“Fast-paced,” “action-packed,” and “breathlessly exciting” are adjectival terms you expect to use when describing a good spy thriller. They all apply to Tim Stevens’ debut novel, Ratcatcher. I discover, however, that it’s possible to take those virtues too far.

The term “Ratcatchers,” we are told, is what English spies call a top-secret, independent group that works to apprehend and eliminate secret agents who’ve gone bad. The hero of the book, John Purkiss, was an English agent until the murder of his beloved fiancée, a fellow agent named Claire. Claire was killed by yet another agent named Fallon, who was convicted of her murder. Then Purkiss left the service and was recruited as a Ratcatcher.

As the story opens Purkiss learns that Fallon has been given early release from prison, and has now been reported in Estonia. Purkiss is sent there to investigate, and soon discovers evidence of a conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism during an upcoming visit by the Russian president.

I can’t deny that Ratcatcher is an exciting book. My problem with it is that it reads more like a Sylvester Stallone movie than a novel. Because of the very nature of cinema, an audience will swallow a lot of improbabilities that the more contemplative environment of reading makes it harder to accept. Just as in a movie, the principal characters here suffer severe, repeated physical trauma without much loss of effective physical function. They mostly get shot at by bad shots. And their own guns never seem to run out of bullets.

I must admit, though, that there were a couple very neat plot twists at the end. And the prose itself, both dialogue and exposition, was professional.

Ratcatcher is worth reading, purely for entertainment. Cautions for language and violence. The sexual content was fairly mild.

The Western mystery story is not as rare a phenomenon as you might think. The conventions of the mystery transfer pretty well to the Wild West, and many famous mystery writers cranked out westerns as well, back in the days when you could make a living writing for the pulps.

Contemporary author James D. Best carries on this tradition with his Steve Dancy stories. Steve is a former gun shop owner from New York City, transferred to the west where, although his primary concern is business, he has made a reputation as a gunman. I thought this approach added freshness to the whole enterprise. We often forget that cowboys shared a country and a time with men like Thomas Edison and Cornelius Vanderbilt, but Steve Dancy straddles both worlds.

Murder at Thumb Butte starts in Carson City, Nevada, where Steve and his friend Jeff Sharp are arguing about where to go next. Steve wants badly to go to Prescott, Arizona. There’s a man in Prescott who has some stock certificates, worthless in themselves, which could cause difficulty for Steve in a project he’s contemplating—using Tom Edison’s electric light to illuminate mines. Unfortunately, Jeff already knows this man, who once slandered him in the vilest way possible. When they get to Prescott, Jeff loses little time in punching his old enemy and telling him he’ll kill him next time he sees him. When the man is found murdered the next morning out near Thumb Butte, with Jeff’s own rifle lying next to the body, he’s arrested for the murder by Constable Virgil Earp, and Steve has to set his mind to clearing his friend. With the help of another friend, Pinkerton agent Joseph McAllen, who comes to town with his daughter Maggie and a married couple who are also operatives, he sets about that project. Continue reading Murder at Thumb Butte, by James D. Best →

When I review novels here, I fight with myself over wanting to write something deep with observations on the rich parts of the book vs. saying too much and spoiling it for new readers. Since it’s easier to go light, I usually do, so I doubt you expect to read great, thoughtful posts from me. No, no. It’s my fault. I’ve already given you a positive, light-handed review of J. Mark Bertrand’s Back on Murder (A Roland March Mystery), but some readers have complained that they found little Christianity in the Roland March series. I’ve only read the first one, but here are some observations I made on the Christian themes of Back on Murder. Do I need to warn you against possible spoilers? Continue reading Themes, Observations on Bertrand’s ‘Back on Murder’ →

I found much to like in Paul Levine’s light legal thriller, Solomon vs. Lord, first in a series. I also found elements that creeped me out. I’ll give you my reaction; judge for yourself.

Like most male readers, I don’t actually hate romance in a story. I just don’t care for stories that are only romance. I want some swords or some guns, or stuff getting blown up. If you’re going to have romance, the best kind is the Benedick and Beatrice sort (as in Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing”), where the man and the woman fight like a dog and a cat, and everyone but they can see that it’s because they have unusual sexual chemistry.

That’s what we have in Solomon vs. Lord. Steve Solomon is a talented, not-overly-ethical Miami lawyer, who at the beginning is defending a man charged with importing exotic animals illegally. Arguing for the prosecution is Victoria Lord, scion of a wealthy family that’s fallen on hard times. Her life plan calls for her to pay her dues in the DA’s office, then get a job with a respectable law firm. She’s also going to marry Bruce Bigby, a handsome and wealthy avocado grower and real estate tycoon. Continue reading Solomon vs. Lord, by Paul Levine →

We said goodbye to our mothers. They’d been around all our lives, but we’d never properly seen them. They’d been bent over washing tubs or cooking pots, their faces red and swollen from heat and steam, holding everything together while our fathers were away at sea, and nodding off every night in the kitchen chair, with a darning needle in hand. It was their endurance and exhaustion we knew, rather than them. And we never asked them for anything because we didn’t want to bother them.

That was how we showed our love. With silence.

…Our mother sticks a knife in our heart when we say goodbye on the wharf. And we stick a knife in hers when we go. And that’s how we’re connected: through the hurt we inflict on one another.

I really didn’t have much choice about buying Danish author Carsten Jensen’s We, the Drowned. I’ve been telling you how much I like sea stories, and this is a sea epic. One quarter of my ancestors were Danes, and this is the story of a small maritime village on a Danish island, not all that far from where my people came from (though mine were farmers, as far as I know. My sailing ancestors were Norwegian. Close enough).

We, the Drowned is a long book, and strange. It starts out in an almost whimsical faction, telling us of Lauritz Madsen of the town of Marstal, who started a war with Germany singlehanded, and was blown up over the mainsail, saw St. Peter’s backside, and landed on his feet back on deck to tell the tale.

But that’s pretty much the end of the whimsy. Author Jensen quickly falls into the fatalistic tone so common in Scandinavian literature. Things get grim, and they stay grim by and large. There are fantastical, magical realism elements to the book, but they mostly follow sailors’ superstitions—visions and omens and objects carrying bad luck. Continue reading We, the Drowned, by Carsten Jensen →