G. K. Chesterton wrote, somewhere, that there are two different meanings for the word “good.” “For example, if a man could shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.”

In a similar (not identical) way, a book can be good in terms of its writing, while not being much good for my personal purposes.

Which brings me to One Day You’ll Burn, an interesting cop novel by Joseph Schneider. Its hero is Los Angeles police detective Tully Jarsdel, an improbable policeman who abandoned the pursuit of a Ph.D. (to the despair of his two “gay” fathers) to become a cop, out of a spiritual resolution to make the world a better place. Promoted prematurely to the homicide squad by way of an experimental department program, he hasn’t yet earned the confidence of the veteran detectives, especially his own partner.

One day a body is found in the entrance to a shop in LA’s Thai Town, in front of a statue of Brahma. The body has been roasted like a Thanksgiving turkey, destroying both fingerprints and almost all DNA, which makes identification difficult. Tully’s partner “graciously” lets him take the lead in the case, assuming it will go unsolved and be a black mark on his record.

But Tully is methodical, and gradually he puts a few clues together, leading him into the bizarre world of Hollywood fandom and memorabilia collectors. And to a hideous killing scheme and a criminal so evil as to be (frankly) a little implausible.

The story was interesting, if a bit over the top. But what put me off, as a bigoted Christian, was that Tully sees himself as on a spiritual quest – a sort of undefined, New Age, semi-Zoroastrian crusade to serve Brahma by helping the world achieve its destined perfection. The world, as he sees it, is getting constantly better (I fail to see much evidence for that myself), and every crime he solves is a step to ultimate justice and peace.

I should say in the author’s defense, though, that he makes a point of the proper use of the term “begs the question.” I was very grateful for that. Also for a scene in which he denounces the corruption that permeates contemporary academia. In that, he was right on the money.

So, bottom line, I thought One Day You’ll Burn a pretty good book in its own right, but not for me.