“Dead on Your Feet” by Stephen Puleston

Detective Inspector (DI) Ian Drake of the Wales Police Service in Caernaffon in North Wales is called to investigate a murder. His regular detective sergeant is on maternity leave, so he has DS Sara Morgan accompany him. The body of a woman has been found in an unoccupied storefront – and found by people passing by when the store’s curtain opened. Her murder has been staged – and what the detectives come to realize is that the scene imitates a well-known contemporary artwork.

The dead woman is a gallery owner and curator for an upcoming local art exhibition. As they investigate, Drake and Morgan discover that a number of people were upset that their work had been excluded from the exhibition, but most seem to have alibis. And then the murder scene goes live, and viral, on YouTube and Twitter. The detectives are dealing with a very sick mind.

And then there’s a second murder, and while it looks different form the first, Drake believes there’s a connection.

Dead on Your Feet is the fourth DI Ian Drake novel by author Stephen Puleston, who has this series and three novels in the DI John Marco series (both detectives work for the Wales Police Force, Drake in North Wales and Marco in South Wales). Drake is separated from his wife, living apart from her and their two young daughters. The separation is about work and the excessive amount of time Drake devotes to it, but the detective is also getting counseling for his obsession with order, cleanliness, and neatness.

Stephen Puleston

But it is that mania for order that drives the man to restore the balance in his world, and it may be the reason he’s such a good detective, doing his job well in spite of the constant police politics. And during this investigation, he learns he has a half-brother who’s 10 years older, the result of his father having a something of a fling when he was 18. The problem is that the half-brother is one of the murder suspects.

Dead on Your Feet is a fast-paced police procedural mystery, and exactly the kind of good, entertaining story we’ve come to expect from Puleston.

Related:

My review of Another Good Killing.

My review of Brass in Pocket.

My review of Worse than Dead.

My review of Against the Tide.

My review of Devil’s Kitchen.

My review of Dead Smart.

My review of Speechless.

Top photograph: The Dinner Party, oil on canvas by Judy Chicago. The painting plays a significant role in Dead on Your Feet.

“Knowing God” by Brian Johnston

The Twenty-third Psalm is perhaps the best known psalm in the Bible. It’s a beautiful and moving psalm in any translation, but the language of the King James Version is hard to surpass. The rhythm and cadence of the words that begin “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” are unforgettable.

This psalm of David, Brian Johnston tells us in Knowing God: Reflections on Psalm 23, is also an intensely personal psalm – for God. The “Lord” of the first line is God’s personal name, Yahweh, the name the Jews considered so sacred that that wouldn’t speak it and in writing left out the vowels – YHWH. And it is this personal God to whom David repeatedly refers as the psalm unfolds; in fact, this psalm is not about David’s (or our own) trials and tribulations but about God.

Johnston uses the framework to describe God’s attributes as revealed in the other names he’s known by in the Bible – the provider, the healer, the banner, the sanctifier, peace, our righteousness, the Lord who is there, and the shepherd. David knew all of these attributes of God, and he especially knew the role of shepherd, having been one himself.

The way God declares his name to us, Johnston says, “makes His character known to us.” And so each of the statements of God are discussed and reflected upon in the succeeding chapters.

Brian Johnston

A native Scot, Johnston worked as a government scientist until he began full-time ministry with the Churches of God. For more than 30 years, he has broadcasted on the Search for Truth radio program. He’s also done missionary work in Belgium and the Philippines. He’s the author of numerous books, including Five Sacred Solos: The Truths That the Reformation Uncovered; Minor Prophets: Major Issues; Double Vision: The Insights of Isaiah; and many more.

Knowing God can easily be used as a devotional or for meditation. Johnston writes in a simple, easy-to-understand style, which makes the narrative a moving, straightforward one. It’s a short read, and more than worth the time required to read it.

Photograph by Biegen Wshodni via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Poetic Voices: Scott Owens and David Chorlton

Poets Scott Owens and David Chorlton might rightfully be called “poets of the land.” But the lands they immerse themselves in, reflect upon, make sense of, and help others understand.

For Owens, in his collection For One Who Knows How to Own Land, it is the land of memory and childhood, the growing up on a family farm. This is the land that has the contour molded by the human hand, or many human hands.

The land Owens describes is the land that has a history, human as well as natural. It’s the land where boys take their BB guns, and where cows have to be milked in the dark, early hours. It’s the land filled with sounds of whippoorwills and grasshoppers, the cackling of hens, and kitchen sounds of breakfast being made before the farmer heads to the fields. It is a land confined by fence and barbed wire, utilized by machines to produce crops.

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