Fiction, Reviews

‘The Silent Hour,’ by Michael Koryta

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“I’ve got to live with that,” he said, “and all I can do, the only way I know to cope with it, is by looking for atonement. Because while his blood might be on my hands, I didn’t kill him—and if I can see that whoever did kill him is punished? Perry, that’s the closest thing I’ve got to redemption.”

The Lincoln Perry detective series by Michael Koryta comes to an end with The Silent Hour – though the conclusion is open-ended, and I imagine there could be more coming down the line.

The great pleasure in these books, I think, is the plotting – these are the kinds of stories where you think you have the solutions, and then further mysteries open up, like petals in a flower, till you finally reach the shocking heart of things. In this case – and I may be being pretentious here – I thought I saw the same thing going on, on a subtextual level, making this a meta-mystery.

Lincoln Perry has had a rough time in his most recent big cases. He got his partner shot and nearly killed. He got his girlfriend into danger. He isn’t much interested when a quiet man named Parker Harrison comes to him – repeatedly – asking him to look into a twelve-year-old mystery. A couple named Cantrell had run a rehabilitation program for ex-convicts – one of whom was Harrison himself. Twelve years ago they disappeared. Harrison wants to find out what happened to them.

Lincoln isn’t much interested in the case – even less so when he learns that the missing wife was sister to one of Cleveland’s chief crime lords. But Harrison gets through to him at last. He agrees to look into it.

Before too long, someone Lincoln likes is dead. Lincoln goes sour, not only on the case, but on the very idea of being a private investigator. Should he just pack it in? Is the game worth the candle?

The question is an existential one – why do we feel the need to solve mysteries? To learn the truth? At what cost? Is it worth people’s lives?

I wish there were more Lincoln Perry novels to read after The Silent Hour. As it is, I’ll go on to other Michael Koryta novels, as well as his Scott Carson books.

I wish he’d work out his paragraph protocols, though. The breaks in the text are unnecessarily confusing.

Fiction, Reviews

‘A Welcome Grave,’ by Michael Koryta

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I’ve reached Book 3 in Michael Koryta’s Lincoln Perry detective series, A Welcome Grave. Lincoln, our hero, has a girlfriend whom he loves, but he also has a past. Once he was engaged to a woman, but she broke it off, later marrying an older, millionaire lawyer. Lincoln responded in character – he punched the guy in the face, ending his own police career.

Now, years later, that man is dead – tortured to death. Lincoln gets a call from the widow, who wants him to locate her stepson, who ran off some time ago and has a substantial inheritance coming. Lincoln isn’t happy about the job, but feels obligated to take it. He finds the young man, too – but he’s not prepared for his shocking reaction. Nor is he prepared for the local cop who decides that Lincoln Perry will be the chief suspect in the father’s murder case. Suspicions are increased as clue after clue pops up to frame him, neatly orchestrated. Lincoln will have to work fast, and be very smart, to keep out of jail. And then the stakes will be raised yet again.

The Lincoln Perry books are simply very good. Well written and engaging. There’s plenty of action, but the emphasis is on the characters.

A Welcome Grave is highly recommended, with the usual cautions for grownup stuff.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Sorrow’s Anthem,’ by Michael Koryta

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I am finding, in Michael Koryta’s Lincoln Perry novels, a pleasure I haven’t enjoyed (at least to this extent) since I first read Andrew Klavan’s under-appreciated Weiss/Bishop novels – a series of free-standing stories that nevertheless form a larger, coherent narrative in which the main characters develop. Sorrow’s Anthem is the second book in the series.

Ed Gradduk and Lincoln Perry were best friends as boys. They lived in the same neighborhood, played together, made mischief together. But Lincoln grew up to be a cop, then a private investigator, while Ed got into trouble and went to prison. Worse than that, it was Lincoln who sent him down. He didn’t mean to – he offered him a chance to get off if he’d testify against his associates, but Ed kept mum and did his time.

But now he’s out and in trouble again, charged with murder and arson. Lincoln goes to look for him, and finds him. But Ed has something he wants to explain before Lincoln takes him in. Except that he’s dead before he can finish his story. Agonized by his guilt over failing his old friend, Lincoln sets about discovering Ed’s secret, and the reason why someone thought he had to die. He’ll find himself up against crooked cops, crooked politicians, and organized crime before he blows it all open.

Koryta writes a great story. He generally doesn’t produce the kind of memorable prose that makes Raymond Chandler or John D. MacDonald so quotable, but every line does its job and the final effect goes directly to the heart.

My only quibbles are first (as I’ve mentioned before) paragraph breaks are inconsistent and confusing. Prose of this quality deserves better page setup. Also, Koryta is one of those writers who thinks a semiautomatic pistol uses a “clip” rather than a magazine.

Doesn’t matter, though. These are great books, and Sorrow’s Anthem is a great (and memorable) read.

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Remembering Hulk Hogan… or at least his TV show

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There’s been a lot of talk lately about the death of Hulk Hogan, a recently born-again Christian, according to reports. He meant a lot to a certain generation of American kids, but they were younger than me, so I knew the man mostly from a 1993-94 TV show that lasted a single season. “Thunder In Paradise” has never made any lists as great entertainment. It was – almost jubilantly – a dumb show. But most people (most guys, anyway) agreed that it was a lot of fun.

The preposterous premise of “Thunder In Paradise” was that two former Navy Seals, played by Hogan and Chris Lemmon (Jack’s son) lived in a resort in Florida and worked brief, exciting mercenary jobs, with the help of their state-of-the-art speed boat, which boasted sophisticated weapons and CGI armor. Former model Carol Alt was on hand for eye candy, and Patrick Macnee (of The Avengers) himself showed up in the early episodes, for some reason. There was also a little girl in the cast, supposed to be Hogan’s ward, who needed rescuing from time to time.

The premise was ridiculous. The scripts were implausible. The acting (especially Hogan’s) nothing to boast about. But the scenery was beautiful, there were lots of girls in bikinis, and every episode offered shooting, running around, and stuff blowing up.

I had no illusions about “Thunder In Paradise,” but I watched it every week, and missed it when it was gone. I remember those days as the end of the fun times in entertainment. I could turn the TV on and not have to worry about receiving moral instruction about the sacredness of sodomy, or the peaceful nature of Islam.

Back then, you could produce a show purely for the enjoyment of men. Nobody agonized over the male gaze. Attraction between the sexes wasn’t considered problematic. We could all have fun – and I’m convinced that fun hasn’t increased in any way since entertainment got its consciousness raised.

Ah, well. That was back when I had dark hair, too.

R.I.P. Hulk Hogan.

(You can watch the whole series on YouTube).

Fiction, Reviews

‘His Last Lie,’ by Erik Therme

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Ryan Driscoll, point-of-view narrator of His Last Lie, by Erik Therme, is a young man in difficulties. He wants to get married to his live-in girlfriend, but has lost his job and is having trouble getting another one. He gets little support from his parents – his mother is distant and disengaged, and his father has never said a kind word to him in his life. Yet Ryan still does them favors, out of a sense of obligation.

He’s just given his father a ride home when the old man shoots himself to death. All he leaves Ryan is a shoebox, which turns out to be full of money. Only it’s not for him. It’s for somebody named Jamie Norton, of whom Ryan has never heard. When he starts asking family and friends about this person, it starts him on a journey of confrontation and discovery, in which everything he ever believed about his life will be turned upside down.

I never entirely made up my mind about His Last Lie. The writing was quite good (in spite of the present tense narrative). My problem with it was that it was highly psychological, and I had trouble judging how realistic the portrayals were. It gets pretty extreme, and maybe implausible in some parts – though I’m not sure.

But all in all, I thought it was pretty good for a small, family mystery story. It certainly kept me guessing. I think I can recommend it, with cautions for language and very disturbing themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Tonight I Said Goodbye,’ by Michael Koryta

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I’ve been pretty impressed with the novelist Michael Koryta, and have enjoyed several of his novels now. Tonight I Said Goodbye is, apparently, his first published novel, and first in his Lincoln Perry detective series. As I read it, I thought – condescendingly – that this was well done, but fairly elementary stuff. I was pretty sure I knew how the plot was going to be resolved.

And all the time I was being taken in. What I thought was happening wasn’t what was happening at all – and the conclusion shocked me like ice water in the face. I was being played by a master.

Lincoln Perry, along with his partner, Joe Pritchard, runs a successful private detective agency in Cleveland, Ohio. They’re not much interested when old John Weston asks them to find his missing daughter-in-law and granddaughter. The case has been all over the media – Weston’s son Wayne (who was, as it happened, a private investigator himself) was found shot to death. The assumption is that he murdered his wife and child, hid the bodies, and then killed himself. John Weston is certain that’s not true. Finally, he goads Lincoln into taking the case.

Wayne Weston, as it turns out, was not as clean as his reputation would have it. He worked almost exclusively for a predatory local property developer, and the names of Russian gangsters keep popping up in the investigation. But it isn’t until Lincoln follows a clue to South Carolina that the case starts exploding around him, and the stakes soar into the sky like rockets.

Tonight I Said Goodbye was a classic detective novel, but better written than most and delightfully unpredictable. I recommend it highly, and look forward to reading the next book in the series.

My only real quibble is poor manuscript setup. For some reason, paragraphs often run together, which can confuse the reader when it happens in dialogue. But that’s probably not the author’s fault.

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In which I pretend to keep my dignity

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Culvers’ battered cod offerings. Credit: culvers.com

The tale of my weekend and Monday is not a cheery one, but I can’t think of another topic. I’ll try to keep it PG rated.

My two-day Waffle Festival was all I hoped it would be. I do a pretty fair Bisquick waffle, if I do say so myself. No doubt there are ways to improve my waffles, but these will do. Sunday, the Great Preparatory Fast, could have been worse. The preparation process that evening… the less said about that the better. It’s over; I’ll say that much. The old friend who served as my driver on Monday is very cheerful and patient, which was necessary because the procedure got delayed a full hour. When it was all over, I bought him lunch. Oh, the joys of solid food! Have you ever had the batter-fried cod dinner at Culvers’? Why does a hamburger place have the best cod in town? That’s one of the great cosmic mysteries. Or paradoxes, or something.

During the Sunday Fast, I searched for the movie “Sunburn” on YouTube, and discovered that it was available there. I was thinking of it, because I’d reviewed The Bind, the book it was based on, the other day. The studio, in its genius, took a hard-boiled, tragic yarn and tried to make it a light action comedy. I remember enjoying it when it came out, but that must have been mostly because of my massive crush on Farrah Fawcett. The movie follows the story’s plot more closely than I expected (though they moved the action from Miami Beach to Acapulco), merely changing the tone of things. But the dark ending had to go, so they substituted a conventional, improbable Hollywood gambit and ended the story on a (very false) light note. One of the worst final sequences I’ve ever seen in a movie.

Watching Farrah, the picture of youthful health and beauty, I couldn’t help thinking of her early death some years ago, the victim of a cancer which (I expect) could have been prevented by the very procedure I was just then dreading.

My great comfort, as I now contemplate the completed ordeal (the results were acceptable), is that at my age I’m unlikely to have to endure many more of these once-every-five-year procedures.

And the moral of the story is – waffles are good, and so is Culvers’ batter-fried cod. I wonder if cod is any good with waffles, the way people now rave about chicken and waffles. Someone should try it. Authentic Norwegian cuisine.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Blind to Sin,’ by Dave White

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I’m not entirely certain why I had so much trouble reading Dave White’s Blind to Sin. It’s a complex book, and demanded some effort in the reading – and I wasn’t entirely certain I was enjoying it enough to make it worth the work.

This is the second book in a series, starring former private detective Jackson Doyle and current private eye (and part-time high school basketball coach) Matt Herrick. Doyle is now serving a stretch in prison, having confessed to murder. He has many enemies in the prison, but has a protector in Kenneth Herrick, Matt’s convict father.

Years ago, Kenneth was part of a successful trio of bank robbers – he and his wife Tammy, plus their driver, Elliot Cole. But when a job went bad and Kenneth sacrificed his freedom to let the other two get away, their family was broken up, and son Matthew was left resenting both his parents, and determined to live a positive, law-abiding life.

When Doyle and Kenneth are released from prison early, though bribery by Elliot Cole, the two freed men are pressured to join Elliot in an audacious scheme to steal a fortune in government money – and Elliot wants to bring Matthew in as well.

What was my problem with Blind to Sin? I guess one difficulty was that – at the beginning – I had trouble telling the characters apart. I found them very similar in their dialogue (and physical descriptions were doled out parsimoniously). Also, the plot seemed to me far-fetched, and the character motivations, if not impossible, at least highly implausible.

And there’s the running theme that Doyle feels a moral obligation to protect “innocent” Matthew, who as a private eye never carries a gun and therefore requires a ruthless killer to defend him. (In the real world, I’m pretty sure,  being a private eye isn’t all that dangerous, and lots of P.I.’s work without guns.)

In any case, I found Blind to Sin heavy going and joyless to read. There are some interesting themes at work here, but it left me flat.

Music

Sunday Singing: Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation

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Today’s hymn was originally written in Latin during the 7th century. It was translated and adapted by the great English scholar John M. Neale (1818-1866). He worked, “Angularis fundamentum lapis Christus missus est,” into the popular hymn, “Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation.” The tune is called “Westminster Abbey,” written by the Abbey’s own organist Henry Purcell (1659-1695).

“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, (Eph. 2:19-20 ESV)

1 Christ is made the sure foundation,
Christ the head and cornerstone,
chosen of the Lord and precious,
binding all the church in one;
holy Zion’s help forever
and her confidence alone.

2 All that dedicated city,
dearly loved of God on high,
in exultant jubilation
pours perpetual melody;
God the One in Three adoring
in glad hymns eternally.

3 To this temple, where we call thee,
come, O Lord of hosts today:
with thy wonted loving-kindness
hear thy people as they pray;
and thy fullest benediction
shed within its walls alway.

4 Here vouchsafe to all thy servants
what they ask of thee to gain,
what they gain from thee forever
with the blessed to retain,
and hereafter in thy glory
evermore with thee to reign.

5 Laud and honor to the Father,
laud and honor to the Son,
laud and honor to the Spirit,
ever Three and ever One,
One in might, and One in glory,
while unending ages run.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Bind,’ by Stanley Ellin

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I’m still trying to get a handle on mystery writer Stanley Ellin. And I must admit that his 1970 novel The Bind kind of blindsided me. It’s unlike the previous Ellin books I’ve read, less reflective – this one is genuine hardboiled, in the old tradition. The way they wrote before Political Correctness.

Jake Dekker is a freelance insurance investigator, the kind who works with the companies to identify fraud, and keeps half of the payout value if he can prove it. He flies into Miami Beach with Ellie, a sexy young actress recruited at the last minute to pose as his wife. They move into a beachfront home next to Mrs. Thoren, wife of the deceased. Mr. Thoren died in an auto crash, but the insurance people suspect he committed suicide, which would invalidate the claim.

Getting to know the Thorens and their neighbors, Jake grows increasingly suspicious that the dead man had a secret, and was being blackmailed. If he can uncover the guilty secret, he may have leverage to pressure the widow to fess up.

Meanwhile, Ellie is falling in love with Jake, and he’s not immune to her charms. But that will make both of them more vulnerable when pressure is applied from an unexpected quarter.

The Bind was closer to a Mickey Spillane novel than I looked for in a Stanley Ellin story. Jake Dekker is a very hard case, a business-first guy who can be really brutal when it’s called for. Sensitivity is not in his toolbox. His relationship with Ellie is completely pre-feminist – there’s no question here who wears the pants, or who needs protecting. Reading it after all these years, I found that element a little shocking, but… let’s say, I didn’t hate it.

There was more sex than violence in this story, just the opposite of the way a mystery adventure would be done nowadays. And as for the conclusion – well, I think I can say that it’s not a good idea to look for happy endings in an Ellin book.

By the way, The Bind was filmed, after a fashion, in 1979, under the title of “Sunburn,” as a vehicle for Farrah Fawcett, fresh off her breakout role on “Charlie’s Angels.” Charles Grodin played Jake. The studio made the decision to turn it into an adventure comedy (which the book most definitely is not), and it flopped badly. Even Art Carney in a supporting role couldn’t save it. (I saw it myself, and was perfectly satisfied to watch Farrah under any circumstances).

I wouldn’t say I loved The Bind. It’s too much in the Mike Hammer mold for my taste. But it was well done after its kind.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture