Brad Frame and Nick Argostino are the heroes of an ongoing mystery series by Ray Flynt. Inkblot Killer is the 11th of these.
The background is that Brad Frame is a Philadelphia billionaire. Some years back, his mother and sister were abducted and killed, and he inserted himself into the investigation. Once it was solved, he set himself up as a private investigator. He developed a relationship with police detective Nick Argostino, and they came to trust one another. As Inkblot Killer begins, Nick is newly retired from the force, and has joined Brad’s agency. But he finds himself uncomfortable with the new work atmosphere.
A new client comes in. She is a rich woman, the entitled daughter of a reclusive tycoon, and she wants them to prove her husband is cheating on her. But when she interferes with the investigation, Brad severs their association. Then she herself disappears, and her equally repellant father retains the agency to locate her.
Meanwhile, Nick becomes increasingly concerned as several of his old police colleagues are strangled to death by a mysterious killer who leaves behind index cards bearing blots of blood, like the patterns in Rorschach tests. Nick grows increasingly convinced that he is on the killer’s to-do list.
Inkblot Killer was a competent enough mystery in terms of plotting. But the writing was pedestrian and the dialogue clunky. It had the flavor of something knocked off quickly for the market. There’s no harm in it, but I won’t be back for another.
Reading Passively: “One of the problems of shouldering one’s way through books—worldview machete in hand—is that we become the kind of readers who get from a book only what we bring to it.” Professor Jermey Larson writes about reading for experience and enjoyment and letting active learning take a back seat. He leans on C.S. Lewis’s effort to equip readers of medieval literature to stay with the story instead of looking at commentaries every other page.
And the Gulag Remains: The Gulag Archipelago in English is 50 years old this year. Gary Saul Morson writes, “Before Solzhenitsyn, Western intellectuals of course knew that the Soviet regime had been ‘repressive,’ but for the most part they imagined that all that had ended decades ago. So it was shocking when the book described how it had to be written secretly, with parts scattered so that not everything could be seized in a single raid. Solzhenitsyn offered an apology for the work’s lack of polish: ‘I must explain that never once did this whole book . . . lie on the same desk at the same time!’ ‘The jerkiness of the book, its imperfections, are the true mark of our persecuted literature.’ Since this persecution is itself one of the work’s themes, its imperfections are strangely appropriate and so, perhaps, not imperfections at all.”
Remembering How We Cooked: Writer Megan Braden-Perry talks about authentic New Orleans gumbo and how strangers change historic recipes. “To me, the composition of gumbo is a topic serious enough to invade my dreams. Recently I had the most awful nightmare, that I made gumbo and forgot all the ingredients and spices. It was just a roux and broth.”
There was a king named Dumb. He ruled over the gulfs that stretch north across Helluland and are now called Dumbshaf after King Dumb. He was descended from giants on his father’s side, a good-looking people and larger than other men; but his mother was descended from the tribe of trolls….
When I made my one visit to Iceland involving more than a stopover in the airport, I took a day trip out to the Snæfellsnes peninsula, to see locations I’d be using in West Oversea, which I was working on at the time. At one point we visited the construction/statue shown on the cover of the book shown above (which is not the one I’m reviewing). Our guide told us this was a guy named Bard, who did things like wading across fjords. I’d never heard of this Bard, and it meant nothing to me at the time.
Years later, Bard came up again in some material I translated for Saga Bok Publishing (not likely, alas, ever to see publication now). Bard, it turned out, was the subject of one of Iceland’s legendary sagas – a late saga full of folkloric elements.
The saga opens with the regrettably named King Dumb mentioned in the quotation above. Dumb and his wife have a son named Bard, the hero of this saga. Bard is, for a time, foster son to the giant Dofri, for whom Dovre Mountain in Norway is named (Dofri features in certain legends concerning the youth of King Harald Fairhair, legendary uniter of Norway, which Snorri Sturlusson quite understandably omitted from Heimskringla), but eventually, unable to get along with that same King Harald, he emigrates to Iceland and settles on the Snæfellsnes. Later, unable to live at peace with lesser men, he retires to dwell in a cave in the mountain, becoming a legendary figure (“the god of Snæfell”) who comes at the nick of time to rescue friends when they are in need. In time he has a son named Gest who is effectively identical to himself and performs the same kinds of feats.
In the end, Gest goes to Norway to meet King Olaf Trygvesson. The king exhorts him to adopt the true faith, but he resists. Later, in a scene reminiscent of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an armored troll (or giant) shows up at Olaf’s court and challenges him to send a hero to claim his (the troll’s) treasure. Gest accepts the challenge, traveling in company with a priest, who eventually baptizes him. But Gest (perhaps because of his other-worldly family roots) cannot survive long as a Christian.
It’s a peculiarity of the Icelandic sagas that the genre did not generally improve with time. Later sagas (and Bard’s Saga is one of the latest ones we have) lack the verisimilitude and psychological insight of the classic sagas. Bard’s Saga is interesting for its legendary elements, and also for the geographical assumptions that seem to be in play (the author appears to think North Norway and Greenland are close to each other).
We tend to think of Norse mythology as a sort of closed canon, as in Christian theology. Stories like Bard’s Saga offer abundant clues to whole branches of pre-Christian belief that are remembered, if at all, only in fragmentary or distorted form.
Rex Dalton is the hero of a series of action thrillers by J. C. Ryan, The Fulcrum being its first volume. Here is another example of that trope I’ve been noticing lately – thrillers about super-secret, completely deniable government assassins who take lethal care of those special cases normal diplomacy, espionage, and warfare can’t handle. It seems to me this trend must express some public hunger for more robust, aggressive action to be taken against a rising tide of terrorism and crime in the world.
Our hero, Rex Dalton, lost his family to a terrorist event years ago. After that he cast off all his human ties, enlisted in the Marines (later Delta Force and then something even more hush-hush), and began turning himself into a living weapon, a sort of warrior monk committed to killing terrorists to the exclusion of all else. At one point he meets a woman he finds attractive, but his focus is elsewhere.
The prose in The Fulcrum wasn’t the worst I’ve seen, and the occasional political comment usually suited my prejudices. But the problem with this book was that it wasn’t really a story. There was no narrative arc. All we had was a sequence of accounts of various actions Rex carries out – invariably with perfect efficiency. He never makes a mistake. He never meets an enemy he can’t overcome. His plans of action always survive contact with the enemy. This author knows nothing about building dramatic tension.
Which is not to say the book was dull. It was interesting to watch our hero at work. But it just wasn’t a story.
I can’t say you shouldn’t read The Fulcrum. There’s entertainment value here. But I can only deplore the absence of narrative craftsmanship.
He was one of those guys who look around when you talk about money because they can’t imagine any legal way they might earn it.
I reviewed another of Stuart M. Kaminsky’s Toby Peters novels the other day. Toby, a low-rent Los Angeles PI in the 1930s and ’40s, tends to be hired – under seriocomic circumstances – by various movie stars and celebrities to clear their names.
Down For the Count begins with Toby looking down at a murdered man on the beach – and up at Joe Louis, heavyweight champion of the world. Louis explains that he saw the man being beaten and ran up to help, but the killers got away before he got there. Toby, who is a fight fan and respects Louis, believes him. He advises the champ to run off before the police get there, and then undertakes to find the real murderer for him, so he won’t be implicated in a scandal.
Toby knows who the dead man is, because his widow (who happens to be Toby’s ex-wife) just hired him to locate the man. Investigation reveals that he had gotten involved in investing in boxers and arranging “cards.” Losses in such enterprises had gotten him involved with some of the nastiest characters in the LA underworld. There is no lack of suspects – or of tough guys (including cops) eager to rearrange Toby’s face, at best.
The Toby Peters books are always amusing. I enjoy the characters and the period flavor of Down For the Count. This one has a darker ending than most in the series. Recommended.
Morse had got it wrong, of course. Morse nearly always got things hopelessly, ridiculously wrong at the start of every case. But he always seemed to have thoughts that no one was capable of thinking. Like now.
I think I’ve read all Colin Dexter’ Inspector Morse novels already. But one of them showed up cheap for Kindle purchase, and I figured I’d re-read it – especially as I’ve been watching episodes of the old John Thaw BBC TV series recently. The book was The Daughters of Cain, and I recognized it as one that – though I enjoyed it – I thought included one ridiculous plot element.
Morse is put in charge of a case concerning an Oxford don who’s been murdered in his home. The chief suspect is the “scout” (the servant) in the college building where he worked. That scout had been found to be dealing drugs to students. He also (we learn) had been brutalizing his wife.
But that man has disappeared. Soon Morse begins to suspect that he too has been killed, by a conspiracy of nice women – his abused wife, her teacher friend, and his stepdaughter (also abused), who is now a prostitute.
As is customary in the Morse novels, we have no moments of Sherlock Holmes super-ratiocination here. Morse, fighting a bad cold and fueled by beer and cigarettes, makes one wrong guess after another, until by a process of elimination (and inspiration) he hits on the truth. Which is pretty much how it works in real life, which may explain the charm of the series.
What is harder to explain is the charm of Morse himself. I have an idea that author Dexter’s original conception of Morse was not much like the actor John Thaw (Shaun Evans of “Endeavour” may have been closer). As I recall, the first Morse novel features women commenting on how “dishy” the detective is.
But as the series continued, Dexter threw in with the TV show entirely, and his Morse and the video Morse became pretty much the same. Yet Morse seemed to possess the same attractiveness to women.
In The Daughters of Cain, one of the central characters is Ellie, the abused stepdaughter of the missing murderer, who is now a prostitute. Although Morse finds her repellant at first, he finds himself increasingly attracted to her. And then – and this is what I really don’t get – she reciprocates the feeling.
Why? What is there about Morse as we know him that would appeal to a young woman who has romantic options? He’s much older, he’s out of shape, he’s short-tempered, he isn’t rich.
This element of the story simply made no sense to me. (Not to mention that most cops have more sense than to fall for prostitutes.) It seemed to me as if the author was forcing his characters into unnatural behaviors, and that’s a major sin in fiction.
Otherwise, The Daughters of Cain was quite a good novel. You might feel differently about the romantic element.
…the Divine Nature wounds and perhaps destroys us merely by being what it is. We call it the wrath of the gods; as if the great cataract in Phars were angry with every fly it sweeps down in its green thunder.
I wonder what J. R. R. Tolkien thought of Till We Have Faces. I can’t seem to find any information about that online. Tollers and Jack were, of course, somewhat estranged by the time this novel was published; not turned enemies, but their friendship had cooled through the circumstances of life. I have an idea Tolkien thought Lewis had lost interest in their mythopoeic project, their shared endeavor to write new myths foreshadowing the gospel for modern pagans.
But that’s very much what Till We Have Faces is – though the myth isn’t a new one (Tolkien specifically wanted English myths) but a retelling of a classic Greek one, the myth of Cupid and Psyche. The central mythopoeic idea that myths are “good dreams” that anticipate the gospel is here, richly and beautifully realized.
Orual is a princess in a fictional barbarian kingdom, apparently sometime in the early Iron Age. She is the oldest – and ugliest – of three sisters. Redival is pretty and frivolous. Istra, the youngest, is so beautiful and sweet that people treat her like a goddess. “The Fox,” the girls’ Greek slave tutor, calls her Psyche, and Orual dotes on her.
But when famine and pestilence come to the land, the people turn on Psyche, accusing her of blaspheming the gods, causing all this evil. It is determined by the priests that she must be taken to the Mountain and sacrificed to the Beast who dwells there. Orual is injured trying to defend her sister, and so is unconscious when the ceremony is carried out.
Later, Orual travels with the chief of the king’s guard up to the Mountain, to gather her sister’s bones for burial. To her astonishment and joy, she finds Psyche there, alive and well. But the girl tells her a crazy story about being married to the Beast of the Mountain, who is actually a sublime god. Orual, certain that Psyche has gone insane, conceives a plan to bring her to her senses. And great evil will come from this.
I first read Till We Have Faces a lifetime ago, when I was in high school and the book was fairly new. It was the second Lewis book I read, after The Screwtape Letters. Callow as I was, I recognized it for a book full of depths, but I couldn’t see very far into them.
Reading it now, as an old man, I found much more in the story. It moved me deeply. Has any book ever dissected the human heart as this one does, bringing to light all the petty possessiveness, jealousy, and even hatred that we humans often mean by what we call love?
Great book. Read it if you haven’t yet. If you have read it, read it again.
There are still a few of the late Stuart M. Kaminsky’s Toby Peters novels left that I haven’t read. But now I’ve read Buried Caesars, in which Toby meets Douglas MacArthur and Dashiell Hammett.
The Toby Peters novels, in case you’re not familiar with them, are set in Hollywood in the 1930s and ʼ40s. They are semi-comic in spirit, finding our private eye hero taking jobs for one famous figure or another (usually, but not always, movie stars), though he never achieves financial success, continuing to live in a shabby boarding house and sharing his office with a low-rent (and low-hygiene) dentist.
It’s 1942, and Toby is summoned to a large estate, where he meets a man who isn’t supposed to be in this hemisphere. General Douglas MacArthur is supposed to be in the Philippines, but he’s come home in secret to deal with a personal crisis. Certain of American victory, he has – he explains – made some plans for running for president after the war. He prepared some strategy papers for his campaign which would be highly embarrassing if they were made public at the present time. And now one of his aides has stolen the papers and is in California offering them to the highest bidder. MacArthur wants Toby to investigate because he’s a) known to be discreet, and b) almost unknown otherwise.
Toby promises to turn all his resources to the task. His problem is that his resources are in fact very limited. However, he is surprised to find a famous man in the dental chair of his office-mate – the author Dashiell Hammett. Hammett explains that he’s trying to enlist for the war (in spite of his age), and the army tells him he has to get his teeth fixed. He’s (temporarily) off the bottle, he has a couple days free, and he’s curious to see whether he still retains some of his old skills as a Pinkerton detective. So he and Toby set out together.
Clues lead them to a castle in the desert, where a crazy millionaire is plotting a military coup, but he’s not the only suspect. Toby will also pick up a stray cat and a framed photo of Wallace Beery in a woman’s wig.
Buried Caesars is undemanding entertainment. I always resent Dashiell Hammett in real life (as opposed to his novels, which I love) because of his unrepentant Communism, but as usual, author Kaminsky steers clear of the most controversial stuff.
I am tall, and I gangle. I look like a loose-jointed, clumsy hundred and eighty. The man who takes a better look at the size of my wrists can make a more accurate guess. When I get up to two twelve I get nervous and hack it back on down to two oh five. As far as clumsiness and reflexes go, I have never had to use a flyswatter in my life. My combat expression is one of apologetic anxiety. I like them confident. My stance is mostly composed of elbows.
Another deal on a Travis McGee book by John D. MacDonald – and this is another important entry in the series, if only by virtue of its being the first.
I’ve told the story here before, because it amuses me. So I’ll just summarize it now. In 1963, Fawcett Publications, a major popular paperback house, hired a new author to create a detective series, replacing Richard S. Prather, their former top seller, who’d followed deeper pockets to greener pastures (to mix a metaphor). John D. MacDonald, the new kid, came up with a slightly reclusive hero, a beach bum living on a houseboat, called Dallas McGee (changed quickly to Travis McGee after the Kennedy assassination in Dallas, Texas). McGee called himself a “salvage expert,” but he didn’t salvage shipwrecks or cars. He recovered stolen objects or money, in return for half the value as a finder’s fee. The first book to appear, in 1964, was The Deep Blue Good-bye. (Every volume would incorporate a color in the title.)
McGee is persuaded by a friend, a dancer, to talk to another dancer named Cathy Kerr. Cathy is a country girl, a single mother, living hand to mouth. But she thinks she might have a right to a missing treasure. Her father, she explains, came home from the war with some secret package that he hid carefully, before being sent to prison for murder. He died before his release, but after a while his former cellmate Junior Allen showed up – a big, strong, dynamic type who swept Cathy off her feet and soon had her completely dominated. He also dug holes all over their farm. And one day he found something and vanished. Cathy is pretty sure he found her father’s stash, and she and her kid could sure use half of it, if McGee could get it back for her.
McGee doesn’t need work just now, but he’s impressed with Cathy’s dignity after all she’s been through. He traces Junior Allen’s footsteps, learning he was last seen on a yacht with a rich, beautiful woman. McGee finds the woman, Lois Atkinson, in her home, cast off by Allen and now a wreck of herself. Allen systematically broke her down and degraded her, and she has nearly starved herself to death in despair and self-disgust. McGee nurses her back to health, and at last begins a gentle affair with her, one which threatens to break through his prickly personal defenses.
But he still has Junior Allen to catch, and he formulates a devious plan to con the con man.
Unfortunately, as with all plans of battle, this one does not survive contact with the enemy. And Junior Allen is a formidable enemy indeed. The climax is one of the most harrowing and memorable in the series.
I read a review some time back that argued that The Deep Blue Good-bye is unworthy of the rest of the books, weighed down by the standard tropes of 1960s men’s fiction. I cannot agree. MacDonald certainly serves up the expected necessaries – plenty of violence and sex. But I think the original readers back in 1964 must have been puzzled by this book – there’s a lot of genuinely excellent prose here, and even the obligatory sex scenes are lyrical and revelatory of character, rather than sordid. (Though I do not approve of the sexual mores.)
Some of MacDonald’s prose – I would argue – is as good as that of his contemporaries Hemingway and O’Hara, only ensconced in far more interesting stories.
I drove back through late afternoon heat. The world darkened, turned to a poisonous green, and somebody pulled the chain. Water roared down the chute. Rose-colored lightning webbed down. Water bounced knee high, silver in the green premature dusk, and I found a place to pull off out of the way and let the fools gnash each other’s chrome and tinwork, fattening the body shops, busying the adjustors, clogging the circuit court calendars. The sign of the times is the imaginary whiplash injury.
Another notable element in this book was one moment – never to be repeated again that I can recall – when McGee hints at some trauma in his earlier life that left him perpetually commitment-averse.
To draw a line under it all, I highly enjoyed The Deep Blue Good-bye and recommend it. Not for kids.
O Thou Faithful Father in heaven, would that I could render unto Thee adequate thanks and praise for all the blessings Thou hast bestowed upon me during all the days of my life up to this hour, but this is not within my power and ability. For I am flesh and blood, which cannot but do wrong. Thou, however, dost daily grant me blessings without measure . . .
My church tradition doesn’t encourage the use of liturgical prayers to mark the hours of the day, though I wouldn’t doubt some leaders would like to move us toward that and more awareness of the church calendar. Perhaps it’s impractical for modern believers. We have many ways to keep the time and many ways to remember the Lord throughout the day.
I begin with this because last week I finished The Book of the Dun Cow again–this time with friends. The heroes perform a supernatural duty unknowingly by marking the day with liturgical crows, specific canonical crows for Lauds, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. I say crows because this is a beast fable. The leader/pastor of this part of the world is the rooster Chanticleer.
It’s a marvelous story with great pacing, strong characters, and the moving theme that the everyday Gospel habits of ordinary church people keep the enemy bound.
Simply, the animals were the Keepers. The watchers, the guards. They were the last protection against an almighty evil which, should it pass them, would burst bloody into the universe and smash into chaos and sorrow everything that had been made both orderly and good.
Star Wars: I’ve been sucked into YouTube reviews and reactions to the new Star Wars series The Acolyte. It started with World‘s review: “The investigation makes no sense, and the Jedi detectives are incredibly stupid. They ask all the wrong questions and dismiss the most obvious clues. The plot is full of holes.” And it followed by several YouTubers who would love to enjoy a good sci-fi show and don’t find it here. It’s discouraging. As I’ve said before, if the Tao of the Force means anything, it means the good stories will come back after the bad ones have their moment.
Memoir: Professor Esau McCaulley says, “No book can replace the role that real friends and family members play in our lives, but books can change or inspire us. They can depict traits that we are drawn to emulate. They can help us imagine different futures when hope is in short supply.”
Faith: “Perhaps the emptiness of the culture of self in a time of tumult—war, economic anxiety, political instability—is causing many to turn once again to Christianity.”
Photo: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
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