‘Two Kinds of Truth,’ by Michael Connelly

November 3, 2017 Lars Walker Leave a comment

Two Kinds of Truth

“Look, I’m sorry. But I wanted to catch these guys. What that kid did, the son, it was noble. When this all comes out, people will probably say he was stupid and naïve and didn’t know what he was doing. But they won’t know the truth. He was being noble. And there isn’t a lot of that out there in the world anymore….”

It’s amazing how Michael Connelly manages to keep the stakes high in his long series of Harry Bosch detective novels. At the beginning of Two Kinds of Truth I was thinking that the formula was getting a little old, but before long I was fully invested. Harry Bosch is a driven character, a man with a near-Christian sense of vocation, and you can’t help starting to care as much as he does.

Harry used to be a police detective in Los Angeles, but he’s past retirement, and now he works on a semi-volunteer basis for the police department in San Fernando, a small, autonomous enclave within greater LA. His official task is cold cases, which he loves, but because he’s the most experienced detective available, he ends up working current cases as well. Continue reading ‘Two Kinds of Truth,’ by Michael Connelly →

Fiction, Reviews

‘Publish and Perish,’ by Sally S. Wright

November 2, 2017 Lars Walker 1 Comment

Publish and Perish

What was it Richard had said in his next-to-last volume? “Logic is the fruit of reason; meaning is the child of imagination.”

Ben had never felt a conflict between the two and he doubted that Richard had either. Any more than either one of them had seen a conflict between reason and revelation.

I linked to an article about Sally Wright a couple days ago, and said I was reading one of her novels. I am delighted to report that author Wright has sailed past my critical misogyny to make me an immediate fan. She writes a pretty good male hero, in the tradition, I would say, of Dorothy Sayer’s Lord Peter Wimsey (though Ben Reese is a very different kind of character).

In Publish and Perish, first novel in a series, Ben Reese, World War II intelligence veteran, is an archivist at a private college in Ohio. The year is 1960. He is in England doing research when he gets news that his dearest friend has died of a sudden heart attack. Ben (who is his friend’s executor) rushes home to deal with the aftermath. He is disturbed by certain puzzling circumstances surrounding the death, and the local police chief agrees with him. Ben starts asking questions, and someone else dies, and then Ben himself becomes the target of a murder attempt.

We often complain about the poor quality of Christian literature. Sally Wright’s work is a shining example of the sort of thing we’ve been pleading for. The writing is superior, the characterizations and dialogue polished and entertaining, the mystery satisfying. And the tone of the thing is appropriate both to Christianity and to the time period – there is no, or very little, obscenity. The Christian characters talk like human beings, not tracts, and the values are unashamedly old-fashioned.

I enjoyed Publish and Perish immensely, and look forward to reading the rest of the series.

Fiction, Reviews

Bruno, Chief of Police, by Martin Walker

November 1, 2017 Lars Walker 1 Comment

Bruno, Chief of Police

Benoît “Bruno” Courrèges, chief of police of the small French town of St. Denis, is a decorated veteran who served with the UN peacekeepers in Bosnia. If he wished, he could find exciting work in Paris, but he likes the life he has. He lives in a remodeled shepherd’s cottage, keeps a large vegetable garden, and coaches young men in soccer and tennis. He likes the slow pace of country life, where his biggest problem is generally tipping off local farmers when EU produce inspectors are on the prowl. He’s had enough action in his life, merci.

But action is coming to him. The first book in Martin (no relation) Walker’s popular Bruno series, Bruno, Chief of Police, involves the murder of an elderly Algerian refugee, whose body is found with a swastika carved into it. The old man was a decorated veteran of the French army, and his death ignites lingering passions from the German occupation, and contemporary resentment of North African immigration. Bruno will see his peaceful town torn by a riot and discover very dark secrets, leading finally to an imperfect – but arguably just – resolution. And there will be a little romance along the way.

I liked Bruno, Chief of Police quite a lot. It started out pretty much as a “cozy” mystery, but got rapidly dark, burrowing deep into human memories and motivations. Bruno is not the simple man he tries to appear, but neither is anyone else.

I’d be happy to read the next book in this series, but the publisher wants twelve bucks for the Kindle version, which is too much.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Lady Stanhope’s Manuscript and Other Stories,’ by Dale Nelson

October 31, 2017 Lars Walker 3 Comments

Lady Stanhope's Manuscript

You know what’s spooky? I’ll tell you what’s spooky. As far as I know, I’d never heard of the author M. R. James before I read the book I’ll review tonight, Lady Stanhope’s Manuscript and Other Stories, by Dale Nelson. And what does Phil do today but link to an article citing M. R. James? [Cue Twilight Zone music.]

Full disclosure: Dale Nelson, author of this story collection, is a good friend of mine and generally the first reader for my novels. He sent me a signed copy as a gift.

Dale, by his own statement in the Preface, has written many of these stories in conscious emulation of James’ “antiquarian” works. I’m not generally a reader of ghost stories, in part because nowadays the genre has gotten mixed up with horror, which I don’t like at all. But as I read this book, I was reminded of Poe’s essay on poetry, in which he says that the purpose of a poem is to leave a single, vivid impression in the mind of the reader. This sort of ghost story has much the same purpose – not necessarily to shock or terrify you, but to leave you with a feeling of unease, of invisible doors left ajar, of watching eyes behind your back in the darkness, of secrets best left buried.

The genres of the stories in fact range beyond ghost tales. There’s plain science fiction here, and fantasy explorations of folklore themes. There’s a straight Christian miracle story. All expertly written, with keen insight into human nature and an understanding of Orthodox theology (and I intended the capitalization on “Orthodox,” because a distinct preference for the eastern church is easy to discern).

Recommended. And yes, I’m prejudiced.

Fiction

‘The English eerie is on the rise’

October 31, 2017 Phil Leave a comment

A loose but substantial body of work is emerging that explores the English landscape in terms of its anomalies rather than its continuities, that is sceptical of comfortable notions of “dwelling” and “belonging”, and of the packagings of the past as “heritage”, and that locates itself within a spectred rather than a sceptred isle. . . . We are, certainly, very far from “nature writing”, whatever that once was, and into a mutated cultural terrain that includes the weird and the punk as well as the attentive and the devotional.

Robert Macfarlane writes about the eerie lands of England in many art forms, beginning with a good summary of a strange story. (via Alan Jacobs)

Fiction, Reviews

‘Blowback,’ by Peter May

October 30, 2017 Lars Walker 1 Comment

Blowback

Peter May’s Enzo Macleod mysteries are growing on me, mainly because Enzo himself is growing. Enzo is a Scottish criminologist living and working in France. He has made a bet that he can solve seven famous unsolved French murders, and he’s working his way systematically through the list. Blowback is the fifth in the series, and this one takes him into the rarefied world of French haute cuisine.

Seven years ago, chef Marc Fraysse, who operated a three star (the highest rating in the prestigious Michelin Guide) restaurant in a remote French village, was murdered just when rumors were circulating that he was going to lose a star. Enzo travels to the village, where he meets an attractive local police woman who eagerly helps him with his inquiries (a pleasant surprise). He goes to stay at the restaurant/hotel, where the victim’s brother and widow make him generally welcome. But Enzo doesn’t trust them entirely, and has insinuated a personal spy into the staff.

Meanwhile, Enzo realizes that some tensions and feuds in the victim’s history echo broken relationships of his own – notably with a half-brother he never mentions to anyone, and the son he fathered with a woman who demanded he have no contact with the child. Hopefully he will find or make some second chances, and not succumb to the errors that brought Marc Fraysse down before his time.

I found Enzo Macleod kind of superficial when I started reading the books. I’m gratified to see him growing with each installment, becoming more and more a grownup and increasingly controlling his passions. I enjoyed Blowback. It also got pretty suspenseful toward the end.

Recommended with cautions for adult stuff.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Don’t Let Go,’ by Harlan Coben

October 27, 2017 Lars Walker 2 Comments

Don't Let Go

Harlan Coben is one of the best of our thriller writers. Instead of voyeuristic violence and obscenity, Coben specializes in profound moral dilemmas, psychological depth, and generally clean prose. I’m a fan. His latest, Don’t Let Go, is OK, but I don’t consider it one of his best.

Napoleon “Nap” Dumas is a policeman in a New Jersey suburb. He has a minor, unofficial sideline in beating up guys who seriously hurt women and can’t be touched by the law. He’s carrying a lot of suppressed anger, going back to one terrible night in his senior year in high school, when his twin brother and his girlfriend were killed in an accident, and his own girlfriend disappeared without a goodbye.

Now there’s been a murder in the town where he lives. The victim was a fellow cop, killed during a traffic stop. But inside the stopped car a set of fingerprints are found – the fingerprints of Maura, Nap’s long-lost girlfriend.

The old case is opened, and Nap is about to learn that many shocking things were covered up that awful night when his brother died. The cover-ups were not only the work of a shadowy government agency, but of some of his best, most trusted friends.

I was a little disappointed with Don’t Let Go. I thought that author Coben fell into some storyteller’s tropes unworthy of his talent. And I thought the final resolution overly complex and not very plausible.

But it kept my interest all through, and was moving in places. You could do worse.

Authors, Publishing

Call to Fund Finishing of Unpublished Burgess Novel

October 27, 2017 Phil Leave a comment

Prance, Noah!

There are many kinds of flood, not all of them water. Here: France, green and grey beneath a swift blue sky, and wholly submerged. The flood here is war.

Adam Roberts, professor of nineteenth-century literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, has been inspired to take up a screenplay left unproduced by Anthony Burgess, a historical movie on The Black Prince. Roberts is working on developing it into a novel. Above is an excerpt from the work in progress.

Roberts said he talked over his idea “with Andrew Biswell (director of the Burgess Foundation in Manchester the world’s leading expert on Burgess’s writing) and we agreed it would be worth seeing if the work could be completed. I have always felt that a science fiction writer is working in the same sort of territory as the writer of historical fiction (and several of my SF novels have been historical, or included historical elements): the creation of a world, the estrangement of the familiar.”

He has been crowd sourcing his fund this year and is 72 percent to his goal this morning.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Deep Freeze,’ by John Sandford

October 26, 2017 Lars Walker 1 Comment

Deep Freeze

John Sandford’s novels are always entertaining. The latest Virgil Flowers novel, Deep Freeze, delivers pretty much what you paid for.

As you probably guessed from the title, this story takes place during the Minnesota winter. Virgil Flowers, laid-back agent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, is called back to place he has no desire to revisit – Trippton, in the southeastern part of the state. He recently closed down a murder ring there involving some of the town’s most prominent people. This time a woman has been found floating in the warm recycling runoff from the local water treatment plant. Evidence in her home indicates she was murdered there and dumped in the river. She was a local VIP, the town banker. She had had a meeting with her old high school classmates the night she died, planning a reunion. All the obvious suspects seem to have ironclad alibis.

At the same time, Virgil is asked to assist a female private detective who has the blessing of the governor. She has been hired by the Mattel Corporation to hunt down a ring of locals who are altering Barbie Dolls to make them into sex toys. Virgil is reluctant to get involved in this case, partly because the illegal business is helping out some people in tough economic circumstances. But he’ll do what he can, when he can. Especially after a bunch of them attack him and leave him badly injured.

If you read Sandford, you know what to expect here – a pretty good mystery with amusing, colorful characters and a lot of obscene dialogue and dirty jokes. One thing I’d advise author Sandford to do is to sprinkle a few more Scandinavian names among his characters, especially the poorer ones. I don’t say that for reasons of ethnic pride (or not entirely). When his rednecks get to talking, I have trouble not imagining them speaking with southern accents. It would help if a few of them were named Olson or Lindquist; it would be a reminder.

Recommended for Sandford fans. If you can’t handle a lot of f-bombs, you’d do best to stay away.

Brandywine Books

‘Two Kinds of Truth,’ by Michael Connelly

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‘Publish and Perish,’ by Sally S. Wright

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Bruno, Chief of Police, by Martin Walker

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‘Lady Stanhope’s Manuscript and Other Stories,’ by Dale Nelson

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‘The English eerie is on the rise’

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‘Blowback,’ by Peter May

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‘Don’t Let Go,’ by Harlan Coben

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Call to Fund Finishing of Unpublished Burgess Novel

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‘Deep Freeze,’ by John Sandford

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Book Reviews, Creative Culture

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Book Reviews, Creative Culture