Fiction, Reviews

‘Fiction No More,’ by Ted Clifton

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There are three books to date in the Vincent Malone mystery series by Ted Clifton. Fiction No More is the third. It’s worth your time.

Vincent Malone, just to jog your memory, is a former legal investigator from Denver, now living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. For a while he worked as a van driver for a local bed and breakfast, but with improving health and a new attitude and live-in girlfriend, he’s moving back into his old work. He still drives the van now and then, but he’s got new challenges.

Still, his latest case comes out of the Inn. A famous mystery novelist is visiting, and she asks Vincent to check out a man whom she believes is following her. He has contacted her in the past, she says, asking why an incident in her first novel so closely mirrored the murder of his own father.

When the man is arrested for another murder by the police, the author surprises Vince by offering to pay for his defense. Vince’s lawyer boss takes the case on, and the trail leads to that older case from the novel. Turns out the author hasn’t been entirely honest with Vincent – her grandfather had firsthand knowledge of the crime, and had described it to her. It all has to do with the theft of Native American artifacts long ago – and some of the people involved are still alive and dangerous. One of them is even powerful.

Fiction No More was a pretty good read. As I’ve said before, these stories combine hard-boiled and cozy elements, and the fusion works pretty well. An unnecessary anticlimax provides a bittersweet coda that I’m not sure I’m grateful for or not.

Cautions for language and adult themes. Modern attitudes toward marriage and cohabitation bothered me a little, but that’s the world we live in.

Fiction, Reviews

Source Material: Infinity Gauntlet

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By the magic of my community library’s digital loaning platform, I was able to borrow a comic book. Crazy wild, I know.

Thanos: The Infinity Gauntlet

When I discovered I possessed this uncanny power, I sought out the source material for the recent Avengers extravaganza, the original telling of Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet. I didn’t like the movie’s storyline for its heavy reliance on a single argument and felt certain Hollywood had rejected perfectly good source material for its own twisted narrative. Surely the original was better; I mean, it’s the canon, right?

Not even Death realized what limitless might the mad titan was striving for. Through cunning, sheer strength, and murder, Thanos wrested the infinity gems from those that possessed them and with each acquisition he gained mastery over the soul, the mind, power, time, reality, space.

The Infinity Gauntlet by Jim Starlin and artists George Perez and Ron Lim starts on an interesting note. Unlike Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos starts the book with all the infinity gems. The story skips neatly over all the nobodies Thanos had to dispatch in order to obtain the six gems, which is fair. How could they have told engaging stories about unknown aliens guarding unknown powers? The threat to human and all sentient life builds nicely over the first two issues.

If you’re unfamiliar with the story, Thanos has just about infinite power with these gems and eliminates half of the sentient beings in the universe. The Avengers won’t roll over for that and neither will the Avenger-friends. That much is in the movies. In the comic books, The Silver Surfer rushes to Earth to tell Doctor Strange everything he knows, Strange receives word from a metaphysical being who is also in the know, and other heroes hear from their sources as well. In short, everyone soon knows who they oppose but not how they can oppose him.

Fault one with The Infinity Gauntlet: The Hulk doesn’t say, “There’s trouble brewing!”

Fault two comes in the big fight. Sure, someone must devise a clever plan. Sure, many heroes will be overwhelmed by this nigh omnipotent villain. Sure, many words will be spilled by B-string supers who speak of themselves in the third person and are supposed to be super-duper defenders except this time. All of this can be done well enough, but they tried to take it to the next level by bringing in a menagerie of gods to challenge the one with godlike power. And what do you think happens to them?

Continue reading Source Material: Infinity Gauntlet →
Authors, Reading, The Press

Sigrid Undset, the I.S.I., and I

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I wrote an essay on Sigrid Undset for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s web site:

Like one of her own characters, Sigrid Undset followed her heart, confronted the consequences, and learned. Enabled by a government grant to live abroad, she began an affair in Rome with a married Norwegian painter, Anders Castus Svarstad. They married in 1912, after his divorce, and divorced in turn in 1919. By that time, they’d moved back to Norway, where their third child was born. Their second child, a daughter, was mentally handicapped. When Sigrid learned to her horror that Svarstad’s ex-wife had placed her children by him in an orphanage, Sigrid adopted them. One of these was also mentally handicapped. (Years later, when she received her Nobel Prize, she would donate the entire sum to children’s charities.)

Read the whole thing here.
Fiction, Reviews

‘Blood Lies,’ by Andrew Cunningham

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A free book deal persuaded me to download Blood Lies, by Andrew Cunningham. It’s the fifth in his “Lies” series.

The main characters are Del Honeycutt, the narrator, and his girlfriend, bestselling mystery writer Samantha Spencer. As the story starts, Samantha is shot on the street, and rushed to the hospital. The main concern is not with the gunshot wound, which is minor, but with possible brain damage from hitting her head on the sidewalk. In a suspicious twist, someone claiming to be a policeman comes to claim the bullet that shot her. Only he’s not from the police.

Del’s investigation of the crime soon leads him to suspect that the bullet was not intended for Samantha, but for him. Which makes no sense, because he’s not the famous one in their relationship. However, he begins learning new things about his own family secrets. He always knew his father was a scoundrel, but he never guessed that he was a spy. For the Chinese.

The story is convoluted, and not particularly plausible. It reminded me a lot of television writing from a bygone era – especially in the main characters’ ability to recover quickly from injuries. Also, deadly perils are averted through improbable lucky breaks – in one memorable scene (and I don’t remember a lot of scenes from this book after a few days), the hero manages to kill an attacker with a cell phone. By accident.

Blood Lies was an entertaining book, but doesn’t bear the weight of much thought. Not highly recommended. Cautions for language and adult themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Blue Flower, Red Thorns,’ by Ted Clifton

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Vincent Malone is the continuing hero in Ted Clinton’s series set in Santa Fe, New Mexico, of which Blue Flower, Red Thorns is the second. Vince went from being a high-flying Dallas lawyer to a successful Denver legal investigator before quitting that work due to his health. He drifted into Santa Fe, where he took a job driving a van for a bed and breakfast. But he found use for his detective skills in the first book, Santa Fe Mojo, and is easing back into that career.

Nevertheless, he’s still driving the van when Blue Flower, Red Thorns begins. He makes a run to Durango, Colorado to get some friends’ son out of a legal problem, and returns to help his pleasant employers deal with a group of important guests. They’re hosting a rising young woman artist and her entourage, while a big auction is held at a local gallery. But these guests act pretty much as you’d expect artists and dealers to act – they’re temperamental, and the artist’s drunken mother makes a scene physically fighting the gallery owner. Which makes her the chief suspect when the owner is found murdered – but if you’re looking for people with motive, there is no shortage. Vincent will have to plunge into the world of art forgery to untangle the mystery.

This is very good entertainment reading, perfect for the beach (or your living room while you’re quarantined). Vince is tough and cynical enough for the hard-boiled fan (though he’s mellowing with a new girlfriend), and the recurring cast of characters is sympathetic enough for cozy readers.

Cautions for language and adult themes. There’s one more book in the series so far.

Religion

The Tomb is Open; Walk In

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Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.

from “Seven Stanzas at Easter” by John Updike

Read the whole poem here, and have a blessed, if confined, Easter.

He is risen!

Music, Religion

‘O Sacred Head, Now Wounded’

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The Ao Naga are a tribal group in northeastern India. They were converted to Christianity in the late 1870s. This is the Ao Naga Choir with the Passion hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.”

“O Sacred Head” is a very old Latin hymn traditionally attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux. However (I’m disappointed to learn) it’s now generally attributed to a 13th Century poet named Arnulf of Leuven (whose name suggests Norman ancestry).

Arrangement by J. S. Bach.

I love this hymn. For Lutherans (and, of course, for many others) Christocentricity is the chief test of theology. If Jesus isn’t the Center, then it’s wrong.

Through all history, people have sought the secret of the universe. Christians declare that the secret is not an equation, not a formula, not a hidden talisman or precious stone or treasure, but a Person. When you get to the end of all questions, when you draw back the final curtain of the universe, you find Personality.

And of course, we always knew this was right. All our great stories declared that the King must save his people; the Father must save his child; the Prince must save the princess. The answer is Someone.

A blessed Good Friday and Easter to you.

Uncategorized

Maundy Thursday, 2020

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Today is Maundy Thursday in the church calendar. The word “maundy” is related to the Latin root of the word “mandate,” meaning command. It’s a reference to Christ’s words at the Last Supper: “A new commandment I give you, to love one another as I have loved you.”

This is a day for Holy Communion in many churches. Most traditional Lutherans aren’t doing the sacrament until the quarantine is over, though. Because we believe actual physical presence is necessary. (My own church is doing virtual communion online, but we’re kind of outlaws.)

April 9 is a sad day in Norwegian history. 80 years ago today, German troops marched into Oslo. They actually expected to be greeted as saviors, protecting the Norwegians from the British, who’d been violating Norwegian neutrality in various ways. The Norwegian government wasn’t quite sure what to do with them at first — after all, Hitler was (for the moment) allied with Stalin, who was a friend and benefactor to Norway’s ruling Labor Party. When the troops marched in, they got a police escort.

However, on that same day, Norwegian troops at Oscarsborg Fortress on the Oslofjord, under the command of Col. Birger Eriksen, fired on a German battleship. The Blucher was a brand-new ship; many of its crew were raw recruits on their first voyage. But among the personnel on board were Gestapo officers and other personnel whose assignment was to capture the Norwegian royal family and government. Because the ship had refused to respond to warning shots, Col. Eriksen determined that whoever they were (he didn’t know at that point), they were hostile and it was his duty to fire on them. His words were, “Either I will be decorated or I will be court-martialled. Fire!” His guns and ammunition were old, but they performed admirably. Both his battery’s shots hit, and the Blucher began burning. Further shots from secondary batteries caused further damage, and the Blucher sank with the loss of 650-800 soldiers and sailors (1,400 survived). The delay caused by the sinking gave the royal family and the government time to escape the city, and ultimately to flee to exile in England.

The movie The King’s Choice includes a dramatization of the battle:

Aside from Atlantic Crossing, which I’ve told you about, I’ve done some other work having to do with Norway in World War II, which I still can’t tell you about. I hope they’re released eventually. I’m quite proud of them.

Religion

Not Safe But Good: Ancient Edition

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Ooh!” said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man. Is he — quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”

“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver; “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Who hasn’t heard this quote from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in a sermon or chapel talk? It’s a good-to illustration for the scary side of God’s omnipotence. God can do things we don’t understand, but remember, like Aslan, he is good.

Did you know God gave us illustrations for this very thing in the book of Job? The picture gets a bit lost on us, because we don’t recognize how wild the world is or has been, but in Job 38-39 God not only says he can handle the wild things, but he owns them also.

Can you hunt the prey for the lion,
    or satisfy the appetite of the young lions,
 when they crouch in their dens
    or lie in wait in their thicket?
Who provides for the raven its prey,
    when its young ones cry to God for help,
    and wander about for lack of food? (Job 38:38-40)

Lions watch for the slow, young, or straggling members of a herd to attack. They lie in wait for the opportunity to kill; I’m told they usually watch their prey in the evening and strike after dark. They aren’t trying to face-off with a worthy opponent. They want to eat. Ravens come along after the kill to pick off what they can.

In this passage and also in Ps. 147:9 God describes ravens and young lions as asking for a kill from the herd from their master, their daily bread. This is the raw horror of nature, not a pastoral you want to hang in your nursery.

The Lord offers several illustrations like this, drawing our attention to wild, troublesome animals that are nonetheless under his care. Wild mountain goats are untamable, potentially dangerous, and can cause a good bit of trouble. Triple that for wild donkeys: “to whom I have given the arid plain for his home and the salt land for his dwelling place?” (39:6). You couldn’t stumble upon a wild donkey and have it carry your luggage to the next town. And if you were able to lead a wild ox to your stable, you would not have that stable the next day. He would take what he wanted from you and no one could stop him.

Read Job 39 for more, but you get the point. God doesn’t simply keep an eye on these wildly unsafe things; he shepherds and cares for them. That can make him look as wild as they are. But if we can know anything, we can know God is good. Not safe by our definition. Not anywhere near domesticated as we might wish. He can be rather scary.

But he’s good. He’s the King.

Photo by Keyur Nandaniya on Unsplash

Non-fiction

Viking Kings, well translated

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The line of the Norwegian kings, art by Anders Kvale Rue

I’ve mentioned that I got some new translation work recently. One of these jobs is to translate a series of short articles on the Viking Age rulers of Norway, for Saga Publishers, the publishers of Viking Legacy. It’s an ongoing project, but my first translation went up today, here.

Unanimous saga tradition regards the Oppland king Halvdan the Black as the progenitor of the eventual Norwegian royal dynasty. The same tradition also relates that he was the first Norwegian petty king to secure for himself a trans-regional power base spanning eastern and western Norway, through a marriage alliance with Ragnhild Haraldsdotter, the daughter of a petty king in Sogn. Their son, Harald, according to custom, would have been fostered up in Sogn at the home of his grandfather, Harald Goldbeard.

The series will be updated with fresh kings, as I understand it, a couple times a week.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture