Jeffrey Overstreet now has three very imaginative fantasy in his Auralia’s Colors series. Here’s a review of the third one.
Category Archives: Fiction
Scandinavian Mysteries
Scandinavian crime fiction is popular these days, for example, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Laura Miller writes about it for the Wall Street Journal.
“Counterintuitive as it may seem, the Scandinavian brand of moroseness can be soothing in hard times. Its roots lie deep in the ancient, pagan literature of the region, preserved in sagas that were first written down in medieval Iceland. The sagas, created by and for people who led supremely difficult lives, are about love, death and war, like all great stories, but above all, they’re about fate.”
Mini-review: Final Victim, Stephen J. Cannell
This will be a mini-review. I’ve reviewed one of Stephen J. Cannell’s novels already, and will doubtless review more (I’ve become a fan). Final Victim isn’t a world-changing novel, but I thought it very well crafted, and I just wanted to meditate on its virtues.
Cannell, as you likely know, is one of the most successful television producers in the industry. He’s also a prolific script writer (though, interestingly, he’s dyslexic). As a professional, he knows how to tell a story, seizing the viewer’s (or reader’s) attention with a wrestler’s grip, and never letting go. Continue reading Mini-review: Final Victim, Stephen J. Cannell
Flying Dutch, by Tom Holt
A couple of my friends are Tom Holt fiends, and they’ve contrived to place in my hands three of his best novels (I reviewed the other two here). Flying Dutch is another offering in his original idiom (to quote, appropriately, Sir Lancelot in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”), the legend-based farce. (He’s moved into actual historical fiction with his more recent novel Meadowlands, a story of Vikings in America which I haven’t read yet.)
As you may have guessed, this is the story of the Flying Dutchman. In legend, the Flying Dutchman is a sea captain who cursed God, and so was condemned to sail the seas forever, allowed to visit shore only once every seven years, until some condition (true love, in Wagner’s opera) is fulfilled.
Holt’s version is slightly different. The Dutchman, Cornelius Vanderdecker, is indeed immortal, along with his crew, and only gets shore leave once in seven years, but the reason is somewhat more prosaic (I won’t spoil it for you). His story gets entwined with that of Jane Doland, an English accountant who stumbles onto the financial complications that naturally result from owning a still-in-force, three century old insurance policy.
As she investigates, and eventually gets to know the Dutchman herself, the true story is gradually revealed. We encounter among other elements alchemy, an immortal cat, and the meddling of a television producer who has figured in other Holt novels.
Once again, I felt that Holt’s writing resembled nothing so much as P.G. Wodehouse’s. Holt isn’t as great a genius as The Master, but he can be very funny, and the plots are similar—a colorful cast of characters, many of them none too bright, meaning well and crossing one another in multiple boneheaded ways. There’s a hint of politics, with some mild criticism of the United States, and the conventional assumption that nuclear power is purely evil, but you’re not intended to take any of it seriously. The ending is satisfying, if off-center.
No offensive elements that I recall. Recommended, if you can find a copy (it’s out of print, sadly).
Robert Crais interview
Thanks to Aitchmark, for sending me the link to this National Review “Between the Covers” interview by John J. Miller, with author Robert Crais (whom I’ve reviewed frequently here). He discusses his new novel, The First Rule.
Android Karenina from Quirk Books
It’s the 100th year anniversary of Tolstoy’s death, so Quirk Books plans to revamp one of his great novels with robots and stuff.
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, by Michael Chabon
Michael Chabon is a brilliant writer, and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is a masterful, scintillating book. It’s lyrical as a poem, funny as a Shecky Greene monologue, and engaging as a crossword puzzle. It’s the kind of book that makes lesser authors (like me) want to throw their laptops through the window and take up careers in online marketing.
And yet I don’t recommend it.
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is a hard-boiled police novel, set in an alternate universe in which the state of Israel failed in 1948. The homeless Jews were (grudgingly) offered a home in the Alaska panhandle, around Sitka. There they have lived for almost 60 years (the book is set in 2007), but next year the mandate runs out, and the land is scheduled to be returned to the Tlinkit Indians (that’s pronounced “Clinkit,” by the way. You probably didn’t know that. I know it because I spent a summer in the Shumagin Islands, long ago).
It’s in this climate of insecurity and futility that police detective Meyer Landsman is taken to view the body of a gunshot victim in the seedy hotel where he’s lived since his divorce. The body turns out to be that of a once-famous young man, a chess prodigy, rabbi’s son and miracle worker who many thought would be the Messiah. Depressed, self-destructive, alcoholic, Det. Landsman sets about solving the mystery, sometimes helped and sometimes hindered by his half-Tlinkit partner and his ex-wife, who is now his boss.
Be warned—the rest of this review includes spoilers. Not spoilers about the plot, but about the meaning of the book. Of course, I may have misunderstood the meaning altogether, as ordinary chess players in this novel are baffled by the moves of the great masters. But I’ll tell you what I got out of it, for whatever that’s worth.
The lesson of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is that the real danger in the world comes from the devout, whatever their religion. Chabon has cleverly, in his alternate universe, created a world without Islamic terrorism (because we all know there’d be no Islamic terrorism if there were no Israel). But there is terrorism nevertheless, coming out of those famously vicious groups, orthodox Jews and Christian evangelicals.
This book, it appears to me, is the heart-cry of the assimilated, secular, self-hating Jew. When the Muslim terrorist says it’s all the Jews’ fault, Chabon (it would appear) hangs his head and says, “It’s true. But it’s not my fault. It’s the fault of those black hats. They’re just crazy.”
So the book saddened me. I should also mention that I read it to the end, though—something which I rarely do with books that offend me deeply. This one was just too good to put down, even when I thought it morally perverse and dangerous.
Cautions for language apply—not only obscenity and cursing, but actual blasphemy. Also a lot of jokes about Jews that no Gentile could get away with.
Read at your own risk.
The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon
Michael Chabon is a brilliant writer, and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is a masterful, scintillating book. It’s lyrical as a poem, funny as a Shecky Greene monologue, and engaging as a crossword puzzle. It’s the kind of book that makes lesser authors (like me) want to throw their laptops through the window and take up careers in online marketing.
And yet I don’t recommend it.
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is a hard-boiled police novel, set in an alternate universe in which the state of Israel failed in 1948. The homeless Jews were (grudgingly) offered a home in the Alaska panhandle, around Sitka. There they have lived for almost 60 years (the book is set in 2007), but next year the mandate runs out, and the land is scheduled to be returned to the Tlinkit Indians (that’s pronounced “Clinkit,” by the way. You probably didn’t know that. I know it because I spent a summer in the Shumagin Islands, long ago).
It’s in this climate of insecurity and futility that police detective Meyer Landsman is taken to view the body of a gunshot victim in the seedy hotel where he’s lived since his divorce. The body turns out to be that of a once-famous young man, a chess prodigy, rabbi’s son and miracle worker who many thought would be the Messiah. Depressed, self-destructive, alcoholic, Det. Landsman sets about solving the mystery, sometimes helped and sometimes hindered by his half-Tlinkit partner and his ex-wife, who is now his boss.
Be warned—the rest of this review includes spoilers. Not spoilers about the plot, but about the meaning of the book. Of course, I may have misunderstood the meaning altogether, as ordinary chess players in this novel are baffled by the moves of the great masters. But I’ll tell you what I got out of it, for whatever that’s worth.
The lesson of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is that the real danger in the world comes from the devout, whatever their religion. Chabon has cleverly, in his alternate universe, created a world without Islamic terrorism (because we all know there’d be no Islamic terrorism if there were no Israel). But there is terrorism nevertheless, coming out of those famously vicious groups, orthodox Jews and Christian evangelicals.
This book, it appears to me, is the heart-cry of the assimilated, secular, self-hating Jew. When the Muslim terrorist says it’s all the Jews’ fault, Chabon (it would appear) hangs his head and says, “It’s true. But it’s not my fault. It’s the fault of those black hats. They’re just crazy.”
So the book saddened me. I should also mention that I read it to the end, though—something which I rarely do with books that offend me deeply. This one was just too good to put down, even when I thought it morally perverse and dangerous.
Cautions for language apply—not only obscenity and cursing, but actual blasphemy. Also a lot of jokes about Jews that no Gentile could get away with.
Read at your own risk.
Stocking books and setting stages
A sure sign of Epiphany around my office is the ceremonial ordering of the spring textbooks for the Bible school and seminary. In spite of one accommodating instructor, who told me he made a point of ordering mostly books he’d determined to be already in stock, this batch is proving more difficult than usual. A surprising number of the books on the list are out of print, which means ordering them through Amazon. One thing I don’t like about Amazon’s system is that, when they tell you a book is available from an affiliated bookseller, there’s no information as to whether that seller has one copy or many. So I end up buying one copy each from a long list of vendors, and that drives the shipping/handling costs up.
Our buddy Loren Eaton, over at I Saw Lightning Fall, links today to a fascinating piece at Tor.com by author Mary Pearson, about the importance of setting in fiction. An excellent essay, well worth reading.
I think sometimes setting is almost relegated to the grab bag of afterthoughts when it comes to describing it, but setting is what makes the characters and plot come alive. It creates atmosphere that the reader can share. It reveals who the character is and how they came to be that person. It supports and pushes events so things happen. It is metaphor and motivation, and often even the janitor too, swishing its mop across the stage long after the performance has ended and you are still in your seat and don’t want to leave. The setting is the last to leave your memory.
I’ve never thought about setting much, because in my own stories setting usually comes pre-packaged with the story. When I write about Vikings, the locale is fairly limited (though the Vikings swung a pretty wide cat, as my latest book shows). And if I’m not writing about Vikings as such, I write Viking-themed modern stories set in the country where I grew up and live. To be honest, I hate trying to write about places I’ve never visited. I figure that, as oblivious as I am to my own home town, parading my ignorance about an exotic place would be overreaching.
But that still determines what kind of stories I can write, whether I like it or not. Or, as Loren says,
Consider how a simple tale of cunning detective thwarts career thief changes when moved from New York to Botswana or to one of Jupiter’s Galilean moons. Despite sharing similar plot arcs, Neuromancer feels worlds away from any of Richard Stark’s Parker novels. That’s because setting is more than color or icing, more than a chance for an author to wax poetic. It sets boundaries, draws lines, holds the course. It says, “You go this far — but no farther.”
The Tin Collectors, by Stephen J. Cannell
I picked up my first novel by Stephen J. Cannell with some misgivings. Cannell is, of course, one of television’s biggest producers and writers, responsible for some great shows (like The Rockford Files and The Commish) and some I consider less noteworthy (like The A Team, which strained credibility farther than I was willing to tolerate).
But being able to put together a successful TV show doesn’t necessarily qualify someone to craft a decent novel. There’s overlap in the two occupations, but big differences as well. And, like any literary snob, I suppose I looked down my nose at the TV connection.
But now I’m convinced. The Tin Collectors was a very good mystery—well written, hard to put down and graced with vivid, sympathetic characters.
Shane Scully is a Los Angeles police detective. As the story opens, he’s awakened from sleep by a call from Barbara Molar, a former girlfriend who is now married to his ex-partner, Ray. Ray has come home mad, she tells him, and he’s trying to kill her. Continue reading The Tin Collectors, by Stephen J. Cannell