Reynard had hired some old white-haired shill to stand out front of the bar in a tuxedo and drag in the out-of-town pigeons. He thought it gave the place some class, the same way some people try to dress up toilet lids with fuzzy covers.
New Orleans jazz cornet player and occasional detective Pat Gallegher rides again in Wet Debt (which is, I think, the last of the series). Wet Debt delves into one of my favorite sub-genres – the very cold case, resurfacing from long ago.
The bar where Pat plays and lives takes up half of a
building. His boss, Shorty, is having the other half renovated. But work stops
when workmen discover a desiccated mummy buried in the concrete floor. It’s a
man, and judging by the clothing he’s been there since the 1930s. Those were
the days of Prohibition and gangsters, high times for New Orleans’s bottom
dwellers.
Shorty’s in a hurry to get the property ready for a new tenant, but the police are in no hurry to close such an old mystery. Could Pat do him a favor, and look into it? Pat agrees.
His investigation leads him to a place where the city’s
upper crust and its dregs once crossed paths, in the speakeasies of old. An old
newspaper photograph displays two criminals in the company of two beautiful
young society girls. Pat knows one of the criminals, a recently deceased gang
lord with whom he had an uneasy relationship. Now he’ll learn how that man came
to New Orleans in the first place, and what he did to earn his power. The dead
man in the concrete was never greatly missed, and nobody alive could possibly
worry about his murderer being unmasked… Or could they?
Not quite as suspenseful as the previous books in the series (though not without suspense), Wet Debt is an enjoyable and atmospheric cold case story. Cautions for the usual. I’m going to miss Pat Gallegher.
“People see too many movies. They expect the bad guy to be some kind of evil genius. You and I, though, we know better. Most of the bad guys we run across have all the brains of wallpaper paste. The blinder the violence, the more likely it’s some kind of stimulus-response event that, given the opportunity, the perp would refer to down the line as just one of those things. You take some of the most prolific killers of the last twenty years, and toss them in a room, and it would look like just a bunch of dumb losers in a room.”
And the saga of Pat Gallegher, New Orleans jazz cornetist and avocational detective, continues with Juicy Watusi, in which author Richard Helms, himself a forensic psychologist, tackles a subject he knows pretty well – serial killers.
Pat’s bar-owner boss gets a new girlfriend – a stripper. Pat
withholds judgment and wishes them well. But it turns out even worse than you’d
expect – the girlfriend is found murdered in an alley behind the club where she
works. And she’s not the only one. Somebody’s carving up strippers all over the
city.
The local police request that the FBI send in a profiler to
help them, but none is available just now. However, a noted profiler happens to
live right there in New Orleans, teaching at Tulane. The trouble is, he’s burned
out – he refuses to do that work anymore.
The police offer a compromise – the profiler can work with them incognito, and another local man with profiling experience can operate as a “beard” – pretending to be the profiler in front of the news cameras.
That other profiler is Pat Gallegher. He too quit the job,
years back, when it started messing with his head. He doesn’t like the deal,
but it seems a small price to pay for stopping this guy.
It gets tougher, though, when Pat’s girlfriend is kidnapped
by the killer. Now he’s on a deadline, and faced by an impossible moral choice.
Juicy Watusi is another cool hard-boiled from a solid writer who knows his stuff. I figured out the big plot twist ahead of time, but I enjoyed it anyway, and recommend it, with the usual cautions.
“It’s like this,” I said. “I’m not mad at the world. I just see things that stink, and I feel like hitting them with a little air freshener. Most poor suckers have too much to lose, or a lot more of them would do what I do…. The average guy on the street has a family or a mortgage, or he’s six months from a peachy promotion he doesn’t want to risk, so he sees a punk muscling some old lady and he turns his head. I guess I just don’t have that much to lose. I see that punk, and I don’t mind jamming him up a little.”
Pat Gallegher, hero of these novels by Richard Helms I’m following right now, is (as I mentioned yesterday) a former Catholic seminarian who lost his faith. But that doesn’t mean he’s abandoned Catholicism. He still goes to mass occasionally, and makes confession to his friend, Father “Dag” D’Agostino. He and Father Dag understand each other – Pat’s a recovering gambling addict, Dag a recovering alcoholic. It seems to me that Pat’s struggles with God allow him to talk more about faith than a Christian character could get away with.
Though his main spiritual belief seems to be in karma.
Voodoo turns up in this one too.
In Voodoo That You Do, the second book in the series, Pat is strolling down a New Orleans alley with a friend, an old mobster named Hotshot Spano, when Hotshot is murdered by Haitian gang members. Pat feels an inarticulate obligation to do something about it. He learns that the hit was ordered by a Vietnamese gangster who controls a number of Haitian gangs.
Meanwhile Pat discovers a little girl rummaging in the
dumpster behind the bar where he lives and plays jazz cornet. Patiently he
gains her trust with gifts of food – like a wild animal – until he’s able to
take her to a shelter recommended by Father Dag. There he meets a lovely social
worker with whom he begins a flirtation.
Turns out that the little girl, Louise, is not just any
little girl. She’s connected to the very gangs Pat’s trying to bring to
justice. And if he isn’t very careful, Louise may suffer for his windmill-tilting.
Fascinating, masterfully written, atmospheric and intense, Voodoo That You Do is a cracker jack mystery in the old hard-boiled style. Highly recommended, with the usual cautions, plus an extra for questionable metaphysics.
Greensleeves was all my joy, Greensleeves was my delight, Greensleeves was my heart of gold, and who but Lady Greensleeves
“Greensleeves” is a 400-year-old tune you may know as “What Child Is This?” Ralph Vaughan Williams composed his “Fantasia on Greensleeves,” a marvelous piece made all the more so by starting with this melody.
Many people tell fanciful stories about the origin of this song. Was it written by Henry VIII for Anne Boleyn, who “cast [him] off discourteously” without losing her head for the moment? Was it an old Irish song, as we all know every good song is? Was it first sung by dog-headed men surrounded by rats? The rumors abound. The Early Music Muse drills into this musical history and reveals the truth, as is so often the case, rather boring. In short, a musician wrote a hit tune that many people used for their own songs, and everyone loved it–they still do. It’s the feature song in the K-drama I just blogged about, Mr. Sunshine. While Savina & Drones have a good composition based on Greensleeves, what Vaughan Williams did with it can’t be outdone for sublimity.
We recently finished a 24-episode historical drama created for South Korean television in 2018 and distributed this year through Netflix. Set at the end of the Joseon kingdom, while Korea tried to move into the 20th century as subjects of a king, Mr. Sunshine is essentially a fiercely patriotic story. It begins with loyalists attempting to defend their peninsula from colonialists, despite obviously being outgunned. It ends with rebels raging against the rising tide of Japanese occupation.
We first see Choi Yoo-jin (Lee Byung-hun) as the son of slaves, who runs to avoid being killed and makes it to New York City. He grows up to become U.S. Marine Captain Eugene Choi, deployed to the American embassy in Joseon. He’s an American soldier with Korean skin; most people don’t know what to make of him. But he’s glad to be back in Joseon so he can find the people who murdered his parents and take his revenge.
On a risky American assignment, he encounters the beautiful Lady Go Ae-shin (Kim Tae-ri) doing something distinctly unladylike. He won’t know about her family until long after his interest in her has grown. But two other men are interested in her too: a Korean samurai, who is thought to have sold his soul to Japan, and the son of the second richest family in the country, who happens to be Lady Go’s fiancé. The three men are drawn together by their proximity and held by various mutual interests.
It’s a beautifully filmed drama told reservedly and works as a personal story of love and duty as well as a historical tribute to Korean independence. Americans will find many things to love about it.
If you know a bit of the history of Korea, you’ll be able to guess the story doesn’t have that happy of an ending; if you don’t know the history, you’ll be able to guess the tenor of the end by the prominent place of “Greensleeves” or by the first English words Lady Go learns: gun, glory, sad ending.
Sam Spade, Mike Hammer, and Philip Marlowe notwithstanding, you don’t ship one off to that undiscovered land from whose bourne no traveler returns without paying the freight in sleepless nights.
Pat Gallegher is a big Irishman who plays jazz cornet in a seedy New Orleans bar. Once, long ago, he studied for the priesthood, until he lost his faith. Then he got his doctorate in psychology and became a forensic psychologist and then a college professor. Those jobs didn’t work out for him. Eventually he floated into the Big Easy and gave free exercise to his gambling addiction, until he joined Gamblers Anonymous. But a local loan shark still holds his note. To pay it off (which isn’t likely to happen in this lifetime) the shark sends him out now and then as a collector.
Pat doesn’t like being a collector, and so he does the
occasional “favor” for friends. These favors generally involve recovering lost
property or scaring off dangerous people. Pat feels these actions help balance
out his karma.
All the above is not the plot of Richard Helms’s Joker Poker, just the back story. We’re talking dense back story here. Which all adds to a solid quality I appreciated in this book.
Doing a favor is how Pat’s lawyer comes to bring Clancey
Vancouer, a wealthy society lady, to see him. Clancey has been having an
affair, and her lover has disappeared. She wants to know that he’s alive and
all right. Pat warns her that the guy was probably just a gigolo, but she doesn’t
care.
Pat agrees to look into it, but has trouble seeing the point. His interest acquires fresh urgency, however, when he is set up for a murder, and has to figure out who among a large group of suspects (including a leggy redhead, a friend of Clancey’s, with whom he has an affair) is the real culprit. The climax will be explosive, shattering for some, and deadly for others.
I loved this book. I read it with a sense of homecoming, of
old comforts. It occurred to me that this book (first published just before the
turn of the millennium) represents a lost style of writing. In today’s books,
even in the hard-boiled genre, political correctness has infected everything. The
characters in Joker Poker use offensive language. There isn’t a kick-butt
female sidekick in sight. And men are permitted to protect women.
Lots of cautions are in order for language and disturbing material, but I highly recommend Joker Poker to fans of the genre. I can’t understand why this series isn’t famous, and author Helms isn’t better known. The prose is vivid and original. The ambience is thick as New Orleans humidity. There are whiffs of all the old great hard-boiled writers in evidence, but I was particularly reminded of John D. MacDonald.
Allen Eskens is a mystery writer (and a Minnesota writer at that) with whom I hadn’t been familiar. But based on my reading of The Deep Dark Descending, I’m impressed with his work.
Max Rupert is a Minneapolis police detective, still mourning the death of his wife Jenni, who was killed by a car in a parking garage a few years ago. His sorrow has colored his life through the previous books in this series, but now it all comes to a head. He learns, in the course of one of his investigations, that Jenni’s death was a targeted hit. He’d always assumed she’d been collateral damage from one of his own cases, killed by some vengeful criminal to hurt him. But in fact someone very powerful and ruthless killed her for the sake of something she’d learned in her job as a social worker.
The book opens on a winter day in the Minnesota Boundary Waters, on the Canadian border. Max captures a man and ties him up, then forces him out onto a frozen lake. Methodically he begins boring with an auger, with the purpose of creating a hole large enough to drown a man.
In counterpoint with the scenes on the lake, we follow in flashbacks the course of Max’s investigation, as he follows information learned in a human trafficking case, slowly realizing that the man he’s chasing is the man who also killed his wife. All his life he’s been a man of the law, but the law can’t touch this killer. Could he live with himself if he were to take the law into his own hands? Could he live with himself if he didn’t?
That question is ever present in The Deep Dark Descending, and it will keep the reader riveted from start to finish, as it did for me. I’m not sure what I think about the final resolution, but there’s no question it was dramatic.
The writing was good – not outstanding, but very good. I
might just read the earlier books in this series, based on this memorable
novel. Cautions for the usual.
I have a new column (as of Sunday) at The American Spectator Online. It’s the article on Hans Nielsen Hauge I’ve been warning you about.
I had the chance to meet a scholar recently, a woman from Norway. I went to hear her talk about a historical figure I’ve written about on this site before — Hans Nielsen Hauge (pronounced “HOW-geh”), the early 19th-century Norwegian lay revivalist.
In conversation after the lecture, someone brought up an undocumented but well-attested story — that it was a tradition at a nearby liberal seminary for some of the students to celebrate the anniversary of Hauge’s death with a drinking party where they would make fun of him.
The speaker said this surprised her. “In Norway,” she said, “Hauge is a hero to both sides. The conservatives admire him for his religious activities. The liberals admire him for being one of the founders of their movement.”
There are books I approach knowing they’ll fascinate me, but also with a certain fear. Because I know they’ll push my personal buttons. Birthday Girl, by Matthew Iden, is that kind of book.
Amy Scowcroft is a woman with nothing in her life but a
quest. A recovered drug addict, she lost custody of her daughter Lacey, who
then – disappeared. Without a trace. People searched, the police investigated,
but the girl had vanished.
One compassionate policeman gives her a suggestion…
reluctantly. He knows a guy, a former forensic psychologist, who was pretty
good at figuring out motives and identifying criminals. His name is Elliott Nash.
The problem is, Elliott’s a homeless bum now. He too had had his child kidnapped.
And murdered. But there’s a place he might be found.
Amy goes and finds him. At first he resists helping her. He
can’t even help himself.
But then he changes his mind. This penniless woman and this
homeless man, with no more resources than an unreliable car and a very few
bucks between them, start tracing down a few facts. Old facts. Questionable
facts. But they have nothing to lose, and are willing to go to whatever lengths
they have to, to find Lacey.
Alternating with the plot thread of Amy and Elliott is the thread that tells us what’s happening to Lacey. Because she is alive. But she’s in the hands of a deeply troubled and dangerous person, one who keeps several children in a remote house. That person has a script and a plan for each of the children’s lives… and deaths.
Birthday Girl is compelling and heart-wrenching, with a ticking clock plot and a neat twist at the end. Also inspirational, in a spiritually generic way.
Birthday Girl grabbed me by the backbone and shook me up. It was painful to read, for personal reasons, but I couldn’t put it down.
Highly recommended, with cautions for intense material.
No book to review tonight. No great thoughts bubbling in my mind. What shall I post about?
Well, I’ve been reading the Flatey Book in the Norwegian translation, and I came on a little-known story about Erling Skjalgsson (it wasn’t new to me; I’d seen it before). To the best of my knowledge, it’s the only surviving story about Erling not also told in Heimskringla. I’ll be working it into a novel eventually, but there’s no harm telling it to you now. No doubt I’ll fiddle with it in my version, as is my wont.
It involves a young man named Eindridi, who was the son of Einar Tambarskjelvar (Gut-Shaker). Einar was a great chieftain in the Trondelag. If you’ve read The Elder King, you may recall him as a character in that timeless work. In TEK, he and Erling are good friends. In The Tale of Erling and Eindridi, things get a little touchy.
Erling had a daughter named Sigrid, whom he’d fostered out to the steward at Avaldsnes, the royal farm on Karmøy Island.
When (Saint) Olaf Haraldsson came in and started reorganizing the country, he took that stewardship away from Erling’s friend and gave it to a freedman named Tore the Seal (they also appear in TEK). He demoted Erling’s friend and sent him up to a less important farm further north. Sigrid went along with him, but chafed at being separated so far from her family.
One day a merchant ship docked near their farm, on its way
south. Sigrid went to chat with the crew, and found that it was the ship of Eindridi,
son of Einar Gut-Shaker. She asked him if she could hitch a ride south to her
home at Sola. Eindridi was preoccupied, and let her join them without really
registering whose daughter she was. Once they were under way, he realized he’d
made a mistake (because she was supposed to be in her foster-father’s care, I think).
But they had a fair wind, and there was nothing to do about it.
On the way south a storm blew up, and they had to run into
an island, taking shelter in a fishermen’s shack. It was cold and wet, and the
girl slept beside Eindridi, though they had no contact beyond a kiss. (At least
that was their story.)
When they finally arrived at Sola, Erling was not at home. Eindridi
was given a loft room to sleep in, and Sigrid came to join him, but he sent her
away. Just then Erling Skjalgsson burst in, accusing Eindridi of dishonoring
his daughter.
Eindridi fiercely denied touching the girl (beyond that kiss), and offered to go through the iron ordeal to prove his honor. Erling agreed to this, and Eindridi passed the trial with flying colors, carrying the glowing iron nine steps, and then having his burns examined after three days. Verdict: innocent. Erling then wished to be reconciled and offered him gifts, but Eindridi was deeply offended and prepared to sail home.
Erling’s son Skjalg went to him and told him he needed to
make peace with Eindridi, because they couldn’t do without his father Einar’s
support in their political struggle with Olaf. “What can I do?” Erling asked. “I’ve
offered him gifts.”
“You need to offer a greater gift,” said Skjalg. “You need
to offer him Sigrid as a wife.”
Erling hesitated at this. “A man of my rank,” he said, “does
not offer his daughter to other men. Other men come and bid for his daughter.”
“And that’s why Eindridi will agree,” Skjalg answered. He did not say that it would be interpreted as an apology, something Erling couldn’t make in so many words. And – perhaps – he’d noticed that the two young people liked each other.
Erling sent Skjalg to make that offer, and Einar – realizing its significance – happily agreed. He was indeed taken with Sigrid, and she with him.
Sailing home, Eindridi met his father, who’d gotten word of
events and was prepared to challenge Erling for his son’s honor. But when
Eindridi explained the marriage offer, Einar immediately understood, and was
pleased.
So Eindridi and Sigrid were married. (Though other sources
name a different woman as Eindridi’s wife, so it’s not unlikely she died
young.)
Not an exciting Viking story. But it is interesting in that it illustrates the kind of social limitations honor culture placed on even powerful men, and how they were able find ways of working around them.
