“The Bridesmaid” by Tom Darin Liskey

Maximiliano Santillan is a private investigator. He was once a policeman, a very good policeman, in fact. But he made the career mistake of testifying against a crooked cop, who was wrongly acquitted. Santillan was banished to a remote post. He’s now a private eye, and he’s worried about his daughter and her involvement with drugs.

Then comes the call – from a former police associate. He’s told virtually nothing except to meet the car being sent to get him. He’s taken to what looks like a police raid on a brothel, except there are no television cameras or reporters or even onlookers as is common with police raids. Inside, he sees policeman gathering and counting wads of counterfeit money. And there’s a dead woman, the death badly staged to look like a heroin overdose. 

Tom Darin Liskey

The woman turns out to be the adopted daughter of the former admiral rumored to be the next head of government. Santillan’s mission: find out who killed her. Even if the admiral doesn’t want to know.

The Bridesmaid by Tom Darin Liskey is a novella set in a country that sounds very much like Argentina, complete with a former military junta that “disappeared” thousands of people and was brought down by a war over control of islands in the South Atlantic. That history looms large in the story, demonstrating that the past is never really the past, that it’s always with us.

For almost 10 years, Liskey worked as a journalist in South America. His stories, articles, and photographs have been published in such magazines and journals as Crime Factory, Driftwood Press, Mount Island, Biostories, Hobo Camp Review, Roadside Fiction, Blue Hour Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, and others. 

The Bridesmaid falls into the category of noir mysteries, and it’s exceedingly well done. Liskey sets the atmosphere and the characters just right for this story, and adds a few twists and turns involving a disfigured war hero and an activist nun. My only regret is that it wasn’t a full-length novel; perhaps the author can be prevailed upon to write more Santillan stories.

Related:

My review of This Side of the River by Tom Darin Liskey.

Poets and Poems: James Matthew Wilson and “Some Permanent Things”

For the past four to five years, poetry has been enjoying a significant resurgence. But it is a resurgence only when broadly defined, and that means “when including the internet.” The Guardian recently discussed the rise of a new generation of poets fueling the rise, originating on the internet and especially Instagram. Instagram poets, when they collect and publish their work in print form, can sell tens of thousands of copies. Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey sold almost half a million copies.

Not even Billy Collins sells half a million copies of a poetry book. 

The Guardian article goes on to point out that the Instagram poets have largely bypassed the familiar poetry gatekeepers – the poetry magazines, poetry societies, and academics who often serve as critics. These poets don’t need Poetry Magazineor the Academy of American Poets to help them sell tens of thousands of copies of their poetry books. The old order somewhat sniffs at the transience of the internet, while the new order runs rather merrily all the way to the bank. The resurgence in poetry has barely touched the traditional poets. We haven’t seen this kind of upheaval in poetry since the modernist poets of the 1910s and 1920s upset the then-traditional poetry cart.

All of this was swirling in my head as I read Some Permanent Things by James Matthew Wilson.

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

Poetry at Work, Chapter 8: The Poetry of the Organization Chart

I was sitting with a woman in the Human Resources Department. There had been a reorganization of our department, part of a general reshuffling across the company, and I’d been assigned to sit with her to work out the new organization chart. 

You would think this was something of a useless exercise. Shouldn’t it be a simple matter of “here’s the boss, here are his or her direct reports, and here’s who reports to them.” But it was anything but simple, and I was to get a lesson in the Byzantine art form of corporate organization charts.

First, she pointed out, not all of the boss direct reports had the same title. Some were directors; some were managers. Next, there were directors and there were directors – a title wasn’t necessarily indicative of grade level, and grade level was everything. The chart had to indicate that by a subtle positioning of the boxes, with some slightly more elevated than the others. The same thing applied to the managers. Then there was the problem of some managers have more people reporting to them than directors did. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

"London: The Illustrated History"

When you travel, and find yourself in a city like London, you inevitably run across books about the city’s history, current events, and people. You want to buy and bring them all home as mementos or souvenirs of your experiences, despite the added weight in your carryon or checked baggage.

London: The Illustrated History is one of those books. But do yourself a favor and buy it and read it before you go. It will help immeasurably help you understand what you’re seeing and experiencing. And, oversized and lavishly illustrated as it is, you won’t have to lug it home on the airplane.

Edited by Cathy Ross and John Clark, the book includes the work of more than 30 academics and Museum of London staff, who contributed with illustrations, photographs, artwork, short essays and sidebars. Each section and each page have something interesting to offer the reader about the history of London. 

The book is divided into 15 historical periods: prehistory; Roman London; early and later medieval London; the Tudors, early and later Stuart London; the Georgian era; Regency London; the early and later Victoria period; Edwardian London; London between the great wars of the 20^thcentury; London in World War II and the period immediately after; 1960s and 1970s London; and modern London. 

Given the millennia of history and the wealth of information available, the volume still manages to provide a broad overview of kings and commoners, history made by heroes and lived by the people, high and popular culture. The reader sees what shopping in Regency London at the upper-class Burlington Arcade (still operating today on Piccadilly, next to the Royal Academy of Art), and dancing in taverns like Max’s, where sailors, coal heavers, dustmen, and “men and women of colour” rubbed shoulders on the dance floor. And if your interests run to Roman London, you can get a view of the arena that lies beneath the Guildhall and the Roman houses below the former Billingsgate Market (I’ve gotten to see both, on two separate visits). 

London is a coffee table book, to be sure, but it is a gem of a guide to the city’s history. It’s also a solid introduction to the city if you’re planning to visit or vacation there.

Top illustration: The Quadrant, Regent Street, 1822, designed by John Nash.

They're watching

After Luke 14:1-11

They’re always there,

always watching,

carefully looking

for the smallest error,

for the slightest misstep,

for any opening to reject,

to ridicule, to pounce.

He was watching, more closely

than expected, for the trap, the snare,

seeing it clearly when it came,

and he posed questions 

they don’t answer, questions

they cannot answer, questions

simple and direct, answers

so obvious, and they knew 

they had ensnared themselves.

Photograph by pixpoetry via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads

It’s no secret that I have serious concerns about the American news media. I’ve watched for years as editorializing has crept into headline writing and news reporting, to the point where it’s getting difficult to determine what’s an editorial and what’s a news story. For a long time, Associated Press stories tended to be more balanced, but that distinction is now gone. Long gone. I read an AP story in my hometown newspaper on Wednesday and spotted at least four instances of the reporter’s bias coloring what was written.

I’ve said it before and it’s worth repeating: Donald Trump is not the news media’s problem. The news media is the news media’s problem.

Then there’s the news that’s not there. This past Monday, the biggest news coming out of Washington was the vote in the Senate on Ben Sasse’s infanticide bill. Guess how much air time CBS, NBC, and ABC devoted to it on their evening newscasts? And the Columbia Journalism Review had a story about Esquire Magazine’s decision not to publish a heavily vetted story breaking the news about movie director Bryan Singer and the charges being made about him. (The writers, who were listed on Esquire’s masthead, took the story to The Atlantic.)

Some of the worst reporting involves religion stories. Not many years ago, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had one of the best religion reporters in the country, a man named Tim Townsend. He covered his beat like a good, tough reporter. He understood the subject matter. He didn’t shy away from controversy and reported it fairly. Today, the paper, like most across the country, has no religion reporter. Reporters with no background or understanding of a story’s context are sent to cover religion stories. An example: Terry Mattingly at Get Religion had some interesting observations about how the media did – and didn’t – cover the Methodist general conference in St. Louis this past week. (As an aside, the Get Religion blog does an excellent job of dissecting how the news media covers religion stories. Or doesn’t.)

And it’s not just news media. We all know that social media has had a profound impact on politics and culture. Anton Barba-Kat at The Point explains what that impact is – social media allows us to disassociate speech from its social context, allowing the unsayable to become the normal. Not to mention the facilitation of the launch of virtual lynch mobs.

More Good Reads

Poetry

After Rublev’s Trinity – Carrie Purcell Kahler at Image Journal.

Old Poem Revue #2: Raleigh’s Last Poem – Aaron Belz at The Drunken Odyssey. 

The Country Library – J.P. Celia at First Things Magazine.

Poor Over – Jerry Barrett at Gerald the Writer.

At this distance – Kathleen Everett at The Course of Our Seasons.

‘We donte want to hurt anney one’: Bonnie and Clyde’s poetry revealed – Alison Flood at The Guardian. 

Faith

Oscar-Nominated Films Raise Questions About Power and Self-Interest – Kristin Brown at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

How to be Less Miserable – Clint Archer at The Cripplegate.

Surprised by Jack – Bradley Birzer at The Imaginative Conservative.

What Fundamentalists in America Had in Common – Justin Taylor at The Gospel Coalition.

What is Radical Christianity? – Darryl Hart at Front Porch Republic.

American Stuff

Susie King Taylor: The First African American Army Nurse – Meg Groeling at Emerging Civil War.

British Stuff

Miss Marianne Skerrett: Dresser to the Queen – Lauren Gilbert at English Historical Fiction Authors.

Writing and Literature

Stewarding the Skill of Writing – Jen Oshman at Plugged in to the Vine.

To Read Without Pleasure is Stupid: On the Novels of John Williams – E.J. Hutchinson at Mere Orthodoxy.

Write to Discover Your Ideal Reader – Ann Kroeker.

Poetry Titles and Tables of Contents – Mary H. Sayler at The Poetry Editor.

Auden on No-Platforming Pound – Edward Mendelson at The New York Review of Books.

Life and Culture

The Religion of Workism is Making Americans Miserable – Derek Thompson at The Atlantic.

You Don’t Have to Have a Well-Formed Opinion on Everything – Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition.

News Media

Covering Nadia Bolz-Weber: It's time for reporters to ditch the public-relations approach – Julia Duin at Get Religion.

Psalm 53 Sung for Pope Francis in Tbilisi, Georgia

Painting: Springtime, oil on canvas by Claude Monet (ca. 1872). 

Storage

After Luke 12:13-21

We pack it all in

our basements, or attics,

our storage lockers, our storage pods,

our garages, our closets,

our warehouses, our second

and third houses,

we pack it all in and 

soon realize it’s not enough,

we don’t have enough

for our comfort, our safety,

our security, our peace of mind,

our station, our position,

the reason doesn’t matter

but we need more

so we get more and find

new ways and new places 

to pack it all in. so it’s there,

ready and accessible, our comfort

until we realize we need more

until our life is demanded of us

and they say in remembrance

that he with the most stuff

loses.

Photograph by Reinhart Julian via Unsplash. Used with permission.