Fiction, Reviews

‘Slam the Big Door,’ by John D. MacDonald

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“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.

Fiction, Reviews

Rise of the Circle by Tom Reynolds

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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.

Here’s hoping the fourth book is much better.

Fiction, Non-fiction, Reviews

Skald’s tales: ‘Stuf’s Tale’ and ‘Thorarin Short-Cloak’

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Coin of Harald Hardrada. Public domain.

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.

Which brings us to The Complete Sagas of the Icelanders, through which I am working my way at no particular speed.

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.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Forgotten Children,’ by James Hunt

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James Hunt, author of The Forgotten Children, is the kind of writer who knows the story he wants to tell, but hasn’t worked out yet how to tell it. The story itself kept me reading, but the writing had me tearing my hair.

Jim North is a Seattle police detective who, with his partner Kerry Martin, works missing persons cases. The worst are the missing kid cases. When they’re called out to a family home one morning, the scene is doubly bad – the two parents have been shot to death, while their son – a foster child they’d been in the process of adopting – has disappeared.

But it gets worse. Soon there are two more double murders, with attempts to abduct the children – though one child escapes. What links them together is that all the children were adopted from a particular local orphanage. When Jim and Kerry arrive there, they encounter defensiveness and veiled hostility from most of the staff.

For Jim, cases like this are personal. He was himself a foster child and carries great bitterness about the things he suffered in the system. When his birth father – who was an evil man – died and left him a fortune, Jim entrusted the money to a foundation for foster kids, the management of which he leaves to its staff.

Jim’s empathy for the kids helps him identify clues that will in time lead them to a shocking truth.

Author Hunt is clearly passionate about his subject. But the story would have been more effective with better writing. His major failing, in my opinion, is overwriting. Like many insecure writers, he doesn’t trust the reader to take a hint. He has to lay everything out, then explain it again to make sure we get it. The characters’ personalities are described rather than demonstrated through words and actions (though, annoyingly, very little physical description is provided). The phraseology is often awkward, as in “And their city was just one cog in the giant wheel churning orphans through a revolving door.” Also, the dialogue was pretty stilted – even awkwardly theatric in the dramatic scenes.

Also, the author handled the solution in an odd way – the true culprit turned out to be no surprise at all, though there was a surprise twist afterward.

But… I did read The Forgotten Children all the way through. So the book wasn’t a narrative failure. All things considered, though, I don’t recommend it very highly.

Music

Sunday Singing: Hold On

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Today’s hymn is a spiritual with many variations and no date of publication. “Hold on,” also called “Gospel Plow,” speaks of persevering in the faith, which doesn’t take fine theological acumen to do.

Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:61-62 ESV).

Keep your hand on that plow,
Hold on! Hold on!

Noah, Noah, let me come in,
Doors all fastened and the windows pinned,
Keep your hand on that plow,
Hold on! Hold on!
Noah said, “You done lost your track,
Can’t plow straight and keep a-lookin’ back,”
Keep your hand on that plow,
Hold on! Hold on!

Hold on! Hold on! Hold on!
Keep your hand on that plow,
Hold on! Hold on!

If you wanna get to Heaven,
let me tell you how:
Just keep your hand on the gospel plow,
Keep your hand on that plow,
Hold on! Hold on!
If that plow stays in your hand,
It’ll land you into the promised land!
Keep your hand on that plow,
Hold on! Hold on!

Mary had a golden chain,
Every link spelled with Jesus’ name.
Keep your hand on that plow,
Hold on! Hold on!
Keep on climbing and don’t you tire
Every rung goes higher and higher
Keep your hand on that plow,
Hold on! Hold on!

Here’s a faster version from the great Mahalia Jackson.

Blogs, Socials, Bookselling, Reading

Lighting Up Your Neighbor to Recover Your Book and Other Useful Ideas

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In his 1912 book about books and bookselling, Joseph Shaylor repeats a story about bookdealer in Barcelona who had particular methods for maintaining his inventory. “Don Vincent, . . . on his own confession was arraigned for the murder of customers who had bought from him rare and precious editions which he thus recovered, and on more than one occasion ‘set fire to the house of a rival, so that in the confusion he could secure some unique rarity of which he could not otherwise have been possessed.'”

He said there was another collector who bought a rare book at a high price. When someone suggested he bought the book in order to reprint it, the collector said, “Heaven forbid! If I were to, it would no longer be scarce and would therefore be valueless; besides, I doubt if the volume is worth re-printing.”

Friends, if you feel the temptation to do something like this, get help. Don’t live with the shame of bibliomania alone. Share it with others.

These home library ideas may also help. Number 2 is so moving it’s hard to scroll past it. Architectural Digest has warm-warming ideas too.

Chekhov: Hai Di Nguyen points to some stories in which Chekhov humanizes his characters through shame. We probably need more shame, more human humility, in real life.

Religion: A year ago today, “22-year-old Mahsa Amini died after being arrested by Iran’s morality police for wearing her hijab ‘improperly’.” Now, millions of Iranian women reportedly refuse to wear a hijab in public.

Evangelism: Here’s a post on a book about making “evangelism a less intimidating” by rethinking the goal and asking questions.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything,’ by John D. MacDonald

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“Sit over there,” she said, indicating a fake Victorian couch upholstered in shiny plastic under a fake Utrillo upon an imitation driftwood wall.

***

He was a loose, asthmatic, scurfy man with the habitual expression of someone having his leg removed without anesthetic.

If the lines above remind you a little of P. G. Wodehouse, I think that’s intentional. The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything is a unique work in John D. MacDonald’s corpus – basically a sex farce wrapped around a lighthearted science fiction/fantasy plot. I loved it as a young man. Re-reading it now (I had a sudden compulsion to do so) I still found it amusing – though elements that troubled me on my first reading are even more troublous today, so much has the world changed.

Kirby Winter’s uncle Omar, eccentric Miami inventor and financier, has died, leaving his nephew in something of a pickle. Kirby is a presentable, rather dull young man whose main personal problem is utter shyness and panic in the presence of girls (generally with slapstick consequences). On his death, Uncle Omar left Kirby his pocket watch and a letter to be opened a year after his passing, and ordered all his records destroyed. Now his business partners and the authorities are looking for 12 million missing dollars, which Kirby was the last one to have in his possession. His (true) protestations that he’s been giving the money away to charities and the poor, on Omar’s instructions, are not believed. So the police are looking for him.

To his rescue – ostensibly – come sexy Charla O’Rourke and her slick brother Joseph, who offer Kirby a means of escape on their yacht. Before long, Kirby realizes that their plans for him are not friendly. They want to get him somewhere where they can torture him until he tells them where the money is.

Kirby escapes them, and through a couple chance connections ends up in a swinging Hollywood director’s vacant apartment. There – to his complete surprise – he finds himself in bed one night with Bonny Lee Beaumont, a free-spirited young stripper with whom he quickly falls in love. But Kirby is concerned about Wilma, Uncle Omar’s only other employee, who will certainly be another target for the O’Rourkes. His plans to rescue her seem hopeless, until he discovers the secret of Uncle Omar’s watch, a way to make time stand still. Literally.

The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything is intended as a fun book, and it is. I loved it when I first read it (around 1980, I think). The central problem of the book is not in fact Kirby’s legal trouble, but his shyness with women. This appealed to me very much at that time in my life. But I had trouble with some of the practical gags in the book, employed as tactical diversions – particularly ones involving stripping women while time is stopped, so that they suddenly find themselves naked in public. That struck me as pretty cruel, even in those swinging times (though it’s Bonny Lee who usually plays the gag, which makes it a little less creepy). In today’s Me Too environment, of course, a writer couldn’t get away with that stuff at all.

The sex element in the book was generally more prominent than I remembered. Not explicit sex, but a fair amount of bed time and nakedness. Also a lot of Swinging Sixties pseudo-philosophy about how sex ought to be free and natural, untrammeled by traditional taboos and mores and legalities. That stuff was pretty much boiler plate in paperback literature at the time, but it has aged poorly. (Though I’m not sure things still weren’t better then than what we’ve got now.)

As an addendum, a TV movie was made of this book in 1980, starring Robert Hayes (of Airplane!), Pam Dawber (of Mork & Mindy), and Jill Ireland. The sex and nudity were toned down, of course, but what disappointed me was that they completely cut out what I considered the true heart of the story – Kirby’s overcoming of his shyness. This is precisely why MacDonald hated pretty much all filmed adaptations of his works.

In summation, I highly recommend The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything as a light read for grownups – with cautions for vintage adult material.

Publishing, Reading, Writing

‘The boring truth about the Library of Alexandria.’

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Today, I’m reading a book I’m enjoying very much. Actually I’m re-reading it – it’s an old favorite. I hope to review it tomorrow.

How’s the writing going? Not bad. Today I got back to laying down text, after several days doing research on Caithness and Orkney, where my characters are bound. I reached 50,000 words, which is half the length I’ve imagined for the book. So that’s on course.

Also, I finished revisions on a magazine article I was commissioned to do. This means, I’m reasonably sure, that I’ll have some money coming in at some point. Also a good thing.

Above, a nice YouTube video I found, on the Library of Alexandria. I remember a teacher in high school telling us about the great tragedy of its loss. According to this presentation, that’s all been overblown. Often by people who have have axes to grind (even some axes I grind myself now and then). But there’s less there than meets the eye, it would appear. No doubt much knowledge has been lost through the centuries, but the cataclysmic holocaust at Alexandria seems to be scholarly folklore.

It’s kind of comforting to know that scholars have their popular fallacies too.

Fiction, Reviews

Two Books in Which Alien Armlets Give Anyone Amazing Abilities

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A review of Meta and The Second Wave by Tom Reynolds

Connor Connolly, 16, didn’t actually want to be at the party deep in the woods, because that crowd never accepted him. His only friend talks him into it, but after a couple conversations, he leaves. That puts him nearby as a murderer drags a child away to her death. He tries to intervene, gets stabbed, and wakes up a few minutes later with alien wristbands that grant enhanced abilities.

Meta bands are the source of all superpowers on Earth. No one knows where they came from, and maybe a few people know how they work. They made their first public appearance over a decade ago, but after a cataclysmic event called The Battle, the public story said they all went dead. When Connor wakes up with a new set, he realizes he can take another shot at that murderer.

In Meta, the teenaged hero narrates his story of finding power, keeping secrets, finding a mentor (a Batman-type), testing his abilities, and confronting threats. Compelled to act when he sees people in trouble, he stumbles through increasingly difficult trials before fighting a creatively powerful villain at the end. His Meta bands don’t give him just one power but a variety of them, including an ability to freeze which comes up conveniently and isn’t mentioned again. The media dub him Omni, because of his multiple abilities, and you’d think new ones would come later, but by the end of the book, you’ll have seen everything he can do. I enjoyed it as a standard origin story.

The Second Wave picks up a few months after the first book with some observations on the practicalities of superness. Many new people have Meta bands now, and many of them don’t want to do hero work. Connor continues to make a name for himself as Omni by spotting these new criminals and taking them down efficiently.

Silver Island, the prison for people who misuse their Meta bands, has been working overtime to lock them away for good. The organization that manages it uses traditional government logic to handle the volatile people they catch and the Metas they work with. Some of them would like to just execute anyone they’ve prejudged as being a Meta who has misused power. We see the same rationale at street level with armed, volunteer SWAT teams patrolling their neighborhoods, looking for criminals who have powered down. The city has become a powder keg, and the good guys may be striking matches.

In this book, some significant events happen off-stage, and when they are revealed through heated accusations, they can come across as fabrications. That was my first impression, since I had nothing with which to verify them. Having gotten into the third book now, I assume the accusations are true, but it seems a bit much to roll with it. The story we have does a good job increasing the danger of villain confrontations, so I wouldn’t call these side events a plot hole.

The biggest deficit to both books is the first-person narrative. The sixteen-year-old narrator sounds realistic, sure, by stating the obvious frequently and overexplaining. Sometimes stating the obvious is played as a joke, but in the context of so much overexplanation, it isn’t funny. But the sequel doesn’t repeat the plot points of the first, such as Kid Super makes dopey mistakes with his new powers but prevails in the end, only to return to dopey mistakes in the next book. This young man is slowly maturing.

Both Meta and The Second Wave are fun books, and I’m already into the third one.

(Photo by Scott Evans on Unsplash)

Fiction, Reviews

‘Denial of Credit,’ by Peter Rowlands

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We’ve had an interesting time in recent weeks with Peter Rowlands’ Mike Stanhope novels. I read and reviewed the first two in the series, giving my opinion that the prose is good, the characterizations so-so, but the plotting weak. I had a surprise when author Rowlands himself showed up in our comments, a little stung by my criticisms but encouraging me to try the next book. So I bought and read Denial of Credit. It was, indeed, a better story – though I still have quibbles.

Mike Stanhope is an English journalist in the field of transportation and logistics. In the first book, he met and fell in love with Ashley, who lives in Cornwall, and he moved there to be near her. But they both have cold feet now about their relationship, and the problems of working remotely, far from London, add to the friction. Mike’s income has decreased, and he’s feeling the pinch.

Then he hears from a famous business mogul named Alan Treadwell. Treadwell is supposedly retired, and he wants a ghostwriter for his autobiography. It’s not an appealing offer, as Treadwell is famously hard to work with. But Mike isn’t in any position to turn work down.

The man proves just as difficult as the rumors say. He has definite ideas about how he wants the book to go, and specific instructions about whom Mike should talk to – and not talk to. But Mike is incurably – somewhat self-destructively – curious. He sniffs around in forbidden places, and what he learns will put him and others in danger.

My major complaint about the last book – the repeated need for lucky passersby to scare Mike’s attackers off before they kill him – was less of a problem here. Mike does have a couple fortuitous escapes, but they’re more complex than before, which makes them more acceptable in narrative terms. I think the characterizations are still a little underbaked, but I can’t deny the book held my complete attention all the way to the end.

One thing I like in these books is that they deal with the business world in an informed, nuanced way. Very few novelists are in a position to do this (John D. MacDonald was a sterling exception).

The book ends in a cliffhanger, but it’s part of a subplot line, so I don’t object to that.

Denial of Credit wasn’t perfect, but I enjoyed it and recommend it.