“Penury” by Pete Brassett

The body of a real estate agent is found in the yard of a small hotel property she recently purchased. She’s dressed and mounted like a scarecrow. The person who finds her is the security man she hired to install monitoring devices for public areas. He calls in the grisly discovery, but he does so anonymously. He’ll say later that it was because he didn’t want to get involved; it may more a case of wanting to avoid the police himself. 

But he’s traced using hone records, and he cheerfully enough tells the police what they want to know. He’s willing to help, at least until his body is found. 

 

Retired DCI James Munro, who still manages to get involved in ongoing cases, finds himself helping an investigating officer who has no experience with murder. Then his own former team is assigned the case, and James finds himself right in the thick of things. And thick it is – a past involving real estate dealings, a Lexus that seems abandoned and then disappears, a suspect who doesn’t want to say what she knows, at least all at once, shifting identities, and fast-paced plot developments that you better read closely.

 

Pete Brassett

Penury is the 12^th Munro and West novel by Scottish writer Pete Brassett, and it is as well-plotted, entertaining, and often downright funny as its predecessors. Brassett had a gift for comic dialogue (even with an overtone of Scottish dialect) between the police officers that helps to relieve tension. It’s difficult to think of another mystery writer with this kind of comic talent.

 

Brassett, a native Scot, has published 13 novels in the Munro and West series, as well as several general fiction and mystery titles. His first novel was Clam Chowder at Lafayette and Spring, followed by three independent crime novels – Kiss the Girls, Prayer for the Dying, and The Girl from Kilkenny, in which he dealt with issues like post-traumatic stress disorder, religious scandal, and manic depression. 

 

With Munro and West, Brassett came into his own, and the series is one of the most enjoyable I’ve read. I have only one more to go, and I hope Mr. Brassett is hard at work on No. 14.  

 

Related:

She by Pete Brassett.

Avarice by Pete Brassett.

Duplicity by Pete Brassett.

Terminus by Pete Brassett.

Talion by Peter Brassett.

Perdition by Peter Brassett.

Rancour by Peter Brassett.

Penitent by Pete Brassett.

Hubris by Pete Brassett.

 

Turpitude by Peter Brassett.

Some Thursday Readings

 

“In the Mountains on a Summer Day,” Poem by Li Po – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Scattered Thoughts – poem by Seth Lewis.

 

Ansel Adams, AI, and the Essence of Creation – Alan Noble at You Are Not Your Own.

A Bible Verse and a Fictional Scene

For the past few months, our church pastors have been preaching a series on the Gospel as seen in the life of David. We’re nearing the end of the series. The sermons have focused on some of the highlights of David’s life, including his anointing by the prophet Samuel, the confrontation with Goliath, the growing animosity of King Saul, the friendship with Saul’s son Jonathan, David becoming king, and Bathsheba.  

Last Sunday, the sermon centered on the end of the rebellion by David’s son Absalom (2 Samuel 18). The army gathered by Absalom has been defeated and scattered; Absalom himself, trying to escape, is caught by his trademark flowing hair in the branches of a tree. He’s dangling there when found by David’s general, who wastes no time in ignoring David’s earlier command to spare Absolom’s life and putting the young man to the sword. 

 

I’m familiar with the account. I’ve read it many times, my attention caught by the image of Absalom dangling from the tree limb. It is a truism that you can read a book of the Bible, a passage, a chapter, and even a verse scores of times and not see something that will suddenly catch your attention during an additional reading.

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

Photograph by Filip Zrnzevic via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Wendell Berry and what it means to love a place – Fr. Michael Rennier at Aleteia. 

 

At Abbey Wood – Spitalfields Life.

 

Is offshore wind really cheaper than gas? – Steve Loftus at The Critic Magazine.

 

Ray Bradbury Unbound – Bradley Birzer.

At the optometrist's

I brought my notebook

and a pen, thinking

I might see something

or other that might

inspire. But it’s only

the eye doctor’s office,

with its all displays

of frames for glasses

and a waiting area 

for people, many

with canes and walkers,

and one elderly lady

managing a toddler,

her grandson, cute

little fellow with blond

curly hair and a loud

voice. A mobile

phone rings, loud 

enough to be heard

in the parking lot,

and we all think

someone doesn’t want

to wear hearing aids.

I come here sometimes,

for my own appointment,

without cane or walker,

yet. Today I’m a driver,

so I just sit and wait and

hope something might

suggest a poem. 

The receptionist loudly

asks if anyone here is

named Timothy, but

no one answers.

 

Photograph by Scott Van Daalen via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

[at the end] – poem by L.L. Barkat at Every Day Poems.

 

“The Last Warm Saturday,” poem by Jane Greer – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern. 

 

Collect – poem by Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

“The Big Sleep” by Raymond Chandler

The Big Sleep is a classic of mystery, a classic of noir, and even a classic of American literature. Published in 1939, it’s the first novel in which author Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) featured his famous detective Philip Marlowe, and it set the stage for the Marlowe novels that followed. The novel was also the basis for the 1946 film of the same namestarring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. 

Marlowe, a private detective, is hired by ailing General Sternwood to find out why a blackmailer is asking for money concerning one of his daughters. Sternwood made in money in the Southern California oilfields; his estate even includes pumping well (tastefully hidden from view of the palatial house). His son-in-law also seems to have disappeared, but no one seems terribly concerned about it. Marlowe is told to stick to the blackmail request.

 

The private detective makes use of clues and his many contacts to track the blackmailer to what appears to be a rare and antique book shop but is a front for a lucrative pornography business. Marlowe soon finds himself sucked into the Los Angeles underworld of pornography, gambling, violence, missing witnesses, and the glamour that disguises all of it.

 

Raymond Chandler

Marlowe is a fascinating detective. An outstanding graduate of the hardboiled detective school, he uses his tough-guy, no-nonsense exterior to harbor democratic ideals and a desire for good to triumph. He’s often compelled to chase down a wrong that’s been done, even when his employer tells him not to. It often leads to another feature of the ambiguousness of the culture highlighted in The Big Sleep – where the good buys and bad guys frequently change places.

 

Chandler’s Philip Marlowe’s novels also include Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The High Window (1942), The Lady in the Lake (1943), The Little Sister (1949), The Long Goodbye (1953), and Playback (1958). He also worked as a Hollywood screenwriter, writing the scripts for such movies as Double Indemnity, The Blue Dahlia, and Strangers on a Train. Many of his short stories were published as collections. He died in 1959 at La Jolla, California. 

 

The Big Sleep is one of the milestones of American mystery fiction. It occasionally included descriptions and terms that were commonly used in the 1930s and 1940s but would cause many readers to wince today. But it’s a fascinating read, opening a window on life and culture in southern California at the time and giving us one of the great hardboiled detectives of American mystery fiction.

Related:

 

Dispatch No. 1: Raymond Chandler – Ameria Friedline at Dispatches to Jack.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Why conservatives should read more fiction – Daniel Pitt at The Critic Magazine.

 

The Sixties Never Happened – Greg Sullivan at Sippican Cottage.

 

Surrender town: An 1881 visit to Appomattox Court House – John Banks’ Civil War Blog.

 

Lifetime Reader – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Sloane Square, the Bloody Bridge and King’s Private Road – A London Inheritance.

Top photograph: A scene from the 1946 movie with Bogart and Bacall.

Do good, be punished

After John 11 

He had turned water

into wine, he had fed

5,000, he had calmed

storms, he had healed

lepers. He had saved

children, and now he

raised a man from

the dead. This was

too much; they feared

this miracle worker,

this rabble rouser;

they feared he would

become so strong that

he would attract the eyes

of the overlords, that

this man threatened 

everything they were,

everything they had.

The decision: he must

die for the good of all.

Better one man die

than the whole nation

perish.

 

Photograph by Ashkan Forouzani via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

To Translate the Ocean – SDG Morgan at Bandersnatch Books.

 

Grief and lament in Texas: Weeping with hope – Melissa Bondurant at CDM Women’s Ministry.

 

Don’t overlook Sunday – Stephen Kneale at Building Jerusalem.

 

A Matter of Politics? – Jean Danielou at The Imaginative Conservative.

Saturday Good Reads - July 26, 2025

She was 34, an English professor at Wellesley College, and had accepted a summer teaching job at Colorado College. Katherine Lee Bates did a tourist kind of thing and climbed to the top of Pike’s Peak. She was so overwhelmed by the view that she wrote this. 

Accused of embezzling an Austin, Texas, bank, he first fled to Honduras to evade capture and arrest. But hiding soon consumed so much energy that he gave himself up and was tried and duly convicted. He served three years in prison. When he was released, he had literally nothing except a few personal belongings and 14 stories in his head. One of them would become what is likely the most famous short story in American literature.  

 

The Richmond office of the FBI suspected that certain people might be right-wing terrorists. The agency then asked a Catholic priest to divulge what was told to him in the confessional. He refused, and he himself became a suspect to be watched and spied upon. James Lynch at First Things Magazine has the story.

 

More Good Reads

 

America 250

 

Winning the Ten Crucial Days: The Keys to Victory in George Washington’s Legendary Winter Campaign by David Price – review by Kelsey DeFord ay Journal of the American Revolution.

 

The Complicated History of David Fanning’s Murderous 1782 Bloody Sabbath Raid – Josh Wheeler at Journal of the American Revolution.

 

The Cathedral and the Republic – Jon Schaff at Front Porch Republic.

 

Faith

 

The Brilliant Apologetic Strategy of the Ancient Church – Michael Kruger at Canon Fodder.

 

Our Freedom to Work & Worship Depends Upon Religious Liberty Protections – Paul Mueller at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

 

Fiction

 

The Rest is Silence – short story by Brecht De Poortere at The Hudson Review.

 

American Stuff

 

The Final Campaign: Grant’s Desperate Race to Complete His Memoirs – Jason Clark at This is the Day.

 

Poetry

 

“Woodman, Spare That Tree!”, poem by George Pope Morris – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern. 

 

‘Glocca Morra” by Paul Durcan – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

“Nothing is enough!,” poem by Laurence Binyon – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Writing and Literature

 

A Life in Fiction – John Wilson at Profrock.

 

Monsters and the Long Defeat – Ian Olson at Mere Orthodoxy on Tolkien and Beowulf.

 

Reading with Jane Austen – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Some Basics About Writing That I Believe – Dean Wesley Smith.

 

Culture

 

Blisters on the Camino de Santiago – Dixie Dillon Lane at Front Porch Republic.

 

The Old Ones – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer. 

 

Why the Revolution Never Ends – Gary Saul Morson at The Free Press.

 

Montego Bay – Bobby Bloom

 Painting: Portrait of the Artist’s Wife Reading, oil on canvas by Ivan Nilkolayvich Kramskoi (1837-1887).

Why cry?

After John 11:35 

Jesus wept.

When he saw the pain

and anguish, he cried.

When he saw the faith

new and imperfect, he cried.

When he saw the wages

of sin and unbelief, he cried.

When he heard “if only you’d

been here,” he cried.

When he saw the people

so cast adrift, he cried.

When he saw the love

for the dead man, he cried.

When he saw the faith

in his healing, he cried.

When he saw the hope

for a miracle, he cried.

When he saw the sisters

fall at his feet, he cried.

When he saw how little

they’d learned, he cried.

When he saw his friend

had died, he cried.

Jesus wept.

 

Photograph by Alejandro Giraldo Ortega via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

The Fourth Vision of Zechariah – artwork by Jack Baumgartner at The School for the Transfer of Energy.

 

“Disturb us, O Lord,” poem by Desmond Tutu – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

“Do not send for whom the bell tolls” by John Donne – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Can I Get a Witness? – David Bannn at Front Porch Republic.

Gathering

Another poetry prompt poem, this one from last month at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Gathering

A single plant,

a native, no less,

officially Monarda

 

but usually called

bee balm, for a reason.

It gathers bees.

 

A single plant that

doesn’t stay put;

it seeds and multiplies

 

and spreads treasure,

a sea of purple crowns

turning the garden

 

into a explosion of

buzzing, hovering,

flapping, pollen-

 

covered bees,

a convention

of pollinators,

 

honey bees, bumble

bees, little bees,

and tinier bees

 

who consider 

the garden 

a personal vase.

Some Thursday Readings

 

“I Saw a Peacock,” poem by Anonymous – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Narnia Secret – Dwight Longenecker at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

In the Thickest of the Fray: Mississippians at Gettysburg in Their Own Words by Joseph Owen & Douglas Ashton – review by Scott Bumpus at Emerging Civil War.

 

“Austerity,” poem by Janet Loxley Lewis – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

“Spare Us Yet: And Other Stories” by Lucas Smith

Faith meets reality. Sometimes, it doesn’t work out as you expect it to, or as you think it should. 

Growing up in a culture that’s saturated Catholic (like New Orleans was), even we non-Catholics were aware of the impact and reach of the church. Ash Wednesday felt weird when you were one of the few in public school with a clean forehead. You lined up for your polio vaccine (sugar cube style) at the local Catholic school. Most of the weddings and funerals you attended were Catholic, and you typically found more food at funerals than wedding receptions. Almost all your neighborhood friends were Catholic. You took you SAT tests at the Catholic high school. Catholic was familiar; Catholic was normal.

 

Perhaps this is why I felt completely at home with Spare Us Yet, the collection of short stories by Lucas Smith. To call them Catholic stories would be an act of misdirection. Certainly, they all have the sense of faith, and a few even concerns priests, religious holidays, and observances. But they are not stories of faith as taught in seminary or theology textbooks as they are stories of faith lived out in day-to-day life.

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

Some Wednesday Readings

 

One Final Newspaper Roll Call – Neil Chatelain at Emerging Civil War.

 

You Can Have This Heart to Break – Patti Callahan Henry at Stories Are My Thing.

 

Hypergraphia: On Prolific Writers and the Persistent Need to Produce – Ed Simon at Literary Hub.

 

When the Stranger Becomes the Scourge: Lessons for Localists from Wuthering Heights – Raleigh Adams at Front Porch Republic.

 

“There Will Never Be Another Battle” – Kevin Pawlak at Emerging Civil War.

That's entertainment

I ran across this poem from six years ago; it showed up in a Facebook memory and I'd forgotten I'd written it. It was a response to a poetry prompt by Kelly Belmonte at All Nine.

That's entertainment

I’m looking at this fence,
and all the planks and posts,
and I’m looking at this bucket
of whitewash,
and I’m having myself a pondering
of trying to make it look easy,
make it look fun, like
chasing chickens or
pulling pigtails,
so I start whistling,
and I start singing,
and sure enough
if it looks like entertainment
they will come. They all
click “like” and add an emoji,
grab a brush and start slopping
that whitewash on, while I head
down to the quiet creek with Huck
to catch me some fish,
smoke some tobacco,
tell some stories,
and rest my eyes.

 

Photograph by Terence Raper via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The life of Samuel Johnson’s servant – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

On a Train Through Murray Country at Sunset – poem by Lucas Smith at The Sprawl of Quality.

 

“The Mower to the Glow-Worms,” poem by Andrew Marvell – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

“The Palace at the End of the Sea” by Simon Tolkien

Theo Sterling is a boy who feels caught between his ambitious father, who manufactures women’s fashions, and his religiously devout mother, who escaped revolutionary Mexico after seeing her parents murdered by partisans. Theo’s father is desperately trying to leave his Jewish roots (and parents) behind, while his mother seems desperately trying to find hers in her Catholic faith. 

It's the late 1920s, and what Theo himself wants to do more than anything is run track, in which he excels at in school and is encouraged by his coach. His father is determined that Theo will quit school at 14 and join him in the business, which is what happens until the Great Depression intervenes.

 

His father’s business is failing with the times, until a strike essentially finishes it. It becomes something of a mortal blow for Theo’s father, and the boy and his mother are left destitute, until rescued by a former friend of his mother’s, a rescue that includes marriage and a move to England. Theo has known middle-class respectability, lower-class poverty, and now upper-class wealth and privilege. His stepfather has both ancestors and property in Spain, and Theo will soon be introduced to a new kind of conflict – the rumblings of the Spanish Civil War.

 

Simon Tolkien

The Palace at the End of the Sea by Simon Tolkien is part coming-oof-age novel, part historical novel, and completely an enthralling story set in the late 1920s and 1930s. Through the life of an American boy and teen, Tolkien tells several stories – the New York garment trade, the Great Depression, upper-class Britain with its famous schools and emphasis upon sports, and Spain spinning towards the brink of chaos and war. Theo Sterling must learn to navigate all of it.

 

It should be noted that this is Part 1 of Theo’s story. Part 2, The Room of Lost Steps, will be published in September.

 

Tolkien previously published five novels: No Man’s Land, Orders from Berlin, The King of Diamonds, The Inheritance, and Final Witness. A graduate in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, he worked as a barrister London, specializing in criminal defense. A grandson of J.R.R. Tolkien, he’s a director of the Tolkien Estate and served as a series consultant for the Amazon TV series “The Rings of Power.” He lives with his family in southern California.

The Palace at the End of the Sea is a thoroughly engaging story. Tolkien captures the bewilderment, disappointment, anger, and maturing of a teenaged boy exactly right. And telling that boy’s story against the dramatic backdrop of the 1930s heightens and deepens both the boy’s experience and that of the times.  

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Britain: MPs should not have to declare their religious beliefs – James Bundy at The Critic Magazine.

 

Hick’s Hall: The Original Middlesex Sessions House – A London Inheritance.

 

Great Moments in Maine Real Estate: Harrington Edition – Sippican Cottage.

 

What You’re Really Hungry For – Spencer Klavan at The Free Press on Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham.

 

Zen and the Art of Bear Spotting – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

A death in the family

After John 11 

Hearing his friend is ill, 

he does nothing, but

waits, surprising them all.

When he does come,

finally, the friend is

dead, four days dead and

in the tomb. Too late,

far too late, to heal.

The crowd follows as

he goes to the tomb;

the sister implies he

failed them all by 

waiting, that he could

have saved her brother,

his friend, because

nothing could be done

after death. Deeply moved,

he tells them to open

the tomb. He calls the man’s

name; the dead man rises

and walks, fully alive. 

We who are dead

hear our name called,

and we walk, 

fully alive.

 

Photograph by Wiki Sinaloa via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Reaching Outsiders with Our Words – Warren Peel at Gentle Reformation.

 

Two Ways to Gauge Contemporary Issues in Theology – Daniel DeWitt at TheoLatte.