I’m quite enjoying Dan Wheatcroft’s offbeat espionage novels. I wonder if other people have the same reaction. I honestly see why some wouldn’t like them.
The Summer of 75 takes place (obviously) nine years after the previous book, The Summer of 66. Our hero John Gallagher, now an experienced counterespionage agent, gets his first overseas assignment. An East German government official, whom he met in the previous book, wants to defect. It’s Gallagher’s job to help him. The government, always tightfisted, stretches to the expense of issuing him a gun and a few bullets.
Of course there are wheels within wheels. There’s a British agent in the pay of the Russians, who very much does not want the defector to be debriefed in the west. There’s the secret police, who know a lot of secrets, but don’t know which ones are red herrings. Not only are all the characters playing games with the others, they’re second-guessing them and doing their best to manipulate reactions.
I can’t claim that I followed the plot of The Summer of 75 all the way through. As is customary with Wheatcroft’s books, it’s pretty complex, all the threads densely packed together. This is a story with very little free space in it, like the roots of a pot-bound plant.
Yet somehow, I found the book relaxing to read. I can’t account for that reaction.
There are a few odd grammar lapses. The author doesn’t know how to conjugate the verb “hang.” He says “X hung him/herself,” more than once. He also has trouble with “sat.” He writes quite professionally otherwise, so that’s peculiar.
But I enjoyed The Summer of 75 – rather more, in fact, than I enjoyed the year itself when I lived through it.
This month, our theme will be the Almighty. Today’s hymn is based on Psalm 145, written by Englishman Richard Mant (1776-1848), the rector and bishop of many English towns. The tune is from an influential German hymnal of the 16th century.
“They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and I will declare your greatness” (Psalm 145:6 ESV).
1 God, my king, thy might confessing, ever will I bless thy name; day by day thy throne addressing, still will I thy praise proclaim.
2 Honor great our God befitteth; who his majesty can reach? Age to age his works transmitteth; age to age his pow’r shall teach.
3 They shall talk of all thy glory, on thy might and greatness dwell, speak of thy great acts the story, and thy deeds of wonder tell.
4 Nor shall fail from mem’ry’s treasure works by love and mercy wrought: works of love surpassing measure, works of mercy passing thought.
5 Full of kindness and compassion, slow to anger, vast in love, God is good to all creation; all his works his goodness prove.
6 All thy works, O Lord, shall bless thee, thee shall all thy saints adore. King supreme shall they confess thee, and proclaim thy sovereign pow’r.
I’ve got a busy day today, so let me start by sharing a little light verse.
You live a few days then you die And sometimes you ask yourself why. What could bring relief? The next season’s release. Go watch and the time will fly by.
They’re calling to all of the sheep To occupy Ivy League Street Don’t think of the issues Just bring down your tissues And cry, yell, scream, chant, and repeat.
Scotland: From the land of the free and the home of the brave comes this tale of Black Agnes, who held Castle Dunbar against the English for several months in 1338, saying among other things”
‘Of Scotland’s King I haud my house, He pays me meat and fee, And I will keep my gude auld house, While my house will keep me.’
A New Review: John Wilson imagines a Christian review periodical and what it’s pushback would sound like: “We’re beset on every hand by attacks on our core convictions, by enemies of our faith, and you are whining about book reviews?”
Of publishers it may be said that like the English as a race they are incapable of philosophy. They deal in particulars and adhere easily to Sydney Smith’s dictum that one should take short views, hope for the best, and trust God.
William Jovanovich, Now, Barabbas
Photo: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Last Saturday I ventured outside my comfort zone to make the perilous drive to downtown Minneapolis (one of the still unburned parts), to hear a lecture. The lecture was delivered at the Mindekirken, the Norwegian Memorial Church (there’s one in Chicago too), where they hold a Norwegian language service every Sunday. You’d think I’d go there all the time, but they’re not really my kind of Lutherans. However, they offer cultural and language programs too, and I lectured myself there once, at one of their regular lunchtime events.
One reason I don’t go there more often is that it’s an awful place to drive to. The conservative Center Of the American Experiment, based here in Minnesota, has documented the fact that our city planners have it as an explicit goal to make driving around here as inconvenient as possible – so we peasants will be compelled to use buses and the wonderful light rail they’re forcing us to pay for. I don’t think I’ve ever driven to the Mindekirken without getting turned around in some way – even with GPS.
Anyway, I arrived at last, only a few minutes late. I came in during the introduction, so I didn’t miss any of the lecture.
The lecturer was my online friend, Pastor Thomas E. Jacobson, who has recently had a book released. It boasts the surprising title, Pain In the Belly: The Haugean Witness In American Lutheranism. I’ve written about the Norwegian lay evangelist Hans Nielsen Hauge many times before in this space – just do a search in the box up above if you’re curious. We Haugeans (I still identify as a Haugean) have been called a sect, but we never separated from Lutheranism or denied its basic tenets. In Norway, the Haugeans in any parish tended to pool their money to build a “bedehus,” a prayer house. There, after having attended regular services in their local Lutheran churches, they could gather among themselves and hold “edification meetings” and other social and educational functions. Many bedehuser still exist in Norway, and continue to be used for something like their original purpose.
I haven’t read Tom’s book yet, but I thought I’d give it a plug here anyway. It focuses on the influence of the Haugeans on Lutheranism in the USA. The title comes from a comment made by a Haugean leader when the old Hauge Synod at last agreed to join a church merger. When told that a theologian in one of the more conservative groups entering new church body had said that he rejoiced that the Haugeans would now be “swallowed up” in mainstream Lutheranism, this man said he expected to cause them “a pain in the belly.”
Sadly (in my view), in the long run the new church body and its successors turned out to have a pretty iron digestion.
In any case, we sang a hymn that Hans Nielsen Hauge wrote in 1799, “With God in Grace I’m Dwelling.” He wrote it during one of his imprisonments for illegal lay preaching. I looked for a video of somebody singing it, but as far as I can tell nobody has ever been bold enough to perform the hymn and leave a permanent record. So I’ll just transcribe a couple verses here. A common tune used for it is “Passion Chorale,” the one we use for “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.”
With God in grace I’m dwelling, What harm can come to me From worldly pow’rs compelling My way thus closed to be? Though they in chains may bind me Inside this prison cell, Yet Christmas here can find me; Within my heart ʼtis well.
Our God has promised surely To free each seeking soul, Who walks in spirit purely With truth as way and goal. Whose heart the world’s deceiving Can never lead astray, Who, constantly believing, Will walk the Kingdom’s way.
God grant us now His power, And help us by His might To follow truth this hour, All guided by His light; And may we work together As one in mutual love, Forsaking self and gather At last in heav’n above.
The novel, The Box, by Dan Wheatcroft, which I reviewed the other day, turned out to be a continuation of an existing series of two books about British counterespionage in decades past. I was intrigued enough to pick up the first novel, The Summer of 66, whose hero (he only appears briefly in The Box) is agent John Gallagher.
The story begins with young Gallagher, formerly of Special Branch, being transferred to the Home Office Statistical Unit, a suitably dull cover for an intelligence operation. In contrast to our ingrained images of James Bond’s world, Gallagher’s new workplace is notably dull. It looks like a slightly shopworn small business operation, not very well funded. (The not very well-funded part, at least, is true. When John eventually gets outfitted with a weapon, it’s no state of the art armament from Q, but a standard revolver. The budget is too tight to allocate him as many cartridges as he’d like.)
The first operation John is involved in concerns the problem of a suspicious number of cryptologists involved in a certain secret project having recently committed suicide. Do the Russians have a method for inducing depression and despair? The group’s investigations uncover a ring of ruthless deep-cover agents.
I’m not entirely sure why I enjoy these books as much as I do. They have noticeable weaknesses. The prose isn’t top-shelf (misplaced modifiers are sometimes among the problems). I can only describe the plotting as dense – we’re bombarded with information, and it’s often difficult to follow the many story threads.
But I think it’s that very denseness that makes the books compelling – for me. There’s an authentic sense of real life here – the way I myself feel when multiple stimuli threaten to overwhelm me. (Author Wheatcroft confesses in his bio to being on the autism scale. Since I believe I’m low-level autistic myself, that may be what attracts me.)
A genuflection is made to the altar of gay rights in this book, but the author demonstrated himself un-Woke in The Box, so I let that go by.
I’m not sure if normal readers will enjoy The Summer of 66 as much as I did. But I certainly did enjoy it.
Tonight, like your high school teacher when he had a hangover and couldn’t face the prospect of lecturing, and so rolled out the old film projector, I once again fall back on video, bereft of useful ideas. I happened to be watching one of the old Inspector Dalgliesh mysteries with Roy Marsden, and Joss Ackland showed up in the cast. That always reminds me of his tour de force performance as C. S. Lewis in the original 1985 BBC television film of Shadowlands – which in my opinion remains the only watchable version. The travesty Richard Attenborough foisted on the public in 1993 was not actually about C. S. Lewis, but about some imaginary scholar Attenborough made up, who was emotionally stunted until being saved by True Love. (I’ll stipulate that Debra Winger was better as Joy Davidman than Claire Bloom was – purely because she was more abrasive. That is, in my opinion, almost the theatrical film’s only virtue.)
This version, excerpted above, is much closer to the original events, and to Lewis’ personality. Douglas Gresham praised Joss Ackland’s performance as his stepfather. Ackland didn’t much resemble Lewis, except in physical bulk, but he had a similar booming voice, and he seems to have sought out ways to make his performance authentic.
The clip above dramatizes the critical point in the plot where Joy, stricken with cancer and newly married to Jack Lewis, experiences a remission and goes home to the Kilns to live with Jack, his brother, and her two sons (there were, in fact, two boys – one got cut in the transition from small to large screen).
Joss Ackland usually played villains or rather nasty people (one exception was a cameo as D’Artagnan’s father in Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers). I would pay considerable money (if I had any) for a voice like his. I looked him up on Wikipedia, and found that he died last November. 95 years old, which is a good run.
Thurstan Baddeley is a police inspector… somewhere in the northwest of England. I’m not sure the city is actually named in Dan Wheatcroft’s The Box, a somewhat oddball novel that I found delightful. He leads the Major Crimes squad, works well with his team, and is good at solving crimes. Unfortunately, his Chief Constable has it in for him. He keeps nagging Baddeley to institute department policies, like wearing preferred pronoun badges and rainbow badge lanyards. Finally, it comes to a head and Thurstan is packed off to a new posting, to investigate cold crimes in the small town of St Helens, Sutton Box station, where police careers go to die.
Soon he is joined by his friend and subordinate Randolph (known as Gandolph), a computer hacker who has massaged assignment records to excuse his presence. Together they begin going through the boxes of cold crimes files. Most of the old cases are uninteresting, but two of them draw their attention. One concerns the murder of a prostitute in 1902, which went unsolved though there was an obvious suspect – the son of the richest man in town. The other comes from the 1970s, and concerns a socially awkward young man, who’d never been in trouble before, convicted of stabbing a man to death. He later committed suicide in prison. Most of the people involved in both cases are dead, but there are people who still know things, and others who remember, with either sadness or fear.
There are no gunfights in The Box (well, this is England, after all), no fistfights or chases. All the violence happens off stage. Yet the author succeeds in escalating the dramatic tension steadily, and I turned the pages with eagerness.
It turns out that The Box is the beginning of a new series for the author, but it branches off from an earlier series. I’ll have to check those other books out. The writing wasn’t absolutely top-shelf – the author sometimes falls into confusing constructions like “fate inhabited him instantly.” But it was good enough to carry a fascinating story with lively characters.
And the cherry on top, of course, is the politically incorrect elements. You don’t run across such bare-faced un-wokeness in many novels today – no wonder the author uses a pseudonym.
Alan Lawson is former Special Forces, former CIA special operations. He left the CIA, disillusioned with what he’d seen there, and returned to his home of Arlington Texas. As Julius Taven’s Darker Than Blonde begins, he’s driving for a ride share service, still struggling with PTSD.
One night he gets a big fare, a pick-up out on a remote ranch. But when he arrives, nobody seems to be around. After waiting several minutes, he starts to leave, and then his fare shows up out of the night – a striking blonde woman. The address where he delivers her happens to be an apartment building where he himself used to live.
And when he gets home and cleans his car out, he finds a money clip holding several thousand dollars. The initials on the clip do not match any of his fares that day. He decides to keep it.
Soon after, the police pick him up for questioning. Turns out they found a man murdered in the ranch house where he made the pick-up, and no trace can be found of the woman he says he drove. The murder victim had the same initials as were on the money clip – but fortunately Alan has hidden it.
Alan knows he’s been set up, but he has resources of his own. He calls his friend Derick, who’s both a skilled fighter and a computer expert. They’ll discover a convoluted and ruthless plot, with millions of dollars of gold at stake – when he’s not avoiding his old CIA boss, who’s trying to re-enlist him, by any means necessary, regardless of the monetary or human cost.
It appears that Darker Than Blonde is Julius Taven’s first published novel, and I must say it’s a very impressive performance. The writing was good (except for the fact that he doesn’t know how to spell “sergeant”), the characters were vivid, and I was fascinated by the story. It was taut and suspenseful. The plot was admittedly convoluted, and it was hard to keep it straight at times. Also, there were a whole lot of characters, so many that I forgot about some of them before they reappeared later on.
I bought this book in part because the title seemed to harken back to John D. MacDonald. Darker Than Blonde isn’t much like a MacDonald novel, but it’s very good in its own way. It seems to be the first installment in a series, and I look forward very much to seeing more.
Cautions for language and violence. A few references to prayer are made, and are respectful.
The hymns this month have focused on Our Lord’s Table. Today’s song was written for an 1866 hymnal by the great English preacher Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892). The tune shared here is not one you would find in a hymnal. It’s a 2009 arrangement by Greg Kay.
“Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body’” (Matthew 26:26 ESV).
1 Amidst us our Beloved stands, and bids us view His pierced hands; points to the wounded feet and side, blest emblems of the Crucified.
2 What food luxurious loads the board, when, at His table, sits the Lord! The cup how rich, the bread how sweet, when Jesus deigns the guests to meet!
3 If now, with eyes defiled and dim, we see the signs, but see not Him; O may His love the scales displace, and bid us see Him face to face!
4 Our former transports we recount, when with Him in the holy mount: these cause our souls to thirst anew His marred but lovely face to view.
Point: Few people buy books that aren’t celebrity aligned. Britney Spears’s autobiography, released October 24, 2023, is currently #1 in Kindle, #10 in hardcover on Amazon. Aside of these, publishing houses stay afloat through backlist sales: Bibles, coloring books, and Don Quixote.
“Someone from a prestige big 5 imprint whose books are often award-contenders and bestsellers once told me any book that sold less than 25,000 in print was a failure for them. OTOH, when I was in an MFA program—where many of the professors wrote experimental literary novels and such—I was told anything more than 5,000 sales was a success. Some small press editors might be happy with 1,000 sales.”
Topping Amazon’s fiction list for most sold this week are The Women, by Kristin Hannah (12 weeks on the list) and The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese (33 weeks).
As booklovers, we may want many more people to join us in reading, sharing, and enjoying the written or recorded word, but I don’t think the sky is falling yet.
Poetry: On April 26, 1336, a great poet climbed into the Alps just for the thrill of it, which people didn’t do in those days. Petrarch climbed to the top of Mont Ventoux (which is much higher today because of inflation) and read from Augustine’s Confessions, “Where I fixed my eyes first, it was written: ‘And men go to admire the high mountains, the vast floods of the sea, the huge streams of the rivers, the circumference of the ocean and the revolutions of the stars – and desert themselves.’ . . .”
Music: Ted Gioia writes western music isn’t what we think it is. “Just stop and think for a moment about the importance of Venice in the history of music. Everything from madrigals to operas found their home in that bustling port city—a key connecting point between West and East in the modern imagination.”
