The Press

Rolling Stone Editor Sidesteps Key Details in FBI Raid Report

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Last October, Rolling Stone a story entitled, “FBI Raids Star ABC News Producer’s Home,” with this lede:

AT A MINUTE before 5 a.m. on April 27, ABC News’ James Gordon Meek fired off a tweet with a single word: “FACTS.” 

The network’s national-security investigative producer was responding to former CIA agent Marc Polymeropoulos’ take that the Ukrainian military — with assistance from the U.S. — was thriving against Russian forces. Polymeropoulos’ tweet — filled with acronyms indecipherable to the layperson, like “TTPs,” “UW,” and “EW” — was itself a reply to a missive from Washington Post Pentagon reporter Dan Lamothe, who noted the wealth of information the U.S. military had gathered about Russian ops by observing their combat strategy in real time. The interchange illustrated the interplay between the national-security community and those who cover it. And no one straddled both worlds quite like Meek, an Emmy-winning deep-dive journalist who also was a former senior counterterrorism adviser and investigator for the House Homeland Security Committee. To his detractors within ABC, Meek was something of a “military fanboy.”

The report describes the quick raid and says multiple sources believed it to be an FBI raid focused on James Gordon Meek. The article says, “Meek appears to be on the wrong side of the national-security apparatus.”

But according to NPR’s David Folkenflik, Rolling Stone reporter Tatiana Siegel had originally included an important detail about the reason for the raid. “Siegel had learned from her sources that Meek had been raided as part of a federal investigation into images of child sex abuse, something not publicly revealed until [February 2023]. Why did Rolling Stone suggest Meek was targeted for his coverage of national security, rather than something unrelated to his journalism?”

According to Folkenflik, Noah Shachtman, Rolling Stone‘s editor-in-chief, covered up the pornography angle without Siegel’s collaboration. Siegel moved to another magazine weeks later.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Trick Question,’ by Tony Dunbar

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I’m still getting accustomed to Tony Dunbar’s Tubby Dubonnet novels, set in New Orleans. They’re not my usual kind of fare; I like my heroes to have a little more existential angst and shining armor on them. But the series is growing on me.

In Trick Question, Tubby gets a desperate plea for help from a fellow lawyer. That lawyer is working a murder case as a court-appointed advocate. His problem is that he’s a hopeless lush, and he’s done almost no prep work, and the trial is about to begin and the judge won’t postpone. Tubby’s a sucker for an old friend, and he hates the idea of a defendant getting railroaded, so he agrees to do the best he can in the few days available.

The defendant, Cletus Busters, is the janitor at a medical research facility. One night he opened a freezer door, and a man’s frozen body tipped out onto him. The body was that of a scientist who’d been using that laboratory. He had complained in the past about Cletus playing with the laboratory mice. Also, drugs stolen from the lab were found in Cletus’ apartment.

In addition, Tubby is doing some estate work for a young female boxer, and he gets a peek into the world of that rising sport.

The whole subject of women’s boxing gives me the willies, personally, so that was uncomfortable. But eventually (spoiler alert), Tubby comes over to my view, so that was OK.

Cletus the defendant turns out to be a voodoo practitioner, but that’s played mostly for laughs, so I didn’t mind that too much either.

Trick Question was entertaining. Still not exactly my cup of jambalaya, but I can see why people are fans. Only mild cautions for subject matter are in order.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Murder on Long Island,’ by Owen Parr

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“Matt Scudder meets Father Brown” is what the Amazon blurb says about Owen Parr’s Joey Mancuso-Father Dominic mystery series. I suppose you could say that about it, assuming the two classic detectives met in an auto collision and both got stunned a little. I got a free copy of Murder on Long Island, and I read it all the way through just to give it a chance. It didn’t get better as I read on.

Joey Mancuso and Father Dominic are half-brothers, we are told, sons of the same mother, one with an Italian father, the other with an Irish one. Through some sorts of shenanigans in the previous volume (Murder on Long Island is volume two in the series), they ended up running a bar and cigar club together, and solving murders on the side, using the establishment as their office. Though Father Dominic, to his credit, devotes most of his time to his church.

A Long Island property developer is accused of murdering his wife. He claims he found her shot to death, but the timeline shows that he waited 20 minutes before calling the police. Also, he was found covered in her blood and had gunshot residue on his hand. The man’s daughter persuades their lawyers to ask Joey and Father Dom to investigate, and they agree to look into it. Joey begins to suspect that those lawyers haven’t been working very hard on the case. There are plenty of leads to follow up, but the trial has already begun.

There is the germ of a good story in this book, I think. Joey and Father Dom could be interesting characters (though I get uneasy when I’m told a priest is “adapting his ministry to the 21st Century”). But the writing simply isn’t very good. Misplaced modifiers are common. Word meanings are confused. Many passages are clumsily written and/or too wordy.

There are courtroom scenes, and (perhaps this was aggravated for me by the fact that I recently read a very good legal thriller) those scenes struck me as highly inauthentic, Perry Mason Show stuff.

There are also technical problems with the text. The paragraphs (without indentations) are separated by multiple spaces, so that many whole pages contain just one paragraph and a lot of white space. Also, oddly, there are occasional digital footnotes which seem to be notes from preliminary readers. These should have been stripped out, if any care at all had been taken with the publication.

Overall, this reader was not much impressed with Murder on Long Island.

Fiction, Reviews

’21 Hours,’ by Dustin Stevens

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Felix “O” O’Connor, hero of Dustin Steven’s novel, 21 Hours, is an ex-con, now a cowboy in Wyoming. He rarely gets back to Columbus, his home town, but keeps in touch with “Lex,” his twin sister. He doesn’t much care for her husband, but he adores their daughter Annie, his niece.

He gets a call from Lex one day, asking for help. She and her husband were attacked, and Annie was abducted. There’s been no ransom demand, and they don’t have a lot of money anyway.

O gets into his car and drives straight to Columbus. If it’s not a ransom kidnapping, it must be human traffickers. Investigating that will mean going to bad places and dealing with very bad people. O can handle himself, and he won’t let anything stand in his way.

Essentially, this is “Taken,” with an uncle instead of a father, and the locations changed.

21 Hours is another example of the recent phenomenon I guess I’d call the “made for the movies thriller.” It involves the sort of action we usually accept in the rushed context of a movie, but (at least for me) doesn’t work as well on the printed page. Our hero suffers excruciating, repeated physical trauma over the course of his adventure, but just keeps on coming, killing multiple enemies who are fresher and in better health than he is.

I suppose that’s all that’s left for the male hero these days. We’ve decided, as a culture, that women can fight men on equal terms, that there is no male strength advantage. All that’s left to a man is his ability to take punishment. So he gets punished beyond all plausibility.

One other quibble I have with this book is that on two occasions the hero opens padlocks by shooting them with a pistol. I’ve never tried the experiment myself, but I have it on good authority that you can’t actually do that.

But other than that, the writing was good. 21 Hours is an entertaining book, if you’re into this sort of thing.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cost of Arrogance,’ by H. Mitchell Caldwell

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Cases are seldom won on cross but rather are more likely to suffer serious setbacks. Most seasoned trial lawyers will admit that a successful cross is one that did not assist the other side. A good cross, like a good plane landing, is one you can walk away from.

You may have noticed that I’ve been posting a lot of negative reviews recently. This is because, due to circumstances I won’t discuss in detail, I’ve been reading a lot of books I get free for my Kindle through promotional offers. The bulk of these books is from independent authors, and (I must confess, though I’m now one of the club), independent authors tend to be amateurs. People who haven’t paid their dues and learned the craft.

So it’s a pleasure to happen on a book that’s published by a genuine publisher, and eminently worthy of that publication. I’m delighted to recommend Cost of Arrogance, first in a coming series starring California attorney Jake Clearwater.

Jake Clearwater used to be a prosecutor in a county (fictional, I believe) north of Los Angeles. He left after a new district attorney proved more interested in chalking up convictions than in seeing justice done. Now he teaches trial law at a small university. It’s a good life, but lately he’s noticed he misses the excitement, the cut-and-thrust of courtroom work.

He’s not enthusiastic at first when he’s approached by representatives of an organization committed to filing appeals for convicts on death row. As an old prosecutor, Jake rarely loses much sleep over condemned murderers. And the convict they want him to help, Duane Durgeon, is no poster boy. He’s a hulking career felon and open racist who actually asked for the death penalty during his trial. Nobody wants his case. That, the activists tell Jake, is precisely why he needs an advocate.

A classroom discussion touches Jake’s legal conscience, and he agrees to hold his nose and go to work on Duane’s case. He little suspects that he’ll soon earn the hatred of an entire grieving town, or that he’ll suffer assault and attempted murder before he’s done. But he’ll also regain his moral center and get his appetite for life back. With a beautiful new girlfriend to top it off.

A book like Cost of Arrogance could have easily been preachy and predictable. Author H. Mitchell Caldwell avoids those pitfalls by writing it right. His characters are not caricatures, but many-faceted humans who often surprise us with their depth. We sympathize with them, even when we disagree (and you can disagree in different ways; there’s scope here for a range of opinions). The writing is clear and workmanlike, the dialogue realistic. The author’s experience as a lawyer and law professor is readily apparent in the obvious authenticity of the courtroom scenes. The plotting is excellent, too. The story kept me fascinated from beginning to end.

The love story was also good – maybe too good to be true. Jake meets a gorgeous woman who is fearful of commitment and needs a sensitive, decent man to teach her to trust again. I can speak authoritatively when I say this is an archetypal male fantasy. But it added to the fun of the story, so I’m not complaining.

Highly recommended. Cost of Arrogance is honestly one of the best legal thrillers I’ve ever read.

Music

Sunday Singing: Though Your Sins Be as Scarlet

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“Though Your Sins Be as Scarlet” performed by the Harding University Concert Choir

As we approach Easter next month, let’s join together in singing Franny Crosby revival-style hymn, “Though Your Sins Be as Scarlet.” Crosby (1820-1915) was born in Putnam County, New York, and lost her sight at age six. “It is as a writer of Sunday-school songs and gospel hymns that she is known wherever the English language is spoken, and, in fact, wherever any other language is heard.” The tune was written by Connecticut industrialist William H. Doane.

1 Though your sins be as scarlet,
They shall be as white as snow;
Though your sins be as scarlet,
They shall be as white as snow;
Though they be red like crimson,
They shall be as wool;
Though your sins be as scarlet,
Though your sins be as scarlet,
They shall be as white as snow,
They shall be as white as snow.

2 Hear the voice that entreats you,
O return ye unto God!
Hear the voice that entreats you,
O return ye unto God!
He is of great compassion,
And of wondrous love;
Hear the voice that entreats you,
Hear the voice that entreats you,
O return ye unto God!
O return ye unto God!

3 He’ll forgive your transgressions,
And remember them no more;
He’ll forgive your transgressions,
And remember them no more;
“Look unto Me, ye people,”
Saith the Lord your God;
He’ll forgive your transgressions,
He’ll forgive your transgressions,
And remember them no more,
And remember them no more.

Authors, Fiction, Non-fiction, Writing

An Endless Night, Culture Wars, and Editors Make Rotten Writers

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I read The Diary of Anne Frank in sixth grade and don’t remember thinking much about it. Something of the oppressive air stuck with me. Something of the final terror. One of my daughters read it last year and went on a rant against it. Maybe I read an abridged version, because I don’t remember reacting to any nasty thoughts or talk of her period. I think I would have noticed something like that in sixth grade. Then again, I could have drifted into a fog here and there, not realizing what I wasn’t reading.

I read Elie Wiesel’s Night for the first time recently. The author won a Nobel Prize in 1986 “for being a messenger to mankind: his message is one of peace, atonement and dignity.” While reading, I thought he had won the prize for literature for this book. Its sparse prose is marvelous, gripping, and conveys much of the dread of his experience.

In the opening pages, Wiesel’s family and neighbors didn’t know what was coming. Two people tried to warn them, but they couldn’t believe the outrageous truth. Who would do take 100s of people into the woods to dig their own graves before shooting them? Men couldn’t do that to each other. When the Germans came to town, one officer brought chocolate to his Jewish “host.” See? The Third Reich isn’t so bad. Many of them clung to any scrap of human decency they could imagine. Even when others were being killed, surely they would be shown mercy.

Such fantasies about the essence of mankind persist throughout the world and are one reason the museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau exists. Many, perhaps most, would say loving your neighbor as yourself is fairly easy if you just try it. They don’t recognize that Christ called this the second commandment, related and subordinate to the first. The first one they would call a nice premise or its own kind of fantasy, and there we have the seed for the hatred Weisel called an endless night.

What else do we have to talk about?

Spring Books: Goodreads has a long list of anticipated books. Some of these look good, not that I’ll ever get around to ’em. My supply of round to’em is a mite limited.

Writing: Jenny Jackson, an accomplished editor with many years of experience, suggests editors make terrible writers. They are used to calls shots, not executing the shots called.

College Closure: The King’s College in New York City has been running deficits for years and experimenting with online education without success. It will likely close by the end of the current semester.

Culture War: Professor Elizabeth Stice argues for living in the truth. “Those who think our culture can be changed only by those with obvious power should consider an alternative philosophical perspective. In 1978 Václav Havel published an essay titled “The Power of the Powerless.” Havel was writing from behind the iron curtain in Czechoslovakia, in a society he described as ‘post-totalitarian.’

“For Havel, the Soviet system was much bigger than the imposition of rules from a handful of powerful figures. It had come to rely on its own subjects for perpetuation. Using the example of a greengrocer who unthinkingly puts a ‘Workers of the World Unite’ sign in the shop window simply because life is easier that way, Havel explained that the people in Czechoslovakia were engaging in ‘auto-totality.'”

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

Music, Reading

‘The Rose of Tralee’

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Three posts from me in a single day. Am I generous, or what? I’ve been reading a lot of books lately, and if I get too far behind in my reviews I forget what a lot of them are about.

But I feel Father Ailill would never forgive me if I didn’t observe St. Patrick’s Day with a musical selection, at least. So here’s Daniel O’Donnell with The Rose of Tralee, a song I reference in my novel Death’s Doors.

I’ll add an ancient Irish blessing I made up a few years back on the Baen’s Bar discussion board:

“May you always have bread for your table, and more bacon than bread, and more beer than bacon. And may you have no need of any of it, having eaten yourself full at the wakes of your enemies.”

Fiction, Reviews

‘Murder For the Bride,’ by John D. MacDonald

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The temporary relief of the rain hadn’t lasted long. The thick heavy heat had spread itself over the city again, like a fat woman face down on a mudbank.

Another non-McGee MacDonald, an early one. I think Murder For the Bride is one of John D.’s less celebrated books, but I liked it fine.

Our hero, Dillon Bryant, is an oil engineer. When Murder For the Bride opens, he’s in South America on a job, thinking every minute about Laura Rentane, the beautiful woman he married just before he left the country. It was a whirlwind courtship, but she was the girl of his dreams. More than one friend expressed doubts about her character, but Dill wouldn’t hear of it.

Then a letter comes. Dill had better come home to New Orleans. Laura is in big trouble. When he arrives, he finds a police detective outside their apartment door. Laura is dead, he is told. Strangled with a length of wire.

Dill has to do something about it. He starts asking questions. The more questions he asks, the more he’s forced to realize that Laura lied to him. Her name wasn’t Rentane. She was older than she looked. Her background wasn’t what she claimed. When the FBI takes over her case, the cops toss Dill some clues, just to spite them. They think they know what Dill is likely to do, but they’re not prepared for how far he’s willing to go.

As in any John D. MacDonald book, the prose in Murder For the Bride is crisp and compelling. There’s just enough sex to satisfy the original paperback audience, which is pretty tame by today’s standards. And beneath it all, a story of integrity and coming of age.

As an added bonus, Commie spies are involved, and there’s no moral ambiguity in their depiction. This is anticommunism at its best, circa 1951.

Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Death Hampton,’ by Walter Marks

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Detective Jericho (first name never given) used to be a cop in Harlem, but ended up with PTSD. Not coincidentally, his marriage fell apart, and his wife moved with their daughter to East Hampton on Long Island. Jericho joined the force there to be close to them.

The novel Death Hampton begins with Susannah Cascaddan, the beautiful, abused wife of a property developer in East Hampton. She’s contemplating leaving her husband when, in defending herself against an attack, she knocks the man out with a wine bottle. In desperation she drags him from their beachside home to the ocean and drowns him.

When Jericho comes to question her, there are immediate romantic sparks. But there are secrets which neither of them knows that will put both their lives in danger before it’s all over.

When I started reading Death Hampton, I marked the book down as a competent story written by a less than professional writer. The writing wasn’t awful, but it was very, very pedestrian.

However, that changed when it got to the sex scenes. The sex scenes in this book are needlessly explicit and remarkably clumsy: “The spark of connection that had flashed between them over the past few weeks burst into an engulfing flame” isn’t even the worst of it.

Also the gun stuff was badly researched. Two of the characters carry .50 Glocks (a huge pistol, if it existed), with silencers (handguns can only be suppressed, not silenced, and that works best with small calibers).

Not recommended.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture