Fiction, Reviews

‘The Supremacy License,’ by Alan Lee

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(Back from Høstfest in Minot. No incidents to report, and my book sales were excellent. Remind me to tell you someday about being a “Høstfest VIP,” which isn’t as good as it sounds.)

I have complained more than once about novels that seem intended to compete with mindless Hollywood thrillers – stories where the hero races from one violent confrontation to another, shrugging off “flesh wounds,” shaking his head and recovering immediately from head trauma, crashing cars and blowing up buildings rapidly enough to prevent the reader from pondering the improbability of the whole frothy concoction.

However, it’s possible for the Hollywood thriller novel to work as light entertainment – if the author has writing skill and a sense of humor. Those qualities won me over almost immediately as I read The Supremacy License.

Our main character is Manny Martinez, code name “Sinatra,” whom I knew previously from author Lee’s Mackenzie August novels (which I also like very much). Manny is an improbable character, a former gang member, drug addict and convict who has cleaned his life up to become the most gung-ho, super-American US Marshal ever. He has devils he wrestles with, but his friendship with Mack, his job, and his love of country keep him on the straight path. He is also, we are reminded, devastatingly attractive to women and a deadly fighter.

As the story opens, Manny is summoned to a meeting with high-level FBI agents. They offer him a job – not full time but sort of on-call – as a special agent for a super-secret domestic black ops group. He would be helping to eliminate criminals so dangerous the government can’t even acknowledge their existence. His partner, oddly, would be Noelle Beck, a demure Mormon data analyst who harbors a secret crush on him.

Manny’s all in from the word go. Anything he can do to serve the USA he’ll do, and the more dangerous the better. His first job is one for which he’s uniquely qualified – to arrest or kill a powerful Honduran terrorist who happens to be his former girlfriend.

Two things made The Supremacy License a lot of fun – Manny’s personality, a blend of tongue-in-cheek arrogance and genuine moral nobility, plus his complete, reckless fearlessness in action. I liked Manny a lot, and I look forward to following his further preposterous adventures. Well done.

Music

Sunday Singing: The Sands of Time Are Sinking

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“The Sands of Time Are Sinking” sung by the congregation of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, DC

For October, we will take up the theme of the life to come. Today’s hymn is by the Scottish poet Anne Ross Cousin (1824-1906). She wrote it while reflecting on Samuel Rutherford’s notes on Revelation 22.

“No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Rev. 22:3-5 ESV).

1 The sands of time are sinking,
The dawn of heaven breaks,
The summer morn I’ve sighed for,
The fair sweet morn awakes;
Dark, dark hath been the midnight,
But day-spring is at hand,
And glory, glory dwelleth
In Emmanuel’s land.

2 The King there in his beauty
Without a veil is seen;
It were a well-spent journey
Though sev’n deaths lay between:
The Lamb with his fair army
Doth on Mount Zion stand,
And glory, glory dwelleth
In Emmanuel’s land.

3 O Christ, he is the fountain,
The deep sweet well of love!
The streams on earth I’ve tasted
More deep I’ll drink above:
There to an ocean fulness
His mercy doth expand,
And glory, glory dwelleth
In Emmanuel’s land.

4 The bride eyes not her garment,
But her dear bridegroom’s face;
I will not gaze at glory,
But on my King of grace;
Not at the crown he gifteth,
But on his pierced hand:
The Lamb is all the glory
Of Emmanuel’s land.

Blogs, Socials, Religion, Uncategorized

Toward a More Reasonable Faith and Words Written or Generated

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My all-time favorite song is Michael Card’s “God’s Own Fool,” published in 1985 on the Scandalon album. That may have been the first album I bought with my own money. It’s a song about Jesus being misunderstood during his earthly ministry. The last lines are:

So, surrender the hunger to say you must know;
Have the courage to say, "I believe." 
Let the power of paradox open your eyes
And blind those who say they can see.

I could understand if someone took lines like this to encourage blind faith, a faith that doesn’t question what we read in Scripture or what our ministers teach, but Christian faith isn’t blind. It’s reasonable and fits the real world He created.

When Jesus tells Peter to check the mouth of a fish for a coin to pay their taxes, Peter believes Him and checks the fish’s mouth. When Jesus tells a couple of His men to go into town, find a donkey and colt tied up, bring them to him, and if anyone asks what they’re doing, say that the Lord needs them, they go into town expecting to find exactly what He has said. That’s a reasonable faith. It’s one that recognizes the limits of our knowledge, not one that denies knowledge altogether.

But what else do we have today?

Art & Literature: David Platzer writes about a Paris exhibit on Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso. “Edmund Wilson—who was generally sympathetic to her work and compared it to Yeats, Proust, and Eliot—noted in a 1923 Vanity Fair article that her word-portraits of Matisse and Picasso published in Camera Work made it ‘evident that Gertrude Stein had abandoned the intelligible altogether.'”

Words: If you or someone you know have shown symptoms of being a witcracker, call the number on your screen. You are not alone.

American Words: American pioneers had to make up words for a new world. Rosemarie Ostler writes, “Often these simply combined a noun with an adjective: backcountry, backwoods (and backwoodsman), back settlement, pine barrens, canebrake, salt lick, foothill, underbrush, bottomland, cold snap.” “Yankee is also almost certainly a Dutch contribution. Various theories have been suggested for the word’s origin (for instance, that it’s a Native American mispronunciation of English), but the most likely one derives the word from Janke (pronounced ‘yan-kuh’), a diminutive of John that translates as something like ‘little John.'” (via ArtsJournal)

Artificial Intelligence: Tech companies are hiring writers and poets to compose somewhat refined work, particularly in Hindi and Japanese. “It is a sign that AI developers have flagged fluency in poetic forms as a priority, while refining their generative writing products.” To what end? (via ArtsJournal)

Photo: Fairyland Cottages Minnesota, 1980. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Romeo’s Justice,’ by James Scott Bell

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This will be a short review – probably shorter than the book deserves. But I’m busy playing Viking in Minot, snatching a few minutes before bedtime, and I’m kind of tired (the festival is going fine; thanks for asking). Anyway, I love all the Mike Romeo books, so what is there new to say about Romeo’s Justice?

Mike Romeo, erudite Los Angeles private eye working for Ira, an ex-Mossad attorney, beats up an obnoxious type at the very start of the book, just to set the tone. The guy deserved it. Then he has a date with his girlfriend Sophie, who is learning to coexist with Mike’s forceful ways.

Ira asks Mike to take on a case from Noel Auden, a mother whose son recently (ostensibly) committed suicide. He had left their Catholic faith to explore spirituality at a school called the Roethke Spiritual Center, out near the Salton Sea. According to his suicide note, he did it because of global climate change, but Noel wants to be sure, in light of the seriousness of suicide in Catholic doctrine.

Mike goes out and starts poking around, asking questions. As you’d expect, there is pushback from some nasty characters, as well as from the police, most of whom are in the pay of a local energy tycoon. But that’s all in a day’s work for Mike Romeo.

Romeo’s Justice was not full of surprises, but it was full of Mike’s personality and Bell’s prose, the things that bring us back. Important issues are addressed. A resolution is found in the end.

Good book. Well worth the price.

Fiction

Coming Soon in the Cameron Winter Series

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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.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Concrete Ceiling,’ by Peter Rowlands

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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.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The End of the Night,’ by John D. MacDonald

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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.

Music

Sunday Singing: All for Jesus

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“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.

Authors, Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry

What’s a Bit of Fascism Between Friends?

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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.”

Banning Books: The American Library Association asks why they have to hide their efforts to indoctrinate our kids.

In the PEN America report, they state, “Hyperbolic and misleading rhetoric about ‘porn in schools’ and ‘sexually explicit,’ ‘harmful,’ and ‘age inappropriate’ materials led to the removal of thousands of books covering a range of topics and themes for young audiences.”

Author: Anti-racistism author Ibram Kendi has used several million dollars on plans that have not materialized. Now, he’s laying off staff.

But enough of that stuff.

Poetry: This is delightful, the poem, the painting, and the recording of the poet’s voice. “My Wife, Sewing at a Window” by Eithne Longstaff

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.)

Music

R.I. P. Roger Whittaker (1936-2023)

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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.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture