Y’all come back now, hear?

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Linda

Once again, Bob Moyer and I have read the same book. I reviewed Margaret Maron’s latest for the Greensboro News & Record, and Bob is reviewing it for Briar Patch Books. I may have treated Maron’s book a tad more gently than Bob did, but we are in agreement that the new one is not among her best. In it, Maron takes her heroine, Judge Deborah Knott, from rural North Carolina to New York City, where she meets the heroine of Maron’s first mystery series, a police detective. The idea may have been to give new life to the earlier series. I suspect, however, that the legions of fans of Maron’s newer series will for the most part just be relieved when the good judge heads home to Colleton County.

By Robert Moyer

THREE-DAY TOWN. By Margaret Maron. Grand Central. 278 pages. $25.99

Margaret Maron has not only carved out a large niche in the soft-boiled mystery genre; she has also filled it with enthusiastic fans. They wait eagerly for the next episode like some people hanker for a tall glass of sweet tea.  Her heroine, Judge Deborah Knott, cheerily dispenses justice and dispels family dilemmas in “Colleton County,” North Cackalacky; she usually ends up in the middle of a murder investigation somewhere in the state as well (she’s a district judge).

In her latest adventure, Maron takes the judge to Manhattan, the Three-Day Town of the title, for two reasons: a honeymoon with her new hubby, and a first-time meeting with Detective Sigrid Harald, Maron’s heroine from her first series. Staying in a friend’s Upper West Side apartment, Judge Knott is to deliver a package to Sigrid from her grandmother, a grand doyenne back in Colleton County. In the package is a bronze statuette involving some suggestive positions her hubby suggests they try.  Before Judge Knott can hand it over, someone uses it to bash in the building superintendent’s brains.  A snowstorm hits at the same time, and the building, along with the city, pretty well shuts down.  Between schlepping out to shop for shoes and groceries, she can’t keep herself from meddling in the murder investigation. In the process she almost gets herself killed.

The apartment building is an interesting setting – there’s a lot hidden in all those closets.  Maron lets loose a lot of threads in her narrative, however, that don’t lead anywhere. Just to maintain her Tar Heel ties, Maron also gives the inestimable judge a minor “crime” to solve by phone back home.  Finally, the contrast with the no-nonsense Harald does not serve the judge, who refers to her hubby as a Prince Charming and actually says “Carpe Diem, y’all,” very well.  Sometimes that glass of Southern tea can be just a little too sweet.  Of course, that may just be to a lot of readers’ taste.  As for me, I’m looking for a bitter dose of the dark side from Walter Mosley’s next two books, which have just come.  To each his own, y’all.

 

Posted in Mysteries, Southern Fiction | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Doing one’s best in Botswana

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Linda

Aficionados of fine wine and food speak of cleansing the palate so that their tastes will be fresh and clear, enabling them to fully appreciate whatever it is they are going to experience next.

I find myself thinking of reading the latest novel in Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series as a cleansing of the mental and emotional palate. I read a lot of books, mostly fiction but some nonfiction, and many of them deal with sobering and sometimes depressing subject matter.

Reading a No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency book is refreshing. These improbable books, set in modern-day Botswana, are uplifting and life-affirming, without in any way being shallow or glib. They remind me that, yes, there are terrible forces and evil people in the world, but there also is much that is good. Once I’ve read the latest novel about Mma Ramotswe and company, I’m ready for whatever the literary world might throw at me.

By Linda C. Brinson

THE LIMPOPO ACADEMY OF PRIVATE DETECTION. By Alexander McCall Smith. Pantheon. 257 pages. $24.95.

Mma Precious Ramotswe is feeling the weight of her world on her shoulders. Things are not going right in several areas of her life.

Fanwell, the young apprentice at her husband’s garage, Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, is in trouble with the law, the victim of an unscrupulous friend. Mma’s husband, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, has tried to help, hiring a lawyer to represent Fanwell in court. But the lawyer, to whom he has already paid a significant amount of money, turns out to be incompetent.

Worse still, their good friend Mma Potokwane has been dismissed from her position as head of the orphan farm. Obviously, the man who maneuvered her dismissal must have some nefarious motives, but how can Mma Ramotswe figure out what is wrong and save her friend’s job? Complicating matters, Mma Potokwane seems to have lost her will to fight.

Mma’s assistant at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency – the only such agency in Botswana – is eager to help, even if she has never gotten along with Fanwell in the past. But Mma Grace Makutsi has worries of her own, as her new husband begins to suspect that the builder of their dream home isn’t completely on the up and up.

When Mma Ramotswe is honest with herself, which she usually is, she realizes that even this list of problems is insignificant when weighed against the woes of people who have no home or those who are suffering from the terrible disease that is causing so much heartache and death in Africa. But these are nonetheless problems that need to be addressed.

Fortunately, help is at hand. Clovis Andersen, the American who wrote the book on private detecting on which she has based all her work, miraculously shows up at her doorstep. With his help, maybe solutions are possible.

Before the book’s end, the problems threatening the orderly, good life in Botswana are under control. The major remaining question is who has helped whom more, but that is a good kind of question.

Once again, Mma Ramotswe reminds us that though neither the world nor anyone in it is perfect, “what mattered most was doing your best and then, if your best turned out to be not very good, at least admitting it and trying a bit harder the next time.”

Of course, as the wise lady well knows, some people don’t try their best and are just not very good people. That is why there needs to be a No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency to make things right.

Reading this book will help make things right for you, at least for a time, and give you a respite from the weight of your world.

 

 

 

Posted in Mysteries | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The FBI: Too much, too little

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Linda

We know, more or less, about J. Edgar Hoover and his excesses, but there’s a lot more appalling information in the history of the FBI. Paul O’Connor reviews a new book that lays out many of the excesses and shortcomings.

By Paul T. O’Connor

ENEMIES: A History of the FBI. By Tim Weiner. Read by Stefan Rudnicki. Random House Audio. 15 CDs. 18½  hours. $45. Also available in hardback.

 How the United States avoided the post-World War I march to fascism has long been a matter of discussion. Were our democratic institutions so strong that they resisted these forces? Or was democracy so deeply ingrained in our national psyche?

After reading Enemies: A History of the FBI by Tim Weiner, a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner for his reporting on intelligence matters, I have my answer to that question: incompetence.

The FBI that Weiner describes employed many of the practices of a fascist secret police. Over its more than 100-year history, the FBI has regularly conducted illegal break-ins, warrantless searches, and illegal wiretaps and buggings. The bureau detained people and stashed them away outside of the courts system, and it disobeyed or ignored court orders and rulings. At times, its directors blatantly disobeyed orders from the U.S. attorney general and president.

At times armed by Congress with anti-sedition laws that would later be overturned by the courts, and at other times armed only by the disregard for law exhibited by its directors – mostly J. Edgar Hoover – the FBI still managed to botch thousands of cases. Our secret police of the 1920s and 1930s simply wasn’t good enough to lead us into fascism.

And, in later years, in cases of international terror or foreign spying and infiltration, the FBI expended as much of its efforts undermining the Central Intelligence Agency – which had a mutual distaste for the FBI – as it did on our enemies from abroad.

Over 18½ mesmerizing hours, Weiner paints a detailed and documented picture of a dysfunctional agency run first as a personal fiefdom by Hoover until his death in 1972 and in later years by other rogues and incompetents.

In Hoover’s case, as his power grew, the FBI became increasingly independent of U.S. law and its elected superiors. It’s a story well known by now, but it is also one that is stunning in its detail.

Hoover was obsessed with the so-called communist threat to the United States, and he chased communists wherever he imagined that they lurked. It is absolutely fascinating to hear of Hoover’s single-mindedness regarding the communists during World War II, a time when German provocateurs posed an imminent threat on our shores.

While the FBI certainly had its successes in crushing some enemy units within the country, the story of this book is that it failed in far too many cases, especially after the 1980s when Soviet (or Russian), Chinese and Cuban spies infiltrated the U.S. government and stole some of our most precious military secrets while also destroying our ability to penetrate their governments through our own espionage.

In some cases, the FBI’s failures stemmed from focusing on the wrong places – on Martin Luther King Jr., for example, as a suspected communist while real enemy operations went unnoticed. In other cases, such as the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the failures stemmed from simple negligence. In that case, the FBI held, unread for several years, a diary that contained information on plans to attack the towers.

In the FBI’s most famous failing, it missed key clues indicating that Islamic terrorists planned to attack the WTC a second time. That FBI failure was not alone, however, in costing American lives. It was simply the greatest example of the bureau’s incompetence as laid out by Weiner.

Although Stefan Rudnicki does an excellent job of narrating Enemies, I wish I had read the book rather than listened. There is so much detail that one wants to underline and dog-ear pages and to take notes. That’s so much easier to do with a book than a CD.

  • Paul T. O’Connor, contributing editor, is a university lecturer who is available for freelance writing assignments. Contact him at ocolumn@gmail.com.

 

 

Posted in American History, Contemporary Nonfiction | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Looking at the face of evil

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Linda

By Paul O’Connor.

IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS: LOVE, TERROR, AND AN AMERICAN FAMILY IN HITLER’S BERLIN. By Erik Larson. Crown Publishers. 363 ages. $26, hardcover. Also available in paperback.

In his narrative histories, Erik Larson has written about a mass murderer in Chicago and a hurricane that destroyed Galveston, Texas, and he says he has always been able to maintain an emotional separation from his research material.

But while preparing to write In the Garden of Beasts, Larson admits, he could not maintain that separation. He grew so depressed that his material repulsed him to the point where he regularly turned one of his key reference books upside down on his desk so he would not see the face of evil on its dust jacket.

It’s no wonder.

That evil was Adolf Hitler, and this latest Larson book is about the year during which the Fuhrer cemented his power in Berlin and led the world into the monstrous catastrophe of World War II.

Larson tells this story through the family of the new American ambassador to Nazi Germany, William E. Dodd, who arrived in Berlin in mid-1933, along with his wife and adult children, a son and daughter.

While the Dodds would stay in Berlin for several years, this book covers only the first year, the time during which the ambassador and his daughter, Martha, grew to recognize the insanity and criminality of Germany’s leaders.

The story has its salacious side. Martha was very much a liberated woman, a practitioner of free love well before Woodstock. She initially saw the German government favorably, and she conducted an affair with the head of the Gestapo for a number of months. There were many other men, as well.

The ambassador, a political appointee with no diplomatic experience but a top American historian who had made his name as Woodrow Wilson’s biographer, is not so naïve as his daughter. But Dodd also fails to see, at first, that the warnings of Nazi terror being reported by his career diplomatic assistants are indeed valid.

Over time, all of the Dodds come to see the evil, and the book culminates in what has become known as The Night of the Long Knives, the weekend in June 1934 when Hitler and his henchmen consolidated their power, murdering probably thousands of real or imagined challengers both within the Nazi movement and without.

In this book, readers can expect the same kind of meticulous research evident in other Larson works. He can write his histories like works of fiction because he collects a wealth of original source material. He combs diaries, letters, interviews and memoirs to be able to reconstruct dialogue, physical descriptions and inner thoughts.

This form of history writing challenges us in a key way. Larson does not lay out for us, the way a conventional historian would, the key points he seeks to make, and then follow with evidence to support. Instead, like a novelist, he recounts events, and they lead to the dramatic conclusion.

Americans are often puzzled by the rise of Nazi Germany. They ask how such a cultured, sophisticated and civilized people could have allowed their government to fall into the hands of such beasts and how they, themselves, could have then supported those animals so strongly.

Larson does not completely answer that question in this book, but he provides us with some insight into it. It’s another masterpiece from Larson.

  • Paul T. O’Connor, contributing editor, is a university lecturer who is available for freelance writing assignments. Contact him at ocolumn@gmail.com.

 

 

 

Posted in Contemporary Nonfiction, History | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

A quiet, thoughtful murder mystery

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Linda

Bob Moyer travels a lot physically, and when he’s staying home, he travels through reading. Here he travels through literature to Sweden and reviews a book by one of that country’s leading writers of mysteries.

By Robert Moyer

INSPECTOR AND SILENCE. By Hakan Nesser. Pantheon. 287 pages. $24.95

 Some things just don’t translate. Take, for instance, the Swedish names in Hakan Nesser’s latest mystery to make it into English – Maalvoot, Rooth, Munster, Kluuge, Malijsen, Sorbinowo and, of course, Van Veeteren, the chief inspector protagonist of this series. The book must be at least a page longer just from the names.

The Inspector himself doesn’t translate all that well; he has a taste for obscure art films, a dark beer before bed, and food far from the fare we usually find in a police procedural – pate, sole, and figs in cognac. Just a few weeks from vacation, and not that much further from retirement, the Inspector moves at, to say the least, a modest pace. He does have, however, one trait that ties him directly to the talented detectives we have come to know in the genre – intuition.  Reason’s elder sister, he calls it. He has it, he trusts it, and he uses it.

As he debates his departure from the force, a police chief in the provinces calls him to ask a favor. A girl may or may not have been murdered; an anonymous call claims so, but no body has turned up. That is, until shortly after the Inspector arrives on the scene. A young girl at a summer camp conducted by an unusual cult that celebrates nakedness and God is found dead near the camp. The cult members, all women, keep their silence and create obstacles for the Inspector and his comrades. As the body count increases, so does their complicity in protecting the cult leader, the most likely suspect.

No car chases, or frantic cell phone calls here in the country of landlines, faxes, and country lanes. The drama unfolds in the internal dialogue as the inspector teases out bits of information through his clever interrogation. He even takes a rowboat out on the lake (it’s the hottest summer in history) to think things over, and cancels an evening interview to have ”another hour with a cheese board” and the evening papers.

 

But he doesn’t stop. A glimmer of an idea in one spot leads him to a slightly more promising spot where a “tiny pulse” of emotion puts him on the trail of a “stupid” mistake that the whole case depended upon. As the bodies accumulate, so do the facts that lead him to the door of the killer.

They also lead him to a decision at the end of the case about his vacation and his retirement. He takes his time as usual; he reads the paper before he takes the next step in his life, on the last page of the book.

Posted in Mysteries | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Isaac Bell to the rescue

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Linda

Here’s another fine example of how listening to audio books to pass the time while driving has led me to a delightful discovery, a series of books I’d happily read in the print version, under other circumstances. But since this book was both well written and a perfect candidate for a dramatic reading, I thoroughly enjoyed the listening experience.

By Linda C. Brinson

THE THIEF. By Clive Cussler and Justin Scott. An Isaac Bell Adventure. Penguin Audio. Read by Scott Brick. 8 CDs. 10 hours. $39.95

I picked up this audio book by Clive Cussler from my stack of review books, assuming I’d be listening to an adventure story about finding and raising historic shipwrecks. My younger son, now a Navy ensign, loved Clive Cussler books when he was in middle and high school.  I was in need of some light entertainment and a change of pace from more serious books.

To my surprise, as Scott Brick began his excellent reading, I found that I was not following the adventures of Dirk Pitt, intrepid discoverer of wrecked ships, pilot and all-around adventurer. Instead, I was transported back to the early days of the 20th century, when the rest of the world nervously watched the German Empire rattle sabers and prepare for what would be World War I.

In fact, the action opens aboard the Mauretania, a luxury ocean liner that plied the Atlantic before the Titanic was launched. And our hero is Isaac Bell, another intrepid adventurer, who shares various traits with Pitt: He’s handsome, popular with the ladies, brave, daring, financially well set but hard-working, smart, resourceful … you get the picture. He’s also very much in love with a woman who’s a pioneer in the fledgling motion-picture industry.

Bell works for the Van Dorn Detective Agency, attempting all the while to maintain his cover as an insurance man. After he stumbles upon a crime in progress aboard the Mauretania, he takes on a case that might involve not only his honor and a promise to a dying man, but even the fate of Western civilization

This is a rip-roaring adventure tale, full of nefarious characters, international plots, crimes, disasters and near-disasters. It takes us across the ocean and then coast-to-coast in the United States. It’s particularly well suited to an audio version because Cussler makes it easy to know and follow the many characters. When listening to some mystery/thriller books, I sorely wish I had a cast list. Of course, I might wish that even if I were reading the print versions of those books, but it’s easier to flip back through a printed book than to go back to an unknown spot on an earlier CD.

What make this book especially entertaining are Cussler’s attention to historical detail and his careful creation of his early 20th-century setting. This is a fascinating time, when Europe and the United States were on the brink of the Great War that would change so much. This book deals extensively with the early motion-picture industry, particularly the efforts to figure out a way to make “talking” pictures. Cussler’s portrayal of Thomas Edison’s heavy-handed role in the burgeoning industry is especially interesting. Edison tried to enforce all the important patents, and employed an army of thugs to protect his monopoly. Bell must deal with them even as he’s dealing with a more sinister enemy.

This book is great fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Historical Fiction, Mysteries, Thriller/Suspense | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Have mercy on us!

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Linda

Anne Barnhill is an inspiration to me. She’s courageously battling some health problems, but manages to find time to read, review and write. Rather than complain or feel sorry for herself, she finds joy in life. She also takes whatever comes and mines it for material for new poems, books and insights.

Anne is the author of the historical novel At the Mercy of the Queen; a memoir At Home in the Land of Oz, about growing up with an autistic sister; and works of short stories and poems.

 By Anne Barnhill

 BOOK OF MERCY. By Sherry Roberts. Osmyrrah Publishing. 234 pages. $10 (paperback).

 In her second novel, Book of Mercy, Sherry Roberts explores the effects of dyslexia on an adult woman, Antigone Brown, or Tigg, as she is known around the small of Mercy, North Carolina, and how this woman, who has battled books all her life, decides to save the local library from Irene Crump.

 Ms. Crump has decided she knows which books the children of Mercy should read and which ones should be banned. To Kill A Mockingbird encourages disrespect for authority.  Huckleberry Finn has that bad, bad word. And those Judy Blume books talk about, well, everything we don’t want our children to do.

 As Tigg gears up for a fight, she discovers she is pregnant. Though Sam, her husband, is pleased and protective, Tigg is terrified her child will have the same problems with reading Tigg suffers.  She keeps her secret, with Sam’s help, so no one knows the struggle she has to read.

 The language is simple and the writing very clear in this novel:

 Most women don’t learn they’re pregnant and then drive for fifteen hours trying to outrun the idea. Antigone Brown did. Today the open road called to her like a siren.  It whispered: Today’s your birthday. You’re thirty years old.  And you’re going to have a baby.  What if she’s just like you?

 The fear that the baby will be just like her is what drives Tigg to, well, drive. Sam is beside himself with worry until finally, Tigg returns the next day, sweaty and tired but glad to be home.  What she doesn’t tell Sam right away is that she’s picked up a young hitchhiker, and he’s asleep in the guest room. Ryder is on his own at 13, his mother a druggie and his little sister dead from his mother’s habit. He’s filled with anger and doesn’t trust anyone. As Tigg tries to protect the idea of freedom of the press, she and Ryder become dear to each other.

  This is a light-hearted look at some serious issues. Those interested in censorship and the importance of story to our culture will enjoy reading it.

Posted in Southern Fiction | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Revelations about Revelation

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Linda

Two years ago, I listened to an audio version of the New Testament, courtesy of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Having been associated with Baptist churches nearly all my life, I had, of course, read and heard many passages over and over. It was, however, very interesting and informative to “read” the New Testament in order – first the Gospels telling about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and then Acts and the various epistles and other books dealing with the growth of the early church.

And then I got to Revelation and thought – wow. What is this?

Elaine Pagels’ new book, which I have just listened to in the audio version, sets out to answer that question.

By Linda Brinson

REVELATIONS: Visions, Prophecy, & Politics in the Book of Revelation. By Elaine Pagels. Random House Audio. Read by Lorna Raver. 5 compact discs. 6 ½ hours. $35. Also available in hardback from Viking. 246 pages including notes and index. $27.95.

“The book of Revelation is the strangest book in the Bible – and the most controversial. “ With that opening sentence, Elaine Pagels dives right into the controversy, not a bit afraid of stirring things up. Bravo for her. We can use a bit of stirring up.

I have no scholarly background for understanding the Bible. I did take an Old Testament (required) religion course as a freshman at Wake Forest University (college at the time) many years ago. Then, rather, than continuing with New Testament, I completed my religion requirement with an Ethics course, which was provocative and inspiring. If I had it to do over, I’d also study the New Testament.

Fortunately, Elaine Pagels writes on more than one level. Her academic credentials are impressive – she teaches religion at Princeton and has written several well-received books, including The Gnostic Gospels, which won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.  One or two scholarly reviewers have pointed out minor inaccuracies in the book, but all seem to agree that over all, this is solid work. For those who want to follow her lead and delve more deeply into the subject, Pagels provides extensive notes.

For those of us who simply want a better understanding of this strange book that concludes our Bible, Pagels’ slim book is easy to understand while providing ample material for further thought and discussion of the lay variety.

Revelation, of course, is the apocalyptic book at the end of the Bible that has provided material for all sorts of paintings, poems and other works of literature, music – and predictions of what is going to happen to people whose beliefs or actions are not the same as those of the people doing the predicting. There are dragons and beasts, cosmic battles, lakes of fire. Revelation gives us the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Whore of Babylon. This is a vision of the end time, Judgment Day, when the righteous will be saved and the unrighteous plunged into eternal agony. This is powerful literature.

Pagels makes a convincing case that Revelation was not written, as many of us grew up believing, by John the Apostle or the author of the Gospel of John. Rather, the author was John of Patmos. This John was a Jew who was a follower of Jesus some years after the Resurrection, when Christianity was spreading and becoming more organized. John had believed that Christ’s return was imminent. But Rome had crushed the rebellion, destroyed the Great Temple of Jerusalem and brutally clamped down on the Jews. John, an elderly man living on the island of Patmos, was writing in a context or war and repression, and his book should be read with that in mind. His writings drew on older Jewish texts – some, books we can read in the Old Testament – and used metaphor in part to avoid Roman retribution. He was, in a way, trying to offer hope by providing a vision of the day when God would wreak havoc on the pagan Roman empire that had so oppressed His people.

Pagels goes on to show how John’s powerful writing was almost immediately adopted by others who used it for their own purposes, in their own fights against those they considered enemies or heretics. Her book provides insight into the early years of Christianity and the struggles over whose vision of the church would prevail. She reminds us that John, like many of the early Christians, still thought of himself first as a Jew.  If you read all of the New Testament, not just the parts that preachers and others find inspirational or instructive, you come across passages arguing endlessly about whether Christians must be circumcised and refrain from eating certain foods. These debates are a part of what Pagels is describing: the conflict between early Christians who wanted to welcome non-Jews, even society’s cast-offs, into their new faith, and those who insisted that Christians must first become good Jews.

Brilliantly, in remarkably few pages, Pagels shows us how, as the early church grew, some Christians declared that Jews themselves were infidels who wouldn’t make the cut on Judgment Day. And as the Roman Empire became Christian, Rome was no longer the Beast. It wasn’t just that Rome became Christianized, she writes; Christianity also became romanized, with the Roman church organized like the Army, with layers of officials and strict discipline. Before long, those Christians who resisted the Roman way became infidels and the Beast, headed for fiery damnation. And so it went, and so it continues to go, until today we have fundamentalist Christians who use Revelation’s imagery to blast those Christians they consider too liberal.

Pagels also reminds us, if we even realized it in the first place, that God did not deliver the Bible to us as a finished book. She writes about the years when early Christians were battling over what writings should be included in the Christian canon. Her explanation of why our Bible includes John’s Revelation but omits many contemporary revelatory books – some with a much less violent outlook – is particularly thought-provoking.

Pagels talks fairly briefly about how Revelation has continued to be used to rouse emotions and demonize enemies into modern times. Both sides in the American Civil War used language and imagery from Revelation, and so did Hitler and those who opposed him. She shows us how profoundly John’s book, intended as a message of hope and inspiration for members of a persecuted minority, has been abused and perverted as a justification for hatred and violence time and again.

Pagels writes on two levels, so that scholars and the rest of us can benefit from reading her book. She also writes on two levels in another respect, for the benefit of those who want to consider Revelation only in an academic or historical way, and for the benefit of those who want to discern its real message of faith and hope.

I listened to the audio book because, knowing myself, I figured I’d never sit down to read the print version. As Lorna Raver read the book respectfully and without exaggeration, I was caught up in the story. I suspect that those with more scholarly knowledge than I might enjoy listening to the book to quickly get the gist of Pagels’ arguments, but then would want to get the print version and spend some time with her notes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Contemporary Nonfiction, Religion | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Kellerman: Double the pleasure

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Linda

Fresh from his triumph at the opening in Winston-Salem of the delightful show from his art collection, “Howard Sam and Bob – A Life With Relics,” Bob Moyer has written a pair of reviews of works by one of his (many) favorite authors. He takes a look at the new print novel out from Johnathan Kellerman, as well as a graphic novel adaptation of one of Kellerman’s early books. In the process, he seems to draw some sort of comparison between his reaction to the graphic novel and my fondness for audio books. I don’t completely follow his train of thought, and I suspect he’s poking fun at me me, but I’ll let him get away with it. Since he’s Bob.

By Robert Moyer

VICTIMS. By Jonathan Kellerman. Ballantine Books. 338 pages. $28.

SILENT PARTNER: The Graphic Novel. By Jonathan Kellerman. Art by Michael Gaydos. Adapted by Ande Parks. Villard Press. 180 pages. $23.

 

 “This one was different.”

So begins the latest Alex Delaware adventure, which is, indeed, different. No Delaware girl friend subplot, no diversion with LAPD Lt. Milo Sturgis’ boyfriend, not even any lengthy meals at Milo’s favorite Indian restaurant. Just a murder so gruesome that Milo calls Dr. Alex Delaware in to view the murder scene, in order that he might plumb the depths of degradation the killer had brought about – an eviscerated corpse with internal body parts discreetly arranged around and on the body. Everyone, including Delaware, turns away upon seeing it.  So precise, so exacting – the killer knew what he was doing.

And then he does it again. And again.

Before Milo and Alex can get their usual handle on the crime, more murders occur. The two long-time collaborators can’t come up with any connection between a curmudgeonly matron, an innocuous accountant and a brusque doctor. Pressure from police headquarters builds quickly as the bodies pile up. In the usual formula, Milo stitches clues together with threads of supposition provided by Alex.  As usual, premises that show some promise unravel one after the other as the narrative progresses. Finally, Alex finds a thread that leads them through a thicket of improbabilities to a stunning revelation about the identity of the killer. Unlike the usual hidden resolution that Alex springs on us, or the slow revelation that Kellerman sometimes employs, this conclusion comes cascading down on the reader. It’s as breathtaking a ride as Kellerman has come up with in recent novels, and anyone suffering Kellerman fatigue will find it refreshing.

Or they can turn to the graphic (in all senses of the word) novel version of one of Kellerman’s early successes, Silent Partner. The story stood well on its own. It’s early in the collaboration between Milo and Alex, and the story winds its way through the sex, scandal and blood of Hollywood high life. An old girl friend approaches Alex for help at a party. He turns her down, and she turns up dead the next day. His guilt drives him to delve into the murder, which he doesn’t understand, and their past together, which he also doesn’t understand.  Volatile, at times unavailable, at other times totally consumed by him, she is an enigma wrapped inside a bloody psychodrama.

A graphic novel is actually more like a script than a book, with the adaptor turning narrative into dialogue, the artist trying to capture the mise en scene.  I found it a bit disappointing, unlike Linda Brinson’s reaction to audio books (she enjoys voices on tape because she says they sound better than the ones in her head). In this instance, the graphic Alex doesn’t have the gravitas that I picture, and Milo isn’t the crumpled rumple of a human that I fondly envision. However, the multiple scenarios that Milo and Alex employ “with the aplomb of a pair of anthropologists observing a colony of savage baboons” are well served by the frame-to-frame frenzy here. 

“Graphic” can happen in that expressionistic way that leaves so much to the imagination, a hand stroking a leg, splashes of ink suggesting blood in black and white.  As with any good production, timing is of the essence, and the story moves right along, not holding us too long with too much narrative at any point, nor making us grimace at the gore.  And it was a pleasure to catch up with an early novel that I hadn’t perused up to this point. Together with his latest, it was an enjoyable double dip of Kellerman.

Posted in Mysteries, Thriller/Suspense | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Mrs. Murphy: No. 20

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Linda

Rita Mae Brown and Sneaky Pie Brown have just graced us with the 20th anniversary Mrs. Murphy mystery.  Since cats don’t usually live as long as humans do, I find myself worrying about Sneaky Pie’s advancing age. If this latest book is any indication, though, the cat is still on her writing game.

And if Sneaky Pie does move on to Cat Heaven at some point, I have no doubt that Rita Mae Brown can find a new kitten for a writing partner. We are told that she rescued Sneaky Pie from her local SPCA in Virginia. Unfortunately, shelters always seem to have plenty of kittens looking for good homes.

A couple of years ago, Brown started a second series featuring pets that talk among themselves in a way that readers can follow but their (sometimes maddeningly dense) human owners cannot. That series is set in Nevada. With a son who’s a biologist in the Las Vegas area, I’m intrigued with the new series and its insights into water problems and other issues of the desert region

But like most longtime fans, my first love remains the Mrs. Murphy series, with its setting in a small town in the shadow of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains

By Linda C. Brinson

THE BIG CAT NAP. By Rita Mae Brown and Sneaky Pie Brown. Bantam. 224 pages. $26.

It takes creativity and a curiosity about life that befits a cat to keep a series fresh through 20 mysteries.  You’d think there would be only so many people to be murdered and so many ways to bump them off in and around the quiet village of Crozet, Va.

But Rita Mae Brown and her feline collaborator, Sneaky Pie Brown, are interested in many things that yield opportunities for dastardly deeds. This time out, their human heroine, Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen, puts her love for and knowledge about motors and vehicles to work.

There’s been a rash of odd vehicular mishaps, some relatively minor, others much more serious. Some things just don’t add up. And then Harry stumbles upon a dead mechanic at a popular local repair shop, his head bashed in. Of course, Harry starts asking questions and poking her nose into dark corners, despite the warnings of her human and animal friends. And of course, before things are settled, Harry’s curiosity will put her in danger. Longtime readers will be interested to find that there’s a new twist to the old plot standard that involves Harry’s beloved corgi Tucker and two cats, Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, rushing to her rescue.

Another way the Browns keep these books fresh is by letting Harry and her friends and associates have real lives rather than become more or less frozen in time and situations. Over the 20 books, we’ve seen Harry leave her job at the post office, remarry her ex-husband, fight breast cancer and help her small-town friends deal with changes in their lives. The folks in Crozet and its environs grow up, get married, change partners, have babies and confront new trends in society, as do people anywhere. They just find a lot more murders in the mix than do the residents of most small Southern foothills towns.

In case there are any readers out there who have not yet discovered this series but think they might want to give it a try, I always feel a need to explain that the Mrs. Murphy series are not like other mysteries. There is that matter of the talking animals – not just Harry’s pets, but also their associates, including wild animals such as the barn owl and the snake that likes to hang from a tree in the yard. These animals don’t nudge and bark or meow in efforts to warn their humans: They converse with one another in good English. We readers understand their conversations, but the book characters do not. This device can help propel the plot, and it also provides a good bit of amusement as the animals comment on the human world. If you’ve ever wondered what your pet would say if it could talk, you should enjoy these books.

Then too, Rita Mae Brown obviously has some strong opinions about society and government, and they find their way into her novels, sometimes through dialogue, sometimes a bit more baldly. At the end of this book, she includes an author’s note pointing out that she and Harry are not the same, although they both do live in central Virginia, where people still believe “That government is best which governs least.”

If talking animals and a bit of social or political commentary turns you off, be warned. If not, join the many happy fans of the Mrs. Murphy books in enjoyment of the 20th installment. At my house as at many others, new Mrs. Murphy books have become one of the most welcome signs of spring.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Mysteries, Southern Fiction | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment