Fiction, Reviews

Second review: ‘After That the Dark,’ by Andrew Klavan

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“I don’t think there is a middle ground. I have a job here. I teach poetry to young people. Poetry is a thing. It’s a thing that does a thing, or tries to do it. It tries to use words to unite the material world with its greater meanings….”

Because I love Andrew Klavan’s Cameron Winter novels so, I make it my custom to read each one twice (when they’re new; no doubt there will be further readings down the road). So this is my second review of the fifth book in the series, After That the Dark.

Our hero, secret government assassin turned English professor Cameron Winter, finally has his first date with Gwendolyn Lord, the woman he’s been dancing around over the course of the two previous books. And it’s good. It’s more than good. They click. They complement each other. They seem to have very little in common in terms of tastes, but they fill each other’s empty spaces. It all rather scares him.

Just to make conversation, she tells him a story she figures is right up his alley. A friend of hers, who works at a penitentiary in Oklahoma, has witnessed a “locked door mystery.” A prisoner, a man who went crazy and murdered his wife and little son, had been locked into a padded cell, wearing only his underwear. A few hours later he was found dead, killed with a nail gun. Officially, it’s listed as a suicide, but where did he get the nail gun?

Just to please Gwendolyn, Winter goes to Oklahoma to ask questions. He does not expect that his questions will lead him to a confrontation with one of the most powerful men in the world, and with a nightmarish assassin he’s already tangled with once before.

On this second reading, I think I understand better what After That the Dark is all about. The heart of the thing is the body-soul nexus, the way flesh and spirit coexist. The dark conspiracy Winter uncovers and fights involves an attempt to overcome the problem of crime through purely mechanistic means. The scene where (spoiler alert) Winter goes to bed with Gwendolyn is a counterpoint, illustrating the truth that flesh and spirit are reconciled through love, not through man’s reason or technology.

I suppose that’s Klavan’s reason for putting the two of them in bed together – in spite of the fact that Gwendolyn is supposed to be a faithful, born-again Christian. It still bothers me, not because I demand stories where Christians are perfect, but because it seems to ignore Christian sexual morality altogether. Still, even fornication is “becoming one flesh” according to Scripture, so it works thematically.

An amusing continuing element in each of these books is the character of “Stan-stan Stankowski,” the ultimate undercover operative. Stan-stan always shows up at some point to pass on information, either from the government or from Winters’ old superior. The thing about Stan-stan is that he seems to have no personal identity, or even a body of his own. In the previous book he was passing as a large, burly wilderness guide. In this book, he appears as a tiny, delicate Asian woman. He’s literally impossible – if the books are ever filmed, they’ll have to use a different actor each time out. But it’s a funny plot device, and suggestive of the flesh/spirit conundrum that is this book’s theme.

All in all, I really enjoyed After That the Dark, like all the books in the series. I haven’t reconciled myself to the sex scene, but it’s not enough to turn me against this fascinating series.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Quick Red Fox,’ by John D. MacDonald

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He was a type. The totally muscled sportsman—muscles upon muscles so that even his face looked like a leather bag of walnuts.

Once again, we turn to a Travis McGee novel by John D. MacDonald – one of my favorites, I think. As I was enjoying it it, I was struck (not for the first time) by MacDonald’s ability to transcend his genre. He was, you’ll recall, writing paperback originals for Fawcett Publications – whose line of trade was sexy, violent stories for a male audience. They were competing directly for readers with Mickey Spillane.

And yet MacDonald takes the premise of The Quick Red Fox, a premise tailor-made for the Spillane audience (Hollywood sex goddess, being blackmailed, calls on studly private eye to save her reputation) and runs it in an entirely unexpected direction. He makes it a love story, with some kind of moral core.

Lysa Dean is a major Hollywood star, up there with Liz Taylor and Kim Novak. Her whole life is regimented, as is her appearance and physical health. But a year and a half back, she kicked loose for a while, hooking up with a shady guy. He took her to a wild house party at a place on a cliff on the California coast, where a lot of group sex took place. What she did not guess was that there was a man with a camera on the rocks a little way off, capturing the action through a telephoto lens. Now she’s being blackmailed.

She sends her personal assistant, Dana Holtzer, to bring McGee to see her. McGee isn’t much taken with Lysa, but Dana intrigues him. Dana is a very reserved woman, very efficient, very put-together. McGee takes the job, not for the money, but to get to know Dana. Lysa sends Dana along with him, as an assistant, and over time Dana thaws toward him, opening up about her past and her situation. McGee, who has always tried to avoid long-term commitments, begins thinking about settling down….

This, of course, cannot end well.

The Quick Red Fox is, I think, one of the best and most memorable of the Travis McGee series. McGee’s growing dreams of a life with Dana raise the emotional stakes, and the mystery remains baffling to the very end (I challenge anyone to figure out whodunnit in this one).

It’s notable that this story features two female characters who appear to be physically “flawless,” and they both leave McGee cold. He much prepares Dana, who (we are told) has some flaws. There’s a scene featuring a pair of hostile lesbians, which has no doubt contributed to the oft-repeated accusation that MacDonald was a homophobic writer. But McGee treats those women the way they demand to be treated, and his view of homosexuality was the conventional one for his time (and, I expect, for the future too).

There’s a lot of moral judgment in this story, more useful in what it opposes than in what it affirms. All McGee can come up with to express his own code is that “a moral act is one you feel good about afterward.” Author MacDonald could have done better than that, I hope, but he wasn’t delivering a moral lecture here.

In any case, I like The Quick Red Fox very much. Cautions for adult themes, pretty mild by today’s standards.

Bookselling, Fiction

Review a Lars Walker E-book, Win Another One!

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When I reviewed Troll Valley after its first release as an e-book, I said it was an entertaining story about what we can and cannot control. A young man grows up with a deformed arm and a fairy godmother who doesn’t stand around granting wishes with a smile. It’s a little dark and not at all shmaltzy. It’s my favorite of Lars’s novels.

Troll Valley is now in audio, narrated by the author himself. You can get it with an Audible subscription or purchase it for your digital library. In honor of that technological accomplishment, we’re running a promotion. It’s a favor to you really. We’re doing you a solid.

Review one of Lars’s novels on Amazon or Goodreads, send us proof of that review, and we’ll send you another e-book of your choice. It has to be a new review. If you posted a review earlier this month or last month, we’ll accept that too. Just share a link in the comments of this post and we can email you another of Lars’s e-books to enjoy (and review, of course, like, please).

For example, you could post a review of Hailstone Mountain, and we could send you the e-book for The Elder King. Let us know which e-book you would like when you post your review in the comments.

Buy the books via any of our affiliate links. You don’t have to have bought the novel recently. It could be the one in your TBR pile. Only the review has to be new.

Post your review by Jan. 7, 2026 to get a free e-book in exchange, and let us know what you think of the new Troll Valley audiobook when you a chance to listen.

(Photo by Veroniki Thetis Chelioti on Unsplash)

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Great Meadows,’ by Christopher Walsh

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Resolved that I was in the right atmosphere for the task at hand, I tipped my glass allowing just a taste to cross the threshold of my lips before it eased across my tongue and down my throat, giving me a Kentucky hug that warmed the cockles of my own barren heart.

According to reports, Catholic churches are growing faster than Protestant churches in America these days. No doubt there are theological forces at play here (though I’m a Lutheran, and many of my fellow Lutherans consider themselves not Protestants at all, but “true Catholics”). But one field in which (it seems to me) the Catholics are certainly leading us by a mile is in producing good literature. A consciously Catholic novel will, in my experience, almost always be better than a Protestant novel. And that includes mysteries like Christopher Walsh’s The Great Meadows.

Our hero and narrator is Levi Motley, a talented young journalist with no fixed address. He hops from job to job, not because he can’t hold a position, but because he’s afraid to put down roots anywhere.

But now he’s headed back to Bardstown, Kentucky, bourbon country, the place where he grew up. As he nears the town, he sees a young, dark-skinned man hitchhiking, holding a sign that says “Gethsemani.” Impulsively, Levi picks him up. He learns that the young man’s name is Moussa Diab, and the Gethsemani of the sign refers to a Catholic seminary near Bardstown, where he’s headed to pray about becoming a priest. He calls Levi an angel, sent by God to help him in his quest.

Arriving in town, Levi soon gets a newspaper job (this book is set around 1997, so newspapers were still a force in the world) with an old friend’s help. Shortly after, he learns that Moussa has been murdered, found dead near a river. Levi is curious – what was Moussa doing in that spot, and why did he have a shovel with him?

The murder story becomes Levi’s big investigative project. It will take him to the intersection of organized crime and local government – and also into a confrontation with the demons of his own past.

The Great Meadows isn’t flawless. There were occasional infelicities in the prose, and at least one politically self-conscious moment. Still, I found it a fascinating, engaging, and inspiring read. I recommend it.

I also hope I write this well myself, even if I am a Protestant.

Music, Religion

Bach’s latest hit, and discipleship

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At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, “I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”

 Turning to the disciples, He said privately, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see, for I say to you, that many prophets and kings wished to see the things which you see, and did not see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and did not hear them.” (Luke 10:21-24, NASB 1995)

The music at the top is one of the recently discovered pieces that are thought to have been composed by Johan Sebastian Bach, whom I once heard Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffman describe as “the second greatest Lutheran in history.” I guess there’s some dispute about authorship, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. Bach’s whole ouvre could have been forged by Mendelssohn, and how would I know?

My devotions this morning were on the passage printed at the top of this text. What struck me was how different this speech is from a lot of what the Lord says about discipleship. (Or at least how I perceive what He says.) I tend to go the same way as Jordan Peterson, who is a legalist and is always discussing it in a cautionary way. “Have you really thought about what that means, ‘taking up your cross’?” Peterson asks. “It means suffering. It means dying. Are we really prepared to do that?”

Which is fair enough; He’s quoting the Lord Himself.

But Christ is in an entirely different mode in this passage. He’s looking at these guys He’s chosen – guys He’s chosen for suffering and ostracism and death – and He’s telling them how lucky they are. He’s given (and is giving) them something that outweighs all that suffering and death to such a degree that they’re not even worth considering.

I certainly believe we should talk about – even stress – the cost of discipleship.

But I’m pretty sure I under-stress the joy of the knowledge of Christ. Which is not surprising, considering my personality.

But I need to work on it.

Non-fiction, Writing

Taking a stand for Athelstan

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The YouTube video above concerns my current study, King Athelstan of England, who is described in the Icelandic sagas as “the Mighty,” though he never attained the popular status of “the Great” in his own country. Today he’s generally acknowledged to have been the first monarch of all England – of all the English. This is because he unified Wessex with Mercia, and the other little kingdoms the Vikings had left tottering had little choice but to tag along.

I’m re-reading Paul Hill’s book, The Age of Athelstan, in preparation for my Haakon the Good book. Haakon is one of those saga characters whose very existence is frequently questioned by historians. Scholars these days tend to be so skeptical of saga accounts that they actually treat a saga mention as evidence against a person’s existence – as if people are more likely to tell stories about people they made up than ones who actually existed. As if nothing ever happened in prehistory, so all the stories had to be invented.

Haakon is not mentioned in any contemporary document we possess. Although we’re told he was raised in Athelstan’s court, no record of his presence has survived. We know of several exiled princes who were raised by Athelstan, but Haakon gets no ink.

I need hardly say that I do believe he existed, and what I read about Athelstan’s court seems to me an excellent place for a king like him to be educated. Athelstan was interested in writing and education (despite the fact that not much record of his rule survives). Young Haakon may or may not have been interested in reading and writing Latin himself (though I figure I’ll make him literate). But there was also much to be learned there about running a kingdom, and (especially) organizing national defense – a field in which the sagas say Haakon made innovations in Norway. Athelstan carried out legal reforms – for instance, he raised the minimum age for capital punishment to fifteen, which was pretty soft by the standards of the time. Haakon also took an interest in revising the law.

There is also reason to connect him with Glastonbury Abbey, and with Saint Dunstan. The sagas say Egil Skallagrimsson fought for Athelstan as a mercenary at the Battle of Brunanburh, though Haakon doesn’t take to him.

Also not implausible. Egil was an easy guy to dislike.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Vikström Papers: Restoration Man,’ by Douglas Lindsay

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It is part of the essence of the hard-boiled detective to be a little abrasive, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when a new HB sleuth finds new ways to be annoying. Douglas Lindsay’s Sam Vikström does just that, but is mostly effective, fictionally, in The Vikström Papers: Restoration Man.

In spite of his Swedish name, Sam Vikström is a Scot. Just to confuse things further, he’s put down roots in coastal Massachusetts, where he works as a private eye. Not the old style PI, with a rumpled trench coat and venetian blind shadows slanting across his office, but an employee of an agency, getting his assignments over the phone. He lives with a cat, drinks too much, and is having an affair with the local chief of police (female), who is married.

His latest job is a missing person’s case. A wealthy woman wants him to find her husband, Carl Fischer, who ran off with his current mistress. She’s not concerned, she says, about his infidelity – they have an “understanding.” She’s just worried about his safety.

Vikström inquires at Carl’s place of business, an erotically oriented art gallery where he restores paintings. Various clues lead Vikström to believe the disappearance is related to a valuable artifact Carl recently got his hands on – a nautical compass from a famous shipwreck. Only people Carl knew (or slept with) are starting to show up murdered, each with a scrimshaw image inscribed on one of their teeth.

Restoration Man was an interesting mystery, and kept me reading. Though set in the U.S., it features English orthography and spelling, so I assume Author Lindsay is English. He should get full marks for doing a pretty good job of reproducing American speech idioms, though – most of the time.

He subscribes to two major current writing conventions that annoy me – he writes in the present tense, and he never describes his characters physically, more than absolutely necessary. (I consider this a lazy affectation – expecting the reader to do part of the author’s job for him.) To be fair, the characters are pretty distinctive anyway.

Sam Vikström himself annoyed me too. He’s always quoting Tolkien, but only the movies – he says he never reads books. He’s also frequently a jerk.

Still, Restoration Man was an engaging book. I might even read another in the series – haven’t made my mind up.

Cautions for adult themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Middle of the Night,’ by Riley Sager

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My parents, immediately concerned about how I’d be affected by my friend’s abduction, made sure to cut me out of the snapshot before it was released to the press. In doing so, they created an ironic reversal of the situation.

Billy, the Lost Boy, was seen literally everywhere, his image almost as prominent that summer as O. J. Simpson and the white Bronco. And I became invisible.

Tonight’s review concerns a novel by Riley Sager, an author I wasn’t familiar with. But he knows his business. The novel is called Middle of the Night.

Ethan Marsh, the narrator, is back (this is another first-person, present tense novel, alas) living in his boyhood home, and not happy about it. But his parents have decided to retire to Florida, and his broken marriage has left him needing a place to stay, so here he is, at least for a while.

It’s not that it’s a bad place to live. Hemlock Circle is a lovely cul-de-sac in a leafy suburb near Princeton University. The neighbors are friendly and engaged with one another.

But this is where, when he was ten years old, Ethan had the worst experience of his life. He was “camping” in a tent in his back yard with his best friend Billy one night, and woke the next morning to find the tent wall slashed open, and Billy missing. Never to be seen again.

Ethan has been haunted by nightmares ever since.

Now, back in Hemlock Circle, he’s constantly reminded of that night. Now and then, in the dark, he has a fleeting impression of Billy’s spectral presence. Some invisible visitor seems to be wandering the circle at night, triggering motion sensors on security lights. And, most troubling of all, from time to time he finds a baseball in his back yard – that had been Billy’s secret summons to get together when they were boys. Nobody knew about it but the two of them.

Perhaps, Ethan thinks, Billy is speaking to him from beyond, asking him to solve the mystery of his murder. Or maybe he’s still alive, playing a vengeful game because he blames Ethan for something – something he himself can’t remember.

Middle of the Night is a well-written and immersive book. It brushed up against the topic of spiritualism, but only brushed it lightly. I found it moving and fascinating to read. As it happens, I figured out whodunnit ahead of time, but only on structural grounds, not because I figured out the clues.

Recommended.

Writing

Back to Haakon

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I am now officially on my own again, work-wise. For the last few weeks I’ve been working on the magazine I edit for the Valdres Samband (an organization of descendants from a particular region of Norway), but I sent that to the printers yesterday. This means I can devote my powers once again to my Work In Progress, my novel about King Haakon the Good of Norway. That’s him on top of the column in the picture above. I’m on the ground, on your right, while my friend Einar is on the left. The photo was taken on my last trip to the Center of the Universe, at Fitjar, where Haakon died.

I’m still mostly doing research, going through books and noting down ideas and intriguing facts. For instance, I discovered in Bishop Fridtjof Birkeli’s book, Tolv År Hadde Kristendommen Vært i Norge (Twelve Years Had Christianity been in Norway, sadly out of print now, but I have a copy), that Haakon had a heathen wife, according to one very old source.

This is great. There’s all sorts of things I can do with the situation of a Christian king married to a heathen. It also addresses the issue of Haakon’s sexuality, which was insulted by Poul Anderson in his novel, Mother of Kings (which I do not choose to link). Anderson made Haakon a homosexual — one assumes because Haakon left no heir, and the sagas don’t mention his marriage. Needless to say, I don’t intend to take Anderson’s lead.

I came up with a great scene, pleasingly offensive, which I plan to incorporate somewhere in my account of Haakon’s childhood. It’ll be something like this:

“Let me tell you something about women, lad. Something you’ll need to understand. You should listen to women when they talk. Listen carefully. Give them your full attention. Then do the exact other way round from what they say. If she says she wants to be handled roughly, to be grabbed up, carried off and ravished, then pick flowers for her. Sing her songs of love. Tickle her knees like a little girl.

“And if she says she wants a kind man in whom she can confide her deepest thoughts and hopes, well, then take hold of her, push her up against a wall, and hump her on the spot.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because none of them knows what she wants. We men are always complaining that we don’t understand women. Let me tell you – they don’t understand themselves any better.”

“So they always say they want what they don’t really want?”

“Always. Most of the time. Seven times out of ten. Or six. Maybe five. As often as not, anyway.”

My working title at the moment is That Was a Good King, a quotation from Beowulf. But I’m not married to it.

Uncategorized

“The roar-a borealis”

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The clip above is from one of my favorite movies, Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero. The setup is that our hero Mack, played by Peter Rieger, is a Texas oil company representative, sent to Scotland to arrange for the purchase of a stretch of coastline where they can build an oil terminal. But he also has a special assignment from his eccentric boss, Mr. Happer (Burt Lancaster). Happer, a passionate amateur astronomer, wants Mack to watch the sky, in the hope he can find an undiscovered comet he can name after himself. However, Mack, along with his Scottish escort Jimmy (Peter Capaldi, later to be Doctor Who), is growing increasingly enchanted by the scenery and the local folk – who are, for their own part, simply delighted to sell their property off for a pile of American money.

The clip is highlighted by the appearance of the aurora borealis. I had hopes of seeing it myself last night. The previous night – Tuesday – there was (as you’re probably aware) a spate of sightings. People from all over the country were posting pictures of it on Facebook. I went out onto my back porch to look for myself, but saw nothing. My back yard isn’t a great spot for aurora hunting – it faces north, but there are tall houses and trees that way. Also quite a lot of light pollution.

It troubled me that I’d missed the lights. I know I’ve seen them once before – sometime around 1972 in northern Minnesota. I might have seen them in Alaska the summer before that, or in Norway the year I took a cruise above the Arctic Circle. But summer isn’t the best time for northern lights, so maybe my not remembering isn’t just because of aging brain cells.

Anyway, I thought about it overnight. And yesterday, the word was that the lights might be even more spectacular. Viewing after 9:00 p.m. was recommended. “I shall get in my car and drive north to see them,” I decided.

And I did that. I drove up to Brooklyn Center, and parked in the Walmart lot. It was still an urban location, granted, but people further south had posted aurora photos already that night.

But for me, nothing. Nada. Niente. (That’s a quote from Local Hero, by the way.) I sat around for about half an hour. No show.

I comfort myself with the fact that I tried. I stayed up late and delayed my bedtime. I drove in the dark (always a challenge when you’re getting on in years) and waited in patience. Just to see something beautiful.

I’m old, but I’m not quite dead. Apparently.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture