Fiction, Reviews

‘Double Trouble,’ by Rodney Riesel

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Book 5 in the Dan Coast series by Rodney Riesel is Double Trouble. Dan starts out doing a divorce case with the help of his friend Red (who still has to drive him around until he gets his license back after a DUI). They are discovered snooping, and have to make tracks.

Then Dan’s dog finds a body buried in the sand in front of his Key West house. Dan calls the police, but leaves the scene, and when the cops get there the body has vanished.

That mystery is explained (partly) when a man shows up looking for his missing sister. He had come to the Keys with his twin brother, who has also disappeared. Dan recognizes him as the spitting image of the guy in the sand. The surviving brother hires Dan to help him find the sister.

I keep complaining about the writing in the Dan Coast series, but then I keep buying the books. So they can’t be that bad. I still have some trouble with the tone – it alternates between buffoonery and deep tragedy. Often the characters don’t seem to be realistically affected by death, even deaths of people close to them. Author Riesel seems to have trouble hitting any notes in between Bottom and Othello. It can be disorienting for the reader.

Also, the big surprise in the book was kind of a chestnut. I saw it coming a mile off.

But I’m continuing reading the series. Cautions for language, inappropriate jokes, and misspelling.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Coasts of Christmas Past,’ and ‘Ship of Fools,’ by Rodney Riesel

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Dan yanked his pistol from his waistband, ejected the magazine from the grip, and looked at the bullets. Then he jammed the magazine back into place with the palm of his hand.

“What was that for?” Red asked.

“I have no idea, but they always do it on TV.”

(Coasts of Christmas Past)

I’m just tooling along through Rodney Riesel’s Dan Coast novels, because they’re short, mostly likeable, and not too demanding. I’ll do two books tonight – Coasts of Christmas Past and Ship of Fools.

Dan Coast, Key West lottery winner and dilettante private investigator, aims for a life of quiet self-destruction on the beach, drinking heavily to suppress memories of his great personal loss. However, in Coasts of Christmas Past, his friend Red and his parents have different plans. His parents show up unexpectedly, organizing a big Christmas for him, whether he wants one or not. Christmas was once his favorite time of the year. But that was before…

The preparations get interrupted when a close friend gets injured. The police believe he was hurt in a botched drug deal, but Dan and Red know better than that. So they ride to the rescue in Red’s borrowed pink Volkswagen. There’s also a touching subplot in this book that will break your heart.

Ship of Fools finds Dan where he’s been headed for some time – confined in a mental hospital, drying out at a judge’s orders. That’s how he gets to know “Officer Mel,” a fellow patient who wears a cardboard badge and thinks he’s a policeman. Nobody believes Mel when he says that somebody has kidnapped his sister, but Dan starts to think there’s something there. So, ruthlessly using his money and snooping skills, he orchestrates his own release and takes Mel with him. Thus begins a madcap adventure with some interesting twists.

I liked the serious aspects of these stories better than the humor. Humor is hard to do, especially the wisecracking kind. One expects drunks to be inappropriate, but even when he’s sober, Dan can be a real jerk. On the other hand, when he gets his priorities straight, he can be a pretty good guy.

The author still needs a proofreader.

Mild cautions for language and adult themes. Good light entertainment, if you can get through the annoying parts.

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Friday Singing: Little Patch of Heaven

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I think I said something about being one of the busy people during the lockdown days. Yesterday was one of those days. You could say I was longing for a little patch of heaven way out west, but you and I both know owning an acre or more of land on the frontier wouldn’t be an easy life. Maybe rewarding, maybe fortune building, but it would be a hard, daily life of somewhat undefined chores and taking risks you hope will pay off.

Still, we can dream.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Ocean Floors,’ by Rodney Riesel

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Rodney Riesel is in no danger of soon winning any major prizes for his prose. But so far I’m enjoying his somewhat uneven Dan Coast mysteries, set in Key West. Ocean Floors is the second.

Dan Coast is an unusual hero in that he’s a lottery winner, but his greatest distinction would seem to be that he’s a degenerating alcoholic. Many chapters begin with him waking in a chair – or even on the ground – after a night-long bender. He has reasons for drinking. This might well alienate readers, though Dan can be admirable when he’s on his game.

Ocean Floors begins with Dan driving north to Miami. He stops for lunch at a roadside bar and grill, where he observes the thuggish bartender bullying a waitress. It’s none of his business, but when he gets back to his decrepit Porsche he finds the waitress huddled in it, pleading with him to take her away. His chivalry kicks in, so they zoom off together.

He soon discovers that this is no mousy little waitress. Also, the bartender was no bartender, but somebody Dan has heard of, somebody very dangerous to cross. As the seductive girl worms her way into his affections, a series of crimes begin, including murder and kidnapping. Dan and his big buddy Red will get in very nearly over their heads.

Author Riesel would profit from a good copy editor, or at least a subscription to Grammarly. He is prone to homophone confusions. I thought he handled the humorous banter slightly better this time out than in the last book, but he’s still learning on the job.

One very intriguing addition here is his neighbor across the street, an old lady named Edna McGee. We are told that Edna is the widow of a “marine salvage expert” in Fort Lauderdale who died in the 1980s. Obviously, we are intended to believe this is the wife of the late Travis McGee. I never knew Travis ever got married, but I kind of like having Edna in the stories, though she’s only a tertiary character so far.

Not great literature, the Dan Coast books are fun to read, so far. I think I’ll keep on with them until I get my mind changed. Cautions for language and mature themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Welcome to Nowhere,’ by Caimh McDonnell

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Nothing else was said, but Reed and Smithy continued to lock eyes. If you tossed a raw chicken between the pair, it would have cooked before it hit the ground.

Well, this one was weird. Caimh McDonnell’s novels are all weird, marked as they are by Wodehouseian comic diction and bizarre character surprises. But Welcome to Nowhere takes it all to the next level.

The hero of Welcome to Nowhere is Smithy, a little person, what we used to call a m*dget (and don’t call him that, because he has strong feelings on the subject). If you’ve read McDonnell’s books about Bunny McGarry in America, you’ve already met him. Smithy works as a cab driver and sometimes an actor in New York City. He’s also sometimes a gambler. Recent losses in that quarter led him to take a demeaning job as a “leprechaun” in a stupid “leprechaun hunt” sponsored by a rich jerk named Reed. Some time later, he comes up with a “brilliant” plan to get his revenge on Reed. His plan goes spectacularly wrong when an apparent ninja assassin breaks into Reed’s apartment the same night Smithy sneaks in. Listening (under protest) to a voice in his head (possibly God’s, though he doubts it) which has been annoying him since he suffered a brain injury a while back, Smithy saves Reed’s life.

If you think that will earn him any gratitude, you don’t know Reed, who is about the worst person you can imagine. Except that even worse people will appear when Reed extorts Smithy and his friend Diller, a struggling, personable actor, into getting involved in an even crazier competition. And that competition turns out to be something out of a Mad Max movie, played out in a secret desert location. It will take a lot of creativity, and some luck, plus some unexpected allies, to get out of a post-apocalyptic fantasy come alive.

Welcome to Nowhere was a funny and creative book. I didn’t like it as much as I liked most of McDonnell’s others, because I don’t much care for this kind of story. But it had a lot of laughs, and was full of left-field surprises. Fair warning – it ends with a sort of a cliff-hanger.

Welcome to Nowhere is brilliant of its kind. I’ll probably even read the next one. Cautions for language and mature (and immature) themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Sleeping Dogs Lie,’ by Rodney Riesel

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Believe it or not, I’ve got yet another beach bum private eye for you today. Rodney Riesel’s Sleeping Dogs Lie is the first in the Dan Coast mystery series. Not quite professional quality stuff, but promising.

Dan Coast lives in a house on the beach in Key West. He doesn’t need to work, and most of the time he stays drunk. Years ago, he had a moment of tremendous good luck, followed shortly by a moment of tremendous tragedy that left him cynical and demoralized. He keeps a dog with whom he has a love/hate relationship, something that is eventually explained to the reader.

However, from time to time, as a favor to friends, he investigates mysteries. In Sleeping Dogs Lie, an attractive woman comes to him and asks him to find her missing boyfriend. Shortly thereafter she disappears herself. With the help of his dangerous friend Ray, he hunts for the answer.

Sleeping Dogs Lie provided an enjoyable story. Like so many fictional detectives, Dan Coast is unaccountably attractive to women (though sometimes, he admits, they have ulterior motives). He engages in a lot of banter, especially with Red, but sometimes with his dog. Sometimes the banter works, but fictional banter involves a delicate touch. Now and then it gets heavy-handed. Sometimes the tone of the prose doesn’t match the seriousness of the action. Still, there’s promise here, and I’ll probably read the second book.

Cautions for language and mature situations.

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Cursed with Interest

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From our desk of You Don’t Say, there’s a common belief that an old Chinese curse states, “May you live in interesting times.” But the best source researchers have found for this adage is a second-hand anecdote from a British ambassador.

The Quote Investigator says the saying has close ties to the family of Sir Austen Chamberlain (1863-1937), who shared the saying at a meeting of Birmingham Unionist Association in 1936. It’s a statement he may have heard his father, Joseph Chamberlain, say on occasion, not as a Chinese curse, but as his own observation.

In 1898, Joseph was reported as saying this before an audience: “I think that you will all agree that we are living in most interesting times. (Hear, hear.) I never remember myself a time in which our history was so full, in which day by day brought us new objects of interest, and, let me say also, new objects for anxiety. (Hear, hear.)”

It’s not spelled out in the research, but you could easily imagine how a statement like this could be slightly misremembered, if not simply misunderstood in context we do not have.

[See yesterday’s post on the supposed Chinese word for crisis]

Fiction, Reviews

‘A-List,’ by D. P. Lyle

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D. P. Lyle’s likeable Jake Longly series of mysteries continues with A-List, a tale of Hollywood and New Orleans.

Jake and his girlfriend Nicole are called to the Big Easy by her uncle, who is a major Hollywood producer. His company is shooting a science fiction film in the Louisiana swamps, but his star, actor Kirk Ford, has been arrested for murder. He woke from a drug-induced sleep to find his girlfriend strangled. He swears that he didn’t take the drug voluntarily, and did not kill her. But the police think it’s a slam dunk.

What’s worse, the girlfriend was the daughter of New Orleans’s biggest crime boss. If the state won’t execute Kirk, he’ll be happy to do it himself – or maybe he’ll just intervene regardless.

It’s a dangerous job, but Jake and Nicole have the back-up of Jake’s dad, the former secret agent, and his giant associate “Pancake.” Cross Hollywood with New Orleans and you get a swamp full of crocodiles, but they’re up to the challenge.

I find the Jake Longly books agreeable. They’re cheerful, which is a rarity in the genre. Unfortunately, there are less satisfying elements for this reader. The writing isn’t terrible, but it’s kind of “on the nose.” Never let me disparage the discipline of writing clearly, but you can be too clear. Spell everything out and you lose nuance. You’re treating the reader like an idiot. And there were some homophone errors – “oogling” for “ogling” and “lost leader” for “loss leader.” The dialogue was often stilted and (as I mentioned in the last review) all the characters talked the same way.

And Jake and Nicole smoked pot, which always puts me off.

And I figured out whodunnit fairly early on.

I won’t give the book an actual thumbs down, but it wasn’t good enough to persuade me to continue the series. You might like it better. Cautions for language and mature situations.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Deep Six,’ by D. P. Lyle

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The supply of fictional beach bum private eyes never seems to run low. Today I review Deep Six, first in D. P. Lyle’s series about Jake Longly.

Jake Longly is a former major league pitcher, retired due to an injury. He runs a bar and grill on Key West, to the disapproval of his father Ray, a former government spook who runs a high-end private investigation company. In spite of this, Ray calls Jake in from time to time to help him with jobs.

One of those jobs has Jake surveilling a house in a wealthy neighborhood one night. Good and bad come from this. The first bad is that his ex-wife, who lives in the neighborhood, discovers him, assumes he’s stalking her, and smashes his car windows with a golf club. The good is that he also meets the girl of his dreams, who kind of leaps into his life and takes up residence there. He’s not complaining about that.

But the worst thing is when he learns that the woman he actually was watching has been murdered in her house, almost right under his nose. He has an alibi for the crime (his new girlfriend, Nicole), but his father Ray is not going to let this affront go uninvestigated. The trail will lead to organized crime and a ruthless Russian mobster who likes to take people on one-way ocean cruises. Jake and Nicole will end up on one of those cruises, culminating in a fairly original – if implausible – showdown.

The story wasn’t bad. The author, however, needs some seasoning, in my view. His dialogue is kind of stilted, and all the characters talk the same way. At one point he gave us a moment of narrator confusion, as if he’d originally written the whole thing in the third person, then decided to break it up between first and third, and missed a spot. The male fantasy element is well provided for in the person of the girlfriend Nicole, who’s pretty much any man’s dream girl. Sex scenes are frequent, but not too explicit. There’s also a little casual pot smoking.

I enjoyed Deep Six, with reservations, and am reading the second book.

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The Chinese Word for Crisis

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From our You Have Heard It Said But I Tell You desk, the Chinese word for crisis, wēijī 危机, is not a pictogram of danger plus opportunity. You can see this definition in action in this 2009 book, Crossing the Soul’s River, in which the author says he was given this explanation first-hand.

In fact, very few Chinese letters represent little pictures of their ideas. More importantly, jī alone is not opportunity; it’s only part of several words.

A whole industry of pundits and therapists has grown up around this one grossly inaccurate statement. A casual search of the Web turns up more than a million references to this spurious proverb. It appears, often complete with Chinese characters, on the covers of books, on advertisements for seminars, on expensive courses for “thinking outside of the box,” and practically everywhere one turns in the world of quick-buck business, pop psychology, and orientalist hocus-pocus. This catchy expression (Crisis = Danger + Opportunity) has rapidly become nearly as ubiquitous as The Tao of Pooh and Sun Zi’s Art of War for the Board / Bed / Bath / Whichever Room.

…

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to offer another example from English that is closer to our Chinese word wēijī (“crisis”). Let’s take the –ity component of “opportunity,” “calamity” (“calamity” has a complicated etymology; see the Oxford English Dictionary, Barnhart, etc.), “felicity,” “cordiality,” “hostility,” and so forth. This –ity is a suffix that is used to form abstract nouns expressing state, quality, or condition. The words that it helps to form have a vast range of meanings, some of which are completely contradictory. Similarly the –jī of wēijī by itself does not mean the same thing as wēijī (“crisis”), jīhuì (“opportunity”), and so forth. The signification of jī changes according to the environment in which it occurs.

“Danger + Opportunity ≠ Crisis“, Victor H. Mair, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, University of Pennsylvania