Tag: book reviews

Behold, Three Books

On By Jennifer Mugrage3 Comments

Hunting Time, a Colter Shaw Novel, by Jeffery Deaver.

By the way, it’s “hunting TIME,” not “HUNTing time.” The sense is not “time to hunt,” but “we don’t just save time, we hunt it down.”

This is a very professional modern thriller and the author has tons of blurbs on the back from other modern thriller writers. The plot was intricate, the pacing tense, and the characters were distinctive enough to keep them straight and give some emotional momentum to the story. There was also at least one major twist that I did not see coming, and that I really thought was clever.

Possibly the best-drawn “character” is the Midwestern city of Ferrington, the picture of urban blight but without the glamour of a big coastal city. Ferrington used to be an industrial capital, but then many industries left the city, leaving people out of work. Now the place seems to be nothing but drugs, crime, and despair. There are lot of chain-link-fence-surrounded empty lots filled with trash, long streets full of abandoned warehouses, and there is a badly polluted river. The ugliness of the scenes described rises to the level of beauty. The cops are corrupt in some cases and spread too thin in others. I think the name Ferrington is supposed to remind us of Ferguson, Missouri, and this is where we start to get into the book’s flaws.

Though Deaver mostly sticks to the story, when laying his scenes he makes sure to get in occasional digs at the reader. Bigots are everywhere. Trans is good, gay is good. We capitalize Black but not white. Stuff like that. Oh, and of course, capitalists are the one who ruined Ferrington in the first place.

My other issue with this book is the female characters. They’re not terrible, but … but … well. They are just missing a certain je-ne-sais-quois. For example, one of the point of view characters is a woman, Allison Parker. Deaver uses third person limited with her and with Colter Shaw, the sleuth. When we are inside Allison’s point of view, he frequently calls her Parker. That is just a bit confusing. It makes it sound like there is another person in the room. I am pretty sure that most women don’t think of themselves by their last name. Although maybe men do. Which is really the problem: All Deaver’s “female” characters (he has three main ones in this book) think more like men. Allison Parker is an engineering genius, very organized, very no-nonsense. Her daughter Hannah is a math genius, also no-nonsense. Sonja Nilsson is a former military operative (you guessed it, no-nonsense!) who is willing to sleep with Shaw after having known him for a day or two.

This is not a problem with Deaver alone. Many, many female authors write “male” characters who think and talk like women. It’s just awfully difficult to get into the head of the opposite sex.

Finally, there are occasional little things that made me scratch my head. “Seahorses can be sensuous.” (They can?) “Five-high.” (It’s high-five.) Nilsson lost forty pounds, and kept it off, in order to go into witness protection. (Oh, I didn’t realize it was that easy. Especially since she left the military at the same time! But, as we all know, the only thing keeping fat people from losing weight is the want-to. Eye roll)

Due to all these little flaws, and because the reveal of the villain was less satisfying than I had hoped, I give this book three out of five stars.

Tomb of the Golden Bird, by Elizabeth Peters

This was pure fun.

The Emersons are a family of British Egyptologists. Emerson, “Father of Curses,” the paterfamilias, is married to Amelia Peabody, whom he calls “Peabody.” This hot couple began their Egyptian adventures back in the Victorian era, but now it is 1922. Their grown son, nicknamed Ramses, is married and has children, and the Emersons have a large, motley household of employees, longtime family friends, relatives, and adoptees, both Egyptian and British. They have returned to Luxor, Egypt, for yet another season of digging. Of course, there are going to be capers, skullduggery, and so forth, and all the Emersons will be involved up to their elbows. Will they be deceived by Emerson’s half-brother Sethos? Will they foil an international plot? Most importantly, will they ever get a peek into the intact tomb that was discovered–technically, by Emerson–and is now being opened by the odious Carter?

This series is exquisitely researched. About 60% of the story is told in the first person by Amelia Peabody, in near-perfect late Victorian/Edwardian language. Scattered everywhere are gems like this one:

… I identified several other [party] guests as journalists. I can always spot them by the bulges in their coat pockets which indicate the presence of notebooks, and by their predatory looks. Messieurs Bradstreet of the New York Times and Bancroft of the Daily Mail were known to me personally (through no fault of mine).

p. 241

The other 40% of the story is told in third person from the point of view of Ramses, who is a quieter character than his colorful parents, but it also includes gems:

He had thought of several innocent explanations for David’s behavior, including the one he had given. It was understandable that [David] might feel the need to be alone; the family en masse or individually could be wearing.

p. 254

I originally came to this series hoping for ancient Egyptian mystical mysteries. It’s not that. It’s more of a romp. Much of this book felt like following the Keystone Cops, but eventually there did turn out to be some twists that gave the whole plot shape and direction. Four out of five stars.

Matchingmaking for Psychopaths, by Tasha Coryell

I picked this up off the New Books shelf at the library. Perhaps I should have left it there, based on the title, but I had read the first few pages and found them engaging. Alas, I returned the book without finishing it. I would have liked there to be at least one main character who I was sure wasn’t a psychopath. A little psychopathology goes a long way.

When I returned the book, the librarian giggled and said, “Oh, that one was silly.” It was indeed silly. But silly and serial murder don’t mix well. At least not for me.

In Which I Read a Romance Novel from 1930

On By Jennifer Mugrage4 Comments

A year or two ago, someone challenged the famous curmudgeon Bookstooge to read Barbara Cartland. This was deliciously absurd, as Barbara Cartland is an incredibly prolific romance author from the last century, whose author picture, lest we forget it, looks like this.

These readalongs are supposed to happen in December.

In December 2024, Bookstooge and his 70,000 followers read Love Saves Day by Barbarba Cartland, which turned out to be essentially an unedited draft that was published after Cartland’s death by her children. Even so, the consensus was that we didn’t hate it as much as we expected to, and that for all its flaws, Cartland is a very professional hand at plotting.

This year, Bookstooge announced that the Cartland of choice was A Rainbow to Heaven. I purchased my copy, and everything was all ready to go. And then, after reading Chapter 3, Bookstooge bailed on us. He had his reasons. You can read them here.

But I am happy to tell you that I finished the book, and boy, did Bookstooge miss out because the plot really heats up after Chapter 3! Below, I will summarize chapter by chapter, and you will see what I saw, that Cartland has the touch when it comes to twists and turns.

And by the way, though this book was published in 1976, it is set in (and, according to the author’s note, written in) 1930.

Chapter 1

We meet Diana Headley, beautiful heiress whose father is a self-made man. We see her go to a party with the other “bright young people,” especially eligible society bachelor Hugo Dalk. We see that they are shallow, good-hearted snobs. We learn that Diana is a celebrity, whose picture is always appearing in magazines.

“I feel morbid,” she told Hugo brightly. “Let’s go and have a drink.”

p. 12

Chapter 2

Hugo proposes to Diana. She brushes him off. We get a little backstory about how this notorious playboy first got the bug for Diana.

Diana manages to get herself invited to the country home of Jack and Loelia Standish, a married couple whom she admires and who seem to represent some stability and kindness in her world. They have an estate called Huntsman’s House in the Malvern hills in Worcestershire. Jack mentions that he has an old army friend name Barry Dunbar who is “one of the most intellectual young men in Europe today.”

Chapter 3

Diana arrives at the beautiful, isolated and peaceful Huntsman’s House.

“So very, very pretty,” Loelia thought. “What a pity she leads such an aimless existence!”

p. 30

We hear more backstory about how Loelia came to marry Jack after a loveless first marriage to a man thirty-five years her senior. We hear how Jack, a sad, cynical soldier in WWI, met Barry Dunbar and was given hope and spiritual elevation by him. We learn that Barry has a project of retrieving obscure Hindu and Buddhist texts and getting them translated into English, and that Jack is helping him with funds.

Then we meet Barry himself. He is not impressed with Diana, and relates an incident in which he caught “three native boys” looking at a copy of Tatler, in which Diana appeared wearing a crazy costume that featured a bikini and top hat. Diana is embarrassed but tries to defend herself. Loelia is disappointed that Barry does not like Diana.

Chapter 4

Still at Huntsman’s House, we find that Barry has a way with both children and animals. Sitting in the morning room, intending to write a letter, Diana overhears a conversation between Jack and Barry. They discuss Barry’s travels, how great Buddhism is, and the need for a spiritual awakening in modern England, which apparently Barry’s Buddhist texts are going to catalyze. Jack presses Barry about whether he will ever marry. Barry admits to wanting a son, but doubts whether any woman could put up with his traveling lifestyle. He reiterates that he doesn’t find Diana attractive because her “mind is completely unused.”

The group walks to The Castle, a building on the Standishes’ land. They have fixed up a portion of it so guests can stay there. Eager to impress Barry, Diana asks for a copy of one of his books, and he lends her A Way. Diana finds it “extraordinarily beautiful,” but hard to understand.

Reflecting on the emptiness of her life of luxury, Diana returns to London, where she encounters her friends Cecil and Bebe,

a small vivacious blonde of her own age, who had startled London with her debut, and had continued to keep it considerably surprised ever since.

p. 51

Bebe and Cecil insist on Diana’s throwing a party, which they will organize. Hugo shows up and is disappointed that he can’t spend the evening with Diana alone.

Chapter 5

Diana and her large group of friends move from restaurant to theater to bar, drinking oceans of champagne and wasting lots of fine food which they can’t appreciate. Eventually, in the wee hours of the morning, Hugo brings Diana back to her London house. He wants to come in and “talk to her” (get an answer about his proposal), but she puts him off until tomorrow night.

Before going up to bed, Diana sees a light on in her father’s study and finds the body of her father, who has shot himself.

After the police are called and Diana’s brother Jimmy shows up, it is revealed that their father got into serious financial trouble and shot himself rather than declare bankruptcy. He was so active in the financial sphere that his ruin causes a crash, and causes many other people to lose their fortunes as well.

Chapter 6

There is a media frenzy making Diana’s father, Robert Headley, the villain. He is portrayed as intentionally looting the public, and luxuriousness of his house is exaggerated.

Quite normally decorated rooms were described as though they were treasure-houses of barbaric splendor.

p. 69

Diana and Jimmy lose everything, but the lawyer encourages Diana to keep her jewels, which she may be able to sell later. She assumes that Hugo will now not want to marry her. She boards a train and goes back to Huntsman’s House for a few days to get away from the publicity and to collect herself.

Chapter 7

Staying at the The Castle on Jack and Loelia’s property, Diana gets a letter from her brother Jimmy. He has taken a job at a garage, with the understanding that he will work under an assumed name so as not to damage the garage’s reputation. The other mechanics can tell that he’s upper-class, and they don’t respect him until he gets into a fight. Diana realizes that she does not have any marketable skills. Although she can ride horses, dance, and speaks several languages, she is not equipped to teach any of these things.

Barry catches her sitting outdoors, crying, and tells her that she still has “the only thing that matters … Courage.”

A friend of Diana’s finds a potential job her. She is to be a “companion” to the daughter of a socially climbing family called the Schnibers. This is quite a change for Diana, but she decides to take the job. Once in their home, she sees how Mrs. Schniber raises money and contributes to a lot of charities, but the wealthy patrons she is helping still don’t treat her with courtesy, much to her frustration.

The Schnibers go to Monte Carlo for the summer, and Diana accompanies them. At one point, she gets away from her duties to have supper with a nice young man whose eye she has caught. He reveals that he lost his fortune in the Headley Crash and will be starting work when he gets back to London. Diana excuses herself before he can realize who she is.

Also in Monte Carlo, the Schniber family bump into Hugo. Hugo is shocked to see Diana in reduced circumstances. He still seems to like her and want to get alone with her, but Mrs. Schniber has hopes that Hugo will pursue her own daughter.

Chapter 8

The Schnibers and Diana return to London. Diana sells her jewels to help her brother Jimmy pay off a debt that he became liable for while he was still at the university. Diana and Jimmy become closer, and each is impressed with the other’s resilience.

Diana encounters the young man from Monte Carlo, but this time he knows who she is and treats her coldly.

Diana goes to Huntsman’s House for the weekend, where she tells Jack and Loelia about her new job and begins to find it funny. She is happier than when she was wealthy. Jack admits to Loelia that he misjudged Diana.

Loelia and Diana discuss love, marriage, and Barry’s tragic backstory. Barry is unexpectedly also staying with the Standishes, and by the end of her weekend there, Diana has realized that she is in love with Barry. She is surprised by the intensity of this new sensation, and she feels more alive than she ever has.

Chapter 9

Diana goes back to working for the Schnibers in London. She remains obsessed with Barry. Hugo has continued to call at the Schnibers, and Mrs. Schniber has finally realized that his interest in is Diana.

While out shopping, Diana bumps into Loelia, who mentions in passing that Barry has joined a Buddhist monastery. Diana is devastated and moves through her days in a daze.

Mrs. Schniber notices the change in Diana and concludes that it is because she is wasting away with love for Hugo. She encourages Hugo to press his suit. He does, and Diana, feeling that nothing matters anymore, agrees to marry him.

Chapter 10

In the midst of preparations for her wedding, Diana hears that Barry is no longer at the Buddhist monastery. He spent only three months there as a monk in order to prove his seriousness and gain access to one of their priceless manuscripts. She flees London, leaving letters for Hugo and Mrs. Schniber, and winds up in a village that she picked essentially at random.

Diana spends a few months living with and working for a very poor young couple, Ted and Rose, who run a roadside garage and a small tea room. She is happy living in poverty and obscurity, but she is not eating well.

On a stormy night, Diana stays with Rose, who is in labor, while Ted goes off on his motorcycle to fetch the doctor. Ted crashes in the rain. Rose delivers a baby boy, and both she and Diana are hospitalized.

Diana has caught pneumonia from running around in the rain. In her fever, she continues raving about whether the doctor will come in time. The doctor can’t identify who Diana is from her possessions, but he finds her book A Way, which has “Huntsman’s House” written on the inside. He contacts Jack and Loelia, who bring Diana to recuperate at their home.

Chapter 11

Barry comes to visit, where he spends time with the thin and weak Diana. He tells her that he is going to go to his house, on an isolated island off the coast of Cornwall, to write a book. Diana decides to risk everything and pursue him there.

She manages to get Barry’s address out of Loelia, who admits, “Somehow … I’ve always felt that you and Barry would suit each other, even in the days when you were a very frivolous person.” (p. 150)

Diana hops on a train, charters a fishing boat, and manages to beat Barry to his house. It is beautiful, peaceful, and unique, with a vast ocean view and two Chinese servants. There, she announces to the shocked Barry that she is going to stay with him. After ascertaining that she is not planning a large, wild party, and that she is the only guest, Barry finally figures out that Diana is in love with him. He reciprocates. The two of them enter directly into Nirvana.

Misanthropic Quote: A Very Parfait Knight

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

Winter got this reaction a lot when he killed people. He was a well-spoken man, a man of taste and culture, a gentle man in many ways and given to fine feelings. Cold-blooded killing was not the sort of thing people expected from him. Unless they were very insightful, they did not understand the complete absence of sentimentality in his makeup. He knew there were some men so low that only death could improve their personalities. He did not hesitate to improve them when the need arose.

–After That, the Dark, by Andrew Klavan, p. 298

After That, the Dark by Andrew Klavan

On By Jennifer Mugrage4 Comments

Let me fangirl for a minute

I am not a person who eagerly awaits the latest release in a series, and pre-orders books as soon as they become available. Usually, I am the one who discovers the series 20 years after it came out. In fact, this series by Klavan is the only exception I can think of. I pre-ordered After That, and it came, as promised, on Halloween.

Mini reviews of the whole Cameron Winter series

This is the fifth book in the Cameron Winter series. The other books are:

  1. When Christmas Comes (O.K. Sets up Winter’s history, shrink, and issues.)
  2. A Strange Habit of Mind (I like it because my mind is also strange.)
  3. The House of Love and Death (Tragic!)
  4. A Woman Underground (Also tragic, but satisfying. Wraps up Charlotte)

After That, the Dark takes Winter on the next stage of his journey. It’s designed to be readable as a stand-alone, but you will find it more satisfying if you’ve been with him all along.

The Basic Review

Like every Winter book, this one deals with Winter’s psychological journey, and on a parallel track there is an equally devastating crime that he is trying to solve and, inevitably, prevent. Subplots include Winter’s love life and his battles with the leftie professors at the university where he is an English professor.

The title for this book is taken from a poem by English Romantic poet Tennyson:

… Who imagined that his death would be like sailing over the sandbar near the coast and out into the greater ocean.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crost the bar.

ibid, p. 160

Cameron Winter’s academic specialty is English Romantic poetry (about which Klavan recently published a book, himself). Throughout this series, it’s sort of felt as if Klavan wants to have the best of both worlds with his hero. Winter is a former government operative, a dangerous man, and also a soft, spiritual guy who just wants everyone to appreciate poetry. Sort of like a medieval knight. I haven’t felt that this tension was 100% successful in past books, although it does lead to the Superman dynamic where the nerdy guy takes off his glasses and messes up the bad guys good, which is always fun. But in this volume, Winter starts to integrate these two different sides of his personality.

The crimes in this book deal with transhumanism. The victims and potential victims are mothers and babies. One potential victim is an expectant mother who has noticed changes in her husband and can’t articulate them well enough to get anyone to believe her. It’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t have been able to handle a few years ago, when my kids were smaller. I kept reading only because this is Klavan, and I know he doesn’t like stories where women get butchered gratuitously. “Look, when there’s a killer chasing a girl with a knife, I’m on the side of the girl!”

So, if you like poetry, action scenes, demonic possession, or personal growth, you will get all of that here. It’s not exactly like any other action/crime book I’ve read. The hero is usually wrestling with his own demons, but in other books he doesn’t spend so much time talking to his shrink. It’s a bold move on Klavan’s part to allow the hero to actually start beating the personal demons. I don’t know how he’s going to continue a noir-type series once his hero becomes psychologically healthy, but I’m sure he’ll find a way.

As you can see, I’m a little conflicted about Cameron Winter. But I still wholeheartedly give this book five stars, and if you want to find out why, read on for some major spoilers.

Spoilers … and Jesus

I have mentioned before that what I live for in books is when the characters’ concrete experience and myth coalesce, so they are walking the specific path in front of them, but also enacting a mythological scene at the same time. This is a little hard to describe, but you know it when you see it. It’s what makes great art.

This fusion of the everyday and the eternal is most often found in the fantasy or sci-fi genres, because to be honest, it’s easiest to set up there. But to my delight, Klavan has here pulled it off in a modern thriller/true-crime type novel.

Let’s go back to the pregnant woman who starts to suspect her husband. Her name is Tilda, a name probably chosen for how vulnerable it makes her sound. Tilda used to be a “bar girl,” one of the town’s easy marks. Then, her husband Martin picked her up with the line, “Do you have a minute to talk about Jesus Christ?” Tilda thought that was a pretty good joke, but then Martin actually did. He actually did talk to her about Jesus Christ. And he was a perfect gentleman. Tilda married him, and she became a Christian and her life completely changed. But now, the man who led her to this change seems to have become a completely different person and Tilda, understandably, doubts herself. Sometimes, she secretly wonders whether she’s really faking this whole Jesus thing.

Winter, meanwhile, is on the track of a man he knows is out there. He knows this man will have undergone a dramatic personality change recently, and that if not found he will begin to commit gruesome crimes. Winter, though an atheist, is dating a Christian girl and she has given him a cross for his spiritual protection. Winter keeps the cross in the coin pocket of his jeans. When the bad guys, after beating him rather severely, have him handcuffed to a chair, he is able to get the cross out and use it to pick the locks on the cuffs. There follows an action scene wherein Winter, still holding the cross, manages to escape the bad guys and run barefoot into a cornfield. As he runs, a cornstalk punctures his foot. When he finally stops running and wonders why his hand hurts, he looks down and finds that the cross has pierced the inside of his fist. He has to dig it out.

When I read that, I looked up and said to my husband, “The hero just received stigmata.”

But Klavan isn’t done with Winter yet.

Tilda, meanwhile, is tied up in the crawlspace in a house her husband has been working on. She knows her husband is about to come and finish her off. Her mind is a hurricane of incoherent prayers for Jesus to spare her unborn baby.

Then Winter shows up, having already decommissioned the husband outside. Because he has been beaten so badly, his face is a swollen mess, “like a monster.” And the first thing he says to Tilda is exactly what I knew he would say:

“Don’t be afraid.”

This is how Jesus comes to us. “His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being, and his form marred beyond human likeness.” (Isaiah 52:14) He shows up looking like that, and He says to us, “Fear not.”

As Winter strives to calm Tilda down enough to rescue her, he keeps saying the sorts of things that Jesus says:

“Listen to me,” the man said. “I’m going to use a knife. No, no, it’s all right, don’t be afraid. I’m going to use a knife to cut you free. It will look scary, but I will not hurt you. Nothing will hurt you now, but I have to cut you free. Don’t be afraid.”

… The man had climbed out of the space. He was above her again, reaching down for her with both hands.

“[Your husband] is not here. Let me get hold of you. Don’t you hold on to me,” he said. “I’m stronger. Let me hold on to you.”

… Tilda was crying hard now. “I prayed to Jesus and you came,” she explained.

“Oh. Well, good,” said the man. “It’s nice when things happen that way.”

ibid, pp. 305 – 307

That last line, by the way, shows that Klavan is not trying too hard with Winter. Nor is he writing an allegory. This kind of double vision in a book is all the harder to do when you let it grow naturally out of the story and don’t force it. Kudos.

Theology November: A Review of a Book about New Thought

On By Jennifer Mugrage13 Comments

Happy Lies by Melissa Dougherty, Zondervan, 2025

This review was originally posted, in a slightly different form, on Goodreads in June 2025.

This book is a capable history of New Thought in the Christian church, particularly in America. The author first sketches how she grew up around a lot of New Thought and mistook it for Christianity. Then, she sketches how after she realized many of these beliefs were wrong, for some years she was calling them New Age because that’s what everyone else called them. She discusses how she learned of the term New Thought and how it differs from the New Age.

Both belief systems partake of Gnostic/Hermetic cosmology and theory of human nature. However, New Age embraces neopaganism and the occult, whereas New Thought instead tries to cast these Hermetic ideas in “Christianese” and read them back into the New Testament. This is made easier because many New Testament writers were talking directly back to Gnostics, and even re-purposing their terms.

Melissa unpacks the Gnostic/Hermetic assumptions behind such common “Christian” practices as the Prosperity Gospel, visualization, affirmations, “I am” statements, and the like. But instead of just dismissing these practices as “ppf, that’s pagan,” she actually shows where they originated and how they differ from orthodox Christianity.

This book does not dive deeply into the pagan side of Gnosticism and Hermeticism. It doesn’t discuss these philosophies’ relationship to Western mysticism, Eastern mysticism, Kabbalism, or German philosophers like Hegel. It doesn’t discuss the attempts in the early centuries after Christianity to integrate Gnosticism with Christianity. The history of these philosophies is a huge topic that could take up a lifetime of study.

Melissa’s book is not meant to be an intimidating doorstop of a book that covers all of this. She’s zooming in on one little twig on this big, ugly tree: New Thought and its influence on American Christianity. Her book gives well-meaning Christians the tools and vocabulary to recognize this kind of thought and to talk about it. I have bought copies to give to all the women in my family. New Thought can be difficult to talk about because it portrays itself as “what Jesus actually taught.” If you know someone who is into New Thought, you cannot just dismiss it as “No, that’s Gnostic.” Even though you are right, to them it will sound like you’re just brushing them off. This book might be useful in such a situation.

If you want to find out how Hermeticism gave birth to Marxism through Hegel and Marx, there is a fantastic series of lectures about it on YouTube by James Lindsay. I also recommend Melissa’s YouTube channel and the YouTube channel Cultish.

Cue Scary Music

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

Looking at the situation with twenty-twenty hindsight, one sees that there was something out of the ordinary going on along the New England coast beginning in 1968. The Cape Cod and Long Island area had been hit by unusual spotted fever rickettsia cases that couldn’t be detected by conventional tests … In short, there were multiple, virulent, uncommon diseases in a small area, all transmitted by ticks.

Bitten, by Kris Newby, p. 193

Two October Reads

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

You Don’t Own Me, by Mary Higgins Clark but actually by Alafair Burke, 2018

I reached for a Mary Higgins Clark because it’s autumn and I wanted me some New York City. I would never want to live there, mind, but a certain version of NYC gives autumn vibes that can’t be beat. I wanted wet leaves, Burberry plaid, private schools, brownstones, Italian restaurants, snobbery, and houses in the Hamptons. (Don’t even know where the Hamptons are, but I know they come with the package.) This book delivered those vibes adequately. It even had me turning to DuckDuckGo to look up some hole-in-the-wall restaurant in the art district that has been a NYC fixture for years apparently. Or I don’t know if New Yorkers would consider it a hole in the wall. The pictures make it look like one, to my West-of-the-Mississippi eyes, where everything is spread out from everything else.

Anyway. This was very New York-y. The protagonist’s dad is a retired NYC cop. There are Italian restaurants. There are nannies. The fiance has a live-in butler. The couple spend most of the book looking for an apartment that has to be in a certain part of the city. In fact, their realtor was so pushy that I started to wonder whether she would turn out to be in on the crime-spiracy. For NYC vibes, it was second only to a Mary Higgins Clark that I read years ago, where the protag’s mother was in the fashion industry and was killed in Central Park by being strangled with a high-fashion scarf.

As with every Mary Higgins Clark, the plotting is very good, very intricate, and the dialogue not so much. Every person who talks is very smooth, articulate, and sounds like a news anchor or else like the narrator. Oh well. I didn’t come here for Chaucer. This book went down easy.

Sweetgirl, by Travis Mulhauser, 2016

This is a Michigan gothic, which is like a Southern gothic, but with blizzards and rude people instead of polite people.

It veers very close to being a horror story, but my overwhelming impression is that of heartbreaking sorrow, but sorrow with a lot of human sweetness in it too.

The very first line sets up the whole plot by outlining the problem and introducing the principle characters in one fell swoop:

Nine days after Mama disappeared I heard she was throwing down with Shelton Potter.

Percy James is a sixteen-year-old girl who is an adult before her time. She has quit school and taken a job so that she can support herself and her druggie mother. Shelton Potter is sort of the opposite: he’s twenty-five, but his mental life is more like that of an immature teen.

The chapters alternate between Percy’s point of view, told in the first person, and Shelton’s, told in limited third. Although Percy goes through a lot of horrible stuff, which I won’t share because of spoilers, the parts that really broke my heart were Shelton’s internal monologue. Although Shelton spends the entire book high–making one horrible decision after another–a danger to himself and others–he still has thoughts and feelings. Quite a lot of feelings, actually. Mulhauser does an amazing job making us follow Shelton’s train of thought, feel his sorrow, and see his naive good intentions. Shelton really does have a good heart. It’s just that he doesn’t have any self-control or common sense. Oh, and he’s high all the time. Many books will give us an antagonist who’s a drug dealer/addict, may be violent and touchy, and may not be too bright, and often at or near the end of the book we get a tiny, poignant glimpse into this person’s sad back story. It’s a rare book that has us in that person’s mind from the very beginning, sympathizing with him to a degree but also hoping something stops him before he does major damage.

One more thing I will say in praise of this book: the prose is top shelf. To take just one example, the last paragraph of the book has Percy going through a variety of complex, poignant emotions. It does not have a single sentence telling us what Percy was thinking or feeling. Instead, every sentence in that paragraph describes something she can hear from where she’s standing. It’s all entirely concrete, and it will rip your heart out. That, my friends, is showing-not-telling. I learn at Travis Mulhauser’s feet.

Quote: A Silver Lining

On By Jennifer Mugrage5 Comments

[My mother’s] first bout of Lyme disease was diagnosed at the Bethesda Naval Hospital when a physician discovered three large bull’s-eye rashes on her behind. The physician was so excited at this classic presentation of Lyme that he called in several other handsome young navy doctors for a viewing. (My mother, somewhat of a flirt, loved telling this story.)

Bitten, by Kris Newby, p. 242

Just Another Mormon Vampire Book

On By Jennifer Mugrage6 Comments

my review of The Penitent by C. David Belt, posted on GoodReads on July 31

I’ve been enjoying these Mormon vampire stories by C. David Belt. This one is the second in the trilogy. In the first book, The Unwilling, a Mormon man named Carl accidentally became a vampire while investigating what he believed was a cult that had seduced his sister. He took the vows you need to take to become a vampire, but didn’t mean them or think they were real. Hence, he is the first “unwilling” vampire in history. Whether or not you think that taking vows while holding mental reservations about them actually lets a person off the hook, for the purposes of this series, it does. The first book is written in the first person, present tense, from Carl’s point of view.

This second book is written in the first person, present tense, from the point of view of Carl’s vampire wife, Moira. (How that came about is a long story, told in the first book.) Moira is a Scottish lass who, more than two hundred years ago, became a vampire intentionally in order to get revenge on the British. But she has since repented and has managed to spend her life without killing any mortals. Hence, she is “The Penitent.” Through a long and convoluted chain of events, Carl and Moira are both somehow vampires and also faithful Mormons who were married in the Temple in Salt Lake City, and who call people to repent and turn to Christ whenever they get a chance.

The worldbuilding in these books is detailed and consistent, in terms of scientific explanations for why vampires are freakishly strong, why they can fly, what can and cannot kill them, and so forth. Oh, and how they can be Christians. The main antagonist is Lilith, “Mother of Night.” The lore around Lilith seems to be a little different in the Mormon world than elsewhere. I had heard that the legend was that Lilith was Adam’s first wife, created before Eve, but in one passage, the characters in this book refer to her as being “three generations down from Adam.”

The theology behind this book is Mormon, which is to say it sounds about 90% Christian, but isn’t quite there. For example, in one scene, Moira is telling a wretched, extremely bitter woman that instead of self-terminating, she should repent and turn to Christ. So far so good. But then Moira tells her that she can be saved if she “turns to Christ and lives a righteous life.” Meanwhile, this poor woman is obviously totally unable to live a righteous life. That’s her whole problem. Mormon theology doesn’t have a really deep grasp of sin nature. I really like the author of this series, C. David Belt, and I sincerely hope that he soon comes to grips with this problem and realizes that people are truly helpless sinners who need something more than what moralism can offer.

The language in this book is pretty good. I don’t personally prefer books written in the present tense, but Belt’s books include a lot of action and also vision/dream sequences that lend themselves to the present tense. Moira tells her story in a slightly Scottish dialect (for example, she consistently uses “nae” instead of “not”), and it’s fun to hear Carl, a former fighter pilot, revert to “pilot speak” when the vampires are flying on a military-like mission.

Based on the plot, worldbuilding, and language, I give this book 5 out of 5 stars for the genre, and in fact it may be the only series of its kind in this genre.

me and C. David Belt at a RenFaire a few years ago. I was dressed as a cartoon cave woman, and he was dressed as a medieval Scot.