Collected Miscellany

How much violence and brutality is too much and how much adds a entertaining sharp edge to a thriller?  This is not an easy question to answer unless you are one of those people on the extremes who enjoys either none at all or an unlimited amount.

It is also tricky because it depends on both the reader’s tastes and the author’s skills. Some authors can make a violent story darkly beautiful while some make the same level of violence seem over-the-top.

As you might have suspected, I bring this up in relation to the David Stone thriller series featuring Micah Dalton.  I reviewed the first book (The Echelon Vendetta); just finished the second book (The Orpheus Deception); and I am planning to tackle The Venetian Judgment soon.

This is an often violent, and at times gruesome, series.  Stone seems to like villains whose souls are twisted beyond recognition and who therefor do some very nasty things.  The hero must both escape being given this treatment, but also stop a larger threat to US national security.

This time it involves some sort of chemical weapon, a stolen tanker, a former colleague sent to the infamous Changi prison in Singapore, and Dalton’s Balkan crime lord nemesis.

Stone manages to pull all these threads together and weave a suspenseful, action filled, and entertaining plot.  I found the second book had a consistent vibe of black humor which I enjoyed but, like many in the genre, it is quiet violent and often strains credibility.  It also barely qualifies as a stand alone work.  If you haven’t read the first book it is difficult to fully enjoy this one.

Further thoughts below.  Read the rest of this entry »

Champlain’s Dream by David Hackett Fischer is a wonderful look at one of  North America’s European founding fathers and heroes.  Samuel de Champlain was the major impetus behind the creation and expansion of New France (Canada) – without him pushing the colony in the beginning, Canada may have been a British colony.

Here is an excerpt of the summary from the publisher’s website:

In this sweeping, enthralling biography, acclaimed historian David Hackett Fischer brings to life the remarkable Samuel de Champlain — soldier, spy, master mariner, explorer, cartographer, artist, and Father of New France.

Born on France’s Atlantic coast, Champlain grew to manhood in a country riven by religious warfare. The historical record is unclear on whether Champlain was baptized Protestant or Catholic, but he fought in France’s religious wars for the man who would become Henri IV, one of France’s greatest kings, and like Henri, he was religiously tolerant in an age of murderous sectarianism. Champlain was also a brilliant navigator. He went to sea as a boy and over time acquired the skills that allowed him to make twenty-seven Atlantic crossings without losing a ship.

But we remember Champlain mainly as a great explorer. On foot and by ship and canoe, he traveled through what are now six Canadian provinces and five American states. Over more than thirty years he founded, colonized, and administered French settlements in North America. Sailing frequently between France and Canada, he maneuvered through court intrigue in Paris and negotiated among more than a dozen Indian nations in North America to establish New France. Champlain had early support from Henri IV and later Louis XIII, but the Queen Regent Marie de Medici and Cardinal Richelieu opposed his efforts. Despite much resistance and many defeats, Champlain, by his astonishing dedication and stamina, finally established France’s New World colony. He tried constantly to maintain peace among Indian nations that were sometimes at war with one another, but when he had to, he took up arms and forcefully imposed a new balance of power, proving himself a formidable strategist and warrior.

Throughout his three decades in North America, Champlain remained committed to a remarkable vision, a Grand Design for France’s colony. He encouraged intermarriage among the French colonists and the natives, and he insisted on tolerance for Protestants. He was a visionary leader, especially when compared to his English and Spanish contemporaries — a man who dreamed of humanity and peace in a world of cruelty and violence.

Fischer’s book is an excellent examination of a man that many Americans do not think much about because they do not think that he had much influence on this country.  However, as Fischer points out, this impression would be wrong.  Champlain’s influence on French and Indian relations in Canada affected British/American relations with the Indians.  For example, due to the belligerence of the French to the Iroquois, those Indians turned to the British for support.  The Iroquois allied themselves with the British in two major wars – the French and Indian and the American Revolution.

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2009 seems to be the year of the thriller for me.  Once I got started with the genre I just kept finding more to read.  My latest in this vein is a series by David Stone featuring Micah Dalton.  The first in the series is The Echelon Vendetta.

There is a lot going on in this often violent, and at times gruesome, espionage thriller and it isn’t easy to capture it all.  I found the most succinct and accurate summation at Entertainment Weekly of all places:

When a mission goes awry in David Stone’s The Echelon Vendetta, the CIA calls in Micah Dalton, a ”cleaner” who dispassionately mops up the mess. But then a friend and fellow agent dies in an apparent suicide and the pal’s family is found hacked to death. As he follows the trail from Tuscany to London to CIA headquarters to the Rocky Mountains, Dalton encounters government spooks, Native American mysticism, hallucinogens, and gruesome violence with which he seems creepily comfortable. But Stone’s unsettling tale keeps losing momentum, due to his nasty habit of interrupting the action with poetic travelogues at each new stop around the globe.

There are really three threads involved in this story.  The main thread is a rather straightforward, and well done, espionage story.  Dalton has to find out what is behind his friend and colleague’s death.  He eventually finds out that his mystery Native American killer is brutally murdering anyone connected to a mission gone bad on a project called Echelon.  Dalton tracks down the killer, and his true identity, as the bodies pile up.  The tension builds until the two confront each other.  Then Stone throws in a twist at the very end.

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I first heard about Joe Mackall at an event at Ohio State this past summer with Dinty Moore.  I like what I heard and so picked up both Last Street Before Cleveland and Plain Secrets: An Outsider among the Amish.  I had some interest in the Amish as I had once worked for a State Senator who represented the area in which the book was set and had has some interaction with Amish issues.

It turned out to be a fascinating book and much more than just a story about how the Amish live.  Sure, Mackall offers real insights into the way the Swartzentruber Amish that are his neighbors live; what they are like as people, friends, neighbors, etc.

But it is more than that.

For those unfamiliar with the subject here is some useful background from the book’s website:

Joe Mackall has lived surrounded by the Swartzentruber Amish community of Ashland County, Ohio, for over sixteen years. They are the most traditional and insular of all the Amish sects: the Swartzentrubers live without gas, electricity, or indoor plumbing; without lights on their buggies or cushioned chairs in their homes; and without rumspringa, the recently popularized “running-around time” that some Amish sects allow their sixteen-year-olds.

Over the years, Mackall has developed a steady relationship with the Shetler family (Samuel and Mary, their nine children, and their extended family). Plain Secrets tells the Shetlers’ story over these years, using their lives to paint a portrait of Swartzentruber Amish life and mores. During this time, Samuel’s nephew Jonas finally rejects the strictures of the Amish way of life for good, after two failed attempts to leave, and his bright young daughter reaches the end of school for Amish children: the eighth grade. But Plain Secrets is also the story of the unusual friendship between Samuel and Joe. Samuel is quietly bemused—and, one suspects, secretly delighted—at Joe’s ignorance of crops and planting, carpentry and cattle. He knows Joe is planning to write a book about the family, and yet he allows him a glimpse of the tensions inside this intensely private community.

If I had to pick a word to descirbe Mackall’s writing it would be “honest.”

In our day and age the concept of “real” has become a cliche; part of a hokey phrase like “keeping it real.” But there is something very real about the way Mackall writes and the stories he tells.  The relationships he explores and the way he communicates them reflects both an honest curiostiy but also a deep respect for the people involved.

Mackall gives the reader a basic overview of the this particular Amish community and helpfully provides context for the larger Amish culture.  He does this with care by intentionally avoiding sensationalism.  But at the same he xplores his own feelings about this unique community and what this says about our culture and theirs – and how the two interact. This deep respect for his subject matter and a continuing sense of introspection makes for a much deeper story.

Those with an interest in the Amish are probably already well aware of Plain Secrets.  But if you have ever wondered about Amish life this would be a great introduction – not because of the technical details but because of the real sense of how they live.  But really, anyone who enjoys well written narrative non-fiction would enjoy this engaging book.

For some reason if a book doesn’t get reviewed relatively quickly I struggle mightily to get around to it at all.  This habit vexes me to no end and this year I have tried, with varying degrees of success, to be better about not allowing books to get lost.

Joe Mackall’s The Last Street Before Cleveland was one book that got lost in the shuffle somehow and sat in the “To Be Reviewed” pile for months.  So this week I resolved to write about it and check that off the list.

So what exactly is the book about?  Despite the books brevity (150 pages) it is not easy to summarize.  It is about trying to go home again; about overcoming depression and finding faith; about memory and nostalgia; about the dying blue collar world; etc.

The publisher describes it this way:

The old neighborhood was the place Joe Mackall left. It was a place where everyone’s parents worked at the factory at the dead end of the street, where the Catholic church and school operated like a religious city hall, and where a boy like Joe grew up vowing to get out as soon as he could and to shed his blue-collar beginnings and failed, flawed religion. When the mysterious death of a childhood friend draws him back to the last street before Cleveland, however, he discovers that there is more to “old haunts” than mere words—and more to severing one’s roots than just getting away.

The titular “last street before” Cleveland is the street Mackall lived on in Parma, Ohio just outside of Cleveland; one street up and you were in Cleveland proper.  Which is not all that far away from where the author lives now in Ashland, Ohio where he teaches English and journalism at Ashland University.  But culturally and metaphorically it is a different world.

So when he returns to the geography of his youth it is a disorientating experience and it takes him in directions he never anticipated.  This memoir takes the reader along for the ride.

For my belated thoughts click below.

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As I have been reading thrillers lately I thought it might be worthwhile to throw in some with an international flavor.  So I added Selcuk Altun’s Songs My Mother Never Taught Me to the reading list.  It turned out to be an interesting reading experience, but hard to get a handle on.

The simple plot belies the novels complexity, but here is Booklist’s quick take:

This latest Turkish import, set in Istanbul, is written entirely in the first person, from the points of view of the two main characters, Arda, a child of privilege and a smothering mother, and Bedirhan, an orphan turned assassin. The reader is rapidly drawn into the innermost thoughts and feelings of both characters, as Arda decides how to live his life after the death of his mother, and Bedirhan vows to get out of the assassin business. The tension is gradually ratcheted up as Arda discovers his father was assassinated and sets out to hunt for the killer, even as the reader learns of the strangely intertwined lives of Arda and Bedirhan.

You could easily imagine a typical thriller with this setup.  Alternating first person chapters leading the reader on a quest to figure out how these two characters are connected and racing to find the conclusion/resolution.

But the novel never had that thriller feel for me.

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When we last left Elspeth and Edmund they were traveling into the mountain to attempt to destroy the trickster god Loki with the crystal sword.  I suppose it is a spoiler of a kind (but if you a reading a review of the third book you have to kinda suspect this) to say that they failed in that mission.

Instead, some treachery lead to Loki’s escape and wreaking of havoc on the world.  The whole gang is forced to flee and re-evaluate just how they can destroy the monster before he destroys them and burns everything to the ground.

The last book in the Darkest Age trilogy, The Circle of Stone,  finds them continuing on their quest and things are as bleak as they have ever been (and that is pretty bad in a series called The Darkest Age).

Despite temptations to go their different ways the group commits to sticking together.  With the hope that Ioneth, the spirit behind the sword, is still there (although very faintly) Elspeth is determined to somehow find Loki and destroy him.  But they have little luck finding anything but fire and destruction.  Loki has split himself up and is as elusive as ever.  Outside of the fires the only trace them seem to find of him is the growing cult of the Burning Man.

The challenge for Lake in this concluding book was to wrap up the story while at the same time keeping the reader guessing and provide an entertaining conclusion.  In this she succeeds.  The Stone Circle has plenty of twists and turns and ends with a powerful conclusion.

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