Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews of books or films, especially those that relate to language or literature in some way.

Death of a Celebrity – Review

M. C. Beaton. Death of a Celebrity. Warner, 2002.

We have enjoyed the various Hamish Macbeth mysteries we have read and reviewed, and it has been a while since we have read one. Death of a Celebrity reached a point where I had to read past my bedtime to find out what was happening.

From the title, the reader can guess immediately who the victim will be. A beautiful emcee of a Highlands-based television program has made some enemies. Like some talk show hosts, Crystal French deliberately observes and interviews Highlanders to put a negative spin on them. She gets lots of hate mail, but her ratings are climbing throughout the U.K.

She is doing piece on the allegedly amateurish police work in the Highlands and is on her way to interview Hamish in Lochdubh when she is murdered. There are multiple suspects. Yes, folks who wrote nasty letters and phoned in threats are among them, but those things happen to all celebrities. There are people closer to her that deserve more investigation.

What about all those people she interviewed and made to look like idiots on television? And then there are people at the television station. What about Felicity, the woman whose show was replaced by Crystal’s? We learn that Crystal slept around to get herself promotions. What about one of her paramours—or one of their wives? She seemed to rub everyone the wrong way.

Some of the usual supporting cast is here. The alcoholic sergeant Jimmy Anderson shows up as does Inspector Daviot. It turns out Daviot and one of the television executives belong to the same fraternal lodge, which puts pressure on Hamish. Hamish’s true nemesis, Blair, is out of town in this one, replaced by one Carson from Inverness. Carson goes by the book—he insists Hamish call him “sir,” for example—but he is much more tolerant of Hamish and willing to consider his ideas.

As always, Hamish is trying to balance doing a good job but avoiding promotion so he does not have to leave Lochdubh. This is an earlier novel than some we have read, late enough so his dog is Lugs rather than Towser, but he has no cat yet.

Also this is the book that introduces us to Elspeth, one of Hamish’s two ongoing love interests. Hamish learns that is ex-fiancée, Priscilla, is engaged, and he has decided to have nothing more to do with women. Elspeth arrives in Lochdubh as a reporter who does the regular horoscope column. Other books remind us that her mother came from the gypsies. Hamish suspects some of the horoscopes are geared consciously towards certain people. For example, one the day she is murdered, Crystal’s horoscope warns her to stay home.

Elspeth helps with the investigation, and she and Hamish develop a mutual attraction. Alas, in typical Hamish fashion, there is enough mutual misunderstanding to make the relationship rocky. Hamish at one point sounds like a “Teenager in Love”:

Women, thought Hamish. I cannae figure them out at all. You want them, they don’t want you, you don’t want them, they want you. (191)

As always, this is a source of humor as well as some frustration.

The plot itself becomes a real page turner as more and more facts are learned. It seems as though the evidence is pointing pretty clearly to one suspect when that suspect gets murdered, too. And that murder sounds like a setup, perhaps associated with organized crime.

Without going into too much detail, neither murder mentioned here is the last of the body count…

There are no real dead ends or red herrings, just many complications that keep Hamish looking and keep readers reading. There will be a few surprises and humorous interludes on the way, but we know that Hamish will never transfer out of Lochdubh in spite of his ability to solve crimes. If nothing else, he knows his people. And M. C. Beaton knows Hamish.

The Divine Romance – Review

Gene Edwards. The Divine Romance. Tyndale, 1992.

I had heard good things about The Divine Romance, so I picked it up last summer at a book store and finally got around to reading it. I was not disappointed. This book is lovely.

Its theme is very simple. The Bible calls the body of believers the Bride of Christ. This book narrates the “romance” of God the suitor from eternity past to eternity future in the form of a novel. Edwards does a good job of presenting the idea as a mystery—as something not really understood well but gradually revealed. It begins with a quotation from Paradise Lost, and there were scenes in it, especially those in the Garden of Eden, which echoed that epic.

While not quoted per se, the concept is clearly based on a few verses from the New Testament. When discussing Jesus’ ministry, John the Baptist refers to Jesus as the bridegroom:

The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. (John 3:29)

Paul picks up on this when he writes about marriage in Ephesians 5:28-32:

He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

He uses the word mystery and compares the “oneness” of a husband and wife with the relationship between Christ and His followers.

Then, the Book of Revelation, which is mostly prophecy about the future, describes the followers of Jesus as the Bride getting ready to be married to the Lord.

“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready…” (Revelation 19:6-7)

The very end of the Bible, which is an invitation to follow Jesus, has these words:

The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” (Revelation 22:17)

Edwards does a magnificent and moving job of sharing the mystery with his readers.

Without going into too much detail, Edwards begins with creation, specifically the creation of the angels. Then as the Lord created the earth and all its creatures, we note that all the visible creatures had a mate except man. After all, God created man in His image, and He had no mate.

The creation of woman is described beautifully. Again, one cannot help thinking of Paradise Lost as we see Eve being formed from a rib of the man. Now man had a mate. The angels speculate. Adam had a partner inside him. Does God have someone inside Himself?

“I suppose if there is someone now hidden in God, then it might follow that one day God shall be hidden in that someone.” (50, emphasis in original)

Incarnation? Does God have a bride?

When God becomes incarnate in Jesus, we see a few episodes that suggest brides or partners. So at the miracle of the wedding at Cana, we are reminded that it appeared the best wine was saved for last (John 2:10). But Edwards suggests something more. Perhaps God will be saving His best for last. If the prophets would envy the apostles who got to see Jesus (cf. Luke 10:24), will those living through the end times be even more enviable?

When Jesus forgives the prostitute who washes His feet at Simon the Leper’s house, Jesus says “Go, and sin no more” (cf. Luke 7:48-50). Edwards has her say: “I am cleansed…and I shall sin no more. But I shall never…never…go away.” (124)

There is so much more. We are reminded from time to time not only of what Jesus did, but that a love relationship like a marriage relationship grows. “She is learning to love me,” says Jesus (230) the way we have to learn to love our spouses as the marriage matures.

We get a sense of the spiritual battles Jesus fought—when He cast out demons, yes, but especially on the cross. But why the battle? For His bride. There is perhaps even a greater mystery than the incarnation: not God hidden in man, but man hidden in God:

“And now, at long last, I will reveal to you—from ages unknown—the Mystery hidden in God.” (185 emphasis and capitals in original)

This is a profound mystery. Read Colossians where it is written:

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3)

We humans usually see this meaning something like God is our hiding place, where we can run to protection. But Edwards is suggesting something more profound: that to God we are like Adam’s rib, hidden in Him and a part of Him in some profound way like the way a husband and wife are one.

The Divine Romance is exquisitely written with lines of poetry interspersed from time to time. Even much of the prose is poetic. It deeply demonstrates God’s eternal plan for man from His perspective. Read it and be moved. Read it and be very blessed.

An Encyclopedia of Tolkien – Review

David Day. An Encyclopedia of Tolkien. Canterbury Classics, 2019.

Yes, An Encyclopedia of Tolkien is a reference book. But unlike most reference works, this is a book your reviewer read from cover to cover (well, not the endnotes or index). It is truly a literary approach to the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Anyone interested in the inspiration and main themes of his work, this is your book.

The entries are about evenly divided between items that appear in Tolkien’s legendarium and items that inspired or influenced his work. For example, we read about Galadriel, Middle-Earth, and Aulë. We also encounter entries about White Ladies from Welsh mythologies, Midgard (Middangeard) from Norse and Anglo-Saxon legends, and the trio of Hephaestus, Vulcan, and Wayland legendary smiths from Greek, Roman, and Norse myth—the characters and places from older works that inspired the elf queen, the land, and the skilled smith from the Tolkien tales.

This is not a dictionary or glossary. The appendices that appear in the Christopher Tolkien edited works such as The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales contain those. The entries here may describe the character, place, or theme from Tolkien’s work but the focus is on the literary connection and significance.

In other words, if you want to find out what Galadriel did or who she is, you will have read the applicable works. In her case, she appears in The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion (“The Rings of Power”), and Unfinished Tales. What An Encyclopedia of Tolkien tells us is that she is an immortal elf queen, daughter of Finarfin and ruler of Lothlórien. Its appendix lists the works of Tolkien where she can be found. It also names works that Tolkien read that may have inspired her creation.

Throughout the book we are reminded that Tolkien was a Medieval scholar. He was familiar with both the tales and the history of Europe during that time period. So, yes, there are entries about the Ring Cycle, King Arthur stories, and the Kalevala. There are entries about the Holy Roman Empire and the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields of A.D. 451.

That battle in what today is northeastern France put an end to the expansion of the empire of Attila the Hun. The empire would fall apart altogether a few years later after Attila’s death. The victory was caused by an alliance of traditional enemies, the Romans and the Visigoths, who understood that the Huns were a threat to both of them. Tolkien based his battle of Celbrant described in The Two Towers on this historical event.

A recurring theme is that Tolkien sought to improve or make more interesting some of the Medieval tales (or tales set in Medieval times). For example, he thought the prophecy in Macbeth about Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane Castle was sketchy. After all, it was not the woods itself that moved, but simply cut branches used for camouflage. What if there were really actual trees that moved? That is where the Ents come in. By the way, The Encyclopedia of Tolkien does share derivations of many words Tolkien invented. Ent in Anglo-Saxon means “giant.”

Jewel and ring legends were popular throughout Medieval Europe. Tolkien clearly was inspired by the rings of the Volsungaga and Niebelungenlied as well as the Sampo of the Kalevala and even the Holy Grail of the Arthurian tales. Tolkien, according to Day, made his versions more chaste for the most part. He wanted to concentrate on the story, no the sensationalism.

The Appendices have some interesting additions. There are charts listing the ancient Valar of Middle Earth and comparing them with the gods and heroes of the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths. There is a outline of the history of Middle Earth which Day tells us covers 37,000 years. There are descriptions of key battles, some genealogies, and few miscellaneous timelines.

Particularly interesting and helpful to readers and researchers are summaries of the three Norse ring legends: the Volsungsaga, the Niebelungenlied, and Wagner’s Ring Cycle. A fourth essay probably reflects the editor’s own experience in becoming a Tolkien student. It details how The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings became adopted by the hippie counterculture of the sixties. My one reaction to that—there were also many non-hippies and non-peaceniks from that era who enjoyed Tolkien, too.

While there is not exactly a glossary of Middle Earth, the appendix contains a list of people, places, and events with references of where to find them in the Tolkien oeuvre. For example, if we want to read about Galadriel, look in “S Quen, RofP, App; UT II 4; LR II 7,9; III 6, V 2, App. A.” In other words The Silmarillion (“Quenta Silmarillion,” “On the Rings of Power,” and the Appendix); Unfinished Tales Part 2 Section 4; The Lord of the Rings, Book 2 chapters 7 and 9, Book 3 chapter 6, Book 5 chapter 2, and Appendix A. There are many more names in the list than entries in the encyclopedia’s body. Day uses the abbreviations to save much space as many reference works do.

Clearly, there is much more. Use The Encyclopedia of Tolkien for research, literary studies, background, and references in the Tolkien legendarium. There is a lot to it.

Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge – Review

Spencer Quinn. Mrs. Plasky’s Revenge. Forge, 2023.

I recall reading about a performance of Hamlet done for students in the upper elementary grades. True, some of the philosophical musings and allusions went over the audience’s heads. But they applauded vigorously when Hamlet stabbed King Claudius. We all understand revenge. It is sweet.

Well, Mrs. Plasky’s Revenge is hardly Hamlet or The Sons of Katie Elder. Imagine a version of Ocean’s Eleven written by Alexander McCall Smith. Quinn is known here for his mysteries narrated by pets, notably Chet the Dog in the Chet and Bernie mysteries. Mrs. Plasky’s Revenge is not like that.

There is some humor, but not like Chet. Romanian teen Dinu is trying to learn American English from an English tutor whose brother has emigrated to America. His tutor speaks:

“My point,” he went on, “is that no American says ‘it is I.’ They say ‘it’s me.’ The grammar is wrong but that’s how they say it. You must learn the right wrong grammar. That the secret of sounding American.”

“How will I learn?”

“There are ways. For one you could go to YouTube and type in ‘Country Music.’” (2)

There are little things like that interspersed in what is otherwise a serious story. Later in the story, for example, Dinu mentions a coal miner’s daughter. He has been listening to Country Music!

If you have ever seen the old television show Columbo, you might get a sense of how this tale unfolds. Viewers saw the crime being committed in the opening scene. We knew right from the beginning who committed the crime. It is no mystery to the audience. The enjoyment is watching Detective Columbo trap the criminals. So here, we know whodunit from the first page.

In Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge, however, the word trap might be too strong. Discover or even stumbles upon work better. She is a naïve who get ripped off by a common scheme. A retired widow, she gets a phone call from someone claiming to be her grandson Will. Will has been arrested and needs bail money. She falls for the story and sends money to a “Safemo” account.

The next day she learns that both her bank account and her investment account have been cleaned out to the tune of 3.8 million dollars. (She and her late husband had successfully sold an invention of theirs—the toaster knife, a knife that slices bread and toasts it at the same time.)

Her banker and broker get the authorities involved right away. While the FBI agent understands what has happened and maybe has an idea of where the crime originated, there is little they can do because of the politics and diplomatic matters with Russia and Eastern European countries.

After doing some downloads from her cell phone, the authorities determine that it is likely the call came from Romania. The second half of the book, then, takes Mrs. Plasky to Romania. She does get her revenge—not in the way Hamlet or Mrs. Elder’s sons get theirs, but she manages to muddle through to a somewhat satisfying conclusion.

The reason I earlier stated that the tone is somewhat like Alexander McCall Smith’s is that it is lighthearted, humorous in places, and even the bad guys are really not that bad. We also get a somewhat sympathetic view of Romania and post-Communist Eastern Europe in general. Do not expect anything like another Chet and Bernie or even Archie and Queenie. Mrs. Plansky learns two Romanian words: frigorific and noroc. Frigorific means “cold.” She is there in the winter. Noroc means “luck.” That is the essence of the tale.

The Pickwick Papers – Review

Charles Dickens. The Pickwick Papers. 1836-1837; Amazon, 2012.

The Pickwick Papers was Charles Dickens’ first novel, if you want to call it a novel. If this were the only novel he wrote, it would probably still be remembered. It certainly does not have the force of some of his later work, but it has a cast of appealing characters and some tight fixes. However, do not expect a plot to run through the whole book.

Dickens wrote The Pickwick Papers as a series for a magazine with each episode of two or three chapters coming out every month for over a year. Most of the same characters, notably Mr. Samuel Pickwick, appear throughout and have an array of interesting and usually humorous experiences as they travel around the English countryside. It would be comparable to a television situation comedy in which most episodes stand by themselves, though there are some plot threads that run through several episodes. And like many such comedies, the writers will throw in a few serious episodes as well.

The reason that it would still be remembered today even if it were Dickens’ only work is that it sketches everyday life of Englishmen during the time it was written. Mr. Pickwick is a retired middle class and middle aged businessman who gathers a few mostly younger men around him to enjoy life. They travel from place to place through Kent, north to Birmingham west to Bath, and to various places in the vicinity of London. Usually they stay in inns or taverns. I was reminded of a line from A Tale of Two Cities: “Those were drinking days.”

We meet various people in these different places from paupers to nobles. Mr. Pickwick seems mostly to be a good judge of character, but even that virtue can get him into scrapes. Dickens clearly was drawing somewhat on his experience as a court reporter as well as his father’s experience with debtors’ prison. Most of the lawyers in the story do not come across especially well.

One lawyer explains that in a court of law, especially with juries, “much depends upon effect.” (6449) We think of various trials in Dickens’ later work such as the trials of Magwich and Compeyson in Great Expectations or the various trials in A Tale of Two Cities, among other works of Dickens.

One episode seems especially noteworthy in today’s political climate. They visit a town where two men are standing for election to parliament. The two newspapers in town take opposing views—not just on the candidates but on everything. The two parties, called the Blue and the Buff, both claim the other is far too extreme and stand for the end of civilization as we know it. A Blue politician refers to his opponents as “ultra Buff.” (10811) In other words, things have not changed much.

Besides politicians and lawyers, there are people from a variety of other occupations. The stingy beadle in The Pickwick Papers, for example, may remind some readers of Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist.

While much of the tale propels Pickwick and his buddies forward, there are also chapters where people tell stories, some allegedly true, others clearly more parabolic. While the whole novel is sometimes called picaresque because it is a tale about travels from place to place, the inserted stories suggest part of The Pickwick Papers could be called a frame story. Indeed, one chapter is titled “The Stroller’s Tale,” a nod to The Canterbury Tales.

One character in one of the tales is guilt-wracked and imagines insects and all kinds of tortures upon himself. We are told “he struggled madly for life.” (654) I recall in college being told that Dickens would influence Dostoyevsky. While the Russian’s works are much more serious than The Pickwick Papers, reading episodes like this tells us not only that Dickens understood people, but we can see the influence of such novelistic psychology in most of the works of Dostoyevsky. Think of Svidrigailov’s vision of hell as being full of spiders in Crime and Punishment.

There are at least two stories of evildoers repenting and changing their lives. While they might not be as well known as Ebenezer Scrooge, we can see that Dickens did hold out hope for the possibility of change. In one case the change comes about because Mr. Pickwick treats one of the criminals in a manner which he does not deserve but which surprises him and brings about a change of heart.

One character, who ultimately has no change of heart, sounds a lot like the pre-conversion Scrooge: “[H]e’s a malicious, bad-disposed, vorldly-minded, spiteful, windictive creetur, with a hard heart as there ain’t no soft’nin” (9205). Still two of Pickwick’s converts “became, in time, worthy members of society” (11949). (Like Joe Gargery, some of the characters here have Kentish accents.)

One sketch describes someone trying to explain the game of cricket. I had to laugh because I do not understand it, and neither did the listeners in the Dickens story. But many folks do not understand baseball or American football, either. I did note that even back then, cricket players from the West Indies were admired, though I suspect that the term Windies for them came later.

There are also a couple of ghost stories. One is a very wild one about a man’s uncle who is taken for a ride on a ghostly stagecoach and saves the life of a beautiful woman. I suspect this may have been some part of English or Scottish oral tradition that Dickens picked up on. Dickens’ most famous ghost story would come later—and it involves the change of heart of a wicked man, but he is taken on some ghostly rides as well.

There is at least one episode with a tender, moving—some would say exploitative—scene of a dying child, something Dickens would become known—or notorious—for.

There is also one scene that may have been inspired by an earlier novel. There is a somewhat wild card party. While the Pickwick Club often has parties to eat and drink, the card party was exceptional. It may have echoes of the card party in Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda, though scandalous in a different way.

Because the Pickwick Club spends a lot of time eating and drinking, we hear some likely exaggerated stories about food and drink. There is the story of a sausage maker that sounds a lot like it could have been based on the oral tradition of the Johnny Brubeck” song. Another man is described as “purveyor of cat’s meat to the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs.” (6894)

The Pickwick Papers also satirizes the medical profession. Going back at least to Chaucer, it seems as though physicians are not always portrayed well in literature, at least until the twentieth century. That may well be because a lot of medicine was hit or miss. One of the medical professionals was known as Nockemorf (“knock ‘em off”).

Another “scientist” is flattened in a humorous attempt of one of the Pickwick Club members to meet a sheltered young lady. The scientist would later ascribe this as a new discovery about the properties of lightning which “which caused him to be considered a light of science ever since” (8382). This reader was reminded of Mark Twain’s satires of science such as we find in Life on the Mississippi and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

While there is much good humor, we can see there is also quite a bit of seriousness as well. After all, we come across injustice, death, crime, con artists, and even false accusation and imprisonment. Still the drama ends happily, not unlike a Shakespeare comedy. After all, by the end of the approximately two year span of the novel three young couples have been married. Because it is a novel and not a play, they do not all get married at the same time as the couples in As You Like It or A Midsummer Night’s Dream do, but it is still fun, and we are happy for them.

If the reader accepts the serial format of The Pickwick Papers, there is a lot to enjoy from this tale. It might remind us that in spite of the hardships, even prison time, there is a lot to enjoy in life.

N.B.: References are Kindle locations, not page numbers.

Make Russia Great Again – Review

Christopher Buckley. Make Russia Great Again. Simon & Schuster, 2020.

The last book I read and reviewed was pretty intense, to say the least. I needed something a little lighter, something that might make me smile. I had heard that Christopher Buckley was funny, and this was a book of his that the library I was visiting owned.

As could be gathered from the title, Make Russia Great Again is a satire on the Trump administration. It is funny, and the satire is light enough that even fans of our former president would get a kick out of it.

While a few of the characters have their real names (Trump, Mike Pompeo), most are slightly disguised, though anyone who reads the news can figure out who they are, e.g., Vice President Pants.

Our narrator, Herb Nutterman, was a top manager at a Trump hotel whom the newly elected president has asked to serve as chief of staff. He has a view of nearly everything that is going on, even things that he wishes he did not know.

There are a number of recurring themes, Trump’s inclination towards “good-looking” people, his dependence on the Fox News commentator “Seamus Colonnity” for media support, his lack of filter, and the hostility of the mainstream media. All of these have the potential for humor, and Buckley makes the most of them.

The basic plot itself is silly enough, but perhaps believable. A Russian oligarch named Oleg Pishinsky is blackmailing President Trump. Pishinsky has numerous business ventures, but he is known for patenting the poison that has been used to assassinate journalists and former Russian officials that have run afoul of Putin. As a result Pishinsky is persona non grata in most countries.

Nutterman has to meet with him in the Vatican—one sovereign nation that does not belong to Interpol. To avoid attracting attention, the CIA has Nutterman, who is Jewish, dress as a Catholic Monsignor. What could go wrong? Especially as someone uses their meeting to attempt to kill Oleg. (Later a submarine will sink Oleg’s yacht in the Black Sea.)

I recall back in the sixties, Russian spies had tried to blackmail President Sukarno of Indonesia by filming him with prostitutes. It backfired. Sukarno, a Muslim, wanted them to show the films to his wives to show that he was still manly. Something similar happens with the plot to blackmail Trump.

There are a whole cast of characters, many of whom we recognize such as the former ambassador to the United Nations and governor of South Carolina, Trump’s son-in-law “Jored” who resembles a figure in a wax museum, and sleazy government bureaucrats of all persuasions.

The plot that inspired the title in part is because of Oleg but also because of a rogue Artificial Intelligence program sponsored by one of the seventeen American intelligence agencies. It is programmed to kick in automatically whenever an American election has been tampered with by foreign powers. It avenges America by tampering with the election of the meddling nation. So the opposition Communist Party in Russia defeats Putin in a landslide.

While America is no friend of Putin, it certainly does not want a return to Soviet Communism. As they say, politics makes strange bedfellows. In this case, the result is a political farce that, I suspect, people of all political persuasions outside of Russia will enjoy. I suspect even former president Trump might get a laugh out of it. He does not take himself that seriously, does he?

The Alone Time – Review

Elle Marr. The Alone Time. Thomas & Mercer, 2024.

We experience terrible things, and in hindsight, our paths seem to drive us toward our individual narrow valleys where we either push through to reach the open air of the other side, or we become stuck forever pressed at all angles by our faults and sheer bad luck. (1722)

The Alone Time is not about what the reader might think it means. It is not about someone demanding his or her “space.” It is about a time when the protagonists and narrators of the novel were alone, apart from the rest of the world. The four members of the Seng family, father Henry, mother Janet, and daughters Fiona and Violet, were flying together in a small plane when it crashed in the wilderness of Washington State.

For much of the tale, the reader is led to believe the crash happened in Oregon, but we learn that the location was actually in the Olympic National Park. I mention that detail only to illustrate how readers learn details in the story—very gradually and not in a linear manner.

The novel unfolds the way many contemporary works of fiction do. Chapters are narrated by different characters, in this case the four members of the Seng family. Most are told by the two sisters, now adults of thirty-eight and thirty-two. The elder of the two, Fiona, is a sculptor who appears to be on the threshold of success in the art world. Violet, the younger, has led a somewhat aimless existence, currently enrolled in college for the third time. Even so, she is mulling the pros and cons of dropping out again.

The parents were both lost in or shortly after the crash. The chapters from their point of view are flashbacks from twenty-five years before leading up to the crash and some of the drama that happened after the crash in the remote forest. The two girls were rescued after twelve weeks; somehow they survived. At the ages of thirteen and seven, they became media darlings for a while and were raised by an aunt. Even twenty-five years later, some critics say that Fiona’s artwork would not have sold at all if it had not been for her well-known backstory. As it is, Fiona uses her sculpting as a way to heal and overcome her trauma.

Like the other Marr tale we have reviewed here, there is much intrafamily conflict. In this case it is more pedestrian than criminal. Henry has been unfaithful, appears to regret it, and wants to make it up to Janet by taking the family on vacation from Southern California to Canada. Thirteen-year-old Fiona figures out enough of what it going on. Violet would probably have been innocent of everything except that one time she answers a phone call for her father from a woman named Alicia.

This in itself has the potential for a lively story. But other things complicate the plot even more. Because Violet has been drifting and at times exploiting her sister’s concern for her, the two sisters have not had much to do with each other for the last six years. They are trying to reconnect, though both have some reservations.

Meanwhile, after twenty-five years, the woman who claims to have been Henry’s mistress comes forward. She is being interviewed on many television talk shows. The timing seems more than mere coincidence since Fiona is beginning to get serious attention in the art world and is having her first solo exhibit. The woman seems to be in it to get attention and make the sisters look bad, even suggesting that they were somehow responsible for their parents’ deaths. And her name is Geri, not Alicia.

Also there is the documentary filmmaker Daley. He at first seems genuinely interested in the sisters’ story and wants to tell their side of it. They trust him at first until they see him with Geri and begin to realize he is more interested in sensationalism than truth.

Of course, the whole time, the reader is wondering what is the truth anyhow?

Marr knows how to pace a story well. Along with the current art world and college drama of the two sisters, we get chapters telling the parents’ stories while trying to survive in the wilderness as winter is coming on. We know that Janet and Henry really do not completely trust each other, but they do want to survive and they need each other for that.

Both have some background which could help them survive. Each has relatives who know traditional Chinese medicine, so they know something of what wild herbs and plants are edible and what ones are not. Henry was a Marine who served in Iraq in Desert Shield (1990-1991). He admits to having PTSD as a result. However, we will also learn that he received a dishonorable discharge. Usually victims of PTSD get a medical discharge or an honorable discharge. There is clearly something else going on here. But he also knows how to hunt and forage. There is chance they can survive if they can overcome both their inner and interpersonal conflicts. There is also at least a suggestion through this idea that perhaps the sisters each in her own way are suffering from some kind of PTSD after their wilderness ordeal,

By the way, Henry keeps saying he needs to protect the girls from wolves. While wild wolves do roam in parts of the mountains of the American West, the last wolf spotted in the Olympics was in 1935. Also the trip was planned to end in Calgary, but where the plane crashes suggests Henry was headed towards British Columbia. What is going on here?

There is a lot going on. The plot takes the reader step by step to an intense climax. But even at the end, loose ends are still floating around—which is truly more realistic. Does anyone know what really happened? As in real life, no one knows all the details, but we can figure enough to move on and perhaps look forward to what the future may hand us.

N.B.: The reference in the quotation is a Kindle location, not a page number.

The Second World Wars – Review

Victor Davis Hanson. The Second World Wars. Basic, 2020.

That is right, the title pluralizes the conflict: The Second World Wars. The author spends little time on that idea, but points out that that there were two conflicts one in Europe and the Mediterranean basin and one in the Indo-Pacific. While the United States and Britain were involved in both places, there was virtually no overlap. The Soviet Union had a non-aggression pact with Japan as well as Germany, only the Japanese pact was not broken until the very end of the war when Stalin broke it.

Now that we have that out of the way, The Second World Wars is a modern classic. It is not a history of the war but an analysis of what happened. I would recommend it for any student of history, but perhaps more importantly, any political or military leader.

One recurring theme, one which we heard a lot about during the Vietnam War, is that there is a temptation to fight the last war. The American Civil War began with battlefield strategies from the Napoleonic wars, but with rifling, breech-loading, and other new technologies, the Civil War was much bloodier. In Vietnam, the American military was doing saturation bombing and napalm as if it were World War II instead of a guerrilla war.

In the case of World War II, the main strategy of Hitler was logical in the light of World War I. In that war, Russia surrendered to Germany, and France held out in trench lines for four years. Germany never made it much past the Rhine. On the other hand, the blitzkrieg in France in 1939 worked so well, Hitler thought the Soviet Union would be a pushover if France was so easily defeated this time. Indeed, if Hitler had been satisfied with what he gained in Poland, kept the nonaggression pact with Russia, and otherwise stayed out of war and tolerated Jews, he would have likely had a larger and prosperous Reich.

Something similar would have been likely with the Japanese, if they had not felt it necessary to get the United States involved. The Axis powers misunderstood their opponents in large part because of American isolationism, British appeasement, and Soviet collaboration. One interesting detail Hanson notes is that because of the Soviet-Japan nonaggression pact, Japan let many vessels originating in the United States carrying supplies to the Russian Far East to help the Soviet war effort. Although they were technically allies, Japan and Germany did little to help each other. In 1939, before the pact, Japan and the Soviet Union were fighting along the China-Russia border. The Japanese were not doing so well with them, so they were happy to leave Stalin and Zhukov alone.

When Japan launched its main Pacific attacks in late 1941, it had the largest and most modern Pacific fleet. But Japan also was thinking of its last war, the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. In that war, battleships were significant, and there were no such things as warplanes, let alone aircraft carriers. If Japan had devoted more resources to carriers and amphibious training, Hanson hypothesizes things might have been different—at the very least the war might have lasted into 1946.

This is a book for thinkers. Allied landings in North Africa were practices for the Normandy invasion. Yes, Stalin complained that England and America were not doing enough in the West while his army was fighting on the Eastern Front, but who was doing bombing runs over Germany and its industrial power? Who was fighting in Africa and Italy?

As with any war, there are many ironies. If we speak of imperial expansion, Stalin made out the best. He kept the Baltic states and Poland, which were obtained during the nonaggression period with Germany, but then the Red Army obtained much of the rest of Eastern Europe when the U.S.S.R. began fighting Germany. By joining the war against Japan at the end, it also benefited from China, Mongolia, and North Korea going Communist. Between war casualties and the brutal occupation by Axis armies, millions of Soviet and Chinese lives were lost, but more were lost at the hands of the national leaders Stalin and Mao through purges and government sanctioned famines.

One basic truth seems universal: Infantry still wins wars. However, the winning armies on the ground in World War II had very important support from the air and from the navies.

Morale is important but can be overrated or underestimated. The Germans and Japanese both benefited from poor enemy morale in some of their encounters, especially in France and Singapore. However, they also saw Britain as weak and America as decadent and thereby underestimated British resistance and American strength.

There are also some analyses of battle plans, especially as they relate to materiel. While Germany may have had the best tanks, the Soviet Union was able to make many more tanks, and American tanks were supported by both infantry and air. Also both countries had dependable supplies of fuel. The plan to take Sevastopol by Germany worked, but Germany did little with its success. It had trouble linking the Crimea with the rest of the Reich, so it never was able to use it as a foothold to get oil from the Caucasus.

While the atomic bomb truly brought an end to the war, the worst bombing of Japan was the saturation bombing of Tokyo on March 9-10, 1945, which remains the deadliest twenty-four hours in the history of warfare. Although kamikaze attacks could be deadly, only about ten percent succeeded. At the beginning of the war, Japan had the best trained pilots, but by 1943 America had superseded them in training, and many of the original Japanese pilots had been killed. By then Japan was having trouble getting oil, mostly because of Allied submarines, so their newer pilots had many fewer hours flight time. While portrayed as honorable, the kamikaze was really a measure of desperation.

Hanson has written extensively on other wars, especially the Peloponnesian War and the Punic Wars. He makes numerous comparisons, things we learn or could learn from them. When Athens attacked Sicily, there was an obvious problem of supply lines and overextending itself. Something similar happened when Germany attacked Russia.

The Second Punic War was a Roman victory, but Carthage sued for peace and remained relatively intact. During the Third Punic War, Rome decided to truly conquer Carthage, and that put an end to any threat from Carthage. There is an obvious parallel to the First and Second World Wars, especially with respect to Germany.

Hanson also mildly objects to the name of First World War. The First World War was a European war like many others. The only reason other parts of the world were involved had to do with empires. Britain, France, Germany, and Turkey all had imperial possessions in other places, so, yes, there was some fighting in Africa and Arabia, and there were soldiers from Down Under and India and North America, but until the United States entered the war, such worldwide participation was from European subjects. With World War II, however, all but about a dozen independent countries in the world got involved. And even some of the neutral countries leaned one way or the other.

There is much more. This review barely touches on the analysis. There is much we can learn. Before any country goes to war, it may be a good thing for at least some of its leaders or advisors to read The Second World Wars. It is about the historical actions of armies and politicians and (and this is paramount) the significance of their actions. As Santayana so famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

The Silmarillion – Review

J. R. R. Tolkien. The Silmarillion. Edited by Christopher Tolkien, Houghton, 1977.

When Peter Jackson began filming his famous Lord of the Rings trilogy, he told the actors, “This is not fantasy, this is history.” That no doubt helped his actors get into their parts, but it also says something about the whole Tolkien mythos, or as Tolkien fans say, the legendarium.

So The Silmarillion is not so much an adventure story or prose epic like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) as it is a history book—in this the case, the history of Middle Earth leading up to the time of The Hobbit and LOTR.

I purchased The Silmarillion many years ago but never completed it. Each chapter pretty much tells a single discrete story. There are many names to keep track of and not a whole lot holding it together as a single work. Indeed, it was not written as a novel but was assembled by Christopher Tolkien, John’s son, from notes and individual tales his father had written but never published.

I discovered recently, though, a different way to read this book. It took a long time. I started in September and just finished this week. A pair of hardcore Tolkien fans have put together a podcast series called the Prancing Pony Podcast. They have posted chapter by chapter commentaries on Tolkien’s works. So I would read a chapter and then listen to their discussion of that chapter. Most of the chapters in the book are quite short, but the podcasts usually last anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours. A few chapters have two or three podcasts devoted to them.

I found the Prancing Pony Podcasts very helpful. They made some of the drier mere history come alive and provided many connections with other works by Tolkien. The also made connections to works that influenced Tolkien or that he liked to read or study himself. Because of the length of each session, it takes over sixty hours to listen to the podcasts in order to cover the whole book. That time commitment may be an understandable deterrent, but for this reader it was worth it. It also explains why it took nearly three months to get through the book.

The book is divided into four parts. The first twenty pages or so is called the Ainulindalë which is about the original creation of Middle Earth. The vast bulk of the book is the Quenta Silmarillion, the tale of the Silmarils, 24 chapters and about 230 pages. This is followed by the Akallabêth, which is the story of the fall of the city of Númenor—an epochal disaster mentioned in LOTR. This runs about fifteen pages. Finally there is an overview of the Third Age, which includes the era that The Hobbit and LOTR take place in. This is about twenty pages.

The book covers millennia leading up to the Third Age, so there are hundreds of names of places and people and genealogies that compete with the Bible and royal families for their detail. Fortunately, the editor included a few genealogies, a dictionary of names that runs over forty pages, and a glossary of terms from the Middle Earth. While The Hobbit and LOTR might be compared to medieval Norse eddas or epics, The Silmarillion takes after a medieval chronicle like that of Froissart—maybe a little dry, maybe based a little on hearsay, likely condensed, but a source of what we do know about the time period it covers.

The rest of this review are thoughts or reactions to certain things within The Silmarillion. Some were inspired by questions raised in the Prancing Pony Podcast.

The Silmarils were three enchanted jewels crafted early in the history of Middle Earth. They emitted light from the original white trees and appeared to have some supernatural powers. Though different in character from the rings of power, elves and other creatures lusted after them. One of the Silmarils figures prominently in the story of Beren and Lúthien ( a brief version of their story is told in The Silmarillion). Wars are fought over them, but in the end (and this in not really a spoiler) one ends up in each of the three realms of the universe—the land, the sea, and the sky.

One of the other heroes towards the end of the story is Eärendil. His name in Tolkien’s elvish language means “lover of the sea.” However the name is originally found in Old English. The “First Christ Poem” (a.k.a. “Christ A”) speaks of Ēarendel, the morning star:

Ēala ēarendel, engla beorhtast,
ofer middangeard monnum sended…

Hail Ēarendel, angel brightest,
Over middle-earth, sent to men…(ll. 104-105)

The earliest reference we have in Tolkien’s notes (from 1914) to anything connected with Middle Earth is an observation he made on these lines. Middle Earth was the Old English term for the earth, the same as the Norse Midgard. Tolkien wrote “There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words, if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English.”

In the context of the “Christ A” poem, Ēarendel seems to refer to Christ Himself who calls Himself “the bright morning star” in Revelation 22:16. Tolkien clearly saw something else as well, as he apparently began to imagine his own Middle Earth.

The Prancing Pony Podcast does a pretty good job of making connections with the Bible in different stories, especially the rebellion of Morgoth (a.k.a. Melkor) as it parallels the fall of the devil. I might suggest to them that they check out Paradise Lost as well for it records both the fall of Satan and the fall of man. Some of the specifics in The Silmarillion seem to be inspired by Milton. Any professor of English like Tolkien a hundred years ago would have known that epic well. The Silmarillion has a lot to say about temptation, especially the temptation of pride.

Like the Bible story of the Fall, Tolkien tells us there was no death in Middle Earth until some of the “ancient ones,” the first elves and other creatures, rebelled. The podcasters seemed to have a little trouble when Tolkien called death a gift. After all, the Bible calls death “the last enemy” (I Corinthians 15:26). Now Tolkien was Catholic, but he did not go as far as Francis of Assisi who called death a brother. Still, we understand that after the Fall God caused things to die because it was better for everyone. If sinners lived forever on the earth, the evil would be truly unbearable because there would be no end to the sin. In that sense, it was a gift to us.

Tolkien also raises interesting question about fate and free will. The devils in hell in Paradise Lost discuss the potentially “vain” circular reasoning of this subject:

Others apart sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate—
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argued then,
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and apathy, and glory and shame:
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy!—
Yet, with a pleasing sorcery, could charm
Pain for a while or anguish, and excite
Fallacious hope, or arm th’ obdured breast
With stubborn patience as with triple steel. (2.557-565)

Unlike such discussions, Tolkien presents what amounts to four different life principles all working together in the story of life. First, Providence, what the Creator (named Eru or Ilúvatar in Middle Earth) creates for men (and elves, maiar, valar, and dwarves) to inhabit and to react to. Then, there is Fate, prophecies that show God’s final intent and purpose. Fate reacts to mankind and mankind reacts to fate. There is also Free Will. Man (and maiar and elves, etc.) can choose to follow God or not. God may provide things to challenge the will, but He does not override it.

A biblical example (one used in the podcast) is the Pharaoh in Exodus. The Lord tells Moses He will harden Pharaoh’s heart (cf. Exodus 7:3). It also says Pharaoh hardened his heart (cf. Exodus 8:32). Basically, the Lord’s plagues caused Pharaoh to harden his own heart (Exodus 4:21). God was no puppet master, but he knew Pharaoh’s heart. By the way, the podcast suggests that the name of Ar-Pharazôn, the last king of Númenor, echoes the word Pharaoh. Ar-Pharazôn also hardened his heart and ended up seduced by Sauron.

And finally, there is Chance, occurrences that happen but seem to be apart from any plan other than simple physical cause and effect. Of course, in Middle Earth, and in our world, some things may appear to be chance, but they are working out something else. In the legendarium, the classic case of chance is in The Hobbit when Bilbo finds the ring. It is truly a kind of random encounter, but the LOTR certainly makes us realize that it is very significant and full of purpose.

There is a lot to consider here. If any readers are curious about the background of Tolkien’s Middle Earth and the “history” before LOTR, then The Silmarillion is for you.

N.B. In the now-legacy program Spelling Slammer by English Plus, we noted that the traditional spelling of the plural of dwarf is dwarfs as in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” However, Tolkien spelled it dwarves. This has caught on, and it really makes sense in Middle Earth because the plural of elf, after all, is elves. Shouldn’t the plurals be parallel? (Not to mention that the plural of the one noun that rhymes with dwarf is wharves, also ending with -ves.) It also makes a helpful distinction between the third-person verb and the plural noun.

Who’s Killing the Old Mystery Writers? – Review

Jon Spoelstra. Who’s Killing the Old (and mostly lovable) Mystery Writers? Spoelstra, 2023.

Who’s Killing the Old Mystery Writers has some echoes of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (a.k.a. Ten Little Indians). In this case, however, we know who the host is, and some of the guests know each other. Samson Aitch, “a massive name in mystery writers…second only to James Patterson,” has invited a group of seven mystery writers to a retreat in rural Oregon to collaborate on a mystery novel together.

Most of them had worked together on another novel which had become a bestseller. Except for Aitch, it was the most money any of them ever made on a book they had written. All of them were looking forward to the chance to duplicate the success of the first one.

There was perhaps a slight catch. In their first novel, one of the characters dies of snakebites by when he drives a car full of poisonous snakes. One of the contributors ended up dying the same way. Once his death made the news, the book sold like hotcakes.

As you can guess from the title, something similar begins happening at the retreat. One of the writers is killed by a long-range rifle shot while teeing off in a golf game. Something like that also happened in the first book. By various other means not mentioned in that first novel, some of the other writers die. Everyone starts suspecting everyone else.

Charlie North, our narrator, writes, but he writes nonfiction. He is a retired columnist and journalist from Chicago who covered the crime beat. He and his friend Ben, a retired police detective, were invited as keynote speakers to share some of their experiences in writing about and solving real crimes. Of course, they end up looking into the murders at the retreat.

For people who enjoy mysteries, this one is fun. Each writer has a different specialty: one writes cozies, one writes hard-boiled, one writes thrillers, one specializes in murders in Maui, one writes steamy tales featuring lesbians. Each day one is assigned to work with Samson and his assistant, Ichabod Crane (yes, that is his legal name), on a chapter. The goal is to have a novel of 28 chapters written in 28 days. But as some of the writers get knocked off, the plans keep changing.

The supporting cast is very good, too. Aitch has a staff that helps him. Is that attractive woman in her twenties really just his proofreader? What about his bodyguard? Charlie enlists some help over the phone, a private investigator from California and a dark net researcher from Oregon. Both seem to have ways of finding information others miss.

Our narrator has a sense of humor and is able to detach himself somewhat—but not entirely—from the goings-on and the rivalries of the different writers. All of the writers are at least fifty years old. Samson Aitch is seventy-seven. So there are certain humorous nods to being seniors, e.g., “old guys have plenty of open spaces on our calendars except for all those doctor appointments.” (175)

There are nods to a number of mystery writers in this book, but James Patterson gets the most mentions. Nor surprisingly, Who’s Killing the Old Mystery Writers? suggests Patterson’s techniques. His narrators are often detached and even unreliable. While Charlie seems to be reliable, he might be covering up something. Like some of Patterson’ stories, not all the loose ends get tied up nicely.

One great feature of this book, which will give most readers pleasure, is its epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter. These are not mere quotations as we often see in books, but very funny jokes or sets of one-liners about old people. Here is one example (I am putting it in my own words to condense it):

A wealthy seventy-two-year-old widower arrives one evening at his country club with a gorgeous twenty-five-year-old blonde on his arm. When she exits briefly for the ladies’ room, one of the other men at the club says, “Your date is very attractive.”

He replies, “That’s not my date. That’s my wife.”

“How did you ever get a young woman like her to marry you?”

“Easy, I lied about my age.”

“What? Did you tell her you were fifty-two?”

“No, I told her I was ninety-two!”

Some are even funnier. A couple had us literally in stitches. Sure, read it for the mystery, but enjoy it for the jokes—or maybe vice-versa.

P.S. One interesting detail from the story: Mr. Aitch says he was in rural Vermont near the Canadian border in 1995, isolating himself to write, when the Grateful Dead came to town. Bob Dylan opened for them. It was their last tour and a month from their last concert. This really did happen. Apparently, it was quite an event!