All posts by Lars Walker

‘Final Hour,’ by Dean Koontz

November 8, 2015 Lars Walker Leave a comment

Dean Koontz has a new novel, Ashley Bell, coming out next month. In the run-up, he’s releasing two related novellas which share a character with that book.

The first one was Last Light, which I read and enjoyed, but didn’t review. But I’m reviewing Final Hour. I liked them both.

The main character of each book is a beautiful young woman, Makani Hisoka-O’Brien. She’s a native of Hawaii, but lives in southern California where she restores classic cars and surfs at the expert level. She loves her island home and her family, but has left them to save her relationship with both. This is because she’s cursed with a supernatural gift – she can tell, through touch, any person’s darkest secrets. This makes it impossible for her to have close relationships, except with her black Labrador, Bob, and her boyfriend, “Pogo,” who is (apparently) pure of heart.

The simple premise of this story is that one day Makani brushes the arm of a jogger, another beautiful young woman. She realizes in an instant that this woman has a twin, and that she is holding that twin prisoner in a secret place and starving her to death.

There’s no question what Makani has to do. With the help of Bob and Pogo, she sets out to rescue the captive.

It’s a great story, with some excellent writing – I especially liked one chapter title: “She Walks in Beauty Like a Polyester Resin.”

There’s a very neat twist at the end.

Recommended. I’m looking forward to Ashley Bell.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Quicksilver,’ by Neal Stephenson

November 1, 2015 Lars Walker Leave a comment

Someone suggested Neal Stephenson’s books to me, so I figured I’d give one a try. I decided on his historical series, The Baroque Cycle. The first novel is Quicksilver.

What shall I say about this book?

What I liked: Very well written. Witty. Good, interesting characters. Excellent historical research on view. A grand artistic vision undergirding all (which seems to be to give us a much-needed introduction to the history of the ideas that eventually produced digital computing).

The central character in Quicksilver is Dr. Daniel Waterhouse, a 17th Century Puritan and scientist. As a boy he watched Charles I being executed. As a young man he roomed with Isaac Newton at Cambridge and was involved with the beginnings of the Royal Society. Through him we observe the actions of the scientists who were inventing modern science, as well as the machinations of the court of Charles II.

Then the story takes a detour, and we follow the adventures of Jack Shaftoe, an English adventurer and mercenary, who rescues a beautiful harem slave, Eliza, at the siege of Vienna. Together with her he sets off on a journey across the German principalities toward the Netherlands, during which they become acquainted with the mathematician Leibniz.

And then back to London and Dr. Waterhouse. Continue reading ‘Quicksilver,’ by Neal Stephenson →

Religion

The Reformation: Here to stay

October 31, 2015 Lars Walker Leave a comment

This morning, in an e-mail discussion I participate in, someone lamented the Reformation. They wished and hoped we could all come together again soon.

That’s a nice dream, and I applaud the sentiment. But in my view it’ll never happen.

Here’s the thing — who’s going to be in charge of this new universal church?

The pope? Then how will you force all the Christians who think the pope is the Antichrist into your church?

Local congregations? How will you persuade the people who think an episcopacy is necessary?

You won’t be able to do this without some kind of coercive force. A new Inquisition.

And I don’t think even Catholics want that.

Besides which, the divisions are far deeper and more complex than just Rome vs. Wittenberg.

The divisions in Christianity go way beyond denominations. I have Catholic friends to whom I am far closer, in the fundamentals, than I am with many of my Lutheran friends.

Even if you somehow shoehorned all the denominations into your new World Church, the conservative vs. liberal divisions would persist.

And would probably, if history is any guide, lead to new institutional divisions.

Uncategorized

Catching up with Orwell

October 26, 2015 Lars Walker Leave a comment

Today, I happened to think of the Party slogan from George Orwell’s 1984:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

And it occurred to me that we’ve reached the age of the second line.

How can freedom be slavery? How can a political culture devoted to the concept of human freedom turn around and call freedom slavery?

We’re seeing it happen now, I think.

The problem of freedom, from the progressive point of view, is that it makes inequality inevitable. Leave any group of people free to do whatever they want, and inequality will be the result. Some people have more talent or intelligence than others. Some have better work habits. Some did a better job picking their parents. It follows inevitably that the competition will have winners, losers, and lots of people in between.

The Left is convincing itself, more and more, that such inequality is unacceptable. Inequality is unjust. Inequality, it seems to them, is exactly equivalent to slavery.

Thus, freedom is slavery.

And we can’t have that. Freedom will have to go.

Reviews, Uncategorized

Netflix review: ‘Murdoch Mysteries’

October 25, 2015 Lars Walker Leave a comment

As I slog my way through my last two months of grad school classes, I’m not ashamed to admit that there are times when I cool my overheated brain in a nice bath of light reading or television. On the television side, though, I’ve given up entirely on the network stuff. For the first time since college, I’m watching none of the alphabet networks’ current offerings. Instead, I’ve been following a superior effort from Canada – Murdoch Mysteries, on Netflix streaming.

William Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) is a stalwart detective for the Toronto Constabulary in the 1890s. A frustrated scientist, he keeps up with the journals and frequently applies the latest discoveries to his forensic work (effectively this is “CSI—Victorian Toronto”). He even invents devices never before seen, such as night vision goggles and telefax machines – which are promptly forgotten about, apparently, once their job is done. Though brainy as Jeeves, he’s limited on the emotional side (we’d say he scores high on the autism spectrum). He’s strongly attracted to Dr. Julia Ogden (Héléne Joy), the beautiful medical examiner, but doesn’t know what to do about it. He’s a geek, but the Victorian kind, so he dresses neatly.

A nice touch is that he’s a practicing Catholic who attends mass daily and crosses himself whenever he encounters the dead.

He is supported by Chief Inspector Brackenreid (Thomas Craig), a Yorkshireman who likes to bluster about “good old-fashioned police work,” but knows Murdoch’s value and mostly supports him. Constable Crabtree (Jonny Harris) is callow but enthusiastic, and provides comic relief and a foil for Murdoch. Continue reading Netflix review: ‘Murdoch Mysteries’ →

Fiction, Reviews

‘Deliver Us From Evil,’ by Peter Turnbull

October 18, 2015 Lars Walker 6 Comments

Years ago, while going through a period of tight finances (come to think of it, I still am), I took to borrowing light reading from the library, which is often a challenge when you’re as picky a reader as I am. I happened on a couple of English mysteries that pleased me very much, but neither the author nor the titles stuck in my memory. But recently, employing my hard-won new skills as an Information Professional, I did some hunting and found the books. Even better, some of them are available for Kindle. And so I offer, for your consideration, Deliver Us From Evil, by Peter Turnbull, one of the Hennessey and Yellich mysteries.

Hennessey and Yellich are police detectives in the ancient city of York, England, a place of great interest to Viking enthusiasts, though Vikings are rarely mentioned in my reading so far. Hennessey is an older cop, a widower who carries on a quiet affair with the female medical examiner. Yellich is younger and a family man, the father of a boy with Down’s Syndrome. There are also a couple more members on their team at this point in the series, each well drawn and having their own story.

The book begins with a beautifully written scene in which an early morning walker, on a frigid spring morning, discovers a woman sitting near the edge of a canal. Discovering that she is dead, he contacts the police. Forensic examination shows that she froze to death, but was probably strangled first. The strangling apparently failed, she revived, but then she succumbed to the cold.

Inquiry into her past reveals a dark story – this is a woman who has cheated and stolen all her life, and who may have done worse things. The question is not who had motive to kill her, but who among many she has hurt actually did it.

The story runs along logical, police procedural lines, and involves a trip to Canada by some of the team. There are no car chases, no gunfights, not even a fist fight. Just patient inquiry into human memories, deceptions, and motivations. I love this kind of book. I wish there were more of them.

A strange affectation of author Turnbull’s is that he opens each chapter with an old-fashioned synopsis:

Wednesday, March twenty-fifth, 15.43 hours – 22.30 hours in which more is learned of the deceased and Mr and Mrs Yellich are at home to the gracious reader.

A little precious, perhaps, but amusing as long as other writers don’t copy it.

Highly recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘An End to a Silence,’ by W. H. Clark

October 11, 2015 Lars Walker Leave a comment

The book under consideration here is an example of a type of novel I like very much. It’s a “small” mystery, localized and character-driven. No international conspiracies; no shadowy government agents. An End to a Silence is the sort of mystery that’s produced more in England than in America nowadays, and as it happens the author is English, though the story is set in America, in a small town in Montana, and seems right at home.

Detective Newton is a burnt-out case, a cop whose career stalled long ago. Now he’s just marking time until retirement. But he’s called to a local nursing home, where an old man’s death has been identified as murder. When Newton sees the victim, he’s suddenly galvanized. This man, Bill O’Donnell, is a suspect in 25 year old case, the disappearance of O’Donnell’s own grandson. Newton is certain that O’Donnell killed the boy and hid the body, despite the fact that he was a kindly man, loved in the community and active in his church.

A new policeman has come to help. His name is Ward (he never explains whether it’s his first or last name), and he’s straight out of a Hollywood western. He’s from Texas, he’s tall and lean and taciturn, he wears a cowboy hat, and he has secrets. Along with investigating the murder, he gets involved in protecting a local woman from her abusive, junkie ex-husband.

The story is all about secrets, and what people do to protect themselves and those they love. There’s a surprising reversal at the end, giving us a resolution that’s not entirely satisfying, but true to life as we know it.

I enjoyed An End to a Silence very much, and regret that this is the author’s first novel. I fear I’ll forget his name before there’s another. Sex, language, and violence are relatively mild, and on top of that the Christians in the book are treated respectfully.

Recommended.

Uncategorized

For your Spectation

October 8, 2015 Lars Walker Leave a comment

I have a piece in The American Spectator Online today:

The liberals’ moral GPS tells them that their present location is right outside the gates of Eden. They’re still wearing their fig leaf aprons (they believe) and just a couple steps back in the right direction will return them to Paradise. How could anyone be against that?

In their view, the problem is simple, like a crossword puzzle. Fill in all the spaces correctly, and Paradise is regained. The fact that the goal is never achieved in practice, that more and more spaces keep appearing, needing new laws written to fill them, does not trouble them. Next time it will be different. We’re almost there. We can see Eden from our front porches.

Read it all here.

Brandywine Books

All posts by Lars Walker

‘Final Hour,’ by Dean Koontz

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‘Quicksilver,’ by Neal Stephenson

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The Reformation: Here to stay

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Catching up with Orwell

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Netflix review: ‘Murdoch Mysteries’

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‘Deliver Us From Evil,’ by Peter Turnbull

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‘An End to a Silence,’ by W. H. Clark

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For your Spectation

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