Fiction, Reviews

‘Roxanne,’ by Peter Grainger

Leave a comment

The Kings Lake Investigations books are a quiet pleasure for the mystery reader, consistently excellent and engaging, without sensationalism or hype. Author Peter Grainger produces readable, satisfying books about people you care for.

In Roxanne, the latest installment, the new Kings Lake murder squad investigates the death of a young woman found dead in a brand-new automobile. The car was her own (though there’s no record of her paying for it), and her body shows no signs of violence. It also appears she did not die where she was found.

DCI Cara Freeman, the new chief of the squad, leads her relatively untested team (we spend much of our time with DS Chris Waters, a hold-over from the days of Inspector DC Smith) as they examine the life of Roxanne, a wild child who had (according to her parents) gotten her act together, with a plan (though a problematic one) for making a future for herself. Problems within the team will be almost as much a challenge as identifying the murderer.

“Conspicuous by his absence” would be a good way to describe this series, now that the fascinating DC Smith is retired and has been relegated to the sidelines. Cara Freeman is interesting in her own way, but it’s kind of a negative way – she’s good at her job, but she remains a mystery to her team. They know nothing of her life or motivations – though the reader will get some insight in this book. Chris Waters is also a sympathetic character, and it’s good to watch him work, and to observe his relationship with his blind girlfriend.

I can’t deny I’d prefer to see DC Smith going through his paces indefinitely, but Roxanne was a good, low-key, sympathetic mystery which I enjoyed from beginning to end. I don’t recall any objectionable content, except for a lamentable misuse of the phrase, “begs the question.” Recommended.

Music, Reviews

FIlm review: ‘Fisherman’s Friends’

8 Comments

For many years, I’ve declared Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero my favorite movie. There are other films I enjoy very much, and sometimes my moods change, but I tend to return in the end to Local Hero for its scenic Scottish setting, understated humor, gorgeous music, and fish out of water point of view.

Thanks to recommendations, I’ve found a movie that belongs next to Local Hero on the conceptual shelf. Fisherman’s Friends, a popular romantic comedy that a number of you have probably already seen. Still, a movie isn’t really complete until I’ve passed judgment on it, right?

The story is a highly fictionalized account of the rise of Fisherman’s Friends, an all-male folk singing group from Port Isaac, Cornwall that specializes in sea shanties (my kind of music, by the way).

As the film tells it, the story begins with a group of London music producer buddies who travel to Cornwall, where one of them is being married. They happen to hear this local shanty group, and our hero Danny Anderson (Daniel Mays) is challenged by his boss to sign the group to a recording contract. He’s not aware it’s all a gag, and when his buddies leave him high and dry in the town, he sets about getting the fishermen’s agreement – which is hard, because they cherish a dearly bought mistrust of outsiders. By the time Danny learns he’s been made a fool of, he has come to value the fishermen’s trust and is falling for a local girl, so he sets about making the big deal on his own.

The rest of the story is pretty much what you’d expect, and you’d be disappointed if it weren’t. It’s well done, and funny, and moving, and I’m pretty sure you’ll like it.

I saw a whole lot of references to Local Hero in this production – I can’t document it, but I strongly suspect they used it for a model – and they couldn’t have made a better choice.

When I’ve talked with people who don’t like Local Hero, I’ve often gotten the comment that they don’t like the ending. They find it a downer. I think at this point the difference may be one of experience. The ending of Local Hero is how things tend to end in my life; there’s a kind of sad comfort for me in it, a feeling that I’m not alone because Peter Riegert’s character is in the same place.

Most viewers will certainly prefer the very different ending of Fisherman’s Friends.

Fiction, Reviews

The Taking: When the Rain Compounds Your Fear

1 Comment

His gaze tracked across the ceiling. “It’s not falling toward us anymore.” His voice quieted to a whisper. “It’s moving eastward . . . west to east . . . as big as two mountains, three . . . so huge,” whispered Neil. He made the sign of the cross–forehead to breast, left shoulder to right–which she had not seen him do in years.

Suddenly she felt more than heard a great, deep, slow throbbing masked by the tremulous roar of the rain.

“. . . sift you as wheat . . .”

I picked a good time to read Dean Koontz’s 2004 novel of apocalyptic horror, The Taking. We had a full day of heavy rain when I started reading, which was perfect atmosphere for blurring reality with imagination, if one were into that sort of thing. I don’t read horror novels, so I worried this one might work me over, but I’m fine. Don’t worry. Really, I’m fine.

The story begins with a sudden gullywasher of luminescent rain that scares coyotes onto the heroine’s porch. No thunder or build up. Just a heavy downpour with a slick glow in the water.

Molly Sloan is disturbed by her impression of watchful evil and the nasty feel and smell of the rain. She’s scared when her husband, Neil, cries out in his sleep. Later they turn on the news to discover the oceans have been sucked into the sky and poured out on the entire world. Chaos has broken out in many cities. The world appears to be under attack by aliens with unseen ships. At least, that’s the best theory they have so far.

Neil and Molly leave their house to try to team up with neighbors and find one of them dead in his bathroom. There’s evidence he tried to fight something off, but no evidence that his shotgun harmed anyone but himself. In another minute, this dead man would be in the shadows behind them, saying, “I think we are in rats’ alley.”

That’s a line from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.

I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

Eliot gets a lot of attention in The Taking, filling the role of one of Molly’s favorite authors. His words are quoted by a number of characters, which forms one thread of mystery that caused me to wonder if this apocalypse was all in Molly’s head. The most bizarre and disturbing events tie to her personal fears and tastes. I began to wonder if she was having a miscarriage or revisiting the trauma of abortion in the real world while the living dead, animated fungi, and dismembered townsfolk occurred in her mind. That would have made for a lousy book. The resolution Koontz offers is more of a spiritual take on alien invasion. More importantly, it works.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Law of Innocence,’ by Michael Connelly

Leave a comment

Michael Connelly’s Mickey Haller series is less celebrated than his Harry Bosch books, but it’s equally well-written and engaging. Mickey, a successful defense lawyer, is probably not as intriguing (and sympathetic) a character as Harry, but he has much to tell us about the other side of the law – the side where the accused stands facing the whole crushing power of the state, and needs a legal gunfighter like Mickey to tell his story for him.

But in The Law of Innocence, the challenge is closer to home. Mickey is driving home from a victory celebration one night when a policeman stops his for no reason he can understand. Turns out his rear license plate is missing, and when the cop opens the trunk, he finds a body there. The dead man is an old client of Mickey’s, one who defaulted on his bills. Micky finds himself in jail that very night. His bail is prohibitively high, but he insists on defending himself. So he has to coordinate his defense during designated visiting times with his legal staff.

The murder victim had been a con man, a specialist in bogus charities. But his wallet was missing from his body, making it impossible to know what false identity he’d been living under lately. Mickey insists on demanding a speedy trial, so the clock is ticking as his team (with his half-brother Harry Bosch assisting) try to figure out who wanted the dead man dead, and who built a frame around Mickey Haller.

Michael Connelly can’t write a bad novel, I think, and I enjoyed reading The Law of Innocence. I noted that he couldn’t resist throwing a couple barbs at President Trump, but I suppose I should be grateful he left it at only a couple. The beginnings of the Covid epidemic contribute an interesting shade of color to the story’s fabric. Certain developments in Mickey’s domestic story met with my coveted personal approval. With the usual cautions for language and mature content, I recommend The Law of Innocence.

Fiction, Reviews

‘You Only Live Once,’ by Haris Orkin

Leave a comment

His name is Flynn. James Flynn. He is handsome and always well-dressed. He speaks four languages. He is devastatingly attractive to women, physically fit, and a master of martial arts.

He is also a patient in a mental hospital. He believes the hospital to be the headquarters of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and calls the director “N,” believing him to be his official superior. When management changes and N disappears, along with a patient Flynn calls “Q,” he escapes in order to rescue them. Along the way he picks up an orderly named Sancho as his sidekick, and rescues a fellow patient, an attractive girl named Dulcie, from her abusive boyfriend. But the greater challenge remains – the world, he is convinced, is under threat from an evil criminal mastermind, and Flynn, along with his bemused (often terrified) comrades, must step in to stop disaster.

Oddly enough, he’s kind of right.

So what we’ve got in You Only Live Once is a send-up of James Bond, in fusion with an homage to Don Quixote.

The book was amusing. It wasn’t as funny as I hoped, because the author tells it pretty much straight. The humor comes strictly from the preposterous situations our heroes get into.

I didn’t love You Only Live Once, but it was entertaining. I suspect a lot of readers will like it very much.

Reviews

Netflix Film Review: ‘The 12th Man’

Leave a comment

More than a year ago, I reviewed the book, The 12TH Man. The book was a reissue, re-titled to coincide with the release of the Norwegian film, The 12th Man, which (I believe) was based on it, at least in part. I have at last viewed the movie on Netflix, and here is my reaction:

In 1943, a group of 12 Norwegian saboteurs sailed from Shetland to Norway, to deliver munitions and commit sabotage against the occupying Germans. Due to outdated intelligence and a betrayal, their boat was intercepted by the Germans. One of the saboteurs was killed on the spot; 10 were captured, to suffer torture and execution. One, Jan Baalsrud, escaped, one of his feet bare and a toe shot off.

What followed was months on the run, with furtive help from farmers and fishermen, and the slow advance of gangrene in his toes (he would eventually amputate them himself). When Baalsrud could go no further on his own strength, patriotic Norwegians (ethnic Norse and Sami both) assisted him, dragging him by sled and hiding him in caves and underhangs, until they got him across the Swedish border to safety, emaciated and only just alive.

The film The 12th Man, starring Thomas Gullestad as Baalsrud, follows the basic story pretty faithfully, but – in the way of movies – ups the visual drama. A fictitious German officer (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is invented to personalize the manhunt from the German side. Moments of action are inserted to raise the cinematic punch, but proper tribute is also paid to the quiet courage and endurance of Baalsrud himself, as well as to the people he considered the true heroes of the story – the ordinary folk who risked what little they had to help a stranger, one almost dead already, to escape the occupiers of their country.

The 12th Man is a superior survival movie, which will certainly compel viewer fascination. The performances are excellent. As is the case with most Norwegian movies, it includes breathtaking scenery. You should be warned that the story includes brutal violence and a harrowing scene of amputation. The dialogue (subtitled) includes profanity. Recommended, if you can handle this kind of thing.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Garden of the Damned,’ by Blake Banner

Leave a comment

Conor Hagan was hard to miss. He was six four and looked like Michaelangelo’s less talented cousin had made him out of concrete.

I bought the collection of the first four Dead Cold Mystery books by Blake Banner, so I coasted right on into the third book, Garden of the Damned.

New York City cold case detective John Stone is intrigued by a 12-year-old file on another old unsolved murder. He notices something in the crime scene photos that eluded investigators at the time – who don’t seem to have worked the case too hard. The victim appears to have been a homeless man, shot and abandoned in a dumpster. But Stone notices that the man had an expensive haircut and manicured nails. This was no street person. This was a prosperous man who was murdered and then re-dressed, to mislead the police.

Along with his partner, Carmen Dehan, Stone starts asking questions, learning that the victim was a missing person – a wealthy young man who had been a devout Catholic, working tirelessly to help the poor. He and his fiancée had disappeared at precisely the same time, and no one had known their fate until now.

But why was he killed? The detectives learn that he was looking too closely into dark secrets being guarded by very powerful men, including men of the Church.

As always with Blake Banner’s books, Garden of the Damned was easy to read and fun. Some of the writing was very good, though plausibility wasn’t always high. Some very dark matters are touched on, and the Roman Catholic Church does not come out looking well at all.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Two Bare Arms,’ by Blake Banner

Leave a comment

The gray drizzle had turned to heavy rain, with huge, broken clouds dragging in off the Atlantic like ripped sails from some cosmic Trafalgar.

The second volume in Blake Banner’s likeable Dead Cold Mystery series is Two Bare Arms. It is autumn, and our heroes, John Stone and Carmen Dehan, New York cops who don’t play well with others but find they make a good team, have selected another old case from the files. This one concerns a pair of human arms (female) found twelve years ago in an East Bronx “lock up” and never connected to any case, body, or missing person. The suspects include a reclusive, somewhat creepy computer geek, a thuggish motorcycle gang member, and a Satanist. The case will not lack for false trails, lies, or danger.

I like a lot of things about this series. Stone and Dehan make an interesting team – lonely people silently reaching out to each other, though in denial about it. A man and a woman who have no friends, and so care all the more fiercely about the one friend they each possess – the other.

Also, whenever they have a chance to eat, they tend to eat steak, with relish. This raises them immensely in my estimation.

And the prose is sometimes superior.

I’m not so keen on the plotting. There are a fair amount of improbabilities, and genuine police procedure is a distant glimmer.

But it was fun. Cautions for language and adult themes.

Authors

The Kindness of Alex Trebek

4 Comments

Jeopardy champion Jackie Fuchs describes the “Uncle Alex” she knew, some of the filler phrases he used, and what TV viewers couldn’t see in the studio.

Him taking my hand and asking me how I felt after I’d had a hypoglycemic scare during my fifth episode. His explaining to one of my competitors who’d gotten off to a blazing start, only to falter in the second half, that it was her buzzer technique and not her knowledge that had been her downfall. How he’d made us feel that it was cool to geek out over “Star Wars” or to collect Barbie dolls or to be interested in whatever we were passionate about.

He reportedly said the game show would carry on without him one day, but who could fill his shoes? In this moment when the contestants tied at $16,000, Alex showed his love the game with a quick laugh.

May he rest in peace.

Music

‘Den Fineste Jinta’

Leave a comment

Roughly 3 days’ work, but I have finished my translation job and sent it winging off to Norway. I have the satisfaction of a job well done, plus the pleasure of a rare November day with sunshine and temperatures near 70. I did a couple hours of my work out on the porch, enjoying the remission.

For reasons I won’t bore you with, I happened to listen to an old musical cassette from long, long ago (still listenable). It was an album of a Norwegian folk group called Vandrerne (the Wanderers). They did a mixture of Norwegian folk songs, original music, retro popular songs, and Celtic folk. The number embedded below, “Den Fineste Jinta” (The Finest Girl), is an adaptation of a well-known Irish song, “Black Velvet Band.” It roughly follows the plot of the Irish song — the young man meets a bewitching young girl who wears her hair “tied up in a black velvet band.” She entices him into a scheme to steal jewelry. He is arrested and ends up being transported to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). Norwegian criminals didn’t generally get transported, so this guy’s fate is different. But I don’t understand the dialect well enough to tell you what it is.