Fiction, Reviews

‘Suspect,’ by Robert Crais

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I generally don’t read books featuring dogs (except for Dean Koontz books, where you can’t avoid them), for the same reason I don’t own a dog. It’s because I love dogs dearly, and firmly believe that no master (certainly including me) has ever been worthy of his canine pet. I’m not sure I can bear the purity of a dog’s love.

Which made Robert Crais’ novel Suspect difficult in places. That’s not to say I didn’t like it. But if you aren’t an actual dog hater, this one will break your heart – in a good way.

Scott James is a Los Angeles cop who’s gotten derailed on his career path to SWAT. He was shot and severely injured in an ambush where his female partner was killed. After months of recovery and rehab, he’s ready to return to work – pretending he’s in better shape than he is. He’s not fit enough for SWAT anymore, so he’s switching to the K-9 squad.

At the end of his training he meets Maggie, a German Shepherd who was formerly a bomb sniffing dog in Afghanistan. She lost her partner and was wounded too, and is hostile to anyone who’s not “pack.” But something in her touches Scott, and he gets permission to try her as his partner. They’re both on probation, they both have PTSD, and they’re not entirely ready for service.

Scott starts digging into the ambush where his partner was killed, and begins to suspect police involvement and a cover-up. Keeping his head down while trying to camouflage his own (and his dog’s) physical shortcomings, he walks a dangerous path. But the man has a Best Friend.

Exciting, gripping, and deeply moving, Suspect is a tremendously entertaining read. Crais has taken a risk in writing a stand-alone not related to his Cole and Pike novels, but he succeeds completely. Highly recommended, with the usual cautions for adult themes and language.

Authors, Fiction

Miller’s Liebowitz Still Worth Reading

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Here’s an essay of author Walter M. Miller and his classic apocalyptic novel A Canticle for Leibowitz. “Along with Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles,” “A Canticle for Leibowitz” was one of the first novels to escape from the science-fiction ghetto and become a staple of high-school reading lists.”

Within the cathedral of post-apocalyptic and dystopian literature, there ought to be a small sanctum reserved for books produced out of the author’s personal experience with cataclysmic events. Other works that fit into this niche include Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five,” which was inspired by the writer having witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden, and “The Forever War,” Joe Haldeman’s 1974 novel, which drew directly on his tour of duty in Vietnam.

(via Books, Inq.)

Coffee, Tea, Drinks

Do You Take Fascism With Your Coffee?

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Swiss retailer Migros is apologizing profusely over distributing coffee creamers with images of Hitler and Mussolini on the lids. The creamers were designed to resemble cigar bands with the likenesses of many different people, including the two dictators. The company responsible for the designs doesn’t see a problem with. Why should it matter if Hitler’s face appears on a coffee creamer lid? they said. But Migros said it is an “inexcusable blunder” that should never have been delivered.

If I received one of these as a customer in a restaurant, I’d laugh it off and wonder if I was being poisoned, but if I was a businessman responsible for selling them, I think I’d fire someone.

Authors, Religion

Marilynne Robinson and American Fiction

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Casey Cep wrote, “Marilynne Robinson is one of the great religious novelists, not only of our age, but any age. Reading her new novel Lila, one wonders how critics could worry that American fiction has lost its faith, though such worries make one think there might well have been wedding guests at Cana who complained about the shortage of water after witnessing the miracle with wine.” (via Alan Jacobs)

Religion

Would That They Were Actually Pagan?

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C. S. Lewis wrote, “When grave persons express their fear that England is relapsing into Paganism, I am tempted to reply, `Would that she were.’” Because pagans have been shown to be convertible to Christianity, but post-Christians have shown more resistance. Pagans appeal to gods who cannot hear them and suffer for it. Post-Christians still benefit from the God they rejected and believe they have earned all they receive. Lewis wished we could find our spiritual poverty again so that we would see the riches to be found in Christ Jesus.

Today Englishman Bob Davey has taken up saving an abandoned church in Norfolk from local pagans. After cleaning up the church, he worked over the graveyard. “But even after he had driven the Devil from the door, still his acolytes returned. On every Witches’ Sabbath – special dates in the Pagan calendar – Mr Davey spent the night camped out in the church, on guard duty.” It can get ugly.

Meanwhile, “The Church of England is trying to recruit pagans and spiritual believers as part of a drive to retain congregation numbers.”

Goofing

Laughter Worth Sharing: Jimmy Fallon

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Here’s a strong example of Jimmy Fallon’s great interviewing technique. He’s talking with Bradley Cooper about The Elephant Man, a play Cooper says inspired him to become an actor. Watch and learn, friends.

Religion

Announcing a New Spurgeon Center

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This just in. Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has begun to build a center to house it’s a extensive collection of documents from the great preacher Charles H. Spurgeon and offer space for lectures and study. They’re calling it the Charles Spurgeon Center for Biblical Preaching.

Authors, Non-fiction

Asimov on Creativity

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A 1959 essay on creativity by Issac Asimov, that has not been published, has been released by a friend at MIT. In it, Asimov talks about the origin of the theory of evolution, which he says was devised by two men independently, Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace.

A person willing to fly in the face of reason, authority, and common sense must be a person of considerable self-assurance. Since he occurs only rarely, he must seem eccentric (in at least that respect) to the rest of us. A person eccentric in one respect is often eccentric in others.

Consequently, the person who is most likely to get new ideas is a person of good background in the field of interest and one who is unconventional in his habits. (To be a crackpot is not, however, enough in itself.)

He goes on to say a team hoping to develop great new ideas needs to become comfortable with each other and inspire each other to look forward. (via Prufrock)

Authors, Fiction

The Primeval Glory of War

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Janie Cheaney talks about war in the context of Andrew Peterson’s fourth book in The Wingfeather Saga. Do Christian novelists simplify and glorify it? “While most wars are wasteful and pointless, some are not. And ugly and terrifying as it is, battle seems to have an almost primeval appeal, especially to men. It’s as if they are called to find out what’s in them: savagery or heroism, unspeakable cruelty or self-sacrifice, the best or the worst.”

It’s a strong desire to live for something large. Perhaps that’s how we currently express the eternity God has set in our hearts “yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). That yearning for glory easily yields to the lust of our pride, making our desire to live for something big subservient to a desire to live a self-directed life, and in doing so we end up fighting over selfish things or for unwise causes. Lars’ latest novel, Death’s Doors, deals with this in that there’s a real battle over life and death raging around the characters, but their perspectives are too self-centered to see it for a while.

Writing

November Is National Novel Writing Month

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Men's LacrosseEveryone has a novel in them, they say. And those works of art or escapism should be published for everyone to read. Apparently, millions and millions of books are being published in the US every year. A small percentage of those books are novels (or fiction novels, as some call them). A very small percentage of the novels published over the last three or four years have depicted the world in chaos as Harry Potter and his friends discover they have been left behind in a uniquely British rapture.

A little under 200,000 people profess to be writers in the US. The rest are too ashamed to admit it. The latter are mostly the ones who participate in library-sponsored parties for NaNoWriMo writers, where anyone can gather with other strangers for a few hours to scribble or type at the first of at least 50,000 words. They will be hear great advice, like this from Chris Baty:

  • Jot down the names of your characters to stop a Mike becoming Matt or Mick as you write.
  • Eat peppermints: a Nasa-funded study showed the peppermint plant increased alertness by 30 per cent.
  • Go outdoors with a newspaper, a pen and a notebook. Close your eyes. When you open them spot ‘Your Person’ and write down everything about them. Close your eyes. Open your paper on a random page and let your finger choose a spot. Open your eyes. The thing you’re pointing to has a link to the person you just collected. Work it into your next chapter.

Many will say, “Just get it written.” They may insist, “The story must get out of you.” But let these stats depress you. And while you’re thinking over your plans for next month’s exercise, ask yourself whether your story is worth pursuing.

“Nine times out of ten, your idea is really quite mediocre and has been done before, actually a number of times and in a number of different ways,” Laurie Scheer states, but you haven’t read those stories. You’re just invested in your own. What still lies before you is the biggest challenge for all writers today: whether you want to write or to have written.

Go ahead and write 50,000 words next month, and if you love it enough to keep at it, then keep writing. Words are awesome. If you don’t love it, maybe you can organize that library party into a community lacrosse team.