Fiction, Reviews

‘Pale Gray for Guilt,’ by John D. MacDonald

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The shape of larceny is, in time, written clearly enough on a man’s face so that it can be read. Constant greed and sharp little deals and steals had left the sign on Preston LaFrance. There is the old saying that God and your folks give you the face you’re born with, but you earn the one you die with.

Ah, the joys of settling down with another Travis McGee novel. Even when author John D. MacDonald’s philosophy rings a little tinny, and the predictions have proven wrong in hindsight, Travis himself remains the best of friends – not only highly entertaining but reliable. Pale Gray for Guilt came out in 1968 and is one of the best in the series.

Tush Bannon is one of Travis McGee’s best old friends from his football days. He’s a big, cheerful, uncomplicated fellow, running a small business, raising a nice family. He has everything Trav can never have unless he alters his lifestyle, and Trav knows it. Then somebody decides to take Tush’s business away, and they take his life along with it. Travis is guilty that he wasn’t there to help. So he makes up his mind to get something back for the widow and the kids. And if a bad guy happens to get in the way of justice, he won’t hesitate to extract some blood too.

With the help of his economist friend Meyer, Trav sets up a neat and appealing con. The author of the book had a business degree from Harvard, and this sting, involving inflating a stock and getting out ahead of the pigeon before it crashes, was a little complex, but convincing. Along the way, McGee and Meyer have ample opportunity to look into the Abyss themselves, and glimpse it looking back at them.

Pale Gray for Guilt has the added element, in retrospect, of setting up a poignant plot element that will only bear fruit years later, in the last book of the series, The Lonely Silver Rain.

An outstanding entry in a classic series, Pale Gray for Guilt gets this reader’s highest recommendation. Cautions for adult situations, somewhat racy for the quaint old days of the 1960s.

Fiction

Many “Rise of the Merlin” Interviews

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Author Jon Del Arroz conducted interviews with some the people involved in The Daily Wire’s The Rise of the Merlin. In the video above, he talked to Rose Reid, a writer and the actress who plays Charis in the show.

“By the time we got to film,” she said, “I had spent so much time in her skin as it were, she felt very second nature. . . . I wanted to go back and see the prophecy and her relationship with her mother, but it’s ultimately not her story. It’s Merlin’s story.”

Next, Del Arroz talked writer Lee Blaylock, who spoke more to how they adapted Lawhead’s work to the screen. Blaylock says, “You’ve seen episode three, so now you know where Merlin’s story begins at least in the episode. Now, in the book that’s halfway through the book. We have a whole first half that details Merlin’s youth and adolescence. We plotted that out as well. We put that on the board, this is what these episodes would look like, but . . . we realized he’s just too passive. While the things that are happening are interesting and fascinating, he’s not — it commits that grievous error in scriptwriting that your character’s not active enough.”

In the next video, Del Arroz talked to James Arden, who plays Taliesin. This is the first of his interviews, so they avoid plot details when talking specifics. Arden said that wasn’t his voice when his character sang, because he can’t sing in tune.

“It was really awkward to stand — because obviously everyone has to react to Taliesin’s voice, which is described in the books . . . as a voice so beautiful that it gives the illusion that you have no wound. You have no pain.”

And earlier this week, he spoke to the main showrunner, writer, and director of the series Jeremy Boreing. He said producing a series like this has to care for the audience, who may have rejected such entertainment because so many other shows have let them down. “We’re so concerned the Left is going to put us in the ghetto that we do the work for them.”

Fiction, Reviews

‘Mr. Whisper,’ by Andrew Mayne

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I don’t think I’ve ever read a book by Andrew Mayne before. I can testify, after reading his novel Mr. Whisper, that he knows how to tell a story. Fascinating premise, engaging characters, well-paced action.

Sloan McPherson, a (female) Florida investigator, tracks down the Marsh Man, a local swamp legend, a sort of Florida Bigfoot. She discovers not a monster, but a confused adult man. It turns out he disappeared as a teenager, many years ago in Oregon, but has no memory of his past life. Where has he been all this time, and how did he get to Florida?

Jessica Blackwood used to be an FBI agent; now she’s a reality TV star on a popular true crime program. Her partner (professional and romantic) is Theo Cray, a brilliant scientist on the high-functioning end of the autism scale. They note that one of this lost boy’s female schoolmates disappeared around the same time, but nobody ever linked the two cases. The two young people had little in common, but they both appear to have been fascinated by the same Jack London novel.

And now a boy in Washington state, who almost committed a mass shooting in his school, presents the same pattern.

If these cases are connected, it means someone has devoted massive resources to some kind of huge, clandestine mind-control experiment. Who could that be? And what will it take to stop them?

I was very impressed with Mr. Whisper. As I said, the book was highly enjoyable and professionally written (though I thought the climax a little forced).

Personally, I had some quibbles. For instance, a historically ignorant dig was taken at the Catholic Church. But what annoyed me most (though mildly) was the ratio of sexes. The main, active characters in this story are mostly female. The action roles which would have gone to men in the Good Old Days are now given to women (though Theo finally gets a chance to show his stuff at the end). I’m inclined to think the author had a movie or miniseries in mind, and was catering to the known preferences of today’s producers.

(If I understand author Mayne’s backlist, he did a previous series starring Theo Cray, though. I probably ought to check that out.)

To sum it up, Mr. Whisper is a very enjoyable, well-written thriller, edging into Sci-Fi. It didn’t make me a fan, but that’s due to my personal prejudices.

Only mild cautions for language and themes.

Fiction, Reviews

Rise of the Merlin: The Last True Bard

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This week Daily Wire released the finale of the great 7-episode fantasy series The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin. I believe wondered in a previous post how they could wrap up a series that won’t tell the whole story. We knew from the start this was the story of Merlin’s ascension, not the reign of King Arthur, so how could they end the series without a massive cliffhanger?

The answer is to end it exactly the way they did. The final scene has been foreshadowed, and now that we have it in full, it closes this first run neatly. I hope we can get at least two more seasons, and maybe 8-10 episodes in each to give the stories the extra few minutes to round them out. Let’s see more of the lives of Aurelius, Uther, Arthur, Gawain, Gwenevere, Lancelot, Merlin, and Morgian too.

In episode six, we left Merlin in the past as he ran from the terrifying fury of his battle rage. That’s where we pick up in the finale to color in what remained of Merlin’s return. I enjoyed these moments. Merlin is stoic and grave in the present day; this return to his greatest horror is like hearing stories from a veteran’s war days.

Then we go to Aurelius’s war camp where things have barely improved. He does have Gorlas’s loyalty, but he needs the loyalty of every man and at least three times as many added to them. The Saxons have 10,000-15,000. At a moment when one of the kings would surely have lost his fool life, reinforcements arrive from the north with Merlin. I’d forgotten they were coming, so this interruption was welcome.

Later, the warlords make a plan, which Gorlas deems not good but no worse than anything else they could do, and the men prepare for battle the next day. That night, Merlin sings to them, having concluded his role is like his father’s, to be a bard to the Britons. This song is similar to those Taliesin sings, with a chorus that’s easily singable. I thought the men would join in as has been the pattern, but they sat or stood in silence that night. The next day on the battlefield, they took up the song to rally themselves to the fight. It was moving.

Do you remember how Ilúvatar and the Ainur sang the world into existence or how Finrod Felagund “strove with Sauron in songs of power” in The Silmarillion? The bards’ songs in Rise of the Merlin have an echo of Tolkien’s magical music. Merlin’s song on the night before the battle for the soul of Britain has a historic pattern, starting with history and moving to charge. Here’s the charge part of it.

Children of Ynys Prydain now
From every hill and glen
Abandoned by our fathers’ gods
And scorned by mournful men
We’ve seen our homes destroyed
Now from hill and glen alight
United now, we rise
Up like dragons in the night
Ooh, ah, ooh ah . . .

Seize your sword and join the fray
Our hallowed ground we’ll free
Rebuke the Saecsen gods
Drive their war host to the sea
Never again our homes destroyed
Our names will live in song
When the hero’s cup is raised
Let our victory wine be strong
Ooh, ah, ooh ah . . .

Kudos to the writers and actors and all of production for this series. It’s a strong work. You could even say it’s a great British work. I hope you will be able to buy it on DVD or rent it in the future. Of course, you can watch it now on DailyWire+.

Music, Religion

‘This Ole House’

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Tonight, for no particular reason, Stuart Hamblen’s “This Ole House.” Probably his biggest hit.

This clip comes from the long-running Country & Western comedy show, “Hee-Haw.” I think I actually saw this episode, which surprises me a little, because I wasn’t a regular viewer. I was too snobbish about “hillbilly” music.

As I recall, Hamblen introduced this performance by recounting how he’d come to write it. He was on a hunting trip with a friend in the mountains when they found an abandoned hunting lodge with a man’s body in it (dead, apparently, by natural causes). As they rode back down the mountain, he meditated on mortality and composed the lyrics.

“I hated, Rosemary Clooney’s performance,” he said (as I remember it), “because she speeded it up to a sort of a schottische rhythm. Then it sold a hundred-thousand copies… and I came to love Rosey’s version.”

I was reminded of this song tonight by association. My dad, when he was milking cows out in the barn, used to sing the first couple lines of another of Hamblen’s songs: “I Won’t Go Huntin’ With You, Jake (But I’ll Go Chasin’ Women).” This was a big hit of Hamblen’s before he was born again.

He had a crazy American Christian story. A preacher’s kid, son of the founder of the Evangelical Methodist Church denomination in Texas, he got into music and became a popular singer and recording artist, with his own radio program. He also acted – if you watch old B westerns, you’ll often see Hamblen – not as a hero, but as the bad guy who leads the outlaws or the evil posse. He dealt with the pressures of fame by drinking, and became an alcoholic. Whenever he got arrested for brawling or public intoxication, his radio sponsors would pay his bail and get it covered up.

Then he attended a Billy Graham crusade in Los Angeles in 1949, and surrendered his life to Christ. He stopped doing beer advertisements on his radio show, and got fired for it. But by then he’d given his testimony on the air, and it boosted Billy’s public profile immensely (though Randolph Hearst’s instructions to his editors to “Puff Graham” certainly had plenty to do with it too).

He remained an outspoken Evangelical the rest of his life, composing such songs as “It Is No Secret What God Can Do” (title suggested by his friend John Wayne) and “Open Up Your Heart and Let the Sunshine In.” He also ran for office, repeatedly and unsuccessfully, on the Prohibition ticket.

The main thing I love about “This Old House” is the line, “Now it trembles in the darkness / When the lightning walks about.”

That’s genuine poetry.

Fiction, Poetry

Shakespeare’s Sonnets Performed by Sir Patrick Stewart

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Next month, Audible will release a recording of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets performed and commented on by Sir Patrick Stewart. You’ll need to sign up for Audible, either a free trial or subscription.

Stewart started sharing sonnets on social media during the pandemic. Now, they are collected in an audiobook along with Stewart’s comments and related stories. This should be excellent.

Serious fans of the sonnets may want to compare this recording with that of the Cambridge All the Sonnets of Shakespeare, read by Kenneth Branagh and Lolita Chakrabarti, which will no doubt be more scholarly.

Reading, Uncategorized, Writing

Early spring ruminations

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Photo credit: nyegi. Unsplash license

We’re at the dirty end of spring right now. It was cold for a couple days, but we got up near 50 (Fahrenheit) today, and the whole week is supposed to be mild. (Thank Providence, I defrosted my freezer last week.) Most of the snow is gone now; just some crusty edges left – which doesn’t mean we won’t get more snow. We probably will. But that will be short-lived. The ground made visible now is unlovely – dead grass and black dirt. A monochrome, frostbit world.

This week is for me a wild social whirl, which means I had/have two things going on. Or three, if you call a doctor’s visit a social event. That was Monday. I had to see my clinic’s Diabetic Educator. As it says somewhere in Job, “The thing I have greatly feared has come upon me.” (Norman Vincent Peale quotes that repeatedly in his Positive Thinking books.) It actually wasn’t as bad as I feared. The nice lady didn’t put me on a diet. I’ve got some documents I need to get around to reading, but what I took away was mostly that I needed to consume fewer carbs and more fiber. Fiber, apparently, can buffer the carbs in your digestive system, reducing insulin spikes. Good to know.

(Note: I don’t have full-blown diabetes. But I am On the Road. Enough to make lifestyle changes advisable.)

The day before, Sunday, when I was still ignorant of this wisdom, I attended a Swedish Meatball Supper in a church basement. Meatballs for protein, and green beans for fiber to counteract the mashed potatoes. Could be worse. We were fed by Swedes, and it’s always pleasant for a Norwegian to be served by Swedes, after the humiliation of the Outrageous Union of 1814, which we have never yet forgiven.

I was impressed that they served us off china plates. I’ve eaten many a church basement meal, but I think it’s been a decade at least since I last ate in a church basement off anything but paper or Styrofoam. I cannot but salute the diligence of the organizers, who took the extra trouble to wash dishes afterward.

I must also salute my friends, Mark and Renae, who invited me along.

Friday is going to be less pleasant. I’ll be attending the funeral of one the guys from my men’s Bible study. A fine guy who loved the Lord. He used to wear bowties to church, so several of us from the study will be wearing them in his honor. I had to order one from Amazon, but I got next-day delivery, and it’s here now.

Reading notes: The book I’m reading right now (I’ll review it soon; maybe tomorrow) did something that pleased me a lot. A small thing, but it delighted me.

One point I’ve thought about occasionally, over my many years as a reader and writer, was a very trivial issue – the lack of same-name characters in fiction.

This is what I mean – in real life, people with the same first name often show up in the same circles. My Bible study group, for instance, though numbering only eight men on a good night, has two Toms and two Daves in it.

But in fiction, this rarely happens. The reason is obvious, and entirely sensible – it confuses the reader. Unless a plot point requires it, it’s so much easier to just give two characters different names. And since the author is the god of the fictional world, that’s his prerogative.

But in this book, there’s a scene where somebody says, “I was talking to Kate and Kate….” This wasn’t confusing to the reader, because Kate and Kate are throwaway bit characters who never appear again. But the line adds just a half-millimeter of verisimilitude, since we all know that such things happen not infrequently in real life.

That’s a nice literary touch. Wish I’d thought of it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Fortunate Harbor,’ by Davis Bunn

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Davis Bunn is, I believe, a Christian novelist, though his novel Fortunate Harbor is not explicitly evangelical. What it is, is a clean mystery/romance. It’s actually pretty good, but this reader is not its intended audience.

Rae Alden grew up in the town of Fortunate Harbor, on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. She loves the place and wants to live nowhere else, which is why, after graduating law school, she turned down generous offers from big firms to set up office back home. She loves the life, but the work is not usually very interesting.

That changes when Curtis Gage comes back to town. He and Rae were sweethearts as teenagers, but his family moved away and they lost touch. Now he works as a manager and troubleshooter for an international corporation based in India. The corporation has just acquired a failed local hotel project which has garnered considerable public opposition. Curtis wants Rae to help him turn the project around, show good faith, and gain community support.

As part of their project, Curtis acquires a large house in a desirable location, wrecked by the last hurricane. Rae represented the old owner, but he disappeared years ago and the money has long run out. But why are federal agents nosing around the property?

Also, can the spark between Rae and Curtis be rekindled? Or will he marry his beautiful boss?

There was nothing wrong with Fortunate Harbor. It’s a well-written romantic mystery about appealing characters. But it’s clearly written for the female market – the emphasis is on romance. This is a wise business move on Bunn’s part – women buy a lot more books than men do.

It just wasn’t my kind of story.

So you might want to check it out, especially if you’re a woman.

[One question troubled me: There’s a scene where Rae, and Curtis’s beautiful boss, having just met, and both being attracted (Rae reluctantly) to Curtis, suddenly find a common chord and become fast friends. My impression (and Heaven knows I know nothing about women) is that women just don’t do that sort of thing.]

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Truth Will Out,’ by Steve Higgs

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Steve Higgs’s cold case trilogy featuring Inspector Tony Heaton concludes with The Truth Will Out. The trilogy seems to have sold quite well, and it pleased a lot of readers. I myself didn’t hate the books, but I was less than delighted with them.

To recap: Tony Heaton is a police detective in the English county of Kent, placidly approaching retirement in a fairly quiet part of the country. Then he is assigned to assist a hotshot young detective in examining old “cold” cases.

That ought to be fairly low-drama work, though it hasn’t proven so in the previous two books, and it doesn’t in this one. People involved in the crimes are still alive, and some of them will go to extremes to keep the dead past dead.

But more than that, Tony has his own secrets to protect. His partner is itching to look into a particular crime that Tony very much wants left alone. He’s beginning to think he might have to kill the young man.

This reader has trouble sympathizing with a main character who’s making that kind of plan.

And the final resolution left me (personally) unsatisfied.

But plenty of readers enjoyed it, so maybe I’m tone-deaf. The suspense certainly ran high. Author Higgs writes pretty well, but there are occasional typos in the text. And he has an annoying problem with misplacing modifiers.

There was no especially objectionable material in this trilogy that I recall. I recommend it moderately.

Music, Religion

‘Built On a Rock, the Church Shall Stand’

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I thought to myself, “Hey! I haven’t posted “Built On the Rock the Church Shall Stand” yet. That’s an important Scandinavian hymn I haven’t done here before!”

Checked our search utility. No, I posted about it – and as recently as last year.

Chalk it up to old age. Old men tell the same stories over and over, and old bloggers blog the same material under and under.

I’ll post it anyway, because I’ve got nothing else.

The lyrics were composed by Nikolai F. S. Grundtvig, the eccentric Danish clergyman who made the first translation of Beowulf into a modern language and started the Folk High School movement.

My people (the Norwegian Haugeans) did not like Grundtvig much, but we sang his hymn. This rendition is done by the Luther College Cathedral Choir, Decorah, Iowa. My people didn’t like Luther College much either, and the one year I spent studying there didn’t leave me with a lot of good memories. The arrangement is by F. Melius Christiansen, who conducted the choir of St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota – which I never attended, but still dislike on principle.

The English translation is pretty faithful, but the opening line takes an interesting tack. The original Danish says, “The church, it is an ancient house,” but goes on to say that it keeps standing anyway, upheld by God. Our English version, as you’ll notice, kicks off in a more upbeat, defiant vein.

Danes, generally speaking, don’t do audacity.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture