Fiction, Reviews

‘Maddy’s Justice,’ by Dennis Carstens

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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.

Reviews

Netflix review: ‘The Gray Man’

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Well, I watched The Gray Man, the film adaptation of Mark Greaney’s novel, reviewed here. It was a book tailor-made for a movie, and the Hollywood geniuses have movie-ized it even more.

Ryan Gosling (who’s actually a pretty good choice for the part, since it’s easy to see him as the kind of guy who could move around unnoticed), plays “Sierra Six,” a super-covert agent for the CIA. We meet him in Bangkok, where he’s been sent to assassinate a target.

In order to avoid collateral casualties, he disobeys orders and confronts the target in person. As he’s dying, the target tells him he’s another member of the Sierra program. He tells Six he’ll be next, and places a mysterious amulet in his hands.

Six’s bosses send killers after Six to retrieve the amulet, and he’s soon on the run. Along the way he finds himself thrown in with agent Dani Miranda (Ana de Armas), who has grown mistrustful of her bosses.

At this point, the film pretty much goes into mental dormancy mode. It becomes (with some breaks for actual drama) a roller coaster of improbable chases, gunfights, escapes, explosions, wholesale slaughter, and heroics. The whole thing culminating with Six facing off with his evil nemesis, Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans as Psycho Freddie Mercury) in an extended showdown.

I frankly don’t remember the original book well enough to say a lot about how the plot was changed for film, but I’m pretty sure that Ana de Armas’ character didn’t play such a large – or active – role in the book. In fact, she generally upstages Gosling, at least in terms of lethality. Hollywood has so distanced itself from the tradition of the hero saving the fair maiden, that now the hero gets saved multiple times by the maiden. She descends to the level of deus ex machina. A triumph for feminism, I suppose.

It annoyed me.

The Gray Man was an amusing way to pass time, but I didn’t think it was a great movie. Certainly not a great adaptation. Cautions for language and lots of violence.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dark Intercept,’ by Andrews & Wilson

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I mentioned just the other day that I’m prejudiced against Christian fiction. Not because I’m against it, I hasten to add, but because I hate seeing it done badly. Which it usually is, in my experience.

So I approached Dark Intercept, by Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson, with a certain amount of caution. However, these guys are established, bestselling authors. I thought I’d take a chance.

My response is… complicated.

Jedediah Johnson is a Navy SEAL going through the difficult adjustments of retirement. When he gets a call from his old boyhood friend in Nashville, David Yarnell, he doesn’t really want to talk to him. They parted on bitter terms, and David married Rachel, who’d been Jed’s girl. He has neither forgiven nor forgotten.

But David explains that their daughter Sara Beth has been kidnapped. That’s a different matter.

What Jed doesn’t know is that Sara Beth is a very special girl, and not just in her parents’ hearts. She has a psychic (or spiritual) gift. She can communicate telepathically and read people’s minds. She was being recruited by a Christian group with a mysterious, clandestine mission. But there are others aware of her powers, and they’re the ones who snatched her. They have dark plans for her, unless somebody is able to locate her and rescue her.

Which just happens to be something Jed is good at.

I kind of seesawed in my estimation of Dark Intercept. At first I was delighted by the sheer quality of the writing. The book is professionally and effectively written. I thought the dialogue was a little weak – everybody tended to talk the same way. But all in all, very good on literary style. Which is a rare treat in faith-based literature.

However, other elements of the story began bothering me increasingly.

One element was the idea of a Christian military group, which is an important part of the story. I have no problem with the idea of the Christian solder (or warrior), obviously. But I view military service as part of a Christian’s civil obligations. I very much distrust the idea of a “Christian” army, fighting holy wars. (Though the enemy here certainly merits a holy war response. But this is fantasy. I don’t want to give people ideas in the real world.)

Another element was the fact that the spirituality in this book is pretty generic. Lots of talk about God and faith. Very little about Jesus Christ and his death, resurrection and atonement. It seemed to be a sort of Touched By an Angel spirituality, adapted for the mass market. Tyndale House is the publisher, but I think they’re aiming at a wider audience.

Also, there’s a woman pastor. You probably know what I think about that.

In sum, I’m not sold. I appreciated the authors’ professionalism. But I found the story theologically problematic.

You might easily react differently.

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Heat Wave Reveals Historic Garden Outline at Chatsworth House

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The summer heat has scorched the South lawn of Chatsworth House in Devonshire so much you can see the outline of an ancient garden that once grew for 30 years.

Head of gardens and landscape Steve Porter told the Yorkshire Post, “We can clearly see the intricate patterns of the historic garden at the moment. The current heatwave is causing us issues elsewhere in the garden but here it has revealed a hidden gem not enjoyed properly for nearly 300 years.”

Those other parts of the garden are described here in an announcement of the completion of the major renovation of an area called “Arcadia.”

Chatsworth House is the one used as Darcy’s Pemberley in the 1996 BBC adaptation.

Photo: “Chatsworth across Canal Pond 1” by Ian Parkes. Creative Commons 2.0.

Music

Sunday Singing: The King of Love My Shepherd Is

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“The King of Love My Shepherd Is” performed by the choir of St. Francis de Sales Church in Ajax, Ontario, Canada

This is another of my favorite hymns. This adaptation of Psalm 23 is by Englishman H. W. Baker, Vicar of Monkland, Herefordshire (1821-1877). He reportedly recited this hymn’s third verse as his dying words. The beautiful tune is naturally traditional Irish, labeled “St. Columbia” in the books.

1 The King of love my shepherd is,
whose goodness faileth never.
I nothing lack if I am his,
and he is mine forever.

2 Where streams of living water flow,
my ransomed soul he leadeth;
and where the verdant pastures grow,
with food celestial feedeth.

3 Perverse and foolish, oft I strayed,
but yet in love he sought me;
and on his shoulder gently laid,
and home, rejoicing, brought me.

4 In death’s dark vale I fear no ill,
with thee, dear Lord, beside me;
thy rod and staff my comfort still,
thy cross before to guide me.

5 Thou spreadst a table in my sight;
thy unction grace bestoweth;
and oh, what transport of delight
from thy pure chalice floweth!

6 And so through all the length of days,
thy goodness faileth never;
Good Shepherd, may I sing thy praise
within thy house forever.

Blogs, Socials, Music, Poetry, Reading, Religion

Give Duke Ellington His Due and a Good Reason to Read Poetry

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The great American composer Duke Ellington would have been the first African-American composer to win a Pultizer Prize for Music back in 1965 had the award board agreed with its own jury. This week, scholar Ted Gioia has been raising awareness of this oversight in judgement and support for pressing the Pulitzer Prize board to reverse this decision.

He describes the decision in his post, “Let’s Give Duke the Pulitzer Prize He Was Denied in 1965.”

That missing award from 1965 has long been a source of disappointment and frustration to jazz fans, and a genuine disgrace in the history of the Pulitzer. The jury that judged the entrants that year decided to do something different—they recommended giving the honor to Duke Ellington for the “vitality and originality of his total productivity” over the course of more than forty years.

This was an unusual move in many ways. First, the Pulitzer usually honors a single work, much like the Oscar for Best Picture or other prizes of this sort. In this instance, the jury recommended that Ellington get the honor for his entire career. But even more significant, it would be the first time a jazz musician or an African American received this prestigious award.

But it never happened.

The Pulitzer Board refused to accept the decision of the jury, and decided it would be better to give out no award, rather than honor Duke Ellington. Two members of the three-person judging panel, Winthrop Sargeant and Robert Eyer, resigned in the aftermath.

If I have my facts right, the only African American with a Pulitzer before 1965 would have been poet Gwendolyn Brooks in 1950.

Reading Classics: Two books argue for reading Socrates and other classics and for “literature [as] a proven path to character formation.”

Resist or Compromise? “In 1981 I was sitting on a washing machine in Willow Grove, Pa., reading a Bible, when an elderly man approached and struck up a conversation. We spent the whole washing and drying cycle on chairs outside the laundromat, him telling me in detail of the persecution of Christians under the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945) and of his imprisonment along with others who refused to bow to the Shinto shrine.”

Prufrock: Micah Mattix’s arts & literature roundup is now on Substack. He explains the reason here.

Poetry: Reading “rhythmic poetry” can help you handle stress, according to some biofeedback responses. Surely hymns would fit this pattern too. (via Miller’s Book Review)

Poetry: Irish poet Eamon Grennan says in a recent interview, “Of course, at the bottom of all is your engagement with the language itself. Loving that, loving and being able to admire how words make sense, how they fit into rhythms that give them a different kind of heft: the potential music of language, I suppose, needs to be part of your breathing.”

This kind of thinking gives him lines like this:
“Moonwhite the garden lightens
And the moon, a pealed clove of garlic, pales.”

Aliens in UFOs: Ron Capshaw says Jordan Peele’s “NOPE” captures the horror and wonder of an old-school UFO movie but doesn’t quite payoff in the end because we’ve seen many aliens who want to kill us over the years.

Photo: Cream Castle sign in Sikeston, Missouri, 1979. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Big Dark Sky,’ by Dean Koontz

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For as long as Ophelia had been wise enough to see the world as it really was, she’d been aware that it was shifting away from truth and light, sliding farther every year. But she would never give up and slide with it. Truth mattered, always striving for the light. As long as there were people like Colson, there was light in the world, a chance that the slide could be halted, even reversed.

It did not take me long to buy, read, and finish Dean Koontz’s latest novel, The Big Dark Sky, just released. I wouldn’t say it’s one of my Koontz favorites, and the title’s weak, but even an average Koontz is more delightful than most books I read.

Joanna Chase is a successful novelist living in Santa Fe. She has fond memories of her childhood on a ranch called Rustling Willows in Montana, though her time there ended in tragedy.

But now she’s started to get mysterious messages, through her TV and her phone and other devices. A voice calling for help, saying they’re in a dark place. As she finds herself compelled to return to Montana in response, she begins to remember things she’d forgotten. For instance, she’s entirely forgotten her best friend – a mentally disabled boy. How did that happen?

Meanwhile, the new owner of Rustling Willows, a multibillionaire, has hired a private investigator to take a close look at the place. Strange things have been going on there. He doesn’t feel safe bringing his family until they stop.

And nearby, a megalomaniac kidnaps a young woman, as an early step in his grand plan to exterminate the entire human race, which in his view has proven itself unworthy of the planet.

What I liked best about The Big Dark Sky was that, although things got very dark (and Koontz can write dark with the best of them), it’s mainly a book about hope. Exactly the kind of book we need in 2022. Though the last line contains an intriguing grim joke.

As far as religion goes, Koontz’s Catholicism is not very evident here. The Gandalf figure of the story, Ganesh, can be presumed to be Hindu. But the scientific/mystical themes are suitable for most anybody.

Cautions for language and a sex scene.

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As I prophesied…

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I’m pretty sure I’ve reviewed all the books in Mark Greaney’s The Gray Man series, and I predicted from my first review (where I called the book “as hard to criticize as a roller coaster, and just about as true to life”) that it would be a movie someday. And behold, it is so. Trailer above.

I expect I’ll catch it on Netflix. The great question, as always, is how much Wokeness will be injected by Inquisitors. We’ll see.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cult Justice,’ by Dennis Carstens

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It’s a common complaint among writers, especially new writers, that editors will return a manuscript without reading past the first page or two. The writers feel they haven’t been given a fair trial.

What they don’t understand is that all editors, and many readers, have developed the ability to spot a clunker at a very early stage. Certain common mistakes immediately mark a writer as an amateur, and most editors have no time to give free writing lessons to every stranger who shoots a story over the transom.

I’m an editor in a small way, and I think I’ve been reading long enough to have some of that instinct myself. When I started reading Dennis Carsten’s Cult Justice, I spotted some caution lights, and didn’t think I’d stay with it for the long haul.

But in this case I was wrong. The prose has undeniable weaknesses, but the story grabbed me and turned out more engaging than I expected.

Ben Sokol is a self-hating Jew and committed leftist, a tenured professor at a state university in Minneapolis. He’s convinced his genius is unappreciated, and he envies more famous and wealthier colleagues. But one day he and a student decide that what society needs is more direct action. There’s been enough talk. It’s time to take violent action – by, for instance, robbing banks. For good causes, of course, though Ben will need to keep a percentage for his expenses…

He assembles a team of idealistic students who scout locations and plan carefully. Soon the news is reporting a series of lightning-fast bank raids, efficient, profitable and bloodless.

Until there is blood.

Meanwhile, Marc Kadella, Minneapolis attorney, is involved in the divorce case from purgatory. The couple seems like a pair of normal, prosperous citizens, but he can’t keep them out of each other’s faces, in one way or another. Until the wife is murdered, and the husband, Marc’s client, is arrested for her murder.

Who would think her death is actually related to the rash of bank robberies?

At the beginning of Cult Justice, I was (strange as it may seem) put off by how much I agreed with the politics. I’m so used to seeing second-rate literature from my side of the fence that I’m afraid I’ve grown prejudiced. And in actual fact, author Carstens does have weaknesses as a writer. One of his besetting sins is misplacing the object of a clause (I’m sure there’s a technical term for that, but I’ve forgotten it): “Having grown up on the East Coast, January was still too much for Ben to take.”

But the story was fun, and the characters were fun, in the tradition of legal and police thrillers. One element that intrigued me was the description – or lack thereof – of Marc’s girlfriend Maddy. Unless I missed something, we are never told what she looks like, not even whether she’s blonde, brunette or redhead. All we know is that everybody talks about her as the hottest thing on two legs. I thought that was a very creative way to present a character – until I found out this was the tenth book in the series, and author Carstens probably just assumed we already knew.

I thought the plot could have been tighter. I would have liked (for the sake of balance) to have had at least one sincere, intelligent leftist in the cast, rather than just scoundrels and dupes (it annoys me when leftist writers treat us that way).

Still, it was fun to read an engaging, fairly professional mystery written from a conservative point of view. You might like it too. Cautions for language and adult stuff.

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Non-conversational reminiscences

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The Hafrsfjord Jubilee in Stavanger. These are some of the many people I did not talk to in Norway.

No book review tonight. I’ve had a sudden onset of translation work, which is a development approved at the highest levels. It had been a while. But it slows down my reading.

So let’s pick up on a subject I left hanging. I wrote a lot here, before I left, about my self-education program to improve my conversational Norwegian. I downloaded an app to listen to Norwegian radio, and watched some Norwegian TV too. How did that go, you ask?

Not very well, to be honest.

During the course of my preparations, I thought I was comprehending the language a little better. That didn’t “translate” (pun unintended) into any actual benefit, in practice. When I faced real human beings in Norway, I found I still couldn’t understand them without several repetitions. And I hate inconveniencing people. Especially when they generally speak English already, and the whole thing could be done more efficiently that way.

Discursive interjection: What is it with language study books and the conversations they give you to memorize? I didn’t resort to any of those during this process, but I often thought back to my time as a student.

A model conversation for the student to memorize goes like this:

Student: “Kan du si meg veien til stasjonen?” [Could you tell me how to get to the station?}

Policeman: “Ja, rett fram til hjørnen, og så til venstre.” [Yes, straight ahead to the corner, then turn left.]

Now we all know what happens in real life:

Student: “Kan du si meg veien til stasjonen?”

Policeman. “Ja, rett fram til hjørnen, og så til venstre.”

Student: “Unnskyld? Vil du si det igjen?” [Excuse me? Could you say that again?]

Policeman: “Rett fram til hjørnen, og så til venstre.”

Student: “Si det igjen, takk?” [Say that again, please?]

Policeman: “You are an American, right?”

Student: “Yeah…”

Policeman: “Just go straight ahead to the corner, take a left and you’re there.”

Student. “Oh. Okay. Uh… takk.”

That’s how it actually works. And that’s how it generally happens in my experience. Carrying out a full conversation, when the other person is an English speaker, is just asking them to spend time being my teacher for free. And I can’t ask that.

Cant. Ask. That. It’s not in me.

However, on a few occasions, I did encounter people whose English was worse than my Norwegian. Then I was able to communicate, with some effort.

And that’s the return I got for my effort. I guess it’s something.

There was a joke I used to make, when I was young and studying Norwegian. I said, “I want to be able to not talk to people in a second language.”

Turns out I spoke prophetically.

I’m pretty sure a normal person would be conversational at this point. I think my real problem is psychological – I’m blocked by my social discomfort.

Still and all, my print-only language skills allow me to make some money in hard times. That’s nothing to nyse [sneeze] at.