British police procedurals tend to be a tad more sedate than American ones. More brain work than gunplay. Author Neil Lancaster breaks that rule as much as possible in The Devil You Know, part of a series set in Edinburgh, Scotland, starring police detective Max Craigie and his mysterious friend Bruce Ferguson. They are both former military snipers. Bruce gives justice a nudge now and then by eliminating the occasional very bad criminal. Max is uncomfortable with this, but they owe each other their lives, and he can’t help sympathizing.
An incarcerated felon, heir to an important crime family, has come forward offering to provide the police with explosive information – information that will bring down a major political figure. In return he wants a transfer to a more comfortable prison – he also stipulates that Max Craigie must not be involved in any way. When the police attempt to carry out the deal, it goes spectacularly wrong. And then Max and his colleagues are in it full-bore, running down leads, hacking computers, and doing surveillance with drones. A lot of bullets will be fired and blood spilled, as well as dark secrets uncovered, before it’s all over.
What I liked best about The Devil You Know was the characters. Author Lancaster is good at painting vivid personalities. There’s quite a lot of cop humor here, which is not all that common in British crime novels – though the c.h. generally takes the form of simple insult, taken affectionately. The weakest aspect of the dialogue is the occasional awkward info dump. The author hasn’t quite mastered that.
An important plot turn involves the heroes’ lives being saved by pure coincidence. That’s a weakness in plotting.
Still, all in all, I found The Devil You Know an entertaining and suspenseful novel. The relationship between Max and Bruce, which is advertised as central to the series, actually plays very little role in this story.
I wonder about the increasing popularity of vigilante characters in contemporary crime fiction. Does it indicate a sense among the public – one too subversive to be plainly stated – that our justice system isn’t really doing its job?
I’m feeling better today, thanks for asking, so let’s think about death, shall we?
The short Tolkien clip above resonated with me. I forget where I saw it first – probably on Facebook, where I waste too much time.
I’m not sure what I’d have thought about that statement, that great books are all about death, before I started working on The Baldur Game (not to say I’m claiming it’s a great book). If you’ve been following the Erling Saga, you know that this will be the last book in the series. And that can only mean one thing. We’re going to be saying goodbye to at least one important character.
A weird, semi-intentional chronological harmony has followed my Erling books. The first novel, The Year of the Warrior, came out in 2000. That’s precisely 1,000 years after the events described, which culminate in the Battle of Svold, usually dated to the millennium year. That’s what the title means – the Latin numeral for 1,000 is M. And (according to one of my characters) M also stands for Miles, which is Latin for soldier or warrior.
The books have loosely kept pace with the millennial anniversaries since then. If I were following the pattern strictly, I’d have left The Baldur Game’s release to 2030, because it ends in 1030. But the book begins in 1024, and I figure that’s close enough for my purposes. It would be hubristic to assume I’ll still be alive in 2030. I won’t give you my precise age, but I’ll be a little surprised if I live that long. (Though it’s looking more likely as it approaches, which astonishes me.)
And yes, the book is about death. I realized that as I was constructing it. There are recurring images of the sea, of chaos, which in the Old Testament evoked death.
And of course Norse sagas are always about death. There may be numerous other themes – honor, love, freedom, loyalty – but in the end they’re about how the characters faced their deaths.
Like all men, I’ve mostly tried to avoid thinking about my own death – though I’ve made an effort to prepare for it as a Christian. But old age tends to concentrate the mind, as Dr. Johnson said about the prospect of being hanged in a fortnight.
One of the values of literature, I think (and I think Tolkien would agree) is that it prepares us to face the things that must be faced.
Maybe we authors can help ourselves too.
(And before you ask – my health is fine, as far as I know. My chief malady, from my youth, has been melancholy.)
I just received a postcard. It was mailed to me from Spring Grove, Minnesota (in the southeastern corner of the state) on May 17 last, and it arrived here in Robbinsdale today. That’s nearly three weeks to travel 161 miles. I could wax indignant about the way the mail service has deteriorated, harkening back to the gilded days of my youth when such a missive would have arrived the following day, or at most in two days.
But at this point, I just sympathize with the postal service. It must be feeling pretty much like I was feeling after this weekend.
Don’t get me wrong. It was a good weekend. Met a number of nice people, and sold a reasonable amount of my books.
But it was hard on me. This was one of those watershed moments in a man’s life (if it’s a man; sometimes it’s a woman but I know nothing about that. I only assume their experience is similar) when he’s forced to face the fact that he’s gotten bloody old. I drove home Sunday afternoon, left all my Viking junk in my car, and collapsed on the sofa. I spent Monday recovering; I accomplished nothing except for posting a book review. I had “run out of sand,” to employ a metaphor from my green years.
Having rested up now and thought it over, I realize the situation may not be as bad as I thought. This weekend was unusual in that it involved two consecutive Viking events on two consecutive days. That meant two setups and two teardowns, plus packing and unpacking my car. That’s a lot of barges toted and bales lifted. Thank God for the young people in our group – we’ve had a gratifying influx of promising youngsters recently, and they are generous in helping me lift and carry and strap things down. I couldn’t manage without them.
But I think I probably need to cut back a little. I’m considering selling my Viking tent. I can get by with a sun shade/awning, as I used to, which is a lot lighter. I said goodbye to steel combat a few years ago, and now I think I may need to say goodbye to the care and feeding of my tent. I stand before the crowd like Lou Gehrig in “Pride of the Yankees,” and say I’m the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
Lugging my Viking chest in and out of my house (it involves steps) is the single hardest part of managing my reenactment impedimenta, though. I think I’m going to experiment with just leaving the blasted thing in my car all summer. Heat may be an issue in the sunshine, but the only thing I can think of inside the chest that’s likely to melt is a little lump of beeswax in my leather sewing kit. And that’s in a plastic container, so I think it’ll be all right.
I’ll be thinking more about efficiency and downsizing. That’s part of the aging process generally. I must resign myself, I think, to being prized for my wisdom rather than my strong back.
Come to think of it, I was never much prized for my strong back. If I was considered wiser than I was strong, that was mostly because I wasn’t very strong.
What, you ask, were these two exhausting events? Saturday was the annual Nordic Music Fest in Burnsville, Minnesota. It’s held at Buck Hill, a commercial ski hill that’s been around forever, right next to the highway. In the non-snow months, they host other events, of which this was one. The day started rainy (not predicted by the weather man), then turned sunny and humid. The featured music was an ABBA cover band, and our young Vikings did a couple combat shows. I had several interesting conversations with people who came by my sales table, and I sold a fair number of books. It was comparable to last year.
Sunday was Danish Day at the Danish American Center in Minneapolis, something our group participates in every year. The weather was nice, though it was starting to spit rain by the time we tore the camp down. Attendance was better than it’s been in a while – I had to wait in line a long time to buy my food. (I got aebelskivers – a spherical Danish pancake served with strawberry jam and powdered sugar, a Danish hot dog, and layer cake.) My book sales were small, but they always are at Danish Day – I sold three books, which is actually good for that event. I don’t know why the Danes seem to be less interested in books than Norwegians – possibly it has to do with the fact that my books are Norway-oriented.
One of our new members has a pair of Norwegian Elk Hounds, named Odin and Freya, which he brought. They are astonishingly mellow and easygoing – I joked with the owner that the dog treats he fed them must be CBD gummies. (This breed is not usually known for its placidity. They’re strong dogs, and generally they like to romp.)
It was a good weekend.
But it seemed to me it was no country for old men. Or so I felt Sunday evening.
Sam Archer, hero of One Way, is a New York City policeman, formerly a London policeman (it’s complicated). He’s on the counterterrorism squad, and in his last adventure (One Way is Book 5 in the series) he got injured badly enough to put him out of action for a while. It’s the last day before his much-anticipated return to work, and he’s relaxing on a park bench when he sees what he quickly identifies as a team of bodyguards moving a protected person. The protected person is a little girl, nine years old. Suddenly Sam spies a hit team attacking them, and he shouts a warning. Soon bullets are flying, one bodyguard (they’re federal marshals) is wounded, and Sam has no choice but to join the marshals in their escaping car. They end up taking cover in a 22-floor high rise building, whose ground floor is soon occupied by the attackers. The bad guys successfully cut off communications, and the little group of marshals, plus Sam and the protectee, are trying to find a safe hiding place – as the attackers begin hunting them down from room to room.
We’re operating generally on the Die Hard model here. Our intrepid hero, outgunned (joined here by a kick-butt female sidekick, for the sake of diversity), faces increasingly long odds, as their opponents turn out to be a lot better prepared than you’d expect – and to have surprising backup resources. Secrets are revealed, only to be topped by deeper, darker secrets. Betrayals are disclosed and further betrayals perpetrated. It all culminates in a rooftop showdown, with a bomb ticking in the basement.
For me, it was all a little much.
I’ve bellyached about the Cinematic Thriller Formula before. This formula dictates that the novel must work like a contemporary action movie – the drama has to ratchet up constantly (nothing wrong with that), and the limits of human physical endurance (as well as the laws of physics) can be generally ignored. Each narrow escape may be plausible in itself, but cumulatively they defy credulity. The strategy is to keep the audience so excited they don’t have time to engage their critical brains.
The problem with that is that novels are, by nature, a slower medium than movies. Most readers can, and do, pause for a break frequently. When we pause, some of us ponder – which conflicts with the author’s purpose.
Also, a movie usually doesn’t last much more than two hours. But a novel can take many hours to read. Being old and weak of heart, I dislike being kept in a state of fight or flight for ten hours straight. It wearies me, and I had a rough weekend.
For all that, I can’t deny that One Way did its job effectively. It was a little odd to read an American story written with English spelling and orthography – “kerb” for “curb,” for instance. But the author did a good job. His prose could use some pruning, but it worked.
Over the past week, I watched the first three original Planet of the Apes movies. I didn’t know the stories. I knew only what anyone familiar with sci-fi over the years would know, a plot point even the sequel spoils in its own trailer. But the whole movie doesn’t turn on that revelation. It was just an interesting surprise to 1968 moviegoers–no doubt part of what made it a successful movie.
You’ve heard that the original Star Wars and Jaws movies were blockbusters that changed moviemaking ever since. You probably know parts of the score from those movies. They have a tone of adventure that feels like a movie. Planet of the Apes leans into the strange and alien. This trailer captures that tone with minimal spoilers. The score invokes the wild unknown of 1960s sci-fi. It isn’t the music of adventure but of survival.
The director, Franklin J. Schaffner, wants us to experience the space crew’s voyage and their crash landing in a sea. We see water breaking through ship’s seems as if in the crew cabin ourselves. The three-man crew drag themselves to shore, and the first real cynicism comes for Taylor (Charlton Heston) laughing loudly at his earnest crewmate planting a pocket-sized US flag next to the water. The crew treks through a canyon wilderness, afraid that, though the air is fine, there may be no drinkable water or living plant life.
The first 30 minutes follows this track. Will they survive or won’t they? This kind of story tension gets me scratching my head, because if you tell viewers upfront the apes rule the planet, how long will they tolerate the main characters scrambling along on their own? Maybe if we were learning about the crew as well-rounded men, it would be more interesting. But we only get the wilderness and three men looking for water.
On the other hand, Richard Schickel wrote in Life Magazine, May 10, 1968, it was the best American movie he’d seen that year–“faint praise,” he says, “considering the competition,” but still he and his four-year-old daughter loved it.
I had thought the first film was going to focus on racial tolerance or bigotry, but it’s really an anti-war movie. The ape society is governed by religious zealots who won’t tolerate evolutionary theories and stamp out any hints of civilization beyond their own. God made apes in his own image, they say. Humans are just mute wildlife. Most of the hostility is in apes treating humans as non-sentient animals, and the story is driven by the threat Taylor poses to their carefully managed social order. The overarching theme, which starts with questions from the crew after they abandon ship and resumes with chimpanzee Cornelius revealing his exploration of ancient human ruins, is the question of what happened to humanity. The authorities won’t tolerate open discussion of humans once having civilization or being anything more than they are today. For viewers, though, if humans were more on this planet, what happened to them?
That’s what the famous scene at the movie’s end hammers home. Taylor realizes he didn’t crash on another planet. He returned to Earth 2000 years later, long after mankind had destroyed civilization through endless warmongering and the A-bomb.
Planet of the Apes (1968) is good period sci-fi. There are things to complain about (like the fact the humans are described as being unable to speak but in fact they are completely mute —they never make a sound), but it’s a good story. I laughed at the scene of government leaders being confronted with facts and ideas they rejected.
“My Faith Has Found a Resting Place,” performed by Danielle Franklyn & Waneisha Denny
This month, our theme will be faith, which will gather in popular song this one from Lidie H. Edmunds (1851-1920). Edmunds, a native Philadelphian, was home-bound for many years. In order to use her time well, she studied literature and wrote hymns.
“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8 ESV).
1 My faith has found a resting place, from guilt my soul is freed; I trust the ever-living One, his wounds for me shall plead.
Refrain: I need no other argument, I need no other plea, it is enough that Jesus died, and that he died for me.
2 Enough for me that Jesus saves, this ends my fear and doubt; a sinful soul, I come to him, he’ll never cast me out. [Refrain]
3 My heart is leaning on the Word, the written Word of God, salvation by my Savior’s name, salvation thro’ his blood. [Refrain]
4 My great Physician heals the sick, the lost he came to save; for me his precious blood he shed, for me his life he gave. [Refrain]
Music and culture writer Ted Gioia talked on camera with David Perell of the podcast “How I Write” to talk about his life of reading and writing. I just watched it, and it’s marvelous.
Ted, who has been writing on Substack for three and a half years, shared the interview with a short excerpt about musicians getting inspiration from dreams. In the almost two-hour interview, he discusses becoming a well-read man over many years, reading books for content or style, chasing publishing trends, writing honestly for yourself first and then for readers, and how our worldview as well as social pressure presses us toward select kinds of inspiration.
It’s well worth your time. Many good thoughts were shared. You’ll note some that I didn’t, so feel free to comment on it here.
Sometimes, especially in English crime fiction, your run across what I’m inclined to call a “Police Cozy.” It’s a story about cops, but low on the action and violence. That kind of story suits me very well.
Author David Carter is producing a series about Chester (England) detective Walter Darriteau. He works in a sex-balanced headquarters (they’re always sex-balanced these days, at least in fiction), and cooperates well with his colleagues. His partner, Karen, is an attractive blonde, but they both have outside romantic relationships. The Missing Man (one of the least charismatic book titles I’ve ever come across) is a novella featuring the regular characters.
A middle-aged woman calls the police and informs them, matter-of-factly, that she wants to confess to a murder. Nearly 25 years ago, she says, she killed her philandering husband. Now she wants to come clean.
Walter and Karen go to her home to interview her, and she tells them she didn’t actually commit the murder herself. She hired a couple criminals to do the job. She doesn’t in fact have any evidence of a crime. The perpetrators are dead, and even the purported burial site is under a concrete overpass (called a “flyover” in England), so it would be difficult to dig up. But her husband disappeared and hasn’t been heard from since, so she’s confident he’s dead.
Walter’s and Karen’s bizarre job is to try to ferret out any evidence or witnesses that might still be around after a quarter of a century. In time all will be revealed – and I have to admit it was a surprise.
The writing in The Missing Man was good. I enjoyed the story. Based on this short sample, the series appears worth checking out.
If you’re in the Twin Cities area, I’ll be present selling books, with the Vikings, at the Nordic Midsummer Fest at Buck Hill in Burnsville, on Saturday.
The voice on the other end was like dark chocolate that smoked and drank too much and didn’t give a d**n.
If you crossed Rex Stout’s Archie Goodwin with Ian Fleming’s James Bond, you’d pretty much get Alex Mason, hero of Odin, the first volume in a series by David Archer and Blake Banner.
Alex Mason is an agent for “Odin,” an officially nonexistent espionage agency operating for the US government. Its head is known as the Chief, but he’s sometimes called “Nero,” an obvious hat-tip to Nero Wolfe, of whom he is a near clone. He summons Alex to his office as Odin begins, telling him that he’s concerned about an agent he’s had in place in Manila, who has suddenly disappeared. That agent was part of a small, strategically placed cell of assets working against the Chinese. And now it seems they’ve been discovered.
In fact, as Alex arrives, Chinese agents are already moving against the cell. Quickly one is murdered, two go on the run together, and another is captured. Alex needs to find the two fleeing assets and get them to safety. As he begins that task, he is joined by a friendly – and gorgeous – female Mossad agent.
In terms of writing craftsmanship, I find no fault with Odin. The characters were sharp and interesting, and the dramatic tension escalated steadily. The prose was often delicious, with lines like, “He turned and strutted over on crisp little feet.”
The plotting impressed me very much. A plot development that looked like implausible coincidence turned out to be perfectly plausible, by neat authorial jujitsu. An apparent contradiction resolved itself, paying off in heightened suspense for the reader.
I was less happy with a moment of justification of adultery, but I’ve overlooked worse moral sins in a novel.
Bottom line – Odin was a superior thriller, crafted with high professionalism. It was a good time with a book, well worth the purchase price.
