Tag Archives: crime

Fiction, Reviews

The Jack Stratton novels, by Christopher Greyson

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It’s a rare treat to discover an author and a series of books I enjoy very much, and which I can recommend to our readers almost without reservation. But that’s the case with Christopher Greyson and his Jack Stratton novels.

Jack Stratton, the hero of the series, is a cop in a South Carolina town. He’s a good man, but wound tight. As a boy he was abandoned by his prostitute mother, but found refuge in a loving mixed race foster home before being adopted by a good family. As a young man he served in Iraq beside one of his foster brothers, Chandler. He saw Chandler die, and because of survivor’s guilt he hasn’t contacted his foster family since.

That’s until Replacement invades his life. “Replacement” is the nickname of a young woman who grew up in his old foster home, though after his time there. She shows up in his apartment and tells him Michelle, a foster sister to whom he was always close, has disappeared. She’d been studying in a local college, but supposedly transferred to a California school. Only she hasn’t gotten in touch with her family, and she wouldn’t do that.

With Replacement as his uninvited assistant, he starts looking into Michelle’s life, and discovers troubling things. Continue reading The Jack Stratton novels, by Christopher Greyson →

Fiction, Reviews

Nothing to Hide, by J. Mark Bertrand.

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In the third installment in J. Mark Bertrand’s excellent crime series about Houston police detective Roland March, we find March examining the body of a man dumped on a basketball court. The body’s head is missing, and both hands have been skinned. March’s former enemy – now his friend and partner – Jerry Lorenz, thinks there might be some significance in the fact that one of the fleshless hands is arranged as if pointing. March jumps a ditch to investigate, falling and injuring his back. And there don’t seem to be any clues in that direction.
But it’s early yet.
Nothing to Hide takes March on a dangerous and tragic ride that reintroduces him to antagonists from his own past, and forces him to push the edge of the law in order to pursue the impartial justice he demands for every victim, and for which he’s willing to put his life and freedom on the line. An interesting sideline is that part of the plot anticipates the ATF’s disastrous “Fast and Furious” program, although the book was written before that scandal was made public.
Strong stuff. I salute Bethany House for publishing a series so far beyond the usual standard of Christian fiction, both in quality and in subject matter. The Christian elements are there, as an integral part of the story, but the purpose here is to tell stories about the truth, not to present a gospel tract to the reader.
The book works fine as a stand-alone, but there’s a definite story arc in connection with the previous novels in the series. I’m contemplating re-reading them all to get the sweep of the thing. Highly recommended, with cautions for disturbing content.

Fiction, Reviews

The Scarred Man, by Andrew Klavan

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I’ve actually reviewed Andrew Klavan’s novel The Scarred Man (written under the pseudonym Keith Peterson, and recently released as an e-book by Mysterious Press) before on this blog. But I want to direct your attention to these books, and I re-read it recently, so it can’t hurt to discuss it again.

Mike North, the hero and narrator, is a young news reporter in New York City, and a very good one (this was written back before the internet holed the newspapers at the waterline). He is assistant to a legendary newsman named McGill, who asks Mike to come along upstate with him to spend Christmas at his home, since he (Mike) has no family. Mike agrees, and while there he meets McGill’s daughter Susannah, and falls so deeply and suddenly in love that everyone in the room can read it on his face. Susanna returns his feelings and they get along very well (including a sexual encounter under the Christmas tree while everybody else is sleeping) until somebody suggests telling ghost stories. Mike, on an impulse, makes up a story off the top of his head—about a sinister man with a scarred face, who dogs another man’s steps.

Suddenly Susannah is screaming, “Stop it! What are you doing to me?” She flees to her room, and the next morning she’s gone back to school.

It takes a few weeks before Mike realizes he has to go up to Susannah’s college and talk to her.

And as he pulls into the entrance to her college, he sees the scarred man from his story in his headlights.

I think this is one of the best set-ups for a thriller I’ve ever read. What’s especially great is that The Scarred Man is not a supernatural story. Everything that happens has a rational explanation. And it’s up to Mike and Susannah to figure it out, because the mystery involves the upcoming execution of a man who may not deserve to die. And the Scarred Man is still out there, dogging their steps, carrying the answers to their personal mysteries – which they may or may not want to learn.

On my second reading, I didn’t think the balance of the book was quite as great as the set-up, but it would be very hard for any story to meet that standard. Klavan fans who know him best from his current books should be warned that this is the early, liberal Klavan. He doesn’t slander conservatives, but the cultural insularity of his background shows through, especially in the addition of a character whom we are supposed to believe is a Christian fundamentalist preacher, even though his speech is peppered with obscenities. This is a fundamentalist preacher as imagined by a New Yorker who’s never actually met one. Attitudes toward sex may also offend some readers.

But it’s a great story, and one that will stick with you. Highly recommended.

Reviews

Netflix review: “Foyle’s War”

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Since the Foyle’s War mystery series has been broadcast in this country on PBS, all of you probably enjoyed it long before I did. But in case I’m not the last person in America to catch this excellent program, I’ll give my own viewer’s response here.

Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle (splendidly underplayed by Michael Kitchen) is chief detective in Hastings, England, during World War II. A sort of running joke in the series is that he desperately wants to do something “more important” for the war effort, but again and again is denied the chance, sometimes because there’s a case he feels he needs to see through to the end, and sometimes because his stubborn integrity makes him enemies in high places. Later on, when the war is winding down, he just wants to retire, but keeps getting pulled back in.

Foyle is a smallish, unprepossessing man, but steely in his character. He’s the kind of superior officer who can flay a subordinate alive without raising his voice. Nevertheless he’s very popular with his underlings, and has a sly, dry, sense of humor.

He is assisted in his inquiries by two regular supporting characters—Samantha “Sam” Stuart, his military driver (played by an actress actually named Honeysuckle Weeks, who’s not conventionally pretty but is nevertheless entirely adorable), and Detective Sergeant Paul Milner (Anthony Howell), an early war casualty with an artificial leg. Together they investigate at least one murder each episode, often connected to war profiteering, espionage, and military secrets. Foyle isn’t always able to arrest the sometimes well-protected culprits, but he does all he can and never gives up under any pressure less than direct orders. In such cases, he never leaves the stage without laying out the moral case. Continue reading Netflix review: “Foyle’s War” →

Fiction, Reviews

Pattern of Wounds, by J. Mark Bertrand

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One of the keys to a long career in law enforcement is learning how to tell police psychologists what they need to hear without sounding deceptive. The only alternative is good mental health, which to me has always seemed too unrealistic a goal.

That’s Houston Police Detective Roland March, hero of J. Mark Bertrand’s crime novel Pattern of Wounds, a sequel to Back On Murder. I liked the first book very much, and I think I liked this one even more. Bertrand is doing almost exactly the thing I’ve tried to do (with far less success) in my own fantasy novels—to portray the real world through eyes of faith, giving both believers and unbelievers a fair chance to make their cases.
Roland March is a Houston cop, at once admired and disliked in his department because of his erratic career history. Successful enough as a crime solver to have been the subject of two true crime novels, he went through a slump period (following the death of his daughter in a car accident with a drunk driver) during which he seemed to be on the way out. In this book he tells us something we didn’t know before about that period—he was cutting corners because he didn’t trust the justice system. Always staying within the limits of strict legality (or so he believed), he nevertheless bent the law in order to insure “true justice” as he saw it. Continue reading Pattern of Wounds, by J. Mark Bertrand →

Authors

"Stieg Larsson set out to defy the conventions of the crime novel"

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The Wall Street Journal has some emails from Stieg Larsson, author of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and following popular crime novels. The author writes of his intention to work around the usual formalities of crime novels. Main characters are not from typical crime novel stock, and he didn’t want his serial killer offing anonymous people, so he spend time introducing minor characters. In real life, no one is completely anonymous. He also states:

A rule of thumb has been never to romanticize crime and criminals, nor to stereotype victims of crime. I base my serial murderer in book I on a composite of three authentic cases. Everything described in the book can be found in actual police investigations.
The description of the rape of Lisbeth Salander is based on an incident that actually took place in the Östermalm district of Stockholm three years ago. And so on.

Lars reviewed The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo here, and the following book, The Girl Who Played With Fire in this post.

Fiction, Reviews

Triple Crown, by Dick Francis

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A while back I reviewed Dick Francis’ mystery, Decider, and said I’d be reading more. So I picked up the collection Triple Crown (comprising Dead Cert, Nerve, and For Kicks) and read it last week. It was an intriguing reading experience for me.
I have a hard time pinning down what’s so compelling in a Dick Francis mystery. Most of the stories revolve around the sport of racing (with the corruption that racetrack betting invites), and that’s a field of endeavor in which I’ve never had much interest (though I’ll admit that if I have to watch a horse race, I’d prefer a steeplechase, which is the kind of racing Francis concentrates on, at least in the novels I’ve read). I can’t say that he’s a brilliant stylist—in fact I’d characterize him as the kind of author who disappears totally, which isn’t a bad way to get your reader invested in your characters. I can’t say he’s especially skilled at crafting vivid characters. And yet I found myself horizontal on the couch for hours, turning page after page, absolutely under the spell of the stories.
Dead Cert, I understand, was Francis’ first published novel. It’s good, but I think he was still feeling his way. Nerve was his second book, and by then he’d already found his pace. This was possibly the most satisfying tale of revenge I’ve ever read. And For Kicks amazed me. It was the compelling adventure of a man who takes a dangerous job for money, endures great suffering and violence, and in the end learns something about himself that changes his life.
I think what I particularly like is that Francis writes about manly men. Men blessed, and burdened, with strength, integrity, and courage, Churchillian in their resolve never to give up.
What a joy to discover an author you didn’t know before, who has a long list of published works you can look forward to!

Reviews

The Forgotten Man, by Robert Crais

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Today I voted. In my little corner of the republic, we were faced with only two decisions, both of them education related. One was the election of school board members. I voted for none of them, since their bios in the local giveaway newspaper made them all look indistinguishable to me. Margaret Sanger crossed with John Dewey.

The big question was whether we wanted to approve a property tax increase for education. According to our lords and masters, our school district will soon be reduced to teaching the kids in one-room schoolhouses with dirt floors and wooden benches.

Come to think of it, that might not be bad. The kids who went to those one-room schools generally learned to read and do their sums. Our present system can’t make the same boast.

Of course my true reason for voting “No” is my selfishness and bigotry. As a bloated member of the plutocracy, my true fear is that the brilliant plans of the National Educational Association will be brought to fruition. If that should happen, all our children will become geniuses and paragons of postmodern virtue. In short order they will end poverty, cure all diseases, stop global warming, abolish war, and prove scientifically that there is no God. This threatens my vested interests and entrenched power, so I’m fighting a vicious, yet futile, rear guard action against the tide of history.

The Forgotten Man is another Robert Crais novel. It really isn’t my intention to review a string of Crais novels all in a row. If I were following my inclinations alone, I’d be reviewing a string of Stephen Hunter novels all in a row, but just at this point in my life I’m cutting back on book buying. So I’m only reading stuff I can check out of the library or find at Half Price Books. My library carries no Hunter, and I’ve bought everything HPB has by him at this point. So I picked up some Crais, and that’s no form of suffering at all. The more Crais I read, the better I like him.

Once again in this book, detective Elvis Cole is forced to deal with the shadows of his dysfunctional childhood. His mother, who was loving but psychotically delusional, always told him that his father (whose name he’s never known) was a human cannonball in a circus. In flashbacks we see how the young Cole ran away from home time after time, searching carnivals for the right daredevil, without any success.

But now, a possible father has come to him (sort of). An unidentified older man, bizarrely tattooed all over his body with religious pictures, has been murdered in an alley. The policewoman who heard his last words says he told her that he was Elvis Cole’s father, come to Los Angeles to find his son.

Cole has been elevated to public hero status by his last case, in which he rescued the kidnapped son of the woman he loves. But in the aftermath she moved away, deciding (and Cole knows she’s right) that being with him is too dangerous a life for a mother who has a child to protect. Since then Cole has been in a funk. He hasn’t even visited his office.

The one thing that could draw him out, though, is the chance to at last learn the identity of his father. He gets permission from the police to assist in the case. But the man is a ghost. He seems to have no name, no past. All Cole learns at first is that the man made several outcalls to prostitutes.

Not to sleep with them. To pray with them. To pray for forgiveness for sins he wouldn’t name.

The story also offers healthy helpings of familiar supporting characters like Joe Pike, Cole’s Psycho Killer Friend™, and Detective Carol Stark, the heroine of Demolition Angel (Crais fixed her up with an FBI agent at the end of that book, but apparently decided he could make better use of her if he had her shamelessly throwing herself at Cole, so he unattached her again).

I’ve been impressed, as I’ve read the Elvis Cole books, by the way in which Crais has deepened and enriched what started out as a fairly shallow, perpetually adolescent character, the kind of detective who wears Hawaiian shirts and decorates his office with Disney collectibles. But maybe I failed to recognize that this was Crais’ intention from the start. The clock on Cole’s wall is a Pinocchio clock, and the figurine on his desk is Jiminy Cricket. And what is Pinocchio but the puppet who needs to learn moral lessons in order to become a real boy?

Reviews

The Ritual Bath, by Faye Kellerman

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Will this work? I have my doubts. I’ve had the kind of afternoon where every time I reach for something I knock something over, and every time I pick something up I drop it (I’m exaggerating, but it feels like that). So I figure either my computer will crash or Bloo will go down just about the time I’m ready to post. But I shall make the effort.

I bought Faye Kellerman’s The Ritual Bath (first in a series of mysteries involving Det. Peter Decker and widow Rina Lazarus) on the strength of my fondness for her husband Jonathan’s Alex Delaware novels. I had misgivings. Generally I don’t care for mysteries written by women (I’m not weighing in on our discussion, some time back, of whether men write the best mysteries or not. I find men usually write the best mysteries for me, which is a very different matter).

I was very pleasantly surprised. The Ritual Bath is both a satisfying crime story and a sensitive examination of the conflicts and stresses involved in being seriously religious in a secular society.

Rina Lazarus lives at an orthodox yeshiva (Torah school) in a run-down section of Los Angeles. Ordinarily an unmarried woman wouldn’t live at an all-male yeshiva, but her late husband was a student, and the school gave her a job and a home so that she could take care of her two young sons. Her job involves cleaning and caring for the mikvah (ritual bath), used monthly by students’ wives.

The night the novel begins, a young woman is attacked and raped outside the mikvah. Detective Peter Decker and his partner arrive to investigate.

There is immediate chemistry between the tall, red-haired detective and the tiny Jewish widow. But though Decker pursues her singlemindedly throughout the book, Rina has to explain, again and again, that there is no way she could possibly date a goy. As the likelihood grows that the rapist (who keeps coming back) may be someone inside the yeshiva, there are numerous opportunities for personal and professional missteps and misunderstandings.

The picture of life in an Orthodox community appears (so far as I can tell) to be pretty accurate. At least it’s credible. The constant nuisance of concern for ritual cleanliness is not glossed over, but neither are the joys of deep belief and genuine community life. (As a sideline, it made me more aware than ever of Paul’s statement that “the letter of the law kills,” and reminded me how grateful I ought to be that Christians are free of such.)

Another pleasure was Kellerman’s portrayal of Detective Decker. I suspect that one reason so many female writers have a hard time with male characters is that they find it both difficult and repellant to try to get into our heads. I found no false notes in Peter Decker. He struck me as a very believable decent guy, at once strongly aroused by Rina and making an honest effort to keep his hormones suppressed.

Another thing that made the book interesting (and problematic) from a Christian point of view was the fact that Det. Decker is increasingly attracted to the Jewish religion itself, as well as to a particular Jew, as the story goes on. We are told that he was raised a Baptist but is nothing in particular now. Question: If a secular person is drawn to Judaism, does that bring him closer to, or farther away from, Jesus Christ?

Another thing that struck me was how similar the book was to a lot of Christian Booksellers Association fiction. The tall, strong, unbeliever is drawn to the beautiful believer, and as love grows he is attracted to her faith as well.

Only Kellerman does it better. Her writing is on a higher level (not perfect, but far superior to most CBA, so far as I’ve read any), her characters more rounded and believable. Also the book is earthier. There are intense situations. There is bad language. Those things might disqualify a book from CBA, but they also increase realism, giving the story greater credibility.

I’ll read more of these.

Non-fiction

Prometheus, bounder

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Today it rained. This is a good thing, just here and just now. We’ve had it mighty dry for a spell in these here parts. I think a lot of farmers got a drink too, which is, needless to say, a lot more important than the state of my lawn.
I picked up a book called Savage Spawn, by Jonathan Kellerman, the mystery writer. I’ve already told you how much I enjoy his novels, so I was interested to check out this book, which is not fiction but a book of popular psychology about children who become cold-blooded criminals.
I’ll probably say more about his conclusions tomorrow, but today I want to quote a passage that impressed me:

Psychiatrist Thomas Millar, in an eloquent essay titled “The Age of Passion Man,” written nearly two decades ago, decried the tendency of contemporary Western society to glamorize hedonism and antisocial behavior, and to confuse psychopathy, which he regards as a form of malignant childishness, with heroism….
Confusing creativity with morality and psychopathic rebelliousness with social liberation led Norman Mailer to predict that psychopaths would turn out to be the saviors of society. Mailer was as terribly wrong about that as he was when he worked hard to spring career criminal Jack Henry Abbott from prison. Shortly after his release, Abbott murdered an innocent man. Oops. What impressed Mailer were Abbott’s writings, summarized in a thin book titled In the Belly of the Beast. A coolheaded review of this volume nearly two decades later reveals it to be a crude, nasty, sophomoric collection of self-justifying diatribes—prototypical psychopathy.
Muddled thinking about evil is by no means limited to the political left. Sex murderer Herbert Smith, sentenced to execution for raping and bludgeoning a fifteen-year-old girl to death with a baseball bat, was able to turn a phrase with some skill, and he conned William Buckley into thinking he was innocent. Buckley campaigned to get Smith out of prison, finally succeeding in 1971, whereupon Smith promptly and viciously attacked another woman. Smith then admitted that he’d been guilty of the first murder. Oops again.

Kellerman identifies here what I consider a major problem in our culture today. Beginning in the days of the Romantic Movement, we began to see the titanic, rebellious, Promethean social rebel (like Shelley or Byron) as the hero, the one who would free us all from Rousseau’s chains, who would liberate us all to become the gods and goddesses we were born to be. The parallel Romantic current, the more Christian and conventionally moral Romanticism of Wordsworth and Coleridge, found few followers. That strain was less sexy. It lacked the sweetness of forbidden fruit, and was much harder work.
Thus we came to believe, first of all, that great, creative souls must always reject conventional morality. Further down the slope we came to believe that whatever was socially transgressive must by definition be a work of genius.
This has given people with artistic pretensions a wonderful excuse to live lives of selfishness and self-destruction.
It has also been responsible for a whole lot of lousy art.