Fiction, Reviews

‘Mystery Explosion,’ by Ed Benjamin

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The mundane title should have tipped me off. Mystery Explosion is actually a novella, the first installment in a series of four books (to date), entitled Bulverde Beat, after the Texas community where the stories are set.

The main characters are Harry Miles, a private investigator, and Luke Remington, police detective, who sometimes hires Harry as a consultant.

A female county prosecutor is killed in a heater explosion in her home. Harry is immediately suspicious – the “accident” was suspiciously timed, and he suspects the victim’s husband from the get-go.

But the story proceeds (commendably) in proper procedural fashion, as Harry and Luke question various witnesses and suspects, gradually eliminating false assumptions.

I didn’t mind the story as such – I like the procedural approach, and this narrative seemed (to this amateur) relatively realistic.

My problem was with the writing. The author isn’t a bad wordsmith, but he needs to learn to cut text. He talks too much – throws verbiage at an idea rather than selecting the exact words he wants. He runs up long lists of redundancies in some places.

Also, he hasn’t learned how to use quotation marks. Tip: When a character’s speech goes on for several paragraphs, you omit the closing quotation marks at the ends of the interior paragraphs. This tips off your reader to the fact that the character has not stopped talking yet. It saves a whole lot of confusion.

A further sin is that the characters are almost never physically described.

Mystery Explosion wasn’t awful, and it had the virtue of being pretty short. But I can’t recommend it highly.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Eddie’s Boy,’ by Thomas Perry

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He had lived a life without being aware of species loyalty, partly because at no time after he was fifteen had he been confident of living for long.

The hero of Eddie’s Boy by Thomas Perry calls himself Michael Schaeffer, but that’s not his real name. As a teenager, he was adopted by a man named Eddie, a butcher. It turned out Eddie was a butcher in more ways than one – he carried on a profitable sideline as a professional killer for organized crime. Eddie began teaching Michael that trade, discovering that the boy had a natural gift for it. He’s a born fighter and marksman. After Eddie was gone, Michael did well as a freelancer, killing bad men for the highest bidder, until one gangster double-crossed him. Michael matter-of-factly set that wise guy up for a murder rap, then left the country. Now he’s happily married to a British noblewoman.

Except that, from time to time, somebody recognizes his face. The word gets back to the U.S., and somebody comes to kill Michael. Then he has to take care of business.

In this fourth installment in the Butcher’s Boy series, men have shown up at Michael’s English home, to kill him and his wife. He handles them, but his wife persuades him to try disappearing instead of retaliating, just this once. He tries getting lost in Australia, but that doesn’t work out. He’ll have to go back to the states, find out who wants him dead, and neutralize them as usual. He has a simple, straightforward method of investigation – he kills men, then studies the reactions of others.

Eddie’s Boy was a well-written book. It kept me fascinated, and moved right along. But I was uneasy with it. When I was younger, I got a lot of vicarious pleasure out of stories about remorseless killers. In my old age, I’ve grown more scrupulous. And I’ve come to believe that no one except a sociopath (see last night’s review) can kill a human without suffering some kind of trauma. So the character of Michael Schaeffer seems a little unrealistic to me.

But the story’s great. Cautions for mature content.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘The Sociopath Next Door,’ by Martha Stout, Ph.D.

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The prevalence rate for anorexic eating disorders is estimated at 3.43 percent, deemed to be nearly epidemic, and yet this figure is a fraction lower than the rate for antisocial personality.

I’m thinking of incorporating a sociopathy (how do you pronounce that word, anyway? Emphasis on the third or fourth syllables?) theme in my next novel. So I bought a book on the topic. I read The Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout, Ph.D., during my Minot sojourn.

It was not comforting reading.

According to psychologists, about four out of every 100 people around us are entirely without conscience. Possess no empathy. They walk among us, they look an act no differently (or not very differently) from anyone else. And yet there’s something important missing there.

Fortunately, they’re not all Charles Mansons or Hannibal Lectors. Most of them are just annoying – they may be the overbearing neighbor who’s always calling the homeowners’ association on you, or the cellar dwelling son who just sponges off his parents, never looking for work. Many of them are extremely charming, having mastered techniques for manipulating others to get what they want. They may be serial seducers or con men or politicians. Several fictional case studies are offered in illustration here.

The bad news is that sociopaths are hard to identify. Author Stout devotes a chapter to methods of recognizing them, but – sadly – the process takes time. They need to be observed in action for a while before the telltale signs can be discerned.

I was pleased by some positive quotations from the church fathers early in the book, but less pleased by the chapter at the end discussing religious concepts, which favors eastern religions because of their emphasis on shared spiritual connections. Still, it’s interesting that contemplation of the sociopathic condition – which occasionally expresses itself in acts that can only be described as evil – leads even scientists inevitably to a consideration of the soul.

The big problem for Christians, I think, is that it seems as if the sociopaths around us are incapable of grace. They cannot repent, because they are utterly blind to sin. They would appear to be children of the devil from birth. I don’t really have a category in my theology for this.

The Sociopath Next Door was a fascinating read, and well written. But troubling.

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Høstfest report, 2025

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The whole Viking crew at Høstfest 2025. I’m 5th from the right in the back row, reading right to left.

The 2025 Norsk Høstfest in Minot is history now, and I feel as if I am too, almost. I’ve often said that I experience Minot as a stop-motion film, altering just a little each frame, as the years go by. What I hadn’t noticed before is that it’s a stop-motion film of my own life, too. I feel a little older, a little slower, with each festival. And this year I felt it especially.

I think (or hope) that my perception was a little skewed this year. I was coming right off a month-and-a-half bout with a stubborn sinus infection. It sapped my strength and kept me sedentary, bad preparation for days of Viking play.

But that doesn’t account for my failure of memory. My shame is extreme – I’ve been going to Høstfest for the better part of 20 years. I’m one of the old hands. Yet I FORGOT that Tuesday is travel day. This year, for some reason, I looked at my calendar, where Wednesday through Saturday were marked off for the festival, and just thought, “I have to leave on Wednesday.” The upshot was that I missed a full day.

I get the feeling I properly belong in a nursing home. Or congress.

The festival went fine. We were once again in the outdoor venue, and it did not rain on us. It was unseasonably warm, though, and the prairie wind (especially on Friday) got pretty vicious. Oddly, the wind seemed to have a psychological effect on customers – the more frantically I was re-tightening stake ropes and repairing tears in my awning, the more buyers flocked in for my books. It was exasperating, but profitable. I tried to be pleasant.

One of my tent poles actually broke. Fortunately, I have a spare.

Sales were very good, for which I’m grateful.

On Friday morning, as I drove in, my car’s engine temperature spiked, right up to the red line. So I got somebody to recommend a local auto shop and took it there, a friend following behind to give me a ride back (I’ve had this adventure before at Høstfest, you may recall). Later that day, I got the bad news – my head gasket is going out. If you know about Subarus, you know that’s a very bad thing. It’s a costly job to fix it, about what my old car is worth.

So I’ll almost certainly have to get a new car. The mechanic thought I could “probably” get her home. I drove below the speed limit all the way, babying the vehicle, and had no problems, though I got in late (and tired).

But last night I slept well, and I feel better right now, physically, than I have in months.

This picture is of me, with a massive drinking horn one of my friends has for sale. (I believe it’s water buffalo horn from India, standing in for the horn of the extinct aurochs, which Vikings would have used.) My friend Dale Nelson, whom I visited on the way home, is writing an article about mead and asked for such a picture – though he did not anticipate my big thinking. Photo credit: Erik Patton.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

Off to Minot

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Tomorrow I’m off, as is my custom, to Norsk Høstfest in Minot, North Dakota. I’m told we Vikings will once again be right across the street from the main entrance. The weather is supposed to be unseasonably warm. The festival runs Thursday through Saturday.

If you’re in the area, I’ll be there (God willing), and have the complete Erling series to sign and sell, along with Viking Legacy.

Note to burglars — my home will not be empty. My heavily armed renter will be in residence. And he never sleeps.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Damned,’ by John D. MacDonald

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But the girl’s fine eyes were on his, in helplessness and in appeal. And his father had said, many times, “When you have to do something right, boy, don’t stop to count how much money you got in your pants.”

Sometimes the great John D. MacDonald just liked to play plotting games, dumping an assortment of characters down in some location together, shaking them up, seeing what happened. That’s how his early (1952) novel, The Damned, works. This book reveals interesting strata of art – on the surface, it’s a fairly standard, sexy men’s novel of the time – some tough guys, some pretty women, some discreet sex, and a fair amount of violence. But even at this early point in his career, MacDonald is mining his material for high grade ore.

On the Rio Concho in northern Mexico, a ferry gets blocked. So a string of cars headed back to the U.S., most of them driven by Americans, is left waiting in the hot sun, their occupants impatient and uncomfortable to various degrees.

There’s the businessman coming back from the first infidelity of his married life, his heart full of guilt and his floozy by his side.

There’s the pair of newlyweds, accompanied by his mother (!). The bride is beginning to realize that the guy she’s married isn’t a grownup man, and probably never will be.

A tough petty criminal, wanted for murder, uncomfortably aware that the police are on his tail.

The small-time nightclub comedian, with two country girls he’s trained as strippers. He’s beginning to suspect, uneasily, that the girls are smarter than he is.

And an expatriate American rancher, comfortable in his skin and in the sun, the only one among them who understands – or cares to understand – the Mexican people all around.

We’ll see some fighting, and some death. People will be confronted with hard truth, about themselves and others.

Oddly, the story is left kind of open-ended. The author leaves it to the reader to ponder where these people will end up down the road, once the ferry is running again. And the narrative is framed by the simple life of a local man, as different from that of the Americans as a space alien’s would be – but a valuable life, good in its own way.

There was a remarkable moment in The Damned that moved me a great deal. A rare moment in a MacDonald book, as he rarely deals with issues of faith (except for one novel which I’ve avoided). A couple of the characters – ones you’d never expect – break out into singing the old hymn, “I Love to Tell the Story.” The reactions of the listeners are instructive.

The Damned is 1950s pulp literature that rises above its genre. Recommended, with cautions for adult themes.

Non-fiction, Reviews

A Light in the Northern Sea, by Tim Brady

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The publisher’s presentation of A Light in the Northern Sea, by Tim Brady, treats it as an account of the remarkable rescue of the majority of Denmark’s Jewish population in World War II. That’s slightly misleading. This book is in fact a brief history of the whole Danish resistance.

As occupied nations went, it must be admitted that Denmark enjoyed a relatively easy war. The first western European country to fall to German assault, it was prevented by both unpreparedness and geography from making an effective defense. The Nazis steamrolled Denmark.

In consequence, the conquerors took the opportunity to pretend that their occupation was a friendly one, a kindly older sibling protecting his Aryan brother from the evil British.

So the German occupation operated with a somewhat lighter hand there than in other countries. Denmark was allowed to mostly police itself… for the present. Its Jews were left alone… for the present.

This situation provided opportunities for anti-Nazi Danes to organize a resistance network and carry out some limited sabotage. This underground network would prove crucial in 1943, when the Germans, increasingly desperate and “doubling down on stupid” as the war went against them, began to suppress Danish freedoms and demand cooperation in solving “the Jewish problem.”

Without going into too many details, it’s worth noting that 95% of Denmark’s 8,000 Jews were safely spirited away to neutral Sweden (which deserves credit as well for its willingness to receive them).

Things “got real” at that point. The occupation became genuine, brutal oppression. The resistance and the reprisals quickly got serious, bloody, and tragic.

If the Danes are sometimes chided for their quick surrender, and for their “easy” wartime experience, they also deserve credit for saving a larger proportion of their Jewish population than any other occupied country. No one can take that honor away from them.

I recommend A Light in the Northern Sea. The writing had a few glitches, but all in all it’s readable and highly interesting.

I was also pleased that the town of Horsens in Jutland, from where my own Danish ancestors hailed, occupies a prominent place in the story of the resistance.

Fiction, Reviews

J.R.R. Tolkien Translated Beowulf? Of Course, He Did

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New YouTuber Gavin the Medievalist breaks down what he found in Tolkien’s translation and commentary of the Old English epic Beowulf and whether you should be reading it in 2025.

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Thinking of Denmark

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Denmark is on my mind tonight. I’m reading a book about Denmark during World War II, but haven’t finished it yet. Above, a gauzy travel video.

I don’t write much about Denmark in this space, even though I’m a quarter Danish.  I suppose it’s partly because it’s my minority ethnicity, but I think it’s largely because being Danish isn’t as funny as being Norwegian. The Norwegians have a public profile in this country, for better or worse. The stolid, taciturn farmer in overalls, painfully shy, honest, not all that bright. Ole Olsen, the butt of a thousand jokes. Garrison Keillor’s Norwegian Bachelor Farmer.

I’m not sure what Americans in general think about Danes, if they do at all. There aren’t that many around – they didn’t come over here in the numbers they came from Norway and Sweden. There are a few famous Danish Americans – Victor Borge, the comic pianist. Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore. Buddy Ebsen and Leslie Nielsen were Danish. But all in all, the Danes assimilated pretty well. They blended in. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a joke about Danes, except among fellow Scandinavians making fun of their pronunciation.

My Danish grandfather loved the out of doors and hunting. He liked polka music (someone once told my brothers and me that he played drums in a band, but I never heard of that). He was most notable for his sense of humor, which was exceedingly dry – people were always complaining that they couldn’t tell whether he was joking or serious.

I have striven to emulate him in this.

Which is no doubt why so many people don’t find me funny.

More on Denmark when I’m ready to review the book, probably on Monday.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Foreclosure,’ by S. D. Thames

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She wiped her eyes, smudging more grime around her eyes. “I remember when you started here out of law school. You seemed different than the others.”

“I take that as a compliment.”

“But you’ve changed, David.”

“I’ve grown up.”

She shook her head. “You’re really just like them now. And they’ll own you soon. Once you make partner, they’ll own you.”

Browsing through my old reviews, I found one of my posts on the novels of S. D. Thames, all of which I had enjoyed quite a lot. I realized I hadn’t read any of his books in a while, so I did a search on Amazon. Turned out he hasn’t put out any more of his Milo Porter novels, but there was a stand-alone I hadn’t read, from way back in 2015 – Foreclosure. I read the book and it impressed me. Think John Grisham, but darker and grittier.

David Friedman is a tough, scrappy Jersey boy, fighting to make partner as a real estate lawyer with a big South Florida firm. As the book begins, he’s furious at being denied a promised partnership. It’s the bad economy, his bosses say.

But one of them offers him a deal – acquire real estate developer Frank O’Reilly as a client. O’Reilly is facing big litigation over a condominium foreclosure, and if David can bring him in and win the case by the end of the year (2007), he’ll get his partnership.

Of course, Frank O’Reilly is the slimiest developer in all of Florida (which is saying a lot), crude and corrupt and cruel-minded. But David knows he can deal with that. If he has to make some ethical compromises, tell a few lies, even ruin a few lives, that’s all part of the game.

But he has no idea what this case will cost him, nor how close it’ll bring him to losing not only his career, but his very life. Not to mention his soul.

Foreclosure is a Christian novel, but of the better sort – better than my novels in the sense that the Christian message is implied, not baldly spelled out. It is, sadly, the kind of book that often fails to please the Christian audience, due to frank language and dark topics. The kind of book Andrew Klavan is writing today, with greater success.

I assume that Foreclosure didn’t sell well, because author S. D. Thames seems to have switched to the light Milo Porter series, and doesn’t seem to have done any publishing at all since before 2020.

I hope he’s all right.

In any case, Foreclosure is an excellent legal thriller for the mature reader. There are occasional rough spots in the writing, but overall I liked it a lot, and recommend it.