were free men.

More than once over the years on this blog I’ve mentioned Johan Bojer’s novel, The Last of the Vikings, which I read in Norwegian (Nynorsk). I even translated a section and posted it once (though I can’t find it now), because I dearly wished to share this book with others, but the English translation was out of print.

I’m delighted to report that this has changed. You can now get The Last of the Vikings in translation for Kindle.

First of all, I must inform you that this book isn’t about Vikings. It’s about the cod fishery in Lofoten sometime around the turn of the 20th Century, when steam was beginning to replace sail. If you see a picture of one of the old Nordland boats, the kind used in this book, you’ll think for a moment that it’s a picture of a Viking ship. That’s because the Nordland boats were descended from Viking boats through unbroken evolution over centuries.

Kristàver Myran is a small farmer (although the text doesn’t say it, his home is in the Trondheim area, where author Bojer grew up). Every winter, like most of the able-bodied men of his neighborhood, he makes the long sail up to Lofoten to participate in the cod fishing, gambling that he can make enough money to get ahead a little in the world. But this year he has great hopes, because he finally has his own boat (purchased on credit). He wondered why the boat was going for such a low price, but only learned after the sale that it’s jinxed. Over the last three winters it has capsized every year. Well, nothing can be done about that now.

Coming along for the first time is his son Lars, proud to be a Lofoten man at last. Lars idolizes his father and dreams of following in his footsteps, but also likes to read and has educational aspirations. He is the main point-of-view character in the book.

Other crew members include Elezeus, Kristàver’s brother-in-law, an abusive, self-loathing husband. And Kaneles (Cornelius), a fun-loving bachelor who’s the sole support of his young sister and blind father. And Arnt, another first-year man, a bad sailor terrified of the sea.

Another skipper from the neighborhood is old Jacob, a limping, black-bearded, drunken, cheerful force of nature. A man with no family and no home on land, who knows nothing but the sea, but knows it like no other.

The men will face many challenges over the winter. They’ll face conflicts with other crews over tangled nets and regional rivalries in drinking shops. They’ll face long hours rowing, and days and nights without sleep when the shoals of fish come in, and boredom when they don’t. They’ll face daunting competition from the new steam-powered boats, along with the arrogance of the authorities. But most of all they’ll face the weather, the killing storms of the arctic sea. They will look in the face of death itself.

I’ve rarely read a book that affected me more than this one. I don’t think it’s just because some of my ancestors must have been involved in this fishery. This is the story of all the poor men over the centuries who’ve taken the poor man’s gamble – risk your very life in the hopes of making a better future for your family, even at the risk of leaving them without a provider. I cared deeply about these characters, and mourned and rejoiced with them.

I have to say I don’t consider the translation first rate. It’s over-literal, in my opinion, which makes the dialogue, in particular, sometimes awkward. But the scenery descriptions were vivid, and the storm sequences sublime.

The Last of the Vikings gets my highest recommendation. It’s unforgettable.