Multitudes

After Genesis 12:1-3 and Revelation 7:9-10 

And then, they gathered,

the multitudes unnumbered,

waving the branches of palm,

crying out in unison, 

the blessing promised,

the blessing sitting

and riding in front of them,

the blessing named

salvation, sitting 

on the throne.

The lamb cried out,

shining as a great light,

to the multitudes 

unnumbered,

the nations

gathered.

Photograph by Roland Denes via Unsplash. Used with permission.

We All Know a Boo Radley

I was all of 21, in my first job after college graduation. I’d been hired as a copy editor on the news desk of the Beaumont (Tex.) Enterprise. Production at the Enterprise was just becoming automated, at least in what we called the “backshop.” Reporters still used typewriters, typing up their copy, handing it to editors (including new ones like me) and hoping we didn’t slaughter their peerless prose when we edited.

Most reporters, like most writers, required editing. I quickly learned who the better reporters were – the ones whose copy didn’t need much editing. Some needed a lot. One rarely if ever needed any – and he was the newspaper’s staff mystery.

I’ll call him Joe. He was in his 50s, and he covered local government. When Joe turned in his stories, he would mumble, almost as if apologizing. I don’t think anyone understood the mumbles. The mystery was how he did his job – he was never seen at a city council or other government meeting, and yet his stories reported exactly what went on. No one knew how Joe did it. Even more mysteriously, no one knew where he lived. He received his mail at the newspaper, and that was his legal address. One staffer followed him in his car one night, and all Joe did was drive around Beaumont for more than an hour until his lost the tail. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Saturday Good Reads

When you meet a fictional character like Ignatius J. Reilly, you may be forgiven for thinking he’s a grotesque version of Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff. When I first read A Confederacy of Dunces and met Ignatius, I thought he was like a lot of people I knew growing up in New Orleans. He wasn’t so much grotesque as he was normal. The novel is now 40 years old, and Alexander Larman at The Critic says it’s a book that can change your life.

For several years now, the British Library has been publishing the Crime Classics series, bringing back long-out-of-print mysteries by both well-known and largely forgotten authors. Most of the stories are from Mystery’s Golden Age, the 1920s to the 1940s, with mystery author Martin Edwards serving as general editor. I’ve read about 20 of them, and they’re wonderful. This week at CrimeReads, Edwards was interviewed about the enduring popularity of traditional mysteries.

It’s a common question people ask of novelists: who is this character based on? Or, who inspired your hero / your villain? In my own case, the most likely answer is that characters come from my imagination, or are a composite, or (the really true answer) I don’t know. I can think of only one character in five novels that drew inspiration from someone I actually knew, and even that person wouldn’t recognize it. Richard Russo at Harper’s Magazine has a different answer, and he asks the question, when does imagination become appropriation?

The tendency to fall for conspiracy theories spans the political and social spectrums. The reality is that we tend to fall for them, no matter how smart and wise we think we are. Jordan Standridge at The Cripplegate takes a look at Jesus’s resurrection and what he calls the dumbest conspiracy theory in history. 

More Good Reads

Life and Culture

The danger of safetyism – Matthew Crawford at UnHerd. 

When Zoom Becomes a Prison – James Jeffrey at The American Conservative.

The Code and the Key – David Mamet at National Review.

Writing and Literature

The Book of Repose: Horizontal and Vertical Time in 'Laurus' and in Lockdown – Nathan Beacom at Plough Books.

Furtive Wings of Glory – Kevin Belmonte at Eerdword.

Bodying Forth the Classics: A Manifesto – Jessica Hooten Wilson at Church Life Journal.

Back to the Sources: Notes on Chesterton the Historian – Jane Lewis at Mere Orthodoxy.

American Tolstoy: Herman Wouk – David Rose at The Critic.

Bilbo’s Garden – Rebecca Martin at The Rabbit Room.

Maigret’s Room – John Lancaster at The London Review of Books.

Poetry

Every Morning He Hallowed Himself – James Matthew Wilson at The North American Anglican.

Ode to Spring – Adam Sedia at The Chained Muse. 

The Letter That Changed Emily Dickinson’s Life – Martha Ackmann at Literary Hub.

Philip Larkin: A Very English Bleakness – David Whippman at Society of Classical Poets. 

Four Poems – Maryann Corbett at A New Cedameron.

American Stuff

In Our Memory Lock’d: Memorial Day and the Need to Remember – Jon Schaff at Front Porch Republic.

Faith

Really Bad Reviews of Really Good Books – Tim Challies.

5 Truths to Remember While the Police Station Burns – Jesse Johnson at The Cripplegate.

News Media

Big Journalism Embraces Propaganda Model – Rod Dreher at The American Conservative.

British Stuff

Leaping the Fence: On English gardens and style – Nicola Shulman at New Criterion.

‘Aila’ Au: Forest Eater 

Painting: Seated Man Reading, oil on paper board (1927) by Yun Gee (1906-1963). 

How did he hear

After Genesis 12:1-3 and Revelation 7:9-10

How did he hear the voice,

this shepherd, with flocks,

this leader, with family?

A dream, on the wind,

a whisper, a shout?

The words: go; you will be 

great, a great nation;

you will be a great blessing;

all families will be blessed

through you.

And what did he do,

how did he respond,

to this shout, this whisper,

this dream, this wind?

He went.

Photograph by Mila Young via Unsplash. Used with permission.

"Hunter's Chase" by Val Penny

A thief breaks into the Edinburgh home of Scotland’s minister of Justice. He’s helping himself to various valuable, including a wad of cash in a desk, when the minister arrives home early and surprises him. The minister is up in years, but he gives chase. The thief reaches a nearby golf course when he stumbles and breaks his ankle. What he’s stumbled over, or into, is the dead body of a woman.

Detective Inspector Hunter Wilson arrives to take charge of the case, and he’s just thrilled when the burglary victim turns out to be his former boss in the police force. The two never got along when they had to work together, and they likely won’t be getting along still. The body, a red-haired woman in her 40s, shows signs of old physical abuse. What complicates the case even further is the burglary suspect, who stoutly maintains that the bag of cocaine in the wad of cash is not his. And if it’s not his, then it must belong to Scotland’s minister of Justice.

Val Penny

Hunter’s Chase is the first of five novels in the Edinburgh Crime Mystery series by Val Penny. It introduces the reader to Hunter Wilson and his team of detectives, including the brand-new team member, the son of the minister of Justice. It’s a big story, with a large number of characters, generally organized into police, their families, and the main players and families of two chief villains. 

As the story progresses, all of these stories begin to intermingle in an engrossing tale of drugs, petty crime, murders, family passions, and old secrets. Wilson, divorced, will come to understand that his own family is enmeshed as well. 

Penny, an American living in southwestern Scotland, has written five novels in the Edinburgh Crime Mysteries series: Hunter’s Chase, Hunter’s Revenge, Hunter’s Force, Hunter’s Blood, and Hunter’s Secret. 

Hunter’s Chase is a finely wrought story, a big story full of personal drama, well-developed characters, and a very past pace that that keeps the reader’s attention riveted.

"His Father's Son" by Autumn Macarthur

Luke Tanner had grown up with life stacked against him. Raised by a drug-addicted single mom who didn’t know who his father was, Luke passed through a succession of temporary foster homes and managed to stay more in trouble than out of it. Anna Harrison was the daughter of a strict, no-nonsense small-town police chief; when she went to college to study art, she met Luke, fell in love, and became pregnant. Back home in Sweetapple Falls, Oregon, she faced the ire of her father.

When the baby, a boy Anna names Joshua, was born, her father told Anna that she had to do two things: put the child up for adoption and get rid of the no-good Luke. She sent Luke away, but the baby turned out to have serious medical problems and her father grudgingly allowed her to keep him. Now he’s 12, functioning in a motorized wheelchair, hoping that one day he’ll have a father like his friends do.

Luke has found faith in Christianity and turned his life around. He’s the project manager for a construction ministry in Mexico when he sees a television talent program. And one of the contestants is Joshua, who’s shown with his mother Anna. Three days later, Luke is in Oregon, ringing Anna’s doorbell, desperate to be part of his son’s life and equally desperate to learn if Anna still loves him.

Autumn Macarthur

His Father’s Son by Autumn Macarthur tells the heartwarming and often heart-wrenching story of Luke, Anna, and Joshua. The story turns on the themes of love, forgiveness, and trust. It’s about owning up to past mistakes and past sins, and what happens when a practical, living faith collides head-on with a more legalistic faith.

Macarthur has written numerous books in the Christian inspirational romance genre and inspirational non-fiction. Her novels include The Macleans series, the Together for Christmas, series, the Billionaire Protectors series, the Sweetapple Falls series, the London Loves series, the Come to the Lake series, and the Huckleberry Lake series. She lives in London. 

His Father’s Son is a moving novel that probes what faith and love look like and actually mean in the hard realities of day-to-day life.

Related:

More Than Friends by Autumn MacArthur.

The Wedding List by Autumn Macarthur.

Four More Christian Romances.

Poets and Poems: S.R. Jakobi and “Antiques & Curios”

It’s not exactly rare, but it is a bit unusual these days to find an entire poetry collection built around a single story. The last one I recall reading is The Long Take by Robin Robertson, some 20 months ago. That was a genre-bending work of fiction, poetry, and crime story that defied classification. 

Antiques & Curios: Fragments of a Love Affair by S.R. Jakobi is clearly a poetry collection in the conventional sense, but its 96 poems center on one event: a love affair between an older man and a younger woman, work colleagues who almost accidentally stumble into and fall for each other. The poems tell a single, usually chronological story of the relationship – how it begins, develops, matures, deteriorates, and eventually ends. Except it doesn’t end, not really, carried on in memory for decades.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

“The Casino Murder Case” by S.S. Van Dine

The purported narrator of the Philo Vance mystery novels is the pseudonymous author S.S. Van Dine, always referred to as “Van” in the stories. The reader always knows what all the other characters, including Vance, look like in great physical and psychology detail, but never does the author provide a physical description of Van. He accompanies Vance on investigations, and he writes reports of the various crimes.

We do know a little about the narrator. He and Vance attended college together. Van also worked at his father’s law firm, Van Dine, Davis, & Van Dine. He made a decision to leave the family firm and work for Vance full-time as an attorney, general secretary, and accompanying investigator. Eventually, it’s mentioned that he lives in a small apartment in Vance’s brownstone. Later critics have read all kinds of implications into Van and his apartment, but the one thing it provided for was a legitimate reason what Van always seems in attendance when District Attorney John F.X. Markham and Police sergeant Ernest Heath arrive with a crime report.

His role in the novels is not unlike Dr. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories, except that Arthur Conan Doyle allowed Watson’s character to more fully develop. Van remains much more of a mystery.

Van is generally faceless and colorless, and the perfect scribe, but there are occasional exceptions, as in The Casino Murder Case, first published in 1934. He finds himself, with Vance, confronting an almost diabolical killer, and he occasionally notes the chilling terror he feels at times, including when they’re both staring their own deaths in the face.

The story centers on the Llewellyn family. Lynn and Amelia Llewellyn are brother and sister; Lynn is married to the former stage star Virginia Llewellyn, and they all live with their mother (in a large New York City brownstone, a standard setting in most of the Philo Vance stories). Also living with them is a maternal uncle, Richard Kincaid, who owns a casino, and Morgan Bloodgood, who works for Kincaid as a casino croupier. 

The story begins with an anonymous letter, saying evil events will begin to happen at the casino on a Saturday night. Vance goes, grasping that it’s the letter writer who will set the vents in motion. The events begin when Lynn Lewellyn is apparently poisoned and collapses at the roulette table. At the same time, at home, his wife Virginia apparent commits suicide by taking poison. Then sister Amelia collapses, having drunk water intended for her mother. Someone is obviously out to destroy the family, and all the clues point to Kincaid, the uncle. 

S.S. Van Dine

But Vance soon realizes that the clues have been designed to point to the uncle. And what is unfolding is the ruthless implementation of a ruthless plan, a plan that the killer adapts as mistakes are made and events warrant a change. The novel at times reads like a movie script, and the story was filmed and released as a movie of the same name in 1935, starring Paul Lukas as Philo Vance.

Willard Huntington Wright (1888-1939) was an art critic who had been literary editor of the Los Angeles Times, an editor of The Smart Set, a novelist, an art historian, and art exhibition organizer. A friend of H.L. Mencken and an admirer of the novels of Theodore Dreiser, Wright hated romance and detective fiction with a passion, until he needed money. In 1926, he published the first Philo Vance story, The Benson Murder Case, with Scribners. And he used the pen name “S.S. Van Dine” so friends wouldn’t know.

The Casino Murder Case certainly is in the running for the best of the 12 mysteries written by Van Dine. A fully developed Philo Vance is the story’s center and star, and he’s even up for a bit of entrapment when he learns he can’t prove the murderer’s identity. The thrilling disclosure scene starts looking deadly for Markham, Vance, and Van, and it’s helpful to remember that there are four more mysteries after this one.

Related:

The Benson Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Canary Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Greene Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Bishop Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Scarab Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Kennel Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

The Dragon Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine.

Top photograph: The movie poster for The Casino Murder Case (1935), staring Paul Lukas at Philo Vance (and made into something of a romance, which the book isn't).

We were works

After Genesis 3:17-15 and I John 3:1-10

We were works of before,

changed, in a moment,

into works of now.

We were fields of before,

fallow, then sown, the seed

now sprouting within us.

We were wind of before,

blowing aimlessly, now

with purpose and direction.

We were water of before,

polluted, until freshened,

cleansed, and purified.

We were works of darkness,

transformed, into works

of light, unshaded.

Photograph by Kyle Glenn via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads

The movies, plays, and books about World War II keep coming. My wife says it’s because the war produced millions of stories, running from heroism to cowardice and success to tragedy. (And I think, too, because the good guys won, and that was not a foregone conclusion.) Heather Morton at Front Porch Republic tells one of those stories – a great aunt shot in both legs and left for dead by a communist gunman in Yugoslavia because she was Ukrainian-German. 

I haven’t read Brendan by Frederick Buechner in a long time. After read David Deavel’s “Messing About in Boats: Frederick Buechner’s Brendan” at The Imaginative Conservative, I think it’s time to reread it.

I first met the poetry of William Butler Yeats in high school. His life and work (1865-1939) spanned the Victorian, Edwardian, World War I, and modernism periods. What I didn’t know, until I read Adam Sedia’s article at the Society for Classical Poets, was how heavily influenced his poetry was by occultism. 

The coronavirus has brought an outpouring of art and writing, but I don’t think I’ve been as touched by anything as I was by Andrea Sanborn’s story at A View of the Lake, entitled “Tucking Ben In.”

I’ve visited Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery here in St. Louis, and I’ve seen the very oldest section, which includes the graves of some 16,000 Civil War soldiers, Union and Confederate, many of them the dead and seriously wounded from the Battle of Shiloh in 1862. Kristen Pawlak at Emerging Civil War shares the stories of several of them. 

More Good Reads

Poetry

What the night sky declares – Joe Spring at Joe Spring Writes.

The 6th poem in my corona on the psalms – Malcolm Guite.

Wearing masks – Troy Cady at T(r)oy Marbles.

Wordsworth is Finally Getting His Revolutionary Props – William Anthony Hay at The American Conservative. 

Inside: Spoken Word Poetry / Lockdown 2020 – Seth Lewis.

“Beach at Corolla, NC” and “Bee Fall” – Paul Jones at South Writ Large.

Life and Culture

Then & Now – David Warren at Essays in Idleness.

Art

The Night Watch: Will Gompertz reviews the Rijksmuseum's high tech photo – BBC News (Hat top: J of India).

The master’s hand: A treasured Vermeer gives up its secrets – Nancy Kenney at The Art Newspaper.

The Painting Behind the Door - Emily Benedek at Tablet Magazine.

Faith

Weird Christianity’s Aesthetic and the Tyranny of Values – Casey Spinks at Front Porch Republic.

Biblia Pauperum (Ascension) – Fred Sanders at The Scriptorium Daily.

Loneliness Has Been My Faithful Friend – Steve DeWitt at Desiring God.

A Christian Reading Manifesto – David Steele at Veritas et Lux.

Writing and Literature

Doesn’t Everyone Reread Their Favorite Books of All Time? – Natalie Jenner at Literary Hub.

Wendell Berry by Silas House, from Step into the Circle: Writers in Modern Appalachia, edited by Amy Greene and Trent Thomson – at South Writ Large.

Blue Ridge Dear – Joseph Bradshaw

Painting: Femme Lisant, oil on canvas (1920) by Henri Matisse (1869-1954). 

Eyes opened

Eyes, opened

After Genesis 3:17-15 and I John 3:1-10

A single bite,

a single taste,

fruit forbidden,

they see themselves

as they are. Then

the sound, footsteps,

the walking 

in the garden,

footsteps thudding

through paths

and hearts,

the thudding

a pealing bell

of a bugle cry

of judgment.

Photograph by Drew Graham via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Six Down,” “Somewhere in England,” and “Dark Progression” by Glenn McGoldrick

Dark story writer Glenn McGoldrick is back, this time with three stories with enough twists to remind older readers of the old Twilight Zone television series.

In Six Down, police are on a stakeout, watching and waiting for an extortionist to pick up the cash. But the suspect turns out to be unexpected, and the question becomes whether the crime is justified, or not.

In Somewhere in England, a pretty hitchhiker wearing suggestive clothes has no trouble finding rides. It’s the drivers who discover they may have picked up more than they bargained for. And we listen to the hitchhiker’s interior monologue as she considers whether the driver deserves the kind of justice she metes out.

In Dark Progression, a “Dark Teesside” short story, a man seemingly concerned about a dead duck in the water sees that he’s being watched. He hurries away but is followed. He loses the man following him, until he arrives home. And then the story takes an unexpected turn.  

Glenn McGoldrick

McGoldrick specializes in short stories, which he’s been writing since 2013. He worked for both land-based casinos and cruise ships for a time, using those experiences for many of his stories. He lives in northeastern England. His stories are dark, gritty, often involve a twist, and inevitably open insights into the human psyche. And his characters run the gamut of good, bad, and something in between, and often find themselves moving far beyond the boundaries of acceptable behavior. 

Like the other stories published by McGoldrick, Six Down, Somewhere in England, and Dark Progression are provocative, surprising, and often disturbing. And always entertaining.

Related:

 4 Stories by Glenn McGoldrick.

3+ Stories by Glenn McGoldrick.

Five Mysteries: 2 Short Stories, 2 Novellas, and a Long Story.

The Dark Stories of Glenn McGoldrick.

“Not Until This Day” by Valerie Bodden

Isabel has been on the run with her young daughter Gabby for three years. She’s running from her abusive and controlling ex-husband. She lands in the town of Hope Springs and finds out that the apartment she thought she rented doesn’t accept pets, like Gabby’s dog. They spend the night in the car; Isabel is nearly at her wit’s end.

Tyler is raising 10-year-old twin boys on his own; his wife left him (and the boys) for another man when the twins were small. His brother and sister-in-law keep suggesting dates, but Tyler is not interested in dating anyone; the hurt runs too deep. 

Valerie Bodden

Tyler first meets Isabel the morning after the sleep-in-the-car “adventure.” It’s not a good experience; he things she might be involved with drugs. That same day, Isabel walks into a job with Tyler’s sister-in-law. Tyler stays suspicious, but soon finds himself in what he thought would ever happen again – an attraction to a woman, and a non-believing woman at that. Trust begins to build, Isabel begins to find faith – and then the ex-husband shows up. Everything begins to unravel when Tyler learns Isabel isn’t who she claimed to be, and her name isn’t even Isabel.

Trust, hope, and forgiveness are the themes of Not Until This Day by Valerie Bodden, one of five novels in Bodden’s “Not Until” series. The others include Not Until Forever, Not Until This Moment, Not Until You, Not Until Us, and the short story Not Until Christmas Morning. Bodden, a pastor’s wife, lives with her family in Wisconsin.

Not Until This Day is an engaging, heartwarming story about two people afraid of second chances and learning how to forgive and trust.

Related:

Christmas, Romance, and Prodigals.