Category Archives: Reviews

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Vanishing Kin,’ by Thomas Fincham

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[Since I know you’ve been waiting for news, I’ll just interject a short status report on my surgery, and then move on. I’m always willing to hear about people’s ills, but I’d rather not know the details.

My surgery went by the numbers. Everything seems to be on track. (Special thanks to my friend Mark, who drove me there and back.) The first 24 hours involved certain restrictions on my movements that were annoying, but that has passed. I have blurred vision in one eye and some minor irritation. But I seem on track for a complete recovery – though not a full and useful life – it’s a little late for that.]

I shall review yet another mystery novel here – The Vanishing Kin, by Thomas Fincham. I am given to understand it’s part of an ongoing series about a detective named Lee Callaway. In this story Callaway is contacted by an old man whose son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren disappeared suddenly about 15 years ago. No trace of them has ever been found.

There’s a parallel plot about a female police officer investigating the death of a video blogger who posted short films about living in a van on the road, who has been discovered beaten to death near her van.

I am a longsuffering man. Sometimes I pick up a story that could be better written, but the author seems to be able to tell a good story at a basic level, even if they lack style. I am almost never happy I did that. I wasn’t this time either.

Years ago I took some kind of correspondence writing course where one of our exercises was to cut a long passage down to a short passage. It’s amazing how much any piece of writing can be compressed if you search out shorter words and phrases, more active verbs, fewer descriptors. This author should have taken that course. He’s always piling the information on, to try to make sure we understand his points:

Callaway wasn’t going to tell Joely what he thought. That’s not what a friend would do at a time like this. They wouldn’t try to put salt on an open wound. That would only make the matter worse. And plus, it wouldn’t bring either Rosie or the money back.

Look at that paragraph. Now cut out all but the first two sentences. Would the reader lose anything?

The Vanishing Kin is not a very good job of writing, and I can’t account for all the positive reviews it has gotten on Amazon.

Reviews

Another movie I worked on: ‘Gold Run’

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It happens occasionally that I discover that a movie I worked on as a script translator is now available in this country. In the case of Gold Run, the movie has in fact been out for a couple years and I hadn’t noticed it. So I watched it over the weekend.

I think what I did on this one was actually an editing job. If I remember right, the script had been translated by AI, but back then the production people were still willing to run it past actual human beings, to avoid major incoherence. I think I worked the whole script, and I thought it was a pretty good one.

Viewing it did not disappoint. This is a solid, exciting film.

Movie fans interested in the subject have been able, in the past few years, to get a pretty good education about the Norwegian response to the German invasion in 1940 . The King’s Choice (which I didn’t work on) and Atlantic Crossing (which I did) told the story of the royal family, on the crown prince’s and crown princess’ sides respectively. Narvik (which I also worked on) told the story of the doomed military defense. And now Gold Run follows another important facet of the story – the (genuinely) amazing story of how the Norwegian government managed to get its entire gold reserve to the coast and off to England, with the Germans on their heels.

The unlikely hero of the story is Fredrik Haslund (Jon Øigarden), a financial secretary for the Norwegian Labor Party. As the bigwigs (Labor is in power) rush to get out of Oslo, they dump the job of evacuating the gold onto Fredrik’s narrow shoulders. Somehow, with the help of an exasperated army officer and his troops, he manages to get the boxes of gold onto trucks to transport to Lillehammer, where they think it will be safe. But the Germans keep coming, so it all has to be put on a train for transportation to the coast. Fredrik is an OCD type, and there’s dark humor in the way he insists on checking every box off his inventory before it can be transferred (multiple times) from one place to another – even with German fighter planes overhead.

For a more assertive – if secondary – protagonist, we also have Fredrik’s sister Nini, who is, we are told, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, and whom I suspect to be entirely fictional, added solely for purposes of inclusivity. Also there’s the poet Nordahl Grieg, who did exist (though he didn’t look like this). His Wikipedia page says he was on the gold ship, though I don’t know if he was actually as much involved in the gold run as this movie makes him. Grieg was a committed Communist and a stalwart supporter of Stalin, by the way.

There’s also a nice subplot about a nerdy bank teller and a rugged truck driver thrown together by chance or fate, who learn to respect each other through shared dangers.

And dangers there are. The closer they get to the coast, the closer the German planes are, until we see Fredrik and Nini breaking into a bank in Ålesund with a battering ram as the city burns around them.

This is the first time I’ve seen a film I’ve translated that was exactly like the script I worked on. And it’s quite a good script. This is a very solid, exciting war movie.

My only disappointment was a personal issue I’d forgotten. At the end, Nordahl Grieg reads one of his own poems, about the feeling of being conquered, and vowing to come back again someday. When I translated the script, I composed a lyrical translation of that poem which I thought was quite good. I had the whisper of a dream that when the film was made, somebody would notice how good my translation was and use my words in the subtitles.

Alas, as I pretty much expected, it was not to be. The lyrics they use are a literal translation (and flat wrong in one line).

Ah well.

I do recommend Gold Run. I saw it on Amazon Prime, where I had to pay a rental fee.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Chalk Man,’ by Adam Lyndon

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I think I’ve reached an age where I’m just going to start avoiding thrillers, unless they’re particularly recommended by some dear and trusted friend. Because it seems there’s a kind of arms race going on among thriller writers, to see how implausibly horrible they can make their heroes’ (and heroines’) plights as they weave their ever-tightening plot nooses. How much punishment can the human body – and mind – suffer without actually killing your hero or wearing out your readers?

Rutherford Barnes, the hero of Adam Lyndon’s The Chalk Man does not actually rip an IV needle from his arm and walk out of an emergency ward with bullet wounds and a concussion (my personal most hated thriller trope), but he and his friends certainly endure a lot more than I found plausible.

Detective Barnes is a policeman in Eastbourne, on the Sussex coast of England. In previous books in this series he apparently suffered the loss of his wife in an auto accident, which he is convinced was caused by a particular crime boss. He managed to get that crime boss sent to prison, and during that incarceration the criminal’s family was killed. He blames Barnes personally and has vowed revenge when he gets out.

When a deadly gas is released in downtown Eastbourne during the height of the Christmas shopping season, it brings all personnel out on full alert. Which means there’s nobody paying much attention when Barnes reports his eight-year-old stepdaughter missing. He certainly gets no help from his supervisor, who hates his guts. So Barnes is on the case alone, his only helpers an Inspector friend (who tends to go missing unexpectedly) and a sympathetic civilian data analyst. And that’s only the beginning of an orchestrated plot that will have Barnes fighting to save his new family and his own life, and to prevent an act of terrorism.

For this reader, it was all a bit much. There was nothing really wrong with The Chalk Man. The writing was good, the dialogue believable, the characters adequate – except for their superhuman resilience. Especially in the case of the two main female characters, who were (as one would expect) spunky and absolutely not to be intimidated. Like all the others nowadays.

Anyway, the book was fine, and may be just what you want for an exciting read. It made me tired.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Murder in the Round,’ by Bruce Beckham

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Always reliable. That’s the great thing about Bruce Beckham’s Inspector Skelgill novels, set in England’s lake district, not far from the Scottish border. The setting is as is expected – the fell country where Skelgill loves to fish and run. Dan Skelgill is a police detective, assisted by his (also reliable) sergeants – transplanted Londoner Sgt. Leyton, and attractive local Sgt. Emma Jones.

One of the great traditions in their neighborhood is the Bob Graham Round, a grueling fell running race. Skelgill has come up with an idea for a new variation, one that takes the same route but incorporates lake fishing. He’s taking some vacation time to test the concept out when he learns of the death of a local runner, killed by a hit and run driver, with no witnesses. Although he can’t take an active part in the investigation because he’s on holiday, he keeps in touch with Leyton and Jones as they investigate. That’s the premise of Murder in the Round.

Skelgill is (I think I’ve said this before) almost the opposite of Sherlock Holmes. Logical deduction is not his forte. He’s more like a hominid from the hunter-gatherer period, operating mostly by his senses, getting messages from the scents in the air and the tracks on the ground.

I used to wonder how long his low-key flirtation with Sgt. Jones would go on, but I’ve come to accept that Dan Skelgill lives in one of those fictional universes where no one ever grows older. They’ll both be young and smoldering as long as author Beckham goes on writing.

Good entertainment. Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Kristin Lavransdatter: The Cross,’ by Sigrid Undset

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Surely she had never asked God for anything except that He should let her have her will. And every time she had been granted what she asked for—for the most part. Now here she sat with a contrite heart—not because she had sinned against God but because she was unhappy that she had been allowed to follow her will to the road’s end.

So it is done at last. I have completed yet another reading of Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter – volume 3, The Cross. Tiina Nunnaly’s translation this time.

It’s a little like completing a long mountain hike, I guess. There’s more than one point where you pause along the path and think about how far you have to go, and sometimes you do get tired. Yet that’s just part of the experience, what you go through to enjoy the clear air and the spectacular views.

In case you’re not familiar with the story, the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy begins with our young heroine, the beautiful daughter of doting parents in 14th Century Norway, rejecting the dull young man they betrothed her to, and running off with a handsome, dashing knight.

In the following two books, she has to live with the consequences. Erlend, her husband, is not a prudent man. He leaves the management of their farm to others (often to Kristin herself) to involve himself in political intrigues, which in the end lose him his ancestral estate. In this book, they have retired to Kristin’s home farm, where Erlend is resented by the neighbors. Sigrid’s chief concern is transferred to their seven sons, and she learns the torments that accompany parenthood. Meanwhile, the Hound of Heaven is always pursuing her.

There’s exquisite irony in watching Sigrid, as she passes through the stages of life, first inspired by romantic ballads, then compared to a ballad, and finally seeing her son inspire a ballad of his own through his misguided actions.

Read Kristin Lavransdatter, and you’ll come to know Kristin better than you know a lot of your friends and family. In a sense, the trilogy is a soap opera – but it’s what soap operas aspire to be; a deep, unwavering examination of the human soul in its glory and its weakness. The scenery descriptions are vivid and immersive. It’s also a paeon to the grace of God.

Not light reading, but highly recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

Cozy, Irish Lit: Small Things Like These

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Sheila had written the shortest letter, asking plainly for Scrabble, providing no alternative. They decided on a spinning globe of the world for Grace, who wasn’t sure what she wanted but had written out a long list. Loretta was not in two minds: if Santa would please bring Enid Blyton’s Five Go Down to the Sea or Five Run Away Together or both, she was going to leave a big slice of cake out for him and hide another behind the television.

Claire Keegan’s 2021 novella, Small Things Like These, is a story about Bill Furlong, a hard-working father of five girls. He’s the man who keeps his 1980s Irish town, New Ross, warm, selling timber, coal, anthracite, and slack. It’s honest work that puts a roof over your head, though the windows may be drafty. He regularly remembers his childhood as the son of a single woman who worked for a kindly widow. Surely, he thinks, someone in town knows who his father is, if by nothing else than a strong resemblance. But no one has even suggested a possibility.

With the Christmas holidays coming and typical last-minute fuel orders to fulfill, Furlong makes a delivery that raises significant questions about his role as a man and member of the community.

I don’t know why I love Irish things. I think half of my family hails from Ulster, which probably means they were Scottish, but something provoked me as a teenager to define myself as being half-Irish (in the loose way many Americans talk about their heritage). All that to say, Keegan’s novella had cozy moments in both the Christmas atmosphere and the Irish dialogue. I found those pages nostalgic somehow. I bought the book wondering if the whole story would be that way.

No, this is a sparing, literary work that captures a few days of Bill Furlong’s life. He’s a man of few words, so a brief story like this fits him, leaving us with a good impression of him and perhaps the same questions he has. I don’t want to spoil the book by articulating those questions, but I will say they are relatively timeless and fit with the Christmas story, just as the title echoes the primary theme: “inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me” (Mt 25:40 NKJV).

Photo by Dahlia E. Akhaine on Unsplash

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Eviction of Hope,’ ed. by Colin Conway

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I have enjoyed Colin Conway’s 509 series, detective novels set in the Spokane, Washington area. When the story collection, The Eviction of Hope, showed up, I realized I hadn’t read one of the books in a while, so I got this one.

The concept (based on a real-world situation) is that “The Hope,” a residential hotel, once a grand place but now home to transients and drug addicts, is being sold for gentrification. That means the residents, some of them hard-luck civilians, others low-level criminals, are being thrown out onto the streets. Author Conway gathered a group of established crime writers to imagine some of the stories of those dispossessed people.

I am of two minds about the stories in this book. They are well-written. Several of them grabbed me.

However, most of them are downers. One, in particular, involves a Christian woman who disappoints us morally.

All in all, The Eviction of Hope was depressing but well done.

Cautions for language and mature situations.

Creative Writing, Reviews

‘Blandings Castle’ by P. G. Wodehouse

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Lord Emsworth finished his port and got up. He felt restless, stifled. The summer night seemed to call to him like some silver-voiced swineherd calling to his pig….

And suddenly, as it died, another, softer sound succeeded it. A sort of gurgly, plobby, squishy, wofflesome sound, like a thousand eager men drinking soup in a foreign restaurant.

The nuts and bolts of P. G. Wodehouse’s short story collection, Blandings Castle, are easily covered. This is a compilation of several early Blandings Castle stories, featuring Clarence, Lord Emsworth, followed by a few odds-and-ends stories, and finally a few of the Mulliner stories, in which Mr. Mulliner tells a group of pub friends stories about his various relations – in this case, relations who lived and worked in Hollywood (as Wodehouse himself did for a time).

I won’t describe most of the stories. They are what you expect, and they are delightful.

Instead, I want to indulge in a few theological observations, because that (oddly) is where my thoughts went as I read.

The Great Divide in Wodehouse is drawn, of course, between the Jeeves stories and all the rest. What I began to wonder about as I read is the fact that – although they both operate in the same fictional universe (there are even stories where characters cross over), they seem to nevertheless operate in different theological universes.

The Jeeves stories, it seems to me, take place in a fallen universe. There is “evil” (admittedly rather silly evil) in the Jeeves stories, and poor Bertie Wooster would come to ruin (usually an unhappy marriage) without Jeeves there to rescue him. Jeeves shares the first two letters of his name with Jesus. He is a very present help in trouble. Although infinitely higher and more intelligent than Bertie, Jeeves has emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant. On him depends all the innocence of Bertie’s fictional life.

The Blandings Castle stories, on the other hand, seem to be set in an unfallen world. “Evil” of the same kind as in the Jeeves stories does indeed arise, but it always resolves itself without any heroic intervention. There seems to be a natural balance in this world, and the proper order reasserts itself automatically.

It occurs to me that this may be some kind of unfallen world. Perhaps Eden was like this, and Heaven will be again. Problems arise, but the natural order reasserts itself.

(I do not, I hope you understand, imagine that Wodehouse had these concepts in mind. I don’t even know what – if anything – he believed. I just think that his genius, like all great genius, drew on Eternal Things.)

I might also mention (honorably) one of the miscellaneous stories, neither a Blandings nor a Mulliner: “Elsewhere, a Bobbie Wickham Story.” This one was a gem.

Bobbie Wickham is a familiar character from the Jeeves stories – she was even engaged to Bertie on at least one occasion. Like all Wodehouse girls, she’s smarter than any of his young men, stubborn, self-willed and sweetly ruthless. Here we see her at her best; like Bertie she is being coerced into a marriage she does not wish, so she sets about manipulating the males around her. If you’re familiar with H. H. Munro (Saki), you probably remember the story, “The Open Window.” The girl there whose speciality was “romance at short notice” was a forerunner to Bobbie Wickham. Wonderful story.

In summary, this is a delightful collection of delightful stories which can only do good in the world.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Double Barrel Bluff,’ by Lou Berney

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Why not? he thought.

Understanding, even as he thought it, that asking yourself, Why not? was usually the beginning of a bad decision, the first domino tipping over.

I like Lou Berney’s Shake Bouchon novels very much. The main problem with them is that he brings them out pretty slowly. So it was a pleasure when I saw that there was a new one available – Double Barrel Bluff. It’s an excellent, offbeat, dark comedy thriller.

Charles “Shake” Bouchon, our hero, is a former wheel man for the Armenian mob in Las Vegas. But he’s now married to Gina, a former pickpocket, and they’ve gone straight. Straight to Bloomington, Indiana, where they have square jobs and live a square life. Which they love.

Until one morning Shake finds himself accosted by an old enemy, Dikran Ghazarian, an Armenian thug the size and strength of an ox, with only a little more brains. To Shake’s astonishment, Dikran – who has often promised to murder him – does not want that today. He explains (after catching Shake) that Lexy Ilandryan, the woman leader of the Armenian mob, has disappeared while on vacation in Cambodia. He needs Shake to go to Cambodia with him and find her. Shake feels some obligation to Lexy, and so they fly there, to hunt for Lexy among the slums and ancient temples.

The dark humor of Double Barrel Bluff rises in large part from Shake’s attempts to keep a rein on Dikran, whose idea of investigating is to punch people and break things. Meanwhile we also follow the team of kidnappers, also a “smart” one and a dumb one, oddly parallel to Shake and Dikran. Author Berney excels at characterization – the good guys and bad guys constantly surprise us, but never pass plausibility.

Cautions for language and extreme situations. And some psychic/Buddhist nonsense. But Double Barrel Bluff was a very exciting and amusing light thriller. I enjoyed it a lot.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dark Side of the Street,’ by Jack Higgins

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There was a time when I was a great fan of the late Jack Higgins’ books. (His real name was Henry Patterson.) In time I began finding him repetitive, and I gave up on him. But I don’t mind picking one up for old times sake, now and then, if I happen to find one I haven’t read before. Such was the case with Dark Side of the Street.

Higgins explains in a foreword that this book was one of his early ones, written with the idea of competing with the James Bond franchise. His character Paul Chavasse is a very Bond-ian British intelligence agent. In this outing, Chavasse is called in on a special assignment to help the police, based on his experience in undercover work. They want him to commit a crime, get caught, and go to prison in order to ingratiate himself with a prisoner.

The background is this: The criminal he’s supposed to befriend, Harry Youngblood, was one of three men convicted of a major theft, and the money has never been recovered. Both his partners have already been sprung from high security prisons and have utterly disappeared. What nobody knows is that these men have not been spirited off to anonymous lives in foreign countries. They were in fact murdered for their loot. When Chavasse befriends Youngblood in prison and joins him in his escape, they will both be walking into a waiting death trap.

Dark Side of the Street benefits from some decent characterization – author Higgins humanizes the ruthless Youngblood, without romanticizing his essentially selfish and brutal nature. There’s also a sad subplot involving an unattractive, lovestruck girl.

The story includes a scene involving a mortuary and the embalmment of a beautiful young woman. It seemed familiar because it was – I’ve encountered the same scene twice in other books by Higgins – one of his weaknesses was a tendency to recycle material.

The layout of the book was marred by a lack of double spacing between chapter sections – meaning the reader frequently finds himself in a new scene with new characters, with no warning. This is the sort of error that happens increasingly in e-books these days, and it’s annoying.

But otherwise, Dark Side of the Street wasn’t bad as light entertainment.