Category Archives: Reviews

Fiction, Reviews

‘August Origins,’ by Alan Lee

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“It’s reverse sexism to pretend girls are never girls and never experience distress. That creates faulty and impossible standards, like magazine covers.”

Pending surprises, I’m pretty much all in on Alan Lee’s Mack August detective series now. And for some of you, that will be a sign of reprobation in me. Because these novels have Christian themes, but they are morally complex and there’s a limited amount of full-blown profanity and obscenity. I don’t think I’d have the nerve to write books like these. But I’m enjoying and appreciating them.

Mackenzie August is a private eye in Roanoke, Virginia. He’s a former cop and underground cage fighter, also a former youth pastor and English teacher. He goes to church and reads the Bible, but is a work in progress, wrestling with how to be a Christian.

In August Origins, the county sheriff comes to Mack’s office, along with a local policeman, to request his help. A new drug boss has moved into town, and the street gangs have adopted a practice imported from California – each new member must “make his bones” by killing an innocent teenaged girl. Three have died so far. They want Mack to go to work temporarily as a high school teacher, to try to figure out who’s running the gangs.

Mack is always up for a challenge. He likes teaching and is good at it. He cares about the kids and tries to help them. But he observes some hinky stuff going on – and then the word spreads among the student population that Mr. August is a nark. His life and those of some of his students will depend on his identifying the drug bosses, and putting a stop to them.

Also he meets a girl who fascinates him – Veronica “Ronnie” Summers, local lawyer and part-time bartender. She’s all he’s ever wanted, but if he wants to be with her, he’ll have to make a moral compromise he’s not willing to make.

There are some shocking elements in August Origins, and the resolution is not very neat at all. But the effect is more realistic than what you’ll generally find in Christian fiction, and that particular story line is not finished yet.

Not for the squeamish, or those offended by profanity. But I rate August Origins very highly.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Last Teacher,’ by Alan Lee

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“I don’t know. I don’t go to church, I don’t have any religious friends, I don’t like the christian radio stations, I drink, I don’t feel like baptists would like me anymore than I like them. I read but cannot understand the Old Testament. Sometimes,” I said, and paused. “Sometimes I don’t even think God likes me very much, though I know that’s not true. Whatever that is, that’s what I am.”

Now here’s an intriguing book, part of an intriguing series. A Christian mystery series, which many Christians will hate. The Last Teacher is a sort of prequel to the Mack August series by Alan Lee.

Mackenzie August is a former cop and former underground cage fighter. Also a former youth pastor. A single father. Now he’s taken a job as a middle school teacher in the small town of South Hill, Virginia. Just trying to figure out where he belongs in the world, and puzzling over God’s will. He’s pretty sure that will does not include a relationship with the hot teacher who starts throwing herself at him from the day he arrives.

Shortly thereafter, he discovers the body of a fellow teacher, shot to death in the school yard. Mack isn’t sure whether he’ll make a good teacher, but he’s a good detective. He’ll need to be, especially when another teacher is murdered in the same way. Mack begins to realize that someone is fixating on him, killing the people around him out of some kind of twisted obsession. That’s personal enough, but when his baby son gets kidnapped, it becomes a matter of life and death.

Alan Lee is a very brave writer, braver than I am, for good or ill. He grapples head-on with one of the major challenges facing Christian fiction writers today: the problem of realistic language. The time has passed when you could get away with having worldly and depraved characters confine themselves to expletives like “gosh” and “darn.” The audience expects people to talk the way they would in real life. That means using language most of us don’t want to spread around.

Author Lee uses that language. The book isn’t full of profanity or obscenity, but it’s there. It will shock and offend many Christian readers. But it’s possible that Lee isn’t writing for the healthy, but for the sick, who are in need of a physician, as the Gospel says.

One of the many things I liked about The Last Teacher was Mack’s voice as narrator. He speaks in the tradition of Philip Marlowe, that tough guy/erudite voice with just a hint of self-mockery. Alan Lee writes this kind of stuff very well indeed. I laughed often as I read. Another trope in detective stories is gorgeous women throwing themselves at the hero. That’s present in these books too, with the novelty of the hero resisting those women.

I found the final resolution a little implausible, but that may just be due to personal prejudices.

If you’re morally offended by bad language in Christian stories, stay away from the Mack August books. But if you’re open to it, there’s a good time reading to be had here.

Recommended, with the aforementioned cautions.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Sticks and Stones,’ by John Carson

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Another day, another British police procedural series. Not a bad one either, judging by this first book, Sticks and Stones, by John Carson.

Edinburgh DCI Harry McNeil is new to homicide, having previously worked in the Scottish equivalent of Internal Affairs. With his sidekick, female DS Alex Maxwell, he’s sent to a country estate to hunt for a bride who disappeared from the wedding reception. Odd duty, but the bride’s father, Broderick Gallagher, is a wealthy man with many important friends, so he gets special favors. Harry and Alex figure the woman just got cold feet, so it’ll be an easy weekend with some good food and drink.

Until searchers discover a headless body, aflame in the woods.

And the bride’s sister is kidnapped.

The whole conspiracy leads back to a long-ago murder-suicide, and revenge nurtured for years, to be served up cold at the wedding.

Sticks and Stones wasn’t absolute top-flight crime fiction, but it was pretty good. The writing was lively, and the characters interesting.

I did note a small problem with cop banter. A lot of cop banter went on here. I like cop banter. The problem in this book – and I hope author Carson will fix this in future outings – is that the banter is all the same. There are three main pairs of cops who banter back and forth, and their banter is almost indistinguishable. Distinct styles of banter are called for here, particularly to distinguish male-female banter from male-male banter.

Just a suggestion.

Not a bad novel, though. Cautions for the stuff you’d expect.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Geordie Murder,’ by Roy Lewis

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There’s a feeling I get when I’m reading a book and not really enjoying it, but it seems like I ought to be. Like one of those modern masterpieces they assign you in college, where you have it on authority that it’s good, but you don’t get it.

I’m not sure whether The Geordie Murder, by Roy Lewis is like that or not. Or what that says about it, or me.

Eric Ward is a former Newcastle (England) policeman. He had to leave the force when he developed glaucoma. He’s seeing again now after surgery, but he’s become a lawyer. He’s also married to a very wealthy younger woman, but refuses her offers to work for her company. He prefers to maintain a struggling private practice serving the “little people” who get overrun by the system.

A local official asks for his help trying to make a case against a loan shark. Eric tries, but even the victims won’t help. They distrust the law more than they dislike the moneylender – and they’re afraid of him.

Meanwhile, a young girl is kidnapped. Her non-custodial mother is the daughter of a tycoon, but her father is an unemployed fellow who happens to be one of the victims of the loan shark (some complicated back story is necessary to justify this plot element). He promises Eric he’ll give evidence, if only Eric can find his daughter again.

My problem with The Geordie Murder (which is an older novel, from back in the 80s) is that is was slow. It seemed to me the author was sauntering through passages that a more skilled mystery writer would reduce to a sentence – or skip entirely. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by recent trends in fiction.

And the climactic showdown – well, it was so low key that I figured it was just a preliminary scene. But nope. Story over.

Author Lewis has a good feeling for characters, and knows how to avoid black and white portrayals. He also has a sympathetic heart for the urban poor. But he used too many words describing these things, in my opinion.

Your mileage may vary. Only minor cautions for subject matter.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Missing Nurse,’ by Roger Silverwood

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The Inspector Morse template seems to be a big success in the world of publishing. You have your older Inspector, supervising one or more younger subordinates. He is grumpy and occasionally insulting, but his heart is of gold, and once his co-workers get used to him, they learn to appreciate that he’s partly joking, partly pushing them to improved effectiveness.

Roger Silverwood’s Yorkshire Mystery Series appears to be constructed on that template, judging by the first book in the series, The Missing Nurse.

The setting is the town of Bromersley. Inspector Michael Angel of the Bromersley police is tall and fat and irascible. He is married without children, and fond of cats. He hates hot weather. Which is unfortunate, because it’s August in the hottest year on record, and on top of that his wife has gone away to visit her sick mother. This leaves him to run the house alone, a challenge that seems beyond him (he delegates much of the work to a rookie subordinate). Also, his favorite sergeant is out of town taking a course.

When Miriam Thomas, a middle-aged nurse from Wales, comes to his office to report her sister missing, Angel is not greatly concerned. The woman had been visiting in town, and such disappearances usually turn out to be simple failures of communication. He tells Miriam not to worry.

But he realizes there’s reason to worry, when a body shows up in a park and matches the sister’s description. Even more sinister, Miriam herself has now disappeared. Angel puts his team on the hunt for her, for her own protection and to try to find an explanation for the murder. The explanation, as it turns out, will take them to an old unsolved case.

Meanwhile a couple thugs hold up a service station and pistol whip the young girl who was working there. Such behavior offends Angel deeply, and he puts his team on the hunt for them too.

I think we’re intended to find Inspector Michael Angel amusing, in the Morse manner. It didn’t really work that way for me. Being intentionally unpleasant to people under your authority is a game to be played with a light hand, in my opinion. Angel lays it on thick. He has his virtues – he cares deeply about crime victims – but he annoyed me.

Such things are subjective. The book might work better for you. The usual cautions apply.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Depth of Winter,’ by Craig Johnson

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Sometimes titles are misleading. When you pick up a book called Depth of Winter, starring Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire, you assume you’ll get a story set in the Wyoming winter.

That’s not what this entry in Craig Johnson’s Longmire saga is, at all (the title’s from a quotation from Camus). It’s a quest story, in which old Walt heads down to Mexico (where it’s hot), all alone, to rescue his daughter Cady, who’s been kidnapped by a vengeful Mexican cartel boss. Instead of his usual cast of supporting characters, we have here a new group of people to help him out, and they’re pretty bizarre – a blind, legless humpback called “The Seer,” a young man with a pink Cadillac, a rancher, a mute Indian sniper. When a fictional series brings in a previously unknown supporting cast, you can be fairly sure those characters will suffer a high mortality rate, and that’s true in this case.

If I remember the first Longmire novel correctly (it’s been a while since I read it), Longmire was originally an overweight county sheriff who made a lot of jokes and was smarter than he appeared when it came to solving crimes. Now (probably under the influence of the TV series), he’s become a larger than life action hero, enduring and inflicting suffering beyond what’s plausible for a guy his age.

Depth of Winter was readable and rousing, with lots of action. But I had trouble believing in it. The final showdown was cinematic and completely unbelievable.

I bridled at a slighting comment on religious faith, though that comment was made in the context of Longmire giving thanks to… Somebody.

I want to read some of the earlier books, to verify my impressions about the evolution of the character, but for some reason I’ve only been able to find the more recent books available from my public library for KIndle. I find the Longmire books readable, but I’m not in love with them. This book struck me as uncharacteristic enough to qualify as extra-canonical.

Cautions for language and intense violence.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Depraved Difference,’ by J. Robert Kennedy

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If you like your thrillers equipped with major plot twists, Depraved Difference by J. Robert Kennedy may be just what you’re looking for.

Me, I’m still thinking it over.

Aynslee Kai, an ambitious young TV journalist in Manhattan, starts receiving videos by e-mail, videos that might make her career. A year ago a couple thugs beat and kicked a young woman to death on the subway. Two more low-lifes videoed the murder and shared it on the net, where it went viral.

Now someone has started identifying the onlookers, the people caught on the video watching but doing nothing to help. Each onlooker is being hunted down and murdered, and each murder is filmed and sent to Aynslee. She is shocked, but also energized by this big career break.

She feels a little guilty, though, about not cooperating more with Detective Hayden Eldridge, a cop who’s asked to see the videos before they’re broadcast. She assists him to an extent, but her boss’s priorities come first. This bothers her a bit, because she’s developed a crush on the hunky Eldridge.

Author Kennedy is very good at surprising his readers, and there are several shockers in this story up until the very climax. There he blindsides you (unless you’re a lot smarter than me) with a twist so bizarre I’m still trying to decide whether he played fair with his readers or not.

Oddly, this book is labeled Number One in the “Detective Shakespeare” series. Justin Shakespeare is Eldridge’s partner, and he doesn’t even show up in the book until the 40% point (on my Kindle). Shakespeare is mentioned often before that, but only as a fat, lazy time-server just putting in his time until retirement. We will gradually learn that there’s more to him than that.

Depraved Difference was a compelling read, and one you won’t soon forget. I’m still not sure whether I approve of the final twist, though. I also thought the character psychology kind of implausible.

Cautions for lots of violence and disturbing situations, plus strong language.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Perilous Cove,’ by Rich Bullock

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If you like Christian romances and Christian mysteries, Perilous Cove by Rich Bullock might be just your kind of book.

It’s not my kind of book, but I don’t know everything.

Natalie Clayton is a recent widow living in Missouri, contending with a hostile mother-in-law. When her house is torched by an arsonist and someone dies, she begins to suspect that somebody is out to get her. She doesn’t know the half of it.

Detective Addison Conner is a recent widower, trying to raise a teenaged daughter. When he investigates the arson at Natalie’s house, there’s a spark of electricity between them. Natalie has nowhere to go when her house is gone, so he takes her in to live with him and his daughter, temporarily. When a second murder attempt is made on Natalie, “temporarily” begins to look pretty brief.

Natalie knows what she has to do – disappear and relocate to California. But she and Addison are not out of each other’s lives yet.

Perilous Cove was an exciting read, and I’ll admit it caught my emotions.

But it was clumsily written, and heavy on romance novel stuff; the villains were over the top, the conflicts improbable (or so it seemed to me). I found the explosive climax less than credible.

If this is your kind of book, you’ve probably figured that out by now. You’ll probably love Perilous Cove. But I found it disappointing. Fortunately I got it on an Amazon deal.

No bad language, and no cautions except for garden-variety fictional violence.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Long Gone,’ by Paul Pilkington

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A good race with a poor finish. That’s my reaction to Paul Pilkington’s Long Gone, the first in a series of mysteries about Chief Inspector Paul Cullen of the London Transport Police. (People tend not to take the Transport Police seriously, which is a running theme in the book. But lots of serious crime goes on on the buses and in the Underground.)

Inspector Cullen is riding the Underground on his way to work when he notices a young man apparently assaulting a young woman. He follows (pausing on the way to get the girl’s assurance that there was an assault), and chases the young man through the streets – until the fugitive comes to a sudden, ugly end.

Paul is placed on administrative leave, as is standard procedure when an officer is involved in a death. He’s heading home when he gets diverted by a call from his daughter Amy. Amy is his only family since the recent death of his wife, and she suffers from anxiety attacks, so he’s protective of her. She tells him she’s worried about her friend Natalie. Natalie had been selected for a major job opportunity – a reality show-style competition between six candidates for a job with a high profile new company. But she sent Amy a disturbing text message on her way home from the event, and then vanished completely.

Paul isn’t supposed to be doing any investigation while he’s on leave, but he’s willing to bend the rules for Amy. As we follow his inquiries, we also follow in flashbacks Natalie’s course through a very bizarre experience in corporate culture, one where she soon realizes that something is very wrong.

Long Gone engaged me and kept my interest all the way through. I was interested in the characters and curious what would happen to them. Unfortunately the plot lost all credibility at the climax. The final action was highly contrived and extremely implausible.

The theme of the book was “Me Too,” which might have put me off a little. However, the main offender was a hypocritical male feminist, so I didn’t mind. But that final “showdown” lost me completely.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘Strange Tales of Scotland,’ by Jack Strange

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Broichan may have been put out by this blatant display of Christian power in his own back yard, so he predicted that a storm would batter the saint on his return to his west. The prediction was proved correct, but as Columba lived on a Hebridean island he was used to foul weather and returned home safely. Anyway it was a pretty safe bet to predict stormy weather in western Scotland; it would have been more impressive had Broichan said there would be a lasting spell of fair weather.

There are ancient ties between Scotland and Norway, which are next-door neighbors in maritime terms. That may explain why I’ve always had an interest in old Albion. Or not. In any case, Jack Strange’s book Strange Tales of Scotland caught my eye. I remember reading books of legend and folklore with great interest in my younger years.

Broadly speaking (though other kinds of tales pop up) the stories in this book deal with monsters like the Loch Ness monster (which is not the only one of its kind), supernatural beings like various kinds of elves or fairies, and ghosts. Ghosts are often associated with the histories of ancient castles, so you get the stories of the castles too.

I didn’t enjoy Strange Tales of Scotland as much as I hoped to. That may be partly the author’s part – I thought the book could have been organized better; it’s kind of a hodgepodge, jumping around the map at random. But more than that, all the stories seemed sadly familiar to me – folk tales tend to be repetitive. You have an infinite loop of abused and cast-off mistresses, innocent women convicted of witchcraft and guilty witches who escaped punishment, murdered babies, and bloodthirsty local Bluebeards. It all kind of depressed me after a while.

However, if you’re not familiar with the field, and appreciate the glamour of Scotland, you might enjoy this book more than I did. One could do worse.

Oh yes, he mentions the Fairy Flag of the McLeods (reputed to be Harald Hardrada’s banner). I appreciated that.