Train travel I was used to; plane travel was something new, and a little frightening. Truth be told, I slept through a lot of it. Twenty-five other hearty souls and I sat within the DC-3 “Flagship,” a noisy, rattling projectile that churned through the night sky like a big kitchen mixer.

I’ve praised Max Allan Collins’s Nate Heller novels here before, especially the early volumes. The first three in the series, True Detective, True Crime, and this book, The Million Dollar Wound, comprise what’s called the Frank Nitti Trilogy—three books that don’t necessarily focus on gangster Frank Nitti (whom, if you only know him from the movie The Untouchables, you don’t know anything about at all), but are set in the Nitti era of Chicago crime, and end—in this volume—with his death.

The Million Dollar Wound (military slang for a non-debilitating wound serious enough to send a guy home, see also, “Hollywood Wound”) begins with Nate Heller waking up in a military mental hospital, unable to remember his name or how he got there. A sympathetic doctor tries hypnotism on him, which allows us to flash back and learn how he—in spite of being old enough to avoid the draft—had enlisted in the Marines with his friend Barney Ross, the prizefighter, in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. We learn of the hell they endured on Guadalcanal, but most of the book concentrates on a post-war adventure, when Nate is hired by newspaper columnist Westbrook Pegler to investigate mob influence in motion picture unions, and then—dangerously—hired by those very labor racketeers to tell them if anybody is nosing around in their business. Famous people encountered include actor Robert Montgomery, fan dancer Sally Rand (Nate’s current girlfriend), Eliot Ness, and—of course—Frank Nitti.

Author Collins’s realistic—though sometimes far-fetched (the two things aren’t necessarily contradictory)–take on Frank Nitti and his era is fascinating. Nate Heller would deny being a friend of Nitti’s, or admiring him, but he sees him as far smarter—and less toxic to society—than his predecessor, Al Capone, or the lesser mobsters who followed him. This is Chicago, after all, Nate would say. There’s an element of tragedy in Nitti’s ugly end.

Recommended, with the usual cautions for language, violence, and adult situations.

“…They even make virtues out of ‘humility’ and ‘turning the other cheek’ and ‘loving everybody.’ Because it alleviates their guilt. It’s much nicer to pretend to yourself that your passivity makes you a saint, rather than just another gutless puke who won’t take a stand for what’s right.”

The passage above kind of encapsulates my ambivalence about the novel HUNTER: A Thriller, by Robert Bidinotto. There’s much to enjoy and appreciate in the book, and it promotes some ideas with which I strongly agree. But in my view it’s taken a little farther than I, as a Christian, can endorse. It’s not merely that I disagree with the Randian point of view on display here; I think the treatment weakens the argument (and the story) in some ways.

I usually do a synopsis of a novel’s opening chapters when I write a review, but the peculiar structure of this story makes that hard to do without spoiling the central surprise (if surprise it is). So I’ll mostly talk about the concepts underlying the story.

The central problem of this book is the early release of dangerous felons into society. Our justice system, as Bidinotto paints it (and he says all the atrocities in the story are based on true events) is that in order to take pressure off the courts and prisons, we’ve set in place a system that automatically pleas down criminal charges, and then shortens even those abbreviated prison sentences through early release for “good behavior.” This early release is facilitated by a naïve network of social service agencies staffed by do-gooders eager to let the prisoners out, proud of their “success” in rehabilitating them. But when those prisoners kill again, these do-gooders feel no responsibility. Continue reading Hunter: A Thriller, by Robert Bidinotto →

First of all, I’ll just start by saying thumbs up on this one. Killer Swell isn’t the greatest private eye story I’ve ever read, but it drew me in and kept my interest. The characters were well-drawn and realistically layered, for the most part.

In this first novel of an ongoing series, Noah Braddock, San Diego surfer/private eye, is approached by the mother of his former girlfriend. The girlfriend, whom he had deeply loved, broke up with him years ago under pressure from her parents, when she went off to college. But now she’s gone missing, and they’re desperate enough to come to Noah for help.

And he, of course, can’t resist the appeal, even coming from them. But things get messy very quickly, and soon he’s forced to delve deeply into his lost love’s personal life, discovering things he’d much rather have never learned.

I’ve often written about the archetype of the American private eye. Particularly the fact that he’s often a figure of male fantasy. What guy, in his heart, doesn’t sometimes dream of living unfettered, setting his own hours, having uncommitted sex with a series of dangerous dames, and being the Spillaneian Jury?

Noah Braddock seems like a prime example of this paradigm. He combines two occupations that appeal to every guy’s inner Peter Pan—the P.I. and the surf bum.

And yet, Noah is an oddly responsible man. I thought his strength of character, oddly, a weakness in his character, if “character” is understood in its purely literary sense. It seemed odd to me that a guy this mature would choose a lifestyle that might as well have a sign reading “Perpetual Adolescent” taped to it. He seemed to me more suited to conventional police work (though he tells the reader he tried that and got bored) and a traditional marriage.

But that’s just my quibble. Others may disagree. I enjoyed Killer Swell, and will probably return to the Noah Braddock series.

The usual cautions for language and adult themes apply.

What was it really like, living in England in the days leading up to World War II? Judging by Mark Chisnell’s novel The Fulcrum Files, it was a time of great confusion and self-delusion. I suspect that picture is accurate.

Ben Clayton, our hero, is an engineer for a British aircraft company, but has been assigned to work on preparing a racing yacht for the America’s Cup race (aeronautics and shipbuilding being sister enterprises). Ben was, as a teenager, one of Britain’s best prospects as a boxer, but he nearly killed another boy in a fight. Horrified, he gave up boxing and became a pacifist.

Pacifism is highly popular and respected in England in 1936. As author Chisnell deftly portrays the era, everybody’s got an ideology—pacifism or communism or Labour or Fascism or Aristocracy, and almost everybody has good intentions. The one thing almost everyone agrees on is that there will not be another war. Impossible. The people wouldn’t stand for another bloodbath like the Great War. Hitler has some legitimate grievances, so throw him a bone and everything will settle down.

But when Ben’s best friend is killed in an accident while fitting a new mast, and that friend is found to have been deeply in debt and involved with shady people, Ben sets out to clear his name. He learns things he’d rather not learn, and eventually has to make choices he’d rather not make. It does no good to avoid the war. The war will not avoid you.

I particularly liked the characters in The Fulcrum Files. They seemed authentic and complex, doing very different, even appalling, things out of a desire to do right. We tend today to see World War II (properly) in very black and white terms, but nobody knew those things in 1936, and Chisnell excels at psychological realism. There’s a love story for the ladies, and lots of boats for those who (like me) enjoy reading about the sea.

The Fulcrum Files does not rise to the heights of the thriller genre, but I enjoy a book that tells a smaller story well. Mild cautions for language, violence, and adult subject matter, but the book is suitable for teens and up.