Category Archives: Fiction

Fiction, Reviews

The Jack Stratton novels, by Christopher Greyson

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It’s a rare treat to discover an author and a series of books I enjoy very much, and which I can recommend to our readers almost without reservation. But that’s the case with Christopher Greyson and his Jack Stratton novels.

Jack Stratton, the hero of the series, is a cop in a South Carolina town. He’s a good man, but wound tight. As a boy he was abandoned by his prostitute mother, but found refuge in a loving mixed race foster home before being adopted by a good family. As a young man he served in Iraq beside one of his foster brothers, Chandler. He saw Chandler die, and because of survivor’s guilt he hasn’t contacted his foster family since.

That’s until Replacement invades his life. “Replacement” is the nickname of a young woman who grew up in his old foster home, though after his time there. She shows up in his apartment and tells him Michelle, a foster sister to whom he was always close, has disappeared. She’d been studying in a local college, but supposedly transferred to a California school. Only she hasn’t gotten in touch with her family, and she wouldn’t do that.

With Replacement as his uninvited assistant, he starts looking into Michelle’s life, and discovers troubling things. Continue reading The Jack Stratton novels, by Christopher Greyson →

Fiction

Points on Interstellar

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Jeffrey Overstreet reviews Interstellar, whose trailer really draws me but I gather the movie may not get me singing. I haven’t seen it read, nor have I read all of Jeff’s review. Still, I’m sure it’s good, so I wanted to link to it.

Our friend Hunter Baker says I enjoyed the film, but could not swallow a major plot rationale. Have you seen it? What do you think?

Fiction, Reviews

‘One Bright Star to Guide Them,’ by John C. Wright

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“Innocence and faith are the weapons children bring to bear against open evils; wisdom is required to deal with evils better disguised.”

You might be tempted, on the basis of its description, to think John C. Wright’s novella, One Bright Star to Guide Them, is simple Narnia fanfic. A story of four adults, who were once children who entered a magical land peopled by magicians and talking animals.

But it’s more than that. This story is a transposition of Narnia. Author Wright moves the whole concept onto a different level. It’s a meditation on the most terrible line in all the Narnia books – “Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia.” Thomas, the protagonist, is summoned to take up a new fight against a revived evil. But when he contacts his childhood companions, he finds that – for one reason or another – they are not willing to join him. So he has to test his faith alone, except for the help of their old guide, a mystical kitten called Tybalt.

One Bright Star to Guide Them is a quick read, but entirely worthy of the material that inspired it. Beautiful in places. Highly recommended.

Authors, Fiction

Child on ‘Day of the Jackal’

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From this interview in England last September, author Lee Child mentions Fredrick Forsyth.

I think that Without Fail [2002] would actually be my homage to Day of the Jackal, because it explicitly references Forsyth’s book. The emphasis there is placed upon the assassins planning for escape, as opposed to the [1993] Clint Eastwood/Wolfgang Peterson film, In the Line of Fire, in which the assassin knows he won’t be able to escape. As I said at the CWA Diamond Daggers ceremony, The Day of the Jackal … was Year Zero for the current generation of thriller writers; it was different, and re-set the clock, and we’ve all had to deal with it ever since. So, I didn’t mean it as a direct homage but acknowledged–for all of us, readers and writers–that Fredrick Forsyth is a giant figure, and his debut novel casts a giant shadow over the genre.

Fiction, Reviews

The Jimmy “Soldier” Riley mysteries, by Michael Lister

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For a little while, while I was reading the first Jimmy “Soldier” Riley mystery, I thought I’d found something wonderful to recommend to you. Alas, the execution did not live up to the promise.

Jimmy Riley’s nickname is “Soldier,” which embarrasses him a little. World War II is raging, but he never actually served in it. He’s missing his right arm, but he lost that in a gun fight in his capacity as a cop. Now he’s a private detective in Panama City, Florida.

But his mind isn’t on his work these days. He’s desperately in love – with the wife of a rich banker. He thought she felt the same way about him, but she broke their affair off one day, without explanation. Now he’s mooning around the office, and his partner is worried about him.

But one day Lauren, the Woman He Loves, comes to his office to ask if he’s been following her (he hasn’t). She refuses to hire him to investigate, but he starts looking on his own initiatve.

That’s the promising set-up of The Big Goodbye, the first book in a trilogy. Unfortunately, the following books, The Big Beyond and The Big Hello, don’t live up to expectations. Continue reading The Jimmy “Soldier” Riley mysteries, by Michael Lister →

Blogs, Socials, Fiction

If These Old Bones Could Talk

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Loren Eaton has written a short story for a collective Halloween storytelling event. It’s a story of a young girl who discovers she hears and experiences things when she touches the bones of deceased animals. It’s a bone-chilling (heh, heh) idea which rings true in sad way. If we didn’t have a culture of death in this world, this kind of story would feel completely fantastic.

Bones spoke to Jenny.

She discovered the gift — if gift it was — at the age of five. Her brother, Samuel, had been excavating in the backyard with a red-bladed Ames True Temper shovel. A foot down, he accidentally disturbed the grave of one Fluffymump, a former favorite feline. Some surreptitious digging, a quick bend and snatch, and he whirled, shouting, “Hey, Germy, catch.”

Fluffymump’s sepia skull landed in Jenny’s outstretched hands.

Naturally, she screamed and ran upstairs to her room. Naturally, Jenny’s father bent Samuel over his knee and given him three sharp whacks. Naturally, Jenny’s mother followed close after to offer consolation and chocolate chip cookies only just taken from the oven. But that was where expectation ended.

Read the rest on his blog, I Saw Lightning Fall.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Reviews

Veith likes ‘Death’s Doors’

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Our friend Prof. Gene Edward Veith of Patrick Henry College gives my latest novel the thumbs up:

But although there are a lot of big ideas in this book and a lot of rich theologizing, Death’s Doors is just fun to read. It’s suspenseful, exciting, and wildly imaginative, both in the author’s story telling and in the way it stimulates the reader’s imagination. And I’m realizing that all good novels–including Christian novels, classics, and other works that are Good for You–need to have those qualities. And this one does.

Read it all here.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Suspect,’ by Robert Crais

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I generally don’t read books featuring dogs (except for Dean Koontz books, where you can’t avoid them), for the same reason I don’t own a dog. It’s because I love dogs dearly, and firmly believe that no master (certainly including me) has ever been worthy of his canine pet. I’m not sure I can bear the purity of a dog’s love.

Which made Robert Crais’ novel Suspect difficult in places. That’s not to say I didn’t like it. But if you aren’t an actual dog hater, this one will break your heart – in a good way.

Scott James is a Los Angeles cop who’s gotten derailed on his career path to SWAT. He was shot and severely injured in an ambush where his female partner was killed. After months of recovery and rehab, he’s ready to return to work – pretending he’s in better shape than he is. He’s not fit enough for SWAT anymore, so he’s switching to the K-9 squad.

At the end of his training he meets Maggie, a German Shepherd who was formerly a bomb sniffing dog in Afghanistan. She lost her partner and was wounded too, and is hostile to anyone who’s not “pack.” But something in her touches Scott, and he gets permission to try her as his partner. They’re both on probation, they both have PTSD, and they’re not entirely ready for service.

Scott starts digging into the ambush where his partner was killed, and begins to suspect police involvement and a cover-up. Keeping his head down while trying to camouflage his own (and his dog’s) physical shortcomings, he walks a dangerous path. But the man has a Best Friend.

Exciting, gripping, and deeply moving, Suspect is a tremendously entertaining read. Crais has taken a risk in writing a stand-alone not related to his Cole and Pike novels, but he succeeds completely. Highly recommended, with the usual cautions for adult themes and language.

Authors, Fiction

Miller’s Liebowitz Still Worth Reading

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Here’s an essay of author Walter M. Miller and his classic apocalyptic novel A Canticle for Leibowitz. “Along with Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles,” “A Canticle for Leibowitz” was one of the first novels to escape from the science-fiction ghetto and become a staple of high-school reading lists.”

Within the cathedral of post-apocalyptic and dystopian literature, there ought to be a small sanctum reserved for books produced out of the author’s personal experience with cataclysmic events. Other works that fit into this niche include Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five,” which was inspired by the writer having witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden, and “The Forever War,” Joe Haldeman’s 1974 novel, which drew directly on his tour of duty in Vietnam.

(via Books, Inq.)

Authors, Fiction

The Primeval Glory of War

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Janie Cheaney talks about war in the context of Andrew Peterson’s fourth book in The Wingfeather Saga. Do Christian novelists simplify and glorify it? “While most wars are wasteful and pointless, some are not. And ugly and terrifying as it is, battle seems to have an almost primeval appeal, especially to men. It’s as if they are called to find out what’s in them: savagery or heroism, unspeakable cruelty or self-sacrifice, the best or the worst.”

It’s a strong desire to live for something large. Perhaps that’s how we currently express the eternity God has set in our hearts “yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). That yearning for glory easily yields to the lust of our pride, making our desire to live for something big subservient to a desire to live a self-directed life, and in doing so we end up fighting over selfish things or for unwise causes. Lars’ latest novel, Death’s Doors, deals with this in that there’s a real battle over life and death raging around the characters, but their perspectives are too self-centered to see it for a while.