Tag Archives: James Scott Bell

Fiction, Reviews

‘No More Lies,’ by James Scott Bell

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I’ve become a big fan of James Scott Bell, one of the very few really good Christian mystery writers out there. So I picked up No More Lies, a newly released revision of one of his earlier works. The book shows obvious signs of a writer still in the learning stages, but it also showcases a lot of the virtues that make Bell such a good storyteller.

The location is the small town of Pack Canyon, once the site of Old West movie sets, in the western San Fernando Valley. Arty Towne is out hiking in a wilderness area with his new wife, Liz. Arty has recently become a born-again Christian, and has left a good-paying job on principle. Liz doesn’t get this. Money is everything to Liz. It makes her very angry. Tragedy follows.

Caught up in the ensuing drama is Arty’s sister “Rocky,” an insurance investigator whose life has been blighted by a facial scar she acquired in childhood. And “Mac” MacDonald, an ex-con and new Christian who’s trying to keep straight in spite of numerous pressures, including recurring headaches from wartime injuries.

No More Lies is a tight, convoluted tale with lots of surprises (some of them a little far-fetched). Lots of “Noir” elements – weak-willed people wading into crime and getting caught in the undertow. I liked the characters, and the book contained moments of laughter as well as pathos.

What didn’t work – and it pains me to say it – is the “God talk.” One of the hardest things for a Christian writer trying to write for a secular audience is making the God talk sound natural. And it’s strained here. (No doubt it’s often strained in my own books.)

Also, there’s a weird anticlimax scene that serves no dramatic purpose I can discern.

But other than that, No More Lies is a lot of fun. Excellent entertainment. No cautions for language or themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Trouble Is My Beat,’ by James Scott Bell

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I’ve become a big fan of James Scott Bell, an excellent mystery-and-thriller writer who also happens to be a Christian. So when I saw he’d published a collection of novellas in hard-boiled style called Trouble Is My Beat, I snapped it up. It was excellent value for money.

Bill “Wild Bill” Armbrewster is a World War I veteran and a successful pulp mystery writer. But it’s hard to make a living doing that, even back in the late 1940s. So he works as a “fixer” for a Hollywood studio. That involves getting stars out of dangerous or illegal situations, avoiding scandal, and sometimes putting the scare on them to keep them on the straight and narrow. It might bring him up against rival studios, or gangsters, or dangerous dames, or the cops. He won’t let himself be intimidated, and he’s a hard man to fool. And at heart he’s a decent guy.

Bill Armbrewster is the kind of simple, old-fashioned hero you don’t run into much anymore, on the page or on the screen. Author Bell does a good job of writing in the hard-boiled voice, though his similes and metaphors aren’t up to Chandler and Hammett’s standards. No effort is made to shock the reader into a raised consciousness. The language is generally mild, and one story involving a Christian evangelist treats him with respect.

There was pretty much nothing I disliked about Trouble Is My Beat. Highly recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Romeo’s Town,’ by James Scott Bell

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I didn’t grow up here, but when you come to stay in L.A. it adopts you. It’s a wild crazy aunt of a town, dressed up in boas and bangles and laughing too loud, sometimes getting angry for no apparent reason and throwing a screaming fit, only to calm down and pull you in for a forgiving embrace even though you haven’t done anything to be forgiven for.

I genuinely love James Scott Bell’s Mike Romeo novels. As I’ve said too many times already, there aren’t a lot of Christian writers today who can write a story worthy to play with the big kids in the industry. Bell’s books are that good, and they manage to keep the language mostly PG. Mike Romeo is a particularly interesting hero, a genius, a Harvard drop-out, a martial arts expert and former cage fighter. He’s on a spiritual journey, facilitated now by his new employer, a disabled Jewish lawyer named Ira for whom he serves as investigator.

As Romeo’s Town opens, Mike rescues a clerk in a bookstore from a knife-wielding attacker, braining him with a large volume on Shakespeare by Harold Bloom. Almost predictably, it’s Mike who ends up in trouble with the law. Then he and Ira go to see a new client, a teenaged boy attending an elite private school, who has confessed to dealing drugs. His mother, who hired them, thinks the boy is covering for another student. Mike’s investigation (punctuated by frequent fights, sometimes to the death) leads him into the intersection between the social elite and the narcotics rackets. With some nasty surprises for him personally. Plus a reunion with the love of his life.

Mike Romeo is a fascinating character, and (in my opinion) author Bell does hard-boiled narration better than anybody writing today, but with a sly personal slant. Highly recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Long Lost,’ by James Scott Bell

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Steve Conroy’s world went to pieces 25 years ago, when he was five. A man broke into his home and kidnapped his older brother. Believing the kidnapper’s threats, Steve didn’t alert anyone until morning. Some time later, his brother’s body was found in the ashes of a burned house, along with that of the kidnapper. Since then he’s lived with the guilty knowledge that he might have saved his brother if he’d called for help sooner.

He married, went to law school, and took a job with the district attorney’s office. But he developed a cocaine habit and lost everything. As James Scott Bell’s Long Lost begins, he’s trying to set up a practice on his own, living in an apartment in a sketchy neighborhood, threatened with eviction from his office. It looks as if he’s about to crash and burn again.

Then he has a remarkable day. First, an attractive young female law student shows up on his doorstep, eager to be his assistant. And a soon-to-released prisoner wants to retain him as his counsel, offering a large cash advance on his fees. Even better, the new client seems to be a genuinely positive guy, keen to turn his life around.

How is he to know that he’s soon to be targeted for murder, arrested, and faced with revelations that will re-write his own past and destroy – or resurrect – all his dreams?

I like James Scott Bell very much. He does a superior job of something I aspire to in my own books (with what success it’s not for me to say), writing Christian stories for a secular audience. Long Lost is actually a re-issue (only slightly edited) of one of his earlier books. This is visible in a somewhat less practiced hand in the writing. The Christian content is more awkward than in his later work, it seems to me. On the other hand, his greatest strength as an author – strong plotting – is very much apparent, and there are some really neat surprises along the way.

Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Romeo’s Stand,’ by James Scott Bell

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“I can’t do this ish,” Sam said.

“Ish?” Ira said.

“Ah, something my dad told me to say instead of the S word.”

I said, “You don’t say the S word, but you’ll shoot a man?”

“I know,” Sam said. “It’s effed up.”

“I approve of his language choices,” Ira said.

Mike Romeo, James Scott Bell’s improbable intellectual tough guy detective, is back for more fun in Romeo’s Stand, Book Five in the series.

Mike is on a passenger flight that makes an emergency landing in the Nevada desert. The woman sitting next to him has a rough landing, and he helps her get off the plane. Then she’s driven away. When Mike gets to the nearby town of Dillard, he asks about her at the hospital, and they give him the runaround.

Then a local tough guy tries to beat him up.

Then the sheriff tells him to get out of town by sundown.

This is not the way to get Mike Romeo out of your hair.

Through a series of unlikely fights, captures and escapes, Mike discovers and, working with the FBI, brings down a major criminal operation centered in Dillard. While making a couple new friends along the way.

Lots of fun. No bad language. Recommended. Maybe not as good as the earlier Romeo books, but plenty good for a summer read.

Fiction, Reviews

Double review: ‘Blind Justice,’ and ‘One More Lie,’ by James Scott Bell

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Not that I am unemotional, but I do have a certain kind of permanent brain damage known as the “legal mind.”

Jake Denny, the hero of James Scott Bell’s Blind Justice, is a legal accident waiting to happen. Fiercely determined to succeed, he came to Los Angeles and had some success, before developing a drinking habit and suffering the breakup of his marriage. Now he’s looking at the end of the line, without work and facing eviction from his shabby little office.

Then he gets a call from the mother of Howie Patino, a childhood friend. Howie was below average in intelligence, but sweet natured and harmless. Now he’s been arrested for the brutal stabbing murder of his wife in the small town of Hinton.

Jake knows this case could be his redemption, but his confidence is gone. On top of that, Howie himself insists he’s guilty – though his story doesn’t make much sense, including the part where he says he saw the devil. Still, Jake’s the only lawyer the Patinos can afford, and he doesn’t feel he can turn them down.

When it comes to the trial, he has two seemingly invincible opponents – the small town district attorney who masterfully opposes him, and his own incompetence, fueled by alcohol. The worse things go for him, the more he drinks.

But he has a couple friends supporting him – one is his investigator, the other is Howie’s sister. They both tell him God can help him, and warn him of dark spiritual forces at work in Hinton.

There was a lot to like about Blind Justice. I personally thought the supernatural elements that got worked in (the book veers toward horror in places) were distracting and unnecessary. But I enjoyed the book overall. This is Bell, so there’s no obscenity.

Just me and a tray of cold cereal and a roll they could have picked off the ice at an L.A. Kings game. Coffee squeezed from the underside of a welcome mat after a hard rain.

I’m reluctant to tell you too much about the plot of James Scott Bell’s novella, One More Lie. There are so many surprises coming so fast that I’d spoil them for you.

Suffice it to say that Andrew Chamberlain, the hero and narrator, starts out the story on top of the world. He’s a highly successful Los Angeles lawyer with a beautiful wife and all the toys money can buy. Very suddenly his world goes to pieces – he’s accused of murder, and very neatly framed. In spite of the services of a friend who’s a top criminal lawyer, he finds himself on trial for his life. He will hit bottom hard before he begins to realize what really happened to him.

One More Lie is an engaging story, though I must tell you I figured out the last big surprise ahead of time. However, there are lots of other surprises to keep you interested.

One More Lie is, as I said, a novella. Three clever short stories are also appended, to give you your money’s worth.

It should be no surprise by now that there’s no obscenity in the book.

Fiction, Reviews

Double review: ‘Your Son Is Alive,’ and ‘Watch Your Back,’ by James Scott Bell

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“I had to give up hope ten years ago. The hope was killing me.”

Dylan and Erin Reeve, the principal characters in James Scott Bell’s Your Son Is Alive, had a storybook life until one day 16 years ago, when their five-year-old son Kyle disappeared from a tee-ball game. No trace of him was ever found. The pain destroyed their marriage. But gradually they’ve learned to live with the sorrow. Dylan is even taking a chance on dating again.

Then, one night, he finds an envelope pushed through his mail slot. The message, written in crayon, says, “Your son is alive.” Erin gets mysterious phone calls. Is someone playing a game with them, or is this the beginning of a ransom demand, after all these years? Or both? There will be shocking surprises (some of them humdingers), and the implausible becomes very real as our heroes are thrown onto a roller coaster of re-opened emotional wounds and genuine physical danger.

I enjoyed reading Your Son Is Alive. It worked very well as a thriller, pushing all my empathy buttons. And the conclusion was satisfying.

The final revelation, though, struck me as pretty implausible. It was the sort of thing I expect more from Dean Koontz. Of course, I love it when Koontz does it. But one expects Koontz’s villains to come out of left field.

Recommended, with points deducted for believability. As usual with Bell, no obscenity.

This is how insanity starts. You get these thoughts and you let them play out and they cut a groove in your brain. If the groove gets big enough, you stay in it, like a diseased yak chained to a pole.

James Scott Bell writes pretty well in the shorter form as well as in novels. This is demonstrated in his collection, Watch Your Back, which contains a titular novella plus several short stories.

Watch Your Back is an interesting study in self-destruction, inspired by James M. Cain. Cameron Cates works for a large pension management company, doing computer security work. He makes a lot of money and is engaged to a lovely young woman. But he hates his job (though he’s good at it) and secretly chafes at the prospect of commitment in marriage.

Then a woman named Laine comes to work at his company. Laine is exotically beautiful and seductive, and Cam can’t stop thinking about her. When she shows an interest in him, he’s easy to seduce. And when she suggests a way they can become insanely rich, his resistance is as flimsy as his character. Trouble is, he doesn’t know some important things, and those things just might kill him.

Watch Your Back is a very neat Noir tale, nicely set up and paid off.

The other stories are good too. I especially enjoyed Heed the Wife, which played off an orthographic detail with which many of us who know old literature will be familiar.

Author Bell says that he published this book to explore a modern medium for re-creating the market for short stories, which died with the demise of pulp magazines. Sounds like a good idea to me. Mature themes, but no obscenity.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Try Fear,’ by James Scott Bell

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I fired up the car and found a Denny’s on the way back to the freeway. I went to their bathroom and freshened up, as they say, and came out feeling like three bucks.

James Scott Bell wraps up his very satisfying Ty Buchanan legal thriller trilogy with Try Fear. Our hero, a very good lawyer who has dropped out of the big time, is called on to defend Carl Richess, a 6’ 5”, 250 pound alcoholic who was arrested just before Christmas for drunk driving and being a public nuisance after fleeing the police dressed only in a g-string and a Santa hat. Amazingly, Ty gets him off, hoping the man will get some help. Carl’s mother and brother are grateful.

Then there’s a murder in the family, and Ty is called to action again in the defense. But there’s more to the case than meets the eye. And the trail will lead very high in the city, indeed.

Also, somebody has been cyber-stalking Ty’s volunteer assistant, Sister Mary Veritas. Ty calls in favors to try to hunt the stalker down, but it’s kind of awkward because they’re trying to distance from one another. Sister Mary hasn’t taken her solemn vows yet, but she feels that Ty is an impediment to her calling.

It all turns out in a very warm and satisfying way, at least for me (a certain segment of Christian readers may disagree).

The Ty Buchanan trilogy is an extremely rewarding reading experience. Besides the clever mysteries, there’s a rich meta-narrative involving Ty’s spiritual journey. This is not a conversion story, but it is a pilgrimage story. And quite a good one.

Mature themes. No objectionable language.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Try Darkness,’ by James Scott Bell

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We drank. Whatever it was, it had a gentle kick, like an eight-year-old girl soccer player.

When I reviewed Try Dying, the first novel in James Scott Bell’s Ty Buchanan trilogy of legal thrillers, I said I found it a little pallid compared to his Mike Romeo books. That was a hasty judgment. This series, I now realize, is wonderful in its own way.

Ty Buchanan, as you may recall, was a high-powered lawyer with a big Los Angeles firm. His life got turned upside down when his fiancée was killed and he himself was arrested and charged with murder. He managed to prove his innocence and identify the real killers with the help of unlikely allies – a priest and a nun, from a nearby Catholic retreat center.

Try Darkness finds Ty living a strange, transitional new life, inhabiting a little trailer at the retreat center. He’s given up his old job, and for the time being is providing legal help to the poor, operating from a table at a coffee shop. Father Bob and Sister Mary Veritas are still his best friends – except that his feelings for Sister Mary are causing both of them considerable discomfort.

Father Bob brings Ty a potential client, a woman who’s living with her daughter, Kylie, at a transient hotel. The hotel makes it a practice to evict all tenants after 28 days, which prevents being reclassified as a residential hotel, making them subject to housing regulations. The practice is illegal, but the law is rarely enforced. Ty agrees to help her sue them.

But suddenly she’s found murdered, leaving little Kylie behind. Ty, leery of handing her over to Child Protective Services, takes her to the retreat center, where the nuns welcome her immediately (except for Sister Hildegarde, the unsympathetic mother superior, whom Ty, Father Bob and Sister Mary attempt to keep in the dark as much as possible).

Ty’s investigation – as you’d expect – will bring him up against powerful and dangerous people.

What was particularly fine about Try Darkness was that it had a lot of heart. Ty is working his way through grief, and his relations with Kylie – and with Sister Mary – are opening his mind and heart to a whole new way of life.

Highly recommended. The books should be read in order. No objectionable language.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Try Dying,’ by James Scott Bell

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He had a salt-and-pepper ponytail and L.A. eyes—trying to look cool and detached and hungry for money.

When you think about it, the thriller genre is almost ideal for Christian storytelling. A good thriller takes its hero and strips him of every comfort and illusion, forcing him to look at the plain truth unblinking.

Kind of like repentance.

James Scott Bell’s thriller, Try Dying, does a very good job of doing just that thing.

Ty Buchanan is a hotshot young L.A. lawyer. He works for a prestigious firm, owns a nice home, drives a nice car. He’s involved in a high-profile case, a lawsuit against a celebrity psychologist famous for helping people recover “repressed memories.” But best of all, he’s blissfully in love with schoolteacher Jacqueline Dwyer, to whom he’ll be married in a few days.

Then Jacqueline dies in a freak accident on the freeway.

After the funeral, he’s approached by a guy who looks homeless. He says he has information to sell him. That Jacqueline wasn’t killed in the accident. “They” killed her, he says.

When Ty presses him for more information. The man attacks him and runs off.

Ty can’t let this go. He starts hunting for the man, and trying to figure out why anyone would murder Jacqueline. Clues lead him to investigate a trendy self-help cult, one that has thugs on its payroll. But Ty won’t give up – even when he finds himself accused of murder and locked up.

This first novel in the Ty Buchanan series wasn’t as much fun as Bell’s Mike Romeo books, in my opinion, but I found it engaging and compelling. Prose, plotting, and characters were excellent. Ty’s existential crisis allows him to think about some of the the most important questions.

Highly recommended. No offensive language.