We’ve raved about Andrew Klavan’s series … well, we’ve raved about almost everything he’s written and about him personally. We can’t hide our admiration. We’re crazy about him.
A couple years ago, he released the first novel in the Cameron Winter series, When Christmas Comes. Lars said, “If Graham Greene had written A Christmas Carol, it might have turned out something like [this].”
Last year, the second novel was released. A Strange Habit of Mind is a compelling story of justice and love. My fear is that “Poetry boy” is going to get it in the teeth next time around. (If you know, you know.)
And by the end of October, book three will be upon us. Publishers Weekly calls The House of Love and Death “complex,” “gripping,” and “a penetrating mystery with a plot that cuts straight to the dark heart of some of modern America’s most pressing issues.”
I just finished listening to the Highbridge audiobook of A Strange Habit of Mind, and the memory of it is pressing me to pre-order The House of Love and Death. Klavan’s writing is gripping, especially when I compare it to my other recent reading. He doesn’t just communicate efficiently, like I might do sometimes. He draws you in. I can’t quote him precisely, but there’s a moment when an adorable student is praising Prof. Winter’s lecture and she pauses to choose just the right word to describe her impression then uses the same word every other student uses in that situation. I love it.
If you pre-order The House of Love and Death, you’ll help push it on to the NY Times bestseller list which will help sustain the series for many books to come. I’m sure you’re the kind of person who would want to do something like that. The generous sort. A warm-hearted, salt-of-the-earth type, that’s you.
I’ve written mixed reviews of Peter Rowlands’ Mike Stanhope novels in the past, and my criticisms of his plotting actually attracted the author’s personal attention in our comments. So I’m happy to report that The Concrete Ceiling, the fourth novel in the series, is (in my opinion) far better than the previous offerings.
Mike Stanhope, freelance English journalist in the Logistics field, is troubled on two fronts. First of all, he’s convinced his relationship with his girlfriend Ashley is dead on its feet. Not only do they seem to be avoiding each other lately, but his commute between Wales (where he’s moved to be with her) and London, where his work is centered, is interfering with his ability to support himself. His second concern is with his self-published novel, which resolutely refuses to leap onto the bestseller lists. (I hear that.)
He’s also thinking more and more about Samantha, a girl he met on another of his adventures. But she’s engaged now, to a go-getting young man who seems to be on his way to bigger things.
Mike is contacted by a cousin of Samantha’s, who has also self-published a novel. He’s wondering whether he should hire a web-based service that promises to promote his book. Mike looks into the service, finding that it looks too good to be true. Nevertheless, in a moment of desperation, he signs on with the service himself. Time passes, and nothing seems to happen. But when Mike goes to see the service’s owner in his home, to try to find out what’s happening, he finds the man dead – and the police suspect him.
This is just the beginning of a complex story, in which many threads converge at last. Author Rowlands does a pretty good job of bringing it all together logically, and I’m delighted to report that this plot depends a whole lot less on “dumb luck” to rescue the hapless hero than previous stories did. One plot twist actually made me laugh in pleasure. Also, as always, the prose is very good.
It’s a personal thing, but I always dislike it when a series hero meets the love of his life in the first story, then drops her for another woman. This probably says more about my personal hangups than about the real requirements of a good story. I’m just mentioning it.
All in all, I was pleased with The Concrete Ceiling, and I recommend it. Only minor cautions for rough language.
And I suddenly realized that I had gone well beyond the point of choice. Even if I changed my mind and decided to fall in step with everybody else, it was now too late. Only in the animated cartoons could a small creature fall off a mountain, look down, register surprise, and climb back up through the empty air to safety.
As great a fan as I am of John D. MacDonald’s work, there are some of his books I’m not going to read again. Some of them are his explicitly environmental stories – though much of what he says is true, especially in deploring the over-development of Florida. But in that regard I’m like the people who say, “My parents dragged me to church every Sunday when I was a kid, and I’m never going back.”
The other MacDonald books I avoid are ones that just left too intense an impression. Dark stories with dark accounts of the suffering of the innocent. MacDonald is never a slasher writer, but his very skill makes the sorrow and the pity harder to bear.
The End of the Night is a book I hadn’t read before now, and I won’t be reading again – for that reason alone. But it’s still an excellent story of its kind. Part thriller, part horror tale. Dark, but excellently done.
The End of the Night opens in a way that informs you from the start exactly what you’re in for. We read a description of the executions, by electrocution, of four young people – a quirky, maladjusted mastermind, a big, thuggish Hispanic man, a slatternly girl, and a nice-looking young man from a “good family.” We learn that they were captured in the midst of a multi-state murder spree during which they killed several men and kidnapped and murdered a lovely, wealthy young woman a few days before her wedding.
The story is told in the words of several story participants, but mainly through the self-conscious memoir of the defense attorney and the final written confession of the “nice” young man. Chapter by chapter the story unfolds, evoking a rising sense of horror in the reader.
I half expected this book to be a plain condemnation of the death penalty, but it’s more complex than that. Although we know the ending, the road to that ending includes more than one surprise. What look, to the modern reader, like echoes of the Manson Family killings are actually unwitting prophecy, as the book was published in 1960.
Recommended, with cautions for intense, mature situations.
“All for Jesus” performed by Covenant College Alumni, Students, Staff and Facuilty
Today’s hymn in our theme of faith comes from New Jersey writer Mary D. James (1810-1883). “All for Jesus” is a confession of devotion in light of the Lord’s excellencies.
“Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (Romans 6:13-14 ESV).
1 All for Jesus! All for Jesus! All my being’s ransomed pow’rs, all my thoughts and words and doings, all my days and all my hours.
2 Let my hands perform his bidding, let my feet run in his ways; let my eyes see Jesus only, let my lips speak forth his praise.
3 Worldlings prize their gems of beauty, cling to gilded toys of dust, boast of wealth and fame and pleasure; only Jesus will I trust.
4 Since my eyes were fixed on Jesus, I’ve lost sight of all beside; so enchained my spirit’s vision, looking at the Crucified.
5 O what wonder! How amazing! Jesus, glorious King of kings, deigns to call me his beloved, lets me rest beneath his wings.
Fascism is a 1921 word that came from the Italian name for Mussolini’s anit-communist party, Partito Nazionale Fascista. The word Fascista actually means “political group,” but fascism has come to mean a particularly nasty political group because of its connection to the Mussolini’s policies. They were the Black Shirts, dedicated to what my 1953 Webster’s defines as a “program for setting up a centralized autocratic national regime with severely nationalistic policies, exercising regimentation of industry, commerce, and finance, rigid censorship, and forcible suppression of opposition.”
Curious that today the word seems mostly applied to those who rally for beliefs with which we disagree. No forcible suppression, just public argument, and—boom—you’re a fascist. A whole political party is committed to overregulation of industry and commerce, but no, it’s the homeschool moms who are fascists. Climate change is the reason they want to take away your gas stove, but is that fascism? Stop being silly. It’s only fascism with other people do it.
This word like many others is used without meaning, showing our society to be closer to Orwell’s 1984 doublespeak than anyone wants to believe.
Book Banning: Maybe the problem isn’t that someone complains about a book, but that public schools exist at all. Neal McCluskey writes, “The very idea of ‘neutral’ education—education that favors no idea or worldview—is not itself neutral. Elevating ‘neutrality’ over worldviews that believe that some things are inherently good and others inherently bad, and that children should be taught what those are, is a values‐driven decision, concluding that neutrality more valuable than teaching some things are right and others wrong.”
Comic books: Penguin Classics is publishing a Marvel collection of $45 hardback reproductions of the silver age stories of X-Men, The Avengers, and Fantastic Four. But wait, there’s more! They released three such editions last year: Captain America, Black Panther, and The Amazing Spider-Man. Gosh! Who could’ve thought they’d do something like that?
(Photo: The Donut Hole, La Puente, California. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.)
I was not aware until a couple days ago that the great Roger Whittaker died Wednesday, Sept. 13, at his home in France. At a certain time in my life, his music meant a whole lot to me, and I still listen to it with a thrill.
The song, “The Last Farewell,” was actually the result of a contest on a TV program Whittaker hosted. Audience members were encouraged to write and submit songs, and the best would be performed on the air. TLF, of course, possessed special magic.
The song itself is about a sailor during the 20 Years’ War, who falls in love with a West Indian girl and has to go back to sea.
By the way, I might mention that I’ll be at Norsk Hostfest in Minot, ND next week. Look for me in the Viking Village. My posting after Monday will be sporadic or nonexistent.
Former football star, current private eye Burnside (no first name given) once vowed never to take a job just for the money. But that was before he fell in love with a woman whom he’s now planning to marry. And weddings cost money. At the beginning of Safety Valve, Cliff Roper, an arrogant and abrasive sports agent Burnside has tangled with before, offers him $10,000 to find out who fired some shots at his former partner, Gilbert Horne, with whom he broke up publicly and angrily. The police suspect Roper, and he’s got the NFL draft coming up; no time for this. So Burnside swallows his pride and agrees to look into the matter.
What he finds is a hive of southern California drama. The rich and beautiful are seducing one another, cheating one another, jockeying for status, and nurturing all the criminal motives any crime writer could ask for. And when Horne turns up murdered, even Burnside comes under suspicion. Now solving the crime is a matter of survival.
I’ve read other books in the Burnside series. Safety Valve is only the fourth, and it seems to me author David Chill still hadn’t quite hit his stride yet. The prose isn’t bad, but he occasionally falls into errors like “a myriad of” or “hold the reigns.” There’s some lazy phrasing too, that could use closer editing.
I also thought the plot in this one a little loose. Still, I enjoyed the book as I’ve enjoyed the others in the series. Burnside is a sort of cut-rate Spenser, but the books are competent and entertaining. And they get better as they go along.
“it’s like they say, a small world,” Jeranna said. They both stood and smiled at him. Though the mouths and the faces were in no way alike, there was a chilling similarity in the smiles. They looked at him with a kind of joyous malevolence, an innocent evil, like two small savage boys—one holding the cat and the other holding the kerosene.
Before he struck gold with Travis McGee, the great John D. MacDonald wrote a variety of novels in paperback. He could – and did – work in several genres, and some of the product is astonishing in terms of its market(s). Your average paperback in those days was full of sex and violence (though tame by our standards today), with a gaudy cover. Aimed at male readers (back in the days when men read books, just so long as they weren’t too highbrow).
But MacDonald smuggled some pretty impressive literature into that market. One of his best novels, I think, is Slam the Big Door, which was published in 1960, three years before Travis McGee appeared. It’s a kind of novel very few authors are able (or interested enough) to write – a business thriller.
Mike Rodenska first met Troy Jamison in a military hospital during the war. They bonded as only war buddies can. After the war, Mike became a successful journalist, while Troy went into advertising, also doing well. They lived near one another and socialized often, with their wives. Then alcohol and infidelity destroyed Troy’s career and marriage, and he wandered off to Florida, where he became a builder and married a second wife, a rich woman.
When Troy learns that Mike’s beloved wife has died of cancer, he invites him to come down and stay in their home. Heal up in the Florida sunshine. And it is good there.
But Mike suffers from “the Rodenska curse,” some character trait that impels people to confide their problems to him. And Troy, it turns out, has plenty of problems. He’s drinking again. He’s cheating on his beautiful wife. And the development project he’s sunk their money into is being nibbled away at by avaricious local real estate sharks – he and his wife could lose anything.
Mike can’t help trying to intervene, to save Troy. But can you help a man whose personal devils are driving him to self-destruction? They didn’t talk about PTSD back when Slam the Big Door was written, but that’s the problem here. There will be trouble. Trust will be betrayed, lives will be lost, but some kind of peace will be achieved in the end.
I was very impressed with Slam the Big Door. It demonstrated – it seemed to me – that MacDonald could have done anything he wanted to in the literary world. He could have been up there with Hemingway. But you know what? I think we would have lost something if he had. MacDonald elevated his genre – paved the way for other writers who aspired (and aspire) to produce genuine literature in the mystery/thriller form.
Another thing I liked about this book is that – although there’s a fair amount of sex – there’s no swinging philosophy apparent. Sex is taken seriously, and adultery condemned. I suppose that was just an expression of the times.
Also, Mike Rodenska is a really good point of view character.
In short, I highly recommend Slam the Big Door. This is a fine novel.
The threats raised in The Second Wave continue to swell in the third book of Tom Reynold’s Meta Superhero series, Rise of the Circle. Connor Connolly’s hometown, Bay View City, is under lockdown by a superpowered tactical team which had been working for The Agency until opportunity turned them into the very beings they opposed. Now, Alpha Team is forcing all other Metas out of the city upon threat of execution.
Connor doesn’t want to leave, because that feels like giving up, but he does for his and his brother’s safety. And also because his high school was destroyed and he needs to keep up the appearance that he’s still a 16-year-old nerd.
Without spoiling the story, I want to praise Reynold’s plotting and tension. The good part of this book is the narrative intensity that carries smoothly from the last book–high, original stakes and dangerous villains. Superman isn’t saving Lois for a third time here. The personal stakes arise naturally, and the main villains are legitimately terrifying.
But this is the weakest of the three books for a few reasons, the biggest of which is all the explanation. There’s the new school, secret Meta training, lots of new people to meet, new teenage dynamics, and too much stuff to explain. We learn a lot in this book. Did we need all of it?
Another reason I mentioned in the previous review. The narrator tends to state the obvious. I could rephrase that as the author not trusting his readers. There’s a point in which the hero needs to hide, so he ducks out and allows others to cover for him. The bad guys come in and ask if anyone else is here. The following line, as I remember it, goes, “‘We’re the only ones here,’ he lied.” It’s just one word of explanation, but really? That scene sticks out because of all that came before it.
More than the other books, this story feels propelled by the hero’s need to do something. He can’t play it safe, and he knows doing something will likely get him killed, but this is a Very Bad Situation and someone must do something. A couple of these scenes of compelled response look like the characters have read the script, which is never good.
I guess the vital question today is, “Do I think about the Roman Empire every day?” It’s the new “Am I a real man?”
I’ve pondered this topic. I think it all depends on what you mean by “thinking about.” I think about Western Civilization quite a lot – especially how it’s declining. That inevitably brings thoughts of Rome now and then.
But if it means, “Do I sit and ponder the glories (or failures) of the Roman Empire every day?”, no, I don’t think I do.
Being me, of course, I do think quite a lot about King Canute’s Dano-English empire, especially these days.
I have two stories to report on tonight: “Stuf’s Tale,” and “The Tale of Thorarin Short-Cloak.”
These are short tales, and not very complex. Both involve Icelandic skalds in encounters with the redoubtable King Harald Hardrada. I can only conclude from them that Harald had a soft spot for skalds (he wasn’t a bad skald himself) and put up with a lot of guff from them he would have killed ordinary guys for.
Stuf was unusual in that he was blind, but apparently he had an adventurous spirit, and he voyaged to Norway to collect an inheritance. There, we are told, he got lodgings with a Norwegian farmer. One day the farmer spies some richly dressed men riding toward the farm, and he’s surprised to learn that King Harald has decided to spend the night with him. He warns the king (no doubt with considerable trepidation) that he’s not prepared for the kind of hospitality a king expects. Harald tells him never mind, it’s just a passing visit on other business.
While Harald is waiting for supper in the house, he asks Stuf his name, and they get into a discussion about names which leads to Stuf more or less insulting the king – though only by implication. Oddly, Harald enjoys this exchange and asks him to sit up with him. Stuf then entertains him by reciting a surprising number of poems he’s memorized. He persuades the king to give him a sealed letter to help him in his inheritance case. Later on, he’s able to become a member of Harald’s household and he writes him a formal poem.
The Tale of Thorarin Short-Cloak is, like the cloak, very short. King Harald and his men are sitting outside the church, waiting for evensong, having prepared themselves for worship by getting drunk in a tavern. Harald composes a mocking short poem about the short cloak Thorarin, an innocent bystander, is wearing, and Thorarin comes right back with a poem about how he’d happily accept a longer one as a gift from the king. Harald tells him to see him the next morning.
When Thorarin arrives at the hall, there’s a man waiting for him outside with a horn of ale. He tells Thorarin that before he gets any further, the king wants him to write a satirical poem about some guy named Hakon Suet-hood (otherwise unknown to historians, I believe). Thorarin composes the poem, but when he recites it for Harald, Harald says he never asked for any such thing. The aforementioned Hakon, apparently a good sport, welcomes Thorarin into his company. He asks Thorarin, as his penance, to compose another satire about a man named Arni. This Arni, unlike Hakon, takes offense and tries to kill Thorarin, but Hakon protects him. Finally, Thorarin gets the opportunity to recite his own formal poem for Harald, who gives him money and tells him to come back and see him when he returns from Rome (where he’s headed on a pilgrimage).
Like the last skald’s tales I described, Stuf’s and Thorarin’s aren’t much in terms of plot or excitement. They’re celebrity encounter anecdotes, and (in my view) their very artlessness argues for some basis in real events. Stuf has particular bragging rights in having insulted the most feared monarch in Europe and getting away with it – plus he got the king’s autograph.
