Pat and Tammy McLeod. Hit Hard. Tyndale, 2019.

Hit Hard could be a command, or it could be a participial phrase. In this case, it is a participial phrase. Hit Hard is an honest biography of a young man who suffered severe brain damage playing football. However, as is usually the case in such instances, his whole family was hit hard, and this becomes their story as well.

Many years ago I knew two families who had young sons die. Both families grieved, of course, and many friends and relatives grieved with them. I was told back then that when a couple lose a child, they often cannot reconcile themselves. One couple stayed together, and they really remained a positive testimony where they lived. The other couple divorced. That was almost as sad as the death of their child.

Hit Hard alternates between the testimonies of father and husband Pat and wife and mother Tammy. Both had understood that theirs would probably be a football family. Pat had played football in college, and one of his brothers had played for the Green Bay Packers. Their oldest son Zachary was playing football for his high school, too. During a pre-season scrimmage, he was involved in a tackle play that somehow caused severe brain damage.

The coach noted it right away and Zach was evacuated to a hospital. A blow to his head caused permanent brain damage. He lost much of his mobility on his right side and has to walk with assistance. He can talk, but only with great effort. He will have to spend the rest of his life in the company of caregivers.

The events surrounding Zach’s accident and partial recovery are harrowing, but they only take up part of the story. There is more.

The parents worked as advisors to a Christian campus ministry at Harvard. One thing that is very evident is that their faith was challenged, but they did not waver. Some people turn away from God when life hits hard, but other draw closer. They realize how much they need him. The McLeods clearly were in the second category.

Zach’s response also is impressive. If anything, his faith became stronger. His teen enthusiasm for Christ has become a solid foundation for his life and outlook. He sympathizes with people that most of us overlook or ignore. In a sense, as his parents explain, he sees his disability as a calling.

There is an undercurrent of something else, though. While both parents did truly trust the Lord, they were hard pressed to trust each other. To use traditional terminology, Pat was more sanguine. He saw the progress Zach was making and remained hopeful for a recovery. Even after it became clear Zach would not experience a full recovery, Pat remained positive about gains that Zach did make.

He understood the difficulties they would have, taking care of a disabled son and the great expenses involved. Still, he tried to remain positive. While it was clear that Zach would never play football again, Pat and Zach were still able to enjoy watching sports and enjoy their love for God together. One highlight in the story is that NFL quarterback Tim Tebow heard about Zach. His foundation assisted him, but Zach was thrilled when he got to meet Tebow when his team came to Boston to play.

Tammy would be considered to have a more melancholy perspective. She had enjoyed talking with Zach, singing songs with him, praying with him, and having great theological discussions with him. With his short term memory gone and his near inability to speak, she missed all these things and could see little positive. She could not understand why Pat seemed indifferent to their suffering. To him, he was being positive. To her, he was insensitive.

Before, for example, Zach and Tammy would sing together as Zach played the guitar. Zach could no longer sing in any typical manner. He still could finger the frets of a guitar with his left hand, but having lost most of his motor ability on his right side, Tammy would have to strum for him.

That really is the main conflict in the story. The testimony of all three is impressive, considering all they had to deal with. Zach also had been big brother to two younger brothers, who suddenly had a different relationship with him. Zach had an older sister who was a freshman in a distant college when he had his accident. They had been best friends before.

And, of course, in any similar case, the parents had to pay far more attention to Zach than to the others, so the whole family dynamic changed.

In spite of their struggles with one another, Pat and Tammy were both committed to their marriage. They refused to allow a wedge to divide them in spite of the conflict they were having. A solution to the conflict came from an unexpected source.

Tammy was discussing her situation with a librarian. The librarian said that it sounded like they were dealing with ambiguous grief. She proceeded to show her a book by that title, and as both parents read the book, a light went on.

Grief comes from loss. Usually, though, the cause of our grief is final in some way. For example, yesterday I learned that a dear cousin of mine passed away two days ago. I am saddened by that, but also know I can deal with it. She had been ill for some time, so her family was prepared. She was in her nineties, so she lived a long, full life. When I think of her, I do think especially of a full life.

I know it will be hard for her children and grandchildren, but they also know that grieving is a part of this life. It may be hard at first, but when we grieve over a loss, whether it is from a death or, say, a property disaster, we eventually get over it and move on. We cannot bring a loved one back from the grave, and in most cases we probably realize that they would not want to come back. We grieve, but we get through it.

Ambiguous grief is different because there is not a finality to the loss. In some cases a person disappears from our life, but we know they are still alive somewhere, or at least we hope they are. Such things as a runaway, divorce, abandonment, or kidnapping can cause grief, understandably so, but there is no finality. There can be a sense of fear or bitterness or other emotions because they are gone but not really gone. There is grief, but it is uncertain, ambiguous. It is not final. We have trouble handling it, and it may continue for years.

The other kind of ambiguous grief comes from when we still have the person or thing but there is now a radical change that creates a different kind of loss. This can happen from brain damage, dementia, or some other debilitating disease. Tammy lost the old Zach, but Zach was still there. She was grieving over what she had lost, but it was hard to do so because he was, if anything, a bigger presence in their lives now.

Yes, once the McLeods began to understand what they were experiencing and then learning to deal with it, they could begin to accept even this ambiguous loss. This is an encouraging testimony of the faithfulness of God over a period of about ten years, but also a witness to others who may be experiencing their own ambiguous grief.

Grief can hit hard, but with God’s help and understanding we can make it through. Just the other day I read that all tragedy derives from the Fall, all comedy from the Promise. Even the way we see Jesus is ambiguous. He was executed brutally and unfairly. He was abandoned and punished for our sins (Isaiah 53:4). We cannot forget that. The book of Revelation tells us that Jesus sometimes even appears in Heaven as a lamb who was slain (see Revelation 5:6. 5:12, or 13:8).

At the same time, Jesus rose from the dead. The Bible says He was “raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25). What he went through overcame sin and death and gave him authority. Not only is He the lamb, He is king of kings and lord of lords (Revelation 19:16). We need both. We need him in Heaven to rule, but we would also like to have Him around, near us.

It took time, but He helped heal the McLeod family. Sometimes, having someone else understand what we have gone through is what we need. If we think God does not understand, just take a look at the Cross. He gets it.

N.B. This book touches on an elite world like Harvard, exclusive prep schools, and professional athletes. Even in such places, belief in the God of the Bible has not been eliminated. Thank you McLeod family for your testimony. I am thankful for such people when I was at Harvard. I am glad to hear there are some still there.

Bob Hazlett. Think Like Heaven. Whitaker House, 2015.

This book is subtitled Change Your Thinking, Change Your World. This makes Think Like Heaven sound like a Christianized The Power of Positive Thinking. There are many books out on such subjects from a variety of religious and motivational writers and speakers. This book is not like them.

This book challenges the reader to ask, “What is Heaven actually thinking about?” This depends on two things: (1) The reader’s knowledge of the Bible, and (2) the reader’s relationship with the Lord. This book focuses on the second because the purpose of the book is instruction. Item #1 is self-evident: Read and understand what God said in His book, the Bible.

The author begins by noting that any born-again believer has the Holy Spirit. That is biblical by definition. If the believer has the Holy Spirit, it ought to be possible to discover what the Lord is thinking in a specific situation.

The author uses many examples from the Bible and from his own experience to illustrate. For example, one time he was taking a taxi in a large city. The taxi driver seemed to be mishandling the author’s luggage. The author’s initial reaction was that this taxi driver was from a different region of the world and a different religion and was acting in prejudice against a Christian.

However, the author took time to pray and learned that the taxi driver was having difficulty with one of his arms. Instead of acting according to his initial stereotype, he asked the man if he was having problems with his arms. The taxi driver explained that he was.

Hazlett then asked if he could pray for him. The man assented. Hazlett prayed in Jesus’ name. The man said his arm felt better, and when unloading the luggage, there was no problem. Hazlett then told the man to give thanks to the God of Abraham—something the man could also assent to. Hopefully, he got the part about praying in the name of Jesus, too.

This illustrates the kind of wisdom that the author says is available to all believers if they are aware of what God is doing and listening for the Holy Spirit. Citing a number of verses in the Bible such as Romans 8:22-23, we are told that most people in the world desire to see God. Those of us with the Holy Spirit have an opportunity to make Him known if we listen to what Heaven is telling us.

There are a number of things the author suggests, things that he clearly had to learn. Two that stand out are these: (1) Get rid of the fig leaf, and (2) deal with fear. For us to minister the Holy Spirit honestly to people, we have to be honest with God. That means not applying “fig leaves” of self-righteousness or legalism, and being honest with God. It also means overcoming fear of man and perhaps of being wrong. The author’s advice is strong. Some may find it hard.

After every chapter, there are questions to answer before God. These could be considered exercises. I confess that it took me a long time to finish this book because I felt that I had to end each chapter deliberately. I am reminded that, like many people, I spend a lot of my life simply taking care of the mundane things of life: work, chores, eating, sleeping.

Think Like Heaven reminds me that I ought to connect with the Lord more and be more aware of what He is doing, even in particular instances where I may be unaware of having different thoughts. If we are honest, that is often the case. The Lord tells us in Isaiah 55:8, “My thoughts are not your thoughts.” So, let us learn to discover what His thoughts are.

This is a challenging book by an author who has a recognized ministry. (Two fairly well-known pastors contributed introductions to this book.) Perhaps we can recognize ourselves in this book, too. I am already thinking that it may be necessary to re-read this book. It is that kind of book. Maybe I should re-read it on my knees.

K. Woodman-Maynard. The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation. Candlewick, 2021.

Wow! Already a 2021 book reviewed here! This is a lovely graphic novel based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Virtually all the narration and spoken lines are taken from the book. In that sense, it is like watching a BBC miniseries based on a classic novel.

The illustrations are very effective. They have a pastel and gauzy character to them. We understand in part that this is the way Nick Carraway remembers the story. We all notice different things even when we witness the same event as another person. I am reminded of Tennessee Williams stage directions for The Glass Menagerie, which he calls a “memory play.” He imagines diffuse lighting and even some scenes set behind a gauze screen. This has a similar idea.

The pastels and the blue shades are almost dreamlike, but that is one of the themes. Kids today talk about the American Dream, and that may be part of it, but the story is Gatsby’s dream. Fitzgerald wrote a short story with a similar plot called “Winter Dreams.” That and Gatsby both were about a dream of an elusive and, ultimately, illusory love.

Because of the visual effect of the graphic novel, one sentence in the novel that never made sense to me does now. Towards the end as Nick is reflecting on the lost vision of Jay Gatsby’s and says, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.” Why orgastic? In both the novel and in this graphic novel, any sexuality is an undercurrent, not explicit but humming in the background like Gatsby’s hydroplane. It suggests something intense but fleeting.

Seeing Gatsby in the graphic novel form, we get the sense of the elusive beauty and even temptation that Daisy was for Jay Gatsby. Gatsby’s dream was kind of an impossible one, like a teenager’s love fantasy. For Gatsby himself it was something more, but at its core, his dream was mere carnality, like an orgasm, or even one of his parties, making a mess and letting someone else clean up after it. Recall that Fitzgerald’s own title for the story referred to a story of a Roman debauch known as “Trimalchio’s Feast.”

As a teacher, of course, my concern would be that some students would be tempted to read this comic book version and think they had read the novel. That is not the case, but the illustrator does a clever job of turning some of Fitzgerald’s metaphors from the word picture into a literal picture. If things are exaggerated, perhaps that is because they stood out in Nick Carraway’s or Jay Gatsby’s minds.

The two-page artist commentary at the end is interesting. I noted right away from the beginning that she got one thing “wrong” about Daisy, just as every existing film version of The Great Gatsby has: The novel tells us Daisy had brown hair, but every visual portrays her as a blonde. Woodman-Maynard recognized this but simply confesses, “I couldn’t reconcile Daisy being a brunette” (231).

She also believed that Fitzgerald’s portrayal of Meyer Wolfsheim was anti-Semitic. I never thought about that one way or the other. She made a point of not using Wolfsheim’s dialect as the novel does. That may be a sign of the times. It was not unusual for writers of all kinds to use dialect—Twain, the Brontës, Poe, Dickens, and on and on. Nowadays, I guess that may be considered insensitive.

As noted by many, Fitzgerald based Wolfsheim on Arnold Rothstein, who was Jewish and involved organized crime. If there is any ethnic animus expressed in the tale, it is by Tom Buchanan spouting his “scientific” Nordic race theories. Tom is the least sympathetic character in the novel. It seems to me, if anything, Fitzgerald is expressing concern about people taking such theories too seriously and “making messes,” which is exactly what would be happening in Central Europe in about a decade. If anything, that would oppose anti-Semitism.

The physical portrayal of Wolfsheim in by Woodman-Maynard reminded me of a portrait of Joseph Conrad, vaguely Eastern European. She always has him in a shadow, which is precisely where he belongs, behind the scenes, and gone before anyone notices.

She also asserts that Nick Carraway is an “unreliable narrator.” She explains what she means, but it seems like her definition is different from what I have come to understand. An unreliable narrator lies or twists things. Carraway does not really do any of those things. Yes, few people have photographic memories, so everyone will notice different things and see things from their limited perspective. Nick is no different, but he is telling the story of Jay Gatsby. Some people, for example, might be more interested in the Nick-Jordan relationship, but that is not Nick’s focus in the story. Besides, if he were really trying to cover things up, he would not have included the manner in which he broke up with her.

Still, those are minor quibbles and worth a discussion. For getting the atmospherics of The Great Gatsby, readers who appreciate the novel would probably enjoy this creative presentation of the Gatsby story.

N.B. I noted that this version spelled Wolfsheim’s name as Wolfshiem. This is the way that the online version of The Great Gatsby found on the Gutenberg Australia site spells it, too. However, when I checked the Scribner’s print version, Fitzgerald’s publisher, it is spelled Wolfsheim. That does correspond to the German name “Wolf village.” Also, that spelling is not flagged on my WordPress spell checker.

Rob Stadler. The Scientific Approach to Evolution. CreateSpace, 2016.

I have been telling students for years that the theory of evolution is not based on the scientific method. There are few experiments, if any, that can be repeated, and observations of one species changing into another have never been recorded. At best, there are changes within a species or a genus. Darwin spoke of pigeon fanciers, for example. Yes, breeders can come up with a dazzling array of varieties, but they are all still pigeons. For more on this perspective, see my review of The Beak of the Finch.

The Scientific Approach to Evolution is subtitled What They Don’t Teach You in Biology. The author is a medical engineer. He holds over 100 patents for medical devices. He understands rigorous science. None of those devices would have been approved if they had not been tested and found to be reliable.

He uses the example of standards for determining the efficacy of drugs. For any U.S. Government approval of a drug, the promoter must present hard evidence that the drug works for most people. The author notes six criteria. These are the same criteria most scientific publications use before publishing a new discovery. The exception to this seems to be when dealing with the subject of paleontology.

Using examples from some of the best known apologists for evolution, the author makes a very careful distinction. He first gives examples of low-confidence evidence for evolution followed by high-confidence evidence for evolution.

Without going into detail, basically his low-confidence examples really refute much of the evidence often used to support evolution. He notes for example, Criterion #1 above, that no one has been able to duplicate the conditions under which life either emerged or evolved. The argument that “conditions were different back then” begs the question and is quite vague. There are many other instances.

His high-confidence examples are some experiments dealing with generations of fruit flies and E. coli bacteria. Under certain environmental pressures certain individual fruit flies and E. coli have developed new traits. He notes two things: these experiments went on for years and in the case of the bacterium, covered 33,000 generations.

The Scientific Approach to Evolution notes that the changes did not come close to changing the species, just adapting them better to their environment, using interventional and prospective techniques. Many more mutations were unhealthful and caused individuals to die off or not reproduce. When we consider the much fewer generations that long-lived primates like chimpanzees and humans live in a time span, if we tried to extrapolate, we could get nowhere near what would be needed to have either ape or human evolve from a hypothetical common ancestor.

There is a lot more. If the reader read no more of this book than pages 152 and 153, he could see the main point. The book also notes that “separation of church and state” such as is the current legal status of the American Bill of Rights does not mean a denial of supernaturalism in the public schools.

Is there sufficient evidence for evolution? Not with a strict scientific method. The author emphasizes that microevolution (changes within a species or genus) is not the same as macroevolution (one organism changing into another). He notes that even hard-core creationists acknowledge microevolution. Macroevolution simply extrapolates (see #2 above) to a scope that really cannot be measured when we consider all the species and organisms just on our small planet.

Stadler does not really take sides. He explains both sides well. He just says, let’s not jump to vast conclusions with vague evidence. Let us be honest about what we actually know about evolution and the difference between microevolution and macroevolution. And let’s quit messing with kids’ minds.

The appendix which lists objections and responses to Stadler’s ideas is also helpful to the reader.

This reviewer makes one observation on one of the quotations in the book. The author begins by quoting well-known proponents of evolution. One is Richard Dawkins, who wrote:

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even because of, the lack of evidence. (6)

Dawkins clearly ignores how the Bible defines faith. Hebrews 11:l (NKJV) says:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Gee! Right there in the “creationist” book’s definition of faith is that word evidence. We all rely on evidence for things we have not seen. We could not survive otherwise. That is true in biblical faith as it is true in particle physics. It is even more so when speaking of an old earth and evolution. None of us saw cells emerge from an ancient protein brew. None of us alive saw Moses cross the Red Sea or Jesus rise from the dead. Believing in any one of those things is an act of faith. The question is not “Is faith a cop-out?” but “What conclusions can we draw from the historical evidence?”

Kathleen Brush. Racism and Anti-Racisim in the World: Before and after 1945. Brush, 12 Dec. 2020.

This booklet of about eighty pages of text along with over 280 references and 140 footnotes is a thorough study on the title subject. What did racism look like around the world before 1945? What has it looked like since?

Clearly, when I say it is “thorough,” it is thorough considering its scope, namely, around the world. What we learn is that racism has been pretty much a fact of life throughout most of history. Traditional African and South Asian cultures have castes. Most other countries and regions have people groups who are looked down upon by other people groups. Sometimes it is for ethnicity, sometimes for religion, sometimes for occupation, sometimes for other reasons.

Before 1945 it is safe to say that such notions were universal. The ostensible reason for this was social order. In America, for example, Jim Crow laws and redlining existed to keep black people “in their place.”

Such practices and ideas have changed radically since 1945, but only in select Western countries. Yes, the United Nations has a Charter on Human Rights, but most nations ignore it or simply say for one reason or another it does not apply to them. For example, in spite of known problems in Xinjinag, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia, and the fact that China only officially recognizes 55 of about 400 ethnic groups in its lands, China considers racism a “Western problem.”

Still, since the Charter was issued, numerous nations have attempted to address this issue.

Read this booklet. Basically, its main point is that racism is virtually everywhere. Only a handful of nations such as the United States with its Civil Rights laws and Australia with its formal apology of its treatment of Aboriginals have made attempts to rectify this. For most countries, “Order—not freedom—is the priority” (82). So-called systemic racism is the way of the world. Hal Lindsey would point out that when Jesus said “Nation will rise against nation” until the world’s end (see Matthew 24:7) the Greek word for nation is ethnos. It actually could be more accurately translated “Ethnic group will rise against ethnic group.” (For what it is worth, the next phrase in that verse says “Kingdom against kingdom” refers to the political entities.)

This book is descriptive, not prescriptive. It describes things historically and in the present. For that reason, some parts are fairly dry. Few people from any of the places described would say it was inaccurate in its descriptions. It gives credit to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt for the initial push for human rights. It also quotes former American President Barack Obama. Racism and Anti-Racism in the World is neither sanguine or pessimistic. It just tells it like it is.

One interpretation this reviewer thought of was that both anecdotally and statistically, the United States is much less racist than it was before 1945. Why, then, are we still hearing about Black Lives Matter and systemic racism? When I took a foreign policy class in college, a term the professor used was “revolution of rising expectations.” Revolutions and challenges to authority usually come from those whose expectations are rising. They are no longer kept down or directly oppressed. Most revolutionaries are educated and from the middle or upper classes, but they either know or feel that there is an injustice that needs correcting, and the way to correct it is through “systemic” change, or revolution. In a way, that is a good sign. Things are getting better. The question is whether or not the “system” has to be radically changed, and if so, how?

Michael Crichton. Congo. 1980. Ballantine, 1993.

Michael Crichton is known for examining scientific “what ifs?” such in as his Jurassic Park: What if we found enough dinosaur DNA to reconstruct a dinosaur? Congo contains the intersection of two scientific researches going on in the late seventies. This intersection takes us to the Congo.

First, integrated circuits or microchips had been invented, and people are looking for ways to make them smaller. This is 1979. What if a rare industrial diamond proved to be a perfect semiconductor?

Second, we have all read about Koko the gorilla and a few other apes kept in captivity that have been taught to communicate in a simple manner with humans. What if we could take such an ape to the wild to communicate with their relatives in the wild? Would we then be able to communicate with them? Would such an ape teach its young how to communicate the way that, say, crows in certain regions have learned tricks and then passed them on? For example, for a number of years crows in one region have learned to chase squirrels into traffic for a quick roadkill meal. This trick has been passed on.

Within these fascinating ideas, Crichton tells a clever story. A semiconductor manufacturing firm is trying to find these blue diamonds along the Rwanda-Congo (then called Zaire) border. A team discovered such diamonds by tracking down the location of a “lost city” known in antiquity as Zinj. Crichton got this name from the Arabic name for what is today the Tanzanian coast, Zanj.

The city was known for its diamonds in ancient times, but had been hidden by the jungle for centuries. A few explorers describe it, and Earth Resources Technology Services (ERTS) sends a team to try to relocate it to find those blue diamonds. The team finds the city and sends one video transmission describing their discovery but showing them being killed by strange anthropoid apes.

A consortium of German and Japanese companies has also sent a team. (Back in the day these were the two main countries competing with the American electronics industry.) Who will get there first? What will happen?

To complicate things, there is ongoing warfare along the border at this time. (For what it is worth, I once was stationed with a couple of men from the Zaire military who described exactly such fighting along their Eastern frontier.) In addition, solar flares during that year interfered with many radio signals, making outside communication via radio impossible. A nearby volcano also is rumbling (there actually would be a significant eruption there in 1980).

Mostly, though, the challenge is what Conrad called the heart of darkness. Crichton’s description of the interior African rain forest sounds forbidding. The tall trees and layers of vegetation make it very hot, very moist, and surprisingly dark. Crichton quotes a number of historians and African explorers like Henry M. Stanley to give a sense of both what the jungle and the practices of its native peoples are like. I would recommend this book to anyone studying Heart of Darkness just to get a greater sense of the people and territory Conrad was describing in his novel.

The ERTS team arrives, led by hunter-mercenary “Captain” Munro and overseen by ERTS executive Karen Ross. With them are Peter Elliot and Amy. Elliot is a primatologist who has taught the young gorilla Amy over six hundred terms using a variation of American Sign Language.

This expedition has many obstacles to overcome. They refer to it as the Congo Field Survey, but it could just as easily have been called the Eldorado Expedition like Conrad’s voyage up the Congo River. Except for Elliot, they are in it for the money. Fame appeals more to Elliot.

One of the more interesting concepts in Congo would be further developed in Crichton’s Next: What if people trained animals to be killers and then the animals continued to pass their knowledge on to their offspring when their human trainers were long gone?

Congo also looks back. The city of Zinj guarded by mutant or hybrid gorillas certainly has echoes of Tarzan’s city of Opar and the new species of ape that raised Tarzan. It may be a little more plausible because of the scientific explanations. The name Zinj may also have been partly inspired the name originally given to an extinct ape found in East Africa: Zinjanthropus.

Although the story is clever science fiction combined with action and adventure, there is some humor. When primatologists observe Amy and other monkeys that have been trained to communicate, they note that those that communicate look down on their own species who do not know how to do that.

Such observations led another researcher, John Bates, to say in 1977 that “we are producing an educated animal élite which demonstrates the same snobbish aloofness that a Ph.D. shows a truck driver…It is highly unlikely that the generation of language-using primates will be skillful ambassadors in the field. They are simply too disdainful.” (66)

Ah, elitists vs. deplorables even among other creatures! (To the best of my limited knowledge, Crichton invented John Bates.)

This entertaining story has a lot to it. It is pre-Jurassic Park Crichton, but it is still a good tale with lots of food for thought. Like Star Trek: Voyager, an underlying question is simply this: What does it mean to be human?

P.S. One of this reviewer’s all-time favorite essays is by Crichton. It also humorously sends up elitists who think they understand all things. Its title? “Aliens Cause Global Warming.”

Tammy Euliano. Fatal Intent. Oceanview, 2021.

We have noted that Oceanview publishing seems to pick some truly entertaining and suspenseful novels, including the Koa Kāne novels we have reviewed here. Fatal Intent is no different. Readers who get involved in the story will find their heart rates increasing. I use the medical language because our narrator here does as well.

This is medical mystery told from a surgical anesthetist’s point of view. We read about a number of patients sedated or stimulated. And some of them die. It gets complicated because our narrator, Dr. Kate Downey, is accused of malpractice when one of her patients dies, though normally it would be the responsibility of the surgeon first.

Soon we begin to see a pattern. Dr. Downey herself had had an uncle who died in a similar manner. Other apparent victims began to show up as well. In each case there was some kind of complication with the patient’s breathing after being given anesthetic gas. In each case also there were what we euphemistically call quality of life issues. Terminal cancer. A mentally retarded child. Long-term coma. Dementia.

It seems unusual to Dr. Downey that the surgeon who blamed her was not hired by the hospital in the usual manner. There also appeared to be a CRA (clinical research associate, I had to look it up) involved in these cases as well. A CRA is like a medical temporary hire. Another term sometimes used for this type of person is a locum, short for locum tenens, a placeholder. In this case the CRA is a nurse anesthetist who does not seem to stay in one place for very long. In fact, Dr. Downey recognizes the name but cannot recall what he looks like. When she legally tries to get access to his personnel files, she finds out there are none.

The accusations build up against Dr. Downey. Fortunately for her, a lawyer named Charles whose father died in a hospital under similar circumstances wants to get to the bottom of things as well.

The CRA leaves the hospital shortly after Dr. Downey is charged, but not before charging her with sexual harassment. Similar deaths start happening at two other hospitals where the CRA works after leaving Downey’s. At this point the doctor is taking some radical action. She tries to warn a patient who seems to be have been in line for questionable surgery, but she is too late. He and his wife have died of carbon monoxide asphyxiation in their home.

One very effective technique of the story is that we rarely see this allegedly homicidal CRA. No one is even sure of his name, though every name he chooses has the same initials. She and the lawyer start calling him BJ for that reason. While there is nothing supernatural in this tale, it almost reads like a horror story because we get the sense that BJ is pulling strings in the background like an unseen specter. (Fans of The Mentalist might think of Red John…)

This BJ character becomes something like Sherlock Holmes’ Professor Moriarty, the “Napoleon of crime.” He is there, lurking in the background. Sinister things seem to happen when he is around, but he always manages to move on. And why does he seem to have no problem getting hired? Are there any eminences grises behind BJ?

Police and the FBI get involved. Downey feels even greater pressure. As a kind of counterpoint, her own husband Greg has himself been comatose after a war injury for months. She wants to wait a year before making a decision because some people do recover from his type of trauma. But Greg’s brother insists that she is being foolish and that her hope is fruitless. When her house is broken into and one of her associates at the hospital is murdered, it seems like things are going out of control.

There is more, of course. There are good doctors and ones whose interpretation of the Hippocratic oath is pretty loose. There are professionals fearful losing their positions. And why was the CRA hired anyhow? What about the hiring of that other doctor? It seems too organized. Dr. Downey’s administrator is pretty hostile towards her, but how much of that is due to plain old money? Hospitals need generous donors to keep things going. No one wants to kill the proverbial golden goose.

Complicated and suspenseful, Fatal Intent is a true thriller. I would not be surprised to hear film rights have been sold for it. If you like suspense, you will like Fatal Intent.

Jerold Zimmerman and Daniel P. Forrester. Relentless: The Forensics of Mobsters’ Business Practices. Willowcroft, 2020.

The subtitle of Relentless is slightly misleading. It is not so much forensics, as it is simply an economic analysis of four criminal gangs. However, what we can learn from it applies to all kinds of businesses and other organizations as well. I suppose we could call it forensic economics.

If you were to type in relentless.com on your web browser, you would get Amazon. That was one of the original names Jeff Bezos chose for his online book business. Relentless often uses Amazon as an example of a legitimate business that uses many of the same organizational techniques as the four groups it highlights: the Mafia, the Sinaloa Drug Cartel, the Hells Angels, and the Bloods and Crips (with more emphasis on the Crips). For readers not as interested in the ins and outs of these gangs, the last two chapters give some direction to businesses. Certainly anyone in any kind of management position would find this book helpful and even—dare I say—inspiring.

There are some distinct differences. The Mafia and the Sinaloa Cartel are mainly businesses. Yes, they deal in illegal things like gambling, prostitution, and drugs, but they are businesses at their core. In reality so are the street gangs like the Bloods and Crips as drug dealers. The Hells Angels (HAs) is an outlaw motorcycle club (OMC) that promotes violence but is not necessarily organized for the money. Again, except for its immorality, Relentless compares HAs to other kinds of voluntary organizations like other clubs, churches, and charities in terms of what we can learn from it.

Many lawful organizations possess similar cultural values as brotherhood, loyalty, and social engagement as the HAs [Hells Angels]…Like the Angels, the Masons required elaborate initiation rites. People form not for profit theater groups because they seek the fellowship and pleasure of associating with like-minded individuals wishing to promote the arts. Others seek out country clubs and churches with members who share the same values and enjoy the same activities. (130)

One example to illustrate that the Hells Angels club is not a business is that whenever a Mafioso or Sinaloa cartel member is arrested, the organizations provide bail money. They have plenty. When Sonny Barger, the founder of the Angels was arrested, he could not post bail.

The authors cite other sources for their basic approach to business success. First there are four pillars of any successful business or organization: its task, performance measurements, performance rewards and punishments, and its culture. Of all the organizations here, the authors recognize the Mafia as likely the most successful in mounting the four pillars.

In the 1930s the five crime families of New York City organized the Commission. This set certain rules for the families such as killing any “made” member of any family had to be approved by the commission. This insured that there would be few “gangland slayings” to call attention to their criminal activities

Similarly, the Hells Angels are organized through the Oakland, California, chapter with regional groups overseeing local clubs. They also have rules of behavior such as any drugs or guns that members might sell must be of good quality to maintain the reputation of the club.

The other two groups have overall been weaker in this aspect, causing many more conflicts and killings. In the case of the Mexican drug cartels, the numbers murdered are in the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands.

The chapters on the Mafia and Hells Angels in this book tend to be stronger, too. That is partly because news accounts are available but also because leaders of each organization wrote autobiographies. Rudy Giuliani, who started out as a public prosecutor, credits Joe Bonnano’s autobiography with showing New York prosecutors how the Mafia was organized and giving them clues on how to best prosecute them.

Similarly, Sonny Barger, one of the founders of the Oakland Hells Angels describes many of the things that he did to promote his brand of outlaw bikers. Indeed, the authors frequently speak of the “brand” of each of the organizations. This includes how people both trust them (e.g., Mafia gambling operations are not rigged) and fear them (all have many members who are murderers). The book does note that the Hells Angels are slightly different because they emphasize motorcycling over money. They are not a criminal organization but an organization that includes criminals.

All four organizations have survived because they have been able to adapt to new circumstances and changes in law enforcement. Both the Mafia and the Hells Angels had problems with police informers. The Mafia then required that any made man would have had to have committed a murder. They figured that no undercover cop would murder someone. Similarly, the Hells Angels began to require a longer probationary period for new members partly to observe them better but also to do more thorough background checks.

The Sinaloa organization has done many different creative things to smuggle drugs. If one part of the American border becomes less penetrable, they go to a different location or maybe dig a tunnel or use submarines. They built meth factories and currently are doing more with manufacturing opioids. Such things reflect a changing illicit drug market. The African-American urban street gangs like the Bloods and the Crips began to flourish when the process for making crack cocaine was developed.

Court records and released communications have given the authors most of the information that they have about the Sinaloa cartel. El Chapo Guzman is currently in prison, but the work goes on.

The chapter on the Bloods and Crips is the vaguest of the chapters. Most of what the authors refer to are sociological studies, so names of the members and even the name of the gangs are not mentioned. One gets the impression that the two gangs are more rivals than enemies, but it is hard to tell. Still, we get an overall idea of how the gangs operate.

In addition to making innovations and adapting to change, there are few other things that any business or organization can learn from these groups. All of them promote great loyalty and identification with their group. For example, Hells Angels do not own their jacket patches. These belong to the organization. If for some reason a member leaves or is kicked out, he has to return the patch and even have any club tattoo removed.

By the way, the authors do note that all four organization are entirely male. One statistic suggests that one of the African-American gangs may have a female enrollment of seven percent of the total membership, but that is it.

In all four instances, the organizations attract boys or men who are looking for respect and have lower moral standards. Identifying with a gang gives them not only identity but respect and a purpose. Even good legitimate businesses and organizations must have people who believe in what the business or organization is doing. Successful organizations have ways of recognizing achievement that goes beyond financial remuneration. Such things as employee of the month or teacher of the year can help them find motivated people and retain them.

Each organization has had problems with people who are not effectively loyal. In most cases such people do something against the rules to get more money, e.g., diluting a drug or skimming money taken in. Legitimate businesses have similar problems. Now, legitimate businesses cannot resort to violence, but they need to come up with ways to insure worker loyalty and respect and to deal with what the book calls “vampire” employees.

There are many more specifics in this book. Although the subtitle suggests this book was about the investigation or prosecution of criminals, it is really about how businesses and organizations survive. The authors note that other books have analyzed different companies to show how successful companies operate, only to have those companies falter and even fail within a decade after the book came out.

As suggested by the title and the book’s introduction (and our second paragraph above), one of the more adaptable companies has been Amazon. Like the effective gangs, they have competed successfully, adapted to new technologies, and put some rivals out of business while buying out others. Relentless contrasts the adaptability of Netflix with the inability of Blockbuster to adapt as a good example we can learn from.

Relentless notes that any organization has to persevere and adapt, be relentless in that sense, the way Amazon has. It notes that the Mafia is not what it used to be because Italian-Americans are not socially marginalized the way they were a hundred years ago. Like Rudy Giuliani, for example, they have earned respect in a moral and socially acceptable way. Will that eventually happen to the successors of the Crips? Will turf wars kill off the best Mexican drug runners? Will the rising price of Harley-Davidson motorcycles keep rebellious youth from even trying to emulate OMCs? Who knows? In the meantime, legitimate businesses and organizations can learn some things from these organizations. Even Jesus in Luke 16:8ff. noted that we can learn from those who earn money unjustly.

One current observation this reviewer could not help make. Mr. Giuliani was fairly successful in combating organized crime in New York. When he tried using the courts to go after the so-called Deep State, he was foiled. Governments are legal or lawful, but corruption of various forms or fear of getting involved can be a temptation for those working in all branches of the government, too.

Lisa Klaussmann. Tigers in Red Weather. Little Brown, 2012.

Poet Wallace Stevens wrote:

        Only here and there, an old sailor
        Drunk and asleep in his boots,
        Catches tigers
        In red weather.

It is a well-known poem called “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock,” which the poet describes disappointment with those who are well off and could be doing so much more with their lives. That seems to be a theme of this novel as well.

I was drawn to this book only because of its title. With such a quotation, it must have had some literary quality and perhaps even a little connection with the poem. I am happy to say that it did.

I wrote recently that it seems a lot of American novels could be seen as postscripts to The Great Gatsby. That is true of this story.

This focuses on two female cousins who grew up very close and together inherited some wealth. Nick (apparently short for Nicole) lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and her family had a large summer home on the offshore island of Martha’s Vineyard. Thanks to Senator Teddy Kennedy and Presidents Clinton and Obama, most readers know something of the Vineyard as a summer spot for well-to-do liberals. Such is this family.

Nick and her cousin Helena marry in the early 1940s and their new husbands both go off to war. Helena’s is killed in battle, but Nick’s Navy officer husband Hughes returns. Helena will marry again, this time to an aspiring Hollywood type named Avery. They move to Los Angeles, but each summer Helena returns to Martha’s Vineyard where most of the story takes place.

Like Gatsby, most of the characters are unwittingly trying to distinguish the difference between desire and love. Hughes is very attractive to women. Even when she is not sure she loves him any more, Nick still has a strong physical attraction to him. Nick herself, while not a classic beauty, has a certain style that also makes her attractive to men. She knows it, too, and can flaunt that knowledge.

Helena is a poorer cousin and seems to lack the confidence of Nick. Still, at least two male characters in the book compare her to actress Jane Russell. She also, then, is attractive though, unlike her cousin, does not seem to either know or care how to exploit it. She comes across as emotionally needy in the sense that she loves Avery because he does frequently tell her how beautiful she is.

The question about attraction comes through, though, in the next generation. Much of the story takes place in 1959 in Martha’s Vineyard. Each cousin has an only child both about twelve years old at the time. Nick’s Daisy is fresh and still on the young side. She is beginning to notice boys and has a crush on Ty, another Vineyard summer visitor whom a lot of the girls find good looking. He is about two years older and has begun to have girlfriends.

Ed, son of Helena, is more socially awkward. If he were a boy of twelve today, we would probably label him “on the spectrum.” He is trying to figure out how to relate to people by observing how other people relate to each other. Now that he is almost thirteen, he is especially interested about male-female relationships. However, his guileless staring and stealthy eavesdropping make people nervous.

For most of the story—except for the beginning chapters which are set in the forties—he is the one person who is asking the question in so many words, “What is the difference between love and desire?” He and Daisy are close. He asks her what she sees in Ty. She cannot really explain it other than good looks and confidence. When Ed tells her in so many words that Ty is a self-absorbed jerk, she acknowledges it, but says she likes him anyway. Indeed, the two younger cousins appear to be the most direct all the way through.

The element of wealth contributes a lot to the story. It seems like the wealthy can get away with things. The Great Gatsby notes, about the rich couple in that novel:

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…

So it seems the same here. During the summer of 1959 a young, pretty Portuguese housemaid is brutally murdered. It becomes pretty clear who did it, but he gets away with it. (As an interesting aside, the latest chapters take place in 1969, and the story of Senator Kennedy leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to drown is a backdrop made without commentary, but here we see from real life the kind of thing Fitzgerald had written about.)

Ed has observed the wealthy employer and the maid carry on their affair, trying to figure out what they found attractive in each other. Later, he will be the one to discover her mutilated body. People in the family and others will attribute some of Ed’s strange behavior to this event, something that would disturb anyone. For the rich employer, murder is the easy way to get rid of someone who has become a problem.

While money might make some people get away with murder or other crimes and infidelities, it also can corrupt those who desire it. Avery, Helena’s husband, hopes he can get some of the family’s money to help bankroll his movie plans (which never bear fruit in over twenty years). He even exploits Helena’s natural beauty to get backing. At that point, though, teenaged Ed sees what is going on, and this makes his questions about love and desire even more complicated. What about people who are unattractive or no longer attractive or who demand too much? What will happen to the next generation?

Yes, many of the characters are tigers—they are predatory. Some are killers. Even those who act defensively use more strength than is necessary. It seems like everyone has wounds and, as is often said, hurt people hurt people. But sometimes the painful experience can give us insight or wisdom we otherwise would not have.

I am happy to note that the author’s indirect observations connected to the Stevens poem quoted are similar to what I teach my students when I teach the poem. I am not sure I would necessarily recommend the novel to high schoolers because of a couple of R-rated scenes, but it does have a literary quality. This is more than just a soap opera.

One other note on this book. I was happy to read the Kindle edition because the cover on the print version makes the story look like chick lit. It is not. Yes, the story is told from the points of view of the five main characters and three are women: Nick, Helena, and Daisy. But this story is for everyone. It is hard, it is real, and it perhaps is also a reminder that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man or woman enter the kingdom of God (see Mark 10:25). In most cases it is simply because they do not want to.

Robert McCaw. Death of a Messenger. Oceanview, 2015.

Chronologically, this is apparently the first of the Koa Kāne Hawaiian Mysteries. We have reviewed a couple of the sequels to this one. As with the other two stories, McCaw takes us into the island culture by telling a gripping tale.

In the first chapter, an anonymous caller to the police describes a dead body in a volcanic cave in the middle of the Big Island of Hawaii. The cave itself is in the middle of an Army firing range. The body has been disfigured as if it were some kind of ritual murder. The first chapter is grim, but it does not foreshadow the rest of the story. This is a mystery, not a horror story.

It turns out that this cave was used in the distant past by native Hawaiians and contains some artifacts and shards of historical interest. Around the same time as this discovery, the son of an old friend of Detective Koa Kāne was picked up unconscious on the island of Kaho’olawe. That smaller island has been uninhabited since World War II when the Navy began using it for target practice. However, it is known to have had some sites of archaeological interest to people.

The Army firing range is near the Saddle Road which runs across the middle of the island between the two main cities of Kona and Hilo. It is about six thousand feet above sea level, a little less than halfway to the highest peak in the islands, Mauna Kea. Mauna Kea is known for its astronomical observatory. When the body is finally identified, it turns out to be that of a young astronomer from the observatory.

There are numerous interesting characters. Some show us something of the social and ethnic makeup of Hawaii. Some are suspects. Some are both.

We meet “Hook” Hao, father of the young man rescued from Kaho’olawe, a fisherman and seafood broker who has his ear to the pier. There is Prince Kamehameha, wealthy descendant of his namesake king. He is interested in preserving the Hawaiian culture, but not necessarily at the expense of what makes money. There is Akiu ‘Ōpua, a native activist promoting Hawaiian independence. He is a friend of the Prince and was also apparently on Kaho’olawe when Hook’s son Reggie was injured there.

There are the various astronomers: Thurston Masters, head of the Mauna Kea Observatory; Gunter Nelson, who may or may not have had a grudge against the young victim; Julie Benson, Masters’ assistant and paramour; Charlie Harper, another observatory worker; and the victim’s girlfriend, an astronomer currently working in Chile. For some reason, though, the astronomer had a plane ticket to California for the day he died.

There are also a few other possible criminal types who could have been involved such as Skeeter Slade, helicopter pilot whose ‘copter was mapping the area where the cave was; Garvie Jenkins, a convicted criminal connected with both missing antiquities and equipment from the observatory; and Starfish Shipping, whose shipping container had an extra compartment.

There are lots of trails to follow, but they all seem to be leading to a single place. There are also some interesting side notes. Masters has been hailed for making a discovery about the red shift that will change the way people interpret distant astronomical events. And even though Kāne himself is a native Hawaiian, we learn much more about the indigenous Hawaiians through characters like Reggie, ‘Ōpua, and their friend Prince Kamehameha. The prince is true Hawaiian nobility, but even he might be a suspect when it comes to stealing archaeological artifacts.

Without giving too much away, some of the action takes place in a blizzard. Yes, Hawaii may be a true tropical paradise, but there is a reason Mauna Kea got its name. It means “White Mountain” in Hawaiian. Winter at over 13,000 feet above sea level can be brutal even in the tropics.

Death of a Messenger is another Koa Kāne thriller. It has a wild, yet believable plot, with the backdrop of the exotic island culture, and a distinctive professional subculture of astronomers. McCaw has done it again! Enjoy!