My friend J. S. Earls is involved with a podcast called ‘Sithra.’ It’s an adaptation of a graphic novel presented in radio drama form. I’m pretty clueless about podcasts, but apparently you can access it on Spotify here. Also available, he tells me, on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and “most anywhere podcasts are heard.”
I listened to Episode One. Engaging story, well produced.
Good news. Translation work has shown up. I dare not hope it means the drought is over; it’s the same project that I worked on a month ago. But we live in hope. So what shall I write about tonight, children, in haste as I am?
As I told you, I’ve been watching a lot of old black and white mysteries. I find myself – to my surprise – somewhat fascinated by the Charlie Chan series. It has its objectionable sides – most particularly in its racial portrayals (though Mantan Moreland was a genius). And sometimes they’re pure B-movie cheese. But occasionally they display some qualities of style and intelligence.
But the film that particularly fascinated me was a 1929 release called Behind That Curtain (based on a novel of the same name by Earl Derr Biggers, though it seems to deviate heavily from that source). The movie is memorable for two or three reasons. The main one is that it’s – technically – the very first Charlie Chan movie. But it’s an awkward fit with the rest of the series.
The thing is, the movie as it turned out isn’t really a Charlie Chan story. He’s mentioned near the beginning, and he shows up near the end, as a secondary character. In this story, he appears more similar to the real Honolulu policeman Chang Apana, whom Biggers credited as the inspiration for the character. (Though the wiry Apana was a far more hardboiled guy than the portly, cerebral Chan of the movies. He was known for using a bullwhip.) In this movie, Chan is a tough cop, a tad trigger happy. No apparent mastermind. He’s played by a roundish Korean actor named E. L. Park.
The story of the film involves a young English woman, Eve Mannering (Lois Moran) who defies her loving guardian to marry the shady Eric Durand. They move to India, where Eric turns out to be a feckless, unfaithful rotter. Eventually the English detective Sir Frederick Bruce shows up to interrogate Eric over an old crime, and Eve, having learned enough about her husband, flees to Honolulu (San Francisco? I forget). There Eric locates her at last, and there’s a decisive showdown at a lecture being given by Eve’s true love, the explorer Col. John Beetham (Warner Baxter).
Aside from the early, clean-shaven and actually Asian Charlie Chan we encounter in this movie, there are other points of interest. One is Col. Beetham’s taciturn Indian servant, who is played by a young Boris Karloff.
The other notable aspect, more literary, is the actress Lois Moran, who plays Eve. She was very pretty, even to modern eyes, and is remembered in real life for being the mistress of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who based the character of Rosemary Hoyt in Tender Is the Night on her.
That’s a lot of freight for one B movie to carry. The film itself is so-so. Standard early sound stuff, where everything moves really slowly, and everybody overacts.
“My point is, it’s clear to me that any great artist—musician, painter, sculptor, a fine prose stylist—is on a subconscious level a mathematician and a mason and an engineer…. An artist is a mathematician who knows the formulas of the soul. ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty.’”
I’ve become a great fan of Dean Koontz’s work, but my enthusiasm is not bestowed equally on all the branches of his work. I’m not a fan of horror, and his latest book, The House at the End of the World, is pretty intense horror.
Katie (I’m pretty sure we’re told her last name at some point, but I can’t find it) is an artist. A few years back, following the horrendous deaths, due to crime, of her two daughters and her husband, she withdrew to the island called Jacob’s Ladder. (One assumes it’s on one of the Great Lakes, but that’s not specified.) Here she paints, but not to her own satisfaction. She knows she has enemies who might decide to dispose of her at any time, so she found herself a solid, fortified house and keeps well armed. She has no social contacts. She promised her husband she’d go on living, so that’s what she’s doing, but without happiness.
Then strange things start happening. Odd sounds in the night; an unidentifiable animal pattering across her roof. There’s unusual activity too at Ringrock, a nearby island that houses a government facility. It’s supposed to be something to do with the EPA, but it’s too hush-hush for that. When a couple armed federal agents show up on her island and arrogantly order her around, she bridles. Then a vicious storm comes up and one of the agents reappears, seemingly insane. Katie begins considering leaving the island, but the agents have disabled her boat.
Then a young girl shows up from another neighboring island. She has a horrific story to tell. Her parents, who worked at Ringrock, are dead, and her nurse has been murdered by a monster. Together they will face the challenge of fighting whatever unearthly creature has taken up residence in Katie’s basement, and then take a dangerous boat trip ashore, after which they’ll have to face both aliens and their own government.
Aside from my distaste for horror stories, I also thought The House at the End of the World started rather slowly. A lot of time is spent with Katie alone, establishing her character and back story without a whole lot happening. Once the girl, Libby, shows up, things move faster. The book is exciting, and if you go for bug-eyed monsters, there’s a pretty spooky one here. Then the government proves to be worse (a sign of the times).
Cautions for language. The author has chosen to use a lot of obscene language in this book, even out of the mouth of the teenaged girl.
The House at the End of the World isn’t a bad novel, but it didn’t suit me as a lot of Dean Koontz books do.
English Calvinist John Kent (1766-1843) wrote this hymn of praise to our eternal God with the imagery of Revelation. It was published in 1803. The tune is traditional Welsh. “As a working shipwright his opportunities for acquiring the education and polish necessary for the production of refined verse were naturally limited,” notes The Dictionary of Hymnology.
1. ‘Tis the church triumphant singing,
Worthy the Lamb!
Heav’n thro’out with praises ringing,
Worthy the Lamb!
Thrones and pow’rs before Him bending,
Odors sweet with voice ascending
Swell the chorus never ending,
Worthy the Lamb!
2. Ev’ry kindred, tongue and nation–
Worthy the Lamb!
Join to sing the great salvation;
Worthy the Lamb!
Loud as mighty thunders roaring,
Floods of mighty waters pouring,
Prostrate at his feet adoring,
Worthy the Lamb!
3. Harps and songs forever sounding
Worthy the Lamb!
Mighty grace o’er sin abounding,
Worthy the Lamb!
By His blood he dearly bought us;
Wand’ring from the fold He sought us;
And to glory safely brought us:
Worthy the Lamb!
4. Sing with blest anticipation,
Worthy the Lamb!
Thro’ the vale of tribulation,
Worthy the Lamb!
Sweetest notes, all notes excelling,
On the theme forever dwelling,
Still untold, tho’ ever telling,
Worthy the Lamb!
I may have just found a book I must read this year.
Joel Miller asks, “If you lived in a society that was strictly and officially materialist in which the state and its officers vetoed disagreement, what would you do if you still recognized the transcendent and dissented from the party line?”
One option would be to “write a surrealist satire that mocked the materialists and dropped the devil and his entourage in Moscow to bend the party line well past breaking.”
That’s what Soviet novelist Mikhail Bulgakov did in his posthumously published work The Master and Margarita (1970). Miller explains one of the author’s themes this way. “For all their anti-capitalistic propaganda, Muscovites were every bit as covetous and grasping as anyone, maybe worse. And as far as the Soviet insistence on strict atheism, Bulgakov replies: Fine, if you won’t have God, you can have the devil—and the devil will have you.”
Word Games: Merrium-Webster shelled out an undisclosed 7-figure amount to purchase Quordle, the word-guessing game that gives you four target words at once. I played many times last year and have gotten away from it for a while. Returning to it this week has not been easy. I want to blame Wordle’s hard mode. You can’t guess four words at once while using all your current hints. Maybe the dictionary has placed harder words.
Quordle is a different challenge than Daily Sectordle, which gives you 32 words at once.
Are word games actually good for your brain? If it’s a challenge, if you aren’t running through them on auto pilot, then yes.
Librarian: There’s a novelization of Belle da Costa Greene, the woman who built J. P. Morgan’s personal library, by Alexandra Lapierre. Gina Dalfonzo writes, “Lapierre is the kind of writer who can make a rare book auction into a thrilling action scene, and make a reader yearn to hold a copy of the bejeweled 8th-century Lindau Gospels. She gets you so caught up in Belle’s untiring passion for her work, it tears at your heart to think that Belle would have been barred from that work if her heritage had been known.”
Finding a Good Home for Books: Steve Donoghue says being a “book person” tends to attract orphan books. “I’m talking about squalling little orphans furtively deposited at the back door of the rectory by tearful (or grateful) parents who have decided that their babies will have a better chance for happiness if cast onto the mercy of a rude stream than if they stay neglected and underfed at home.”
Apocalypse Next Door: Russian sci-fi novelist Dmitry Glukhovsky says his apocalyptic novel set in the Moscow metro system is selling well after his government condemned him for opposing the war in Ukraine.
Coffee: At least among customers of Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts, iced coffee has overtaken hot coffee orders by three to one. Next month, Starbucks is changing its rewards program to make getting free hot coffee or tea 100 stars (not 50) and free iced coffee or tea 100 stars (not 150). Fans are upset, maybe because handcrafted drinks cost 50 stars more, maybe because change of any kind upsets people.
Photo by Erik Witsoe on Unsplash
Shoveled snow today, because my neighbors who usually blow the stuff away are still on vacation. Nevertheless, I am unbowed. I’m reading Dean Koontz’ latest right now, so there’s no review. But it’s Friday, and that’s often a day for posting music.
Our beloved Sissel was just 15 when she sang this song on Norwegian TV. It’s a translation of a French number called ‘Hymne a l’amour,’ made popular by Edith Piaf. There is an English version, entitled, ‘If You Love Me,’ and it’s very good, but the video isn’t a live performance. So we’ll use this one. You can find the other on YouTube if you like.
Now and then the major had to sideline the jeep as a column of Shermans ground along the road, pulling up a coughing fit’s worth of dust as well as releasing spumes of octane consumption and more noise than could be easily borne. They sounded like radiators clattering down a marble staircase.
If you’re my friend on Facebook, you may have noticed a couple “woe is me” posts from me in the last couple days. Those posts have provoked a couple very nice comments on my books, which I appreciate a lot.
But when I read a Stephen Hunter novel, I feel myself larval and unformed. This guy knows how to tell a story.
The Bullet Garden is his latest, and it’s an Earl Swagger book, about the father of Hunter’s regular hero. It’s been a while since he did an Earl Swagger book, and I remember thinking, when I read the last one, that there were signs he might enjoy those stories even more than the Bob Lee ones.
In the somewhat flexible chronology of Earl Swagger’s life, this book comes after his adventures on Tarawa in the South Pacific. In the European theater, the D-Day invasion has occurred, but the advancing Allies are bogged down in the “bocage,” the famous hedgerows of Normandy. One of their worst headaches is a company of ranging enemy snipers who consistently attack American patrols, picking off their officers just at sunrise or sunset, when most men can’t see well, and leaving the troops in panic.
Allied command wants the best sniper in the American military to come and figure out a way to kill these killers. So the summons goes to Sgt. Earl Swagger of the US Marines, who’s training leathernecks at Parris Island just now. The assignment goes with a brevet rank of Major in the US Army (!). Earl agrees to go – it could be interesting.
The story will take us to SHAEF headquarters in London – hopelessly politicized and riddled with spies. We meet Earl’s chief assistant, Lt. Leets (a character from a previous story, and, even better, a Minnesotan!), and Basil St. Florian, hero of Basil’s War. There’s Leets’ gorgeous sweetheart, a secretary at SHAEF, who has to deal with unwanted advances from a corrupt officer. There’s Archer and Goldberg, a couple hapless dogface draftees who turn into unlikely heroes. And there’s also the mysterious sniper, a man with a strange history and stranger motives.
You’ll encounter a lot of name-dropping in this book, especially of the literary kind. Very few names are given, but they’re all easily recognizable; some are delightful surprises. The villain of the story (the physical villain; there’s a strategic villain too) is disguised by a minor name change, but should be fairly easy to identify, at least at one remove (contact me if you have trouble).
But it’s the sheer, masterful storytelling that amazed me. The plot is complex, but as smoothly and efficiently assembled as the lock of a custom hunting rifle. I cared about the characters and my interest never flagged for a moment.
I have only a few quibbles, which seem to be editing problems. The author loses track of a female character’s hair color at one point, and seems to get confused about the mechanics of driving on the left side of the road at another.
But all in all, The Bullet Garden is a tour de force of thriller writing. Highly recommended. Cautions for language and adult topics.
Stephen Hunter has a new book out, and I’ve got it. It is, needless to say, a sheer delight to read. At the rate I’m going, I’ll probably have a review tomorrow. So, in anticipation, I post the short interview above, which is pretty old. But most of the interviews I found with him were heavy on gun topics. I have no objection to gun topics myself, being a gun nut too. But I thought, in this space, I wanted to find something focused a little more on storytelling, because, however much an expert Hunter may be on gun topics, he’s even more knowledgeable about plotting and characterization. I think this interview, from 2010, advertising his novel I, Sniper, showcases that. To an extent.
The interviewer refers to the roman à clef nature of the novel’s beginning. Most of you are probably familiar with the term, and it’s explained as they talk.
Advice to writer’s: If you’re going to write a roman à clef, aim high. Portray famous people – political figures and celebrities. Do not write a roman à clef in which you show that guy you hated in high school dealing drugs or visiting brothels, unless you’ve disguised him beyond all recognition. If he can guess who he is in the book, he can sue you. Public figures can’t do that; they’re pretty much fair game, according to law.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel from New Zealand before. The setting in Dead Ground by Justin Warren is kind of exotic. My main takeaway is that it seems to rain a lot on the west coast.
Dylan Harper is a young police detective in Christchurch. He and his older partner are surprised when they’re sent over to Westport on the west coast, to investigate the disappearance of a newspaper reporter who also worked a second job as an environmental inspector. Dylan isn’t keen to go, because Westport was his childhood home, and he has bad memories from the place. Not to mention enemies.
When they arrive, they quickly suspect the missing man’s attractive wife of murdering him. But as they poke around, questions arise about his last known movements, and about water samples he took at a remote farm. Dylan begins to suspect dirty work at a Chinese-owned mining operation in the mountains.
Now, whenever people talk about mining in a mystery these days, you can be pretty certain contamination and some kind of cover-up can’t be far behind. And when the Chinese are involved, that pretty much seals the deal. The real mystery here is who has been corrupted and how high the corruption goes.
The writing in Dead Ground is okay, but nothing to crow about. Author Warren does make some effort to provide colorful descriptive passages for the reader. The major weakness in the writing, from my point of view, was homophone confusion.
What I liked least was that the book ended in a cliffhanger.
There are further books in the series, if this one grabs you.
It’s one of my many moral weaknesses. Whenever I come across a Florida mystery about a detective who lives on a boat, something in my brain says, “Maybe this will be the next Travis McGee.” It never is, and the disappointment skews my critical judgment. And yet I can’t help myself.
The latest self-inflicted wound of this sort is Million Dollar Staircase, by David Crosby. It’s the first in a series starring Will Harper, a retired journalist who inherited money and chose to live aboard a houseboat in a marina in the Tampa Bay area. He’s been enjoying the maritime lifestyle and growing closer to Sandy, a beautiful French woman who runs another marina nearby. One day he finds Sandy in a celebratory mood. She just read that the town is planning to develop a river walk around her property. That will certainly bring business in!
Only it won’t. Turns out the city plans to condemn her property, and that of her neighbors, paying only current market value – though once the development begins, values will skyrocket. It also turns out a local real estate investor has bought out all the homes in the area, at depressed prices. The whole busines stinks of cronyism and corruption.
But Will has a lawyer friend who owes him a favor. He’ll sue the city for them pro bono. There’s a good chance that, if they can’t get the eminent domain process stopped, they’ll at least be able to get the business owners a more reasonable payout.
What they don’t expect is that some people are willing to kill to cover up their corruption.
Million Dollar Staircase wasn’t a bad book. I liked Will Harper and his friends, and was rooting for them. I am entirely sympathetic to those who oppose the way Eminent Domain has been abused in recent decades.
But I thought the story a little… slack. The suspense could have been ramped up more effectively, and I would have liked for Will Harper to be a little more of a fighter (in the physical sense).
But it wasn’t bad. I don’t remember much objectionable language, and the sex scenes weren’t very explicit. I downloaded a three-book package, so I’ll see how I like the next books.
