Fiction, Reviews

‘Murder at Midsomar Manor,’ by Bruce Beckham

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I’ve always enjoyed Bruce Beckham’s Inspector Skelgill mysteries. They’re far from my favorite detective books, but they’re amusing and pretty consistent in quality. Also, they don’t work hard to offend me.

Murder at Midsomar Manor, number 27 in the series, was not one of the best. It short-changed me, I thought, in my favorite character (Skelgill himself), and offered way too much of my least-favorite character.

Judging by the book’s title, one might guess that this was some kind of riff on the popular “Midsomer Murders” TV series. However, though it does deal with television, it’s the reality TV genre that’s portrayed (and satirized) here.

Everyone at the police station is excited that the popular series, “Friend or Foe,” is being filmed at a neighborhood spot – the remote Midsomar Manor, which is located on a local lake with which Inspector Skelgill (great fisherman that he is) is quite familiar. He is fascinated by a legend of a gigantic prize trout that lives in the lake (and which will come to figure in the plot).

The program’s competition involves 12 celebrities, 3 of whom are arbitrarily and secretly designated as “foes.” Each night one competitor will be voted out by the others, as being most likely to be a foe. And each day one of them will be “murdered” (eliminated). The hope is that all the foes will be eliminated before they can “kill off” the rest of the players.

But when one of the celebrities, a very unpopular public figure, is actually murdered, the police must take charge. Unfortunately, the case is given to Detective Inspector Smart, Skelgill’s great rival and a thoroughgoing ass (who also happens to be stupidly star-struck). To her own alarm, Skelgill’s female subordinate, DS Jones, is assigned to assist him, which involves putting off his frequent sexual advances.

DI Smart is proven wrong again and again, but arrogantly manages to blame Jones each time. Fortunately, Inspector Skelgill is just off stage, out on the lake in his fishing boat, ready to step in and set things right in the end.

The first thing that annoyed me about Murder at Midsomar Manor was that the cameras (and there are a lot of them in this story) are pointed so much at DI Smart and DS Jones. It passes plausibility that any male in today’s Britain could hold an inspector’s post while being as blatantly sexist as Smart is (setting aside the fact that he’s an idiot). Smart’s egregious behavior becomes genuinely tiresome, even for a known sexist like me.

Also, the solution, which comes by way of Skelgill toward the end, hangs on a pretty implausible coincidence. Uncomfortably close to a deus ex machina.

And just as a note, the author misuses the phrase, “begs the question” and mistakes “flaunt” for “flout.”

Murder at Midsomar Manor was entertaining, as is the whole series. But this one reached too far for farce, and lacked plausibility.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

Post-event report: The Red River Valley Renaissance Faire

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This is not the Red River Valley Renaissance Faire. I didn’t get a picture there. This is the Viking Age Club of Minnesota at the very last Norsk Høstfest in Minot, ND last year. Our turnout in Fargo last weekend was considerably smaller.

I am back, unscathed (though more than a little stiff and sore) from the Red River Valley Renaissance Faire in Fargo. It was a good event, and I feel each and every one of my multitudinous years.

The faire was impressive. One always compares these things to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival in Chanhassen, which boasts permanent buildings on a large site. This Fargo operation is much smaller, and repurposes some of the buildings of the North Dakota State Fair, along with pre-fab, disassemblable constructions of their own, on top of all the tents of the participants (like your humble servant). We Vikings had a space all our own in one corner of the precincts, and we were quite happy and visible there.

The weather was warm, but not uncomfortably hot. The big problem was the legendary North Dakota wind, which tended to lift my awning/shade off its center pole, so that I finally gave up using that pole, and learned to love the low ceiling.

Book sales were good. Saturday was the best day – business started slow, but picked up in the afternoon. More than one person looked at my books, promised to come back and buy later – and actually did so, which doesn’t often happen. I went from worrying that I’d have no sales to wondering if I’d run out of some books. Which did not occur, but it’s a good problem to have to worry about.

For a smaller Renaissance faire, this one was memorable. Near us was a display of raptors, tended by a pair of falconers – they had red-tailed hawks, several kinds of owls, and even a turkey vulture. (Call me prejudiced, but I will never love turkey vultures.) Further down the line was an exotic menagerie, featuring a camel, an albino wallaby, and otters. (So I heard; I didn’t spring for the entrance fee.) Gymnasts worked a high trapeze. I ate a corn dog each day – I don’t often get to eat “fair food.”

Saturday was busier than Sunday, but I sold a good number of books overall. Got to watch the diverse cavalcade of humankind living out its fantasies with various levels of success. Had a few good conversations. Benefited, once again, from the hard work of younger Vikings for my setup and takedown. Didn’t get home till after midnight last night.

I’m told they want us back next year. I’ll happily return.

If my old legs can still walk a year from now.

Music, Religion

Sissel: ‘Eg veit i himmerik ei borg’

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When I lack a book to review, Scandinavian hymns are my go-to fallback, as you’ve probably noticed. I’m sure I’ve posted Sissel singing ‘Eg Veit i Himmerike Ei Borg‘ before, probably in a different performance (she does it here with the Heretic Tabernacle Choir), but I never get tired of this particular one.

The song sounds to me like a medieval hymn, but it’s not quite that. The tune is an old Norwegian folk song, and the words were translated from a pre-17th Century German hymn. The Norwegian translation was done in 1905. James Cameron, so the story goes, heard Sissel’s rendition and hired her to do the background vocals for “Titanic.”

You can see the lyrics and a translation on this Wikipedia page.

I like to sing this one to myself sometimes when I’m hanging around the Viking camp, since it seems period-appropriate. Only I can never remember the verse that starts “Men visst eg veit ein morgon renn” probably because I misheard the lyrics completely.

No blog post from me tomorrow. See you Monday, God willing.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

Personal appearance alert

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In case you’re in the Fargo, North Dakota area this weekend, the Vikings and I will be at the Red River Valley Renaissance Faire. The Renaissance is not strictly our temporal bailiwick, but we’ll plunder wherever we’re welcomed.

I shall have books to sell, and to sign. Pray for my car.

Authors, Publishing, Reading, Religion, Uncategorized

A day trip, and historical meditations

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I shall tell you the tale of my adventures last Friday. I was part of a group of members of the Georg Sverdrup Society, and we went to visit a seminary not our own.

I think I won’t mention the name of this seminary, though there’ll be enough clues to work it out, if anybody cares to. It is an impressive cluster of buildings on an impressive campus, with a  history going back to the 1870s. However, the church body it serves, which I generally refer to here as the Very Large Lutheran Church Body That Shall Remain Nameless, finds itself now unable to support the institution’s real estate, so the property is being sold. The seminary will continue, but in more modest quarters.

Because of this approaching change, our society president arranged a visit. It would allow us to view the buildings, the library (now being packed up) and the archives (soon to be packed up). We got to see a number of interesting items on display. Below is a copy of Martin Luther’s death mask, with matching hands (his right one swollen and cramped from much writing). Luther was a man who liked his carbohydrates:

There was also the legendary bust of Hans Nielsen Hauge, the Norwegian lay evangelist about whom I’ve written a lot on this blog. I had the pleasure of informing those present that this bust is not actually a portrait, but the product of an artist’s imagination, originally carved in wood for a ship’s figurehead.

Our guide was very cordial, so nobody mentioned the well-attested fact that seminary students have a tradition of holding a beer bash on Hauge’s birthday, with the bust present, in order to demonstrate their contempt for the man and his movement.

We also got to visit Old Muskego Church:

Old Muskego Church from Muskego, Wisconsin is often called the first Norwegian Lutheran church building in America. This is not true – I, for one, favor the Haugean church in Fox River, Illinois. But Old Muskego, which was moved here in 1904, is the oldest surviving one. A new location will have to be found for it. All our guide would tell us was that they were in negotiations about the matter. I have my suspicions, and I wish the project well. The old place deserves preservation.

We sang the old Scandinavian hymn, “Children of the Heav’nly Father” in harmony before we left.

Afterward we wove our way through circuitous highway repairs to Lakewood Cemetery, traditional resting place of Minneapolis’ great and good. There we visited the graves of Professors Georg Sverdrup and Sven Oftedal, the founders of the Lutheran Free Church. Our guys.

This outing got me thinking about our tradition, the Haugean movement, and its place in history.

Continue reading A day trip, and historical meditations →
Fiction, Reviews

‘Cutler’s Bargain,’ by Colin Conway

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I think I’m done with Colin Conway’s John Cutler books.

I like author Conway’s 509 series, which is a sequence of police procedurals involving a rotating cast of Washington state cops. He’s also written a series about “the Flip-flop Detective,” which is supposed to be light in tone. The John Cutler books, on the other hand, are contemporary Noir. John Cutler’s world is grim and shadowed, full of betrayal and moral compromise. I thought things might lighten up as the character developed, but I’ve finally concluded that that’s not the intention.

In Cutler’s Bargain, book 5 in the series, John gets an offer from a client willing to pay well. She’s a wholesome-looking woman who grows marijuana in a cellar underneath a strip mall she owns. She had been keeping the operation secret, but now somebody has broken in through a window and tried (though they failed) to get downstairs into the “grow.” She wants to know who leaked the information.

John isn’t eager to get involved with illegal drugs (this book was written before legalization), but the problem is interesting and she promises to pay double. Meanwhile, a friend has asked John to talk to a boy and try to steer him away from gang involvement – something he approaches without much confidence.

Cutler’s Bargain kept my interest all through, but – as with all these books – the final result was disappointing. The story ends on a highly ambivalent note, with Cutler negotiating a resolution that merely balances one evil against another.

The writing is good (in spite of the misuse of the word “flaunt”), but I’m tired of the depressing endings. Your mileage may vary.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cutler’s Friend,’ by Colin Conway

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I like Colin Conway as a writer. One of the things I like about his work is that he generally keeps the politics low-key.

That is not true, however, of Cutler’s Friend, the third volume in his John Cutler series. The author published those first three books early in the 2000s, and the era may be part of the problem. This book is (in my opinion) more suited to the zeitgeist of that decade than to the present.

At the beginning of Cutler’s Friend, John has stabilized his life somewhat. He is now a licensed private investigator in Spokane, and he has a regular girlfriend.

He gets a visit from Mike, his former partner on the Seattle police force. Mike has, John discovers, become a pretty nasty racist, largely because his wife Tina left him for a black professional athlete. John wouldn’t care to do a favor for Mike at this point, but it’s Tina who needs help. Her new husband has been murdered, and she’s been arrested for it. Mike wants John to prove she’s innocent.

As John begins the investigation, the job raises tension with his girlfriend Erika, who is black. She starts discussing racial issues with John, and distancing herself from him. He finally realizes that he has to choose between helping an innocent woman and keeping his girlfriend.

This book pushed all my buttons – negatively. It started with a scene where John is dealing with a guy in a wig and a dress, in which he keeps condemning himself for “prejudice” when he forgets to use “her” preferred pronouns. Then we go on to the scenes with Erika, where the point seems to be that, as a miserable white man, there’s nothing John is allowed to do but kneel in repentance and apologize forever.

This bothered me a lot. Because if that’s the way the races have to relate to one another, it will always be impossible for us love each other, or even to be friends. It’s a formula for eternal racial segregation. I have to believe there’s some better way.

If I weren’t already fond of the series, I’d have dropped it with Cutler’s Friend. But I’m reading on. People learn and grow, and I see no signs of this kind of self-conscious political correctness in Colin Conway’s later work.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Weans,’ by Robert Nathan

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The currency of the Weans consisted of the grand, the fin, the buck, the bit, and the payola.

Ever read a book about archaeology, and wonder how accurate the scholars’ guesses, based on very partial information, are? Robert Nathan had fun with that question in his 1960 short novel, The Weans.

The idea of The Weans is that it’s a book written thousands of years in the future, about what archaeologists have learned in “the Salt Continent” (North America) based on meager findings from their archaeological digs.

Much of the humor rises from the archaeologists’ assumptions. Too many artifacts are assumed to have religious significance, for instance. The book also includes a number of puzzles for the reader, which said reader only figures out gradually (I may have missed a couple, I fear): we wonder why the Americans are known to history as “Weans.” Or why our capitol city is remembered as “Pound-Laundry.”

An amusing book. It contains one gag about underage sex that didn’t age well. But all in all, fun to read.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cutler’s Chase,’ by Colin Conway

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“What?” I asked.

“You used to be a cop.”

“And?”

“You seem to hate them.”

“I don’t hate them.” I stood. “But I hate who I became while I was one of them. That’s a truth I will never escape.”

The second novel in Colin Conway’s John Cutler series is Cutler’s Chase. This book has him back in Spokane, where he’s working as a nightclub bouncer. He’s flirting with a woman who likes him, but he’s afraid to get close to her because he’s sure she’s bound to reject him in the end. And he’s found a friend in a guy in a neighboring apartment, a retired Marine.

There is a murder, and Cutler finds himself, uncharacteristically, taking on a responsibility – for the murder victim’s dog. He’s certain who the killer is, and he won’t listen to the decent detective who asks him to stand aside and let them do their job. He gets in a lot of fights. There’s a major plot twist at the end (which I have to say I saw coming).

But Cutler’s Chase was a good book, and not as dark as the first book in the series. I recommend it.

Bookselling, Fiction

A Skjalg Erlingsson story

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I hope you’ll be happy to learn that I’ve just published a story related to the Erling Skjalgsson saga. The Buried Farm is a tale about Erling’s son Skjalg, and deals with the lead-up to the ill-fated Norwegian invasion of England in 1066 under King Harald Hardrada.

I submitted this story to a proposed anthology of stories about the Battle of Stamford Bridge. The editors did not select it, but told me kindly that their reasons had to do with their chosen approach to the topic, and not with the quality of my wordsmithing.

So I figured my readers might like to read it as a stand-alone. It’ll only cost you a buck.