Fiction, Reviews

‘Dark Peak,’ by Adam J. Wright

Leave a comment

A good psychological thriller can be great entertainment, if the psychology is plausible. How does Dark Peak, by Adam J. Wright, stack up?

Mitch Walker is an English landscaper, a hard-working divorced father. Thirty years ago, his sister was abducted and murdered by a serial killer in Derbyshire, where his family lived at the time. His mother was so traumatized that she took him and fled away, and he never had contact with his father again.

Now he receives notice that his father has died, leaving him the Gothic-style mansion where they lived at the time, plus a fortune. Mitch doesn’t mind the money, but he doesn’t look forward to going back to the mansion. He still has nightmares about the place.

Elly Cooper is also divorced. She’s a former journalist who wrote a bestselling book about a serial killer and has been living off the royalties for some time. But book sales have fallen off, and her agent offers her a deal to do a new book, about a series of unsolved murders in Derbyshire, one of which is the murder of Mitch’s sister.

They will arrive around the same time, and their arrival will stir up old memories and old evil. It soon becomes apparent that the murders have not stopped – and someone in Mitch’s own family may be responsible.

The great weakness in Dark Peak was characterization – which ought to be the first thing you need to get right in a book of this type. If you don’t understand your own characters, how are we to believe you about psychopaths? The characters in Dark Peak commit the common fictional character error of keeping secrets from the police for reasons that advance the plot but seem unnatural in the real world. They also tell each other too much – real people rarely spill their guts to each other like these people do. It provides an excuse for information dumps, but again it rings hollow.

Also, for this reader, the murderer’s motivation, when finally revealed, didn’t seem very plausible.

The book is free for Kindle as of this review, so you might want to check it out, but I was rather disappointed. Cautions for disturbing content.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Twisted Justice,’ by Dennis Carstens

Leave a comment

I liked the first Marc Kadella novel that I read, Cult Justice (by Dennis Carstens), even though there were some problems with the prose, because it had solidly conservative content and the story was pretty good. Reminiscent of a John Sandford book, but with a legal setting. The second one, Maddy’s Justice, I liked less, because it was all You-Go-Girl feminism (as I perceived it). So I figured I’d give Kadella one more shot with Twisted Justice. I have to say, he knocked it out of the park. For this reader.

Minneapolis lawyer Marc Kadella, along with his impossibly hot girlfriend, Maddy Rivers, attends a Christmas season party in a box at U.S. Bank Stadium. They were invited by Parker Crane, a friend who’s done well in financial services. During the party, Parker asks Marc about what a divorce would cost him, as his marriage is on the rocks. When he hears the answer, Parker comments that he’d be better off killing her. Then he takes it back.

Not long after, Parker’s wife Diana is stabbed to death in the parking garage of her lover’s apartment building. When the police check Parker’s cell phone records, they put him in that exact spot at the time of the murder.

Parker maintains that his phone was stolen, and he’s being framed. He retains Marc to defend him. As a defense attorney, Marc, of course, has no need to prove Parker innocent. He just needs to raise reasonable doubt. His obvious tactic is to construct a SODDI (Some Other Dude Did It) defense.

To do this, he looks into Diana’s personal history – and finds a wealth of alternative murderers. Because it turns out Diana, a former Minnesota Vikings cheerleader, had a nice little side gig going as a high-end call girl. And some of her clients were among the most powerful men in Minnesota, men with plenty of things to hide…

This book was a little more courtroom-centric than the previous book, with fewer shootouts and gunfights. That was fine with me. The courtroom scenes seemed authentic, and thus educational. As usual with this series, I found the character banter amusing, but not convincing. The problem with misplaced modifiers in the text, so evident in Cult Justice, was not noticeable here. I did note one badly cast sentence that should have been re-written, but in general the writing was okay. The final “surprise twist” didn’t surprise me, but was dramatically appropriate.

What I really loved about Twisted Justice was that it poked a well-deserved finger in the eye of the Minnesota power structure. That was genuinely sweet.

Uncategorized

Viking festival film, featuring me

3 Comments

I found this film on YouTube. It’s some footage of the Viking festival at Avaldsnes, which I attended last month. This would be Saturday. I see several people I met on it, But I think everyone will agree that the highlight of the film is the scene, toward the end, where I am featured tending the fire in the longhouse. Enjoy.

Writing

Happy endings, tragedy, and futility

4 Comments
Photo credit: Kevin Erdvig @kjerdvig. Unsplash license.

Occasionally, I think. Even more occasionally, what I think makes sense.

Today I was thinking about stories. Or “story” as a subject. I’ve written about it here before.

I have a theological view of stories. I noticed first, long ago, that the basic structure of plot (hero faces challenge – hero must overcome repeated, escalating failures to achieve goal) works because it mirrors the basic structure of our lives. This is the art of living. Stories tell us how to live. (A bad story is a kind of crime, because it teaches wrong lessons that could get people hurt.)

Later, I thought larger. The universe, it seems to me, is a story. Christians don’t believe that life is an eternal cycle, as many of the pagans did. We believe that history is a narrative. It has a beginning and an end. Tolkien declared that the Resurrection was the “eucatastrophe” (the happy, unexpected turn of events) of the story. The final happy ending awaits.

I had the thought, this morning, that all stories with happy endings are, in some sense, Christian. Even if they’re profane and filthy. They still have a holy structure. Sacred bones, you might say.

But then I thought, what about tragedy? Is tragedy un-Christian?

No. Tragedy is (according to Aristotle) meaningful. The hero’s ending may be awful, but it means something. The tragic hero may deserve his fate (like Macbeth) or may be the innocent victim of Destiny (like Oedipus). But his death is significant. It arouses pity and horror. It enriches the spirit. There’s meaning in tragedy.

What is not Christian is the story of futility. The absurdist tale. I’ve run across a few in my time, and I hate them. One that comes to mind is “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” which I watched on Netflix. I can see the story’s value as a corrective to the conventions and tropes of the Western genre, which get turned on their heads one after another. But the final conclusion is emptiness. Another was “No Country for Old Men,” also by the Coen Brothers. I’ve heard it described as a Christian story – and maybe it is at some intellectual level too deep for me – but I saw it as a story bereft of hope.

I’m trying to work these thoughts into the book. Means a few last-minute adjustments.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Bright Orange for the Shroud,’ by John D. MacDonald

Leave a comment

After the minimum waiting time, they were married late one afternoon at the court house, and left in a new white Pontiac convertible, the back seat stacked with her matched luggage, her smile as brilliant as a brand new vermin trap ordered from Herter’s catalogue.

Whenever I see a deal on one of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee books in e-book form, I grab it. So it was with Bright Orange for the Shroud, a fairly early – but memorable – entry in the series. If I remember correctly, now and then in later books, when he’s recalling his personal nightmares, McGee mentions Boo Waxwell.

Travis McGee isn’t a private eye. He calls himself a salvage specialist. When people are robbed of large amounts of money or valuable possessions, he goes and gets them back, then keeps half the value. This enables him to live his chosen lifestyle – “taking his retirement in installments.”

He plans to make this particular summer one of his lazy ones. He’ll do some maintenance on his big houseboat, the Busted Flush, cruise a bit, do some fishing. He’s earned a rest.

Until Arthur Wilkinson shows up on the dock, incoherent and emaciated. Arthur was part of their beachside community for a while, a low-key, diffident man who’d made money in the family business. Then he met tiny, gorgeous Wilma Ferrer, married her, and moved away.

But it turned out Wilma was a con woman. With her little group of confidence friends, she picked Arthur clean. Money wasn’t enough for her, though. Together with the muscle of the group, big Boo Maxwell, she made sure Arthur had been destroyed as a man.

McGee can help people recover stuff, but recovering a lost soul is outside his skill set. So he goes to Chookie McCall, a professional dancer who dated Arthur for a while, before hooking up with a wrong guy, now in prison. Though she’s reluctant at first, one look at Arthur arouses all Chookie’s maternal instincts.

McGee comes up with a plan to con the cons and get some of Arthur’s money back. It’s a good plan. His mistake is underestimating Boo Waxwell as an opponent. Though he comes off as an ignorant, overgrown cracker, Boo is no fool at all. Someone suggests that Boo is McGee’s alter ego, what he might have been if something had been missing in his make-up. (In many ways, Boo anticipates Max Cady, the brutal villain of MacDonald’s novel The Executioners, which was filmed twice under the title, Cape Fear.)

There’s not a wasted line in this book. It’s tough and hard-boiled and tender and sympathetic. There’s a lot of sexual content. Some of it reads really great from my traditional, sexist point of view, and some of it reflects the mores of the sexual revolution and hasn’t aged well.

The plot includes, in my opinion, one too many lucky breaks for the good guys. But all in all, Bright Orange for the Shroud works splendidly. Highly recommended.

Music

Sunday Singing: ‘Holy Spirit Faithful Guide’

Leave a comment
‘Holy Spirit Faithful Guide’ performed by Fountainview Academy

Today’s hymn, “Holy Spirit Faithful Guide,” was written and arranged by Marcus Morris Wells of Cooperstown, NY (1815-1895). He was a farmer and said he was working in the cornfield on Saturday afternoon when the concept for this hymn came to him. He worked it out the next day and sent it to the editor of the New York Musical Pioneer, who published in the November 1858 issue.

1 Holy Spirit, faithful Guide,
Ever near the Christian’s side;
Gently lead us by the hand,
Pilgrims in a desert land;
Weary souls fore’er rejoice,
While they hear that sweetest voice
Whisp’ring softly, “Wand’rer, come!
Follow Me, I’ll guide thee home.”

2 Ever present, truest Friend,
Ever near Thine aid to lend,
Leave us not to doubt and fear,
Groping on in darkness drear;
When the storms are raging sore,
Hearts grow faint, and hopes give o’er.
Whisp’ring softly, “Wand’rer, come!
Follow Me, I’ll guide thee home.”

3 When our days of toil shall cease,
Waiting still for sweet release,
Nothing left but heav’n and prayer,
Wond’ring if our names were there;
Wading deep the dismal flood,
Pleading naught but Jesus’ blood,
Whisp’ring softly, “Wand’rer, come!
Follow Me, I’ll guide thee home.”

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Reading

Who Gets Hurt, The Scandal of Holiness, and Norman Lear

Leave a comment

I was reading some introductory sociology texts recently, and in trying to encourage students to critique their own biases and lay aside their cultural preferences, the author brought up infanticide as an example. Other cultures practice infanticide for their own reasons, and while it would be easy to condemn them for it, who are we to judge? The author didn’t actually say we should not condemn this cultural difference. She said it would be easy to believe we are right to condemn it, in the context of paragraphs on being open-minded and meeting diverse people where they are.

What is easy to believe is that this example of cultural differences is a stand-in for abortion. If the example were honor killing or the less lethal shunning, would the author be willing to simply roll with it? In both cases, the natural remedy to work toward would be to work against the social groups who accept these things. Because two of these things are evil and the third can be.

Is this where our current secular mindset takes us, the belief that we are above all morality and everything is mere difference of opinion? I keep thinking the reason this sociologist is willing to dismiss infanticide as a mere social difference is she isn’t the one getting hurt.

Reading: In The Scandal of Holiness, Jessica Hooten Wilson argues for reading fiction to see God at work in the others and expand Christian imagination. Reviewer Justin Lonas found this true for him. “The Holy Spirit used those who influenced my learning to read literature and poetry to protect me from making a shipwreck of my faith.”

Comedy: Norman Lear, the comedy writer who gave us shows such as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, turned 100 on July 27. He drove America’s morality to the left, Albert Mohley writes, “by creating the stories that made America laugh … and sometimes cringe. In any event, Americans watched Lear’s television shows by the millions. They could hardly avoid them.”

Brisket with the Best: This article on eating at the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest is remarkably funny and goes in an unexpected direction while keeping its feet on the ground.

Noting: I try to read my books gently–as few wrinkles as possible, but I also am fairly ready to grab a pen or pencil and mark them up. Here are reasons for writing marginalia.

Gothic Novels: British historian Jeremy Black is written a literary series of series. The Age of Nightmare is coming in November. “The true interest of the Gothic novel is more remarkable than it is grisly: the featured darkness and macabre are not meant to usurp heroism and purity, but will fall hard under the over-ruling hand of Providence and certainty of retribution.”

Photo: McDonald’s, Azusa, California. 1977. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Murder on “B” Deck,’ by Vincent Starrett

Leave a comment

The name Vincent Starrett was familiar to me. He was a well-known writer of the Golden Age of Mystery, but is best known for his book, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, which I read long ago and enjoyed. (I believe he was the one who suggested that Nero Wolfe was Holmes’ son by Irene Adler.)

So, in my ongoing effort to find more classic mystery writers to read, as a break from the Woke Age of Mystery, I bought Murder on “B” Deck, first in Starrett’s series of three 1920s novels starring amateur detective Walter Ghost.

We meet Ghost first through the eyes of his friend Dunstan Mollock, a mystery writer. Dunstan is on board a steam ship about to embark for France, to see his sister and her husband off on their honeymoon. Dunstan is delighted to find his friend Walter Ghost on the ship, also headed for Europe. Walter is described as a tall, ugly, amiable man who is a former Army intelligence agent, a scientist, and an explorer. And somehow he has acquired a reputation as a solver of mysteries.

Dunstan, through a boneheaded mistake, finds himself stuck on board after embarkation, and decides to just buy a ticket make the trip. Not long after, one of the passengers, a beautiful woman who calls herself the Countess Fogartini, is murdered in her stateroom. Shortly thereafter another passenger, a young English nobleman, is lost overboard under suspicious circumstances.

So the captain asks Walter Ghost to investigate. Ghost starts cautiously interrogating the other passengers. I’d like to tell you the drama builds and the tension grows excruciating – but that’s not what happens. The whole thing proceeds at a pretty leisurely pace.

I suppose my tastes have been coarsened by modern fiction, but I found Murder on “B” Deck slow, and the prose flabby. Also the culprit’s behavior, when he is at last unmasked, struck me as more suitable for melodrama than the real world. Ideas of social class that just don’t fly anymore were also on display.

If you’re looking for a low key book that won’t offend you (much), you might enjoy Murder on “B” Deck as a change of pace. But I can’t really praise it much.

Writing

Novel update

2 Comments
Erling Skjalgsson confronts King Olaf Haraldsson at Avaldsnes. It’s actually this scene I’ve been wrestling with. Illustration by Erik Werenskiold.

So how’s the writing going?, you ask.

King of Rogaland is very nearly done. I’ve been doing the final polish now, taking into consideration comments I got from several first readers who were kind enough to take the time to look it over. I didn’t follow all the criticism, but some of it, I must admit, is spot on.

For instance, a fellow name Phil Wade, whom you might have heard of, pointed out that a particular plot thread had not been satisfactorily tied up. He was correct, blast his eyes. I set out to fix it.

It wasn’t easy.

There are times when you’re writing a book when you need to do something and you’ve got, literally, nothing in your toolbox. Somebody (say, Phil) raises a question and you realize that you haven’t even thought about the matter.

Possibilities suggest themselves. None of them work, because they conflict with stuff you’ve already nailed down. It’s like you’ve got to do laparoscopic surgery on your own body – there’s lots of important stuff in the way of the part you need to get at. (That’s not actually a good metaphor at all. But I like its vigor. What I was really trying to express was that the rest of the plot elements were already in place, and I had to fit this new extension somewhere in among them without bumping into the existing furniture.)

It’s pretty terrifying, really. It’s a question of faith. Yes, you’ve been through this before. You’ve seen ideas appear in the past, after days or weeks or months of brain work. But you don’t know that it will happen this time. This time the well may be dry at last. (Especially if you’re getting old. Lots of writers run out of steam in their old age.)

Mixing metaphors is often a symptom.

But it came to me at last. I think it works.

King of Rogaland is coming. I’ve got to get the cover finalized, and I’ve got to see if my e-book guy is available to help me format the thing and release it to Amazon. So it may take a while.

But it’s coming.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Maddy’s Justice,’ by Dennis Carstens

Leave a comment

I reviewed Dennis Carstens’ legal thriller Cult Justice a little while back. I didn’t think the writing was the best, but the characters and dialogue were interesting. Also, the book had a genuinely conservative theme.

So I bought the next book, Maddy’s Justice. And now I’m kind of confused. There was no visible conservatism in this story, except for a hatred of pure evil that pretty much anyone could share. The name change of Minneapolis’ former Lake Calhoun to the unpronounceable Bde Maka Ska is mentioned with unreserved approval. And the plot here is right out of the feminist playbook, aside from some of the jokes.

Attorney Marc Kadella and his boss, Connie, are retained to defend some real scumbags from a sexual harassment complaint. Marc and Connie are used to defending dirtballs, but these guys are worse than they appear. They’re a high-powered, politically juiced law firm with astoundingly predatory policies toward their female employees. It’s generally understood that promotion depends on delivering sexual favors, and even so, few women last long with the firm.

But that’s just on the surface. They are closely connected to an operation in the Caribbean that’s reminiscent of Epstein Island.

But wait, it gets worse…

In order to prepare his defense, Marc has to investigate his own clients, because he knows the plaintiffs’ lawyers will do that, and his clients aren’t cooperative. He turns his private eye friend Tony Carvelli, and his partner Maddy Rivers (who is Marc’s fiancée) loose on them. And the closer they look, the uglier it gets. And the more danger they’re in.

I had a couple problems with this book. The first is that Maddy is a genuine Mary Sue, a woman so beautiful, we’re told, that she once posed for Playboy, but also so lethal that she chews hulking thugs up and spits them out.

Also, the law office banter (similar to, though not quite at the level of, John Sandford’s cop banter) struck me as unrealistic. I say this having no actual experience of law office banter. But I have trouble believing that men and women working together in the business world today make easy jokes about sex with one another and take it lightly. I suspect that a large number of female employees are constantly on the hunt for microaggressions. And the men walk on eggshells.

The author’s besetting sin of misplaced metaphors was less on display in this book than in the last one (though it did show up), but comma placement was almost random all through the text.

So I didn’t like Maddy’s Justice as much as I liked Cult Justice. I don’t know if I’m going to go on with the series or not. But they’re one and one with me, so maybe I’ll give them one more chance.

Cautions for language, adult situations, and some really, really disturbing themes involving violence against children.