Category Archives: Fiction

Fiction, Reviews

‘Missing pieces,’ by Peter Grainger

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The morning was as glorious a one as on Waters’ previous visit, and who would disagree that sunshine in the middle of June shows off the English countryside to its greatest advantage? The dappled light beneath those immemorial elms lit up the mosses and lichens on the gravestones they passed, nature’s own script in memoriam, written by the slow hand of time, and above their heads a party of screaming Swifts circled the church tower in an ecstasy of the old excitement.

The Kings Lake Investigations books by Peter Grainger continue the police procedural series that started with the D. C. Smith mysteries. Missing Pieces is the latest. I still miss Smith, who is reported to be off sailing somewhere now, and makes no appearance in this book. But I have to admit that the new books are still pretty good. And this one impressed me especially.

Inspector Smith’s old investigative team has now been incorporated into a new homicide squad. Kings Lake, however, is not Midsomer; they don’t have murders popping up on a weekly basis. So, with the one-year anniversary of their squad approaching, and desiring to justify their continued existence as a unit, they are ordered to look into some cold cases. They soon settle on a puzzler from the 1980s – a young woman was found strangled in a woodland clearing. She had no identification and lies now in an anonymous grave in a local churchyard.

As we follow the investigation, mostly from the viewpoint of Detective Christopher Waters, we see them drawing a connection between the murder and a Woodstock-like music festival held on the same property the same week. It proves surprisingly difficult to locate the people who owned the property at the time, and when they do, the owner is suspiciously reluctant to cooperate – even after being arrested.

The remainder of the story is a journey of curiosity, not suspense. There are no car chases, no gunfights, no sinister criminal masterminds. Just a journey into the Heart of Darkness, though it happens in a bucolic setting.

This is my favorite kind of mystery, and it was immensely satisfying. What made it even better was the excellent prose (note the excerpt above) and a well-integrated religious sub-theme. I have no idea what author Grainger believes, but he asks the right questions. All the police characters seem fairly clueless on religion but, faced with the possibility of New Age/Pagan human sacrifice as opposed to orthodox Christianity, Christianity comes out looking pretty good (though Pentecostals come in for a bit of a drubbing). I might almost describe Missing Pieces as a Christian novel, with the message very obliquely delivered.

But I don’t insist on that.

I do, however, recommend the book highly.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The First Shot,’ by E. H. Reinhard

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Tampa police detective Carl Kane is called to an abandoned industrial building to view a crime scene. There are two middle-aged women dead behind the factory, killed execution-style. Inside are the bodies of several men, also shot to death. It’s hard to work out a scenario for the crime, which seems brutal beyond necessity. Shortly after that, there’s another mass killing, after hours in a strip club. Again, the crime looks as if somebody has been killing more people than they need to, in a simple robbery.

That’s how The First Shot, by E. H. Reinhard, starts. We follow the investigation as it progresses, until Kane finally finds himself face to face with an incredibly murderous psychopath.

“Incredibly” is the operative word here. The First Shot is an example of the sociopath story so popular in crime fiction today (I first encountered it in John D. MacDonald’s books. He did it better). The problem with the villain here is that he’s plain, flat evil. No motivations, no personal history, no redeeming qualities at all. Someone created for you to hate, and for no other purpose. Although I believe evil exists, I don’t believe anyone is solid, homogenized evil through and through. Tragedy, as Aristotle (I think it was Aristotle) told us, should evoke pity and terror. This guy evokes only terror. Which means he’s paradoxically both dull and evil.

I also don’t enjoy watching the innocent murdered. That happens again and again in this book.

The hero, Carl Kane, isn’t much better. We learn a couple things about his personal life – he transferred from Milwaukee after a bad divorce. He’s gun-shy in regard to relationships. And that about covers his character development. Other than that, he’s indistinguishable from the rest of the cops (I did have trouble telling them apart).

On top of that, the author tends to over-write. A lot of his verbiage could be cut by a good editor.

So all in all I wasn’t much impressed with The First Shot, and won’t be following this series.

Fiction, Reviews

‘A Long Shadow,’ by H. L. Marsay

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The shadow of Inspector Morse overhangs the landscape of British detective fiction. Morse may have been the most successful English mystery protagonist since Sherlock Holmes. I have a suspicion that the thirst for a new Morse may be behind H. L. Marsay’s creation of Inspector John Shadow of York, whose first adventure is A Long Shadow. Shadow does crossword puzzles (though he doesn’t seem to ever finish them). He listens only to old music (though it’s 20th Century standards, not opera). He grumps at his younger partner. He’s not Morse’s clone, but he seems related.

One cold night a young homeless woman dies on a street in York. The very same day a skeleton is uncovered by an excavation crew – a murder victim from more than 30 years ago. And soon more homeless turn up dead – all poisoned by cyanide in vodka. Inspector Shadow has an intuition that the present-day murders have some connection to the old one. But who has a motive? The business owners who want the homeless people cleared out? Drug dealers? Some psychopath?

I have to tell you I figured out who the murderer was fairly early on – and I’m not all that good at solving these things. The author needs to work on her (she’s a she) red herring skills. But I liked Inspector Shadow himself, and enjoyed the reading experience. York is an interesting historical city, so I appreciated the setting too. I went ahead and bought the sequel, A Viking’s Shadow, for reasons too obvious to explain.

A Long Shadow doesn’t get my highest recommendation, but it wasn’t bad. I don’t recall the language being too foul.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Speak for the Dead,’ by Jack Lynch

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Jack Lynch’s series of mysteries about San Francisco private eye Pete Bragg continues with Speak for the Dead. I’m not sure what the title means in terms of the plot, but the book was enjoyable.

Pete Bragg gets a call from an old friend from his newspaper reporting days. There’s a bad situation at San Quentin prison. A prisoner named Beau Bancetti, a biker gang leader, has attempted to escape with some buddies. The attempt failed. Now he and his friends are barricaded in an activities center, with two guards and two women as hostages. He demands that somebody go up to his home town and help his brother Buddy, who’s been charged with murder. Buddy isn’t like him, he explains. He’s painfully shy and gentle. He couldn’t kill anyone.

Ordinarily the prison administrators wouldn’t worry about hostages being killed. It’s one of the rules – civilians who go inside know the risk. But in this case, one of the hostages happens to be a popular female movie star incognito; they don’t want the bad press. So they need a private eye to go to Beau’s home town and investigate the murder. Would Pete do it?

Of course he will. And from the time he shows up in town he knows something screwy is going on. Nobody believes Buddy Bancetti could murder anyone. But a lot of them are hiding something too. Pete will be attacked by thugs, and shot at by a sniper. Then he’ll uncover a nasty conspiracy.

The story moved along well and kept my interest. My constant complaint in reading this series has been that Pete rarely actually solves a case – he’s usually a step behind and only puts it all together just in time to avoid getting killed. This time he actually solves one – and it’s pretty complicated.

Author Lynch seems (he’s gone now) to have had a thing about marijuana – this story includes an argument for legalization, which annoys me. But I guess that ship has sailed.

Another concern was a scene where he allows himself (purely for information-gathering purposes) to get into a semi-sexual situation with an underage girl. I think that’s the kind of scene you could get away with back in the 80s – you couldn’t do it today.

But generally it’s an okay book. I don’t give it highest marks, but it passed the time and did not bore me.

Fiction, Reviews

Cleansing the palate with ‘When Christmas Comes’

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But he was wrong, you know. Eddie-My-boyfriend got it wrong altogether, evil little troll that he was. That wasn’t what the look on my face was expressing, not at all. I wasn’t feeling shock and horror at the hypocrisy and phoniness and decadence of modern life. In fact, in that moment, it didn’t seem hypocritical or phony or decadent to me at all…. The one solid reality I could cling to… was, again, our Christmases, our past together, my love.

It was a strenuous weekend, by my declining standards. We got a heavy snow Friday night – I’m not sure exactly how much, but I think I read it was about 7 inches. Heavy stuff, too. And my kindly neighbors, who always move the snow for me (we share the driveway) suffered a failure of their snowblower. So they hired some neighbor kids, whose snowblower broke down too. Thus, there I was, with the neighbor lady, shoveling in front of my garage for about a half hour. Somewhat to my own surprise, I didn’t collapse of a heart attack.

Then I had to go and buy a new inkjet printer. Because for the life of me I couldn’t make the old one work with the new wifi. Also the tray has been broken for some time. That meant a trip to my favorite computer store and a long wait in line. And then the inevitable siege, trying to make it talk to the wireless network. I succeeded at last (this always feels like sorcery, employing incantations I don’t understand at all). Which made it possible, at last, to print my Christmas newsletters.

Moving on to books, you may recall how intensely I disliked Trevanian’s The Loo Sanction, which I reviewed on Friday. Fortunately, I had the perfect antidote at hand. Andrew Klavan’s new book When Christmas Comes, which I adore and was planning to re-read anyway.

When Christmas Comes could almost have been written as a counter to The Loo Sanction (I’m not saying it was. I’m just saying they both deal with the same questions in drastically different ways.)

Both the heroes, Trevanian’s Jonathan Hemlock and Klavan’s Cameron Winter, are American academics who formerly worked in covert espionage operations. Dangerous men, skilled at killing.

And both of them walk into situations where hypocrisy is (or is apparently) rife. Hemlock into the world of cutthroat international politics. Winter into a seemingly idyllic American town where a clean-cut, decorated veteran is on trial for murdering his sweet wife. With the Christmas season as a backdrop, offering lots of opportunities for comment on commercialization and the emptiness of tradition.

But unlike Hemlock, who smashes fetishes and is himself smashed in return, Winter never closes his heart. Much of the book is taken up with his narrative – to a psychologist – of the story of his love for a girl named Charlotte, whom he spent time with every Christmas as he was growing up. And how the magic of those early Christmases was undermined and overwhelmed by old secrets of horrific ugliness.

And yet Winter has the wisdom to discern the truth, even in the midst of lies and hypocrisy. “The great good thing,” as Klavan describes it in his autobiography. As long as he still believes in the great good thing, he remains open to salvation.

A repeated theme in When Christmas Comes is “psychomachia,” the literary device where the characters in a story represent aspects of the storyteller’s own soul.

If that’s so, then in giving life to others, as Winter does at the end of the story, he may also be given life himself.

I don’t know whether it would be better for Andrew Klavan to write a sequel, or just leave us with that hope.

Personally, I vote for the sequel.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Loo Sanction,’ by Trevanian

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Jonathan Hemlock, who appeared in Trevanian’s earlier novel, The Eiger Sanction (which was filmed by Clint Eastwood), is a retired American art professor and world-famous critic. But he had a secret life as a “counter-assassin” for an espionage agency referred to, not so subtly, as the “CII.” He hated both his employers and his targets, but the job made it possible for him to indulge his passion for collecting Impressionist masters. As The Loo Sanction begins (1973) he’s retired and spending a year in London on a cultural visit for the embassy.

Then he’s kidnapped by a British Intelligence agency known as “the Loo,” roughly equivalent to the one he used to work for. He doesn’t want to work for them, but is extorted into doing so by threats against people he likes.

His job, he’s told, is to steal a package of films, films made secretly at an ultra-secret London sex club. The owner of these films will be in a position to blackmail the entire British government into doing what he wants (Jonathan can almost see the head of the Loo – the most hypocritical Church of England vicar imaginable – salivating at the prospect of controlling them).

Jonathan will come up against a formidable enemy, a grandiose crime lord who is both an aesthete and a sadist. Along with a supporting cast of equally appalling psychopaths. He will barely survive.

A lot of people won’t survive. Generally, the better you like a character in this book, the more likely they are to die horribly.

Trevanian can be amusing in his acerbic comments, at least when I agree with him. But the story of The Loo Sanction is a story of unremitting cynicism, where every ideal is laughable and all institutions are not only corrupt but satanically vile. The plot gets crueler and crueler as it goes along, and finally ends in Hell.

I have rarely disliked a book as much as I disliked The Loo Sanction. I’m not even going to link to it on Amazon. Someone depressed or suicidal could possibly happen on it, and I don’t want to risk the consequences.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Five Red Herrings,’ by Dorothy L. Sayers

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“An official personage like you might embarrass them, don’t you know, but there’s no dignity about me. I’m probably the least awe-inspiring man in Kirkcudbright. I was born looking foolish and every day in every way I am getting foolisher and foolisher.”

The seventh novel in Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey series is The Five Red Herrings, a book that, I fear, has not aged well. The Amazon reviews suggest that most other contemporary readers agree.

Back in the 1930s or so, readers loved their puzzles, and spent time on them. Crossword puzzles were a relatively new innovation, and they took the country by storm. A corollary was the railway timetable mystery, in which the culprit’s alibi is based on a clever manipulation of train times, and the detective must figure out the trick. I assume readers worked at these books the same way they did with their crosswords, attacking them with pencils and pads of paper. Railroad timetables were familiar and interesting to them, because that was how urban people traveled back then.

The town of Kirkcudbright, in the Scottish county of Galloway, is home to a renowned, picturesque artistic colony. These people are generally friendly and amiably competitive, but they all share a loathing of Campbell, a black-bearded semi-talent with a massive, defensive ego, a drinking problem, and a reflexive tendency to resort to his fists.

So no one is much grieved when Campbell’s corpse is found one morning in a river at the foot of a steep bank, below an unfinished painting on an easel surrounded with artist’s supplies. But Lord Peter, examining the site, notices something the police have missed. One object that ought to be there is not there – and it can’t be found. So it’s not an accident but murder, and the investigation begins. Suspects are not lacking. The problem is that they all have alibis that seem solid. Several of them involve travel on trains.

For a reader not willing to work the puzzle by means of transcribing timetables and comparing them closely, reading The Five Red Herrings involves a lot of taking things as given that you don’t quite follow. This makes for some fairly opaque reading for long stretches. But Lord Peter is as amusing as usual, and he does get some good lines off. And there’s some very clever work in the final solution to the mystery.

Most readers today find The Five Red Herrings the least interesting of the Wimsey series. But if you’re reading the books and enjoying them, you should probably not skip it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Imposter’s Trail,’ by J. C. Fields

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A quiet, inoffensive man parks his car by a lake, reads a letter from his brother, and shoots himself to death, leaving a letter confessing to a series of murders. The suicide’s ex-wife tells the police her former husband was driven to kill himself by his brother Randolph, who’s a psychopath.

Randolph Bishop, serial killer, is back in action in J.C. Field’s The Imposter’s Trail.

Years ago, retired FBI agent Sean Kruger had a chance to kill Bishop, the worst serial killer he ever encountered, but let him live and be arrested. The man went on to make his bullied brother his scapegoat, and to murder a string of innocent people. Kruger feels personally responsible for every victim.

So now he’ll be coming out of retirement and going after Bishop again. This time he’s not going to let him go. Especially after Bishop proves to have terrorist ties. And even more so after Bishop threatens Kruger’s family.

In terms of storytelling, I found The Imposter’s Trail (third in a series) a pretty compelling entry in the Thomas Harris “stare into the abyss” school of psychological thrillers.

I personally do not like stories where we get to share victims’ last minutes with them. I prefer to be shown the bodies and let my imagination do the rest. But your tastes may vary.

One real weakness in the book was plain proofreading. “Slight of hand” for “sleight of hand.” Infelicities like “Retreating further back.” Using “conscious” instead of “conscience.” The manuscript would have benefited from a good proofreader.

The Imposter’s Trail was a little dark for my tastes, but you might like it better. Cautions for intense situations, but the language wasn’t too bad.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Lockdown,’ by Sean Black

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[This novel was published in 2014, so its title should not be understood to have anything to do with the current pandemic.]

A trend I have deplored more than once is the emulation of “action movies” in thriller novels. Action movies (and more so now that we have CGI) have traditionally incorporated greater implausibilities than action books. Because movie action happens so fast – not giving us time to think about things – and we actually see the implausible happening before us. Reading is a slower, more thoughtful process, so writers have always, in the past, had to work a little harder to maintain the reader’s confidence.

Not anymore, though. Nowadays, more and more frequently, action novels are just as implausible as movies. Such is the case, in my opinion, with Sean Black’s Lockdown, first in a series.

Ryan Lock is a private security expert working for a major pharmaceutical company. Animal rights activists have been protesting their practice of animal testing, which culminated in a few of them digging up the company president’s recently deceased wife and dumping her body on a street. Then the company met with the protest leaders. Surprisingly, they announced that they would be ending animal testing immediately.

Then someone is murdered, and everything turns into chaos. There’s a kidnapping, and Ryan Lock is on the case; he stays on the case even after getting fired from his job. Soon it will be impossible to tell friends from enemies, and a terrorist wild card will be added to the deck.

It seemed to me Lockdown followed the action film template too closely. Switch was followed by switchback so regularly that it got to be pretty predictable. And not very believable.

But the thing that really annoyed me about Lockdown was the villain – an over the top, Ming the Merciless type motivated by nothing more than pure grandiosity. I didn’t believe in him, either.

Also, the formatting was awful. Paragraphs and line endings bore no relation to my page layout. Which is annoying.

However, if you’re looking for popcorn reading that doesn’t get too political, Lockdown will keep you interested.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Wake Up and Die,’ by Jack Lynch

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The fourth novel in Jack Lynch’s Pete Bragg series, about a private detective in San Francisco in the 1980s, is Wake Up and Die. It started a little slow, I thought, but finished strong.

Pete gets a client referral to a prosperous local bookie. The man has received some photographs of his daughter. She’s naked with a man in the pictures, and they look like stills from some kind of professional film. When Pete suggests the man just ask his daughter about them, he refuses. He doesn’t even want Pete to talk to her himself. Instead he needs to nose around among her circle of acquaintances and find out what’s gone wrong. Pete thinks that’s insane, but families are what they are and the client knows best.

He learns, to his surprise, that the daughter is actually doing pretty well. She’s engaged to the heir of a wealthy property developer. But as Pete noses around that family’s business, he learns that they’re involved in a major oceanside development project. And that project has attracted some pretty shady partners, who are making unexpected and puzzling changes in the plans. People Pete very much wants to talk to all seem to have gone on vacations, or are just strangely unreachable.

Soon there will be murder, and arson, and major battery against someone Pete cares about. And now that he’s mad, the gloves will come off.

I thought Wake Up and Die meandered somewhat in the first half, but once things started happening, it grabbed me but good. The language isn’t bad (the rules were a little different as recently as this), and though the sexual bits were such as I can’t approve of, they’re almost quaint (like ’80s San Francisco itself ) by 21st Century standards. I liked Wake Up and Die, and continue to enjoy the series.