Another free book by an author I’m not familiar with. I think this is the fourth in the string. I’ve disliked each book less than the last, and The Blood Line by Solomon Carter was the best so far. Not stellar, but not bad.
Aging Detective Inspector Joe Hogarth of Southend in Essex, England, is summoned to a very nasty crime scene with his two female colleagues. The deceased has been dead several days, and decomposition is well under way. The dead man was known as a forger, specializing in false passports and other IDs. The method of the murder is interesting – first the man was given a powerful “speedball” injection of cocaine and heroin, and then he was stabbed to death before the drugs could kill him. Why would anyone take the trouble to do all that?
Before long another local criminal, a human trafficker, is found murdered exactly the same way. This is obviously personal for the killer, but who could that person be? The field of possible suspects is wide; the problem is finding the person with the right kind of hate.
Joe Hogarth is a sort of a sad sack – middle-aged, never married, lonely but scared of commitment. Instead of taking risks in dating, he medicates himself with alcohol. Meanwhile, an old enemy of his has been released from prison. All unknown to Hogarth, this psychopath has come to town and is laying plans to repay him for all the time he spent behind bars.
I thought The Blood Line was well-written. Joe Hogarth is a good character, and not politically correct; I was interested in him. My only real objection, though, is a big one – the story is kind of dreary. Hogarth has a dreary life, and little hope is in view. Maybe things will get better in the next books in the series.
Sad, sad news. The historian Paul Johnson died today. He was born in 1928, and was a practicing Roman Catholic. He wrote more than 40 books, as well as innumerable articles. Originally a leftist, Johnson grew disenchanted with the Left, objecting especially to its blinkered moral relativism, a theme that runs through all his works. His books Modern Times and Intellectuals were formative for me (I delighted in his takedown of Ibsen in Intellectuals), and I also appreciated The Birth of the Modern.
The English Spectator has a memorial post today here. It includes a quote from an article he wrote for them on moral relativism:
As I see it, the Satan who confronted Jesus during this encounter is the personification of moral relativism, and the materialism which creates it. What we are shown is not merely ‘all the kingdoms of the world’ but the entire universe, in all its colossal extent, reaching backwards and forwards into infinity and beyond the powers of the human mind to grasp except in mathematical equations. We are told: this came into existence, not by an act of creation, but as a result of the laws of physics, which have no moral purpose whatever — or indeed any purpose. There is no conceivable room for God in this process, and mankind is an infinitely minute spectator of this futile process about which he can do nothing, being of no more significance than a speck of dust or a fragment of rock. If you will accept this view of our fate, then there is just a chance that by applying the laws of science to the exclusion of any other considerations, and by dismissing the notion of God, or the spirit, or goodness, or any other absolute notion of truth and right and wrong, we shall be able marginally to improve the human condition during the minute portion of time our race occupies our doomed planet.’
Rest in peace, Mr. Johnson. You’ll be much missed.
I’ve been reading a lot of free books made available through various Kindle promotions lately. As you may have noticed, I wasn’t entirely happy with the last couple I reviewed. Was J. C. Fields’ The Cold Trail more satisfying?
Well, yes. But not entirely.
This book is part of a series, and there were the usual problems with character relationships that had to be explained, but that wasn’t handled too badly. The story begins with the disappearance, a few years back, of three female volleyball players from a college in Missouri. A few years later, our hero, Sean Kruger, a professor at another Missouri college, is able to rescue a different volleyball player. Kruger is a former FBI agent, and he worked on the earlier abductions. The similarities prompt him to get his hacker friend to do some checking in the records, and he believes he can discern the work of a serial killer. Because of this he makes up his mind to go back to his old job at the FBI, which assigns him to the case.
Eventually he and his team are able learn that one thing connects a number of disappearances of female athletes over recent years. In each case, a particular software company was installing a system in the college at the time. And the man overseeing the installation was the son of the company’s owner, computer mogul Robert Burns, who recently retired as a senator. The son in question was Robert Jr., “Bobby,” and he has just been elected to his father’s old seat. Is it possible a US senator is a serial killer?
Of course it’s possible, and much money has been spent on covering up Bobby’s “indiscretions.” But it goes far deeper than that. We’re talking about the Russian mafia and international human trafficking.
The story worked pretty well. The characters were interesting, and they interacted well. The dialogue was good. The book could have used a proofreader – I found misplaced modifiers and word confusion (like “vanilla folder”). But as a narrative, it wasn’t bad. I caught what looked to me like one plot weakness, but that happens.
My reservations were mostly political and paranoid.
The evil senator is, of course, a conservative Republican. And he is owned, part and parcel, by Vladimir Putin and the Russians, who are using him to destabilize the US economy.
It occurred to me that Robert Burns might be a stand-in for Donald Trump in a left-wing fantasy.
Also, we got to watch the FBI at work investigating a senator, and they cut legal corners from time to time. Nothing sinister about the squeaky-clean FBI illegally surveilling a Republican, right?
Also, the bureaucrats in this book never worry about wokeness. There’s no concern over microaggressions, and nobody talks about their preferred pronouns. I did not believe this was true to contemporary life in the federal government.
All in all, The Cold Trail left me with chilly feet.
Writing a story (of any length, but novels are hardest in this respect) presents many challenges, and it’s a surprise any of us ever gets it tolerably right (I’m not saying I get it right myself; that’s for others to determine). You’ve got to cobble together an interesting plot, and then you’ve got to cat-herd your characters into doing the (sometimes outrageous) stuff they need to do in order to keep common sense from breaking out. A story implies unusual activity, and unusual activity usually means forcing characters to do extreme stuff. This can be done well or badly. I felt it was done rather badly in Lewis M. Penry’s One Other, second in his DS Jerome Roberts police procedural series.
Dr. Ben Carr is one-half of a medical practice in the London suburb of Shefford. He’s a family man and football (soccer) coach. Apparently popular with his neighbors – so why did someone stab him to death in his home?
Detective Sergeant Jerome Roberts, along with his superior DI Richard Martin, starts questioning neighbors and friends, and a darker picture of him emerges. Dr. Carr seems to have had his share of enemies – there’s his business partner (whom he’s been blackmailing), and the families of female students he’s been sleeping with. There’s the football mom who threatened him publicly for not putting her son into a game. There’s his own brother, too.
As police pressure increases, the suspects respond violently, turning on one another, and even on themselves. The whole thing erupts in a series of homicides.
And that’s my problem with this book. This isn’t supposed to be grand opera or Shakespearean tragedy. It’s a story about ordinary middle class citizens in a suburb. No doubt they’re all sinners like the rest of us, but (it seems to me) the author overestimates the capacity of the average person for deadly force. Killing another human is the first and most stubborn taboo. It takes serious fear, trauma, or specialized training to get past that taboo. Communities don’t just break out in murder like an epidemic of chickenpox.
One Other fell down, for this reader, in the psychology department. I simply didn’t believe the story.
The poor—the slaves who really stoop under the burden of life—have often been mad, scatter-brained and cruel, but never hopeless. That is a class privilege, like cigars. Their drivelling literature will always be a ‘blood and thunder’ literature, as simple as the thunder of heaven and the blood of men.
On a friend’s recommendation, I picked up the Project Gutenberg version of G. K. Chesterton’s The Defendant. (My link, of course, is to a version you’ll have to pay for. You think we’re running a charity here?) It’s pretty standard Chesterton, which is to say, eccentrically stimulating.
The book’s title, as the author himself admits in the Foreword, is awkwardly put. Chesterton does not stand in his own defense here, but in defense of various topics he has chosen for no other reason than that they’re out of fashion (or were at the time). Subjects include: “Penny Dreadful” novels, skeletons, publicity, nonsense, “ugly things,” slang, detective stories, and patriotism. It helps, in reading, to have some general idea of intellectual fashions around the turn of the 20th Century. Although Christianity is mentioned, this is not one of Chesterton’s most Christian (or Catholic) works.
The Defendant isn’t one of the most memorable books in G. K.’s ouvre, but it’s definitely worth reading. There are excellent moments:
“There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. Men do not quarrel about the meaning of sunsets; they never dispute that the hawthorne says the best and wittiest thing about the spring.”
“Scripture says that one star differeth from another in glory, and the same conception applies to noses.”
“Jesus Paid It All” arranged for acoustic instruments and performed by Craig Duncan
Here’s an excellent hymn to begin a new year. Elvina M. Hall (1820-1889) wrote “Jesus Paid It All” on a fly leaf of the hymnal of her Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1865. Perhaps that means it was written in response to a sermon or Scripture reading during the service. It reads like such a response.
1 I hear the Savior say, “Thy strength indeed is small, Child of weakness, watch and pray, Find in Me thine all in all.”
Refrain: Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe; Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow.
2 Lord, now indeed I find Thy pow’r and Thine alone, Can change the leper’s spots And melt the heart of stone. [Refrain]
3 For nothing good have I Where-by Thy grace to claim; I’ll wash my garments white In the blood of Calv’ry’s Lamb. [Refrain]
4 And when, before the throne, I stand in Him complete, “Jesus died my soul to save,” My lips shall still repeat. [Refrain]
I intend to read more books this year, but since I didn’t quite track how many I read last year, I don’t have an actual number to aim for this year. Goodreads has 23 on last year’s list, which includes several manga. Not sure those count, and a number of books isn’t my goal anyway. A number of pages would be more accurate.
I bought a few Christmas gifts for this purpose, and Tom Holland’s Dominion is 542 dense pages. That will take me a while to get through and in no way diminishes my enjoyment or education for being only one book. (I should take notes too.)
Writer Max Liu read a poetry anthology over two years, “each morning in the four minutes it took my coffee to brew. It was a wonderful reminder that reading is never about quantity and always about the quality of time you spend with a text.” He encourages all of us to read well and for fun, not to meet some goal. (via Joel Miller)
Christian Poetry: How would you define Christian poetry? What about a poem would make it Christian? In a new anthology, Christian Poetry in America (which I bought last month), part of that definition is placing “imitation and tradition over originality and self-expression.”
War in Ukraine: “Someone said it’s essential for Ukraine to win as it would give Russia a chance to rethink its values and undergo cleansing and much-needed change. We pray for it.”
Self-Absorbed Much? A new book is coming on the dangers of social media. The Wolf in Their Pockets is written to pastors to help them minister to “those whose online influences have filled them with cynicism and contempt.”
Photo: Santa’s #1 reindeer, Magic Forest, Lake George, New York. 1996. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
The inner office was, however, empty when Joss entered. It was only after he had banged cheerfully on the desk with a paperweight, at the same time shouting a jovial “Bring out your dead,” that Mr. Duff came in from the little balcony outside the window, where he had been attempting to alleviate his dyspepsia by deep breathing.
“Aha, J. B.,” said Joss sunnily. “Good morrow.”
“Oh, you’re there are you?” said Mr. Duff, making no attempt to emulate his junior’s effervescence.
The managing director of Duff and Trotter was a large man who, after an athletic youth, had allowed himself to put on weight. In his college days he had been a hammer thrower of some repute, and he was looking as if he wished he had a hammer now and could throw it at Joss….
“You’re late!” he boomed.
“Not really,” said Joss.
“What the devil do you mean, not really?”
“A man like me always seems to be later than he is. That is because people sit yearning for him….”
The first book of P. G. Wodehouse I ever bought was the collection The Most of P. G. Wodehouse, published by Simon & Schuster back in the ‘70s, which included the novel Quick Service as a sort of extra (it remains the most reasonably priced way to get this book, so that’s the link I’m using). Thus, Quick Service was the first Wodehouse novel I ever read. I enjoyed it immensely then, and did again on re-reading. Especially because its main character is surprisingly different from most of your Wodehouse heroes.
The plot of the story is extremely tight and complex, but cutting back to the essentials, we start at Claines Hall in Sussex, which now belongs to Mrs. Howard Steptoe, an American millionairess, and her husband. Also in residence is her poor relation, Sally Fairmile, who serves as a sort of secretary. Sally has just gotten engaged to young Lord Holbeton, another guest at the manor. The problem is that under the terms of his father’s will, Lord Holbeton can’t touch his inheritance yet without the approval of his trustee, Mr. J. B. Duff of Duff and Trotter’s exclusive grocery store in London. Sally suggests that she go talk to Mr. Duff, and see if she can’t charm him.
But when she arrives at Duff’s office, she finds not him but our hero, Joss Weatherby, an artist who works in the advertising department. Joss immediately falls in love with her. When she’s gone, Duff reappears, having learned, through eavesdropping, that Joss painted a portrait of a Mrs. Chavender, which now hangs at Claines Hall (where Mrs. Chavender just happens to be a current guest). Duff was once engaged to Mrs. Chavender, he says, and it occurs to him that her face, with its haughty sneer, would make a wonderful poster for the store. He then fires Joss, but Joss heads off to Claines Hall, to take a job as Mr. Steptoe’s valet (a job that Sally mentioned is open). His plan is to steal the portrait, get his job back, and marry Sally.
There may be other heroes like Joss Weatherby in other Wodehouse stories (my memory sometimes fails, and there are a lot of stories), but such an energetic, bright, confident type isn’t the Master’s usual fare. Uncle Fred and Uncle Galahad were probably something like this in their youths. “Aplomb” is the word that best suits Joss. It makes no difference whether he’s discovered swilling his boss’s sherry, breaking into a French window, or perched on a chair, cutting a painting from its frame, he is never dismayed. His self-confidence only ebbs in those moments when he contemplates his unworthiness of the woman he loves. And then only briefly. Joss Weatherby is a great tonic for the depressive reader.
Quick Service is a tremendous story, and everyone should read it.
Your correspondent is a tad down today. Translation work has been slow (read nonexistent), and it snowed and snowed for days and days. Stopped today, and we should be safe for a while according to the forecasts. But it’s… full out there. Chock full. This is one of those years when we don’t know what to do with all the accumulation. The piles along the driveway are nearly as tall as we are.
Of course my neighbor clears the snow for me with a machine, but it’s guilt-inducing to watch him at it.
The news is depressing too. I think I’m going to turn off talk radio again for a while (except for some hours of Prager). Listen to Pandora instead. Confession: I’d like to see my party, you know, pulling together. But I’m afraid that if I say that I’ll be accused of being a RINO. The arguments in favor of the Twenty make some sense to me, but I don’t like watching friends turn into enemies. Simple soul that I am, I don’t think that really helps in the long run.
Above, maintaining the theme of love for That Hideous Strength I’ve been proclaiming all week, here’s Andrew Klavan talking about it. Some of this is a little hard to understand (how can anybody not love Narnia? How can anybody read THS with ease the first time through?), but his opinions on the meaning of the book are spot on. They get him the all-important Walker endorsement, which is nice.
I opened my eyes again. Ridiculous. The truth—as the last half hour had demonstrated beyond doubt—was that the war was lost. And yet here I was, so trapped in the habit of writing, that I was already trying to find the words to explain to someone who would never read them why no one would ever read them.
Dale Nelson reviewed this book in the Bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis Society, comparing it to That Hideous Strength. I bought it on the strength of that. Coyote Fork is a very different book from THS, but a fascinating parallel read.
Robert Lovelace is an English journalist who used to make his living as a travel writer. But that livelihood is gone, destroyed by social media. His last, desperate bid for writing work is an assignment to go to Silicon Valley and report on the roll-out of TOLSTOY, the latest brain-child of social media mogul Evan Bone (whom Robert blames for the loss of his job). TOLSTOY is supposed to represent a whole new level of Artificial Intelligence, one in which computers will be creating their own stories. Robert can only take so much of this, and rushes outside at last for fresh air.
In the parking lot, he sees Anne Grainger, his ex-girlfriend, who’s supposed to be in England. She’s another victim of Bone’s empire – after rediscovering her Christian faith in mid-life, she was cancelled for her thought crimes in a thoroughgoing way by Global Village, Evan Bone’s social media empire. She fled into hiding, her reputation ruined.
Back in his hotel room, Robert gets the news – Anne is dead. She killed herself, and she was nowhere near California at the time.
The vision, or visitation, of Anne leaves Robert with a single resolve. He’s going to discover the secretive Evan Bone’s true story, and tell it to the world. Give him a dose of his own medicine. Destroy the destroyer. His quest will take him to Coyote Fork, the abandoned site of a 1970s hippie commune, where it turns out Evan grew up. There’s a standard popular narrative about Coyote Fork, and then there’s the true story, which only a few people dare to tell.
Along the way, Robert will be joined in his quest by Ruth Halassian, a scholar who shares his passion – and might share his future. But the real secret of Coyote Fork lies with the local Indians, and they don’t tell their story to just anyone.
Coyote Fork is really not very similar to That Hideous Strength, except in certain themes related to the abuse of science and technology. Robert is a little like Mark Studdock in some ways. But this story is much simpler (which will relieve many readers). Where THS is explicitly Christian, Coyote Fork is more ambivalent – not anti-Christian is the best I can say on that. Where Christianity comes up, it fares pretty well, but the real truth in this story (to the extent that there is a truth) seems to be hidden among the pre-Christian Indians. The final resolution seemed ambivalent at first, but became clear once I’d thought about it.
All that said, Coyote Fork is expertly written, fascinating, and disturbing. I recommend it. Cautions for adult stuff and rough language.
