I wave my palm,
I lay down my cloak,
to welcome the king
of Jerusalem.
I see the colt,
I am the crowds
to welcome the king
into Zion.
I stand and wait,
I cheer the king,
who rides the colt
into Jerusalem.
And in four days,
I’ll stand and shout,
Crucify the king
of Jerusalem.
Photograph by Andrew Anderson via Unsplash Used with permission.
A retired postal worker is found dead in his meticulously kept garden. His daughter and grandchildren have lived with him for a few years after the death of her husband. And she is failing fast with cancer.
The Thames Valley Police Force at Kidlington near Oxford is still reeling from the sniper death of a beloved superintendent. Detective Inspector Hillary Greene was there when it happened, as a group walked out of headquarters into the parking garage. She’s now back after two months leave, and she’s dealing with her own problems with the death, this new murder case, and the superintendent’s pregnant widow, herself a police officer, deciding to undertake her own investigation into her husband’s death.
They all know who the murderer is. The problem is that they have zero evidence. The suspect’s house is being watched. No one thinks he’s finished. And then he slips away without anyone realizing he’s gone.
Faith Martin
Murder in the Garden is the ninth novel in the DI Hillary Greene series by British author Faith Martin. Its predecessor, Murder in the Mansion, turned into a riveting edge-of-your-seat suspense thriller – and this one follows in the same vein. It requires a close read to keep track of several narrative threads happening at the same time, but your careful reading is well rewarded. It’s a gem of a mystery novel.
In addition to the DI Hillary Greene novels, Martin (a pen name for Jacquie Walton) has also published the Ryder and Loveday novels as well as the Jenny Sterling mysteries. Under the name Joyce Cato, she has published several non-series detective stories. Both Cato and Martin are also pen names for Walton. (Walton has another pen name as well – Maxine Barry, under which she wrote 14 romance novels.) A native of Oxford, she lives in a village in Oxfordshire.
Related:
Murder on the Oxford Canal by Faith Martin.
Murder at the University by Faith Martin.
Murder of the Bride by Faith Martin.
Murder in the Village by Faith Martin.
Murder in the Family by Faith Martin.
Murder at Home by Faith Martin.
Murder in the Meadow by Faith Martin.
In other words, Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia didn’t just show up in Gettysburg and fight George Meade’s Army of the Potomac. In the month leading up to the battle, Lee’s army moved in three substantive routes toward Pennsylvania. The approval to take the war into the North was given by the Confederate government in late May, and Lee wasted no time. By June 1, his army began to move.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.
He wasn’t just another war poet. Vocance did something that no one had done before. He used the haiku form of poetry to help him understand what he’d experienced in the Great War. And it was his work, collected as One Hundred Visions of War, that first popularized the writing of haiku.
Perhaps that’s two black eyes for me – one for not knowing Vocance, and one for not knowing how the haiku form moved into Western culture.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
In 1940, the German government created the Warsaw ghetto in Poland, an area of 1.3 square miles into which were herded tens of thousands of Jews. Including Aaron, his wife Raizel, and their daughter Machale. For the next three years, groups of Jews would be taken by rail cars to the Treblinka concentration camp and killed.
Even though the stories of deportation and death are always denied, even from many of the Jews themselves, Aaron and Raizel know better. And they decide they have to do something to get their daughter to some kind of safety. A Polish friend helps; a bribe to a ghetto guard helps Machale escape. But Raizel is killed at the ghetto hospital where she works, and Aaron is sent to Treblinka. The family that had agreed to hide Machale decide to get rid of her when the money Aaron paid runs out.
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| Michael Behagen |
The Partisan’s Daughter by Michael Behagen is the story of what happens to Aaron and Machale, as the war grinds on. And Aaron will learn much about the Poles, the Germans, and himself before the story comes to an end. The story unfolds as both a kind of documentary about Aaron’s war years and escape from Treblinka and his confession about a terrible injustice.
Behagen is a filmmaker and writer best known for a 1980s thriller television series called “Late Night Stories.” He’s written and produced a number of documentary and feature films, and he published hi first novel, Lullaby, in 2002. A native of Israel, he lives in both Israel and France.
We heard he was coming.
We went out to meet him,
singing, waving palms,
exploding in joy with
the man who’d raised
a man from the dead.
We saw it happen.
The conquering king
arrives to free us, they
say, riding a colt,
foretold and prophesied.
Even his enemies
understood what was
happening:
the world had followed,
the world had gone after
Him.
Photograph by Daniel Schludi via Unsplash. Used with permission.
Who would have thought it? A relatively low-budget film about the “Jesus freaks” in the late 1960s and early 1970s has outgrossed many of the Oscar-nominated films. Olivia Reingold at The Free Press reports on Hollywood’s Great Awakening.
The great hoax of the 20th century might have been Senator Joseph McCarthy’s assertion that communists had infiltrated the U.S. government in a flood. In “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century,” Jacob Siegel at Tablet Magazine says the 21st century already has a strong contender.
Publishers are actively at work on their backlists, editing potentially offensive language and scenes in the works of well-known authors. You may have heard about the changes to Roald Dah;’s books, but did you know that Agatha Christie is also undergoing the correctness knife? Rachel Hall at The Guardian has the story.
More Good Reads
Poetry
T. S. Eliot’s still point – James Matthew Wilson at New Criterion.
Promise: A Spring Poem – William Tryon at Society of Classical Poets.
Entry to Jerusalem – John Slater at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).
Divine Poetry: Katherine Rundell Shines a Light on John Donne – Malcolm Borthwick at Literary Hub.
British Stuff
Bart’s at 900: The world’s oldest hospital celebrates its nonacentennial – Will Palin at The Critic Magazine.
Temple Bar: A Historic Boundary to the City – A London Inheritance.
Life and Culture
The humanities hit back: Science has ventured beyond its proper territory – Charlotte Stroud at The Critic Magazine.
Debates in England about free speech and religion veer into 'thoughtcrimes' zone – Terry Mattingly at Get Religion.
Lessons from My Father – Brian Miller at A South Roane Agrarian.
American Parenting and the Terror of Risk – Dixie Dillon Lane at Front Porch Republic.
Faith
An Unexpected Symbol – Greg Doles at Chasing Light.
Were Later Versions of Christianity Radically Different than Earlier Ones? Reflecting on Recent Scholarly Claims – Michael Kruger at Canon Fodder.
Writing and Literature
Behind the Scenes: Book Endorsements – Tim Challies.
The Ends of Worlds: Living with the Inevitable in Paul Kingsnorth’s Buckmaster Trilogy – Rhys Laverty at Mere Orthodoxy.
Ukraine
Why was the West so slow to see the real Vladimir Putin? – Robin Ashenden at The Spectator.
Demining Ukraine: Ukraine relies on agriculture–but nearly 40% of its fields have been sown with Russian landmines – Paul Kroeger at American Purpose.
William Tell Overture – Glen Campbell
