Category Archives: Reviews

Fiction, Reviews

‘Devil King Kun,’ by Dr. H. Albertus Boli

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“Well!” said Weyland, “this is a rara avis indeed. The Amazonian strockbroker parrot has been seen only by a priviliged few explorers…. This species is a perfect demonstration of Darwin’s principles of sexual selection,” Weyland explained. “The male with the best-performing stock portfolio is naturally preferred by the females.”

It’s unusual to get good news in these times, but I recently discovered that the web’s greatest blog, Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine, had somehow managed to be revived outside my notice. Of course it has become, once again, a daily resort for me. I also noticed that Dr. Boli had a brand new book out, Devil King Kun. It was for me the work of but a moment to download it onto my Kindle.

Seriously, I don’t think I’ve laughed this hard at a book since the last time I read P. G. Wodehouse. (You may notice, if you are a close observer, that this review is very close to the single review the book has attracted so far on Amazon. That’s because I wrote that review.) Think of the great old, mostly English, adventure novels, by H. Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle, Sax Rohmer, and others – then blend them into a heaping bowlful of Lewis Carroll. That’s Devil King Kun.

Our intrepid hero, Norbert Weyland, is on the trail of the archfiend Devil King Kun, king of Andorra (a microstate on the Iberian Peninsula). In his ruthless quest for world domination he has already taken over the local Archdiocese in Pittsburgh, the key to control of parish festivals throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. And tomorrow, the world.

We follow Weyland and his faithful chronicler, Peevish, on a madcap chase through North America, South America, and across the Atlantic to the Pyrenees by airship, ornithopter, ski, and other means of transport, pursued by Devil King Kun’s beautiful, cat-suited daughter Princess Kun – who has plans for “having fun” with Weyland before killing him. They acquire a pet tiger and a friendly South American native girl as companions, and face pretty much any cliched, melodramatic peril you would expect to find in an adventure novel, escaping again and again by the skin of their teeth through Weyland’s quick thinking and the reader’s heavily strained suspension of disbelief. Realism is a distant dream, and non-sequiturs flourish in verdant abundance.

Devil King Kun was the book I didn’t know I needed in these insane times – at last, something too bizarre to believe, even in 2020! I loved Devil King Kun. I highly recommend it.

He is without doubt the most devious tactical accordionist in the world.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Close-Hauled,’ by Rob Avery

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I started thinking about my current situation. No girl to share my time with, no boat to sail on the ocean, a commanding officer wanting to pin my hide to his wall, local cops trying to stick me with a couple murders, and a bunch of bad guys trying to kill me. You could say it was a low point.

I’m a sucker for boat-based mystery series, though I haven’t found many that earned my loyalty for long. Sim Greene is the hero of Rob Avery’s series in that sub-genre. Sim lives on board a small sailboat in Channel Islands Harbor in California. He’s a Navy CPO in his day job, hoping to make it up into NCIS someday. He has a rich, beautiful girlfriend (he’s a little astonished at this turn of events), and loves to surf. He likes his life, and is not looking to change it much. But change is coming to him.

When Sim discovers a dead body while diving, at the beginning of Close-Hauled, his commanding officer calls him in and tells him to investigate the death on his own – reporting only to him. He wants some papers the victim left behind. Sim is excited to take the case on, but soon realizes he’s in over his head. Not only is he forced to operate without official credentials, but more people get killed, and the police have him tagged as the culprit. He’ll have to do some fast thinking – and enlist his best friend, a former SEAL – to figure what really happened and get through it all with his life, let alone his career.

I generally liked Close-Hauled. I thought it well-written and the characters were mostly pretty good (though the hero’s slacker lifestyle annoyed me at times). But I found the downbeat ending deeply unsatisfying. I think I’ll try the second book in the series, but if it ends as unhappily as this one, I won’t go on.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Bad News Travels,’ by James Swain

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The bar was busy, as were all the bars in Key West, the town a drunk tank sitting atop a giant sponge.

James Swain is the author of several mystery series. Bad News Travels is the latest of his Lancaster-Daniels books. I liked it quite a lot.

Jon Lancaster is a former Navy Seal and retired cop. Beth Daniels is a working FBI agent. Their occasional partnership is unofficial, but they complement each other. Jon is more of a seat-of-the-pants detective, and he sometimes crosses lines when he feels justice demands it. Beth is more logical and by the book. Getting help from Jon might lose her her job one day.

In Bad News Travels, they go to Saint Augustine, Florida together, for her father’s funeral. Dr. Martin Daniels had been a respected physician. But one day he shot himself, leaving no suicide note. When they examine his house, both are immediately suspicious. They find paper towels soaked with blood in the garbage. Dr. Daniels had installed a panic room in his house, as well as a a hidden safe. And there are hints that he had had some kind of shameful, secret life, leading to his suicide.

Jon and Beth’s investigation will bring them up against Russian gangsters, human traffickers, corrupt cops, and a blackmail ring. Plus a final, shocking revelation about her father’s death.

Bad News Travels was a well-done, enjoyable mystery. I especially liked the ending – others might see it coming, but it blindsided me fair and square.

Minor cautions for language and mature themes.

Non-fiction, Reviews, The Press

New Viking book by Neil Price

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Via our friend Dave Lull, a London Review of Books review of Neil Price’s new book on the Vikings: Children of Ash and Elm.

In one of several vignettes, Price imagines a younger son on the impoverished west coast of Norway, whose childhood sweetheart has a new brooch: a present from a boy who spent a successful summer raiding. What is young Orm or Gunnar going to do? Not only does he need money for the bride-price paid to her family, he needs a reputation: ‘The act of acquiring silver was as important as the silver itself.’ And if he went raiding he might in any case acquire a woman for free. DNA has shown that ‘a very large proportion – even the majority – of female settlers in Iceland were of Scottish or Irish heritage.’

Looks like the kind of book a man of my pretensions needs to read. It’s coming August 25th.
Fiction, Reviews

‘Low End of Nowhere,’ by Michael Stone

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Michael Stone has the Hardboiled voice down. In Low End of Nowhere, first of his series starring a Denver bounty hunter who goes by the name of Streeter, he gives us gems like this:

His face had the warmth of age, like an old wooden desktop.

There was a strange menace to his entire being, like barbed wire covered with pale skin.

He had the scarred complexion of a public golf fairway but wore an impeccable herringbone suit.

When Streeter busts a beautiful female insurance scammer, frustrating her bogus injury claim, the last thing he expects is for her to turn around and hire him. But Story Moffat (that’s her name) was impressed with his efficient work and apparent integrity. She is the sole heir of her boyfriend, a murdered drug dealer. She knows he had money squirrelled away somewhere, but she can’t locate it. She wants Streeter to find it for her, for a generous fee. The job appears to be legal, and the woman’s interesting, so Streeter takes the job. This will put him in competition with a sleazy lawyer and his two semi-human thugs, as well as a corrupt cop. People will get killed in unpleasant ways.

I loved the prose in Low End of Nowhere. This is extremely good gumshoe writing, harkening back to Chandler and Hammett. My reservations come from… what shall I call it? The ambience. It’s a sad story about a group of people who aren’t very sympathetic (except for our hero himself and a couple friends). Although I enjoyed reading the book, I’m not eager to go down these mean streets again.

You might like it better than I do. Cautions for language and mature themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Bitter Legacy,’ by H. Terrell Griffin

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I’ve made it to Book Number 5 in H. Terrell Griffin’s Matt Royal mystery series, set in Longboat Key, Florida. Matt is a retired lawyer with all kinds of fighting skills left over from his days as a Green Beret.

The plot of Bitter Legacy – which is fairly complicated – centers around an acquaintance of Matt’s, Abraham Osceola, an elderly member of a small Caribbean tribe known as the Bahamian Seminoles. Abraham travels to see Matt, wanting his advice on a document he’s discovered, which could mean a lot of money to his tribe. But Matt is out of town, and Abraham is attacked and hospitalized.

When Matt comes home from his vacation, he finds that somebody has been shooting at his friend Logan (which shouldn’t really surprise him; it seems no friend of Matt’s can turn around without getting shot at). Trying to discover the source of the threat, Matt meets J. D. Duncan, a new female cop in town who’s smart and sexy (surprise!) and sparks fly. Before long his friend Jock, the mysterious secret agent, shows up too and they follow clues that seem to lead to one of the richest men in Florida.

I think I’ve had enough of Matt Royal for a while. The books are fast and fun, but if you’ve read one, you’ve kind of read them all. The author employs the same tricks and tactics again and again, relying just a little too much on lucky breaks to keep his heroes alive.

There’s another issue too, which may just be nitpicking on my part. Our hero Matt talks a lot about his war experiences in Vietnam, and the PTSD symptoms he and his friends suffer after killing anyone. I don’t dispute that this is realistic – I hate to think how I’d respond if I ever killed anyone, Heaven forbid. But this psychological agonizing doesn’t (for me) fit in well with the rather cinematic improbability of the violence portrayed in the stories.

Your mileage may vary. I recommend reading the Matt Royal books one at a time, with other reading in between.

Fiction, Reviews

Heir to the Raven, by J. Wesley Bush

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She approached the gate. God must be on the other side. She pushed it open, but did not find paradise, but rather a void filled only with noise and shifting colors that made her mind hurt. Amid the tumult, she felt something moving. No moving, really, but coming.

What pact are you seeking, child?

Larissa knew about pacts. They were dangerous if you used the wrong kind of faie. Whoever this was didn’t have a body, but she could feel it close by, as if it filled her very bones. It sounded like a woman.

“Vyr are trying to kill us all. We need to kill them instead.”

Heir to the Raven by J. Wesley Bush is a thrilling read, an original story well told.

The story begins with young Larissa, one of the few magical characters in this fantasy of kingdom politics. She stumbles into saving her village in the scene quoted above, but that raises everyone’s fears that she’s a witch. They summon the duke’s men to take her away to be examined by the king’s magician. She eventually learns she has taken the greatest risk of her life.

Heir to the Raven by J. Wesley Bush

Next we meet Selwyn, the duke’s fourth son who wants very much to kill a wild boar-like animal so that he can become a scholastic knight. If his hopes pan out (meaning he doesn’t die), the hunt will be the most warfare he ever sees. His father won’t like it, but he hasn’t liked anything about him for years. As a knight, he can escape his family and do something interesting, if not worthwhile.

All of that comes to an end when Selwyn suddenly becomes the new duke of the Jandarian savanna, moving this novel into the coming-of-age category. That would be true for both Selwyn and Larissa, but with so many characters, political mysteries, suspicions and deceit, the young stars don’t get much time to stand around and watch their feet grow.

In this light-handed fantasy we hear of a few unusual beasts and a bit about greater and lesser faie, both light and dark. Securing an agreement with an outer faie is called pactmaking. The uses and dangers of it color most of Larissa’s story. But most of what we see of it comes from the bad guys, shamans ushering barbarous throngs into battle as an act of worship to a dark faie. At times I wondered if someone could throw out some good magic, but that probably doesn’t fit the scope of the story.

Somewhere I read Bush describing his tale as a strong PG-13; it definitely is that. There are some nasty deaths, plenty of natural vulgarity, and some sexual subject matter only lightly described.

The meat of it is in realistic characters with many diverse perspectives. A conniving villain doesn’t stare out a window, twirling his mustache; instead he professes loyalty to the king as he works quietly to undermine him. The brash soldier is not a bumbling rebel, but a loyal subject. Even the petulant king, which is a character type I dislike, is handled skillfully.

And this being book one of a series, it wraps up nicely while leaving many ends loose. You really should go buy this book, if only to support the creation of the sequels. I look forward seeing what happens next.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Wyatt’s Revenge,’ by H. Terrell Griffin

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Book Number Four in H. Terrell Griffin’s Matt Royal mystery series is Wyatt’s Revenge. In Wyatt’s Revenge, one of Matt’s old friends, Lawrence Wyatt, is murdered in his condominium. Police have no clues, and there seems to be no suspect with any motive. Matt, former Green Beret and retired lawyer, takes the deaths of his friends very seriously. And when things start getting sticky, he has well-connected, dangerous friends to whom he can turn for backup. Even if the trail leads to Europe and old Nazis.

Wyatt’s Revenge, like all the books in the series, is fast-paced and exciting. But I begin to weary of the author’s tricks. He tends to repeat his action scenarios. And he relies too much on coincidence to keep his hero alive – an error aggravated by his having Matt say that he doesn’t trust coincidences.

Also, he doesn’t know the difference between a clip and a magazine.

But I’ll read at least one more. The books aren’t bad, just a little limited in creativity.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Blood Island,’ by H. Terrell Griffin

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Continuing H. Terrell Griffin’s Matt Royal mystery series, we come to number three, Blood Island. This one was a bit of a disappointment, in this reader’s view.

Matt Royal, you may recall, is a retired lawyer living on Longboat Key, near Sarasota, Florida. He is also a former Green Beret who keeps his skills up – which is handy because people keep trying to kill him for one reason or another.

In Blood Island, Matt gets a call from his ex-wife Laura. She left him with good reason years ago, when he went through a self-destructive period that might have pulled them both down. She’s remarried, but they still care for each other. She has a stepdaughter named Peggy, who has disappeared unaccountably. Matt is happy to help her out, and starts hunting for her, assisted by his friend Logan Hamilton.

It all leads to a big terrorist plot, originating with a delusional Christian evangelist who runs a string of brothels (!). I was disappointed with that plot element, though it was made clear that this guy was crazy and not representative of evangelicals generally.

My other main problem with Blood Island was plausibility. Author Griffin works hard to keep stuff moving fast, but it didn’t move fast enough this time out to overcome my skepticism. If a civilian tips a bunch of law enforcement agencies off to a terrorist plot, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t all agree to put the civilian in charge of their operation, even if he’s a former Green Beret with a superspy buddy.

There’s a tragic subplot which worked fairly well, but not well enough to sell the overall plot to me.

However, I’m not disillusioned with the series yet. I’ll give it another chance.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Murder Key,’ by H. Terrell Griffin

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If the criminals hadn’t been stupid enough to try to kill Matt Royal, they’d have been home clear. Retired Florida lawyer Matt recently discovered three men near a beached boat while out jogging. Two of them were dead, the other just hanging on. Matt called the police and got help for the survivor. That’s how Murder Key begins.

Shortly after, Matt and his friend Logan are minding their own business in a bar when somebody tries to kill Matt. Logan saves his life. Then somebody tries to kill Logan. Matt has no idea what’s going on.

It’s time for him to call in the big guns – his childhood buddy Jock, who happens to be an agent for an unnamed, super-secret government agency. Before long Matt and Jock are headed to Mexico to learn about the illegal immigrant pipeline, and then investigating a slave labor camp back home in Florida.

Lots of action, interesting characters, a good story. This is entertainment worth the entrance fee, and (unlike the last book) I didn’t figure out the big surprise ahead of time.

Recommended.