We Are the Hanged Man, by Douglas Lindsay

It’s always a pleasure to come across a well-written novel. But good writing doesn’t necessarily mean the reader will like the novel, and in We Are the Hanged Man I find a work of literature that not only leaves me, personally, cold, but repels me. Your liters per kilometer may vary.

Robert Jericho is a police detective in the small city of Wells, in England. At one time he was very famous as a London detective, but he didn’t enjoy that, and voluntarily retired to a quieter town to serve out his time until retirement. He suffers from profound, chronic depression, dating back to the unsolved disappearance of his wife, years ago. He is puzzled when he starts getting envelopes delivered to him, each one containing a Tarot card — “The Hanged Man.”

Meanwhile, his supervisor (who loathes him) has come up with a delicious plan to force him to resign. A TV reality show, “Britain’s Got Justice” is looking for a bona fide detective to serve as a judge, and she manages to get Jericho that post. So he is plunged into the passionately shallow world of television production, a world author Lindsay takes great pleasure in verbally drawing and quartering. Jericho’s congenital misanthropy is well justified in this environment, but that doesn’t make his discomfort less.

Then one of the contestants disappears. The program suddenly becomes deadly serious (though the production team doesn’t notice), and Jericho finds himself drawn into a personal struggle with a monster from his own past. Continue reading We Are the Hanged Man, by Douglas Lindsay

Quotes from Gospel Deeps

Josh Otte offers “20 exulting quotes from Jared Wilson’s latest book, Gospel Deeps: Reveling in the Excellencies of Jesus. I just couldn’t fit them all into my review, but I also couldn’t resist sharing them with you. Read and worship, friends!” For example:

“My driving conviction in this book is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is big. Like really big. Ginormous, if you will. And deep. Deep and rich. And beautiful. Mulitfaceted. Expansive. Powerful. Overwhelming. Mysterious. But vivid, too, and clear. Illuminating. Transforming. And did I mention big?”

I’ve been reading this book too. It’s wonderful. Don’t wait for my review to get it yourself or for someone on your Christmas list.

Writing because I got work

I got good news today. I received a favorable reply to an offer I’d made (by invitation) to Saga Bok Publishers in Norway to do the English translation of Prof. Torgrim Titlestad’s recent book, Norge i Vikingtid. That would be Norway in the Viking Age in English.

I lowballed my offer, because I’m unproven in professional translating and I’m keen on this project, and on establishing a working relationship with Saga Bok.

Years ago, as I began to work on a novel about Erling Skjalgsson, I came to certain conclusions about what his principles were, on the basis of the saga accounts.

It was with some delight that I discovered later that there was a Norwegian historian who shared, to a large degree, my views on that particular subject. That historian was Prof. Titlestad.

The project looks to be fairly easy, except for the length of the book, which is considerable. But most of my translation to date has been of 19th Century Norwegian writings, with flowery language and often convoluted sentence structure. Prof. Titlestad, on the other hand, writes in a simple, clear style.

I don’t expect that this will interfere with my fiction writing to any great degree.

In any case, I need the money.

So Small a Carnival, by John William Corrington


St. Louis Cathedral is in a class by itself. Take away the ornate altar, and it could be a Protestant church built during the baroque. Despite all its popish flummery, plaster statues, and overreaching painted motifs, it is austere, chaste, a masterpiece of design and grace. If I were God, I’d stay there a lot.

Occasionally, when trolling among the books offered free for a day for Kindle, I run across a gem. So Small a Carnival, by John William Corrington, is one of those. Aside from being a mystery, it’s a New Orleans novel, almost a genre in itself. Author Corrington can take his place alongside Walker Percy, if not on equal terms, at least without embarrassment. This is a fascinating story with a tremendous sense of place. And possibly—I’m not sure—a subtextual Christian message. Or something.

Wes Colvin is a reporter for a New Orleans newspaper. He receives a mysterious phone call from a stranger who wants to meet him in a local restaurant and tell him a story. Instead, when Wes arrives with his friend Jésus (which Wes insists on pronouncing “Jesus”), he finds the place shot to pieces just a moment before, all customers and employees dead.

Including someone who meant a lot to Wes.

Composing a story about the massacre, Wes comes into contact with the powerful Lemoyne family and the beautiful Denise Lemoyne, granddaughter of one of the victims, with whom he falls suddenly and sharply in love. Poking into the swamp waters of Louisiana politics with the help of his cop friend, “Rat” Trapp, he begins to discover some very old and dangerous secrets.

I liked many things about So Small a Carnival. One is that it was a smart book. There are certain dumb things that mystery heroes tend to do, like walking into dangerous situations alone, that Wes is smart enough to avoid. Corrington manages to keep the tension up without resorting to such cheap tropes. The heart of the book is the question of whether history is “real” or not. I tend to disagree with what the characters conclude (and I found the final resolution difficult to wrap my mind around), but it may possibly be grace and forgiveness that are really in view here.

Highly recommended. Cautions for language, violence, and adult themes.

Top Ten

10 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Shows That Were Canceled Too Soon: from Paste Magazine

You know, I watched the pilot of Firefly and liked it, but somehow didn’t like it enough. I think it was the sexual content. My sweet, sweet wife said my expectations were too high, having heard so much praise over the years, but I’m not sure that’s the reason.

Satchmo on Stage

“Long Wharf Theatre’s production of Satchmo at the Waldorf has become the biggest hit in the history of the theatre’s Stage II,” the press release states. I’d love to say I know this personally, but I’m confident New York audiences are not wrong about this one. Learn more at playwright Terry Teachout’s blog.

The Black Mile, by Mark Dawson

Here’s a first class historical mystery. Mark Dawson’s The Black Mile takes place against the dramatic backdrop of the London blitz in 1940. Things are chaotic enough in the city, and plenty of people are dying, without the Blackout Ripper running around murdering prostitutes.

Charlie Murphy is the youngest son of a highly honored, almost legendary, London police detective, now a highly ranking officer. We first meet him in a squad of bobbies trying to put down an anti-Italian riot. Completely out of his element and disoriented, he ends up running away. Back at the station, he observes the abuse of some Italian prisoners by other policemen, and reports them, leading to the dismissal of two of them. This earns the anger of his older brother Frank, their superior.

Frank is a hard man, but no villain. A World War I veteran with facial scars from mustard gas, he orders his teenage daughter to stop seeing her Italian boyfriend, and she responds by running away. For the rest of the story he searches the streets for her, remorseful and terrified that she might be the next victim.

There’s also a newspaper man, only moderately honest, who sees the Ripper story as his ticket back to the front page. He knows things the police don’t, but he’s not sharing.

The most fascinating thing about this story (which is not to say the drama is weak—this is a book fit to be made into a thriller movie) is the depth of the character depiction. These are the kind of people we all know—essentially decent but flawed in various ways, caring for each other but wounded in their pride.

The prose slips occasionally, in terms of word choice. I noticed two instances where author Dawson repeated the same descriptive metaphor twice.

But those are minor problems. All in all a gripping, fully rounded, well-told story, which I recommend.

Cautions for language, violence, and sexual situations.

Red Gloves, by Tim Greaton

I bought Red Gloves by Tim Greaton because I quite enjoyed the first story in the Samaritans Conspiracy series, The Santa Shop. This isn’t top shelf literature, but it’s considerably better than the average Christian novel, and the author manages to radiate an atmosphere of goodness that’s hard for an author to do but welcome after you’ve read a few dozen gory thrillers.

Priscilla Harris is a detective with the Portland, Maine police department. Although she’s good at her job, she seems (to a male chauvinist like me) a pretty good argument for women—generally—staying out of policing. She’s close to breaking down under the pressures of her job and her family. Her teenage son, a former college basketball hot prospect, had his dream shattered in a car accident and has slid into drug addiction. She’s also certain her husband is having an affair with his secretary.

Meanwhile she’s got a growing drug problem in her city to fight. As she tries to defuse a stand-off with drug dealers in an apartment building, a mysterious stranger wearing a parka and red gloves steps in mysteriously to prevent bloodshed. Later the same stranger keeps her son out of a situation that would have gotten him arrested. Who is this man, and is he a good guy or a very clever bad guy?

The pleasant theme of the Samaritans Conspiracy books is the idea of a group of people devoted to acting in the world like we wish angels would, to straighten things out, rescue people, and turn people onto the right road. I like to imagine it, though I don’t actually think it would work very well in real life. Real life has a way of sending things to hell on a slippery slope of good intentions. But that doesn’t prevent me enjoying the story. And the characters are very well done.

Tim Greaton’s writing is good, but not entirely polished yet. He tends to overwrite, telling us more than he needs to. And his word use can be poor, as when he describes someone as having “an honest core about him,” or when he writes “allusions” when he means “illusions.”

Still, I think our readers will enjoy Red Gloves. Cautions for saltier language than you generally encounter in Christian literature.

Commentary’s Podhoretz, Myers Split

Broken Iphone 4Professor D.G. Myers has been writing for Commentary magazine for many years, and for the past 18 months he has been under contract for their literary blog. Last week, he was told to stop writing for a while. Editor John Podhoretz emailed him after seeing a post on Commentary’s literary blog which Podhoretz did not consider literary. It was policial.

Podhoretz expalins, “I told David that he could write at will on his blog without editorial supervision, as long as he stayed within the confines of the literary. … [With the post, “The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage”] David had decided unilaterally to convert Literary Commentary into a sociopolitical blog without a moment’s consultation. This I considered an uncollegial and insubordinate act,and I’m afraid it was not the first of these.”

Myers says, “I did not conceive of my post as political; it was, to my mind, a literary and philosophical defense of gay marriage, derived from my reading, utterly silent on questions of public policy.” And he praises Podhoretz for being a great editor.

Many Internet voices have reacted to this news, accusing the Commentary editor of being the very old white guy they say Republicans need to shove out of the lifeboat. Podhoretz reminds them that he and other editors had approved a post Myers wrote for their main political blog in support of gay marriage, so the subject of Myers’ post on the literary blog was not the issue. Continue reading Commentary’s Podhoretz, Myers Split

In which the world is upside down, and there is no justice

James Lileks, to the grief of millions, has announced a short hiatus from his Bleat blog. He attributes it, with commendable frankness, to a bad review of his novel, Graveyard Special.

Someone whose opinion matters a great deal gave a rather brutal review of “Graveyard Special.” I admit it has its deficiencies, and had hoped that the $4.00 price and general spirit of fun would carry it along, but man. Aside from a note that it had occasional patches of “brilliant” writing, there wasn’t a single positive thing said. Not much said at all, really, beyond just “I’ve been dreading this” and “do you really want to know?”

I’d say that we all know the feeling, but I’m not sure I do. I’ve gotten bad reviews to be sure, but never from anyone whose opinion mattered a lot to me. I suppose this is the sort of thing that happens when you get into the big leagues and the sharks start noticing your scent.

In any case, I wish Lileks well. If this can happen to him, who among us is safe?

I, on the other hand, have an almost embarrassingly positive review to report. Novelist and opinion writer Hal G.P. Colebatch sent me the link to a review he did almost a year ago in the Australian News Weekly. I think I’ve got a new blurb somewhere in there.