Quotations: Here’s a great example of how asking the simple question, “Who said that?” or “Who was the first to say that?” can lead to nowhere interesting. Consider the origin of this statement: “Thinking is the hardest work many people ever have to do, and they don’t like to do any more of it than they can help.”
Quote Investigator also points out that AI programs can miss what doesn’t seem possible to miss, as in a line in an Edgar Allen Poe story.
Pranking Academic Journals: I remember the journal article Boghossian refers to as the one that busted them (the dog park article) and I thought I blogged about it at the time, but perhaps I didn’t. I tend to shy away from topics even loosely related to sex. In this video from Dad Saves America, Boghossian discusses his attempt to expose peer-reviewed journals that are willing to publish any nonsense that falls within accepted dogma. It’s incredible.
I can’t say I was any too pleased. I felt the old beak furtively. It was a bit on the prominent side, perhaps, but, dash it, not in the Cyrano class. It began to look as if the next thing this girl would do would be to compare me to Schnozzie Durante.
I suppose there must be a time when it would be a mistake to read a P. G. Wodehouse novel, but I can’t think of one offhand. And for this reader, the Jeeves and Wooster stories are supreme. It’s Bertie Wooster’s narration that makes all the difference.
Opinions differ, naturally, on what is the best J&W novel, but I think Right Ho, Jeeves must be in anybody’s top two or three. John Le Carre called it one of his all-time favorite novels. An internet poll in 2009 voted it the best comic novel ever penned by an English writer. Published in 1934, RH,J was Wodehouse’s second full-length Jeeves novel. Critics have noted that these first two books share the common theme of Bertie attempting to assert himself in the face of Jeeves’ intelligence and personality; that element was reduced in later stories. But it can’t have been because it was ineffective as a plot element – it’s irresistible.
When we join our heroes, Bertie has just returned from a holiday in Cannes. He soon clashes with his valet Jeeves over his new dinner jacket – a “white mess jacket with brass buttons” that was all the rage on the Riviera that summer. Bertie insists that he will wear the garment, creating a coldness between master and servant.
So when Bertie gets word that his cousin Angela Travers has broken her engagement to his old friend Tuppy Glossop, he refuses to appeal to Jeeves to solve the problem, but comes up with a plan of his own. Similarly, when his old school chum Gussie Fink-Nottle tells him he can’t work up the nerve to propose to Madeline Bassett (a girl Bertie considers too goopy to live, but just right for the feckless Gussie) he hands him a scheme of his own (based on “the psychology of the individual”).
Needless to say, all Bertie’s plans lead to disaster, and in the end only Jeeves’ fantastic brain can bring about a resolution – a resolution that will involve a considerable amount of discomfort for Bertie himself. One notes a certain refined vindictiveness in Jeeves here, but it’s the affectionate vindictiveness of a parent who wants to teach an errant child a lesson they won’t forget.
No review of Right Ho, Jeeves would be complete without a mention of the classic scene when Gussie, drunk as a lord for the first time in his life, distributes prizes to students at Market Snodsbury grammar school. Here is farce raised to Olympian heights.
What a treat. If you haven’t read Right Ho, Jeeves, do yourself a favor.
He owns four billion dollars’ worth of abstract expressionist paintings so meaningless and ugly that, displayed in one gallery, they would render connoisseurs of such art suicidal with delight.
Dean Koontz’ colossal success as a novelist, combined with his quirky Catholic faith, have made it possible for him to take risks most writers wouldn’t. The Forest of Lost Souls is clearly experimental in nature. Although I enjoyed it, I’m not entirely sure how successful the experiment is.
Vida, the heroine of the book, is a young woman of rare beauty and even rarer gifts. Orphaned young and raised by a kindly uncle in his mountain cabin in Colorado, she makes her living mining and polishing precious stones for sale. She has a strange gift for finding gems, but that’s only one of her talents. She sees hidden beauty everywhere, and lives in harmony with nature and its animals, who do not fear her.
She recently lost the love of her life, a local schoolteacher and activist who was trying to stop a development plan for a mountain meadow near her home. Supposedly he died in a freak accident, but it was murder. Anyone who gets in the way of the plan will be targeted for similar murder.
Author Koontz performs a very neat maneuver in this story – he enlists all the reader’s sympathies for nature under threat from ruthless capitalists, but then turns that sympathy against the progressive policies that actually drive much of that threat (wind power in this case). He introduces us to close-to-the-soil, spiritually sensitive Native Americans, and then uses them in a way we hadn’t looked for.
And he does not neglect to include a couple of heartwarming love stories.
But I wasn’t sure it all worked in the end. This is a story about Heaven taking a hand in human affairs, providing rescue through supernatural powers. If that’s what it’s gonna take to save us, I’m not sure we’re likely to be so favored.
Also, I found the love stories (both of them) too good to be true (here speaks the bitter old bachelor).
But The Forest of Lost Souls is certainly an enjoyable book. I do recommend it.
I have returned safely from my annual pilgrimage to Minot, North Dakota for Norsk Høstfest. I’d planned to post a report tonight, but my slow computer is taking time uploading my photos, and I want you to enjoy the full splendor and pageantry of the spectacle. So I’ll try to do that tomorrow.
I will tell you that it went very well, and I have only good things to say about the festival.
Tonight’s review, then, will be A New Prospect, by Wayne Zurl.
Sam Jenkins, our hero, is former New York City police detective, now retired the town of Prospect, in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. He’s found retirement a little boring, so when the current chief of police retires under pressure, Sam applies for the job, for which he’s (theoretically) overqualified. Obviously he doesn’t expect the kind of action he used to see in the Big Apple. Except that, on his very first day on the job, there’s a puzzling murder.
The victim is a rich local resident, a nasty drunk who was widely hated. He was stabbed to death in his folding chair, next to his vintage Rolls Royce, during a classic auto show. It soon becomes apparent that a lot of people – including the not-so-grieving widow – do not appreciate having an “outsider” investigating the murder, and pressure is put on Sam to hand the case off to the state police or the FBI. But this is just the sort of mystery Sam has always been best at, and he keeps at it.
The writing was okay. This is an older book, and I assume author Zurl had to actually satisfy a publisher’s proofreaders. But the book never really grabbed me. I thought Sam, as narrator, revealed a somewhat condescending attitude to the southern people he’s dealing with. Especially annoying was the heavy use of dialect in the dialogue. The occasional “y’all,” and such, is plenty to suggest an accent. You don’t have to spread it on thick.
Impossible crimes are an interesting mystery subgenre. I’m fond of them. That was one of the things that kept me reading Chris McGeorge’s Now You See Me.
Robin Ferringham, hero of the story, is the author of a successful memoir about the disappearance of his much-loved wife Samantha, whose body has never been found. One day he receives a call from a young man named Matthew, who has been arrested for the murders of five of his young friends. They went into a canal tunnel in the town of Marsden, a tourist attraction, in a long boat, and when the boat was found later, only Matthew was in it, claiming to have no memory of what happened to the others. Everyone is convinced of his guilt (though I find it hard to understand what kind of a case the prosecution could make). Robin is inclined to dismiss the young man’s pleas, except that he claims to have gotten his name from Samantha, who “called him” around the time she disappeared. And he knows things that only she could have told him.
So Robin must go to Marsden, where (in classic mystery style) he finds the locals hostile. But he also finds an ally. Together they get close enough to an incredible conspiracy to put their lives in danger.
And when I say “an incredible conspiracy” I mean just that. This is one of those fictional criminal schemes that is so complex and has so many moving parts that it’s impossible to believe in it. I think the author shows some potential as a writer, but his plotting is uneven, and his writing only fair. The story showed signs of his coercing the characters into actions that don’t seem quite natural to them.
And the violence was more graphic than it needed to be.
In the end, in spite of the author’s apparent potential, I found Now You See Me disappointing.
Over the years I have become very fond of Peter Grainger’s DC Smith novels, set in England’s Norfolk. Smith was a police detective in the fictional town of King’s Lake. But he grew old, and some years back author Grainger made the decision not to defy real-world time, and allowed Smith to retire – more or less. He now lives in a marsh-side house with his partner, a (female) author and fellow former police detective. He keeps his hand in by working as an investigator for the security firm of Diver and Diver, run by a young brother and sister team whom he met on the job.
I’ve got to confess – I’m not enjoying Smith’s retirement as much as I hoped. But more about that later.
As The Late Lord Thorpe opens, Smith accepts a new assignment. Lady Caroline Thorpe, a member of the landed aristocracy, wife of a member of parliament, has asked Diver and Diver to look into the death of her brother, Lord Thorpe, some time earlier. He was found drowned in a swimming pool after a wild party at an estate famous for scandalous goings-on. A witness reported he’d been taking drugs, and drugs and alcohol were found in his blood.
But now she has heard rumors from some of her brother’s friends, who have a different story to tell. Her brother had been trying to clean his life up, and if something nefarious happened, she wants to know about it.
The investigation will involve dealing with some powerful and dangerous people. But the final outcome is really no great surprise, and I have to admit I found the story a little slow.
I don’t know why Smith has lost so much of his charm for me. Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t surprise me much anymore. As a cop he was always showing unexpected talents and capacities.
Also – I think I have to admit that I’m finding the books increasingly conventional in terms of its political correctness. It’s gotten to the point where most of the professionals we encounter in these stories are female, and most of the competent ones are female as well. The few dullards we encounter are uniformly male. You’d think the book was written by television script writers.
As always, the book was well-written (though the author was guilty of misplaced modifiers on two different occasions – a disappointment). But not a scintillating read in my opinion.
Peter May is an excellent novelist with a gift for scenic description. I’ve read a number of his novels with great pleasure. I think he may be trying to lose me as a reader now, but more about that below.
Fin Macleod, hero of The Black Loch, is a native of the Isle of Lewis, a former policeman now employed as a civilian in the city (I forget which city), doing computer forensics on cases of child pornography. The job is nearly killing him.
Then he learns his son has been arrested for the rape and murder of an 18-year-old girl, back home at Stornaway on Lewis.
Years before, as a detective, Fin had returned to Stornaway when an old friend (married to Fin’s old girlfriend) was murdered. In his investigations, he learned that that friend’s son was not actually his, but Fin’s own. Fin ended up marrying the former girlfriend and getting to know Fionnlach, his new-found son.
Fionnlach had stayed in Stornaway and taught school there. Now one of his female students is dead, and it turns out Fionnlach had been having an adulterous affair with her. Her body was found floating in the Black Loch, marked by signs of rape. A witness saw Fionnlach fight with her on a cliff and knock her over the edge.
Fin drops his work and, together with his wife, travels to Stornaway to see what’s wrong. Their son won’t talk to them; he talks as if he’s guilty. The townspeople have already made up their minds.
Fin asks questions, mostly of old friends. The community has many secrets (for one thing, a lot of the young people seem to be the children of different men from their legal fathers). But one person in particular has deadly secrets to hide, at any cost.
There was much to enjoy in The Black Loch. I love the Scottish Isles, and Author May brings them and their people to dramatic life. The dialogue was very good, though Americans will have a little trouble with the dialect – as well as a lot of trouble pronouncing names (though a pronunciation guide is included).
My problems with the book were mostly personal. The depictions of the church were uniformly negative – though Fin makes it clear that he mainly dislikes the present minister, whom he knows to be a hypocrite, every mention of the church always includes some comment on how grim and barren and comfortless Calvinism is. As a Lutheran I can sympathize somewhat, but I thought he overdid it.
There’s also the political element. In this book and the previous May book I read, he made the choice to go full-on environmentalist. He seems to believe – no doubt sincerely – that now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the planet.
The problem with this is that you end up with the old “Law & Order” cliché. If a certain type of character appears, you can always be sure that they’re going to be the culprit. Sad to say, that predictability was front and center in The Black Loch.
When all is said and done, The Black Loch is a good novel, but (in my opinion) the author is selling his birthright for a pot of message.
A criticism which (obviously) more than applies to me, too.
It’s New Year’s Day 1944; the world war is winding down. But Toby Peters, shabby Los Angeles private investigator, has a new celebrity client – Cary Grant. Grant, a naturalized US citizen from England, has been doing unofficial work for British Intelligence. He has recently heard from a source among American Nazi agents, who has secret documents to sell. But the source doesn’t want Grant to bring the money; he has to send someone else. That someone is Toby Peters, who, despite being the smallest of small-timers, has a reputation for reliability and discretion.
But when Toby shows up at the designated exchange spot, people start shooting. The seller of the papers ends up dead, and the money and the papers disappear. Grant wants Toby to keep searching for the conspirators, and it will lead to great danger for Toby and all his motley friends.
The usual eccentric cast of characters is here as always – Gunther, Toby’s Swiss midget best friend, and Sheldon Minck, the worst dentist in the world. Jeremy Butler, Toby’s office landlord, who is also an ex-wrestler and a poet. Mrs. Plaut, Toby’s apartment landlady, who is almost totally deaf and inhabits a bizarre world of her own. Not to mention others.
When I think about it, in the end, the whole thing would have worked out better if Toby and Cary Grant had left the case to the FBI from the start. But it’s not about the plot, it’s about the Keystone Kops chase.
I struggle to describe Killer-Glum’s Saga, as it really left no strong impression on me. Most great sagas feature some kind of powerful motivation for the main character – vengeance or a woman’s love or the righting of some great wrong. Killer-Glum has none of those things. He’s just a guy who goes through his life, and happens to have a talent for man-killing.
The saga writer seems to sense this lack, because he begins Glum’s tale with a trope borrowed from a thousand sagas, folk tales, and fairy tales: The hero starts out as his father’s least promising son, showing no initiative and often being taunted for his laziness. But when it comes down to cases, he proves extremely adept at fighting and killing, and before long he is the most powerful man in his district. We are told that he maintained this power for an unusual length of time. But eventually his enemies get the best of him, and he loses his property and has to move elsewhere. In the end he is converted to Christianity and dies in old age.
There are many incidents here, and a hundred characters to try to keep track of, but not much of a central narrative line. The situation is not improved by the fact that the text is somewhat corrupt.
One interesting scene did strike me – at one point Glum’s son kills a man, and Glum wants that fact not to be known. So he compliments a thrall on doing the killing, repeating the praise so may times that the stupid thrall begins believing it himself. Early medieval brainwashing.
My final evaluation is that Killer-Glum’s Saga is not one to read if you’re new to saga reading. This one is for the saga buffs; it demands a little effort.
It had been many years since I’d read a novel by the late Ed McBain (who was actually Evan Hunter, which name was itself at first a pseudonym for Salvatore Lombino, who legally changed it to Hunter). I was a fan of McBain’s 87th Precinct novels for a long time, but Eight Black Horses offended me. It had to do with a rapist who was targeting pro-life women, and at one point the author had a policewoman musing that she thought both sides were wrong. I thought it was awfully generous of McBain to concede that pro-lifers were no worse than rapists, and stopped reading the series.
But Hark!, an 2004 87th Precinct book, came up on a deal recently, and I figured, after all we’ve been through since, Eight Black Horses was actually pretty mild stuff. I figured I’d give it another chance.
Verdict: Hark! wasn’t bad, but I don’t like McBain’s writing as much as I used to.
The 87th Precinct books are set in a city called Isola, which is obviously New York City under an assumed name. The central character has always been Detective Steve Carella, but a regular cast of other detectives supports him. A recurring character in many of the books has been a criminal called “the Deaf Man.” The Deaf Man is a genius, and bears a grudge against the 87th. So he periodically reappears sending them mocking messages that provide cryptic clues to whatever major score he’s planning on their doorstep in order to prove how dumb they are.
This time he’s sending them hand-delivered notes containing quotations, mostly from Shakespeare. Much of the book consists of the detectives brainstorming what the messages might mean. There seem to be recurring themes of word reversals, palindromes, and anagrams. Also hints about books. But there really isn’t enough information to guess, which is just the Deaf Man’s game.
Several subplots involve man-woman relationships. Steve Carella is planning a double wedding – remarriages for his widowed mother and his sister. Detective Burt Kling is dating a black doctor, and feeling the social pressure. Detective Cotton Hawes is dating a television reporter and wondering whether she cares more for him than for her career. Another detective is dating the only woman on the squad. Even the Deaf Man is living with a prostitute who’s helping him with his scheme but may be smarter than he assumes.
But the best part of the book, for me, was a small subplot involving a detective from another precinct named Fat Ollie Weeks. Fat Ollie is a perfect comic relief character – he’s fat (of course), and he’s not too bright. His ideas of police procedure are Neanderthal, and he’s a bigot and a sexist. But recently he started dating a Hispanic woman cop, and he’s finding better impulses blossoming within him, to his own surprise and discomfort. Also, he’s working on writing a novel which is apparently pretty good.
Hark! was an okay novel, but I found it a little slow, and all the police brainstorming got a bit wearying (though there were amusing moments of cop ignorance about Shakespeare). I was reminded how society has changed during a scene where a superior is apologetic for asking the woman detective for “a woman’s point of view.” Back then that kind of talk was considered sexist — today the woman’s point of view is considered the only acceptable point of view.
Also, I rebel against the whole idea of the Deaf Man. At the beginning, Ed McBain’s books were praised for their authentic descriptions of police procedure. But the Deaf Man is pure Hollywood. Real criminals don’t act like that, or so I’ve been informed.
