Category Archives: Fiction

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dead Folks’ Blues,’ by Steven Womack

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A surprising number of older mysteries are showing up these days, a development that pleases me a lot. Such books are enjoyably un-Woke, by and large. Dead Folks’ Blues, by Steven Womack, is a pretty good book with roots in classic hard-boiled.

Harry James Denton is recently divorced, and recently fired from his job as a newspaper reporter in Nashville, Tennessee. He moved into a smaller apartment, switched to a smaller, older car, and set up as a private eye. So far, most of his income has come from repossessing cars and skip tracing for a buddy in that business, and his operation is sinking fast.

Then in walks Rachel Fletcher, blonde, beautiful and rich. Once upon a time, Rachel and Harry were in love. But they drifted apart, and she married a successful surgeon. Now she’s living the good life.

Except it’s not as good as it looks. Her husband, she tells Harry, has a gambling problem. She’s pretty sure someone has threatened his life over unpaid debts. She’s willing to pay Harry – generously – to keep an eye on him.

The money, on top of Rachel herself, is irresistible. But this case will be full of surprises. Harry will find himself unconscious on top of a corpse, followed around by sinister characters, and beaten within an inch of his life before – belatedly – the whole plot comes together for him.

Dead Folks’ Blues was fun to read. Author Womack does a pretty fair job with his hard-boiled narration, though he needs to learn when to stop talking and trust the reader to get the joke. Also, I figured out Whodunnit pretty early.

Not sure if I’ll carry on with this series. It shows promise, but there are suggestions of leftish political leanings – and such things tend to only get worse. But it was worth reading. I do recommend it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Alexandria,’ by Paul Kingsnorth

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Well, I have done it. I have completed reading Paul Kingsnorth’s Buccmaster Trilogy. Frankly, if I’d known what I was getting into, I’d probably have given it a miss. But in the end, it did grab me.

Alexandria, the third book of the trilogy, almost seems to take us back to the 11th Century setting of the first book, The Wake. It’s about people living a primitive life in fen country. Only this isn’t the past, it’s the post-apocalyptic future, some time after global warming (one assumes) has permanently heated the earth and raised the water levels.

The main characters, who speak in the same kind of crude old English dialect as Buccmaster in The Wake, are all that remains of one of the few remaining, primitive human tribes. Once there were hundreds of them, but they’re down to seven. There are a patriarch and a matriarch, a married couple with a young daughter, one other old man and a young man, who has no sexual outlet except for carrying on an affair with the married woman.

They are a matriarchal society, and they worship an earth goddess. Their creed is the importance of the body – there can be no life without the body. Their great enemy is Wayland. (We remember Wayland as Buccmaster’s god in The Wake. But now Wayland isn’t a blacksmith god, but the guiding spirit of Alexandria, which is an artificial intelligence bank into which most of humanity has uploaded its consciousnesses. Emissaries from Alexandria, strange semi-human creatures in red cloaks, constantly dog them, tempting one tribe member after another away into the supposed delights of Alexandria.

Toward the end, when the villagers have to flee rising waters and head for Glastonbury, where they expect final illumination, I began to actually be engaged with this story. Although there’s no Christianity here, except in passing allusions, the central question is a profoundly Christian one – what does it mean to have a body and a soul? Do body and soul have to be at war? Can there be a marriage between them?

I don’t necessarily recommend Alexandria or the Buccmaster Trilogy, unless your brow is pretty high as a reader. But it’s a meaningful literary exercise from an author who’s now a Christian.

Fiction, Reviews

‘You Live Once,’ by John D. MacDonald

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Another oldie from John D. MacDonald to review. You Live Once is not, in my opinion, his best work. But I may be prejudiced. (Ya think?)

Back in the mid-50s, when You Live Once was published, there was a particular kind of corporate culture common to several major American corporations (I had an uncle who was involved in this). The company would move young executives around, relocating them every couple years, putting them to work in various divisions on various jobs. The idea was to make them generalists, able to step in and take over wherever they were needed.

Clint Sewell is part of this culture, though unusual in being a bachelor. That suits his boss, Dodd Raymond, very well. Dodd is carrying on an affair with Mary Olan, a wealthy local girl, notoriously promiscuous. Dodd brings Clint along on double dates with his wife and Mary, allowing him to spend time with Mary while Clint amuses his wife. Clint has tried his own luck with Mary, but she put him off.

It’s a great arrangement for Dodd, until everything goes foul. Clint wakes up in his apartment one morning with a bad headache, and finds Mary dead in his closet – strangled with his own belt. Panicking, Clint drives the body to the woods and dumps it (feeling guilty). But that doesn’t put the police off long. Soon he’s a fugitive, looking for someone to turn to for help.

I thought You Live Once was more of a programmer than most of MacDonald’s books, more of a potboiler cranked out for a buck. But my judgment is clouded because the story employs a trope I dislike. That trope may have been quite fresh in 1956, but it’s pretty predictable today. And it’s one that annoys me.

So I don’t give You Live Once my highest rating. Your may like it better.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Busman’s Honeymoon,’ by Dorothy L. Sayers

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Dorothy L. Sayers initially intended to end her Lord Peter Wimsey series of mystery novels with Gaudy Night, in which Harriet Vane finally succumbs to Peter’s charm and agrees to marry him. But later she collaborated with Muriel St. Clare Byrne on a Wimsey play, called Busman’s Honeymoon. In the play, the honeymoon is interrupted by the discovery of a murdered body, to the couple’s frustration and some interesting character revelation.

Later Sayers turned the play into a novel. It’s not considered one of the best of the series, but it has virtues that make it well worth reading.

The story opens with a series of letters written by various characters, describing the wedding and its initial aftermath. Harriet has confided to Peter’s mother that she always wanted to live in a particular house she used to visit as a child, in a village in Hertfordshire. Peter has delightedly bought it for her, and he and his man Bunter have arranged for the house to be ready for their occupation when they show up on the wedding night.

However, they find the house locked and uninhabited, and none of the servants were expecting them. At last they get in, make shift to set up in spite of inconveniences like blocked chimneys, and consummate their marriage. The next morning the missing former owner is found – bludgeoned to death in the cellar.

The local police superintendent takes to Wimsey immediately, being, like him, devoted to collecting literary allusions for insertion into conversation. Lord Peter can’t resist involving himself in the mystery. They will encounter a collection of local eccentrics, all with various motives for wanting the victim dead, but with either insufficient motivations or solid alibis. The final solution will prove to involve a genuine scoundrel and a baffling murder weapon.

The story gets slow in some stretches, especially in what I assume (it’s been a while since I read it) the added scenes not found in the play. The great virtue of the book, in my opinion, is the section at the end where Peter suffers a PTSD reaction as the murderer’s execution hour approaches, and Harriet comforts him.

Recommended. I also think some Christian college ought to stage the original play some time. I wish I’d gotten the chance to play Lord Peter when I was young and thin.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Non-fiction

Debunking Electrifying Hobby, Oversharing, Blogrolling

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I subscribed to a video service in order to watch a movie last month, and since then I’ve tried to catch a few more in the package before cancelling. So far, it’s been a buy-one-get-four deal.

This week a couple of us watched the original Top Gun for the first time. I’ve heard it’s a frequently quoted movie. It can’t be more than any other well-received flick of its time. Only a couple lines stood out to me from the scant story that links the flying together. But the flying is cool. Dog fighting is cool. Faux drama about possibly running out of gas so you shouldn’t try to help a couple teammates return alive is not cool.

The F-14 Tomcats they fly in the movie have co-pilots, radar intercept officers (RIO). From what you see on screen, they appear to be only a second set of eyes, so I had to look up what they could do in the air–navigation, radio, electronics, and some weapons. Dave “Bio” Baranek, a Top Gun himself, has a book on it.

I don’t plan to watch it again, but then I rarely rewatch anything anymore.

Both sides: “The American body politic, Mamet tells us, is fundamentally diseased, and is slowly being consumed by an ideologically radical political class which, left unchecked, is sure to consume it.” A Playwright’s Life – (lawliberty.org)

Banned by YouTube: Ann Reardon has many great videos on cooking and other videos that debunk “life hack” videos that purport to demonstrate a cool, new time-saver, often food related. Her recent video exposing the dangers of fractal wood burning (“34 deaths”) was removed by YouTube, because somehow the artificial intelligence judged the debunk to be more dangerous than the how-to.

Star Rating? Tyler explains the reasons he doesn’t like Goodreads.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin: A book that changed the world.

Social demands: “Learning to say ‘no’ can be difficult; learning to not reveal one’s conscience on every single issue that hits the news can be even harder, especially in a society where it is seen as good and noble to have a ‘take’ or a strong moral stance on practically everything. . . .”

Stormy Sea with Sailing Vessels by Jacob van Ruisdael

Feature Photo: Christie’s Restaurant sign, Houston, Texas. 1983. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Beast,’ by Paul Kingsnorth

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I want to like Paul Kingsnorth, the critically acclaimed English author who has recently converted to Romanian Orthodox Christianity. So I have read and reviewed the first novel of his trilogy, The Wake. And I have now read Beast, the second book. I’ll be honest – it’s a challenge.

In my not-critically-acclaimed novel, Troll Valley, I created (and killed off) a pretentious young novelist who insisted on reading aloud his manuscript, in which the main character describes being in darkness and silence, doing nothing, for pages on end. I was reminded of that character as I read Beast. I’ll admit more happened here than in my parody story, but still it was a challenge for a middle-brow reader.

This book, unlike the first of the trilogy, is set in the present (apparently). The main character, who we learn is named Edward Buckmaster (thus probably a descendent of Buccmaster, the hero of The Wake), has apparently run away from his wife and daughter to spend time living in a shack in the wilderness, pursuing a spiritual quest for meaning.

A storm damages the hut and leaves Edward with amnesia. And probably delusional. Through a stream of consciousness narrative, we follow him trying to find out where he is and who he is, and hunting for the only other living thing he can find in his world, a black panther.

I have some vague idea what this book is about, but I couldn’t really say for sure. I’m not sure I’m supposed to.

I’m going to finish the third book of the trilogy, Alexandria. Maybe it will illuminate its forerunners. If not, I’ll admire Kingsnorth as one of those authors who’s too smart for me.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Echo from the Past,’ by Hervey Copeland

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I figured I’d need to download at least one extra book so I’d have reading material during my Norway trip. As it was, I didn’t have a lot of time for reading, and the book I was on, The Wake (reviewed yesterday) was pretty slow going. But I got to The Echo from the Past on my trip home. It was nice to read a book that featured places I’d visited just days before. But beyond that, this was a disappointing read.

Craig McMillan is an unemployed English journalist and hobby sailor. He’s running out of cash, so he’s interested when an acquaintance tells him he can earn a good amount of money transporting a passenger to Norway. The passenger plans to enter the country unofficially, but Craig is assured that he’s not carrying drugs or wanted by the police. Still, anyone who’s ever watched a Noir film knows that no good can come from a deal like this.

As it turns out, the weather in the North Sea turns tempestuous, and Craig wants to turn back. At that point his passenger, who’s been affable up till now, pulls a gun on him and tells him to sail on. They barely make it to Norway, and the passenger sails away in a rubber inflatable boat. Craig plans on staying in the country for a while and sightseeing, in order to establish his cover story for the police.

But then he learns that his passenger has turned up dead, his throat cut. Then a man with a gunshot wound shows up on his deck. Craig wants to take him to the hospital, but the man says no. He needs to get out of the country as soon as possible. He tells Craig an incredible story about Nazi gold and modern corruption and betrayal.

Craig’s investigative instincts are aroused, but he will find himself up against powerful and ruthless enemies.

The problem with The Echo from the Past was amateurish writing. The author talks too much. He tries to lay everything out for the reader, not trusting their intelligence. Take a sentence like: “It meant that there wouldn’t be any prying eyes sticking their noses in things that were of no concern to them.” Aside from the mixed metaphor, that sentence could be reduced by half and be much more effective. This is a book by someone who has never learned to prune his prose.

Also I found the ending implausible. I don’t recommend The Echo from the Past.

I might mention, however, that the language was pretty subdued. Not much profanity. I’ll say that in its defense.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cocktail Time’: A Novel about the Novel ‘Cocktail Time’

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“There’s nothing like getting married. It’s the only life, as Brigham Young and King Solomon would tell you, if they were still with us.”

When Lord Frederick Ickenham is inspired to humble his friend, barrister Sir Raymond Bastable, by knocking off his hat with a Brazil nut, he cannot know Bastable will go on to write the best-selling novel Cocktail Time in response. But then he does suggest the idea to him the next day in the vein of, “This would be the thing to do, but you could never do it, could you? Of course not.”

Bastable takes that suggestion as a gauntlet thrown and channels all of his anger about modern young men of mid-1950s English society into a novel bitterly entitled “Cocktail Time,” because that’s all today’s youth are good for. And, boy, does he put passion into it. He compares it to Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor, a romance banned as pornography in fourteen U.S. states. If the voting public knew he had written a novel like this, his hopes for a political would be over, so it has to go out under a pseudonym.

As soon as you start hiding things in a Wodehouse novel, you’re in for trouble. Cocktail Time is the third of four books starring the fifth Earl of Ickenham, Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, or Pongo Twistleton’s Uncle Fred. It’s jolly fun. Will the world learn who really wrote Cocktail Time? Will Bastable’s sister Pheobe be able to do anything with her social blight of a son? Will Johnny Pearce, owner of Hammer Lodge, work out his money troubles, particularly being able to show his housekeeper the door? You’ll have to find out yourself.

It helps to have read more about Uncle Fred prior to this, because while this gently aged fellow takes up a slingshot (or “catapult” as the English say it) and knocks off the hat of a proud, old stuffed shirt he has long known in chapter one, without having read previous stories, you wouldn’t know how Uncle Fred is capable of impersonating just about any type of person alive and perhaps also parrots.

At the start of chapter eight, after introducing Carlisle, a con artist who would cause trouble for the weaker minded of the cast, Uncle Fred shares a cab with him on their way to the same residence, and I immediately felt the marvelous potential of the two professional impersonators together. The sparks flew.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Wake,’ by Paul Kingsnorth

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now in this small holt by bacstune locan at the treows i was thincan that these frenc they wolde gif all these things other names. i was locan at an ac treow and i put my hand on its great stocc and i was thincan the ingengas will haf another name for this treow, it had seemed to me that this treow was anglisc as the ground it is grown from anglisc as we who is grown also from that ground. but if the frenc cums and tacs this land and gifs these treows sum frenc name they will not be the same treows no mor. it colde be that to erce this treow will be the same that it will haf the same leafs the same rind but to me it will be sum other thing that is not mine sum thing ingenga of what i can no longer spec

If the snippet above, from Paul Kingsnorth’s eccentric novel, The Wake, seems difficult to read, rest assured it’s supposed to be difficult. The author has made the decision to write in something like the language and orthography of an actual 11th Century document. This provides a sense of authenticity at the expense of comprehension. If you’ve studied a Germanic language, as I have, reading it will be a little easier. But I suppose any English reader can comprehend most of it with a little work.

Buccmaster of Holland (a place in England, not the Netherlands) is a stubborn and self-willed English peasant farmer at the time of the Norman conquest. He’s jealous of his status (a socman with three oxgangs), brooks no contradiction from his wife or sons, and holds tenaciously to the old, pre-Christian English heathenism.

When the wapontake is raised to recruit men to fight, first King Harald Hardrada in York, and later William the Conqueror in the south, he refuses to go himself, because he sees nothing in it for him. This leads, ultimately to the loss of everything he has. So he flees into the wilderness to be a “green man,” a rebel and an outlaw, to fight the invaders. He gathers a small group of fellow outcasts, and lords it over them as if he were the great man he believes himself to be. And all the while he is listening to the voices of the old gods, whose messages are infuriatingly vague.

Ultimately, we will learn Buccmaster’s secrets, which are ugly and tragic and make the story a rather different one from what he – and the reader – have believed it to be.

The Wake is a book that requires some wrestling, in various ways. I’m not sure if I’d go on to read the second book, but I already paid for the third one, so I guess I’d better see it through. The author has recently converted to Christianity, and it will be interesting to see what effect that pilgrimage may have had on this unusual trilogy.

Fiction

Coming in November: The Fall of NÚMENOR

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“HarperCollins is proud to announce the publication in November 2022 of THE FALL OF NÚMENOR by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by writer and Tolkien expert, Brian Sibley, and illustrated by acclaimed artist, Alan Lee with new pencil drawings and colour paintings.”

The above is from the press release. The Tolkien Society has a few more details. (via @TeawithTolkien)