Fiction, Reviews

‘South Phoenix Rules,’ by Jon Talton

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I’ll begin this review by disclosing that I have decided to stop reading Jon Talton, whom I originally liked very much. I’ll explain my reasons below. Two more reviews are coming, however (this one and the next), because I like the author enough that it was hard to make the break. However, he ticks me off in a couple ways.

The first way is that he jerks his readers around by way of soap opera-style drama in his hero’s, David Maphouse’s, romantic life. As South Phoenix Rules begins, we find that his wife Lindsey, with whom he was blissfully happy the last time we looked, is now working out of town and pondering divorce. To complicate matters more, her long-lost, bad-girl sister Robin is now living in David’s house (at Lindsey’s insistence) and flirting heavily with him.

Then Robin receives a FedEx delivery that I won’t describe to you, which sets David – who has just resigned as a Maricopa County sheriff’s deputy – to investigating the drug business in and around Phoenix. This is the darkest, most violent story in the series to date, with David going full vigilante. There’s also a shocking murder that changes the shape of the whole series scenario.

The second reason I’ve grown annoyed with author Talton is his repeated assertion that the Tea Party, and anyone concerned about the border, must be motivated by pure racism. He seems to prefer a situation where white employers exploit underpaid foreign labor, undercutting wages for poor Americans of all races. I’m not saying it’s not a debatable and complex issue. I’m just tired of his simplistic, libelous assertions.

But I’m reading one more book, and I’ll probably review that tomorrow. No more after that.

Reading, Religion

How to Develop a Precocious Mind

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Young writer Bethel McGrew describes growing up with scholarly parents in a house of ten thousand books.

The ideological benefits of homeschooling are obvious, but besides these I’m moved to reflect on this simple freedom of time—time to train my attention on good and beautiful and difficult things, to furnish my mind with them at my own pace. I have sadly lost some of that gift of attention in the digital age. I flip through a decades-old memo pad logging all the books I read in a given year, in between the little to-do lists I would make for an afternoon of reading, chess study, or whatever else nine-year-old me was working on, and I’m filled with envy.

Bethel is a good columnist with strong opinions of her own, not simply all the correct ones. I recommending her Substack and whatever she releases into the wild, like this piece today on what the revival of Michael Jackson says about America.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Arizona Dreams’ and ‘Cactus Heart,’ by Jon Talton

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I’m still clawing my way out of my respiratory infection, and so have been reading in pretty long stretches, concentrating on Jon Talton’s interesting David Mapstone mysteries. I have to confess I don’t love the books as much as I did, but I haven’t ditched the author yet.

Arizona Dreams finds our hero, Arizona “sheriff’s historian” David Mapstone, getting a visit from a woman who claims to be a former student of his (though he doesn’t remember her) from his teaching days. She gives him a map that’s supposed to lead to the desert grave of a murder victim. But that’s not what he finds at all…

Meanwhile, David’s wife Lindsey, also a deputy, is investigating a series of ice pick murders. David will get involved with that investigation too.

Cactus Heart is prequel, set back before the turn of the millennium, before David and Lindsey got together. In hot pursuit of a couple of criminals, David and the sheriff stumble on an old crypt in an abandoned building. Inside the crypt are two small skeletons – the skeletons of children. David’s investigation will lead him to the old crimes of one of the county’s most powerful families.

The stories remain well-written and interesting. I am cooling to the author because, in spite of the anti-woke opinions David Mapstone expresses in regard to his academic career, some of his other views bother me. David describes himself as a Goldwater libertarian, but a Greenie in terms of land development (fair enough; the southwest is certainly overdeveloped). He’s also not interested in a strong border. In these books, anyone who believes in border enforcement is uniformly portrayed as a racist. These books, it should be noted, were written before the borders were completely opened during the Biden administration, and all the human suffering that caused. It looks kind of dumb in retrospect, to me at least.

Still, the books maintain my interest. Cautions for language and sex scenes, which sometimes seem to me a little more detailed than necessary.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Camelback Falls’ and ‘Dry Heat,’ by Jon Talton

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This will be a rare double review. I need to pick up my pace, as I’ve been running through Jon Talton’s David Mapstone series pretty quickly. It’s not that I don’t have other things to do than read, but I’m fighting a respiratory infection at the moment and I keep stopping for breaks. And when I take a break, I read. And when books are these good, the breaks tend to get long.

David Mapstone, if you recall yesterday’s review, is an unemployed academic historian, hired by his friend, chief deputy sheriff Mike Peralta, to investigate cold cases in Phoenix. When Camelback Falls opens, Mike has just been sworn in as the new sheriff – but a few minutes later he’s cut down by an assassin. As Mike fights for his life in the hospital, David finds himself – much against his will – appointed interim sheriff.

Soon David finds himself investigating another cold case – the murder of two deputies. Evidence he uncovers seems to suggest considerable corruption in the sheriff’s office – corruption that seems to involve Mike himself.

Moving on to the next book, that’s Dry Heat. This time out, David investigates the death of a homeless man whose case becomes more interesting when an FBI badge is found sewn into his jacket. The badge is that of the only FBI agent ever murdered in Arizona, a crime long unsolved. Meanwhile, David’s new wife Leslie, a digital forensic detective, has become the target of assassins, sent by a Russian gangster whose operation she helped close down.

The David Mapstone books are excellent in several ways. The prose is very good; the characters are vivid. The mysteries are genuinely intriguing. And the values generally please me (though David and Leslie cohabit before marriage).

I’m really enjoying these books.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Concrete Desert,’ by Jon Talton

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A search of our old posts shows that I reviewed a Jon Talton novel some time back, and liked it very much. But somehow he dropped off my radar.  Concrete Desert, the first book in his David Mapstone series, showed up cheap recently, so I bought and read it. Now I’m a fan.

David Mapstone is a native of Phoenix, Arizona. He was a policeman there in his youth, then he went away to earn his doctorate in History. But he found that there are few opportunities in academia nowadays (the early 2000s) for white males who don’t hate western civilization. He ended up back in Phoenix, where his old police mentor, Mike Peralta, is now chief deputy sheriff. Mike offers David a job as Sheriff’s Department historian, investigating old cold cases – not necessarily a permanent job, but something to do, and he’d carry a badge and a gun again. David accepts.

Almost immediately, he gets a visit from Julie, his old lover. She has a younger sister who has disappeared, and she wants David to look for her. David still has a weakness for Julie, and agrees. Meanwhile, on the job, he discovers a pattern in old cases of murders of young women. A serial killer had been at work, he realizes, and nobody noticed.

But there are people out there who want the past covered up. And there are others who are lying to David, and are ready to kill him and anyone else who gets in their way, if he can’t unmask them first.

I was highly impressed with Concrete Desert. The book had a strong sense of place; the descriptions of Phoenix and its environs were vivid and tactile. The prose was excellent (not as quotable as, say, Chandler or MacDonald, but most effective), and the dialogue and characters were lively. And to put the cherry on top, culturally conservative opinions popped out frequently.

Highly recommended. Cautions for language, violence, and adult situations.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Mask,’ by Dean Koontz

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Dean Koontz, always a prolific author, turned out several thrillers under pseudonyms early in his career. He wrote The Mask, published in 1981, under the name of Owen West. That’s not the very beginning of the author’s career, but the book struck me as rather underbaked Koontz.

Carol Tracy is a psychologist in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She gets the job of treating a teenaged girl known only as Jane Doe, who has shown up with total amnesia about her past. Jane is beautiful, well-mannered, and sweet. Somebody must miss her, because she’s a child any parent would cherish – Carol herself, who’s been trying vainly to conceive, begins to cherish her, and soon takes her into her home. But why has Carol begun to to have terrible nightmares? And why is her husband hearing unexplained thumping noises in their house?

There’s also Carol’s friend and mentor Grace, who starts receiving cryptic phone calls from the voice of her own deceased husband, warning her to keep Carol and the girl apart.

The book escalates, in typical Koontz fashion, to a violent, wrenching, and abrupt climax.

I was not greatly impressed by The Mask. It seemed to me a conventional supernatural thriller, lacking the deeper themes the author would later bring to his work.

It was okay, if you’re not too offended by reincarnation.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

Blowing the Elk Horn

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Outside the Viking House in Elk Horn
Panning right, more of the camp

When you drive through the Story City, Iowa exit on Highway I-35 (I have been informed by a distant cousin) you are driving across what was once my great-grandfather’s farm, back around the turn of the 20th Century. I’ve been through that intersection many times before, but I hadn’t known that fact. So I had that to ponder as I drove through on my way home from Tivoli Fest in Elk Horn, Iowa last Sunday (Google Maps took me by a different route going south, for reasons beyond my ken).

Just another satisfaction in a highly satisfactory weekend.

I’m sorry I haven’t posted for the last few days. I was out of town starting Thursday, of course. I could have posted yesterday, but I came home very tired, and seem to be suffering another of my bouts of respiratory infection now. I’ll probably be running on low power until I see the doctor next Monday, but I’ve dragged myself to my desk to do my duty now, before I forget everything.

The event covered Friday, Saturday, and parts of Sunday, though I left Sunday morning. Friday was pretty quiet, but I got my tent and book tables set up, in the grassy area near the Viking house, instead of in the field across the road as in the old days. I did catch one high-roller who bought three books, and may God bless him. He confessed, in low tones, that he was a Norwegian in a Danish town and he welcomed the moral support.

Normann, our locksmith, talking medieval tech with a fellow Viking

I stayed with a dear family of Christian friends in a nearby town, with whom I had enjoyed one of those long, wide-ranging conversations late into the night, the last time I was down there, 15 years ago. We picked the conversation up, more or less, where we left off.

Saturday had good crowds, and I stayed pretty busy. Sold out my whole stock of Viking Legacy, and did a fair trade in my own novels. Credit card purchases were complicated by the fact that Elk Horn is in a sort of satellite black hole, and cell phone signals come and go. But I lucked out and it always worked for me. Greeted a few familiar Vikings, grown a little older now. Ate festival food (but in relatively modest quantities. My habits seem to have changed for the better). I didn’t get to see the fireworks, though, as I went back to spend more quality time with my hosts.

Scott, the comb maker and fabric merchant. Also featured in this image, my left index finger.

I splurged on one addition to my Viking kit, made and sold by  Scott, the fellow pictured above. It’s this Viking traveler’s comb, based on a larger original found in a grave:

When you pull out the little pin, the comb comes out of its case, thus:

Isn’t that cool? Nice craftsmanship, too.

Fiction, Reviews

‘One Green Bottle,’ by M. Jonathan Lee

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A murder story set on a Norwegian fjord cruise? I could hardly turn that down, especially getting it cheap. I assumed it was a sort of a mystery, but it’s more of a suspense story. The mystery in One Green Bottle isn’t whodunnit, but who didn’t?

The tour guides leading a group of cruise ship hikers up a mountain in Norway assure them that they’ve never lost a customer. Well, that’s about to end. They’ve hit a perfect storm today, because there are eight people in this particular party, nearly all of whom are planning to kill either themselves or someone else.

There’s an English couple getting away from home for a while to deal with the tenth anniversary of their only daughter’s death. The experience is complicated by the husband’s growing conviction that his wife is having an affair with another man – who just happens to show up with his own wife on this cruise (surprise)! There’s an American financier planning suicide because he knows his embezzlement is even now being discovered by his co-workers. And a psychopathic American heiress worried that her alcoholic sister will blab to the police about how they murdered their father.

Yet we learn at the beginning of the book that only one of them actually dies. Which one will it be?

There’s much to admire in One Green Bottle. The prose is good. The characters are admirably faceted – the most sympathetic among them can be annoying, and the most annoying have sympathetic moments. The story was fascinating and engaging.

But it left a rather sour taste in my mouth. This is a fictional universe whose God, if there is a God, is Irony.

I recommend it moderately. Cautions for language and disturbing themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘To Have Everything,’ by Alan Lee

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The heavens were purpling when I reached Washington, DC. The sun had disappeared beyond the simple Federal-style architecture found in Georgetown as I drove through, and beyond into Spring Valley, a spacious, secluded neighborhood inside the city with grand estates and private yards. If you were rich, you couldn’t live here. These residents looked down on the rich. These residents blew their nose with the rich.

I think I’ve now caught up with Alan Lee’s delightful Mackenzie August series, about an upbeat Raleigh, NC private eye who lives in a house with several family and friends, because he believes in community. I haven’t read all of the Manny Martinez books, though, so there’s always that.

To Have Everything features two main plot threads. First there’s a rich old woman who wants Mack to surveille her three grandchildren. She wants to leave extra money to the one who’s most responsible, but Mack suspects she’s already made her mind up – possibly very badly.

Then there’s the problem with Sheriff Stackhouse, Mack’s father’s girlfriend. She’s running for mayor, and a shoo-in – if she lives. Unfortunately, people keep trying to kill her (which Mack, of course, has to stop). Mack has contacts (some surprisingly friendly) in organized crime, but nobody seems to know who put out the contract. Mack will have to get proactive. Fortunately, as he confidently asserts, he can handle anything.

Lots of fun, as usual. I think To Have Everything was one of my favorites in the series. My only quibble is that (possibly due to an autocorrect mistake) the word “diffusion” keeps appearing where what’s wanted is “defusing” (as in a bomb).

Otherwise, great. Cautions for language and violence.

Bookselling, Reading, Uncategorized

Tivoli Fest in view

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A moment in the Viking camp at Tivoli Fest, years ago. Several of these people are no longer alive.

Dropped a book I was reading today. Yet again. I’m old, and have only so much time left; why should I waste any of it on novels that insult me?

This book (which I got in a free offer) was passably written (though the author had a tendency to misplace modifiers). I was giving it a fair chance. I thought it was moving a little slowly, and the characters were somewhat hard to keep straight, but that’s probably because I’m old.

Then the two detectives (one white male, one black female) interview a young male slacker whose ex-girlfriend has disappeared. The b.f. detective thinks he’s a suspect. The w.m. detective says maybe she could give him a break; he just got bad news about his ex. The w.m. retorts that he’s just a typical white male; no responsibility.

And the w.m. male apologizes.

Apologizes.

I didn’t care for the slacker character myself, but his sin wasn’t that he was a white male. Is that the new acceptable stereotype – white males are all shiftless? Seriously?

Into the bin with that one.

I had a scary moment with my car too. Went to the grocery store, and as I left the parking lot I heard a dull rattling sound from the rear end. Feared the worst.

Then I thought, that sounds a little like wood bumping on plastic. It could be my wooden apple crate, in which I keep my linen table cover and various informational signs and promotional items for my book sales. I’d just loaded it in the back of the cargo area.

So after I got home I offloaded the crate and tried driving around some more. No noise. Great was my relief.

Because I’m going out of town this weekend. A long Viking trip – not as long as the Minot drive used to be, but a good 5 hours, probably closer to 6 when you figure in lunch and comfort stops.

The event is the Tivoli Fest in Elk Horn, Iowa. If you’re in the neighborhood of southwest Iowa, you might check it out.

Elk Horn is a tiny town, only 600 or so residents. But it boasts two museums of Danish heritage – the Museum of Danish America and the Danish Windmill Museum.

It’s been many, many years since my group has gone to Tivoli, due to circumstances best left to history. Enough to say at this point that our invitation to participate has been renewed, and we’re happy to be going. It was always a great event. I recall especially the Saturday night fireworks, which apparently are still on the program. Elk Horn punches way above its weight when it comes to fireworks. I’ve seen far less impressive displays in far bigger communities.

And, of course, I will have books to sell. Looking forward to it. Pray for me, if you think of it, that my car will hold up and my sales may prosper greatly. Like a great… Dane.