Category Archives: Fiction

Fiction, Reviews

‘Murder at Home,’ by Bruce Beckham

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The air is still and smells of mulch and fungal spores, and woodland sounds resonate – the harsh porcine screeching of jays and the fine ticking of robins.

The snippet above is just a sample of the deft natural descriptions that give Bruce Beckham’s Inspector Skelgill novels their unique tactile qualities. I’m not a great fan of outdoor stories, and I prefer my detectives more cerebral than instinctive. Which makes these novels entirely wrong for me, but I like them very much anyway.

In Murder at Home, book 22 in the series, our hero is out fishing on Bassenthwaite Lake, his favorite haunt, when he notices an old man on the shore in a wheelchair. The old man greets him as if he knows him, and talks to him about fishing. When a nurse comes to collect the old man, she tells Skelgill that he’s an indigent, dumped in a hospital and on the minimal welfare plan. They call him William, but aren’t sure that’s his name. He suffers from dementia.

Skelgill feels an affinity with the old man and decides to look more closely into the situation. This is not entirely outside his duties, as he and the attractive Detective Sergeant Jones are investigating welfare fraud.

Their other cohort, DS Leyton, is working undercover as a welfare worker. A flirtatious co-worker gives him a tip that the scam he ought to be looking at is one where people create false identities and then “double-dip” under their own and their assumed names. That will lead to a mother and son who are living the high life, not only on double benefits, but on murder.

I was a little ambivalent about Murder at Home at the beginning, purely for emotional reasons. But it grew on me, and having finished it I consider it one of the best entries in a stellar series. Highly recommended. The mature material is subdued enough to qualify the book as a Cozy, but the tone is a little tougher than a Cozy.

Oh, I might mention that all these books are written in the present tense. I object to that on principle, but in actual practice I always grow inured a few pages in.

Bookselling, Fiction

The Hobbit Illustrated and Animated

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One book I own that I wish was in perfect condition is a Rankin & Bass edition of The Hobbit (1977). It’s a coffee table book, perhaps designed to read with two or more children in and around your lap. The full text is included, so you won’t miss any details, except maybe those skewed by the illustrations.

The cover of the Rankin/Bass edition of The Hobbit
The death of Smaug can't be held to one page.

I assume my parents bought this, and I don’t remember it being a gift to me. I just acquired it at the appropriate hour. My own children rough it up a good bit, as they have done with many books.

Continue reading The Hobbit Illustrated and Animated →
Fiction, Reviews

Omni’s Fall by Tom Reynolds (Series #4)

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Book cover of Omni's Fall

I understand when a cast of characters is in high school, the plot usually entails going to class, but I remember the third novel, Rise of the Circle, ending on big decisions and cosmic revelations. This novel, Omni’s Fall, begins with our hero struggling through math class.

I guess that means it’s just another Monday.

Teenaged metahuman Connor Connolly feels compelled to act, even when he doesn’t know what to do. That gets him into big trouble and threatens to end his heroic career. The authorities over him keep telling him to stand down and not draw attention to himself, while at the same his Batman-like mentor is calling him out to missions. After each feat of heroism, his metabands, the technology that makes him a superhero, look more damaged than before. Should he keep using them? As soon as he decides to rest a while, another threat or opportunity arises.

The plot and structure of the book are fun and maybe hold together, but they aren’t strong. I liked the villain and the new developments to the world. I still like the characters. But everything together didn’t work as well as I wanted it to.

It’s one thing for the hero to press on when everything is telling him to play it safe. Maybe he can’t stop, because the threat will run him down or the bad guys will get away. Maybe he’s the only one with all the facts to bring justice. It’s another thing for the hero to keep risking his life because “somebody’s got to do something.” No one throws himself in front of a runaway train because somebody has to do something to stop it. Of course, when you open the possibility of being able to stop the train with your super strength, how big does that possibility have to be for you to make the jump?

With the threat of his metabands failing, Connor must confront the possibility that he may no longer be able to fight bad guys as Omni, but when that argument comes up, he gets defensive and denies all of his worries like a man denying he has colon cancer. He isn’t mature enough to have the power he has, and he isn’t mature enough to recognize his immaturity. The fear of having your power taken from you is a good theme, but this story doesn’t go deep enough to make it compelling.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Florida Firefight,’ by Randy Wayne White

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I read several of Randy Wayne White’s Doc Ford mysteries about a decade ago, and liked them, but I stopped because I found myself less and less comfortable with the worldview. But a deal showed up recently for one of White’s earlier books, Florida Firefight. This was written under the pseudonym Carl Ramm, and was the first volume in a series about a freelance commando named Hawker.

Shortly after Chicago policeman James Hawker has been fired for violating department policy by doing the right thing, he gets an invitation to spend Thanksgiving with a reclusive tycoon whose son Hawker had tried to save. The tycoon tells him he knows of a town in Florida called Mahogany Key, where Latin American drug smugglers are moving in. He’s concerned about his friends there and would like Hawker to go down and help. His cover story will be that he’s bought the local marina and wants to get it going profitably again. Intrigued – and having nothing better to do – Hawker decides to take the job.

What he finds is a depressed community, falling into ruin. The local residents had attempted to resist the incoming gangsters, but found themselves outmanned and outgunned, and now they’re beaten. With the assistance of a beautiful environmental biologist, Hawker forms a plan to defeat the narco smugglers and help the locals regain their pride.

There was nothing out of the ordinary about Florida Firefight. It follows the essential thriller formula that has worked so well for so many writers, like Lee Child and Gregg Hurwitz more recently. Lots of action, with a layer of inspiration in there somewhere. But I thought the book well written, except for some awkward information dumping in the first scene. Otherwise, the book was a fast and exciting read.

I found it melancholy, though. It reminded me of a time – not very long ago – when we lived in a very different country. We had a simple, comprehensible chief enemy in the world – Soviet Russia. Americans still had a sense of being one people, of sharing an identity. Remembering those times, under present circumstances, was kind of depressing.

There was one substantial sex scene, more explicit (in my opinion) than strictly necessary.

Florida Firefight was a well-written novel, and very entertaining on its own terms. I should mention that pretty conservative opinions got expressed, somewhat to my surprise.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Revenge at Sea,’ by Brian O’Sullivan

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As you know if you’re a regular here, I have no qualms about trashcanning a book after reading a couple of pages, if it fails to please me. This practice is made easier by the fact that I get a lot of books free or extremely cheap, through Kindle offers. The world is full of shabby, overoptimistic self-published books, and I’d rather not stomp on the author’s dreams by panning their book when I could just keep mum.

But occasionally a slightly more promising book shows up and keeps me reading long enough, before disillusioning me, that I don’t want to lose my sunk time cost without even being able to do a review. So I read that book through, and then I trash it here.

That is the story with Revenge at Sea, by Brian O’Sullivan.

What made me increasingly hate this book, as I slogged through it, was not only that the prose was bloated and bad (it started fair and deteriorated as it went along. This is not unusual. It’s common – and not actually a bad idea – to do a lot of polishing at the start, when you’re trying to hook the reader). It wasn’t just that the dialogue was stilted and not half as clever as it thought itself.

My main complaint was that our hero/narrator was an idiot.

The aforementioned hero/narrator is Quint Adler, a reporter for a minor newspaper in California’s Bay area. Supposedly, he is highly talented (this is dubious based on his prose) but has never gotten his big break. One night, while in a hospital after an injury, he overhears a suspicious conversation between his roommate and a companion. It sounds like they committed a major crime. He snaps a picture of the guy’s information sheet and, after being released from the hospital, goes to check the guy’s home out. He finds the man dead, but does not inform the police. Instead, he sees it as his opportunity. If he can figure out what the guy was involved in, he can write the Big Story that might supercharge his career.

Gee, what could possibly go wrong?

Over the course of the next few weeks, Quint will lie to the cops, get some people killed (gruesomely), be framed for murder, and at last have a showdown with his nemesis on a yacht on the open sea. (The final climax is one of the least plausible I’ve ever encountered in a novel.)

Quint spends time in jail during this story. It doesn’t occur to the author to describe Quint’s feelings about being locked up. There is zero description of the jail experience. He knows people he’s talked to have killed by mobsters, but fails to make the connection that he might be in danger too.

Like I said, an idiot.

The author also misuses words, like “taciturn” when he seems to want “covert.”

This is, in short, a badly written book that I labored to finish.

The author shows signs of talent, but he needs a good editor. At least 1/3 of his verbiage could have been cut, and it would have only improved the experience.

Not recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Paddington Mystery,’ by John Rhode

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The world of mystery fiction, as you’re probably aware, is divided (broadly speaking) into the subgenres of “Cozy” (think Miss Marple) and “Hard-Boiled” (think Mike Hammer). But nothing in life is ever that simple. Hard-boiled has devolved over recent decades (mostly) into the Thriller genre, and that’s all we’ll say about that today. But sub-genres exist within Cozy . I had never heard of the “Humdrum” subgenre before I looked up John Rhode (a pseudonym for Cecil Street), author of The Paddington Mystery. At first I thought the descriptor “humdrum” a little dismissive, but gradually I came to understand the point.

The central character in The Paddington Mystery, set in 1925, is Harold Merefield, a young London gentleman. Harold grew up as a close friend to Dr Lancelot Priestley, a retired mathematician and amateur detective. He was even close to being engaged to Priestley’s daughter April. But then he came into money and decided to sample the high life. He joined a shady gentleman’s club and even wrote a scandalous novel – which sold well.

One night Harold he comes home drunk to his apartment in the early hours to find a dead man, soaking wet, in his bed. The police suspect him at first, but let him go when the medical examiner declares the death due to natural causes. Nevertheless, the mystery remains. Who was the old man? How did he get into Harold’s apartment in the first place?

Harold is suddenly concerned about his reputation, and the only person he can think of to approach for help is Dr Priestley. Dr Priestly, it turns out, is still kindly disposed, and he welcomes the mystery as a chance to exercise his powers of logical deduction.

It was at that point that the story, I must admit, began to drag. At the beginning I was quite taken with The Paddington Mystery. I liked the characters, and the morality was purely bourgeois. I felt right at home.

But what made the book “humdrum” was that pages and pages were spent on exposition of the puzzle, as various characters explained the mystery, and Dr Priestly went on and on, explaining every step in his logical deductions. It did get tedious.

Especially because I figured out whodunnit fairly early in the process.

So, I must say, with regret, that I can’t entirely endorse The Paddington Mystery. On the plus side it was old-fashioned and non-objectionable, but it was also kind of… how shall I put it? Elementary.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Bad Weather Friend,’ by Dean Koontz

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She was about five feet eight, slim, with ink-black hair cut short and eyes as green as the plastic on certain Memorex high-density diskettes, which were still in use in those days.

One of the delights of being a Dean Koontz fan is the constant surprises. Far from writing the same book over and over (as some authors tend to do), Koontz keeps obsessively changing it up. Some of his books are terrifying. Some are suspenseful, some plaintive and melancholy. And sometimes he just likes to have fun. The Bad Weather Friend is Koontz in sheer fun mode.

When Benny Catspaw loses his job, gets dumped by his girlfriend, and has a bank loan turned down all in one day, it’s not even the worst day of his life so far. Benny has been through a lot, but he faces it all with his customary optimism and good humor. Benny is a nice guy.

Then he gets a message from a great-uncle he never knew he had. The old man says he is sending Benny a shipment, his inheritance. It will be alarming, he says, but Benny should not be afraid.

Benny will be afraid, though, when the shipment turns out to be a muscular giant with superhuman powers and a deep hatred for postmodern interior decoration. His name is Spike, he says, and he’s a “craggle.” Craggles are supernatural beings entrusted with the protection of the world’s nicest people, of whom Benny is one. Along with Harper Harper, a charming young woman training to be a private investigator, Spike listens to the story of Benny’s day, and concludes that there’s a conspiracy to destroy him. These conspirators must be hunted down and stopped (Spike never kills anyone). The three of them set out on the quest. Along the way, Benny will recall the strange course of his unusual life up to now, and will fall in love with Harper.

Dean Koontz is a practicing Roman Catholic, and many of his books shows traces of his faith. I can’t say that element is very apparent in The Bad Weather Friend. This story is all about “niceness,” which has (correctly) been denounced in countless pulpits as inferior to the righteousness God demands. I don’t think any conclusions should be drawn on that score. This is a fun book, not intended to be taken very seriously.

The Bad Weather Friend was a pleasure to read, and I wished it were longer. Highly recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Written In Bone,’ by Simon Beckett

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It’s always a pleasure to read a book by a professional who knows his business (better than I do, to tell the truth). And yet a professional can carry his craft to the point of manipulation, and that can be annoying. That’s my take on Written In Bone, by Simon Beckett.

Dr. David Hunter is an English forensic scientist. He has a girlfriend he’s trying to build a relationship with, and he’s planning to spend some time with her when he gets an emergency call for help. A body has been found on the island of Runa in the Hebrides, and all the other crime scene investigators are tied up. Could he go and check it out? Shouldn’t take long, it’s probably nothing criminal. David agrees, raising doubts both in his girlfriend and himself about his commitment to the relationship.

When he arrives in the small, close-knit community, he goes to see the body, that of a woman, lying in a ruined cottage in the hills. It looks like an unusual, but most often innocent, phenomenon, “spontaneous human combustion,” which is actually the result of a wicking effect on clothed, burning corpses. But a closer examination of the skull proves this was no accident. The woman was murdered.

At that point, David ought to call in the professionals, but a sudden freak storm descends on the island and lasts several days, disrupting communications and making travel impossible. Meanwhile, more bodies start turning up…

Good characters. Good pacing. Good prose. Lots of rising tension. Written In Bone is plotted in a masterly fashion, and it kept me fascinated all through.

And then we got to the end, and (for this reader) the author kind of spoiled it.

This is one of those stories where you have a solution, and then you find out that solution is wrong. And then you find out the revised solution is wrong too. And finally there’s a twist that leads to a cliffhanger.

A cliffhanger.

That’s excessive, in my estimation. Aside from the fact that I don’t like cliffhangers (I consider them a cheat), when an author gets cute and keeps second-guessing solutions, it violates the principle of Occam’s Razor. Solutions that get too complicated grow decreasingly interesting.

So there it is. The writing is great. The resolutions were disappointing. For me, anyway.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Hills Be Shaken,’ by Michael Stewart

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When I encounter a poorly written Christian novel, I tend to assume it comes from an Evangelical Protestant author. As an Evangelical Protestant myself, it’s one of the things I have to live with. I instinctively expect better things from Roman Catholic writers, probably because I mostly read good ones (Undset, Buckley, etc.) Nevertheless, there are badly written Catholic novels, and Michael Stewart’s The Hills Be Shaken turned out to be one of those. Which isn’t to say the author doesn’t show some promise.

The premise is original and engaging. An act of terrorism destroys a large swathe of Manhattan, Kansas. Just before the explosion, police officer Sam McGuire stops a woman who’s jogging in the park, carrying (legally) a pistol and an AR-15. Though she seems to have no connection to the disaster, Sam can’t shake a feeling that something was off about her, and he studies his dash cam footage of the incident obsessively.

Immediately after the event, engineer Moses Haley was arrested by the FBI, simply because he happened to be taking a break on the roof of his workplace at the fatal hour. He was soon released, little guessing that he’d soon be recruited by that same agency. His new career will put pressure on his family life and demand courage of him he never knew he had.

My reaction: First of all, I did finish the book. I don’t always do that. The plot was interesting enough (though far-fetched), and kept me interested. I liked the characters. The values were good.

But the writing was amateur hour. All the characters talked the same way, and they spoke like someone writing a book, not like real people talking. The religious passages were awkward, too long, and preachy. The action (as in so many novels nowadays) was more cinematic than realistic.

Also there was a long sequence involving action in a very high place, with an escalating danger of falling. I hate scenes like that for personal reasons, though it certainly kept my interest.

Anyway, The Hills Be Shaken was an admirable story, awkwardly told. But we might look for better things to come from the author.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Recital,’ by Gregg Hurwitz

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Occasionally a short story shows up on Amazon, and occasionally I’ll buy it, if it’s from an author I like. But I usually won’t waste a blog review on one.

But an Orphan X story by Gregg Hurwitz is another proposition altogether. The Recital is definitely worth a notice here.

As you may recall, Evan Smoak is Orphan X, a former assassin for a super-secret government agency, now (for all practical purposes) Batman. He has taken a young woman under his wing as a sort of foster daughter, the hacker Joey Morales. Joey is attending music school now, and she tells Evan she’d like him to come to her first recital along with a few of his friends, about the only people she knows in the world. Evan, whose whole life is focused on staying anonymous, has some difficulty wrapping his mind around the concept of a recital. She wants him to watch her training? Even more difficult is recruiting his friends to come along to the event – his friends being a nine-fingered illegal gun dealer, a retired cartel kingpin, and an uber-sexy female assassin. But Evan has acquired enough minimal empathy to understand this is important to Joey, so he goes to work on the problem.

It will involve trading some favors with people, not entirely legal stuff. And his friends won’t exactly fit in with the conservatory audience. But in their own ways they all care about Joey, and they’ll support her or die (maybe kill) trying.

I’m confident The Recital will be the most touching, endearing story about assassination, gunrunning, and personal security you’ll read all year.