Fiction, Reviews

‘Bite,’ by Nick Louth

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Bite

I realized his sculptures describe the character of the physical world more eloquently than any chemist or physicist. He said it best: ‘You torture the metal to get it to show you its soul.’

Having enjoyed Nick Louth’s The Body in the Marsh so much, I immediately bought his first novel, Bite. As a thriller, Bite is different from The Body…, but it’s extremely successful in its own way.

On a transatlantic flight, a mysterious man sets some mosquitoes loose in the First Class section, which is filled with officers of a large, ruthless pharmaceutical company. Shortly after the plane unloads in Amsterdam, where the pharma people are planning to attend an international conference, people start coming down with a never-before-seen strain of malaria. This strain doesn’t respond to available treatments, and seems to thrive in a northern climate.

Meanwhile, Max Carver, an American sculptor with military experience, arrives in Amsterdam on the same plane, along with his girlfriend, Dr. Erica Stroud-Jones. He will be having a big gallery show in the city, while she will be delivering a paper at the pharma conference – explaining her discovery, a revolutionary approach to treating malaria.

But on the day she’s supposed to address the conference, Erica disappears. The police immediately suspect Max of murdering her, and it’s only with the help of a shadowy group of American agents that he gets out on bail. He sets out to find her, and enters a dangerous world of criminals, spies, and professional killers. He will test the very limits of his courage and endurance in the process.

Meanwhile, extracts from an old journal of Erica’s tell the story of a time in her earlier life when she was a hostage in Africa, and plumbed the depths of suffering and despair.

As I read, I compared Bite to a summer action movie. It has the same quality of being exciting to follow, but being fairly implausible when objectively considered. But it was as exciting as advertised, and I could hardly put it down. The characters were fascinating, too.

Cautions for language and mature situations, including rape and torture. There were some references to the Bible and Christianity, and they were fairly positive. Opportunities for leftist propagandizing were generally avoided. Recommended, for adults.

Coffee, Tea, Drinks

What America Loves Most: Ice Cream

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When you think of American wealth, what evidence comes to mind? If it’s not on your list already, jot this one down: the abundance of ice cream.

In Ice Creams, Sorbets and Gelati: The Definitive Guide, authors Robin and Carolyn Weir explore the history of ice cream and how it was a dessert of luxury 200 years ago. In Colonial America, a pint of ice cream could have cost a week’s wages.

In 1921, The Soda Fountain, a monthly trade magazine to the soda industry, published an article touting “Ice Cream as Americanization Aid,” declaring that serving ice cream to [immigrants] on Ellis Island would help them acquire “a taste for the characteristic American dish even before they set foot in the streets of New York.” This would not only help new immigrants assimilate to the American “standard of living,” but it would also inculcate American values: “Who could imagine a man who is genuinely fond of ice cream becoming a Bolshevik?

I can’t say what results any field tests of this idea might have been produced, but it came at a time when America was starting to crank ice cream as if it would churn up a great, big, beautiful tomorrow.

During Prohibition [1920-1933], ice cream parlors filled some of the void left by closed bars, and brewers, including Yuengling and Anheuser-Busch, re-opened their operations as ice cream factories. The Association of Ice Cream Manufacturers could not have been happier — members reportedly sang a chorus at their conventions that went, “[Father] brings a brick of ice cream home instead of beer!”

(via Prufrock News)

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Body In the Marsh,’ by Nick Louth

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The Body In the Marsh

As you may have noticed, I’ve written a string of negative book reviews recently.

Here, at last, is one I really liked.

The Body in the Marsh, by Nick Louth, centers on Detective Chief Inspector Craig Gillard, who operates in southern England. Craig rescues an attractive woman from a mountainside while rock climbing, and believes he’s stumbled onto a good thing when he learns that she’s fun to be with and a fellow cop – though a lowly constable.

But he begins to neglect her when he gets caught up in a case of a woman’s disappearance. Liz Knight, the wife of a prominent criminologist who’s been very critical of the police recently, has disappeared. Soon after that Knight himself disappears.

Craig has a personal reason for being concerned. Long ago, Liz was his first love. She dumped him to marry Knight. If – as looks increasingly likely – Knight has murdered his wife and fled abroad, Craig has a double motive for hunting him down and seeing him imprisoned.

But it turns out it’s all a lot more complicated than that. Craig will have to reevaluate his whole life because of the shocking things he’ll learn.

The Body in the Marsh is a first-rate (though not flawless) detective thriller. The characters are complex and layered, and Craig’s passion catches the reader up. I thought there were a couple weaknesses in the plot, such as coincidences, but the whole thing worked together very well to give me a very exciting reading experience. I saw hints of liberal politics, but they weren’t shoved down my throat.

Highly recommended. Cautions for adult language and situations.

Non-fiction

Was Honor the Big Reason for the American Revolution?

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The Art of Manliness has an audio interview with a history professor who’s written a book that has me repeatedly wondering if he’s right. Craig Bruce Smith is an Assistant Professor of History and the Director of the History Program at William Woods University. He’s written American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals During the Revolutionary Era. He says that while taxation, military aggression, and other oppressive treatment from King George and his empire did lead the colonists into a revolutionary war, the impetus behind our leaders’ call to arms was to defend their honor and that this idea matured over the lives of our founders to the point of pledging their sacred honor to the defend their independence.

In this vein, Yale’s Joanne Freeman wrote on the themes applied in the Burr-Hamilton duel. James Bowman reviews Freeman’s book, Affairs of Honor.

Among the Founding Fathers, she tells us, “Honour” was used interchangeably with “reputation” but it meant “reputation with a moral dimension and an élite cast”. It was, moreover, “the core of a man’s identity, his sense of self, his manhood”, which is why even in those relatively enlightened times it not infrequently involved men in single, and lethal, combat over real or imagined slights.

Bowman has written a book on the history of honor and its ties to morality and manners.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Red Alert,’ by James Patterson & Marshall Karp

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Red Alert

In spite of James Patterson’s immense popularity, not to mention rumors that his political views tend conservative, I had only tried one of his novels up to now. And I didn’t finish that one.

But a friend recently recommended the NYPD Red series, so I figured I’d give Patterson another chance with Red Alert.

Alas, he’s just not my cuppatee.

Zach Jordan and Kylie MacDonald are the New York Police Department’s “Red Squad.” Their job is to handle threats and crimes involving the city’s rich and elite. So they’re on hand the evening a prominent architect is killed by a shaped charge while giving a speech at the elegant Pierre Hotel. At first the reaction is that such a thing was unthinkable. The man was a do-gooder, part of a foundation devoted to helping the less fortunate. But gradually a different picture emerges. He was one of a group of four men, all rich and powerful, who, years before, had gotten into trouble trying to smuggle drugs from Thailand. When another of the four is killed by a similar explosion, the truth becomes obvious – someone has a grudge against the four of them, and is picking them off one by one.

Meanwhile, a female filmmaker is found dead in what appears to be a “strangulation fetish” accident. But it’s not an accident.

The story here is told with the competence one expects from an author of James Patterson’s experience and prolific output. But somehow I had trouble caring. The characters seemed to me to have the depth of cardboard. And the heroes were pretty stereotyped – a solid, sensible male cop partnered with a wild and crazy female cop who likes to beat people up, shoot people, and drive fast. I’ve seen that one too often in the last couple decades.

So my reaction is that the book is adequate light reading, but it failed to provide the vicarious human element I personally crave. Your mileage may (and likely will) vary.

Cautions for language and adult stuff.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Blood Road, by Stuart MacBride

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The Blood Road

Hardie rubbed at his face. ‘We’ve got two missing girls; an ex-police-officer who was stabbed to death; an exhumed murder victim no one can identify, a serving police officer who’s been hanged, and now you say the body you dug up in the middle of nowhere wasn’t just murdered, it was tortured first!’ He pressed his palms into his eye sockets and made a muffled screaming noise.

It is my plan not to read any more of Stuart MacBride’s Logan McRae novels. I bought this one by accident, as I explained a few reviews ago. But it’s not because they’re bad novels. They’re well-written and exciting, with moments of excellent, witty prose. I just don’t like the world they take me into.

In The Blood Road, our hero, Detective Inspector Logan McRae, has made a move to the Professional Standards police squad in his part of Scotland. His former boss is now his subordinate. Other cops don’t like him much because of his job, but short-handedness means he gets pulled into a murder investigation anyway.

A body is found stabbed to death in a car along a lonely road. When it’s identified, it’s a shock – it’s a former police colleague, who was supposed to be dead years before. Meanwhile there’s been a string of child abductions, and rumors are spreading of a secretive “livestock market” where these children will be auctioned off to pedophiles. Evidence mounts that somehow – it’s almost impossible to believe – this twice-dead policeman was involved with that ring. Continue reading ‘The Blood Road, by Stuart MacBride →

Uncategorized

Erling Skjalgsson’s home

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In case you’re interested in seeing where Erling Skjalgsson lived, I’ve found a little film showing it. The stone cross is a replica of Erling’s memorial stone, and the church with the glass repairs is the old Sola church, built later than Erling’s time. But I’ve placed Ailill’s church in the same spot.

Uncategorized

Social awkwardness in a Chinese restaurant

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One aspect of being a strange person is having strange experiences. Experiences that are strange merely because it’s you involved.

A strange sort of coincidence happened to me yesterday evening. Only weird because I’m weird.

I’m a man of routine. Part of my regular agenda is to go to the gym on Wednesday evenings, and then have Sweet & Sour Chicken at Lee Ann Chin’s (a local Chinese chain) afterward. This I did last night.

I was sitting at a table, eating and reading a book on my Kindle. The table was at the back wall, and I was sitting on a long bench that stretches along that wall and serves three different tables. At the time I was the only one using any of those tables.

I was reading another Logan McRae novel – that series whose quality I admire, but which I just don’t like much. But I bought this book by accident, and I wasn’t about to dump it. Continue reading Social awkwardness in a Chinese restaurant →

Book Reviews, Creative Culture