Category Archives: Reviews

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Man Who Cancelled HImself,’ by David Handler

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I did believe that. Of course, you must remember that TV and movie people almost always mistake their business friends for real friends. This is partly because they want to believe that everyone they deal with truly loves them. And partly because they have no real friends.

David Handler, author of the Stewart Hoag mysteries, spent some time as a TV sitcom writer. He mines that vein of experience for background material for his mystery, The Man Who Cancelled Himself, in which we once again follow “Hoagy” Hoag, celebrity memoir ghost writer, and his scene-stealing basset hound, Lulu.

The first few Stewart Hoag books seemed to be heavily disguised portraits of actual characters, but as they go on, the author is spreading his net wider. The main character here, Lyle Hednut, is a lot like John Belushi, with some Rosanne Barr and Pee Wee Herman thrown in. He started in improv comedy, and worked his way up to having his own sitcom, playing “Uncle Chubby,” a sort of degenerate Mr. Rogers. The show was leading the ratings until Lyle got arrested under embarrassing circumstances in an adult theater. Now there’s pressure to cancel the show, and the network wants Hoagie to write a book that will give Lyle’s side of things. In order to fit in, he’s added to the series writing staff.

One of the first things Hoagy learns is that Lyle Hudnut is only marginally human. Big, overdramatic, Gargantuan, mercurial, he is a genuine narcissist with manic mood swings, who jumps from woman to woman and terrorizes his co-workers. He tells Hoagy a horrific story of childhood abuse, but Hoagy begins to suspect he’s left important points out. And when someone begins to sabotage the production, real danger presents itself.

This was one of my favorite books in this series, mainly because author Handler does something I never expected – he offers us a pair of characters, husband and wife, who are ordinary middle-class elderly Americans. They are neither well-educated nor stylish. Nevertheless, they are handled with genuine empathy and respect. The character of Hoagy Hoag generally presents himself as something of a snob, a latter-day Lord Peter or Philo Vance. But this was a nice scene. As a middle American, I appreciated it.

There was also an important development in Hoagy’s own life in this story. I was mostly in favor of it, but I thought our hero had been rather badly used. You can judge for yourself.

Pretty good stuff. Cautions for language and some gross mature content.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Boy Who Never Grew Up,’ by David Handler

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I know how to handle stars. The lunch pail ghosts don’t. They treat them like rational, intelligent human beings. I know better.

The adventures of David Handler’s celebrity ghost writer sleuth, Stewart “Hoagy” Hoag (and his excessively anthropomorphic basset hound, Lulu) continue with The Boy Who Never Grew Up.

In most of these books, you can kind of guess who the central “celebrity” is supposed to be – they’re generally based on one or two real-world characters. In the case of The Boy Who Never Grew Up, it’s harder to tell. Author Handler seems to have several Hollywood characters in mind – a bit of Michael Jackson, a bit of Walt Disney, a bit of Steven Spielberg. And the studio depicted doesn’t really resemble anything that exists in our world anymore.

Matthew Wax is (or has been) the biggest producer in Hollywood. A kind of filmmaker-savant, he has made the most popular films in history, and built his own studio, devoted to turning out wholesome, heartwarming fare portraying an idealized American life. He is, however, essentially a big child. He avoids the real world, and even lives on the set where his most successful, family-oriented movies were filmed. With his mother close at hand, keeping a watch on him.

He was married, to Pennyroyal Brim, the actress he discovered to play the cheerleader girlfriend in his movies. But she is divorcing him now, taking their child with her, and through her shark lawyer she is accusing him of various cruelties and perversions. She’s even writing a book about it. So Matthew’s people bring Hoagy in, to write a book from Matthew’s own point of view.

The celebrity subjects Hoagy has dealt with up to now have generally fit the stereotypes – arrogant, thin-skinned, narcissistic. Matthew is rather different. He really is just a nice kid who had a rough childhood and grew up maladjusted. Hoagy not only becomes his friend (how can you resist a guy who owns the car from “Route 66” and lends it to you?), but he works up the personal concern to help Matthew move out of his comfort zone a little.

The whole thing could be kind of heartwarming, like a Michael Wax movie, if there weren’t a murderer lurking around, and if we didn’t get a very shocking revelation of that murderer’s motives in the end.

Also there’s a big twist in Hoagy’s own life, almost as shocking in its own way.

I’d call The Boy Who Never Grew Up one of the better entries in this entertaining series. Moderate cautions for adult language and themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Woman Who Fell From Grace,’ by David Handler

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I got Lulu, my drafty old fifth-floor walk up on Ninety-third Street, and my ego, which recently applied to Congress for statehood.

Rolling along through David Handler’s Stewart Hoag mysteries. I’m going to need to break the monotony soon, but for tonight I have another one to review.

Stewart “Hoagy” Hoag, former critically acclaimed novelist, is now reduced to ghost writing books for celebrities. This exposes him to a large number of dysfunctional individuals, and before long somebody always gets murdered. Nevertheless, people keep hiring him. We call this fictional license.

In reading The Woman Who Fell From Grace, you need to think of Gone With the Wind – and you will. Oh, Shenandoah is the name of the book and movie in this alternate reality – a historical romance set not during the Civil War but during the American Revolution. It was a bestseller and a blockbuster film, and the leading man died suddenly the very night the shooting ended. The novelist was killed in a hit and run accident shortly thereafter. But she left notes for a sequel which, under the terms of her will, were sealed for fifty years. The fifty years are up now, and her daughter, Mavis Glaze, is working on the sequel. However, instead of following the notes, she claims to be following psychic instructions from her mother, with bizarre results. So her brothers summon Hoagy to come to Virginia and take her in hand. That’s what he’s good at. This will also involve him attending the anniversary ball, which will give him the opportunity to meet some of his childhood heroes. And his beagle Lulu, as is her wont, will go Hollywood.

There are, of course, skeletons in the closet, the kind that people have killed before, and will kill again, to keep locked up.

The Woman Who Fell From Grace was enjoyable, like the other books in the series. I felt the plot broke down at the end though, where Hoagy (who has a bad habit of insulting people without possessing the fighting skills to protect himself from the consequences) walks into a perilous situation with eyes wide open, and the author has to employ a deus ex machina to rescue him.

Not the best in the series, but entertaining. Moderate cautions for language and adult situations.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald,’ by David Handler

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“You wouldn’t want another writer. We reserve our best qualities for our lead characters. There’s not much left over for real life.”

Continuing with David Handler’s amusing Stewart Hoag mysteries. Like many cozies, these books are sometimes far-fetched and over-cute. But they’re fun, and “Hoagy” Hoag is good company.

In The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald, for the first time in this series, we get to observe Hoagy in his natural environment – the New York literary scene. He’s been hired to help a hot young author write a memoir. In theory, the hot young writer ought to be able to write his own memoir, but handsome, dissipated Cam Noyes is suffering from a malady Hoagy knows all too well – acute writer’s block. That was a lot of what killed Hoagy’s own career as a literary wunderkind. In fact he sometimes thinks he’s looking in a mirror.

Turns out Cam has secrets he doesn’t want anyone to know about. But Hoagy has his own formula for ghost-writing – he doesn’t write fluff, and he won’t be lied to. His method will bring shocking facts to light, uncovering the ugly underside, not only of the cutthroat publishing business, but of the motivations that drive people to pursue fame.

Meanwhile, the framing elements that turn readers into series fans are fully present here – Hoagy’s continuing on-and-off relationship with his actress ex-wife, and the (somewhat implausible) antics of his drama-queen basset hound, Lulu.

Lots of fun. Minor cautions for language (though efforts are made to avoid obscenity as much as possible). Recommended as light entertainment.

(Addendum: I should note that the author made a really dumb mistake about guns in this book, confusing rifles with shotguns. We notice those things in these parts,)

Fiction, Reviews

‘All Men Dream of Earthwomen,’ by John C. Wright

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“The Designers swore—they swore upon their souls, even those that do not have souls—[that] man could be molded to any shape as needed, and that his taste would follow, like any other arbitrary convention. They said the soul of man would somehow still see beauty there, after the beauty had vanished.”

Amphitricia said, surprised, “They were right, weren’t they?”

I gave her a long look, and said gravely, “All men dream of Earth-women.”

I enjoyed science fiction when I was a kid, when the stuff available to me was simple enough for my simple mind. Later on, I began to find most SF kind of cold-blooded – but I also found the best works dauntingly complex. So I don’t read much of it anymore. But I’m fond of John C. Wright, and I figured I’d try his recently released story collection, All Men Dream of Earthwomen.

I found it challenging – a bit like Gene Wolfe, but – unlike Wolfe’s work – just comprehensible enough to accommodate my simplicity. It was also engaging, provocative, and highly enjoyable.

 About a third of the book consists of the novella that provides the collection’s title. It’s set in the far, far distant future, when Earth is a dimly-remembered home world to dozens of (sometimes barely recognizable) humanoid races, bioengineered to survive on whatever planet they’ve colonized.

The hero of All Men, James Ingersoll, is (or claims to be) a librarian, an emissary from a distant, high-gravity planet whose inhabitants are immensely strong. He comes to an Earth space station to negotiate for historical information. When he sees a man trying to kill a beautiful earth woman, he leaps in to rescue her, which oddly gets him into legal trouble due to the myriad nonsensical regulations that govern the station. However, it also makes him an instant celebrity, which – in this society – literally constitutes sudden wealth. As he shakes things up in the traditional manner of hard-boiled heroes, his true mission is revealed.

One particularly fun feature of this story is that it’s footnoted, explaining obscure earth references for readers of the future. These footnotes are very often wildly wrong, in a thought-provoking way.

Ten short stories follow – each of them a highly inventive picture of a possible distant future, where many things have changed but some remain constant. These stories are outstanding in their variety and inventiveness.

I should mention one consideration that will give many Christian readers pause – there’s quite a lot of female nudity, especially in a couple stories (among the best of them, too). The nudity isn’t gratuitous; it’s integral to the stories’ meanings. As a child of Pietism, I find this a little hard to handle in the context of Christian fiction – but I also think Wright may be Right.

It occurs to me that in our times, when a new kind of secular Puritanism has taken hold, it may be the duty of Christian writers to take the initiative in celebrating sex – not Sex as a commercial commodity, but old-fashioned, organic, procreative, heterosexual sex. Every kind of sexual congress is celebrated in our popular culture today, except for the kind that makes babies. It might be time for us to champion Procreative Sex, and manly men and feminine women, as a kind of subversive art. There are still plenty of young people who are curious about that kind of sex, in spite of all the advertising to the contrary.

In any case, for those willing to handle its challenges, All Men Dream of Earthwomen is a very fine story collection. Cautions for sexual situations (as mentioned) and for some rough language.

I do have to report that this book could have used better proofreading. There are lots – I mean lots – of misspellings, wrong words and word omissions.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Man Who Lived By Night,’ by David Handler

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Then I popped open a bottle of lager and watched part eight of a sixteen-part series on BBC 1 called Giant Worms of the Sea. Whoever thinks British television has it all over American TV has never actually watched any.

David Handler returns with his ghost-writer hero, Stuart “Hoagie” Hoag, in the second series installment, The Man Who Lived By Night. This one takes him into the treacherous world of British Rock ‘n Roll.

Tristam Scarr is his new interviewee. Lead singer of a top British group called Us (a little like the Rolling Stones, a little like the Who), Scarr lived a life of excess and notoriety, and is now one of two survivors of a group that numbered four at its peak. He lives like a hermit in a palatial house on a massive English estate, but is a wizened shell of himself, subsisting on baby food. He wants to tell his life’s story – including his shocking allegation that the two group members who died young were in fact murdered.

Hoagie, accompanied as always by his faithful, fish-eating beagle, Lulu (aren’t there quarantine rules for bringing animals into the UK?) moves in with Scarr and begins the interviews. But he has an ulterior motive for being there – his ex-wife Merrilee is starring in a London play, and their sparks re-ignite (is it adultery to sleep with your ex-wife?). As in the previous novel, somebody appears to threaten Hoagie (and, even worse, Lulu), but he will persevere and bring the shocking truth to light in the end. In considerable style.

I’m not as interested in the rock world as I am in Hollywood, so this book was slightly less interesting to me than the previous one. But enough sacred cows got poked here that I still had a good time (though it’s weird to read a book of this vintage and see celebrities now dead or aged described [sometimes lampooned] as young, sexy, and current).

Recommended. Lots of fun. Not too much objectionable stuff.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Man Who Died Laughing,’ by David Handler

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“It’s that way in my business, too,” I said. “You’re only taken seriously in literary circles if your stuff is torturous and hard to read. If you go to the extra trouble of making it clear and entertaining, then the critics call you a lightweight.”

I’m surprised I never heard of David Handler before. The Man Who Died Laughing, his first Stuart Hoag mystery, was a lot of fun, in some ways a (relatively, it was published in 1988) modern riff on the old Thin Man formula.

Stuart “Hoagy” Hoag is a literary flash in the pan. He had tremendous success with his first novel and won money and acclaim. Then an industrial-strength case of writer’s block gripped him, and he’s written nothing since. He lost his beautiful actress wife (though they’re still friends), and is now living in a tiny, squalid New York apartment with his fat basset hound, Lulu (who only eats fish). He’s out of money and just days from living on the streets, when his agent gets him an offer to ghost-write an autobiography for a Hollywood comedian.

Desperate as he is, Hoagy doesn’t want to write the life story of Sonny Day, formerly half of a legendary comedy team called Knight and Day (think Martin and Lewis, with strategic differences. Sonny was the crazy one). Sonny is notoriously hard to work with, and in any case, Hoagy is wracked with self-doubt, and embarrassed to have fallen this low.

But Sonny shows up personally in his apartment (bodyguard in tow) and as good as bullies Hoagy into taking the the job. Gradually, he and the comic develop a working relationship – the man is more likeable than expected, but also prone to tantrums and bouts of irrationality. But through their interviews the reader begins to understand a troubled man with a cohort of personal devils, seriously trying to get off the sauce and rebuild his life and career.

But there’s someone out there who will go to any length – even murder – to prevent a certain fact from coming to light.

The Man Who Died Laughing was delightful to read. As you know, I like my mysteries character-driven, and this format – relying heavily (though not exclusively) on interview transcripts – seemed to me a fresh and original way of constructing a mystery.

I liked it a lot, I laughed and began to care. I recommend it highly.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Vanished,’ by Brett Battles

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I’m a fan of Brett Battles’ Jonathan Quinn series of thrillers, about a “cleaner” – a man who works as a contractor for espionage agencies, getting rid of evidence – and bodies – for them. The latest book is The Vanished.

Nine years ago, Quinn and his team attempted to provide protection for a brilliant scientist, in part as a favor to her sister, who was an agent. The job went bad, and the scientist was spirited away (not involuntarily, I might add). Since then, the agent sister has been inactive on the job – obsessed with finding and rescuing her sister.

But now Quinn and his team have been temporarily sidelined by their employers. Shocking news from France motivates them to travel there and try to rescue the sister on their own. This will involve merely getting past the security of one of the most technologically advanced corporations in the world.

The main thing that distinguishes The Vanished as a story is that author Battles decided to set it in 2020, incorporating the whole business of Covid-19 lockdown protocols. That makes some things harder for them and some things easier, but did not (for this reader) make the story much more interesting. As you know, I’m a reader who likes character-driven stories. The Jonathan Quinn series is generally pretty good in that department, but this story was mostly about procedures and technology. I didn’t find it compelling.

But it’s a good series. You might like this one better than I do.

Reviews

Netflix film review: ‘The Professor and the Madman’

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Back in 2015, I read Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman (which I reviewed here) as part of my graduate school work. It was one of the few pleasures that course of study provided me. So I was delighted to learn that a movie had been made of the story, and that it was available on Netflix.

According to what I see online, star Mel Gibson (who plays Prof. James Murray, head of the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language project) was very unhappy with the way the film was made. He and writer Farhad Safinia sued the producers, and they finally came to an undisclosed settlement. Apparently the film we have is not the one Gibson dreamed of.

I’m glad I read about that after I’d seen the film, because what I saw pleased me immensely.

Overall, the movie covers events as described in the book. Dr. William Minor (Sean Penn), an American military surgeon unbalanced by his experiences in the Civil War, murders an innocent London laborer, under the delusion that he is an Irishman who’s been persecuting him. Judged insane, Minor is confined to the Broadmoor Insane Asylum. His life begins to find some focus again when he answers Prof. Murray’s appeal for volunteers to hunt out historical citations of various English words for the dictionary. Working obsessively with books allowed him by the asylum director, he provides the project with a much-needed boost.

Meanwhile, Prof. Murray, who lacks a university degree but got his position through plain expertise in languages, suffers professional and social opposition from the scholars at Oxford University Press. A long-distance friendship arises between him and Dr. Minor, but it’s only when he finally goes to present Minor with a first printing of part of the work that he discovers his friend is a madman.

Meanwhile, Minor – though still delusional about many things, is tormented by guilt and attempts to get his pension money conveyed to his victim’s widow. At first she rejects his help angrily, but in time her genuine desperation and his genuine remorse result in a strange affection – leading to a shocking outcome.

As in all dramatic productions, events are rearranged and re-molded to suit the creators’ vision. And dramatic moments happen that never happened in our world. But the film’s vision, as I perceived it, was a very fine one. It has to do with guilt and forgiveness and love, and the importance of work in our lives. It doesn’t rise quite to the level of Christianity, but there are Christian themes all over the place.

The depiction of Victorian England is rich and convincing. The performances are excellent.

My one great complaint is that in one scene, a character – an Oxford scholar, no less – misuses the phrase, “begs the question.” That just isn’t done, old man.

Cautions for very disturbing scenes of violence and insanity. Not for the kids.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘Victims of Foul Play, by Patricia Lubeck

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I feel a little badly about reviewing this book. It was not written by a professional, and does not pretend to literary quality. It’s aimed at a very small public. But I read it as a favor to someone, and I feel that calls for a review.

On a December morning in 1961, farmer Clarence Larson of rural Garvin, Minnesota called for a neighbor’s help. His wife was dead, her body wrapped around the power take-off of their tractor. He said she’d been helping him “elevate” some corn into a bin (a procedure employing an augur in a chute; I know it well) when she got caught in the mechanism. (This was not uncommon; I heard many stories of people losing arms in power take-offs when I was a kid, and I knew a guy whose brother was killed by one of them.) However, in this case, an unexplained injury to the back of the woman’s head, plus the condition of the body, along with the presence of a new insurance policy, aroused suspicions. The county, however, was unable to prove Clarence’s guilt to a jury, and he went free.

Clarence moved to Tracy, Minnesota, and remarried. In 1980, his new wife disappeared. She failed to show up for regular appointments, and left behind personal possessions to which she’d been attached. When people asked about her, Larson gave conflicting explanations. The county sheriff called in the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (which you may know from John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport novels), and even a psychic. But sufficient evidence was never found to convict Larson of murder.

Patricia Lubeck’s book, Victims of Foul Play, is a bald and artless chronological account of events. There can be no doubt that the author believes Larson got away with murder. But in the end, she leaves us with the same thing the authorities had to accept: the man was a clever murderer who managed to hide any really incriminating evidence.

Victims of Foul Play will be of interest to people interested in the local history of Lyon County, Minnesota. I can’t recommend it to anyone else. It is not well written.