Category Archives: Reviews

Fiction, Reviews

‘Jack of Diamonds,’ by Christopher Greyson

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I have enjoyed the Jack Stratton series by Christopher Greyson, well-written and well-conceived mystery/thrillers suitable for a Christian audience, but better in quality than the average Christian fare. An admirable hero you can root for. Good values.

Jack of Diamonds marks a milestone in the series – it’s about Jack’s wedding to his girlfriend, Alice. Something he’s been working up to for a while.

But of course, in the world of fiction, such an event can’t go off smoothly. Jack, who is operating as a bounty hunter since losing his police job, catches a distress call from a cop at a rural location. Being closer to the spot than the real cops, he drives in to help. He finds the policeman suffering from a head injury, and inside the house he finds a room decorated with drawings of women. Among them is a picture of Alice – plus a wedding invitation.

Obviously the wedding needs to be postponed. But explain that to Alice, who’s being nearly driven to distraction by the pressures of preparation. She and Jack had wanted a simple ceremony, but a wealthy former client whose life they saved insisted on paying for a production worthy of the Kardashians, complete with a relentless wedding planner.

Meanwhile, seemingly random women are disappearing, and Jack is convinced their vanishings are connected to the wedding stalker. And when an abandoned church is found filled with corpses, the weirdness goes off the scale.

I liked Jack of Diamonds, as I’ve liked all the books in the series. But I have to admit I found the premise of this one pretty implausible. It spoiled it somewhat for me.

Still, it’s a fun read. Recommended, but on a lower level than the previous Jack Stratton books.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Rewinder,’ by Brett Battles

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I don’t read a lot of science fiction, but I got a deal on an SF book by Brett Battles, whose mysteries I’ve enjoyed. So I gave it a shot. Rewinder wasn’t bad at all.

Rewinder is a time-travel story. It starts in an alternate universe where the United States never won its independence. Instead, our hero, Denny Younger, lives in a British empire in which society is intensely stratified. Born a lowly “Eight,” Denny has little to look forward to in life beyond a manual factory job. However (to his father’s alarm) he tests high in history. And the day after finishing high school, he finds himself taking the entry test for the Upjohn Institute. That enterprise ostensibly does historical research to verify the genealogy of upper-class individuals hoping for prestigious appointments.

But that, Denny learns, is only the public face of the thing. In fact, Upjohn employees are time travelers. They go back in time to observe people’s ancestors and learn their dirty secrets. They can then use those secrets to blackmail their clients, bringing in government grants and preferential treatment for the corporation.

But one of Denny’s trainers, Marie, senses something uncommon in him. She gives him hints that she and (perhaps) some others are sometimes going beyond their instructions – “doing right” rather than just “doing well.”

When Denny makes a bumbling mistake and erases his own timeline entirely, replacing it with one that will be familiar to you and me, he will be faced with a shattering decision – “fix” his mistake or choose a better world.

Rewinder was a fun book. I’ve done some time travel writing myself, and it makes my head hurt, so I can only imagine the kind of labor it must have taken to plot out the many paradoxes here. Science fiction fans, especially, will enjoy Rewinder.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘The Lost Cause,’ by James P. Muehlberger

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On December 7, 1869, two men attacked the Daviess County Savings and Loan in Gallatin, Missouri. One of them murdered the cashier and grabbed a metal box (which turned out to be full of worthless documents). They fled riding double, as one of their horses had run off. On the way out of town they stole a farmer’s horse to make a successful getaway.

The lost horse was quickly identified. It was a blooded Kentucky thoroughbred, well known as belonging to one Jesse Woodson James. This was Jesse’s first identified post-Civil War crime, and a Kansas City newspaperman named John Newman Edwards took interest. He began writing laudatory articles, sparking what would become an American legend.

The Gallatin raid has traditionally been viewed as a botched bank robbery. But lawyer James P. Muehlberger, author of The Lost Cause: The Trials of Frank and Jesse James, has uncovered the original documents of the lawsuit that followed the event, in which a lawyer named Henry McDougal sued Jesse on behalf of the farmer who lost his horse. The evidence he uncovered strongly suggests that this was not a bank robbery at all, but a failed assassination attempt. The outlaws were after another Gallatin man, Major Samuel P. Cox, who had come into possession of a pair of pistols owned by the guerrilla leader Bloody Bill Anderson, killed in the war. Anderson’s brother Jim had written Cox a threatening letter demanding the pistols back. Evidence indicates that the murderers went to Gallatin to kill Cox, but instead shot bank employee John Sheets, who resembled Cox. The other robber, long thought to be Frank James, was probably Jim Anderson.

Muehlberger goes on to give a kind of legal history of the James gang, from McDougal’s original lawsuit up through the murder trials that followed Frank James’ final surrender in 1882, in which he was acquitted and set free.

Muehlberger’s purpose is partly to tell the story and share the fresh information he’s uncovered, and partly to plead his own case – that the James gang was not a romantic band of Southern heroes, oppressed by corrupt carpetbaggers, but a low-life group of thugs, contemptuous of others’ lives and property, who benefited from a positive public relations campaign. Rather than robbing the rich to give to the poor, Jesse’s take tended to go toward paying off his race track gambling debts. Muehlberger also wishes to debunk the whole idea of the “lost cause,” the claim that the Southern cause in the Civil War was not about slavery but about constitutional rights.

I tend to agree with him on that point, though I think it’s overstated. I disagree with those who say that secession had nothing to do with slavery, but I also disagree with those who say it was only about slavery. I think there’s a middle ground there.

I do agree about the James gang, though.

The Lost Cause is a book of considerable interest to anyone curious about that period of American history. The writing isn’t top-notch but it’s not bad. Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Only the Details’ and ‘Good Girl,’ by Alan Lee

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He stood taller than me, which isn’t easy, and he was much wider, which is silly.

Two more reviews of Alan Lee’s Mack August novels. Then I’m done for a while. There are a couple more books to date, but they’re a side series starring Mack’s US Marshal friend, Manny. I’ll save them for later.

It’s not every man who suddenly finds himself – to his complete surprise – married to the woman of his dreams, who also happens to be filthy rich. But that’s the situation of Roanoke, Virginia private eye Mack August at the beginning of Only the Details. Which makes it a pretty good day.

Right up until a potential client injects him with a soporific, and he finds himself loaded on a jet headed for Naples, Italy. A disgruntled crime lord has put out a contract on Mack, but that contract has been bought up by a different crime lord, who has a use for him. He wants Mack (who used to be an underground cage fighter) to represent his criminal family in an annual international tournament in Naples. Elimination in this tournament means actual elimination, but the winner becomes a hero in the underworld. Except that, as his captor explains, he’s promised to kill Mack when it’s over, regardless of the results.

To Mack August, such setbacks are only obstacles to be overcome. Half of Only the Details involves Mack’s never-say-die conduct during the tournament. The other involves the efforts of his Virginia friends to rescue him. It’s all preposterous fun.

In Good Girl, the next book (and I realize the fact that there is a next book constitutes an unavoidable spoiler), Mack is asked to work for a man who suffers anteretrograde amnesia – the condition where one remembers the past, but can make no new memories. Ulysses Steinbeck survives by keeping copious notes, depending on the assistance of his housekeeper.

Steinbeck lost his memory in a car accident several years back. One memory he has from the very end has to do with a dog he bought – something even he doesn’t understand, because he doesn’t even like dogs. But the dog is important… for some reason. Can Mack find the dog and figure out the secret?

Mack goes to work, acquiring the dog, a mature and well-behaved Boxer. He learns that someone else is looking for the dog too, and some exercise of his fighting skills will be required before the conclusion, which is a highly satisfying one. Author Lee says in a note that he felt that Only the Details was pretty intense, and it was time for a warmer and fuzzier sequel.

I liked both these books a lot, and recommend them, if you can handle the language (see my previous reviews). The author also needs to work on his vocabulary – he generally does pretty well with Robert B. Parker-esque erudite vocabulary, but now and then he stumbles.

Realism is not strong in this series – I’m thinking particularly about Mack’s relationship with his fiancée/wife “Ronnie,” who seems to me more a figure of male fantasy than a plausible character.

But it’s all a lot of fun anyway.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Flawed Players’ and ‘Aces Full,’ by Alan Lee

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The economy of Portsmouth was propped up on freight shipping, mountains of it. There was no new construction but this part of town looked healthy. Like, we have enough money but we don’t want nice things because sailors might break them. (Aces Full)

Jason Bourne for fans of John Eldridge.

That’s my current thumbnail description of Alan Lee’s Mack August books, my current semi-guilty obsession.

Mack, as I’ve mentioned, is a big, strong, intrepid Christian private eye in Roanoke, Virginia, the single father of an infant. I’m reading his books so fast (in spite of recent resolutions to spend less on books) that I’m going to review two at once tonight.

Flawed Players has Mack hired by a local academic, who faces a prison sentence for stealing stuff from the neighbors in his tony neighborhood. All the stuff was found in his office closet, and he swears he has no idea how it got there. His argument is weakened, however, by the fact that he’s a classic absent-minded professor, and could conceivably have done it and forgotten. However, it’s hard to figure a motive for the crime.

On a closer, more personal level, someone close to Mack has been murdered. He discovers that the organized crime figures whose noses he’s been tweaking know how to hold a grudge.

In Aces Full, Mack is hired to find evidence to mitigate the sentence of a confessed murderer named Grady Huff. Grady is rich, entitled, and the biggest ass Mack has ever met. But his lawyer thinks there’s something more beyond his story that he killed his house cleaner purely on a whim.

Meanwhile, Mack is learning more about the woman he loves, the incandescent “Ronnie” Summers. She has dark secrets, and deep obligations to some very bad people. Mack conceives a plan to set her free, centered on an epic underworld poker game, which will take a dramatic and unexpected turn.

I’ve described this series as a Christian one, but I’m ambivalent about using that term. It’s Christian in the sense that the hero is a Christian, trying to live a Christian life. But he’s not the kind of Christian you’d expect – his best friend is a corrupt US Marshal, and another friend is the local cocaine distributor – who also goes to his church.

I’m reminded in one sense of the minor controversy that exists around Veggie Tales. The Veggie Tales videos are clever and entertaining productions promoting Christian values. But, as some have noted, they’re not Christian in the sense of sharing the gospel. They’re all Law.

In the same way, a reader of the Mack August books might come away thinking that Christianity is just a set of rules to live by – and most of us wouldn’t stand up as well as Mack does to the extreme temptations he faces. Even his cocaine-merchant friend has asked him whether he’s shared the Good News with Ronnie (who would appear to need it desperately), but Mack never gets around to it.

So I’m still not sure what to say about these books from a theological perspective.

But I sure am having fun reading them. (In spite of some homophone problems in spelling.)

Recommended, with cautions for adult themes, violence, and language.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Desecration of All Saints,’ by Alan Lee

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I am now officially obsessed with Alan Lee’s Mack August mysteries. Expect the reviews to come fast and thick for a few days.

Mack, as I’ve told you previously, is a big, strong Christian private eye in Roanoke, Virginia. He’s not a model evangelical – he drinks a little, and uses bad language now and then. And occasionally he fornicates, though he always resists it and has not consummated his passion for “Ronnie” Summers, the girl he loves. Unfortunately she’s engaged to another man (the marriage was arranged by her father, who happens to be a local drug lord).

Mack knows there will be trouble at the beginning of The Desecration of All Saints, when two vestrymen from the big Episcopal church in town come to hire him. They want him to investigate their pastor, a celebrity preacher named Louis Lindsey. One of his subordinates has complained that Lindsey has been making homosexual advances. They are sure the accusation is groundless, but they want Mack to look into it, just to vindicate their pastor.

As he investigates, Mack discovers that there’s good evidence the accusations are true.

Even worse, a local boy has been kidnapped, and Mack begins to suspect that Lindsey is the one who took him. And is likely to kill him, if he can’t be stopped.

Funny, engaging, and sometimes inspirational, I enjoyed The Desecration of All Saints. The book (which is marketed as a stand-alone, not part of the series, for some obscure reason) has flaws. Part of the fun of Mack’s character is his self-deprecatory humor, often framed in elevated vocabulary. But (in this book more than the others I’ve read) he uses the words wrong occasionally. He also falls victim to homophone confusion. This one needed a better proofreader.

The Desecration of All Saints also deal with a touchy subject – homosexuality. As Mack expresses his views, he’s more easygoing about it than I am, falling into the “we’re all sinners, gayness is no big deal” school. However, he also seems to suggest that lack of father figures is a contributing factor to homosexuality, so he’s not entirely in the “enlightened” camp.

I might also mention that if you like sexy books – as opposed to dirty books – you can hardly look for hotter stuff than the Mack August series. Unlike most fictional private eyes, Mack tries to shun fornication, which means that in the scenes where “Ronnie” comes on to him, the sexual tension is off the charts. There’s nothing so erotic as chastity, and that’s proven here.

Recommended, with cautions for language and subject matter.

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.