Number 5 in W. Glenn Duncan’s amusing Rafferty series is Cannon’s Mouth. Hard-boiled detection on the lighter side of the scale (though plenty of dark stuff happens).
Rafferty, as you may recall, is a Dallas private eye. He’s surveilling a delivery man suspected of pilferage on a hot Dallas day, when he steps into a little park to spy from the shade. A small, pudgy man comes up to him and starts talking as if he knows him. Talks about murdering his business partner, who is ruining the business. Rafferty is so hot and impatient that he barely pays attention to the man. But afterwards he does his civic duty by alerting his friends on the police force, providing all the details he can remember. They’re not much impressed.
Until the named target shows up dead, the night before the “contract” had specified. Worse than that, Rafferty is the one who finds the body. Now he needs to do some quick dancing with suspicious cops, including the leader of a drug task force who’s taken an unexplained interest in the proceedings.
Even when he’s released, Rafferty’s problems aren’t over. Somebody is calling him to demand the money they “earned.” And they’re not above throwing a bomb or two to show they’re serious.
Cannon’s Mouth leans a little too heavily on coincidence in its plotting to please me. And, as always, Rafferty isn’t as funny as he thinks he is. Still, the book was likeable and diverting, and I can recommend it as light reading – the kind of book you’d enjoy taking to the beach this summer. Plus, it’s a couple decades old, so it doesn’t preach at you.
Her brown hair was slicked back into a bun above a face of sculpted symmetrical beauty. She wore a matching symmetrical smile that exuded all the warmth of a protractor.
I’d been following Matt Coyle’s Rick Cahill series of private eye novels, but somehow I’d missed the latest, Last Redemption, which came out in 2021. I missed a lot, as it turned out.
Rick Cahill is a San Diego PI, formerly a cop and a bartender. He struggles with guilt over past mistakes, and has been somewhat self-destructive in the past. But now his life has changed. He’s engaged to a woman he loves, Leah, and she’s pregnant. They plan to marry before the baby is born.
What he’s not telling Leah is that he’s been diagnosed with CRT, a brain damage condition common to pro football players. Repeated head traumas over the years are beginning to take their toll (I’ve always felt fictional private eyes get knocked out too often, without realistic effect). He occasionally suffers mental fugues, forgetting who he is and what he’s doing. And the doctor tells him his life expectancy is reduced. He’s going to tell Leah soon, but hasn’t made up his mind to it yet. Still, he’s changed his life. He’s not taking the hard-boiled jobs anymore. He’s doing security checks for companies. Simple office work, on his computer. Boring, but the income is good and he wants to be a family man now. To be around for them.
Then he hears from Moira, a fellow private eye who’s saved his life in the past. She’s worried about her son Luke, who’s a computer whiz. Luke had been working for a company that audits computer programs, and was checking out a medical technology startup that’s on the brink of a breakthrough in cancer treatment. But Luke has broken up with his girlfriend, who put a restraining order on him. And now he’s disappeared. And he’s suspected in a murder.
Well, how dangerous can this job be? Quick in, quick out, no hassle, right?
There will be hassle.
Last Redemption was well-written, gripping, and suspenseful. I enjoyed it immensely, and recommend it highly, along with the whole series. But this one was the best of the lot.
There can never be too many British police procedurals, in my opinion – even though I only really like a few of them. Graham H. Miller’s The List is the first in a series starring Jonah Greene, a detective in South Wales (not New South Wales in Australia, but the original place).
Jonah has just returned from an enforced break from the job, during which he’s been seeing a counselor. He “froze” during a police raid, resulting in injury to another officer. He thinks he’s ready to go to work again, but he’s not welcome with the other detectives. His boss assigns him to a job in the coroner’s office. Basically it’s desk work – he’s just supposed to see that the forms are filled out and the proper people notified.
But the very first corpse he deals with challenges him. It’s a homeless man who froze to death. There are suspicious details – why was the body found in an area where the homeless rarely go? What happened to the warm coat and sleeping bag he was known to have? And how did he come by two bottles of expensive whisky?
Another homeless man comes to see Jonah. He hands him a list of names the dead man left with him, saying the dead man told him that if anything happened to him, he should get that list to the police. They’d know what to do with it.
Jonah has no idea what to do with it.
But Jonah is a little OCD (one of his problems). Although he’s ordered to move on to the next case, he insists on asking questions on his own time. Which alarms certain influential people…
The List wasn’t bad as a novel. I had some trouble reading it, but I have a feeling that’s because it was a little close to home for me. Some of Jonah’s psychological problems are similar to mine; it was uncomfortable.
But my main problem with the story was that (this isn’t a spoiler; it’s fairly obvious early on in the story) it centered on an elaborate conspiracy lasting over many years. I am very suspicious of conspiracy stories. A secret is hard to keep in this world. And this conspiracy seemed to me improbable on the face of it.
Still, the book wasn’t bad. You might like it better than I did.
Until this week, I knew next to nothing about Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series. I knew it was very long and that some people loved it. I did not know that Jordan was rewriting The Lord of the Rings and that the first of fourteen novels, The Eye of the World, was meant to be his version of The Fellowship of the Ring.
One Goodreads reviewer writes of the first book, “It is difficult to comprehend how an author could take such a simple, familiar story and stretch it out over so many pages.
The hero is an orphan who looks different, he gets his father’s magic sword, he goes on a quest with an old, wily mentor, gets attacked by evil (dark-skinned) mongoloids from the mysterious East, meets the princess by accident, becomes embroiled in an ancient prophecy, discovers a magic ‘force’ which controls fate (and the plot), &c., &c.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
Of the second book, another reviewer praises the overall story but recommends reading with friends to help get through the boring parts. “Jordan’s prose was super wordy and descriptive, there’s no way around it. Two books (570k words in total so far) into the series and when it comes to the actual story progression, not too much have actually progressed.”
A reviewer of eighth book notes he would have included a plot summary, but the book has no plot or development at all.
Because many TV producers want to create the next Game of Thrones, Amazon released last year an eight-episode series based on The Eye of the World, and it appears that they have done a terrible job.
Man Carrying Things reviews it in about an hour, noting some strong weaknesses in the scriptwriting such as frequent deaths that are undone a minute later. Another reviewer appeals to the book lore to say this is supposed to be a very bad move done only by evil magicians, but there’s no indication this show has that in mind. In fact, the show seems to have cliched TV formulas most in mind. It lacks continuity within single episodes. It spends too much time on exposition that doesn’t develop anything.
One major change from the source material is questioning who the chosen one–the Dragon Reborn–is among the main characters. The book tells us upfront, but the show says it could be anyone, and as a result, doesn’t explain what being the Dragon Reborn would mean. It’s apparently an open question whether this is good or bad. Maybe the writers couldn’t pull themselves away from a desire to drive the story toward a character saying, “Maybe the real Dragon Reborn were the friends we made along the way.”
Being an old writer, I had the privilege, at the very beginning of my novel-writing career, of getting my manuscript vetted by a genuine, old-school editor/publisher, Jim Baen. When I read books written by today’s crop of self-published novices, I am continually reminded to thank God for that privilege.
Who’s Killing All My Old Girlfriends? by Jon Spoelstra is one of those books that screams for an editor. The author shows signs of talent, but his poorer instincts need restraining.
Charlie North, the hero of WKAMOG?, is, according to his own account, a successful blogger in Portland who makes a decent retirement income off posting once a week (he’s a little vague on what his winning formula is. It certainly isn’t the quality of his prose). He’s a widower whose beloved wife died of cancer not long ago. One day while talking with his ex-cop friend Bert, he comes up with the idea of going to see the three women he dated seriously before getting married. To see if he could have been happy with any of them, or something.
He goes to Los Angeles to see the first. She dumps a bowl of yogurt on his head. Then, shortly after they part, he learns she’s been murdered with a blunt instrument. Charlie is a Person of Interest in the case.
Saddened but undeterred, he goes to Chicago to visit the second. He doesn’t speak to her, but observes her in a restaurant with her husband. They seem prosperous and happy. Soon after, she is killed with a blunt instrument, too.
Finally, he goes to see the third, in Miami. He has a pleasant dinner with her and her husband, but while she’s in the ladies’ room, the husband (who is apparently a mobster) quietly threatens to kill him if he blogs anything further about them.
And shortly after, she is killed with a blunt instrument.
Now Charlie is a Person of Interest for the police in three cities. Fortunately, he has his ex-cop friend, who calls in other ex-cop friends to help, and Charlie concocts a plan to discover the real killer. Or killers. And clear his name.
If all this seems far-fetched, it seemed that way to me, too. The book started out lightly and likeably, but kept getting darker and darker, though the tone never got serious enough to match the body count. And when the final showdown produces a pile of bodies like the last scene of Hamlet, all plausibility flew out the window.
Each chapter opens, for some reason, with stale “old people jokes” – the ones you see posted on Facebook, over and over. The author admits he borrowed them. I have no idea why he thinks they enhance the reader experience.
Also, the writing is just bad in a lot of places. Author Spoelstra offers lines like, “bleeding like a sliced carotid artery in the neck” (where else are you likely to find a carotid artery?). Or “The end of my Lost Loves Saga hadn’t played out yet, of which it might never play out.”
I stuck with it to the end, partly because of conservative opinions expressed or implied. But I don’t really recommend this book.
She paused. “I know what you’re thinking—that anybody with proper sensitive feeling would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well. I don’t see why proper feeling should prevent me from doing my proper job.”
I have reached the penultimate installment in Dorothy L. Sayers’ immortal Lord Peter Wimsey series. Gaudy Night is probably not Miss Sayers’ best mystery novel, nor by any means her most popular. But it carries the satisfaction of finally bringing the Harriet Vane cycle to its proper culmination (though she’s in the final book too, and rightly so).
Harriet Vane is a popular mystery novelist who once stood in the dock on trial for her life. Lord Peter Wimsey saved her from the gallows, and ever since he has been courting her in a low-key manner, aware that she has a low opinion of herself and is chary about new relationships.
In this book, Harriet goes back to her college (the fictional Shrewsbury – a sly choice of name – a women’s college at Oxford University) for a Gaudy Night – a school reunion. She’s nervous about her reception, but it goes surprisingly well. The only real blot on her experience is a nasty note someone tucked into the sleeve of her academic gown – but she shrugs that off.
Soon after, she gets a letter from the Dean, inviting her to the opening of the new library. She also wants Harriet’s advice on a problem they’re having. Crude notes like the one she received are showing up more and more frequently, and there’s been minor vandalism. Harriet is a mystery writer – maybe she can ferret out the culprit – discreetly, of course.
Harriet is delighted to go, and plunges into the scholarly life. She even takes up research with an idea to earning her Master’s degree. But the poison pen writer is getting more and more aggressive – even to the point where lives are put in danger. In the end, it will take Lord Peter to come in and, with an objective eye, resolve the mystery.
The theme of the book is Dorothy Sayers’ recurring theme in all her work – vocation. She believed strongly that there was a moral obligation for a person to work at whatever God has best equipped them to do, rather than what society says they should do. (She and C. S. Lewis differed on that subject, and lived the consequences out in their personal lives.)
As one who knows the British university system only second-hand, I found some matters confusing. And I also had trouble keeping the scholarly characters straight. Nevertheless, I enjoyed watching Harriet’s journey to greater insight. This book is mostly Harriet’s, after all. Lord Peter only comes in at the end.
Fairly often, when I don’t like a book, I just drop it. But sometimes I feel it necessary to write a bad review as a warning to the unwary. That is the case with Simon King’s The Final Alibi.
Jim Lawson is a psychiatrist in Australia in the early 1950s. But once he was a cop, and he participated in the arrest of “the Devil,” a monster who kidnapped young women and ate them alive (there is no lack of graphic description). The experience shook him so much that he left the police and went into psychiatry. He also wrote a couple bestselling true crime books about the case.
Now he gets a request to come back to the town of Cider Hill, where it all happened. Somebody has taken up where “the Devil” left off – the murders occurring now are identical. And the convicted killer is still locked up in prison. Could they have been wrong about him all this time? Is there some way he could be getting out to kill again?
Jim joins forces with an attractive young female police officer to try to figure things out – which will lead them to more encounters with mangled bodies. Also, Jim takes up again with the girl he rescued from the Devil back in the day, with whom he had an affair before he left town. But it turns out she has secrets, and she’s not the only one covering things up.
There’s a point where the thriller genre crosses over into plain horror, and (as I’ve often stated) I don’t like horror. This book portrayed far too much plain suffering and awfulness, far too explicitly, for my taste. (I think the intention is to tap the Silence of the Lambs vein). Also, the writing was sometimes weak, the author making bad word choices. And the central psychological diagnosis is one which, I believe, is no longer considered valid.
On top of all that, we’re left with a cliff-hanger, which always annoys me.
If you have a stronger stomach than I do, you may enjoy The Final Alibi. It was certainly a fast-paced, high-tension story. But they couldn’t pay me to tackle the next two books in this trilogy.
I’ve been reading and reviewing David Chill’s Burnside detective novels for a few weeks now. Bubble Screen is third in the series.
Burnside is, as you may recall, a former pro football player, a former LA cop, and now a private investigator. Sometimes his football credentials, from USC and (briefly) the pros help him get work. In Bubble Screen he’s hired by Miles Larson, the owner of a cable installation company, who’s a rabid USC supporter and large donor. Cable boxes have been disappearing from his warehouses, and he wants to know who’s pilfering. He suspects the union rep.
The problem turns out to be bigger than some inventory shrinkage. Larson’s grown kids are a dysfunctional bunch, and there’s also been trouble at a warehouse in Las Vegas. And Las Vegas suggests a lot of sinister associations.
Meanwhile, Burnside is also trying to figure out what to do about his girlfriend Gail, who has finished law school now and is considering relocating to San Francisco to take a good job offer.
As I’ve mentioned before in these reviews, I’ve enjoyed the characterization in these books. The plots are okay. The writing is fairly bush league; Author Chill is prone to solecisms. This book includes such treats as: “moving behind the largess of his impressive desk,” and “I… knew the area intricately.”
Lines like that are good for a chuckle, but this time out the author seemed to take a couple of pokes at Christians too. So I figure I’ll break off with this series. I’m not all that invested in it.
Your mileage may vary. It was entertaining, and had a couple heartwarming moments.
As the midges devoured them, they hummed and sang, and worked harder. They wandered like flocks of singers on their way toward some destination. In truth, it was more a lamentation than a song because the midges bit so terribly. And you needed two hands on your scythe. As in a pilgrimage, great peace attended them when they finished.
Of all the pilgrimage paths our Lord prepared, the one that runs through hay is the most beautiful. You pace with the scythe until you reach the neighbor’s fence, then you walk back. That route is the Lord’s way. The midges are a work of the devil.
Up until now, the greatest novel about the Norwegian immigration to America has been Ole Rolvaag’s Giants In the Earth. (It used to be kind of a big deal. I don’t know if anyone reads it anymore, except for my ethnic group.) I haven’t read GITE since college, but as I recall it, it’s depressing in a very Norwegian way. Everybody is unhappy until they die.
Now there’s a new great novel in translation about what we call the Innvandring – Edvard Hoem’s Haymaker in Heaven. I’m happy to report that, on top of being lyrical and captivating, it’s also somewhat less oppressive in tone than Rolvaag’s book. Wodehouse it ain’t, but it’s a brighter journey.
Knut Hansen Nesje is a poor cotter in Norway in the second half of the 19th Century, a widower with one son. Everyone just calls him “Nesje.” His great point of pride is that he’s the head haymaker on the big estate in the neighborhood. He works hard and long and with skill, taking pride in his work. When he’s finished at the estate, he has to work his rent out for his landlord. When there’s time left over, he works on clearing the parcel he rents high up on the mountain, which he hopes – eventually – to be able to purchase.
When a widow named Serianna shows up one day looking for work, they take an interest in each other, and eventually sleep together. Marriage follows after she becomes pregnant. They have several children, and cherish great hopes of all those young hands to help with the labor in the future. But the future will not be quite as they planned…
Serianna’s sister Gjertine eventually shows up. Gjertine is a “Reader” – that is, a Haugean, a pietist, one of my people (though these are apparently a later aberration of Haugeanism, which I have trouble recognizing. Gjertine dresses in a more provocative way than most Haugeans I ever knew would approve, and we’re told that she has been taught a “spell” by them – an incantation to magically stanch bleeding. I hope the author is exercising artistic license here).
Gjertine is beautiful and has many suitors, but insists on choosing her own husband. The man she chooses seems an odd choice — “the Saddle Maker,” who has a reputation with the ladies. She demands two years of continence from him before she will accept him, and surprisingly he complies. They seem to be happy together, but the world is changing…
Things are changing in Norway. Industrialization is coming in; labor and reward are now related in new kinds of ways. And the greatest change of all is the lure of America. It’s in the back of everybody’s mind. Lots of land. Wealth to be won. A more egalitarian society. Gradually, as families and one by one, people start departing for America, and we follow their various destinies on the North Dakota prairie. (It’s interesting to contrast the reaction of the wife in Giants In the Earth, who is oppressed to the point of agoraphobia by all the open space, and Gjertine, who’s delighted by the life and the colors.)
Nesje is a man perfectly attuned to the world he was born into. He’s not introspective; he takes life as it is. Which makes it all the harder for him to deal with a world that will never again be the way he feels it ought to be.
These are my people, of course, so Haymaker in Heaven may not speak to you as it did to me. I found it engrossing and deeply moving. Especially because Nesje, although physically very different, was almost a portrait of my father in his personality and character.
The translation by Tara Chace is good, but has some dead spots. I wish I’d had a chance to put my own hand to it.
Highly recommended. The author treats religious matters respectfully, in general, though I’m not sure he always understands. However, he doesn’t do a bad job of it either. The story, he tells us, is based on the lives of his actual ancestors. You may have trouble keeping the names straight.
The second book in David Chill’s Burnside series is Fade Route (I’m pretty sure all the titles come from football plays, but I’m fairly ignorant in that area). Once again he offers an engaging story about an interesting private eye looking into an intriguing mystery. Once again, some of the writing drove me nuts, but not enough to drop the book.
Burnside (no first name), briefly a pro football player, then a cop, and now a Los Angeles private eye, has time on his hands because his girlfriend is up in San Francisco studying law. So he’s taken to doing counseling work at a center for the homeless run by his friend, Wayne Fairborne. Wayne is a good guy who cares about helping street people learn skills that will make it easier for them to go back to work. He’s also running for mayor of Bay City (really Santa Monica; it’s an alias that goes back to Raymond Chandler), apparently as a Republican(!).
And then he’s murdered.
Who would want to murder Wayne Fairborne? Turns out there’s a fairly long list. His resentful brother-in-law. The string of women he’s had affairs with, or their husbands or boyfriends. And – not least – the incumbent mayor, who’s as crooked as a subdivision street.
Burnside will learn a lot about his friend Wayne, and much of it he doesn’t want to know. I followed the story with great interest, even in spite of lines like, “Dignity is a commodity that illuminates the trail.” And “Opportunities have a way of availing themselves to those who persevere.”
Recommended, as a fun read. Nothing terribly objectionable.
