Fiction, Reviews

‘Choice of Evils,’ by Morley Swingle

Leave a comment

Can a former district attorney find love with a woman he once sent to prison for manslaughter?

That slightly implausible puzzle is one of several in Morley Swingle’s Choice of Evils, first in a series of legal thrillers featuring attorney Wyatt Blake.

Wyatt Blake, of Panorama Springs, Colorado, lost his way after the death of his wife in a skiing accident, an accident for which he still blames himself. His concentration slipped, and an ambitious rival managed to beat him in his race for reelection. Now he’s set up as a defense attorney, but the word is out that Wyatt has lost a step.

So it’s a surprise when a friend refers a heavyweight client to him – Ryker Brando, a tech and legal-marijuana multimillionaire. Ryker doesn’t deny that he cut the rope tying him to his business partner while rock climbing, sending him plunging to his death. But he argues that he had no choice – if he hadn’t, they’d have both been killed.

Ryker’s claims are weakened by the fact that the man was having an affair with his wife.

Ryker is kind of an Elon Musk caricature – he’s autistic, arrogant, demanding, and unlikeable. Wyatt will have a job to do, convincing any jury to buy his arguments. He’ll need to bring his A game – and these days he’s not the lawyer he used to be.

He doesn’t know if it’s a good thing or bad when he runs into Harper Easton, a female former police officer, now a private eye, whom he sent to prison for shooting an unarmed suspect. She hates his guts, and he feels guilty about it. But there’s a spark there, and he could use an investigator…

First of all, I need to say that I enjoyed Choice of Evils. The prose was good. I liked the characters. I was caught up in the mystery.

However, I thought there was a certain… lack of self-confidence in the writing.

Years ago, I read an interview with a TV comedy writer who’d written for Milton Berle. He recalled how Berle had always asked him to make the jokes “lappier.”

What does “lappier” mean? the writer wanted to know.

Berle explained that he wanted the jokes to fall into the audience’s laps. Nothing subtle. Push the joke in their faces like a cream pie.

I felt that way reading Choice of Evils. It seemed the author didn’t trust his own powers. He was telling me how to feel about everybody and every situation – even, to some extent, the big plot twist that was coming further along

Take, for instance, this passage:

Aside from a cordial hello, Harper hasn’t said a thing to me. No reason she should, though. I had a hand, obviously, in causing a great deal of unpleasantness in her life. The help I’m giving her regarding her mother is small compensation.

There’s nothing wrong with those lines in themselves – except that they tell us nothing we don’t already know. We’ve been told numerous times that Wyatt caused Harper “unpleasantness.” We’ve seen how he’s helping her mother out. The last two sentences are thus entirely superfluous, and could have been cut, moving the scene along.

Well, it may be author Swingle is learning his craft, and will do better in time. Taken all together, Choice of Evils is a commendable and highly readable effort.

In spite of being written in the present tense.

Recommended, with cautions for language and some steamy sex stuff.

Fiction, Publishing, Reading

‘Troll Valley’: recording done

1 Comment

Tonight, BIG NEWS!

Deeply… underwhelming… big news.

(By the way, do kids today realize that “underwhelming” wasn’t always a word? I first saw it used in the Pogo comic strip, back in the 1960s, I think. It was funny because “overwhelming” had never (that I know of) been paired with “underwhelming” before. “Overwhelming” was one of those words that had no commonly used obverse form, just as we still never talk about anyone being “gruntled.”)

What I mean to say is, I finished recording my novel, Troll Valley, this morning. To mark the occasion, I decided to film myself “in studio,” for the benefit of future literary historians.

I apologize for the quality of the video. The old HP laptop I use for recording doesn’t have much of a camera.

But you’ll note that the sound is good. That’s the quality of sound you’ll be getting with my fully artisanal audiobook.

I need to give the whole thing a listen-through again, though, just to be sure it’s right. I should be able to do at least two chapters of that a day, so it ought to take a couple weeks.

Then, it will take as long as it takes for me to jump through the hoops of converting files for Audible, and uploading. (Phil has already modified the book cover for me, for which I’m most grateful.)

But it’s coming. It can’t be too long now.

You may now return to your scheduled weekend.

Fiction, Reviews

‘An Honest Man,’ by Simon Michael

Leave a comment

There are plenty of legal thrillers out there. Simon Michael’s An Honest Man recommended itself to me through being set in London in the 1960s, and through authenticity (as far as I could tell) and general good writing.

Charles Holborne was, not long ago, a rising criminal defense barrister. In spite of prejudice – both class prejudice and antisemitism (he changed his name from Horowitz, to his mother’s annoyance), Charles’ legal and persuasive skills brought him success. Until he was accused of the murder of his wife. The story of how he cleared himself of that charge was the subject of the first book in the series, and An Honest Man is the second.

Charles has come down in the world. It doesn’t matter that he was innocent of the murder – the London bar is a small, parochial community, and Charles lives under a cloud now. He’s struggling for money, and contemplating taking a job with a large legal firm, losing forever the courtroom work he loves.

Then, to his surprise, he gets a request for representation from a very wealthy and prominent client – Harry Robeson, a criminal solicitor who’s helped defend some high-level organized crime figures. Charles is leery at first, unsure why a man with so many options would choose him. But Harry is charming and thoughtful, and Charles is soon convinced of his innocence. It doesn’t hurt that a corrupt policeman with whom he’s tangled before seems to have been playing some shady tricks.

Many surprises and twists lay ahead. An Honest Man is a cynical enough book to be realistic about the world, but just positive enough to satisfy the reader’s inner idealist. I liked it a lot.

Cautions for violence and a little more sexual detail than I considered necessary.

But overall I was very pleased.

[I note, once again, to my minor annoyance, that this book was written in the present tense. I seem to be hitting a string of those lately. I suppose it’s what the cool kids are doing these days.]

Reading, Uncategorized

The ambivalent wonders of cotton

1 Comment
Eli Whitney’s cotton gin

Do they teach them about Eli Whitney in schools anymore? When I was young, Whitney’s story was told (briefly) because of his tremendous – and ambivalent – importance in American history.

Whitney’s cotton gin revitalized the economy of the American south. It made cotton a cheap and profitable bulk commodity. (Until then it had been exclusively luxury wear.) And – tragically – it revived human slavery as a business model in America, where it had been – everyone agreed – quietly dying out. All those self-righteous sermons about God ordaining slavery mostly got delivered after the plantation economy had been revived and prosperity once again depended on cheap field labor.

But there’s another side to the cotton story, less well known but equally significant. I read about it, I think, in Paul Johnson’s The Birth of the Modern, and it astonished me.

I’ve written much about the rise of Pietism and how it contributed to literacy, social mobility, and a new social status for common people. But few are aware how much cotton fiber also contributed to that change.

As I understand it, John Wesley never actually said, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” But it does encapsulate some ideas he expressed. However (I think Paul Johnson made this point), it would have been impossible to say that before cotton became widely available.

Cotton is a wonderful fiber. It’s light and cool, great for summer wear. And you can boil the stuff. Throw it in a kettle and bubble the germs out of it. A poor man who owns cotton clothing can be as clean as the king of England or the president of the United States.

Wool is wonderful in its way (especially up here in the north), but you have to wash it in cool water. You can never sanitize it. That means that throughout history, when most of the poor wore wool, even next to the skin, those poor people stunk.

Cotton gave them a new dignity. I remember my mother reminiscing repeatedly about her childhood in the Great Depression. “Our clothes may have been old, and they may have been patched,” she said, “but my mother saw to it they were always clean.” That’s the pride of the honest poor, and a revolution in the world.

Since it’s supposed to be Pride Month, I’ll go with Cotton-Wearing Pride, thank you.

Fiction, Reviews

‘No Turning Back,’ by Steve Frech

Leave a comment

I have announced that I’m cutting back on my reading of thrillers, just because I’m getting too old for the stress. But that doesn’t mean I’ve given up on thrillers altogether. When I do read one, I prefer the smaller, more intimate kind, where the focus is as much on character as on bangs and kabooms.

Which is precisely what I found in Steve Frech’s No Turning Back. I got it through an online deal, knowing nothing about the author or the story. But I had a treat in store.

Our hero and narrator (the book, I regret to say, is written in the present tense) is Lucas Walker, a young man who moved with his wife Julia to Los Angeles from their small home town in Pennsylvania not long ago. They found the streets meaner than they expected, but they were getting by when they learned that Julia was pregnant. They agreed they wanted the baby, and somehow they’d figure out a way to pay for it. Then Lucas lost his job. Concerned about stressing Julia, he did not tell her about this. Instead, when he’s not job-hunting, he now drives for a ride share service. It doesn’t help to pay their debts, but it allows him to maintain insurance coverage.

Lucas thinks he’s in a bad spot.

But he has no idea how bad a spot can be.

When he picks up a man named Damon, on a dark road in the Hollywood Hills, he figures he can squeeze one more ride into his night. Maybe he’ll get a decent tip.

Instead, Damon – who is spattered in blood – pulls a gun on him and tells him to drive to a certain address. There he will kill someone, and then they will drive to another address where he’ll kill someone else. He has a whole night of homicide planned out, and Lucas will be his chauffeur.

If Lucas does not cooperate, Damon says, he will kill him. Then he will go to his apartment and kill Julia.

Over the course of the night, Lucas will learn what fear and desperation really are. But he will also discover courage and resource within himself that he never knew he had.

And he will learn a few things about Damon – who is not exactly what he seems, and somehow grows increasingly sympathetic, in spite of the blood on his hands.

No Turning Back is fast, intense, and compelling. It grabbed me like the best work of Andrew Klavan or Gregg Hurwitz. It also had a very satisfying twist at the end. This is an expertly plotted and written story. It would make a great movie. Like all thrillers, it contains a few implausibilities, but they’re well handled.

I happily recommend No Turning Back. Cautions for language, violence, and adult themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘All Hallows Eve,’ by Charles Williams

Leave a comment

(Sorry for the late post tonight. I had an eye exam, preparatory to cataract surgery [to which I very much look forward], today. They dilated my eyes, and I’m only now regaining the ability to see my computer screen clearly.)

What had looked at Lester from Evelyn’s eyes, what now showed in her own, was pure immortality. This was the seal of the City, its first gift to the dead who entered it. They had what they were and they had it (as it seemed) forever.

Lester Furnival (Lester, in this case, a woman’s name) is a ghost. As All Hallows Eve begins, the war is over, but she fell victim to a freak accident, a commercial plane dropping from the sky near Westminster Bridge. She has now entered a parallel but different City – the City of God. But she’s still disoriented.

With her is her “friend” Evelyn, a petty-minded and voluble woman who happened to be with her when they died. But as they wander the familiar streets, now strange and strangely unpeopled, Lester finds herself drawn into the troubles of another friend – Betty. Betty is the daughter of Simon Leclerc, a charismatic healer and preacher of peace who is now attracting a world-wide following. No one guesses that Simon is in fact the Antichrist, a magician. He has a plan to make contact with the eternal through killing his daughter and using her spirit as a messenger, to bring him news of the future. He’s already been sending her on such journeys in trances, and it’s in that state that she encounters Lester, who feels a divine compulsion to help her before she can move on into higher Heaven.

Meanwhile, Lester’s husband, Richard, is mourning her and lamenting his failures as a spouse. Lester’s friend Jonathan, a renowned painter, wants to marry Betty – unaware of her father’s plans for her. To please Betty’s mother, he paints a picture of Simon – one which infuriates the mother, but – surprisingly – pleases Simon himself.

That’s the setup for All Hallows Eve, Charles Williams final novel. Like all his books, it’s eccentric and challenging. I’ve always enjoyed it, and I quite enjoyed re-reading it.

Williams was a writer utterly at odds with modern literary fashions. Where we all (I include myself) struggle to be terse and precise in our prose nowadays, Williams unleashes a flood of words on the reader. But he does it the right way. He is not – like so many bad writers – just throwing words at his ideas, hoping a few will stick. Rather, he revels in an abundance of words, saying the same thing over and over in different ways, faceting his (often surprising) spiritual insights.

I would say, in fact, that Charles Williams’ fiction was just another stream of his poetry. Almost literally a stream – more like a torrent. One launches one’s boat into it and drives with the current.

Some people like Williams; some can’t stand him. I like him a lot (as a writer, not necessarily as a man). If you haven’t tried this strangest member of the Inklings, All Hallows Eve is a good place to start. But be prepared to wrestle with it.

Music

Sunday Singing: A Welcome to Christian Friends

Leave a comment

To continue our recent trend of sharing forgotten hymns, today’s hymn was written by the great John Newton, “A Welcome to Christian Friends.” It talks of our unity and comfort in Christ. The recording of Bach’s “O Jesus sweet, O Jesus mild” is a potential tune for it. You’ll have to make the adaptation as you listen.

“In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” (Eph. 1:13-14 ESV)

1 Kindred in Christ, for his dear sake,
A hearty welcome here receive;
May we together now Partake
The Joys which only he can give!

2 To you and us by Grace ’tis giv’n,
To know the Saviour’s precious name;
And shortly we shall meet in Heav’n,
Our Hope, our Way, our End, the same.

3 May he, by whose kind Care we meet,
Send his good Spirit from above,
Make our Communications sweet,
And cause our hearts to burn with Love!

4 Forgotten be each worldly Theme,
When Christians see each other thus;
We only wish to speak of him,
Who liv’d and dy’d and rose for us.

5 We’ll talk of all he did and said,
And suffer’d for us here below;
The Path he mark’d for us to tread,
And what he’s doing for us now.

6 Thus, as the Moments pass away,
We’ll love, and Wonder and adore.
Lord, hasten on the glorious Day
When we shall meet to part no more!

Music

‘Hils Fra Meg Derhjemme’

Leave a comment

As you’ve probably noticed, on those increasingly frequent evenings when my skull contains only a couple thoughts rattling around, none of them usable here, I resort to posting music. Often it’s Scandinavian music. I’d like to pretend I do this because I grew up with it, but in fact I heard very few of these songs in my childhood, except the hymns. I learned them as an adult.

“Hils Fra Meg Derhjemme” is regarded as the Scandinavian-American anthem. I had the idea it was originally a Swedish song, but this article says it was first performed in Denmark. Nonetheless, all the Scandinavian immigrants adopted it. It’s a song of homesickness, and quite heartbreakingly beautiful.

There are a number of versions available on YouTube, but only a couple live performances. And most of those are either instrumentals or an odd, C&W adaptation. So I’ll have to settle for a performance performed in 2014 by Lynn Peterson and Garrison Keillor, on Prairie Home Companion. I’m no longer a fan of Keillor’s, and am loath to feature him here, but needs must.

As you can read in the article linked above, the song tells of a sailor at sea, standing watch at night. He sees birds flying north, and fancies they’re headed for his homeland. He asks them to take his greetings back to his family, to the green mountainsides and bright fjords (Swedish and Danish versions vary those details a little).

I don’t believe this song is well known in Norway. The last time I was there, I had an evening with the cousins at Avaldsnes, and Cousin Edna brought out her guitar. She asked people to share their favorite songs, and I suggested “Hils Fra Meg Derhjemme.” Nobody had ever heard of it.

Fiction, Reading, Religion

Thoughts on ‘All Hallows Eve’

5 Comments

I’m reading (again) Charles Williams’ final novel, All Hallows Eve. I’m not quite half way through it. Williams is not the easiest read, but I keep coming back to his books. Just a few thoughts tonight about my ongoing impressions.

A recurring theme in Williams’ novels is the city – properly spelled with a capital “C” when he deals with it. J. R. R. Tolkien was always a little leery of Williams, and I’d imagine attitudes towards cities had something to do with it. Tolkien was a countryman, reveling in woods and meadows, trees and flowers and butterflies. Williams was London-born, and felt best at home there, amid the noise, the crowds, the bustle.

I’ve never (yet) read St. Augustine’s City of God, but I understand it to be a meditation on the societal catastrophe of the fall of Rome. Augustine told Christians that they mustn’t identify the City of God with any city of man, however great its pretensions. Christianity could do without Rome – we look to the City with foundations, eternal in the Heavens.

Nevertheless, Williams saw something of eternity in London, and in any great metropolis. A city has a being of its own; a body, a pulse, and a spirit. Many members work together to support a common life. The man of God can find an image of Heaven in the city, if he looks for it. London is itself an active character in All Hallows’ Eve.

Another thing that always strikes me – bothers me, really – in this book is that the villain is a Jew, and his Jewishness is an important element. There is no hint here of Jewish inferiority – rather the opposite. The villain here, Father Simon, is, we are made to understand, the Antichrist. And as the true Antichrist, he has to correspond to Jesus Christ, but in an inverted way. The Jewish capacities that in part made Jesus Messiah are aped and parodied in Father Simon.

This is my personal opinion – we need to be careful, when reading, to understand that people didn’t view antisemitism the same way back then (Williams died in 1945, as the war was ending, but before most people knew the true extent of Hitler’s Holocaust). The old antisemitism was bad enough, but Hitler improvised a new kind. The persecutors of Jews before that time – Catholic and Protestant and Orthodox – had never considered annihilating the Jews. They wanted to convert them. Hitler cared nothing for the Jews’ souls. He was all about “pure” blood, and regarded the Jews as an infection to be removed.

I don’t think we can ever treat Jews the same way in literature again. And that’s a good thing.

Music

A song from my Grandma: ‘Nelly Gray’

Leave a comment

Tonight, an old song. Which probably means nothing to you, but it means something to me, and there’s a story or two in there, and stories are good things.

If there was an artistic side to my family, it was my paternal grandmother’s. Her father was a skilled artisan, with (I’m told) beautiful handwriting. Grandma sang and played the piano and guitar – I don’t think she was anything like a virtuoso, but she could sight-read, something I never achieved.

Sometimes she’d sit at the piano and play for her own amusement, and her favorite song seemed to be “Nelly Gray” (video above), a very popular pre-Civil War anti-slavery ballad. I have no idea where she learned it. Maybe her piano teacher made her memorize it. Maybe it was popular in her family – her own parents came to America in the 1880s, long after abolition had been accomplished, but she had cousins who came in the 1840s.

“Nelly Gray” was written by a United Brethren minister and songwriter named Benjamin Hanby (who also wrote the Christmas songs “Up on the Housetop” and “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas”).

Like all the United Brethren, Hanby was a strong abolitionist. His family had given shelter to an escaped slave named Joseph Selby, who had left his sweetheart behind in Kentucky. The family was trying to raise money to buy her freedom when Selby died of pneumonia. Deeply moved, Benjamin Hanby created the song “Nelly Gray” (published 1856) about a slave in Kentucky whose sweetheart has been “sold down the river” to Georgia (generally considered a crueler place for bondsmen than Kentucky). He laments her loss, and at the end of the song he is dying, looking forward to their reunion in Heaven.