There are various ways for authors to handle the problem of aging in popular series characters. Some characters never age at all. Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin were unaffected by the passage of decades. John D. MacDonald, as I recall, allowed his hero Travis McGee to age about one year for every three in real time. This lent an illusion of realism, while extending McGee’s effective life as an action hero as long as the author was likely to live. Perhaps the bravest course is to just let nature take its course.

That’s what Stephen Hunter is doing in his Bob Lee Swagger novels. Old Bob Lee, decorated Vietnam War Marine sniper, is getting long in the tooth. He’s moving slow, and feeling his aches and pains (especially the ones from his multiple wounds) pretty badly.

So Hunter has apparently decided to take the series in a new direction. And I salute him for it. In Dead Zero he’s produced an exciting and compelling action novel in which Bob Lee acts as the shrewd old detective, reader of human “landscape,” and spotter, but another, younger sniper has come on board to do the running and crawling and shooting. Continue reading Dead Zero, by Stephen Hunter →

When men are weary they fall into anarchy; but while they are gay and vigorous they invariably make rules. This, which is true of all the churches and republics of history, is also true of the most trivial parlour game or the most unsophisticated meadow romp.

We are never free until some institution frees us; and liberty cannot exist till it is declared by authority….

This may be the most delightful of all G. K. Chesterton’s fictional romps. Many love The Man Who Was Thursday, but Manalive is perhaps the distillation of the author’s philosophy of life; a comedy that makes his most serious point.

The central character of Manalive is Innocent Smith, a huge but oddly graceful gentleman who leaps into a suburban London garden one day, chasing his hat in the wind. He is not at all irritated by having his hat blown away; he declares to the people present that hat chasing is one of his favorite sports. He then proceeds to shoot a physician’s hat off with a pistol, an action which sparks the story’s odd action.

Soon three young men have proposed to three young women, and had their proposals accepted. Then authorities come to take Innocent Smith away. He is, according to information received, an attempted murderer, a burglar, and a bigamist, believed to be dangerously insane. Through one of those odd plot contrivances that could only happen in a Chesterton story, a hearing on his sanity is held in that very house. Evidence against Smith is heard, and explanations given.

Without giving away the details, the whole point is that Smith is a man who has discovered how wonderful life is, and is determined to make himself forever aware of the wonder of living through finding new ways rediscover its beauty. He seems insane because he’s eminently sane. He looks like a murderer because he imparts life wherever he goes. He is a walking paradox, Chesterton’s perfect brain-child.

If you’re looking for realistic fiction, this is not the book for you. Chesterton, as is his wont, stretches probability as wide as Innocent Smith’s waistcoat. He plays with ideas, plays with his characters, and plays with the reader. He is endearing and maddening—just like his main character.

Recommended without reservation.

Stephen Lawhead has never been a conventional Christian author, or even a conventional fantasy author. He writes by his own rules. Sometimes I like what he does, sometimes not so much. But all in all I was pleased with his novel The Skin Map, and look forward to the continuation of the series.

The main character is a generally unremarkable young man, Kit Livingston, who lives in contemporary London. One day he gets lost and wanders into an alley, where he meets a man who claims to be his great-grandfather, Cosimo Livingston. Cosimo claims that there are invisible paths and portals (“ley lines”) throughout the world, by which knowledgeable travelers may travel through time, space, and dimension.

Kit tries to explain to his girlfriend Wilhelmina why he missed their date. To prove his story to her, he takes her back to that alley and successfully makes a jump to the historical past—17th Century London. But he gets separated from Wilhelmina, who finds herself (we learn later) in Bohemia at about the same time. (One of the pleasures of this book is the Wilhelmina subplot, in which an unhappy 21st Century feminist finds personal fulfillment as a businesswoman in 17th Century Prague.)

Kit finds Cosimo, who agrees it’s important to try to locate Wilhelmina and send her home. But to do that they need a map. There is only one map of the ley lines, the “Skin Map,” a piece of parchment made from the tattooed skin of the first explorer to chart the space-and-time-byways. (He had the map made on his own torso so that he could never lose it.) That map has been cut into several pieces, and the single piece Cosimo and his friend Sir Henry Fayth possessed has been stolen. Before long they learn they have more serious problems than the disappearance of Wilhelmina. A very dangerous and resourceful enemy is doing his best to assemble the Skin Map for his own megalomaniac purposes, and he will stint at no crime to get what he wants.

I found The Skin Map a very engaging fantasy entertainment, suitable for teens and older. Good values are taught, and Christianity is presented in a serious, positive light. I think Stephen Lawhead was wise to move away from medieval fantasy, at least for a while. He seems to have grown uncomfortable with the kind of sword-and-armor violence that such stories demand, and this idiosyncratic adventure gives him scope for other kinds of action. Recommended.