Agatha Christie. The Man in the Brown Suit. 1924. The Agatha Christie Collection. Create Space, 2019.

———. The Secret of Chimneys. 1925. The Agatha Christie Collection. Create Space, 2019.

The Man in the Brown Suit starts off as a mystery but ends up, like The Secret Adversary, as more of an adventure or thriller. It is somewhat formulaic, but it is still fun to read. Because of its wide-ranging settings, it has a scope that many of the Christie tales do not have. Taking place in multiple hemispheres and countries, this is emphatically not a closed room mystery.

Anne Beddingfeld, daughter of a famous archaeologist, happens to observe the unusual death of a man in a London subway station. The man looks past Anne as though he sees something that shocks him, and falls onto the track where he is killed by the live rail. A man in the crowd identifies himself as a doctor, does some routine checks on him, declares that the man is dead, and runs away.

As the doctor runs off, he drops a note which Anne picks up. It says, “17.1.22 Kilmorden Castle” and has a note about an appointment for a showing of a house for rent. Anne has been recently orphaned and is looking for some adventure. She goes to the house showing only to discover that the body of an unidentified woman stabbed to death was found there shortly before she arrived. A witness says she saw a man with a brown coat leave the house around the time the murder occurred.

Anne’s curiosity is aroused, but she can find no record of any place named Kilmorden Castle. She happens to notice an advertisement for a ship named Kenilworth Castle and discovers that the line also has a ship named Kilmorden Castle. The ship is scheduled to leave England for South Africa on the 22nd. That perhaps explains the “22,” but what about the 17 and 1?

Anne thinks she might be able to sleuth out some information about the man in the brown suit and the two deaths she has encountered. She persuades the editor of a London daily to take her on for this investigation. Now she is gainfully employed. Her next step is to see about the Kilmorden Castle.

She books passage, and after a conflict about who is supposed to take Cabin 17, Anne is assigned the cabin. The next morning at 1 a.m. a stewardess knocks on the cabin door, and then a few minutes later a man whom Anne thinks she has seen before stumbles in with a stab wound under his arm.

It gets more complicated and Anne finds herself up to her neck in intrigue. Although she has little money, she does have some name recognition because of her father’s fame as an archaeologist. This helps at one point because she can tell in conversation who really knows something about archaeology and who does not.

The cruise ship and subsequent landing in South Africa have an interesting cast of characters. There is John Eardsley, son of the owner of the house where the woman was killed. His father was a millionaire who made his fortune in African mining (Cecil Rhodes anyone?). Like so many young men of the time, he is a veteran of World War I.

There is also the aristocratic Sir Eustace Pedlar who has a small entourage traveling with him. One of his secretaries named Pagett apparently tries to thrown Anne overboard one night on the ship.

Fortunately for Anne, the Honorable Suzanne Blair, a society dowager, takes Anne under her wing. Anne travels with her to the interior. The geography is a little vague, but it sounds like they are in Bechuanaland (now Botswana), then a British colony. Once again, Anne’s life is threatened. It seems people thinks she knows more than she really does.

She learns that Eardsley and a friend had found a source of diamonds in British Guiana (now Guyana), but they were defrauded when someone substituted diamonds recognizable as coming from South Africa for the one they found. They were accused of fraud even though they had been set up. Eardsley’s friend, Harry Rayburn, was later killed in the war.

Also traveling with them is Colonel Race. Rumors are that he belongs to the Secret Service, but he seems to be a friendly tourist. Colonel Race will later make an appearance in Death on the Nile.

There is more. Anne receives a note supposedly from an old friend of her father’s who is affiliated with a museum in Cape Town. She goes to visit him, but the address belongs to someone else and she is taken captive. Throughout the novel there are allusions to a popular film series The Perils of Pamela (cf. The Perils of Pauline?). At the beginning Anne envies Pamela’s adventures, though she is liberated enough to sense that Pamela did not always need to be saved by a handsome young man. As the story evolves, she is less happy about being in such an adventure but at the same time determined to figure out what is going on. She manages to get out of a series of scrapes—sometimes on her own, but sometimes with the assistance of others.

Not everyone is who they say they are. A few characters have several identities. One is a master of disguise. Behind all the intrigue appears to be some jewels—maybe from Guiana, maybe from Africa, maybe both—and an éminence grise known as the Colonel. Who is this Colonel? What is his game?

Meanwhile, as Anne finds herself in Johannesburg, there is a revolution going on. It is dangerous for anyone to be out and about. At another point, she finds herself on an island in a river in the middle of an African desert. This tale has scope. The mystery is eventually solved. There is a bit of romance. It is fun.

The Secret of Chimneys is another action mystery by Christie. The striking characteristic about this one is that there are attempts to frame some of the main characters. At its core, the story is about the succession of governments in the country of Herzoslovakia. Kind of like Zenda’s Ruritania, this is a small Balkan kingdom that is currently a republic. However, the republic is unstable and there is a move to reestablish the monarchy. The putative King Michael of Herzoslovakia has come to Britain both to look for political support and some financial backing. It seems that oil has been found there and potential investors from both the U.K. and U.S.A. are interested.

Meanwhile, in South Africa, a couple of young Englishmen who befriended a Herzoslovakian count have two manuscripts that others might be interested in. One contains the memoirs of the count. People are concerned that the memoirs may be a tell-all that makes Herzoslovakian royals and politicians look really bad. There are also some letters that someone has used to blackmail a woman named Mrs. Revel. These are apparently letters written by Mrs. Revel to a lover posted in Africa. One of the letters has the return address of Chimneys, a well-known mansion near London owned by the Marquis of Catherham.

It so happens that when Anthony Cade, one of the young men, arrives in England, a meeting is arranged by Foreign Secretary George Lomax for all the principals in the Herzoslovakia restoration scheme. Among them are King Michael, Mr. Lomax, potential investor Herman Isaacson, American investor Mr. Fish, Lomax’s secretary Bill Eversleigh, and Virginia Revel. Mrs. Revel is a 27-year-old widow whose late husband had been the Ambassador to Herzoslovakia. She is invited because of her familiarity with the country and her acquaintance with King Michael.

On Cade’s first night in a London hotel, a waiter breaks into his room to steal the manuscript. Cade is able to defend himself, but the waiter escapes with a bundle of papers—but they are the blackmail letters, not the manuscript. Needless to say, the waiter does not report to work the next day. Cade decides to track down the Mrs. Revel. He finds in the newspaper some information about Virginia Revel, and comes to her house. When he arrives, she has just discovered the body of a man she had never seen until the day before murdered in her house.

She says the man had approached her with the letters and asking for a thousand pounds from her or he would publish them. The man is none other than the waiter from the hotel. Mrs. Revel is to leave for Chimneys the next day. Cade helps her dispose of the body and the pistol that was found in the room. Mrs. Revel says she did not write those letters, it must have been another Revel. She also says that she owns no guns or pistols, but the pistol was engraved with the name Virginia. Clearly, this is a frame up, but why would someone go to all this trouble to frame her?

Cade develops a clever but slightly complicated way to dispose of the body and the pistol. The disposal of the pistol is a particularly clever send-up of detective stories. Weapons used in crimes are often buried or thrown in bodies of water. Here Cade climbs a tall tree and places it in the treetop. No one, he thinks, will think of looking up to find the weapon.

Cade that night goes to Chimneys. A note on the dead man says “Chimneys 11:45.” He has been told about the meeting to begin the next morning there. Mrs. Revel is already there. He sneaks onto the property and actually is looking through one of the windows when he hears a shot. A light in one of the upstairs windows goes on briefly, and then all is quiet. He runs off to the nearby inn where he is staying. The next morning, the maid discovers the body of King Michael. While this story has many assumed identities, Mrs. Revel is able to confirm that the victim is indeed King Michael.

The police are called in, so we meet the clever but suspicious Inspector Battle. Soon an investigator from the French Sûreté shows up, one Monsieur Lemoine.

There is something else going on as well. The Koh-i-Noor, the famous British royal jewel has been stolen and replaced with an imitation diamond. There are also some Herzoslovakian jewels that may have been stolen as well. The last royal couple to actually rule the country were killed in a coup. That King married a beautiful French actress. French authorities seem to think she may have been connected to a gang of notorious jewel thieves led by a man who goes by many names but best known as King Victor.

Now King Victor had been imprisoned in France for seven years. No one could ever connect him to a really big heist, so he was released a few months ago and is believed to have gone to England. French authorities tried to keep track of him, but he soon gave them the slip.

Two murders, two manuscripts, political and commercial plotting, a potential master criminal, at least one frame-up—this makes for a fascinating and entertaining story. No, there is no Poirot, but there is still enough humor mixed in the intrigue to say The Secret of Chimneys has a lot to recommend it.

Postscript. These two are the last two novels in the Agatha Christie Collection as noted above. The book also contains over two dozen short stories involving Poirot. Nearly all of them are told by Hastings. The short stories are uneven, but the best ones are clever. The reader cannot help think of Sherlock Holmes and Watson, but Poirot is a bit different. He is more conceited. In that sense he is reminiscent of the French sleuth Arsène Lupin. He or the narrator have more of a sense of humor than Holmes, Watson, or Lupin. Poirot, like Holmes, tends to ask the right questions. While Poirot notes things that people do more than the physical evidence, they point us to the solution. For example, in one case there is a murder after an evening dinner party. When Poirot arrives he notices that the curtain in the main window is not drawn. Why, he wonders, was the curtain not drawn? People outside can see what is going on inside once the sun goes down and lights go on. Yes, it it a physical clue of sorts, but it really asking a question about human behavior.

I should note that right now I have reviewed a number of mysteries. One more may be coming. Part of that is because of the Agatha Christie Collection I obtained. But part of the reason is that we have been proofreading a fascinating but intellectually challenging piece of nonfiction. Reading something a little lighter has been refreshing after a few hours of the heavier stuff.

Agatha Christie. The Mysterious Affair at Styles. 1920. The Agatha Christie Collection. Create Space, 2019.

———. The Secret Adversary. 1922. The Agatha Christie Collection. Create Space, 2019.

———. The Murder on the Links. 1923. The Agatha Christie Collection. Create Space, 2019.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles was Agatha Christie’s first published novel. While I can understand why The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was voted the best mystery novel of the Twentieth Century, The Mysterious Affair at Styles is more fun.

This novel introduced the world to Hercule Poirot. Poirot has had to leave Belgium because of the World War. He has found a place to live in Styles St. Mary in England. An old friend of his, Arthur Hastings, is recovering at the nearby estate of Styles Court after injuries he received in battle. Hastings is our narrator and gets into the story right away as Mrs. Emily Inglethorp is murdered one night. Mrs. Ingelthorp is the mistress of Styles Court.

Mrs. Inglethorp inherited Styles Court when her first husband died. She lives there with John and Lawrence Cavendish, sons of her late husband from his first marriage along with Mary, John’s wife. However, the widowed matron recently married Alfred Inglethorp, a man about twenty years her junior. People suspect he is a male gold-digger. The housekeeper, Mrs. Howard, expresses her special dislike of her mistress’s new husband.

There is also the usual house staff: housekeeper, maid, gardeners. Mrs. Inglethorp led the local philanthropy and was well esteemed by most. Still, she did have a strong personality that could lead her to rub some people the wrong way. And, as is often the case in such tales with a sizeable estate, there is a will involved. In fact, one of the questions is simply which of her wills is the most current one?

After hearing of Mrs. Inglethorp’s murder, Hastings immediately gets his friend Poirot to come to Styles Court. The inspector from Scotland Yard, Inspector Japp, is happy to have Poirot as a consultant as he knows Poirot’s reputation.

Yes, there are at least half a dozen suspects, and we are kept guessing. For example, the local druggist has a record that Mr. Ingelthorp bought some strychnine recently. Yet the signature in the pharmacy’s ledger does not match his handwriting, and according to a witness, Alfred was visiting elsewhere at the time the poison was purchased.

Poirot keeps looking. Some unusual clues become important. Why, for example, did Mrs. Inglethorp start a fire in her fireplace in the middle of a summer day? Mrs. Ingelthorp ingested poison some time in the middle of the night. But how? And how did she get served the poison?

At one point John Cavendish is arrested. Poirot predicts he will be found not guilty because there is not enough evidence. They should have waited, he says. He is right. So will Cavendish be tried again? What about double jeopardy? Is there evidence that points to someone else?

The Mysterious Affair at Styles is a most entertaining story. We observe M. Poirot observing others. We get a sense of his methods and when we find out finally who’d done it, it all makes sense and makes us smile.

The Secret Adversary introduces us to two more of Christie’s characters who will appear in a number of her stories: Tommy and Tuppence. That is to say, Tommy Beresford and Prudence “Tuppence” Cowley. They are old friends who are both demobilized after World War I and are looking for work.

They decide to start the Young Adventurers, a detective agency, and business comes right away. The problem is that it may involve some questionable personalities.

This is very different from the Christie mysteries we have reviewed recently. Today it would be classified as a thriller. Yes, the story does involve some detective work, but it has much more action, international intrigue, and a number of lives that are in danger.

The business comes to Tommy and Tuppence almost by accident. A man overhears them talking and offers Tuppence fifty pounds to begin searching for a mysterious woman known as Jane Finn. This Jane Finn was an eighteen-year-old American passenger on the Lusitania when it sank in 1915. She was looking for adventure and was on her way to England to volunteer for their war cause. When it was clear that women and children would be going to lifeboats first, a man who identified himself as a British government official gave her a document that he said should be delivered to the American consul.

The contents of the document, we are told, could affect the outcome of the war. Now that the war is over, some people think that the document could cause a socialist or Communist revolution in England if its contents are revealed. But Jane Finn landed in Ireland and seems to have completely disappeared.

Meanwhile, an American named Hofheimmer shows up looking for Miss Finn. He says that he is her cousin and he is the son of a millionaire. Even in 1922 not a whole lot of people rented Rolls-Royces, but Julius Hofheimmer does.

During the war, Tommy met a man known to him as Mr. Carter who worked for British Intelligence. Tommy looks him up to get some direction. We learn some of the details of what is going on concerning both the treaty and some foreign agents who are trying to foment a revolution.

Through Carter, they are introduced to Sir James Peel Egerton, a Member of Parliament and famous lawyer. Some say he could be Prime Minister one day. Partly through him, we become acquainted with one Marguerite “Rita” Vandemeyer who also seems to be looking for Miss Finn. Miss Vandemeyer is a still attractive woman of a certain age who has money and is used to getting what she wants.

With echoes of the Baker Street Irregulars, Albert—a pre-teen boy who works as an elevator operator and knows the streets—provides information for the Young Adventurers and acts as a messenger for them.

There are kidnappings, escapes, and at least one death in this novel. The death appears to be suicide, but who knows for sure? The escapades take the Y.A.’s and Mr. Hoffheimmer all over London and other places in southern England.

There is a deadline. Tommy learns that the conspirators are planning to make their move on September 29th, British Labour Day. That just gives them a couple of weeks. We also learn that Jane Finn, if alive, may have suffered amnesia as a result of the shock of the sinking of the ocean liner she was on. And it seems that behind everything is an éminence grise known only as Mr. Brown.

Tommy may have seen him, and everyone seems to fear him, or at the very least have great respect for him. Even though Mr. Carter knows of his existence and something of his schemes and connections, he has no idea who this Mr. Brown is.

Lots of action, lots of intrigue, and even a bit of romance in The Secret Adversary. To say more might be giving away secrets.

The Murder on the Links became the second novel of Christie’s featuring Poirot. Once again, Poirot entertains the readers, stringing us along the way he strings along his pal Hastings.

This one involves a fairly complicated murder plot. Poirot in England (the war is over but he has remained there) receives a frantic letter from a man in Normandy, France, asking for help. It sounds like he fears his life is in danger. Taking our narrator Hastings with him, Poirot hurries to the small town where M. Renauld, the letter writer, lives. When they arrive, they learn that Renauld was murdered the night before.

In what had already become a stock plot element, the local police inspector Giraud is annoyed at Poirot’s presence and a rivalry begins. Giraud is all about finding physical evidence. Poirot is more concerned about human behavior and motivation. Without going into too much detail, let us say that the physical evidence is not all that it first appears to be.

M. Renauld is a wealthy French Canadian who made his fortune in South America and retired to the coast of northern France. His body is found on a golf course adjacent to where he lives in a freshly dug but still open grave or pit. Mme. Renauld says that two masked men who spoke the Spanish dialect of South America entered their house around 2 a.m., gagged and bound her, and took her husband away. They said they wanted some secrets from him.

Poirot tells Hastings that this crime reminds him of other crimes. As he puts it, if a criminal finds that a certain modus operandi is effective, he will use the same technique again.

At the same time this home invasion occurred, the two other men who live on the property were absent. The Renauld’s chauffeur was away on vacation, and their son was supposedly on his way to Chile to take care of his father’s business there. The only other people at the house, then, the night of the murder were two maids and a housekeeper, all women. Yet it is clear that someone with a certain amount of strength must have dragged Renauld’s body to the links and dug the hole. At the same time, the body was not buried, suggesting either the murderer/murderers were interrupted or they wanted to body to be found. But then why dig the hole?

M. Renauld was stabbed to death. The knife was still in his body. The knife belonged to Jack Renauld, the Renaulds’ only son. It turns out that he had not boarded the ship to South America but had returned on the last train around midnight. He apparently did not go the Renaulds’ house because no one there saw him.

We learn that Jack had become engaged to Marthe Daubreuil, the beautiful daughter of a widow in the same town. Earlier, before he supposedly left to begin his voyage, Jack and his father had a vehement argument over Mlle. Marthe. His father opposed the marriage and even threatened to disinherit Jack if he went through with it.

Giraud arrests Jack for the murder. As in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Poirot correctly predicts there is not enough evidence to convict Jack. There are numerous twists in the plot. To say much more would involve spoilers, except to say that there is a connection to the old crime that Poirot vaguely recalled. The M.O. worked the last time. The perpetrator not only got away with murder, but got away, period.

Just when things seem to being resolved—even though it is only halfway through the book—the Renaulds’ gardener discovers a second murder victim. The unidentified man looks somewhat disheveled but is wearing an expensive suit. And he has been stabbed with the same knife that killed M. Renauld. (The knife had disappeared while in police custody due to a mistake Hastings made.)

The Murder on the Links is a puzzle, but Poirot puts the pieces together. In talking about crime in general, he notes that there are really only three motives for murder: money, relationships, or fanaticism (mental illness, political, religious). In the two murder mysteries, we can rule out the fanaticism. Political fanaticism may play into The Secret Adversary.

One common narrative trait in each of the mysteries is how susceptible men appear to be to attractive women. Hastings himself, a bachelor and war veteran, claims to have fallen in love with two different young ladies in The Murder on the Links. Before he learns about Marthe’s engagement, he is already attracted to her. He also meets a charming young Englishwoman on the train at the beginning of the story. This young lady also mysteriously appears in the village near the Renaulds. He claims he loves her as well.

Lest Christie be criticized for claiming that only men are so shallow, each of the stories also have at least one female character who is interested in men or who has married a man only because they are rich. To the romantic reader, I can say without giving too much away that the truly mercenary types of both sexes get what is coming while those of better character either realize their poor judgment or discover something more in the relationship. Indeed, The Murder on the Links really illustrates what true love may cause people to do.

There is a lot more than meets the eye in all three of these tales. They truly are entertaining reads even a century later.

Robert Jordan. The Eye of the World. 1990; Tor, 2019.

The Eye of the World carries many echoes of The Lord of the Rings (LOTR). It is a different world, but not that different. The culture including transportation, weapons, and architecture is medieval. There are languages and naming conventions that seem to have Celtic and Old English roots. There are some people who have certain supernatural powers. There is a great evil that controls a barren wasteland. This evil is trying to take over the world. And some of the heroes and heroines are ordinary rural types who find themselves outside of their comfort zones and in the midst of a big adventure.

Much of the story is told from the point of view of Rand, a farmer’s son who lives in a remote part of the world known as Two Rivers. Most people they run into have heard of it but never been there. It is Hicksville.

That also means that nothing much ever happens there. The seasons cycle through and life goes on. Big battles and political dramas in the past have pretty much not touched Two Rivers because it is hardly worth fighting over.

It is then quite shocking when on the eve of the spring festival in Two Rivers, the village is attacked by an army of Trollocs. I suspect the name Trolloc was derived from troll and orc (think LOTR) or perhaps ogre. These are large, hairy half-humans controlled by the Dark One. They seem to be selective on which houses they burn and whose livestock they kill, but people are terrified.

Rand’s home, outside the village in the country, is one of the places singled out. His widowed father is nearly killed. Rand is a teenager, and the homes of two of his friends, Perrin and Mat were two of the other places targeted by the Trollocs.

While everyone acknowledges that the Trollocs and the Dark One are evil, there is a lot of ambiguity concerning other characters. The village is also visited by Moiraine and her scout and bodyguard Lan. Moiraine is an Aes Sedai, a kind of sorceress who can at times call up or channel supernatural power. Aes Sedai are all women in the present age. In the distant past, all male Aes Sedai either went over to the Dark One or died saving the world from the Dark One. Since then many or most people do not trust the Aes Sedai because it is not always clear which side they are on.

Moiraine persuades Rand and his friends and two young women from Two Rivers to accompany her on a quest to fight this latest outbreak of evil. She is convinced that the three young men and at least one of the young women are part of a kind of divine plan. As she puts it, they are threads woven into the Pattern of the Age or Web of Destiny.

So most of the story, then, tells of this group of people attempting to fulfill their destiny. Along the way, they pick up another companion, Thom the gleeman. A gleeman is a traveling entertainer or bard. Mat learns some juggling tricks from Thom. These tricks will come in handy later when the members of the group get separated and Mat and Rand are on their own. Between Mat’s juggling and Rand’s flute playing the pair are able to earn their keep at some the inns they come to. It is better than sleeping behind a hedge or under a haystack, which, unfortunately, they have no choice but to do sometimes.

To try to summarize the tale would not do it justice. It is epic in scope. Like an Odyssey on land (well, a few from the group have some adventures on a river), the characters visit many different villages and cities and encounter all kinds of people and other creatures. Besides the evil Trollocs, there are are also eyeless ghostlike creatures called Fades and people committed to the Dark One named Dreadlords who lead the Trollocs. While the Dark One himself goes by many different names, his true name is the same as the Hebrew and Arabic word for Satan. Moiraine advises her charges:

“There are limits to the Dark One’s power inside you. Yield even for an instant and he will have a string tied to your heart, a string you may never be able to cut. Surrender, and you will be his. Deny him, and his power fails.” (675, cf. James 4:7)

Ultimately, then, The Eye of the World does reflect a Western or Judeo-Christian perspective of good and evil. Indeed, the term Aes Sedai, the name of the power-wielding sorceresses, means “servant of all.” This, of course, echoes Jesus’s famous observation:

Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister: And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. (Mark 10:42-44 KJV)

For long time, though, the tale makes the morally good side seem impersonal. Moiraine tells others to find the One Power. I could almost hear Obi-wan Kenobi saying, “Use the Force, Luke.” It is well known that the Star Wars saga is rooted in a pantheistic oriental worldview. But towards the end, we learn that the world of the Eye of the World came into being from a good Creator. So, maybe, as in Narnia, there is an Emperor Beyond the Sea.

There are other echoes of epics and medieval tales. Some of the weapons have a story. Rand takes his father’s sword with him on his quest. The sword has an engraving of a heron. Several people wonder how a peasant shepherd from Two Rivers can have such a weapon whose design has a famous military reputation. One of the characters is a Green Man, a half-human half-green plant character as we see in old European legends and fairy tales. Another is an Ogier, a tree-loving giant. There is also an interesting take on the wolf man. Oh yes, at least one queen and her royal family play a part.

While Eye of the World clearly falls into the sword and sorcery category of fantasy, there is one element that is more reminiscent of science fiction. In sci-fi stories wormholes or hyperspace are highways which cause spacecraft to move at incredible speeds or travel quickly to distant locations. Thanks to the Ogier, we discover a kind of underground tunnel system that does something similar.

Jordan tells the story very well. Because he creates a new world, there are plenty of descriptions, but Jordan clearly presents them and weaves them into the narrative. He easily compares to Tolkien that way. Reading the book does require imagination, but it is worth it. The descriptions are clear enough that when I discovered about halfway through reading the novel that my edition contained a glossary, I realized that I was doing fine without it. (I do confess because of the scope of the story, I was happy to refer to the glossary a number of times while writing this review. It was easier than trying to find a specific name or episode among 830 pages!)

In The Eye of the World, the fantasy comes alive. The good and evil are palpable. While it does tell a complete story, it also hints that Rand’s adventures are far from over. Hey, others like Dante and Tennyson have written some kind of sequel to The Odyssey. I may not feel right now that I have to go out an get the next volume in the set; still, if I want to escape into another sword and sorcery story, I am sure I could do worse than picking up Jordan’s sequel. There are thirteen more plus a prequel.

P.S. As I was reading this, I was thinking to myself that someone from Hollywood must have obtained the movie rights to this. I could easily see this story being made into a film series. I do not subscribe to any streaming services, so I was not aware when I started that Amazon Prime already has released its first season based on this book series. I also learned that there are some serious fans—there is an annual Jordan Con (convention) and a WOT Con (Wheel of Time Convention) that host discussions and interpretations of the books. Sounds like fun.

P.P.S. We did finally watch the first season of the Amazon Wheel of Time series. The first season is based on The Eye of the World. It is an entertaining series, but it leaves much out. Being a Hollywood production, there are sex and language issues that are not found in the novel. Also the Western Judeo-Christian approach is a bit muddled with some Oriental suggestions of reincarnation and idols. I confess, I pictured many things including the Eye and the Blight quite differently, but it is a decent introduction to the story. It is a cliché, but “I liked the book better.”

Agatha Christie. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. 1926. The Agatha Christie Collection, Create Space, 2019.

I read recently that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was voted the best mystery novel of the Twentieth Century by a committee of 600 mystery writers. Wow! One could modify Ecclesiastes 12:12 by saying, “Of the making of mystery books there is no end.” If this is considered the best, it must be really good!

A few years ago I directed a staged version of Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution. The students in the play were very good about keeping the ending a secret. I took my hint from the film version of the story. Actors in the film version were not given the last eleven pages of the script until the day of filming those lines. After one of the school performances, an audience member came up to me and told me she felt like she had to take notes. The end was such a surprise that she still wasn’t 100% sure how it all worked together.

That’s Christie at her best.

It is likely that few people unless prepped beforehand will figure out who murdered Roger Ackroyd. The village of King’s Abbot had something of a scandal because a widow in town had apparently committed suicide. Then “country squire” Roger Ackroyd is killed.

Our narrator is one Dr. Sheppard, the village physician and friend of Ackroyd’s. He is single and lives with his spinster sister Caroline. The business of everyone in town interests her.

Sheppard discovers that a relatively new neighbor is none other than Hercule Poirot. The famous detective has retired. He found King’s Abbot appealing because nothing ever happens there. Naturally, the local inspector ropes him into the investigation. Sheppard becomes friendly with him and even calls himself a Dr. Watson to Poirot’s Holmes.

The last person to see Ackroyd alive in his library saw him at 9:45 in the evening. No one else came into or left the room, and he was dead by 10:00 p.m. All the household staff had alibis.

Sheppard is an effective narrator. No, he is not omniscient, but, thanks to his sister, he is alert to town gossip and there are many people who could be suspects. Sheppard, though, becomes directly involved because he gets a phone call from someone calling himself Ackroyd’s butler saying Ackroyd has just been murdered. He hurries back to the Ackroyd mansion. But when he gets there, the butler denies making the phone call, and the room containing Mr. Ackroyd’s body is locked from the inside. Sheppard figures Ackroyd had been dead about half an hour when he arrived back at the Ackroyd mansion at 10:30.

Another mystery concerns the murder weapon. It is a fancy Tunisian dagger which Ackroyd kept in a display case. Sheppard had visited earlier for dinner and heard the case being opened. After the murder, it was found still open.

Ackroyd had a number of staff members including a butler, maids, and a personal secretary. They all could have done it. Rumors were that the housekeeper Miss Russell and Ackroyd had had a fling at some point, but when Roger’s single sister came to live with him after he was widowed, that relationship ended. He was also linked to Mrs. Ferrars, the widow who had just committed suicide. There also may be some other things going on with some of the other maids in the house. John Parker, the butler, and Geoffrey Raymond, the secretary cannot be ruled out.

But the main suspect is Ralph Paton, Roger Ackroyd’s stepson. He was popular and good looking but careless with money. He was at the house in the evening but then went to a local tavern and never came home. Indeed, he disappeared, and no one seems to know where he went.

There are many complications. Ralph is engaged to Flora Ackroyd, Roger’s niece. This was arranged by Roger, and while the couple have some respect for each other, there does not appear to be any love. Also present at the Ackroyd house the evening of the murder is an old friend and well-known big game hunter Hector Blunt.

Mostly, though, we observe Hercule Poirot through Sheppard’s eyes. Poirot is clever. He speaks an entertaining Franglais. It helps if the reader knows some French, though the overall mystery does not require it. Towards the end, Poirot assembles all the suspects—a common mystery meme—but surprises everyone, including this reader. To say much more might get into spoiler territory.

Still, there are some interesting things to note. The book was first published in June of 1926. In December 1926, Mrs. Christie famously disappeared for eleven days shortly after Mr. Christie asked for a divorce. When she was located, she was apparently suffering from amnesia. To this day, no one is sure where she was or what happened in that week and a half. I could not help thinking of Ralph Paton’s disappearance.

I hope it is not much of a spoiler to say that I suspect that James Patterson’s The Beach House may have been inspired by The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. In turn, Roger Ackroyd may have been inspired by Castle Rackrent, the famous Gothic novel from 1800. Jay Gatsby compares his own house to Castle Rackrent in the 1924 Fitzgerald novel. And so it goes. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is an original, but Ecclesiastes 1:9 also tells us that there is nothing new under the sun.

Earl Derr Biggers. Seven Keys to Baldpate. 1913; Project Gutenberg, 22 June 2011.

We heard about this 1913 mystery in connection with the Broadway and Hollywood impresario George M. Cohan. He wrote a play script based on this novel. That was not something Cohan usually did himself, so he must have really liked this story.

Seven Keys to Baldpate is a funny mystery. Today’s audiences would probably like it because it contains self-conscious irony, a trendy attitude these days.

Billy Magee is a writer who is looking to change his approach. He has written a number of popular novels that sell well but that the critics pan. “Too melodramatic,” they say, but people still like melodrama. “Not serious” say others.

Magee, then, has decided, as we would say today, to go off the grid. The father of a friend of his owns an inn among the mountains of upstate New York-New Jersey. The Baldpate Inn gets its name from the mountain peak that rises above it. It is December, and the inn will be closed until April. Magee plans, then, to live there alone and write the great American novel.

As the reader can guess from that title, his plans go crazily awry. It seems like six other individuals or groups of people have similar designs on the Baldpate Inn for a variety of reasons. No sooner does Magee get settled than another young man by the name of Bland enters the inn with another key. He says that the love of his life has left him for another man and he wants to get away for a while.

The two young men just get settled into their rooms when another visitor enters. This man is an older college professor, Thaddeus Bolton. The college where he works is not too far away by train, and he is looking for some solitude. It seems that university politics was not much different a hundred years ago. From his account, all it takes is a small misunderstanding and one’s academic freedom is challenged. He had to get away.

The next morning Magee meets still another visitor, Jake Peters. He is a hermit who lives farther up the mountain in a shack. In the summer he sells post cards to patrons of the inn. He has been recruited by Quimby, the inn’s caretaker who lives nearby, to cook for the guests who will be coming.

So, no, these are not the only people expected at the inn. Soon they are joined by the mayor of a city not too far away. The mayor is accompanied by servile flunky who does his dirty work. Mayor Cargan and Max both complain about “reformers” who make life miserable for politicians. Cargan says to the professor:

“…Who makes the trouble? Who’s made it from the beginning of time? The reformers, Doc. Yes, sir. Who was the first reformer? The snake in the garden of Eden. This hermit guy probably has that affair laid down at woman’s door. Not much. Everything was running all right around the garden, and then the snake came along. It’s a twenty to one shot he’d just finished a series of articles on ‘The Shame of Eden’ for a magazine. ‘What d’ye mean?’ he says to the woman, ‘by letting well enough alone? Things are all wrong here. The present administration is running everything into the ground. I can tell you a few things that will open your eyes. What’s that? What you don’t know won’t hurt you? The old cry’, he says, ‘the old cry against which progressives got to fight,’ he says. ‘Wake up. You need a change here. Try this nice red apple, and you’ll see things the way I do.’ And the woman fell for it. You know what happened.” (1194)

Speaking of women, the next to arrive are a matronly Mrs. Norton and her attractive daughter. It so happened that Magee had seen Miss Norton crying in the railroad station. He was struck by her beauty and had asked if there was anything he could do to help, but she told him it was none of his business. Now she has arrived at the inn as well. This pair is soon followed by a woman in her late twenties or thirties by the name of Helen Faulkner. The addition of female guests gets our hermit Mr. Peters rather nervous. It turns out he is writing a book on the evils of women.

Two more visitors add up the seven keys. One is a mysterious figure who only seems to travel or leave his room at night. The other is a Mr. Hayden, newly CEO of the Suburban Railway. It seems that Mr. Bland works for Hayden, and that both Quimby and Mayor Cargan have a history with him.

The author follows the advice of Chekhov, who tells us that all details in telling a story need to be relevant. As he is to have said, “One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off.” So all the details in this tale do come together. As already noted, the young woman crying in the train station appears a little later in the story. Even the details about some the summer guests should not be overlooked.

The tale is told from Magee’s point of view, so there is a mystery almost from the beginning. Why are all these people coming to the Baldpate Inn in the off season? Especially so for a city mayor and a railroad executive? We also learn that not everyone is going by his or her real name. What are they all hiding?

Part of the fun of the story is that it does itself turn a little melodramatic. The situation baffles Magee at times. The melodrama amuses him. And he feels he is falling in love with Miss Norton. Many will experience all three sentiments about the tale as they read Seven Keys to Baldpate.

Edna Ferber. Show Boat. 1926; Gutenberg.org, 7 Jan. 2022.

Show Boat is the novel that inspired the musical by the same name. Show Boat, the musical, is one of the greatest Broadway musicals, and it contains arguably the greatest Broadway show tune of all time, “Ol’ Man River.” Although the musical was and is surprisingly realistic for a popular show, Ferber’s novel is more realistic. While one could argue there is a kind of romantic ending, it is not nearly as saccharine as the ending of the musical.

The musical came out only a year after the book was published. The book itself tells a lively story, and it is easy to see why people might want to adapt it for stage. Nowadays, someone from Hollywood probably would have bought rights to it.

The river is much more of a character in the novel even though the song “Ol’ Man River” characterizes the river as well. The story begins with a lively description of spring flooding at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers with the paddle wheel show boat the Cotton Blossom largely at the mercy of the waters.

There is drama within the boat as well. Magnolia Ravenal, daughter of the vessel’s captain, is giving birth to a daughter. She names her Kim, after the three states which she could have been born in—Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri. It is 1889, but from Kim’s birth, we get a flashback for about half the novel of Magnolia’s growing up on the Mississippi steamboat.

The story is Americana in the liveliest sense. Magnolia sees and describes the rivers and the small towns on the rivers. She observes the actors and the crew of the boat, and they really become her family. Her mother Parthenia is a somewhat stereotyped Puritanical Yankee. Her father “Cap’n Andy” is more outgoing and adventurous. Still, Ferber ends up admiring Parthenia for her business acumen and providing some balance to Magnolia’s distinctive upbringing.

Some of the crew members are black, and Magnolia learns from them. She picks up many of the songs and spirituals they sing. A major crisis occurs when it is revealed that the star actress Julie had a black mother. She and her white husband are arrested for miscegenation in Mississippi. Her husband sticks with her, but they have to leave the acting company because of the Jim Crow laws throughout the South. Since the story is told through Magnolia’s eyes, we get a great sense of the injustice of it all.

The Cotton Blossom also navigates the Ohio River, including some of its tributaries like the Kanawha and the Monongahela. In the winter, the family lives in Thebes, Illinois, a small town where Magnolia will attend school for a few months each year. While the boat does stop at cities like St. Louis and New Orleans, it seems that many of the adventures ashore are in small rural communities. The audience from the smaller towns appreciate the shows more. They enjoy the stock melodramas and have nothing to compare the performances to.

Magnolia identifies with the river and the show boat. It is the only life she knows. The man she marries, Gaylord Ravenal, has taken an acting part opposite her on the boat, and they spend about six years on the boat as a married couple, the last three or four years with their daughter Kim. When Cap’n Andy dies, Ravenal sees that it is time to leave the boat. He could not work for Parthenia. So they move to Chicago.

Ferber gives us a panorama of life in the Windy City just as she did with life on the rivers. Ravenal makes a living gambling. At some points they are living in exclusive hotels with Magnolia wearing fine clothes. A sealskin coat becomes a kind of symbol of the family’s relative status. At times she wears it to fancy dinners and theatrical performances. At other times, it has been pawned. Eventually, Magnolia returns to show business in local theaters and achieves some success. Kim, following her, becomes a star and ends up living and working in New York.

So, yes, we get a little bit of the life on Broadway here, too. Show Boat has scope. It has tragedy and triumph. There are natural forces and social forces working. We even get a glimpse into the Chicago criminal underworld: This is in the 1890s and early 1900s, so before Capone and the Mafia. Even the foods seem to play a part. Magnolia learns from the black cooks Joe and Queenie on the boat. Her father purchases most of the groceries for the crew. And then we get a veritable smorgasbord from cheap rolls to restaurant delicacies in Chicago.

The tale could just as easily have been called Magnolia, since Mrs. Ravenal is the main character. She is tough and endearing. She has a sense of love and loyalty. She does “stand by her man” in spite of his unsteady occupation, but she also has integrity. When Gaylord borrows money from someone with criminal connections, she takes the money and returns it. That scene itself is an eye-opener.

Most of all, even though she spends years in Chicago and New York, Magnolia identifies with the river. The river is beautiful and savage at the same time. A sailor on the river has to know all its channels and how to handle storms and changes that constantly occur. So Magnolia learns to stand strong in the storm, to accept changes she cannot control, but to take advantage of the changes the storms create. There is much to admire in her.

I suspect Margaret Mitchell may have been inspired by Show Boat. Scarlett O’Hara has a very different character—she is far more devious and selfish than Magnolia—but one can hear Magnolia saying, “Tomorrow is another day” as Scarlett would a decade later.

Aristophanes. The Birds. 414 B.C.; Gutenberg.org, 22 Jan. 2013.

Anthony Doerr, the author of All the Light We Cannot See, has come out with a new book which I want to read at some point. He named his latest Cloud Cuckoo Land. He gets the title from this ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes. I figured that I should read this first to get a little background.

The Birds is a light, even silly , comedy. Two Athenians—Euelpides and Pisthetaerus—have gotten disgusted with Athenian politics and are looking for a new place to live. There is also a suggestion that they owe people money and may be trying to escape repaying their debts.

As with other Aristophanes’ comedies, this adapts some old myths for its own purposes. People may know the story of Procne, Philomela, and Tereus and how they were all turned into birds; Tereus, into a hoopoe. They learn that former mortal King Tereus is now King of the Birds. With the help of their pets, a jay and a crow, they persuade Tereus to create a new city-state in the air. The city state will be called Nephelococcygia, or Cloud Cuckoo Land. (This particular translation does not usually translate it, but tells us it means “Cloud Cuckoo Town.” Same idea.)

Word spreads quickly because this new city in the air intercepts all the prayers and sacrifices headed to the gods in the heavens and on Olympus. The gods are starving, and many of the mortals like the new arrangements because the gods are not meddling in their lives any more.

A series of other people seeking entrance to Cloud Cuckoo Land make up most of the story. These seekers include a priest, a thief, a philosopher, two poets, and a lawyer, among others. They are all looking to see how they contribute to this new society to make it a better place. They are all turned back by the two men and the Chorus of Birds. Eventually the gods Poseidon, Heracles, and Triballus (you’ve probably never heard of him but we get his story) come to try to get the birds to relent on the sacrifices.

Without going into too much detail, Pisithetaerus eventually strikes a deal that is too good for him to pass up. This was written during the Peloponnesian War and there are some discussions about who has the superior culture, Athens or Sparta. The overall theme is clear, though. There is no such thing as a perfect society simply because there are no perfect people, and it is no better without gods.

In the last hundred years or so, most anti-Utopian literature has been dystopian like We, 1984, or The Hunger Games. The Birds is much more light-hearted. We laugh at the various characters who parade across the proscenium, but the message in some ways is the same as 1984. Even the best intentioned government planning ends up being oppressive to someone. When Thomas More coined the word Utopia, he knew what he was doing. It means “Nowhere.” Anyone who believes such a place is possible probably has his head in the clouds and is a bit cuckoo—or dangerous.

This particular translation does not have any credits as to who did the translation or when it was done. It does have numerous footnotes which help explain some of the jokes and historical background. For example, we are told that in the Greek as well as the English the name of Triballus sounds like “tribulation.” (Are you looking for trouble?) The notes do help, but the message is there even without them. Yes, even ancient Athens was not perfect. Its decline actually began at this time because of the Peloponnesian War, but don’t most people who try to remake a society have a personal power agenda, too?

Helen A. Guerber. Classical Mythology. 1893; Fall River, 2018.

Classical Mythology is an abridged version of the author’s Myths of Greece and Rome, a classic compilation of ancient Greek and Roman mythology. This can be a useful tool to get a decent background to these myths.

A former student took an art history class in college. She had studied Ancient Classics in one of my classes. Our school also had required Bible classes, so she knew a lot of the Bible also. Between her background in the classical myths and the Bible. she was the only person in her art history class who knew most of the stories pictured in old master paintings and sculptures. For anyone taking art history who needs some background, a book like this is worth pursuing.

The class that I teach uses Edith Hamilton’s Mythology for its secondary source. It has more historical background than this work and perhaps is a little more detailed. Hamilton may have used Guerber, though, the same way that Guerber may have referred to Bulfinch. Unlike either Hamilton and Bulfinch, Classical Mythology just carries tales from the Greek and Roman myths. Hamilton refers to Norse mythology as well. Bulfinch includes that plus Welsh myths and King Arthur stories.

Classical Mythology tells its stories in a direct, unembellished manner. Compared to Ovid’s Metamorphoses or Hawthorne’s A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, it is drier. Some might treat it as much as a reference as a story book.

This book does include interpretations of a few of the stories. While the story of Proserpina helps explain the seasons, Guerber believes that the later version of the Adonis myth in which Adonis is permitted to return from the Underworld for a time each year also explains the seasons.

This particular edition contains many color plates of works of art from the early Renaissance to the Victorian era that enhance the stories. There are also many quotations from poets from classical times to the twentieth century, but in most cases the sources are not given. While the documentation could have been clearer, the book shows the influence and effect these stories have had on our culture from the time of Homer and Hesiod to the present. For background, it can be a good place to start.

American Odysseys: Writings by New Americans. Vilcek Foundation, [2012].

American Odysseys is a nearly six-hundred-page anthology of writings by twenty-two people who have come to the United States of America from other countries in the last generation. Many came with their families when they were young. Some were clearly escaping war or persecution in their home countries. Others were looking for a new beginning. A few may have relocated simply because their jobs sent them here.

This is a collection of poems, short stories, and excerpts from novels. Many are based on their experiences in coming to America or fleeing their old country. Sometimes they are just poems or stories that could have been written by anyone.

For example, Ellen Litman writes about experiences in my hometown of Pittsburgh that could have happened to any number of people, whether recent immigrants or not. Her characters are from the former Soviet Union as she is, but similar things could have happened to others whose ancestors came on the Mayflower. I would note there are a few distinctives that show us Pittsburgh, but even those could be altered slightly and placed in another location.

Ismet Prcic’s selection “Porcus Omnivorus,” on the other hand, is very distinctive. It has echoes of “The Swimmer” as our slightly inebriated Bosnian-American protagonist tries to find his way home from a Los Angeles neighborhood. He passes by a house where he hears some people speaking Bosnian. They are having a party, and they welcome him in. It also turns out that the people at the party were not on the same side in in the 1990s civil war there. In that sense, it is more like some of the short stories of Ambrose Bierce.

Some of the stories from the Near East, especially Iran, are moving because they involved significant personal danger. While fiction, they are based on things that really happened or could have. Stories and poems by immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean speak a lot to the region where I live. I have had numerous students whose families are from one place or the other, and they are finding their own distinctive identity.

The stories and poems from immigrants from Vietnam are worth reading. Having lived through the Vietnam era, it is both refreshing and enlightening to read about the perspective of someone who was “in country” back then. There is a somewhat unfair stereotype of American Vietnam veterans as being all troubled and suffering from PTSD. Yes, some are troubled and have suffered, but many came back and adjusted all right. It was no different for the Vietnamese soldiers, regardless of which side they were on. Some of them, too, became very troubled, others managed to make a new life, even if they had to emigrate.

I make two general observations about the works in here. Some of the works do have sexual content. There is nothing unusual about that in modern literature. What was striking, though, was how unpleasant nearly all the references to sex are, even when about married couples or people who seem mutually attracted to each other. The so-called sexual revolution (which did go side by side with the Vietnam era in America) was supposed to “liberate” people and even make sex fun. It seems to have become dreary and banal. Maybe the old ways were better.

The second observation is simply that much of the poetry is dense. Back in the sixties and seventies I worked hard to understand modern poetry. At the time to a degree I succeeded because I kept on trying and because I had some good teachers and developed a background. I honestly did not get a lot of the poems in this collection. Often they had effective images or interesting language, but they lacked or seemed to lack cohesion. Some fell into the trap of profanity and pornography, as mentioned in another recent review of poetry. The political side tended to be vaguer or more general.

Having said that, there were some interesting poems, too. Matthea Harvey, for example, has two series of poems in here that have a variation of the Hebrew acrostic poems of the Old Testament. Each poem has alliterative sentences arranged in alphabetical order. Each starts alliterating G and then proceeds alphabetically through S or T, depending on the poem. Sometimes Q or J is skipped. Here an excerpt form “The Future of Terror/5” showing part of H and I:

            We danced the hokey pokey on holy days—
            put your left arm in heaven, your right leg in hell
            and in the hubbub of shake-it-all-about,
            we didn’t hear the hoofbeats. The illuminati
            spoke to us over intercoms via interpreters. (122)

Perhaps this form has a name.

Lest it sounds like I am complaining about the poems here, there are some that I think anyone can appreciate. Those by Vuong Quoc Vu are especially moving. A few are reflections on the the Vietnam War, but most are just observations about universals from a distinct perspective. The use of language works extremely well in these poems, as some even explain Vietnamese words and grammar to us. But it is precisely through words and grammar that we communicate in whatever tongue we use. Many of the works in American Odysseys do have something to say.

My thanks to the school family who shared this book with me.

K. J. Soze. Revelation Explained. Soze, 2022.

Revelation Explained is the promised sequel to The Message for the Last Days. Indeed, the first chapter in the book is labeled 17. While it continues the first book’s observations on what the Bible says about the times surrounding the return of Jesus, it does deliver what its title promises—an analysis of the Bible’s Book of Revelation.

Over the years we have read a number of books on Revelation and End Times. This reviewer credits Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth with getting him to realize the God of the Bible is the God of history. In the past few years we have reviewed The Earth’s Last Empire, which follows in Lindsey’s footsteps and Nathaniel West’s The Second Coming of Christ. Though West wrote over 100 years ago, his book seemed to follow the Bible more literally. A friend recommended it to me as probably the best book on End Times prophecy. I tended to agree, but reading Revelation Explained may make me revise my thinking.

Unlike most other writers, Soze makes no speculations about Russia or Turkey or Iran or oil wells. She simply analyzes the Bible. Many have noted that the Book of Revelation quotes the Hebrew Bible more than any other New Testament book. Revelation Explained looks at most of those quoted passages and other parallel Scriptures in the Bible, especially Daniel and Jesus’s own predictions in Matthew 24 and Luke 21. She notes that Matthew 24 and Mark 13 describe the same teaching of Jesus, but Luke 21, while similar, was delivered at a different time, which is why it says more about Jerusalem and less about the actual end of the world.

I honestly had not heard that before, but if you read the three Gospel passages carefully, it appears she might be correct. Matthew 24:3 and Mark 13:3 both tell us that Jesus was on the Mount of Olives when he shared the prophecy in those chapters. It is often called the Olivet Discourse for that reason. Luke 21:5 suggests Jesus shared the teaching in that chapter while he was still in the Temple. Luke 21:37 appears to be an attempt to clarify the distinction. All three accounts could be from the same occasion, but it seems impossible to be dogmatic about that.

Without trying to debunk anyone else’s interpretation, Soze makes a case for the Second Coming, Resurrection of the Dead, and the Judgment to come pretty quickly together. She cites a number of verses in both Testaments that make it sound like the Resurrection of the Dead follows almost immediately after the Lord’s return and that is quickly followed by Judgment.

Similarly, she takes passages about the so-called Great Tribulation during the Last Days and makes a case that Christians will have to endure that. That is more typical of Christianity throughout history. Just today I heard on the radio about a Christian couple in Pakistan attacked and killed by a mob of five hundred. News reports tell us, for example, that governments in both Russia and China are trying to regulate the churches in those countries more strictly.

She notes especially that the word trouble or tribulation do not mean the same as wrath. That is true in the Greek and Hebrew as well. True believers are not subject to God’s wrath, but that is not the same as having trouble or trials or tribulations. See, for example, John 16:33.

She observes that most people in most places in the history of the world have rituals to supposedly help them in whatever afterlife they believe there is. The problem is that if these become works-oriented rather than faith-oriented (a theme of her first book), these lead to deceptions about what happens to the soul, and eventually to the idea that people can become gods.

Her interpretation of the significance of the number 666 is simple and uncomplicated as well. The number which appears in Revelation 13:18 (LEB) is described as “the number of man” or “man’s number” or “a human number”—more accurate translations than “the number of a man.” In other words, it stands for mankind in general.¹ She notes that it is two thirds of 1,000, and the prophet Zechariah 13:8-9 states that in the last days’ tribulation a third of the people will remain loyal to the Lord.

Of course, once we start talking about such things as rituals and symbolic numbers, then we come into the question of the so-called Antichrist and his companion the False Prophet. Both represent the primal sin of the devil (see Isaiah 14:13-14) and Adam and Eve (see Genesis 3:5): that desire to take God’s place. In other words, “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator…” (Romans 1:25 NIV).

So it appears that there will be three reactions to this assertion of someone else claiming to be God or like God: (1) They will go along with it because they identify with the devil; (2) they will go along with it for self-preservation; or (3) they will reject it and become subject to harassment, persecution, intolerance, and even execution.

In the end, there will be a spiritual alignment from our earthly realm to God, or the devil. We will be like God [I John 3:2], or be like the devil [John 8:44]. There is no gray area, and there will be no lukewarm believers at the end of the age. All living people will come to the Valley of Decision at that time (Joel 3:14). (256)

The end of the age will be like the Days of Noah [Matthew 24:37-39]. The judgments mentioned in Genesis 6 are primarily about sin and active rebellion of mankind, not about fallen angels, famous figures or any other focus like implanted chips. Christ’s predictions in Matthew 24 speak of warnings for average people not to be led astray by false prophets. This is the core message of warning. (273)

Very basic! Yet so many people try to make things more complicated than they really are.

Soze provides many Scriptures. She often places verses side by side, even in charts, to illustrate that they are talking about the same subject. She uses many prophetic books of the Bible in doing this like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, and the Letters to the Thessalonians, but especially Daniel, Matthew, and Revelation. To get a sense of this, take a look at the author’s web site which has a page on this.

The author helps the reader realize that while the study of End Times has some uncertainty to it, it is understandable. If we look at Revelation and the parallel passages it really is not tricky to get the general idea. The Bible tells us “to be prepared and look for the signs.” Another way of looking at those three responses above is this way: (1) Those who understand that the devil is behind things and like it that way; (2) those who do not understand either the spiritual reality or the signs; and (3) those who recognize the signs and await the Lord’s return.

There is a lot more to this thorough study. We recommend it. Even if readers do not agree with all the interpretations here, it should give us all things to think about and pray about.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

¹ Some Bible translations say, “It is the number of man” or an equivalent, others say “It is the number of a man” or something similar. When I was looking into this I had two copies of the same translation, the New King James Version. One phrased it the first way, the other the second way. Even the same translation shows variations in this!