Charles Dickens. Little Dorrit. 1857; Project Gutenberg/ Amazon, 2012.

I have taught a few Dickens novels over the years. Some I have taught most years for the last forty. I have from time to time read some of his other works, but it has been a while since I have read a different one. There was no particular reason why I chose this one other than the title made me a bit curious.

Little Dorrit reminded me of A Tale of Two Cities in its narrative approach. There are numerous characters. Each chapter seems to focus on a different character or group of related characters. It is not even clear at first how they are all related. Like A Tale of Two Cities, the different parties do all come together in some way as the story moves to its conclusion.

While portions are set in foreign countries—France, Switzerland, and Italy—most of it takes place in various places around London. While A Tale of Two Cities waxes philosophically about government and various economic systems, Little Dorrit has more satire and social commentary.

Perhaps the most pointed satire has to do with the Barnacle family, many of whom work for the British government at the Circumlocution Office. What a perfect name for a government agency! At one point one of the workers at the office explains why it is good for the country that the office does nothing at all. And even the family name, Barnacle, suggests parasites that weigh things down. 1984’s Ministry of Truth is simply a later iteration with perhaps a more nefarious intent.

There is also some interesting social satire. Without giving too much away, the Dorrit family has fallen on hard times, but they have an aristocratic background. When the social position is restored, we see family members responding differently. One does not change too much except that he refuses to acknowledge his recent poverty. One associates with the young gents who spend their time in idle pursuits. One calculates how she can really rise socially and become “someone” in society. One is uncomfortable with the change, and seems to look fondly back on the old days.

The story begins around 1856, so the people with money and power are less likely to be aristocrats and more likely to be successful in business. Of course, that success, if played right, may lead to a title. In the Western World today, there is an aristocracy, but it is one of money, whether old money like the Rockefellers or new money like Silicon Valley. So it is in Little Dorrit, that the person who is esteemed the most is the richest. He is considered a genius—until he isn’t any more.

Padding through all of these various characters and intrigues are Little Dorrit and Arthur Clennam. Amy Dorrit, who prefers to be called Little Dorrit, was born in the Marshalsea debtor’s prison. At the time the story begins, she is twenty-two and has lived there all her life. She cares for her father who is a prisoner there. She is free to leave, but she refuses so that she can take care of her father.

Little Amy Dorrit is almost too good to be true. She cares for her father and sympathizes with those who are down and out. She works hard. She has kind words to say about everyone. The reader cannot help but root for her. She exemplifies what it means to live a life of love and giving.

Arthur Clennam seems to be connected with everyone somehow. He has returned to England after twenty years in the orient working for his father’s company. He is still single. We learn later in the novel perhaps the real reason why he was sent abroad. His mother is still alive and running the family business in London, but she seems more like a stereotypical evil stepmother than anyone with maternal instincts. There is, as in Great Expectations, a certain Cinderella element to this story, but the outcome is very different. Still, as with Great Expectations, there is a theme of true nobility. What does it really mean to be noble, to be a true gentleman or a true lady?

And, as with many Dickens tales, there is a theme of justice vs. injustice. In this case, the whole system of jailing debtors seems unjust. How can Mr. Dorrit possibly pay off his debt if he is locked up in jail? He seems to be a natural leader in the prison, but there he remains. Indeed, Dickens suggests something which has been observed over and over in more modern times—people who have been institutionalized often seem to be unable to adjust to freedom when they are released from their institution. They are so used to the structure and having things done for them, they find it hard to survive on the outside.

As always with Dickens, we can learn from different characters. Some have been unjustly treated and have learned to forgive. One gets away with murder. Others remain bitter. Some change when they see the importance of standing for the truth. Others twist everything. One of the saddest characters is Miss Wade. She trusts no one. Even those who are trying to help her, she assumes they really don’t like her and are out to get her anyhow.

Because there are many characters and the chapters seem to hop from character to character, it might help the reader if there were some kind of cast list as they sometimes include with Russian novels. I found the list in Wikipedia fairly helpful. Unfortunately, it did contain one significant spoiler. Another way might be for the reader to make a list with some of the basics of each one. One could even argue whether or not Little Dorrit is the main character—no one would say such a thing, for example, about Oliver Twist or David Copperfield.

Little Dorrit has scope, as Shakespeare would say. It covers a lot, but at the same time, we are rooting for Amy Dorrit and hoping that things will work together for the good.

Robert Kurson. Pirate Hunters. Random, 2015.

Pirate Hunters contains an adventure within an adventure. We meet John Chatterton and John Mattera—along with a significant supporting cast—undersea salvors, or as we might say, treasure hunters. One of the original treasure hunters, corrects one of the Johns and says “treasure finders.” A lot of people hunt treasure, but who finds it?

Within their story is the story of the Golden Fleece, a British merchant vessel that became a pirate ship when its captain and crew decided to go on their own in 1684.

Chatterton and Mattera, though with varied backgrounds, became successful partners in locating and salvaging historical shipwrecks such as U-869, a German World War II submarine that was thought to be lost near Morocco but was discovered off the coast of New Jersey. Chatterton, an army medic in Vietnam, was one of the most agile and daring wreck divers, often swimming in tight spaces and waters deeper than most divers dare. Mattera, diver and former loan shark, was a meticulous researcher. They were thinking of searching an area in the Caribbean known for lost Spanish ships for a gold-laden galleon, when Chatterton got a phone call from Tracy Bowden.

Tracy Bowden was seventy at the time and one of the best known treasure finders. He had a proposal for them. He thought he knew where the Golden Fleece was. The Golden Fleece was a pirate ship captained by Joseph Bannister, at the time one of the more successful pirates. He had been a captain on British merchant vessels for many years, but for some reason around the age of forty, he decided to go rogue. He is the only known pirate leader to successfully thwart an attack of the Royal Navy by fighting back. While numerous vessels from the 17th and 18th centuries have been discovered, only one bona fide pirate ship from the so-called Golden Era of Piracy (1650-1720) had ever been discovered, the Whydah.

Kurson effectively narrates his story, leaving the reader in suspense. It is as if he were writing weekly episodes for a magazine serial, so one part will be on Chatterton up to a point, then on the men scouting the area in the Dominican Republic (DR), then some notes on undersea electronics, and then a little history of pirates in Port Royal, Jamaica. (English pirates like Bannister usually worked out of Port Royal).

There is a lot of tension, anyhow. The men are exploring a remote part of the DR where there a tendency to lawlessness. It is not merely a piece of background trivia that Mattera had been CEO of an international private security company: he knew how to handle a nighttime ambush on a country road and other attacks.

There is also a looming political deadline. UNESCO had established an international treaty that all shipwrecks belong to the nation in whose waters they are found. Independent salvors have no rights unless the government in the area wants to grant them. The DR has not signed the treaty yet, so treasure hunters are still able to claim salvage rights, but it looks like the DR will sign on shortly. If they make their discovery too late, all their expenses and work could end up being for nothing.

There are also other treasure hunters. Unfortunately, while there is a certain amount of mutual respect for successful treasure hunters, the business as a whole is fairly cutthroat. There are many claims and counter claims. Some hunters never get a dime from the work they have done because of specious legal wrangling. Also some are known to double cross people they have hired or partner with. Months into their search, they discover that at least two, possibly three, other outfits have begun searching the same general area. What if they find what Chatterton and Mattera have been looking for? What if they are heavily armed?

There are also personal problems. Each of the men involved have families and other affairs to be concerned about. Sometimes they have to leave for a week or two at a time to take care of business. Some wives are more understanding than others. Will they run out of time? Will they run out of options?

Ultimately, will they make their discovery?

Pirate Hunters gives great insight into the challenges of making historical undersea discoveries. It also gives us some additional insight into the lives and times of the Golden Age of Piracy, and why perhaps even a successful merchant sailor like Bannister might go rogue. It seems like each discovery uncovers another mystery.

N.B.: We have noted that different books we reviewed have given different dates for the Golden Age of Piracy. Kurson here dates it 1650-1720. The Pirates says 1690-1720. Pirates of the Treasure Coast says 1670-1720. Since piracy was illegal and “off the books,” different sources note different beginnings. All three give 1720 as the terminus, though at least one other source says 1725. By 1720 international treaties had been established, Spain and England had quit fighting, and the most notorious pirates were either dead or had just a few years to live. Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet died in 1718; Calico Jack, in 1720; Edward Vane, in 1721; Black Bart, in 1722.

Robert A. Heinlein. Starship Troopers. 1959; Ace, 1987.

The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony, sweat, and devotion…and the price demanded for the precious of all things in life is life itself—ultimate cost of perfect value. (74, ellipsis in original)

“You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.” (Mark 10:42-44)

In my younger years I was a fan of Robert A. Heinlein. I loved Glory Road. Stranger in a Strange Land is great literature. I even liked Time Enough for Love—some critics panned it, but it had scope and originality. His Job was a weird disappointment. Somewhere along the line I just forgot about him till I picked up a copy of Starship Troopers at a recent yard sale. What an enjoyable book! I had forgotten how great he could be and what an experience reading one of his novels is.

On one level Starship Troopers is an entertaining “space opera,” as they say. Our narrator, Johnnie Rico, has just graduated from high school and has decided to join the military, much to his father’s dismay. “We’ve outgrown wars. This planet is now peaceful and happy and we enjoy good enough relations with other planets,” his father tells him (23).

Except that soon Earth and its planet colonies would be threatened by a new and different alien life form that was apparently trying to colonize the same kind of places where people from earth were living. They are slightly larger than humans but their culture is organized like ants or bees—perhaps a precursor to the Borg of Star Trek. When they move to a place they want to take over, they simply flood the place with their “bugs.”

Humans learn quickly that is makes no difference how many of these worker bugs they kill. The workers do not fight, and in a war situation they are like cannon fodder. For every hundred or so workers there is one soldier bug. The humans learn to focus on fighting them. But even that is not enough. The bugs burrow underground, and the humans discover that there are at least two more types of these creatures. There are the “brains,” the ones who give the orders to the workers and warriors who follow them blindly. It is truly a hive mentality. Then there is the queen who breeds all these creatures at a profligate rate.

As is true with ants on earth, we rarely see anything but workers—soldier bugs if there is fighting. The brains and queens stay deep underground. A few human soldiers have tried to go into the underground labyrinths, but invariably get lost and captured.

Being futuristic science fiction, Johnnie also tells of the suits, like space suits only mobile, that those of the Mobile Infantry (MI) wear. We learn that the navy operates the space ships that transport the MIs to where they are needed. There is still inter-service rivalry in the future. We are told at one point that a group of admirals proposed eliminating the army altogether. With interstellar travel, it was obsolete. Clearly Johnnie’s father was naive about there being no more wars, the same is true with armies.

Back in 1977 a friend who had served in the National Guard had just seen the original Star Wars. His response was simply that all those guys in white spacesuits were the infantry. No matter where you go, or when, even to a galaxy long ago and far away, there will be the “grunts.”

This in itself would make for a decent story, but Heinlein puts much more thought into his stories. Most of the book is actually about the training that Johnnie and MIs in general go through. It is the distant future—we are not exactly told when but Heinlein’s century is called the XXth—which makes it sound like that it was a long time ago. Anyone who has been through basic training can identify with some of Johnnie’s experiences.

As is true even with current military training standards, it is understood that some recruits will fail to graduate. Unlike the American system today, however, some of those failures will be because of death. If they died in combat or following orders, they will be promoted posthumously. But one truth about basic training remains: “Boot camp was made as hard as possible and on purpose” (45, italics in original).

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the government of Earth—and it has been single government for a long time—is that only military veterans can vote. It is not because the culture has become a futuristic Sparta, but simply that only veterans have put the lives of others in their land ahead of their own. Johnnie’s History and Moral Philosophy teacher, Mr. Dubois, explains it, “…their citizenship is valuable to them because they paid a high price for it” (27). In the American culture there used to be the idea that people who worked for the government were public servants. It is still an ideal, but it seems that in the last few years even American bureaucrats want us to know they are our masters.

Mr. Dubois teaches Johnnie the opposite of what his father told him:

“Anyone who clings to the historically untrue—and thoroughly immoral—doctrine that ‘violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it…” (24)

Indeed, Starship Troopers reminded this reader of Star Wars in another way. Mr. Dubois is one of several characters who, as they say, pour into Johnnie as he matures as a man and as trooper not unlike Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi. We still need wise mentors who speak truths rather than what people might want to hear. Heinlein himself is one for us.

Rachel McMillan. Murder in the City of Liberty. Nelson, 2019.

The attractive cover and promise of a mystery set in Boston caught my attention. There are really two main plots in Murder in the City of Liberty. There is a criminal enterprise which does result in a murder about halfway through the story. There is also a love triangle. Will Jane go with St. John or Rochester, I mean, will Regina (“Reggie”) go for Hamish or Vaughan?

Reggie Van Buren and Hamish DeLuca are partners in a detective agency in the North End of Boston in 1940. There are numerous allusions to The Thin Man films with Dick Powell and Myrna Loy. Reggie is upper crust from Connecticut. While Hamish’s father is a quite successful newspaper editor, his father’s family immigrated to Canada shortly before World War I. Since the early 1900s, the North End has been primarily an Italian neighborhood.

There is one unclear reference not explained in this story. DeLuca is normally an Italian name, and Nick has a cousin who is clearly Italian, but his father was registered in Canada as an enemy alien during World War I, but Italy fought with the Allies in the Great War. (Italy’s historical traditional enemy was Austria.) It is conceivable they came from Austria or the Balkans, but this seems a little odd.

The action starts immediately. Like films that start in medias res, it is not exactly clear what is happening but Hamish is attacked and Regina is left for dead. Hamish was supposed to meet a potential client, but whenever he talks to him on the phone afterward, the client hangs up without answering Hamish’s questions. And it seems like everyone is involved in some way in a plan to develop a waterfront apartment complex on land that may be more like the sinking sand from Jesus’ parable.

Van Buren and DeLuca get another client, one Errol Parker, a black baseball player signed by the Red Sox and playing for their local minor league team. Fans call him Robin Hood because he steals bases expertly. But he is being harassed in a much more serious way than a rookie would expect. We know it is because of his race, but this is 1940, and there are some pro-Nazi agitators who want the U.S. to stay out of the wars in Europe and Asia antagonizing both blacks and Jews.

Hamish’s best friend Nate is Jewish, and as they investigate both the construction project and Errol’s problem, Nate, Reggie, and Hamish all end up in trouble. To tell who is murdered would be something of a spoiler because the murder does not happen until nearly halfway through the story, and the policeman in charge of the investigation says it was not a murder.

Through all this there is the back-and-forth wavering of Regina trying to decide whom she really loves. Is it Vaughan, a family favorite and old friend, whose business can also help Mr. Van Buren’s business? Or is it her partner, Hamish, whose family is also highly esteemed in his home city but not in America?

There is also Hamish’s Chicago cousin, Luca Valeri, who left Hamish after Hamish was shot in a nightclub in the first story in the series, but who seems to have a lot of elliptical connections. Why did Luca’s former associate suddenly appear in that opening scene? Can Hamish forgive Cousin Luca for abandoning him at the club? And why is Errol’s teenaged nephew running errands for him out of the Parker House?

For the most part, McMillan gets a nice sense of Boston in the forties. I recall my father describing Scollay Square (now gone to make way for Government Center) the way she describes it. There are a few anachronisms, but they do not take away from the overall story. Sadly, the real Red Sox would not have signed a black player in 1940. The owner back then was notoriously prejudiced, and the Sox were actually the last major league team at the time to have a black player on their roster (Pumpsie Green in 1959).

Peter W. Wood. 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project. Encounter, 2022.

1620 was recommended by a friend, and it is worth reading. As the subtitle suggests, it is a critique of the “Woke” 1619 Project promoted by the New York Times. While it does challenge a number of the assertions made by the various publications associated with the 1619 Project, it is, as the subtitle also suggests looking at it from the perspective of a critic.

The author is a professor and an anthropologist, so he is particularly focused on human relations. As a counterpoint, the author makes a case that 1620 is more of a watershed year for American history. It is the year of the Mayflower Compact which set the model for a diverse “body politic” with a republican non-aristocratic model. 1620 notes that the black captives sold in Virginia were not treated as chattel. We know some became working free members of the settlement, and that both black men and women married white settlers. The chattel slavery would come later.

The author notes other authors—mostly reputable historians—who have challenged many of the so-called facts of the 1619 project. He is more interested in the conclusions drawn and the ramifications of those conclusions. A major conclusion of the 1619 Project is that the Declaration of Independence was made to counteract the abolitionist movement in England. The problem is that in 1776 there were more abolitionists in North America than England. Indeed, Jefferson and his committee wrote a paragraph condemning the British support of the slave trade. That paragraph was omitted from the final draft because of the objections of three states, the two Carolinas and Georgia. Even delegates from Virginia supported it.

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobium of INFIDEL Powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another. (Read the full draft here.)

Wood’s basic thesis is that the United States is no Utopia—there has never been one in the history of the world—but it is a work in progress striving to live up to its ideals. Key critics of the 1619 Project Wood points out are Socialists. While they might agree with some of the critiques of capitalism in the Project, they point out the project is very loose with historical facts and promotes division, while the goal of Socialists is to promote a classless society.

Wood clarifies one source of confusion. The 1619 Project gets some of its funding and support from an organization called the Pulitzer Center. This kind of like the term Webster’s Dictionary. The Pulitzer Center is not affiliated with the Pulitzer Prizes or Joseph Pulitzer, but the name of this left-wing advocacy group adds some gravitas which is probably unwarranted.

There is a lot more more. 1620 is very quotable. If you are looking for specific details, there are other works and writers out there like David McCullough, historians who have detailed criticisms. This is more a questioning of the whole purpose and goals of the 1619 Project. The Project seems to be following the trajectory of European radicals of eighty to a hundred years ago. The problem is that such a “utopia” reduces most of its citizens to mere chattels of the state.

Jeremiah Denton. When Hell Was in Session. Traditional P, 1982.

Many Americans of a certain age may recall Jeremiah Denton or at least recall what he did. He was a U.S. Navy airplane pilot who was shot down over North Vietnam and spent over seven years as a prisoner of war in the notorious Hanoi Hilton prison camp. He may be best known as the prisoner who repeatedly blinked the word TORTURE during a North Vietnamese press conference with supposedly humanely treated prisoners. He later served as a U.S. Senator from Alabama.

The experience of Denton and his fellow prisoners recorded in When Hell Was in Session brings new meaning to the word torture. The bodies of the men were twisted in all kinds of bizarre manners. As the reader begins to understand the scope and method the Communist captors used, the only thought is “who has the twisted mind to even think of these things?”

Pigeye [prisoners had nicknames for the guards who were otherwise anonymous]and one of the other guards grasped me, handcuffed my hands behind me, and then grunting and swearing began beating me severely…I reeled about the cell and fell down repeatedly. They kept pulling me to my feet and hitting me…Bloody nose, cut lips, blackened eyes, bruised ribs: the standard before the main event.…

He pulled my shirt sleeves down to protect my arms from scars…and then he and another guard began roping one arm from shoulder to elbow. With each loop, one guard would put his foot on my arm and pull, another guard joining him in the effort to draw the rope as tightly as their combined strength would permit. The other arm was then bound, and both were tied so closely that the elbows touched.…After about forty-five minutes, the pain began to subside and I began to go numb. I was too weak to sit up, and when I fell backward, the weight of my body spread my fingers so grotesquely that two of them were dislocated.…

They had cuffed a cement-filled 9-foot-long iron bar across my ankles, and Pigeye released the bar from the shackles and laid it across my shins. He stood on it, and he and the other guard took turns jumping up and down and rolling it across my legs. Then they lifted my arms behind my back by the cuffs, raising the top part of my body off the floor and dragging me around and around. This went on for hours. (64-65)

That was just one instance. At one point his legs were so swollen from tortures and edema that the shackles no longer fit around his ankles.

All I can think of is the verse from the Bible that speaks of consciences being seared with a hot iron (I Timothy 4:2). It is remarkable what evil people can do to other people.

The purpose of the torture was to somehow break the prisoners so that they would confess their political crimes and perhaps be released early. Denton is a gentleman and does not name any person who was released early for doing such things, but there were only a few.

Two he does mention—one was so badly tortured that he was near death and was released. The other feigned imbecility and was seen to be useless. That sailor, who actually washed ashore in Cambodia but was captured by Vietnamese operating there, had memorized the name of each of the 256 prisoners at the time, so on release he was able to let the Pentagon and prisoners’ families know who was there.

Denton himself was kept in solitary confinement for about four years of his ordeal. Still, the men developed a couple of tapping codes with occasional paper drops to communicate with each other. For the most part, they were able to encourage one another in spite of the tortures they endured.

Denton himself credits a spiritual experience while he was in solitary for giving him the vision and fortitude to make it through. While he considered himself a Catholic believer before, the Holy Spirit became real to him at one point when he realized he had to make a choice of whom to trust. His experience was reminiscent of Solzhenitsyn’s own conversion experience while he was in a Siberian labor camp as described in The Gulag Archipelago and Colson’s Loving God.

One other name that readers would probably recognize was that of James Stockdale. Denton was one of the early men shot down, and at first he was the ranking officer. Later Stockdale would take that role. Both men are examples of perseverance in great trials plus a certain doggedness. Stockdale would later run unsuccessfully for Vice President in the Perot candidacy. Stockdale would limp for the rest of his life as a result of tortures he received in Hanoi.

When Hell Was in Session is not for the faint of heart. Denton graphically describes the pain he endured. Denton notes that North Vietnam had subscribed to the Geneva Convention concerning the treatment of prisoners of war but claimed that captured enemies were war criminals and thus not covered by the treaty. People can justify all kinds of cruelty by twisting legalities to their tastes.

Much of the book covers the period from 1965 when Denton was shot down until 1969 when Ho Chi Minh died. That death made a big difference. After that, their captors fed them better and ceased most tortures. Ho’s death happened around the time that Nixon took the office of President from Johnson, so there may have been several factors contributing to the change. Denton felt that some of the wardens may have begun to fear reprisals for their treatment of the prisoners.

Denton also writes of a few political conversations he had with the North Vietnamese. He noted that their hard work would just end up in the hands of Russians (whom we see occasionally in the background) or party members. One replied that at least they had security.

He did have one occasion to have a priest hear his confession. The priest was obviously told by authorities what to say, and tried to steer the discussion to politics. While Denton was moved by the experience, he told the guards’ supervisor that he would only agree to confession again if the priest would not speak of politics. For any religious practitioner allowed under Communism, that was a no-go.

There are many other similar tales in this book. Denton was convinced, judging from the behavior of the guards and what he learned from newer prisoners, that if the allies had pursued victory in 1968 and 1969, the outcome of the war might have been different. Denton, after all, was shot down in 1965, so he was unaware of the antiwar demonstrations back in the States.

Denton’s testimony here goes along with many testimonies of victims of Communism in the Soviet Union such as Solzhenitsyn, Sharansky, Ratushinskaya, and even testimonies of Communists like Wolfgang Leonhard. There are fewer such testimonies from China, but they do exist such as The Heavenly Man and stories of Tibetans and Uighurs.

I am reminded of Winston Churchill’s observation that democracy is the worst form of government—except for all the others. Communism is evil. It enriches certain amoral members of the party at the expense of everyone else. And we have to admire the fortitude of such people as Denton, Stockdale, along with Solzhenitsyn, Brother Yun, and a host of others. Let us not forget.

Donna Andrews. Owl Be Home for Christmas. St. Martin’s, 2019.

Donna Andrews has written a series of cozy mysteries with names of birds in the titles. Owl Be Home for Christmas is the first we have read. It is entertaining and contains some of the things we especially like about the cozies.

In such mysteries the victims are either extremely likeable—no one can understand why anyone would want to kill them—or extremely dislikeable—everyone is a suspect. Owl Be Home for Christmas runs just under 300 pages, but the murder does not happen till a third of the way through the book. And even then, it may not be a murder as the death could be from natural causes. Still most readers of the genre realize about twenty pages in that Dr. Frogmore is doomed.

Doctor Frogmore is one of about two hundred ornithologists attending a symposium or convention on the biology of owls. Most are associated with universities or other groups that include naturalists like National Geographic or the Audubon Society. They are meeting at a hotel and convention center in rural Caerphilly, Virginia, when they are socked in by a blizzard. No one can leave the hotel for days. The only person who arrives comes via snowmobile.

So, yes, this is a kind of extended closed room mystery, The Mousetrap with a cast of three hundred. About two hundred are convention attendees. They make the likeliest suspects, but Dr. Frogmore has managed to alienate some of the other hotel guests as well as most of the staff. Frankly, even our narrator, Meg Lanslow, could be a suspect. She is there as one of the convention organizers, helping her ornithologist grandfather. Her family is there with her—her husband and two sons.

Like other mysteries that take place in a similar setting, there are stolen key cards, rooms that are generally off-limits, and definitely some cabin fever. Meg’s teenage sons see the thing as more of an adventure. Just as there are basement chambers and tunnels in the hotel, the boys dig a tunnel system connecting various doorways and cabins under the snow.

The tale is lots of fun to read, and we do sympathize with the many people who have been not just victims of Frogmore’s rudeness, but whose professional reputations may have been hurt. The plot takes a number of twists and turns. How can you have an autopsy at a snowed-in hotel? What about the doctor’s food allergies? Or the vial of nitroglycerin spray found at the death scene?

Andrews is very good at staging. So we get a good sense of the convention seminars, the dinners, the hotel offices, the cabins, and so on. And unlike The Christmas Hummingbird, Owl Be Home for Christmas actually presents accurate information about a variety of owls. It also illustrates different discussions and disagreements bird scientists have among themselves. We were thinking, as soon as Dr. Frogmore was introduced, that his name was appropriate, too. There are some tropical nocturnal birds like nightjars and whippoorwills known as frogmouths. They are not owls, but they do have some similarities. At one point they are even mentioned in the book.

Those tunnels under the snow may act as symbols for the mystery. It is easy to take a wrong turn, and it is hard to see very far ahead, but if the tunnelers do not panic, they will find their way.

James Polkinghorn. Liquid Shades of Blue. Oceanview, 2023.

We have received a number of novels from Oceanview Publishing, we have enjoyed all of them, and that includes the new Liquid Shades of Blue. We have noted occasionally some books are hard to categorize. This is one. It is marketed as a thriller, and it is one in the sense that readers will want to keep turning its pages. But it not a stereotypical thriller. There are no terrorists or gangsters or serial killers out to get anyone. While the two main characters are lawyers, there is no court case or legal wrangling.

Liquid Shades of Blue is primarily a psychological study with a possible crime in the background. But because there is no terrorist or serial killer type, it does not follow the usual so-called psychological thriller where people fear for their lives because of some psychotic or psychopathic character.

The psychology comes mostly from our first-person narrator, Jack Girard. Girard owns a bar in Key West and devotes most of his time and energy to that. He also is a lawyer. He mostly does small cases for customers, but he used to work for his father’s high-powered law firm. We can see, then, that a lot of the psychology is straight out of Freud. For reasons that become obvious, Jack has some daddy issues. He is happy doing what he is doing on the Keys, away from the big-time Miami firm of his father. Everyone, even Jack, calls his father the Duke.

This may sound strange, but the beginning actually had echoes of Camus’ The Stranger. The story begins with Jack learning that his mother has died. He learns this after he wakes up apparently having spent the night with a prostitute, though he remembers nothing of the night before and how he picked her up—if he indeed did pick her up.

Jack is around thirty years old, and his parents were divorced just a few years ago. His father’s phone message with the news says that his mother killed herself. Jack finds that a hard to believe because his mother had a very positive outlook on life, but the evidence seems to point to that conclusion. Sadly, Jack had one sibling, an older brother who did actually commit suicide. Is there something in the family gene pool that contributes to this?

Jack does what he can to investigate his mother’s death. He visits her condo and his father’s new waterfront home. He visits his mother’s parents who are both still living. He reviews his brother’s suicide. His father admits that he visited his mother the day she died to discuss a settlement issue, but he left her still alive. From his time as a Miami lawyer, Jack does have a contact in the police department and one in the FBI to see if he can discover anything that they might have on his mother’s death.

But the tale focuses on Jack and his father. Mr. Girard is a Nietzchean. He became a successful attorney, he would say, because he had a strong will. He tried to instill in his sons the idea of the will to power. Of course, that also suggests that he saw himself as an Übermensch, beyond good and evil. Clever, amoral lawyers can use the laws to their advantage, regardless of a client’s actual guilt or innocence and regardless of whether a suit is right or wrong.

Because he saw her shortly before she died, the Duke indirectly is looking for Jack’s help to clear his name. A true Übermensch, of course, would never ask for help, but Jack takes him at his word and tries to look into things.

Much of the story, then, tells us not so much about the circumstances surrounding the family suicides as it tells us of Jack still trying to resolve his feelings about his father—not that he had been very close to either parent in recent years.

He learns that his mother had a new boyfriend. The boyfriend is a successful businessman and native of Colombia who has put together a healthcare business that makes him millions. The suspicion is that behind the clinics and hospitals, he also markets drugs illegally. So, while Jack never appears to be in danger, he does cross paths with Julio Guzman as he inquires about his mother’s death. There may be some criminal types in the background, but not anyone trying to kill Jack or do him harm.

Liquid Shades of Blue is psychological in the primal sense—mommy’s dead, big brother’s dead, daddy’s distant and insensitive. Jack dropped out of daddy’s pressurized money-making law firm for a simpler life. Jack’s brother dropped out by taking his own life. Did his mother do the same?

I was reminded of another book we read a few years ago, Unwritten. That novel also takes place in southern Florida and involves some hurting people looking for some psychological relief. Liquid Shades of Blue does not have the tale of inner healing that Unwritten has, but it keeps us reading. There is enough action for readers to admit that, yes, this is a thriller of some kind, even if it’s not the kind of thing Grisham, Steele, or Connelly might write. It goes beyond the thriller formula to get at core beliefs.

William Martin. The Lost Constitution. Forge, 2007.

William Martin writes historical novels in the vein of James Michener. As Shakespeare would say, they have scope. The Lost Constitution is no exception.

Peter Fallon, whom we first met in Martin’s Harvard Yard, has become the protagonist in a number of his novels. Fallon is a Boston-based rare book and manuscript dealer. Harvard Yard had to do with a lost Shakespeare play. The Lost Constitution tells a tale of an early annotated draft of the United States’ Constitution that had apparently been preserved by a family and handed down through generations.

Form this book, we get an idea of the scope of American history. There is Will Pike, an assistant to Rufus King who was a member of the Constitutional Convention. Pike got the job through a recommendation from Revolutionary War hero Henry Knox because his father was a skilled officer under Knox. Pike’s father and brother are involved in the infamous Shays’ Rebellion in Western Massachusetts, which became an impetus for a true constitution, not the mere Articles of Confederation.

We especially get the history as it played out in New England. The Pike family becomes early investors in textile mills there. Martin notes that the Blackstone River, running roughly from Worcester, Massachusetts, to Providence, Rhode Island, has one of the steepest drops for its length. That made it perfect for water-powered mills.

We see a Pike descendant working briefly during the Civil War in St. Albans, Vermont. Readers familiar with Civil War history can guess what happens. St. Albans would be subject to a Confederate raid from across the border with Canada. Other relatives and business partners are involved with logging in Vermont and New Hampshire.

We meet Harriet Beecher Stowe in both Connecticut and Maine. Gettysburg hero Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had taught with her husband in Brunswick, Maine. After the war she would settle in Connecticut.

We meet sailors out of Newport, Rhode Island. We are reminded that Rhode Island did not send a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and was the last of the thirteen original states to ratify the document. We also meet a prosperous family in the textile business who owns a mansion in Newport. During the twenties and thirties, Newport also figured in smuggling adult beverages during Prohibition.

(One glitch in the book: Stolichnaya Vodka was first produced some time between 1938 and 1946, so it would not have figured with the Prohibition rum runners.)

Then our contemporary, Peter Fallon himself, in tracking down the alleged document, is caught up in intrigue that takes him to all six New England states. He tries to find family connections in Vermont, ex-New Yorkers now living in Northwest Connecticut, maritime interests in Rhode Island, professors at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, another rare book store in Portland Maine, hoodlums and terrorists in Boston, and strange goings-on all over.

A congresswoman from Massachusetts is sponsoring a bill to repeal the Second Amendment to promote gun control. (This character seems to be inspired by Massachusetts lawmaker Elizabeth Warren.) Of course, the NRA and other human rights organizations oppose this. Both sides believe that the earlier draft of the Constitution, purported to have annotations by King, Elbridge Gerry, and others, could prove their case that either the Second Amendment was (1) a specific right for state and local militias only or (2) a broad right for individual defense of life, liberty, and property.

“We’ll think of something,” repeated Bishop. “As I said, it’s all about opinion molding.”

“I thought it was all about the truth,” snapped Peter. (223)

Or when two men are discussing the issue:

“When the framers said ‘a well-regulated militia,” they meant regulated, like the National Guard, guys who handle guns regularly because they’re regulated, get it?”

“I get what Madison said in The Federalist, ‘The Constitution protects the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over almost every other nation.’ Period. Full stop.” (447, italics in original)

Fallon finds himself traveling all over New England from Maine to Connecticut from the Newport seascape to the top of Mt. Washington, the region’s highest peak. He and his girlfriend Evangeline also find themselves in danger. Even though the tale is about rare manuscripts, it ends up with a body count that reminded this reader more of something by Tom Clancy. (There is, in fact, an homage or tip of the hat to Clancy in the course of the story.) This is a historical novel but it has a lot of action in the vein of one of his technothrillers.

There are also a few love stories and family dramas thrown in. There is a little something for everyone.

Martin gives us a lot to think about, both what it means to be an American and what New England is like.

“…this is a government of laws, and laws are made by men, and men might not always be what God intended them to be, but men like you and me, we’re decent, just the same.” (21)

Peter liked to believe that neighbors looked out for each other, a man’s word was his bond, and, as his mother used to tell him, a stranger was just a friend you hadn’t been introduced to. That was the world he remembered from his boyhood, a better world than most Americans lived in now, and probably a better world than they lived in back then.

Still, the chances of meeting a serial killer instead of the Good Samaritan were small, no matter what they told you on television. (99)

The broad-beamed Aaron Edwards approached, his attitude professorial and paternal, that is to say, condescending and lordly. (190)

“…judges are just lawyers who know politicians…” (253)

“But most people just want to do the right thing and live their lives and be left alone. The people are like gravity pulling the pendulum to the center.” (371)

“In America, we get up in the morning, we go to work, and we solve our problems.” (54 et passim)

About New Englanders: “We live through seven lousy months, just to get to five good ones and call ourselves lucky.” (328)

With Martin’s geographical and historical overview of New England in the form of a thriller, it is not a spoiler by saying that the story ends at one place that all New England (with the exception of parts of Connecticut southwest of the Munson-Nixon line) can focus on and agree on in spite of other divisions—Fenway Park.

N.B: There are sailors, criminals, and others who use crude language in this book. For that reason, it may not be for everyone.

B. C. Talbott. The Handmaiden. Word and Spirit, 2022.

“Kathryn never had to work the people up. The Holy Spirit was there before she came on.”
                —Gene Martin (112)
“If I ever walk on that stage and the Holy Spirit is not there, that will be the last time.”
                —Kathryn Kuhlman (123)

The Handmaiden is a biography of famous healing evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman, the first in many years. It has potential for ministering to its readers.

As best it can, The Handmaiden covers Rev. Kuhlman’s upbringing and early life. It does a delicate, if a bit vague, job on her marriage. Primarily, though, it describes her gradual growth in ministry, first working with her older sister and brother-in-law who were themselves itinerant evangelists then with a friend traveling as the God’s Girls duo. We see her establishing an evangelistic and healing ministry first in Idaho, then in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. (The book is written in a very impressionistic style, so it is hard to tell which came first, Pennsylvania or California, or maybe they overlapped or flipped back and forth.)

The book’s strength is sharing on Rev. Kuhlman’s character. From this book the reviewer is reminded of Jonathan Edwards or D. L. Moody—not necessarily in theological acumen but in their seeking to be used by the Holy Spirit regardless of what is going on around them. This book has the potential for challenging the reader to ask himself or herself, am I really being sold out for Jesus? How much am I holding back? Could God use me more?

Kuhlman would write in a letter:

There is no limit God can do with a person, providing that one will not touch the glory. God is still waiting for one who will be more fully devoted to Him than any who has ever lived; who will be willing to be nothing that Christ may be all; who will grasp God’s purposes and will take his humility and His faith—His love and His power, without hindering, let God do great things. (176, italics in original)

While the purpose of the book is to tell Rev. Kuhlman’s life story, and that it does, more or less, probably the two strongest parts of the book are excerpts from two sermons. One sermon is from Kathryn Kuhlman herself that really reveals something of the nature of God. I said to myself as I was reading it, “This is really anointed. This is worth sharing.” The other was the eulogy given by Oral Roberts at Kathryn’s funeral. That tells us not only something of her character but something of the nature of the God she served.

The impressionistic style the author adopts can be a little hard to follow in places. For example, about halfway through the book we were told Rev. Kuhlman was 58 years old in 1965. That at least gave me an idea of when she was born, even though there were still spots where it was hard to tell which events happened in which decade.

Talbott based much of her information on interviews from co-workers and others who knew her who were still alive as well as documentary sources and extensive watching of clips of her television show. From those sources, especially from her co-workers, we get a sense of what she was like and get a sense of the source of her strength.

Currently, the standard biography is Kuhlman’s own “as told to” autobiography by Jamie Buckingham, Daughter of Destiny. With some polish, The Handmaiden could supplant it, or at the very least, provide some additional insight into the ministry of this twentieth-century saint.