Category Archives: Fiction

Authors, Coffee, Tea, Drinks, Fiction

Everyone Loves Food

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“While I was writing The Lost Family, I cooked a lot—to meditate on the day’s writing as well as to kitchen-test all the recipes I then featured on the book’s menu. Some of my favorite lines for the book would bubble up that way, as if from a Magic 8-Ball, and one of them was ‘vegetables have no language.’ I revised this slightly for the novel, but it means that food is universal. The produce and spices will vary from country to country and cuisine to cuisine, but if you love food, you have a vast family out there. We can all communicate about how our beloved dishes are different—and how they are the same.” – Jenna Blum, The Lost Family

Crystal King, whose book about Vatican chef Bartolomeo Scappi, The Chef’s Secret, came out this year, quotes eleven authors on including food in their writing.

“Writing, in a way, is an extension of my cooking, and vice versa. Cooking taught me how to create, that I needed to create.” – Phillip Kazan

Photo by Jonathan Borba from Pexels

Fiction

Canticle Holds Up

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Walter M. Miller Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz holds up after sixty years.

“The most miraculous thing about this book, however, is that it offers a profound critique of the extremists at either end of our so-called crisis of liberalism and serves as a stark reminder that these debates are nowhere near as new as some think,” writes Daniel Kennelly for The American Interest. (via Prufrock News)

Fiction, Reviews

‘Death in Transit,’ by Keith Moray

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Keith Moray’s Torquil McKinnon series is a pleasant and atmospheric set of “cozy” police procedurals that play out on the fictional island of West Uist in the Scottish Hebrides. I’ve been following them with enjoyment, and Death in Transit was an enjoyable addition.

This time around, the remote island is once again the center of international attention, due to an astronomical event, “the conjunction of Venus and Mercury and the transit of Mercury,” clearly visible from there. The phenomenon attracts an odd assortment of outsiders – media people, a noted astronomer, and a motley group of New Agers with astrological pretentions. But the discovery of a murdered body floating in the harbor dampens the excitement, and a further murder raises apprehensions. Pressured, as always, by his unsympathetic off-island superior, Inspector Torquil McKinnon will have to uncover old secrets, resentments, and rivalries before the true killer is revealed.

There was nothing very novel about Death in Transit, which put the likeable regular cast through its usual paces among fondly described characters and locations. But it was fun, like all the books in the series. Recommended, with no important reservations for language or content that I can recall.

Fiction, Reviews

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

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This has been the longest year of my life, and it’s not yet October. I could tell you the details, but I usually shy away from that; I mean, we’ve never shaken hands, bought each other coffee, or sung a hymn together. We wouldn’t recognize each other if we were in the same room. But I don’t mind talking about books with you, and that brings to this 800-pager.

My hardbound copy is like this but red.

I started reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Suzanna Clarke early in the year, and though I liked the story, I put it down in favor of — I don’t know, maybe I was making money at something (that’s a nice thought). The story progresses slowly, not diverting onto rabbit trails so much as taking time to set new stages and bring in dialogue. There was a chapter toward the end I thought could be cut to a couple sentences, but most of the time I wished the pace would pick up even though I was enjoying the scene before me.

Of course, I’m not like Lars. On Monday he can tell you he’s reading a 3,000 page book that will take him a while to review, and on Friday you’ll have that review. I take eight months to get through 800 pages. That’s not a tweetable goal. Follow me on Goodreads; you won’t be inspired.

The novel begins with Mr. Norrell, who wants to crush the dreams of all would-be magicians and remake English magic after his own image. He is naturally a stuffy academic in his manner of thought and speech, but his passion is to use magic properly and practically, keeping it away from theoretical magicians who do nothing but talk over poorly written books. He opposes people like the president of the York Society of Magicians, who says, “Magicians … study magic which was done long ago. Why should any one expect more [that is, to do magic today]”?

Norrell gains a good reputation and important connections in London before Strange shows up, and in advancing his career he sets the plot of the whole book in motion. This is an laudable point in Clarke’s storytelling. She could have had the rise of Norrell and Strange’s fame in England be the provocation for the villains that come; instead she has Norrell conduct a work of magic he knows to be risky that opens the door to a great deal of trouble.

Continue reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell →
Fiction

Lucas Doesn’t Like New Star Wars Stories

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From what I’ve read about them, George Lucas’s original plan for eps. 7-9 of the Star Wars series would have been more like eps. 1-3. An ancient order of the Whills as a force behind the Force would be explored, likely through a thrilling sequence of talking, chin stroking, talking, and sitting.

Slashfilm has a little of what Lucas liked about plans and artwork for episode 7, but the movie didn’t develop in that direction. According to Disney CEO Bob Iger in his newly released memoir, Lucas didn’t like that direction.

When Disney bought the franchise and Lucas’s outlines for the new episodes, they stated their freedom to develop them as they wished. “George knew we weren’t contractually bound to anything,” Iger wrote, “but he thought that our buying the story treatments was a tacit promise that we’d follow them, and he was disappointed that his story was being discarded.”

Lucas wanted something new with each movie, but Iger and his team wanted something Star Wars, “to not stray too far from what people loved and expected.” He doesn’t directly disagree with Lucas, but I’m glad the sequel films are not more like the prequels.

I remember enjoying The Force Awakens; I reviewed like this.

No photo description available.

That pretty much sums it up without the slightest hint of a spoiler.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Bury the Dead in Driftwood,’ by Scott William Carter

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The gray sky, which often broke up or dissolved by midmorning, remained as solid as fresh paint.

I had read and reviewed a previous novel in Scott William Carter’s Garrison Gage mystery series, and decided not to read any more. I don’t clearly recall why; it likely had something to do with the main character’s open (though not obnoxious) atheism. But Bury the Dead in Driftwood sounded intriguing, and I bought it. I have to admit, it was pretty good.

Garrison Gage is a small-time private eye who relocated to Barnacle Bluffs, a town on the Oregon coast, to get away from his past. He walks with a limp (often with a cane), due to an old knee injury. A widower, he has adopted a daughter, who is now away in college. He finds, to his amusement, that he’s become a local character, “the detective.”

He didn’t know Harriet Abel, the high school teacher whose body was found under a pile of driftwood on the beach. But she had his name on a piece of paper in her possession, and apparently wanted to hire him. Gage is curious what she wanted from him, and impressed with the universal respect she seemed to command. So he decides to investigate, even without a client.

Property and development money will appear as motives, but things aren’t as simple as they appear. Amusingly, Gage finds beautiful women – including the police chief’s daughter – throwing themselves at him in an almost embarrassing way. A mysterious professional killer appears to make chilling threats. And the one woman Gage cares about more than life itself – his adopted daughter – refuses to keep a safe distance.

I enjoyed Bury the Dead in Driftwood far more than I expected. The one scene involving religion – in a syncretistic Universalist church – took no skin off my nose. The multiple women with Gage in their sights worked up to a very funny scene of embarrassment. And at the end, Gage was able to deliver a fairly non-PC defense of a man’s sense of obligation to protect women.

Mark Twain said of Huckleberry Finn that he had attempted to do a book without weather. Bury the Dead in Driftwood is nothing like that. The weather and geography of coastal Oregon are active characters in this book, beautifully described. Readers will feel as if they’ve been there.

Cautions for the usual, including one “sex” scene that actually involves no sex at all. Pretty good.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Bad to the Bones,’ by James Harper

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I took a chance on the first novel in an unfamiliar detective series, Bad to the Bones, Book 1 of James Harper’s Evan Buckley series.

It held some interest, but didn’t work for me.

Private Eye Evan Buckley (I never really noticed where he lives) suffers a shock and vows to end his meat and potatoes work – investigating unfaithful spouses for divorce cases. His original motivation for becoming a PI was to find missing people, like his own wife who disappeared without explanation. A (surprisingly) friendly police detective refers him to a woman whose son and husband both disappeared some years earlier. She believes the police found an easy explanation and dropped the case without really solving it. Evan vows to discover the truth for her.

Which he does. But the journey to the explanation seemed weird to me. Character relationships struck me as unrealistic – people start by snarling at each other, then suddenly become bosom buddies. The police don’t operate like real police at all.

And the final “resolution” was so horrific that I couldn’t at all comprehend the sense of closure we’re supposed to believe both Buckley and his client feel at the end.

So I don’t really recommend Bad to the Bones. I saw potential in the author, so maybe the following books will be better.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Mission Critical,’ by Mark Greaney

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There really isn’t much to say about a new Gray Man novel, except that it’s a Gray Man novel. One knows what to expect – rising levels of implausible, cinematic action, improbable endurance of injuries by the hero, and a running cast of characters who, if not profoundly portrayed, are interesting and amusing.

Mission Critical (Number 8 in the series) offers a couple fresh elements – new developments in the Romeo-and-Juliet-with-guns romance between hero Court Gentry and the former Russian agent Zoya Zakharova, and the introduction of a new villain whom Court, with all his skills, actually fears.

Court is catching a ride on a CIA transport flight when a covert team transporting a hooded prisoner comes on board. Later, when the prisoner is being transferred on a tarmac in England, the team is attacked by unknown foreign agents – Court kills some of them, and is then sent by his handlers to try to retrieve the prisoner.

Meanwhile Zoya, still being “debriefed” in a safe house in the US, learns that her Russian spy father, whom she had believed dead, is still alive. She makes a snap decision to escape and find him – thus narrowly avoiding an attack on the house by hired assassins. Now she’s in the wind, and the CIA is uncertain whether to consider her friendly or hostile.

There’s a big plot underway to deliver a devastating blow to the intelligence services of all the English-speaking nations at a conference in Scotland. It will take all Court, Zoya, and their teammates can do to stop it – and there will be a price to pay.

Mission Critical was as good as any book in the Gray Man series, and they’ve all been good. High in entertainment value. The usual cautions apply for language, violence, and sexual situations.

Fiction, Reviews

‘An Advancement of Learning,’ by Reginald Hill

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I think I tried to watch one episode of the long-running BBC series, “Dalziel and Pascoe,” based on Reginald Hill’s mystery novels. It just didn’t grab me. But I thought I’d try one of the original books, to see if I caught the magic there. The formula’s pretty familiar – old, grizzled detective teamed with young, callow detective – only these books are old enough that the young detective is allowed to be male.

An Advancement of Learning (the title comes from a book by Sir Francis Bacon) takes place at Holm Coultram College, a fictional school in Yorkshire. A statue is being moved from the spot where it has stood for five years, when human bones are discovered under its base. They turn out to be those of the former Principal of the College, Alison Girling, who was assumed to have died in an avalanche in Switzerland, also about five years ago. Detective Inspector Andrew Dalziel and his assistant Peter Pascoe are assigned the case. Dalziel is an old working-class type, contemptuous of intellectuals and the academic life. Pascoe is a college graduate who once considered a scholar’s life – indeed an old college girlfriend turns out to be on the faculty here. They will encounter partisan instructors, politically radical students (who seem pretty mild by current standards – this was the early ‘70s), drugs and satanic rituals. And there will be more murders. All in all, Dalziel’s view of academics seems to be validated when all is revealed.

There were things I liked about An Advancement of Learning. It was written long enough ago that social norms were a little more conventional – homosexuality is still scandalous, and most people seem to be nominally Christian (though the only vocal Christian in the book is pretty unattractive).

But I didn’t care for author Hill’s writing technique. He spends a lot of pages telling us people’s thoughts. I’ve learned to expect to see plot advanced through dialogue and conflict, rather than interior monologue. So I found it kind of slow going. Also, although I was prepared to like Insp. Dalziel, I didn’t. His personality didn’t seem to go very deep. The ending was moderately satisfactory, though.

You may like this book more than I did. The language was pretty mild, and the violence and sex were mostly off stage.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Agent In Place,’ by Mark Greaney

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One more book in Mark Greaney’s Gray Man series, and it’s as good as its predecessors. In fact, I think I’d rate Agent In Place as one of the best.

It seems like an odd assignment for the world’s greatest assassin, but Court Gentry, the Gray Man, has been hired by a group of Syrian expatriates in Paris to kidnap a supermodel. Bianca Medina is the mistress of a fictionalized president of Syria, Ahmed Azzam, and she has secretly borne him a son. The Syrian patriots who hired Court hope to use her to get to the tyrant.

Court succeeds, but as usual there are wheels within wheels. Azzam’s wife in Damascus is plotting against Bianca with her Swiss lover, a ruthless security expert who is himself plotting to get himself out of Syria. Just as the Syrian army, the Syrian resistance, the Russians, the Americans, ISIS, the Iranians, the Kurds and others are fighting for various purposes in the desert, one faction is fighting another in Europe, each trying to leverage the instability for their own purposes, noble or ignoble or purely mercenary.

In the style of all the Gray Man books, situations that start out complex rapidly unreel into tangles and twists and betrayals that threaten to bring Court’s storied career to a sudden and bloody end. But whatever happens, in Europe or in Syria, Court will find his moral center and do what he sees as right, even to the point of death.

Lots of fun. Agent In Place had a climactic fight scene as deeply satisfying as any I’ve ever read in a book. Cautions for violence, language, and high dramatic tension.