Category Archives: Fiction

Fiction, Reviews

‘Hunting Rabbits, by Mark Gilleo

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Here in the Midwest (which is actually the North Central US, but why be pedantic?), when we encounter something that’s unlike anything we’ve seen before, but still doesn’t impress us much, we damn it with faint praise by saying, “Well, that’s different.”

I’d describe Mark Gilleo’s Hunting Rabbits as “different.” I can honestly say I haven’t ever read anything quite like it before.

Charlie Gates is chief of police in Williamsburg, Virginia, home of Colonial Williamsburg. One day there’s a holdup at a local drug store, and the culprit is thwarted, getting his arm broken by a bystander who knows how to handle himself. The bystander then disappears.

The next part of the story confused me a little. Williamsburg isn’t a big town, as far as I know. But the police resources that are now devoted to this non-lethal crime struck me as implausible in any police department these days. Charlie is even able to secure the assistance of a big-city homicide detective, Luis “Quags” Millares, who becomes his trusty right-hand man.

Studying surveillance camera footage, they learn that the crime-stopping bystander soon left the area on a bus, along with a couple other drug store customers. A little inquiry reveals that this bus is one of a private fleet whose sole purpose is to transport CIA trainees to and from “The Farm,” the nearby, high-security federal training facility.

Even more intriguing, a fingerprint on the robber’s gun, touched by the crime-stopper, matches a print from the scene of an old murder – that of Charlie’s own sister, one of the victims of a still-unidentified serial killer decades ago.

What confronts them then is what I’d describe as a “black box” investigation. Because of security regulations, the cops find themselves unable to interrogate either their suspect or any witnesses. What they end up doing is to present various threats of bad publicity to the Farm authorities, and then watch as they themselves clean up their own mess — not always getting it right, either.

I found the story unsatisfactory in several ways. The decisive stuff in the narrative happens mostly offstage. Our heroes are just spectators, sometimes unsatisfied spectators.

Also I thought the characterization was clumsy, especially at the beginning, where characters commit the common literary sin of telling people too much at their first meetings. And there were some homophone spelling problems.

The book wasn’t bad, but it didn’t leave me wanting more.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dark Peak,’ by Adam J. Wright

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A good psychological thriller can be great entertainment, if the psychology is plausible. How does Dark Peak, by Adam J. Wright, stack up?

Mitch Walker is an English landscaper, a hard-working divorced father. Thirty years ago, his sister was abducted and murdered by a serial killer in Derbyshire, where his family lived at the time. His mother was so traumatized that she took him and fled away, and he never had contact with his father again.

Now he receives notice that his father has died, leaving him the Gothic-style mansion where they lived at the time, plus a fortune. Mitch doesn’t mind the money, but he doesn’t look forward to going back to the mansion. He still has nightmares about the place.

Elly Cooper is also divorced. She’s a former journalist who wrote a bestselling book about a serial killer and has been living off the royalties for some time. But book sales have fallen off, and her agent offers her a deal to do a new book, about a series of unsolved murders in Derbyshire, one of which is the murder of Mitch’s sister.

They will arrive around the same time, and their arrival will stir up old memories and old evil. It soon becomes apparent that the murders have not stopped – and someone in Mitch’s own family may be responsible.

The great weakness in Dark Peak was characterization – which ought to be the first thing you need to get right in a book of this type. If you don’t understand your own characters, how are we to believe you about psychopaths? The characters in Dark Peak commit the common fictional character error of keeping secrets from the police for reasons that advance the plot but seem unnatural in the real world. They also tell each other too much – real people rarely spill their guts to each other like these people do. It provides an excuse for information dumps, but again it rings hollow.

Also, for this reader, the murderer’s motivation, when finally revealed, didn’t seem very plausible.

The book is free for Kindle as of this review, so you might want to check it out, but I was rather disappointed. Cautions for disturbing content.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Twisted Justice,’ by Dennis Carstens

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I liked the first Marc Kadella novel that I read, Cult Justice (by Dennis Carstens), even though there were some problems with the prose, because it had solidly conservative content and the story was pretty good. Reminiscent of a John Sandford book, but with a legal setting. The second one, Maddy’s Justice, I liked less, because it was all You-Go-Girl feminism (as I perceived it). So I figured I’d give Kadella one more shot with Twisted Justice. I have to say, he knocked it out of the park. For this reader.

Minneapolis lawyer Marc Kadella, along with his impossibly hot girlfriend, Maddy Rivers, attends a Christmas season party in a box at U.S. Bank Stadium. They were invited by Parker Crane, a friend who’s done well in financial services. During the party, Parker asks Marc about what a divorce would cost him, as his marriage is on the rocks. When he hears the answer, Parker comments that he’d be better off killing her. Then he takes it back.

Not long after, Parker’s wife Diana is stabbed to death in the parking garage of her lover’s apartment building. When the police check Parker’s cell phone records, they put him in that exact spot at the time of the murder.

Parker maintains that his phone was stolen, and he’s being framed. He retains Marc to defend him. As a defense attorney, Marc, of course, has no need to prove Parker innocent. He just needs to raise reasonable doubt. His obvious tactic is to construct a SODDI (Some Other Dude Did It) defense.

To do this, he looks into Diana’s personal history – and finds a wealth of alternative murderers. Because it turns out Diana, a former Minnesota Vikings cheerleader, had a nice little side gig going as a high-end call girl. And some of her clients were among the most powerful men in Minnesota, men with plenty of things to hide…

This book was a little more courtroom-centric than the previous book, with fewer shootouts and gunfights. That was fine with me. The courtroom scenes seemed authentic, and thus educational. As usual with this series, I found the character banter amusing, but not convincing. The problem with misplaced modifiers in the text, so evident in Cult Justice, was not noticeable here. I did note one badly cast sentence that should have been re-written, but in general the writing was okay. The final “surprise twist” didn’t surprise me, but was dramatically appropriate.

What I really loved about Twisted Justice was that it poked a well-deserved finger in the eye of the Minnesota power structure. That was genuinely sweet.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Bright Orange for the Shroud,’ by John D. MacDonald

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After the minimum waiting time, they were married late one afternoon at the court house, and left in a new white Pontiac convertible, the back seat stacked with her matched luggage, her smile as brilliant as a brand new vermin trap ordered from Herter’s catalogue.

Whenever I see a deal on one of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee books in e-book form, I grab it. So it was with Bright Orange for the Shroud, a fairly early – but memorable – entry in the series. If I remember correctly, now and then in later books, when he’s recalling his personal nightmares, McGee mentions Boo Waxwell.

Travis McGee isn’t a private eye. He calls himself a salvage specialist. When people are robbed of large amounts of money or valuable possessions, he goes and gets them back, then keeps half the value. This enables him to live his chosen lifestyle – “taking his retirement in installments.”

He plans to make this particular summer one of his lazy ones. He’ll do some maintenance on his big houseboat, the Busted Flush, cruise a bit, do some fishing. He’s earned a rest.

Until Arthur Wilkinson shows up on the dock, incoherent and emaciated. Arthur was part of their beachside community for a while, a low-key, diffident man who’d made money in the family business. Then he met tiny, gorgeous Wilma Ferrer, married her, and moved away.

But it turned out Wilma was a con woman. With her little group of confidence friends, she picked Arthur clean. Money wasn’t enough for her, though. Together with the muscle of the group, big Boo Maxwell, she made sure Arthur had been destroyed as a man.

McGee can help people recover stuff, but recovering a lost soul is outside his skill set. So he goes to Chookie McCall, a professional dancer who dated Arthur for a while, before hooking up with a wrong guy, now in prison. Though she’s reluctant at first, one look at Arthur arouses all Chookie’s maternal instincts.

McGee comes up with a plan to con the cons and get some of Arthur’s money back. It’s a good plan. His mistake is underestimating Boo Waxwell as an opponent. Though he comes off as an ignorant, overgrown cracker, Boo is no fool at all. Someone suggests that Boo is McGee’s alter ego, what he might have been if something had been missing in his make-up. (In many ways, Boo anticipates Max Cady, the brutal villain of MacDonald’s novel The Executioners, which was filmed twice under the title, Cape Fear.)

There’s not a wasted line in this book. It’s tough and hard-boiled and tender and sympathetic. There’s a lot of sexual content. Some of it reads really great from my traditional, sexist point of view, and some of it reflects the mores of the sexual revolution and hasn’t aged well.

The plot includes, in my opinion, one too many lucky breaks for the good guys. But all in all, Bright Orange for the Shroud works splendidly. Highly recommended.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Reading

Who Gets Hurt, The Scandal of Holiness, and Norman Lear

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I was reading some introductory sociology texts recently, and in trying to encourage students to critique their own biases and lay aside their cultural preferences, the author brought up infanticide as an example. Other cultures practice infanticide for their own reasons, and while it would be easy to condemn them for it, who are we to judge? The author didn’t actually say we should not condemn this cultural difference. She said it would be easy to believe we are right to condemn it, in the context of paragraphs on being open-minded and meeting diverse people where they are.

What is easy to believe is that this example of cultural differences is a stand-in for abortion. If the example were honor killing or the less lethal shunning, would the author be willing to simply roll with it? In both cases, the natural remedy to work toward would be to work against the social groups who accept these things. Because two of these things are evil and the third can be.

Is this where our current secular mindset takes us, the belief that we are above all morality and everything is mere difference of opinion? I keep thinking the reason this sociologist is willing to dismiss infanticide as a mere social difference is she isn’t the one getting hurt.

Reading: In The Scandal of Holiness, Jessica Hooten Wilson argues for reading fiction to see God at work in the others and expand Christian imagination. Reviewer Justin Lonas found this true for him. “The Holy Spirit used those who influenced my learning to read literature and poetry to protect me from making a shipwreck of my faith.”

Comedy: Norman Lear, the comedy writer who gave us shows such as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, turned 100 on July 27. He drove America’s morality to the left, Albert Mohley writes, “by creating the stories that made America laugh … and sometimes cringe. In any event, Americans watched Lear’s television shows by the millions. They could hardly avoid them.”

Brisket with the Best: This article on eating at the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest is remarkably funny and goes in an unexpected direction while keeping its feet on the ground.

Noting: I try to read my books gently–as few wrinkles as possible, but I also am fairly ready to grab a pen or pencil and mark them up. Here are reasons for writing marginalia.

Gothic Novels: British historian Jeremy Black is written a literary series of series. The Age of Nightmare is coming in November. “The true interest of the Gothic novel is more remarkable than it is grisly: the featured darkness and macabre are not meant to usurp heroism and purity, but will fall hard under the over-ruling hand of Providence and certainty of retribution.”

Photo: McDonald’s, Azusa, California. 1977. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Murder on “B” Deck,’ by Vincent Starrett

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The name Vincent Starrett was familiar to me. He was a well-known writer of the Golden Age of Mystery, but is best known for his book, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, which I read long ago and enjoyed. (I believe he was the one who suggested that Nero Wolfe was Holmes’ son by Irene Adler.)

So, in my ongoing effort to find more classic mystery writers to read, as a break from the Woke Age of Mystery, I bought Murder on “B” Deck, first in Starrett’s series of three 1920s novels starring amateur detective Walter Ghost.

We meet Ghost first through the eyes of his friend Dunstan Mollock, a mystery writer. Dunstan is on board a steam ship about to embark for France, to see his sister and her husband off on their honeymoon. Dunstan is delighted to find his friend Walter Ghost on the ship, also headed for Europe. Walter is described as a tall, ugly, amiable man who is a former Army intelligence agent, a scientist, and an explorer. And somehow he has acquired a reputation as a solver of mysteries.

Dunstan, through a boneheaded mistake, finds himself stuck on board after embarkation, and decides to just buy a ticket make the trip. Not long after, one of the passengers, a beautiful woman who calls herself the Countess Fogartini, is murdered in her stateroom. Shortly thereafter another passenger, a young English nobleman, is lost overboard under suspicious circumstances.

So the captain asks Walter Ghost to investigate. Ghost starts cautiously interrogating the other passengers. I’d like to tell you the drama builds and the tension grows excruciating – but that’s not what happens. The whole thing proceeds at a pretty leisurely pace.

I suppose my tastes have been coarsened by modern fiction, but I found Murder on “B” Deck slow, and the prose flabby. Also the culprit’s behavior, when he is at last unmasked, struck me as more suitable for melodrama than the real world. Ideas of social class that just don’t fly anymore were also on display.

If you’re looking for a low key book that won’t offend you (much), you might enjoy Murder on “B” Deck as a change of pace. But I can’t really praise it much.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Maddy’s Justice,’ by Dennis Carstens

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I reviewed Dennis Carstens’ legal thriller Cult Justice a little while back. I didn’t think the writing was the best, but the characters and dialogue were interesting. Also, the book had a genuinely conservative theme.

So I bought the next book, Maddy’s Justice. And now I’m kind of confused. There was no visible conservatism in this story, except for a hatred of pure evil that pretty much anyone could share. The name change of Minneapolis’ former Lake Calhoun to the unpronounceable Bde Maka Ska is mentioned with unreserved approval. And the plot here is right out of the feminist playbook, aside from some of the jokes.

Attorney Marc Kadella and his boss, Connie, are retained to defend some real scumbags from a sexual harassment complaint. Marc and Connie are used to defending dirtballs, but these guys are worse than they appear. They’re a high-powered, politically juiced law firm with astoundingly predatory policies toward their female employees. It’s generally understood that promotion depends on delivering sexual favors, and even so, few women last long with the firm.

But that’s just on the surface. They are closely connected to an operation in the Caribbean that’s reminiscent of Epstein Island.

But wait, it gets worse…

In order to prepare his defense, Marc has to investigate his own clients, because he knows the plaintiffs’ lawyers will do that, and his clients aren’t cooperative. He turns his private eye friend Tony Carvelli, and his partner Maddy Rivers (who is Marc’s fiancée) loose on them. And the closer they look, the uglier it gets. And the more danger they’re in.

I had a couple problems with this book. The first is that Maddy is a genuine Mary Sue, a woman so beautiful, we’re told, that she once posed for Playboy, but also so lethal that she chews hulking thugs up and spits them out.

Also, the law office banter (similar to, though not quite at the level of, John Sandford’s cop banter) struck me as unrealistic. I say this having no actual experience of law office banter. But I have trouble believing that men and women working together in the business world today make easy jokes about sex with one another and take it lightly. I suspect that a large number of female employees are constantly on the hunt for microaggressions. And the men walk on eggshells.

The author’s besetting sin of misplaced metaphors was less on display in this book than in the last one (though it did show up), but comma placement was almost random all through the text.

So I didn’t like Maddy’s Justice as much as I liked Cult Justice. I don’t know if I’m going to go on with the series or not. But they’re one and one with me, so maybe I’ll give them one more chance.

Cautions for language, adult situations, and some really, really disturbing themes involving violence against children.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dark Intercept,’ by Andrews & Wilson

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I mentioned just the other day that I’m prejudiced against Christian fiction. Not because I’m against it, I hasten to add, but because I hate seeing it done badly. Which it usually is, in my experience.

So I approached Dark Intercept, by Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson, with a certain amount of caution. However, these guys are established, bestselling authors. I thought I’d take a chance.

My response is… complicated.

Jedediah Johnson is a Navy SEAL going through the difficult adjustments of retirement. When he gets a call from his old boyhood friend in Nashville, David Yarnell, he doesn’t really want to talk to him. They parted on bitter terms, and David married Rachel, who’d been Jed’s girl. He has neither forgiven nor forgotten.

But David explains that their daughter Sara Beth has been kidnapped. That’s a different matter.

What Jed doesn’t know is that Sara Beth is a very special girl, and not just in her parents’ hearts. She has a psychic (or spiritual) gift. She can communicate telepathically and read people’s minds. She was being recruited by a Christian group with a mysterious, clandestine mission. But there are others aware of her powers, and they’re the ones who snatched her. They have dark plans for her, unless somebody is able to locate her and rescue her.

Which just happens to be something Jed is good at.

I kind of seesawed in my estimation of Dark Intercept. At first I was delighted by the sheer quality of the writing. The book is professionally and effectively written. I thought the dialogue was a little weak – everybody tended to talk the same way. But all in all, very good on literary style. Which is a rare treat in faith-based literature.

However, other elements of the story began bothering me increasingly.

One element was the idea of a Christian military group, which is an important part of the story. I have no problem with the idea of the Christian solder (or warrior), obviously. But I view military service as part of a Christian’s civil obligations. I very much distrust the idea of a “Christian” army, fighting holy wars. (Though the enemy here certainly merits a holy war response. But this is fantasy. I don’t want to give people ideas in the real world.)

Another element was the fact that the spirituality in this book is pretty generic. Lots of talk about God and faith. Very little about Jesus Christ and his death, resurrection and atonement. It seemed to be a sort of Touched By an Angel spirituality, adapted for the mass market. Tyndale House is the publisher, but I think they’re aiming at a wider audience.

Also, there’s a woman pastor. You probably know what I think about that.

In sum, I’m not sold. I appreciated the authors’ professionalism. But I found the story theologically problematic.

You might easily react differently.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Big Dark Sky,’ by Dean Koontz

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For as long as Ophelia had been wise enough to see the world as it really was, she’d been aware that it was shifting away from truth and light, sliding farther every year. But she would never give up and slide with it. Truth mattered, always striving for the light. As long as there were people like Colson, there was light in the world, a chance that the slide could be halted, even reversed.

It did not take me long to buy, read, and finish Dean Koontz’s latest novel, The Big Dark Sky, just released. I wouldn’t say it’s one of my Koontz favorites, and the title’s weak, but even an average Koontz is more delightful than most books I read.

Joanna Chase is a successful novelist living in Santa Fe. She has fond memories of her childhood on a ranch called Rustling Willows in Montana, though her time there ended in tragedy.

But now she’s started to get mysterious messages, through her TV and her phone and other devices. A voice calling for help, saying they’re in a dark place. As she finds herself compelled to return to Montana in response, she begins to remember things she’d forgotten. For instance, she’s entirely forgotten her best friend – a mentally disabled boy. How did that happen?

Meanwhile, the new owner of Rustling Willows, a multibillionaire, has hired a private investigator to take a close look at the place. Strange things have been going on there. He doesn’t feel safe bringing his family until they stop.

And nearby, a megalomaniac kidnaps a young woman, as an early step in his grand plan to exterminate the entire human race, which in his view has proven itself unworthy of the planet.

What I liked best about The Big Dark Sky was that, although things got very dark (and Koontz can write dark with the best of them), it’s mainly a book about hope. Exactly the kind of book we need in 2022. Though the last line contains an intriguing grim joke.

As far as religion goes, Koontz’s Catholicism is not very evident here. The Gandalf figure of the story, Ganesh, can be presumed to be Hindu. But the scientific/mystical themes are suitable for most anybody.

Cautions for language and a sex scene.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cult Justice,’ by Dennis Carstens

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It’s a common complaint among writers, especially new writers, that editors will return a manuscript without reading past the first page or two. The writers feel they haven’t been given a fair trial.

What they don’t understand is that all editors, and many readers, have developed the ability to spot a clunker at a very early stage. Certain common mistakes immediately mark a writer as an amateur, and most editors have no time to give free writing lessons to every stranger who shoots a story over the transom.

I’m an editor in a small way, and I think I’ve been reading long enough to have some of that instinct myself. When I started reading Dennis Carsten’s Cult Justice, I spotted some caution lights, and didn’t think I’d stay with it for the long haul.

But in this case I was wrong. The prose has undeniable weaknesses, but the story grabbed me and turned out more engaging than I expected.

Ben Sokol is a self-hating Jew and committed leftist, a tenured professor at a state university in Minneapolis. He’s convinced his genius is unappreciated, and he envies more famous and wealthier colleagues. But one day he and a student decide that what society needs is more direct action. There’s been enough talk. It’s time to take violent action – by, for instance, robbing banks. For good causes, of course, though Ben will need to keep a percentage for his expenses…

He assembles a team of idealistic students who scout locations and plan carefully. Soon the news is reporting a series of lightning-fast bank raids, efficient, profitable and bloodless.

Until there is blood.

Meanwhile, Marc Kadella, Minneapolis attorney, is involved in the divorce case from purgatory. The couple seems like a pair of normal, prosperous citizens, but he can’t keep them out of each other’s faces, in one way or another. Until the wife is murdered, and the husband, Marc’s client, is arrested for her murder.

Who would think her death is actually related to the rash of bank robberies?

At the beginning of Cult Justice, I was (strange as it may seem) put off by how much I agreed with the politics. I’m so used to seeing second-rate literature from my side of the fence that I’m afraid I’ve grown prejudiced. And in actual fact, author Carstens does have weaknesses as a writer. One of his besetting sins is misplacing the object of a clause (I’m sure there’s a technical term for that, but I’ve forgotten it): “Having grown up on the East Coast, January was still too much for Ben to take.”

But the story was fun, and the characters were fun, in the tradition of legal and police thrillers. One element that intrigued me was the description – or lack thereof – of Marc’s girlfriend Maddy. Unless I missed something, we are never told what she looks like, not even whether she’s blonde, brunette or redhead. All we know is that everybody talks about her as the hottest thing on two legs. I thought that was a very creative way to present a character – until I found out this was the tenth book in the series, and author Carstens probably just assumed we already knew.

I thought the plot could have been tighter. I would have liked (for the sake of balance) to have had at least one sincere, intelligent leftist in the cast, rather than just scoundrels and dupes (it annoys me when leftist writers treat us that way).

Still, it was fun to read an engaging, fairly professional mystery written from a conservative point of view. You might like it too. Cautions for language and adult stuff.