A few weeks back, the Sons of Norway organization (of which I am a member in good standing) interviewed my boss, Linda May Kallestein, about the Atlantic Crossing miniseries. Link here; I can’t embed it.
Aside from working as a translator, in which enterprise I serve as a subcontractor, Linda May was a co-writer on the series, with Alexander Eik. In this interview she talks about her Norwegian-American background, and her experiences in writing and filming.
About 18 minutes.
Lou Fleener, a private eye in 1950s Chicago, is the hero of Duane Lindsay’s comic novel, Missing Amanda. Lou is not prepossessing in appearance – short, dumpy, and balding. But he’s actually the next thing to a superhero. He’s almost impossible to beat in a fight. It’s something he was born with – lightning reflexes, an uncanny ability to anticipate his opponents’ moves, and a skill for turning any odd object at hand into a deadly weapon. He’s Jackie Chan before there was a Jackie Chan.
He also has ethics. So when he gets a visit from thugs representing Duke Braddock, one of the city’s gang bosses, who wants to hire him, he turns them down flat – then hurts them when they try to get tough.
Braddock responds by doing an end run on him. He goes to Lou’s best friend, Monk. Monk is tall and handsome, but socially inept. He’s also depressed, missing the daughter his ex-wife took away in their divorce. So he’s a sucker for Braddock’s sob story about how his little girl Amanda was kidnapped – certainly by one of his gangster rivals. He needs Monk to persuade Lou to find out who’s got her and rescue her.
And, by the way, he’ll kill Monk if Lou refuses.
So, against his best instincts, Lou starts poking around. Soon he’s got various mobsters mad at him, and he’s figured out that Braddock never had a daughter. It was all a scheme to start a gang war and get his rivals to kill one another off. Rubbing Lou and Monk out along the way will be just a detail.
Lou is angry. He knows how to fight, and Monk knows how to strategize. Together (along with a blonde they pick up along the way) they begin a big operation to bring everybody down.
They may not survive, but they’re gonna have a whole lot of fun.
My nutshell reaction to Missing Amanda was, “It would have been better as a movie.”
I can’t really complain about the story. It kept me reading, and it had many amusing moments. Also some heartwarming ones. But the plot maintained a level of implausibility that struck me as more suitable to the screen than the printed page. I was never able to quite suspend my disbelief.
Also, there were a couple hints of politics – not many, but enough to be annoying. And some anachronisms, especially in language and slang.
Still, I was reminded of Donald E. Westlake. A lot of people like Westlake more than I do. If you’re a Westlake fan, you might enjoy Missing Amanda very much.
As a crime-fighting vehicle, the high-seated, silver Ford C-Max scored low on stealth. But its array of adjustable coffee cup holders still made it the most popular CID choice on nights. Brook wasn’t sure if the person who ordered it for the fleet knew nothing about policing or everything.
DC Brook Deelman is a competent, conscientious police detective on the London force, his career hindered by a drinking problem. He and his partner are called to the scene of a death in a cemetery – an old man, apparently drunk, has fallen against a tombstone and broken his neck, his hand on a bottle of cheap whisky. It looks Non-Suspicious, but Brook has doubts. The man appears too well-dressed to be a falling-down alcoholic. When he learns that the deceased was a decorated WW2 veteran, a prison camp survivor, it seems tragic. But then he meets a homeless man who saw the whole thing – the victim wasn’t drunk at all, according to the witness, and he put up a creditable fight for his life. And the whisky bottle was planted as stage dressing by the killer.
Brook gets no support – in fact he gets pushback – from his superiors when he wants to look further into the man’s story. But that doesn’t stop him. He starts piecing together the history of a man who lived with surprisingly few personal connections – only a war buddy in a rest home (who is soon murdered in his own turn) and a mysterious correspondent who occasionally sent Christmas cards from Australia containing a cryptic message.
I liked this book very much indeed. It was an original mystery, and author Ed Church has achieved originality in the right way – through vivid characterization and very tight plotting. I mean, extremely tight. This is one of those stories that ties all its loose ends up neatly, and they all come together in a gratifying way – with a couple really neat surprises.
Non-Suspicious came equipped with a lot of moral ambiguity, but it was the good kind. I appreciate the good kind. The bad kind is when the author shows us all kinds of sociopathic behavior and then explains that we’re all just naked apes, and it’s stupid to worry about right and wrong. The good kind – as in this book – is when the characters wrestle with right and wrong, and have to confront their mutual failings to do what they ought.
I liked Non-Suspicious a whole lot. I’m looking forward to reading more books in the series and spending time with Brook Deelman, a positive masculine character you can root for.
UPDATE: An enhanced version of my 2002 lecture at Mayville State University has been posted on YouTube. It includes the introduction by Prof. Dale Nelson, explaining how awesome I am. Or was.
And the translation work keeps coming. This is most gratifying to me, though it means some long hours at the keyboard for a few days. Also I’ll have to bow out of something I meant to do with the Vikings tomorrow. One must prioritize, and I choose money. Not for my own sake, of course, but for the sake of the people who send me bills.
Above, another newsreel clip giving background on the “Atlantic Crossing” miniseries. Here you’ll see the arrival of the SS American Legion, on which our principal characters fled to America. We see Mrs. Florence Harriman, Ambassador to Norway, a character in the series, as well as Crown Princess Martha and her children. The news conference is precisely the one re-created for the series, even down to the dress Martha is wearing.
Another notable figure who travelled on the SS American Legion was the humorist/musician Victor Borge, a Jew fleeing Denmark.
Many long years ago, in 2002, I gave my very first lecture on the Vikings at Mayville State University in Mayville, ND. The invitation came thanks to my friend Dale Nelson, of the English Department. That culturally significant moment was recorded for posterity, and the video has just been posted at YouTube, as you see above.
The first time I saw this video, some time after the talk, I was impressed with how fat I looked. Now I’m impressed with how young I look.
I can’t guarantee I still stand behind all the opinions I express in this talk. One lives, translates, and learns.
A little over half an hour.
I’m bogged down again with lucrative translation today. But in service of my vested interest in the miniseries “Atlantic Crossing” on PBS Masterpiece, I offer this film clip I just found, with footage of Crown Prince Olav and Princess Martha during their US goodwill tour in 1939 (briefly dramatized in the first episode). Unfortunately, it’s silent, but there are some title cards. You will note that the original Martha was rather taller than the actress who plays her (Sofia Helin), and wore rather larger hats.
Chess masters in Iran have chaffed against government restrictions on their conduct abroad. Women must wear hijabs in public, just as they would be expected to at home, and any player scheduled to play against an Israeli must forfeit the game. Any violation of these rules would mean personal punishment and likely repercussions for your family as well.
World News Group describes a few Iranian chess players who took a stand or suffered an forfeit and reacted by seeking asylum in France, England, or America.
Many Iranian stars like Firouzja go to France, but Moradiabadi recalled that when he visited the French Embassy, staff were condescending about having certain paperwork. When he went to the U.S. Embassy, the woman helping him kept saying “okie dokie” and told him she would help with any copies of forms he forgot.
In 2012 he obtained a U.S. green card and in 2017 became an American citizen: “That was a happy day for me.” Moradiabadi was delighted to see an Iranian women’s grandmaster, Dorsa Derakhshani, playing for the United States a few years ago, after the Iranian federation expelled her for not wearing a hijab at a tournament. She was a student of his in Iran as a young girl.
“Actors are leaving, artists are leaving, it’s everything. Chess is one of many things,” said Moradiabadi.
“Refugees’ Gambit” by Emily Belz, April 8, 2021
Suddenly, I have lots of translation work. For a day or two, anyway.
This helped divert my thoughts from the impending verdict in the Chauvin trial. This was of particular interest to me, since my city was likely to burn if the “wrong” decision was made.
But the verdict was just announced. Guilty on all counts. I’m pretty sure at least part of it is unjust, and likely to be overturned on appeal. So I have the uneasy sensation of being relieved, due to what looks like a lynching.
Of this I am ashamed.
I wrote down some thoughts for The American Spectator Online here. They are not happy thoughts. Though some are clever, I think.
Viewed through the golden glass of the vestibule where we first meet him, wondering where he’s left his ticket of invitation and fuming inwardly because he can’t enter without it, he looks like a dogfish in aspic.
George Bellairs is a classic English mystery writer. I wasn’t familiar with his work before I bought He’d Rather Be Dead, first published in 1945. The book has much to commend it.
Sir Gideon Ware is the newly-elected mayor of the English seaside resort town of Westcome. He is a ruthless property developer who built the town into its present prosperity through hard work, loud promotion, flexible ethics and corner-cutting. At a dinner given to celebrate his victory, he falls under the table during his speech, and dies. Cause of death: strychnine poisoning.
Police Superintendent Boumphrey of the Westcome police is very good at keeping tabs on the citizens’ comings and goings, and even at keeping files on them, but feels this case to be above his pay grade. So he applies to Scotland Yard to send one of their detectives (this happens all the time in novels, but I’ve read the Yard never actually does this) to investigate. They send Inspector Littlejohn (he has a first name, but I can’t recall it), who proceeds in a quiet and matter-of-fact manner, working steadily to uncover the secrets of Sir Gideon’s past, and the force from that past that has now struck him down .
What I liked best about He’d Rather Be Dead was the prose. Author Bellairs had the gift of turning out a very apt sentence, like the one at the head of this review, or this one:
Mr Brown’s smiling lips parted to disclose two copious sets of teeth crowding upon one another like passengers for the last bus.
Not quite Wodehousian, but excellent in its own way.
The mystery itself involved a systematic progression through suspects and evidence, without a lot of fireworks. Characterization was not memorable, and even Littlejohn himself doesn’t leap off the page – almost all we learn of him is that he’s in a happy marriage. He isn’t even physically described until almost the end of the book – which loses him points with this reader.
But I must admit that I didn’t guess the murderer, though I thought I did.
I might possibly read another Inspector Littlejohn book, but He’d Rather Be Dead didn’t grab me a lot. The prose was excellent, but the key was pretty low for my debased modern reading tastes. I don’t recommend against the book. There’s much to be said for it.