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Journal of the plague season

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I apologize for my radio silence last night. I was just too run down to do anything but go to bed early. I’m celebrating my annual Cusp of Winter Tradition – the massive bronchial infection. It makes no sense to me that – every year about the same time – I come down with a cold which must inevitably descend into my lungs and take up residence like 1970s hippies, putting shag carpet up on all the walls. But such is the case. Every blinking year.

And every blinking year I imagine that this time my immune system will do what I pay it to do, and kick the deadbeats out. According to what I’ve read, you never get the same strain of cold twice, so it only makes sense that once in a while it would be a cold I could beat. But I never can. So at the point when I’m coughing all over my work and living spaces, infecting everyone I encounter, I finally break down and see the doctor. As I did today.

Actually it was a Physician’s Assistant today. She listened to my lungs, had a good laugh, and prescribed an antibiotic and an inhaler. Plus suggesting an over the counter nostrum.

So I guess I’m not a hypochondriac.

When you’re Norwegian, you can’t go to the doctor just because you feel sick. You need to feel you have something interesting to offer, something they can tell their colleagues about, and write up in a JAMA article.

And now I need to lie down. Titanic powers are at war within me.

Goofing, Poetry

Limericized Classics

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Our friend Ori posted a graphic on Facebook, showing a series of limerick versions of classic poems — “The Raven,” “Stopping in the Woods on a Snowy Evening,” etc.

I couldn’t find the original source, so I don’t care to republish it here. But I will publish the one I came up with on the spot (well, after a few minutes’ thought). It requires a sloppy but common pronunciation of “Ulysses”:

“The Odyssey”

There once was a Greek named Ulysses,
Who angered a god with his disses.
He paid for his crime,
But got home in time
To wedding-unplan for his missus.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Afon,’ by Robert Partridge

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Afon

He had forgotten, too, the pain of this [writing] – the pain of dragging this thing out of oneself, the birth of a reluctant child that would much rather go on growing inside than be forced out screaming into the light of day and the fear of examination. He had forgotten the monstrous ego that was needed to push the creation out into the world, with all its mess and suffering. He had forgotten.

I’ve been praising Peter Grainger’s DC Smith novels in this space. On noodling around for further information about the author (who seems to wish to be a man of mystery), I discovered that “Peter Grainger” is a pen name. More than that, the author had earlier written (under the name Robert Partridge) some literary novels, one of which – Afon – starred a character named Peter Grainger, who was a novelist.

Messing with our heads, in other words.

So I bought Afon. It’s pretty good. Not my cuppa tea, but a well-written novel.

Peter Grainger is in his 40s. Long ago he wrote a first novel that got a lot of recognition, and then he lost his nerve and wrote no more. Now he’s quit a teaching job, which he hated. He has some money left from a divorce settlement, so he decides to take a lease on a cottage on an estate called Afon, in a remote valley in Wales. He will try and write another novel. If he fails, at least he’ll know he made the attempt.

He meets the elderly landowner and his much younger wife. He learns to fly fish. He makes an enemy of the estate’s brutal gamekeeper, agonizes over his feelings for two different women (both married), and after a struggle produces a new book.

Afon abounds in lovely descriptions of the natural beauty of Wales, and in perceptive dramatizations of the writing process. The ending is kind of ambiguous, the sort of thing you expect in a literary novel – which is one of the reasons I generally avoid literary novels.

But it’s pretty good. Not much obscenity here, though the bonds of marriage take a beating. Recommended, if you like this sort of thing.

Blogs, Socials, The Press

For your Spectation

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A new column of mine, Letter to a Young Friend, has been published today at The American Spectator Online.

So here we are, post-election, looking at an outcome neither of us expected. I’m not about to do an end zone dance — this election wasn’t exactly a triumph for conservatism. Frankly, I expect the new president will do a lot more that will please you than you expect at this point.

But now seems to me a good time for a thought experiment.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Midnight Riot,’ by Ben Aaronovitch

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Midnight Riot

Urban fantasy is not a genre I generally favor. However, when I saw Ben Aaronovitch’s Midnight Riot, an urban fantasy involving police detective work, I thought it was worth a try. I liked what I found. It’s sort of Harry Potter goes to Scotland Yard, as you’d expect, but it has special (outstanding) qualities of its own.

London Probationary Constable Peter Grant is about to receive his first assignment. He dreams of working in CID, solving homicides. His superior, however, thinks he’d be a better fit in the Case Progression Unit, a unit devoted to paperwork. Peter sees a rather dull future ahead of him.

But one cold night he’s assigned to perimeter duty, guarding a crime scene in Covent Garden. The unfortunate victim has had his head knocked clean off. A witness appears and tells Peter how the crime was committed. But there’s a problem. The witness, dressed in Victorian clothes, is (and admits to being) a ghost. When a certain Inspector Thomas Nightingale happens by later, Peter tells him, almost as a joke, that he’s been interrogating a ghost. To his surprise, Nightingale listens to him seriously. The next day, instead of going to CPU, Peter finds himself assigned to assist Nightingale, who is the one-man staff of a special (secret) unit devoted to solving supernatural crimes.

Peter moves into the large manor which is Nightingale’s headquarters and begins his apprenticeship in wizardry. They soon find that they’re not dealing with a single crime, but a spectral serial killing spree, in which some unidentified power is possessing ordinary people, changing their appearances, and using them to kill other innocent people, somehow identified by the murderer (who is apparently quite mad) as his personal enemies.

What takes Midnight Riot above the level of most modern fantasies is the narrating voice of Peter Grant, who is at once naïve, cynical, and witty. I enjoyed the narrative, and had a good time reading a well-told story in which the stakes ratchet up rapidly and fearsomely.

Cautions for language and occult themes. Religious matters are studiously avoided, which is all to the good as far as I’m concerned. I’ll be reading more Peter Grant books, at least until the author decides to offend me (which I expect he’ll do before long).

Religion

‘The Ruthless Love of Christ’

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In case you’re curious to see me deliver the chapel sermon I posted here some weeks ago, here’s the video, courtesy of the Association Free Lutheran Schools:

Larry Walker // The Ruthless Love of Christ from AFLC Schools on Vimeo.

Reviews

Netflix Review: ‘Detectorists’

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Detectorists

It was suggested to me that I might enjoy the English TV series, “Detectorists.” I think I know why the suggestion was made. In very broad terms, it’s a picture of my life. In spite of that, I found it entertaining.

The series centers on the lives of a pair of friends who belong to a metal “detectorists’” club (it’s pure coincidence that the mystery novel I reviewed last night involved the murder of a detectorist). Lance (Toby Jones) is a small, unprepossessing man who is nevertheless quite intelligent. He works as a forklift operator in a produce warehouse, but his twin passions are his ex-wife, who exploits his affections, and metal detecting in the Essex countryside. His friend Andy (Mackenzie Crook) looks and dresses like a homeless man, but actually is nearly qualified as an archaeologist when the series starts. He lives with a girlfriend, Becky (played, I was delighted to discover, by Rachael Stirling, daughter of Diana Rigg, the great crush of my youth). Andy and Becky dream of going to Africa to do excavations, but Andy drags his feet, crippled by self-doubt. He and Lance spend a lot of time together in the fields with their detectors and in pubs, even to the point of raising mild jealousy in Becky.

They are members of the Danebury Metal Detecting Club, a small, struggling group of moderately obsessed social misfits. Their mortal rivals are the “Antiquisearchers,” a less principled detecting group, suspected of “Nighthawking” (detecting at night so as to take possession of their finds without properly declaring them to the authorities). The DMDC is galvanized in the first season by the appearance of a young woman named Sophie (Amy-Ffion Edwards), who attracts Andy’s attention enough to put a strain on his relationship with Becky.

The first season centers on Lance and Andy detecting on the farm of an affably crazy farmer, who constantly calls out commands to nonexistent dogs, and is suspected of having murdered his wife and buried her somewhere on his property. In the second season, a young German man shows up and asks the group’s help locating the crash site of a plane which had carried his grandfather during World War II.

“Detectorists,” written by Mackenzie Crook himself, is a well-crafted, character-based comedy which treats its cast of characters with affection. We laugh at them but also with them, and they are portrayed with pathos and compassion. Also, the scenery shots are breathtakingly lovely.

I liked it a lot. The only thing that really annoyed me was the final episode, broadcast as a Christmas special, which involved elements of superstition. Cautions for language.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Rags of Time,’ by Peter Grainger

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The Rags of Time

Desk Sergeant Charlie Hills was by nature a two-fingered typist, but sometimes, when the muse was upon him and there were words to be produced that contained a lot of a’s, e’s, and s’s, the middle finger of his left hand would join the party. He typed ‘assessment’ with some panache, therefore, but then had to stop and count the s’s, undoing any gains he had made in the time taken.

I like Peter Grainger’s D.C. Smith mysteries more with each outing, and The Rags of Time did not disappoint. I have compared Essex Detective Sergeant D.C. Smith to the American character of Columbo before, but I found myself thinking of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch this time around. Though different in their environments and methods, the two detectives have much in common. Both are aging masters, and both tend to make enemies among their colleagues because they work a little harder than everybody else. Where other cops are content to connect a few dots and make a frame, these two see more dots and sometimes come out with very different results. They never forget that it’s not enough just to make a case – they need to find the truth, to do justice as much as possible.

This time out, Sergeant Smith is contemplating retirement. He’s just returned to work from medical leave, and the department is going through changes. One of his fellow detectives, Wilson, a man who’s been a personal rival and enemy, is on the point of promotion. Smith, who has no noticeable personal vanity, actually manipulates various things to make Wilson look good, and attempts to heal their differences.

All that, however, falls to pieces when a dead body is found in a rural field. The victim, a metal “detectorist,” was killed with a blunt object of some kind. Suspicion falls on his fellow detectorists, but Smith is unsatisfied with Wilson’s rush to judgment. He has to step in to correct the man’s mistakes – multiple times. The true trail seems to him to lead to the residents of a nearby friary where, in spite of holy vows, somebody is telling lies.

D.C. Smith is a fascinating character, a mystery to his co-workers, and even a bit of a mystery to the reader. I like him immensely. I liked this book immensely. I liked the prose immensely. The language is restrained (including little profanity), but often witty, and there’s really nothing to object to. Even issues of faith are treated with respect. I highly recommend The Rags of Time and the whole series.

Goofing

‘Fool-proof Roast Turkey”

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It’s going to snow. I can feel it in the air pressure. In the humidity level. I see it in the grayness of the sky. I smell it in the atmosphere. I sense it in my arthritic old bones.

But mostly I heard it on the radio.

As you plan your Thanksgiving meal, make sure to check out the following “fool-proof” recipe from Joseph’s Machines.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Escape Clause,’ by John Sandford

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Escape Clause

Eleven years: Peck would give everything to have had those eleven years back. For one thing, he wouldn’t have messed around with those women in Indianapolis. If he’d gotten a regular doctor job, he’d be driving the big bucks now, fixing everything from Aarskog syndrome to Zika virus.

I’m fond of cop humor. Cop humor is black humor, often profane humor, the humor of people who’ve seen the worst things life can dish up, and have found ways of coping. John Sandford’s novels about Minnesota cops are full of cop humor, which is one of their charms. In comparison to his Prey novels, starring Lucas Davenport, his Virgil Flowers novels tend to lean more heavily toward slapstick. Escape Clause is perhaps the most comic of his novels to date, though there are several murders along the way.

In Escape Clause, we begin with the theft (kidnapping?) of two rare tigers from the Minnesota Zoo. There’s no mystery in this story – it’s a thriller. We know who the bad guys are (an eastern medicines doctor and a few thugs), and the suspense is in how fast the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, in the person of Virgil Flowers (the only guy they can spare because of security demands at the Minnesota State Fair during visits by presidential candidates) can figure out what’s going on and stop it.

Virgil is a good cop, though not a very good shot, and generally reluctant to even carry a gun. He also tends to take a lot of pratfalls in this outing. Simultaneous with this job, he gets involved with stopping some thugs, hired by a sweatshop owner to beat up his girlfriend’s sister, who’s doing sociology research on the illegal alien workers.

It’s all a lot of fun, and it’s mostly dirtbags who get killed. The climax is obvious a mile away, but no less enjoyable for that, on a visceral level.

An interesting new element in this story is the character of “Father Bill,” a Catholic priest who leads an odd life. He works as a supply pastor for the Minneapolis-St. Paul diocese nine months of the year, and is celibate then. During the summers he works at a resort and has a girlfriend. This is kind of jaw-dropping, but I suppose it’s not unthinkable in today’s church. Virgil, whose father is a Lutheran pastor, makes some small effort to talk him over to the Protestant side.

Anyway, I had a good time with Escape Clause. Cautions for lots of bad language and adult situations, also the death of an animal (almost always more traumatic than human death in a novel).