"Caution: Death at Work" by Rhys Dylan

A young London securities trader is getting married, and his best friend since childhood (and best man) takes him on a weekend bicycling trip through the forest they both knew so well as kids. But while camping out, they’re attacked while sleeping. The securities trader is killed and the best friend seriously injured in a brutal knife attack.  

The clues are few. The friend couldn’t see what was happening in the dark or identify who the killer might be or even look like. The only clue of substance is the friend’s hearing a motorcycle or motorized dirt bike. 

 

Detective Chief Inspector Evan Warlow and his team begin an investigation of a crime that looks random, and yet it doesn’t. Slowly they check everything possible – video footage of nearby roads, backgrounds of the victims that might suggest something, exhaustive interviewing of family, friends, and acquaintances. Some indications point to an incident in the past, but it looks at best inconclusive.

 

Rhys Dylan

Warlow has been coaxed from retirement, but his health issue is still there, and he’ll learn more in about two months. In the meantime, the case gets his full attention, and he soon learns that, like in too many murder investigations, people don’t always tell everything they know.

 

Caution: Death at Work is the second in the DCI Evan Warlow series by Rhys Dylan, and it’s every bit as good as its predecessor, The Engine House. In Even Warlow, Dylan has created an experienced police detective who’s struggling with a (still unknown) health issue and who often has to allow clues and conversations simmer in his mind before the light bulb pops on. 

 

Dylan has published 15 novels in the DCI Evan Warlow series. A native Welshman educated in London, Dylan wrote numerous books for children and adults under various pen names across several genres. He began writing the DCI Warlow series in 2021; The Engine House was published in 2022. Dylan lives in Wales.

 

Related:

 

“The Engine House” by Rhys Dylan.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

How One Town Turned a Child’s ‘Cru for Help’ into a Hate Crime – Frannie Block at The Free Press.

 

Noble Street: The Ruins of London’s Industry – A London Inheritance.

 

The Burning Season – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

Finding the Lost Generation on a Stroll Through Paris – Jackson Lanzer at Literary Traveler.

Missing

After Luke 2:41-50 and Mark 11:12-17 

Returning from Passover,

they know their son is

among the group traveling

together, until they look

and can’t find him.

Panicked, they rush back,

back to Jerusalem, 

a day’s journey, and search

the city for three days. They

find him in the temple,

teaching the teachers 

by asking questions,

questions as insightful as

they are profound. They 

should have known, he

says, were to find him –

in his father’s house.

 

In twenty years, the boy

now a man is in his

Father’s house, turning

over tables, cleansing,

redeeming, still about

his Father’s business.

 

Photograph by Bertrand Borie via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

“On the Savior,” poem by Claudian (AD 370- 494) – E.J. Hutchinson at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

And all the people said…[inaudible mumble] – Simon Arscott at Gentle Reformation.

 

The Hidden Saints of Seventh-Century England – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative. 

Saturday Good Reads - March 29, 2025

This past Tuesday was the 100^th birthday of writer Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964). I still remember when I discovered her writing. I was 24, working for Shell Oil in Houston, and a work colleague (who herself was a bit Flannery-esque) strongly me urged me to read her. Which I did. And I promptly devoured everything he’d written, including her letters, collected and published in 1979 as The Habit of Being. One of my favorite lines of hers was, “When I’m asked why Southern writers always seem to write about freaks, I say it’s because we’re still able to recognize one.”  

Her 100^th birthday meant she was just about everywhere you looked.

 

Poet and writer Sally Thomas has a reflection on O’Connor and her works, as does Chilton Williamson Jr. at Modern Age. Catherine Taylor at The Guardian wonders if we should still read her works. Shaun Usher at Letters of Note considers her letters (she was a marvelous letter writer), while Henry Eliot at Read the Classics recommends reading her short stories. Ralph Wood at Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal argues that her life and work embodied the three Lenten requirements of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Poet and writer Angela Alaimo O’Donnell has written three books about O’Connor, and she has three poems about the writer at Rabbit Room Poetry. If you want to read O’Connor, I’d recommend the edition of her collected works published by the Library of America. 

 

And if you’d like to hear O’Connor speak in her own voice, Open Culture has a recording of her reading “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction.” (The early part is difficult to follow, but it gets better, and you can click on “Show transcript.”)

 

More Good Reads 

 

Writing and Literature

 

The Vanishing White Male Writer – Jacob Savage at Compact Magazine.

 

Twenty-one facts and opinions about A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader. 

 

Building: How You Can, While You Can – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review on Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather.

 

The American Revolution: The 250^th Anniversary

 

Discover Parick Henry’s Legacy – Cassandra Good at Smithsonian Magazine.

 

“Never heard anything more infamously insolent”: Loyalist and British response to Parick Henry’s famous speech – Rob Orrison at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Virginia 250^th Events – Bert Dunkerly at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

American Stuff

 

The Man Behind Reagan’s ‘Evil Empire’: Tony Dolan, RIP – Paul Kengor at The American Spectator.

 

Review: The Confederate Resurgence of 1864 by William Marvel – Civil War Books and Authors.

 

Israel

 

Israel’s Second War of Independence – Michael Oren at Clarity.

 

Poetry

 

“The Last Ship,” poem by J.R.R. Tolkien – Andrew Henry at The Saxon Cross.

 

“On Joy Harjo,” excerpt from Ambiguity and Belonging by Benjamin Myers – New Verse Review. 

 

At the Funeral Parlor – James Matthew Wilson at National Review.

 

“Spots of Time,” from the Prelude by William Wordsworth – Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Faith

 

You Were Made for This – Brianna Lambert at From Glory to Ordinary.

 

Friends Come and Friends Go – Tanner Kay Swanson at Desiring God.

 

Life and Culture

 

In Praise of “Old” – Reid Makowsky at Front Porch Republic.

 

O Freedom – Anchor Hymns

 Painting: The Evening News, oil on canvas by Louis Charles Moeller (1855-1930).

How we are to live

After Galatians 5:22-25 

Living in the Spirit

produces fruit, tangible

things we see, that are

expensive, that we know,

within us and within

the body. We see these

things:

love, joy, peace, patience,

kindness, goodness,

faithfulness, gentleness,

self-control. We have

left behind our old lives,

its passions and desires.

We are new creatures,

living in the Spirit,

keeping in step. We are

not citizens of this world;

we are strangers to it.

Our citizenship is someplace

else. We do not earn our way

to heaven; we are the vessels

through which the light

of heaven shines.

 

Photograph by Name Gravity via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“To Keep a True Lent,” poem by Robert Herrick – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise – poem by Walter Chambers Smith at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin). 

 

“Annunciation,” poem by J.C. Scharl – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

If I Had Not Been Writing the Poem – poem by Rene Emerson at Rabbit Room Poetry.

Among the Seven Golden Lamps – poem by Cody Ilardo at Power & Glory.

Poets and Poems: Forrest Gander and "Mojave Ghost"

In 2021, five years after the death of his wife, poet C.D. Wright, poet Forrest Gander began to walk sections of the San Andreas Fault from north to south. Accompanied by a recent immigrant, Ashwini Bhat, he eventually found himself in Barstow, California, where he’d been born. It was more than a hometown; he describes how his mother’s enthusiasm for the washes and canyons of Rainbow Basin led in an almost direct line to his own interest in geology (and a degree and a career before poetry).  

That early experience and his own background in geology led to an intense interest in landscape, an interest reflected across many if not most of his writings. And it’s fully reflected in Mojave Ghost: A Novel Poem (2024). The ghost of the title, he says, refers to his mother; he can’t help seeing the landscape of the Mojave Desert through his mother’s eyes. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

John Niehardt’s Epic ‘Cycle of the West’ – video by Andrew Bensn Brown at Society of Classical Poets.

 

The Draft Horse – poem by Robert Frost at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

“The Touch of the Masters Hand,” poem by Myra Brooks Welch – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“Epic,” poem by Patrick Kavanaugh – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

Some Wednesday Readings

Things Worth Remembering: America is an Invention – Dominic Green at The Free Press. 

Wokeness as a Tax on Human Nature – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies. 

 

On Teaching Fairy Stories by Junius Johnson – review by Aimee Davis at Story Warren.

 

What a Victorian Novel Teaches About Friendship and Civil Order – Eric Malczewski at Front Porch Republic.

 

The New York Times and the Case of the Missing Knife – Mike Pesca at The Fre Press.

 

Ten Years After – Greg Sullivan at Sippican Cottage.

 

Trouble, Trials, and Vexations: The Journal and Correspondence of Rachel Perry Moores, Texas Plantation Mistress, edited by Thomas Cutrer – book review by Greg Romaneck at Emerging Civil War.

 

The remarkable journey of George Foreman – Edmond Davis at Baptist News Global.

 

Two Christians Made a Show about Jews. It’s Phenomenal – Batya Ungar-Sargon at The Free Press.

 

How Artists Communicate: A Look at Johannes Vermeer – Sara Swacina at Faith on View.

 

Painting: Woman Holding a Balance, il on canvas (1662-1663) by Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 

Poets and Poems: Siân Killingsworth and “Hiraeth”

I haven’t lived in New Orleans for more than 50 years, but when I think about the idea of “home,” it’s what first comes to mind. Whenever we visit, though, few things are what I remember. My old neighborhood superficially looks the same, but the neighbors themselves, of course, have all changed, often many times over. The French Quarter is still there, but that coffee shop catacorner to the Presbytere on Jackson Square was the Louisiana Library, where I did research on papers in high school. The building housing my father’s printing business on Gravier Street in the business district is now a condominium. How did that happen? 

No, you can’t go home again. Or perhaps you can, but it’s no longer the home you remember.

 

“Hiraeth” is a Welsh word that translates directly into English as “longing.” As poet Siân 

 Killingsworth quotes in her chapbook entitled Hiraeth: Poems, it implies “a spiritual longing for a home that perhaps never was.” It’s the home that occupies our minds and hearts, the home we remember. The quotation comes from an art / video exhibition in 2022 by UK artist Jayne Lee.

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The hard Frost – Brenda Wineapple at The New Criterion.

 

Braving the Poem: Interview with Catherine Abbey Hodges – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Sayers in Paradise: From Dante to Dorothy – Seth Myers at An Unexpected Journal.

 

The Road He Took: A Lenten Reading of Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” – Heather Cadenhead at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

“Piano,” poem by D.H. Lawrence – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

"Murder on the Dawn Princess" by Roy Lewis

It starts with a fishing boat finding a body floating off the northeast coast of England. No identification, no fingerprints, nothing to say who it might be. Eventually, enough information is shared between police in Britain and Interpol to suggest a possible identity – a man from Spain wanted for questioning in a case. 

Meanwhile, and oblivious to the case, Arnold Landon of the Morpeth Department of Antiquities & Museums is debating with himself about a job offer in the United States, one involving his friend Jane who seems to be taking up permanent residence there. And he’s still dealing with his boss, the beautiful if totally political Karent Stannard, who’s hired an executive assistant who’s as beautiful as she is. She asks Arnold to help orient the new hire, and the two investigate a complaint from a local estate owner that a neighboring estate, run by what looks like a cult, may be building on a noted archaeological site.

 

Arnold soon finds himself in a tangle of boss, politics, a cult-like leader, and the local historical society. And then the estate owner is found dead at the bottom of the tower of his home – and a very suspicious substance in his bloodstream. And Arnold begins to see a link between the man’s death and something he heard when he visited the possible new job in the States, not to mention the body found floating.

 

Roy Lewis

Murder on the Dawn Princess is the fifteenth novel in the Arnold Landon series by British author Roy Lewis (1933-2019). It continues the running theme of its predecessors – how a mild-mannered antiquities official seems to attract crime of all kinds, up t and including murder. And more to the point – how he helps solve them (much to the chagrin the local police and his boss). 

 

Lewis was the author of some 60 other mysteries, novels, and short story collections. His Inspector Crow series includes A Lover Too Many, Murder in the Mine, The Woods Murder, Error of Judgment, and Murder for Money, among others. The Eric Ward series, of which The Sedleigh Hall Murder is the first (and originally published as A Certain Blindness in 1981), includes 17 novels. Lewis lived in northern England. 

 

The Arnold Landon series, like the series for Eric Ward and Inspector Crow, is set largely in the period of the 1970s and 1980s. They’re classic, old-fashioned yet greatly entertaining mysteries without the DNA analysis, computers, mobiles phones, and other fixtures of contemporary crime novels. And they’re terrific reads.

 

Related:

Murder in the Cottage by Roy Lewis.

Murder Under the Bridge by Roy Lewis.

Murder in the Tower by Roy Lewis. 

Murder in the Church by Roy Lewis.

Murder in the Barn by Roy Lewis.

Murder in the Manor by Roy Lewis.

Murder in the Farmhouse by Roy Lewis.

Murder in the Stableyard by Roy Lewis.

Murder in the House by Roy Lewis.

Murder by the Quay by Roy Lewis.

Error in Judgment by Roy Lewis. 

Murder at the Folly by Roy Lewis.

Murder in the Field by Roy Lewis.

Murder at Haggburn Hall by Roy Lewis.

Murder on the Golf Course by Roy Lewis.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Meaning & Membership – Elizabeth Stice at Current Magazine.

 

A Scrambled Story & a Puzzle to Solve: Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire – Jeff Goins at Miller’s Book Review.

 

I’m a Liberal at a ‘Conservative’ University: How Did I End Up Here? – Boris Fishman at The Free Press.

 

Telling a Hopeful Story: Some notes on Hannah Coulter and the active voice – Gract Olmstead at Granola.

 

The Luxurious Death Rattle of the Great American Magazine – Joe Nocera at The Free Press.

How shall we then work

After Genesis 1:27 - 2:15 

Created perfectly, to be done

perfectly, work joined

the rest of creation with

the fall, cursed life the rest

of creation was cursed. It

became what we know as 

work – hard, difficult,

exhausting, often deceptive,

confusing, harsh, humiliating –

all the things that happened

when man fell.

 

To redeem work, as to redeem

life, a sacrifice was needed,

required, mandated. And

the sacrifice was made,

redeeming us and pointing

to the way work is to be done.

Still fallen, as we are still

fallen, the light illuminates

the path for our work. 

We are to work as the redeemer’s

servants.

 

Photograph by Jesse Orrico via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

In Case I Die Unexpectedly – poem by Rachel Welcher at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

The Future of New Calvinism – Tim Challies.

 

Fear – Bill Grandi at Living in the Shadow.

Saturday Good Reads - March 22, 2025

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser is 100 years old this year. D.J. Taylor at The Spectator observes the anniversary, noting that the novel is as much a historical artifact as it is a work of fiction. 

It’s a long article, but the story it tells is so riveting that you forget how long it is. And it explains something I’ve wondered about for years: what causes bright, intelligent, educated people, many in their 50s and 60s, become as hysterical as 13-year-old teeny boppers on Tik Tok? And how did this craziness get so wild so fast? For Tablet Magazine, David Samuels tells the story. As it turns out, it was crazy, but it wasn’t fast; in fact, it was a deliberate strategy. Read “Rapid Onset Political Enlightenment.”

 

Years ago, I wrote a post for The High Calling about the power of second chances. It’s the story of how I became a Christian in college. The High Calling disbanded in 2015, and its archive was transferred to the Theology of Work Project. This past week, I received an email on the power of second chances, and the teaser sounded familiar, and, yes, sure enough, there’s my article all over again. It’s minus my byline, but it’s what I wrote for The High Calling.

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

Surviving Disney, Squatty Potty, and Building “The Chosen” – Mike Rowe interviews the Harmon Brothers. 

 

What Happened to Silicon Valley’s Most Infamous Thought Criminal? – Johanna Berkman at The Free Press.

 

News Media

 

Why is the NYT Admitting the Covid Lab-Leak Theory Now? – William Briggs at Science Is Not the Answer. 

News Media

 

An Obit for Journalism – Andrey Mir at City Journal.

 

American Stuff

 

The Angst of the Well-Endowed – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

Dusty Bookshelf: Judah P. Benjamin, the Jewish Confederate – Max Longley at Emerging Civil War.

 

Timeline: The Road to Taking Down the Department of Education – Greg Collard and James Rushmore at Racket News.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Sherlock Holmes vs. the French – Olivia Rutigliano at CrimeReads.

 

Evelyn Waugh’s Decadent Redemption – Henry Oliver at Liberties.

 

It Is Not Good to Read (Only) Alone – Nadya Williams at Front Porch Republic.

 

The Joke’s on Woke: Shakespeare & the Pride Problem – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

Faith

 

Reaching the West with Wonder – James Wood at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Art

 

The ten most expensive Vincent Van Gogh paintings – Martin Bailey at The Art Newspaper.

 

British Stuff

 

Cruikshank’s London Almanack 1835 – Spitalfields Life.

 

Poetry

 

Loaves and Fishes – David Whyte.

 

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” poem by Robert Frost – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

For the Fallen, Poem by Laurence Binyon – Performed by Laurence Fox.

Painting: The Reader, oil on canvas (1911) by Lovis Corinth (1858-1925).

It began with work

After Genesis 1:27 – 2:15 

From that first movement

of the beginning, it was

work. Creation was

work, a weaving

of created things. Into

man life was breathed,

a garden planted, land

fertilized to produce and

sustain life. Everywhere

you look in creation,

you find work, infused

into life from the start.

And it was good.

 

With the fall, work fell

as well. What began as

a blessing became

a curse. The day will

come when work, too,

will be restored. That day

is at hand.

 

Photograph by Maxime Agnellia vis Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

The Lord Will Come and Not Be Slow – poem by John Milton at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

The Theology of Work and the Stay-at-Home Mom: Embracing the Value of Our Calling – Shiphrah Lakka at IndiAanya.

 

Cuddy, a sonnet for St. Cuthbert – Malcolm Guite.

 

Speak Life – poem by Jesse Baker at Rabbit Room Poetry.

Poets and Poems: Donna Hilbert and "Gravity"

One aspect of collected and selected poem editions is that the insight they offer into how a poet grows and develops. I have a 1980 edition (20^th printing, no less) of the Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, which is something of a personal treasure. On the bookshelf, it sits very close to The Collected Poems of T.S. Eliot (Annotated; 2015), which I hauled back from England in my carryon bag and developed new arm muscles in the process. Both works helped me see how the two poets developed over a lifetime of writing poetry.

Collections aren’t only for famous dead poets. Donna Hilbert has been publishing poetry collections for 35 years. A consistent theme in her work has been an exploration of home and family and navigating life within that context. In 2018, she published Gravity: New & Selected Poems, a selection of selected poems from past collections as well as a number of new poems. This winter, her publisher has issued a second edition of Gravity. 

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

Some Thursday Readings

 

The Translations of New Verse Review 2.1 – Steve Knepper at New Berse Review.

 

“Disobedience,” poem by A.A. Milne – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Attic – Poem by Jerry Barrett at Gerald the Writer.

 

Title poem from The Mother of All Words – Kelly Belmonte at Kelly’s Scribbles.

Some Wednesday Readings

How to get started reading English literature: An Introductory syllabus – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader. 

A life shaped by my father’s bedtime stories – Kate Weinberg at The Spectator.

 

Clouds – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Booknotes: Hundreds of Little Wars, edited by G. David Schieffler and Matthew M. Stith – Civil War Books and Authors.

 

Tolkien, Philosopher of War – Graham McAleer at Front Porch Republic.

 

In Old Bow – Spitalfields Life.

 

Death, Grief, and Frodo’s Incurable Wound – Zak Mellgren at The Subzak.

 

Do Your Own Research: How to File Freedom of Information Requests – Greg Collard at Racket News.

 

“Futility,” poem by Wilfred Owen – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Photograph: Wilfred Owen in World War I.