{"id":13165,"date":"2019-12-18T18:28:52","date_gmt":"2019-12-18T23:28:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=13165"},"modified":"2019-12-18T18:28:52","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T23:28:52","slug":"the-last-teacher-by-alan-lee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=13165","title":{"rendered":"‘The Last Teacher,’ by Alan Lee"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t go to church, I don\u2019t have any religious friends, I don\u2019t like the christian radio stations, I drink, I don\u2019t feel like baptists would like me anymore than I like them. I read but cannot understand the Old Testament. Sometimes,\u201d I said, and paused. \u201cSometimes I don\u2019t even think God likes me very much, though I know that\u2019s not true. Whatever that is, that\u2019s what I am.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Now here\u2019s an intriguing book, <\/strong>part of an intriguing series. A Christian mystery series, which many Christians will hate. The Last Teacher<\/a><\/em> is a sort of prequel to the Mack August series by Alan Lee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mackenzie August is a former cop and former underground cage fighter. Also a former youth pastor. A single father. Now he\u2019s taken a job as a middle school teacher in the small town of South Hill, Virginia. Just trying to figure out where he belongs in the world, and puzzling over God\u2019s will. He\u2019s pretty sure that will does not include a relationship with the hot teacher who starts throwing herself at him from the day he arrives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly thereafter, he discovers the body of a fellow\nteacher, shot to death in the school yard. Mack isn\u2019t sure whether he\u2019ll make a\ngood teacher, but he\u2019s a good detective. He\u2019ll need to be, especially when\nanother teacher is murdered in the same way. Mack begins to realize that\nsomeone is fixating on him, killing the people around him out of some kind of\ntwisted obsession. That\u2019s personal enough, but when his baby son gets\nkidnapped, it becomes a matter of life and death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alan Lee is a very brave writer, braver than I am, for good\nor ill. He grapples head-on with one of the major challenges facing Christian fiction\nwriters today: the problem of realistic language. The time has passed when you could\nget away with having worldly and depraved characters confine themselves to expletives\nlike \u201cgosh\u201d and \u201cdarn.\u201d The audience expects people to talk the way they would\nin real life. That means using language most of us don\u2019t want to spread around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author Lee uses that language. The book isn\u2019t full of\nprofanity or obscenity, but it\u2019s there. It will shock and offend many Christian\nreaders. But it\u2019s possible that Lee isn\u2019t writing for the healthy, but for the\nsick, who are in need of a physician, as the Gospel says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the many things I liked about The Last Teacher <\/em>was Mack\u2019s voice as narrator. He speaks in the tradition of Philip Marlowe, that tough guy\/erudite voice with just a hint of self-mockery. Alan Lee writes this kind of stuff very well indeed. I laughed often as I read. Another trope in detective stories is gorgeous women throwing themselves at the hero. That\u2019s present in these books too, with the novelty of the hero resisting those women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found the final resolution a little implausible, but that\nmay just be due to personal prejudices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re morally offended by bad language in Christian\nstories, stay away from the Mack August books. But if you\u2019re open to it, there\u2019s\na good time reading to be had here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recommended, with the aforementioned cautions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t go to church, I don\u2019t have any religious friends, I don\u2019t like the christian radio stations, I drink, I don\u2019t feel like baptists would like me anymore than I like them. I read but cannot understand the Old Testament. Sometimes,\u201d I said, and paused. \u201cSometimes I don\u2019t even think God … Continue reading ‘The Last Teacher,’ by Alan Lee<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[127,1733,2935],"class_list":["post-13165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-alan-lee","tag-mackaugust","tag-the-last-teacher"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}