"The Well of Ice" by Andrea Carter

It’s a Christmas to remember. Shortly before the holiday, someone torches the much-loved pub in the town of Glendarra on the Inishowen Peninsula in County Donegal. Suspicions focus on the barmaid, who happens to be missing. And then on Christmas Day, when local barrister Benedicta O’Keeffe is out walking with her love interest, Sgt. Molloy of the local Garda, they find the barmaid’s body. The woman has been strangled. 

The arson and murder investigations seem to go nowhere. Too much is swirling around the small Irish town – the pub’s upstairs tenant having heard (and complained about) strange noises in the small hours of the morning; the victim’s husband who seemed to accept his wife’s disappearance as something norm; former residents suddenly returning from abroad; the whiff of eco-terrorism; long-buried family secrets; and the specter of the prison release of the man who killed Benedicta’s sister and was convicted of manslaughter.

 

Andrea Carter

And as she and Sgt. Molloy soon discover, people will say things to an attorney they wouldn’t say to the police. And Benedicta, known as Ben, is pulled deeper and deeper into the mystery.

 

The Well of Ice is the third Inishowen mysteries by Irish writer Andrea Carter. Carter knows well how to arrange a relatively large cast of characters, help you keep all the names straight, and cleverly weave a story that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go. If I have a criticism, it’s that the story paces well until the last 30 pages, and then a lot – and I mean, a lot – happens fast and furiously.

 

Carter studied law at Trinity College Dublin and managed the most northerly solicitor’s practice in the Republic of Ireland. In 2006, she moved to Dublin to work as a barrister and then turned to writing crime novels. She’s published five Inishowen mysteries featuring solicitor Benedicta “Ben” O’Keeffe: Death at Whitewater Church, Treacherous Strand, The Well of Ice, Murder at Greysbridge, and The Body Falls.

 

Related:

 

Death at Whitewater Church by Andrea Carter.

 

Treacherous Strand by Andrea Carter.

When You Face Too Many Ways to Open a Novel

How many openings can a novel have? Let me count the ways. 

I’d never experienced the problem of too many ways to open a novel. Five novels, and five fairly straightforward beginnings, meant that I never struggled over how to open a story. Somehow, I always knew, and it wasn’t an issue.

 

Until now.

 

I began to write the draft like I always had. I had an idea, and image, in my mind, and that’s how I’d start the story. I wrote it. I read it over several times. It seemed to work. I started writing beyond the opening, and I bogged down. 

 

Something seemed slightly off, and I knew it was the opening. So, I reworked it. And reworked it. I revised it to the point where it was almost unrecognizable from the first version. It still didn’t work. I discarded it and started over. I tried something entirely different. At one point, I thought I had it, finally, only to realize I didn’t. I went back to the first and tried it again.

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at ACFW. 

 

Photograph by Ankhesenamun via Unsplash. Used with permission.

"Poets of the Civil War," edited by J.D. McClatchy

If I asked you to give me the name of an American Civil War poet, you would likely say “Walt Whitman.” His poems, like “O Captain! My Captain!,” “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” and “The Wound Dresser,” certainly catapult him to the top of the Civil War poets list.  

But if I were asked to name another Civil War poet, I’d be rather stumped. Until, that is, I laid eyes on Poets of the Civil War, edited by J.D. McClatchy, published in 2005 as part of the Library of America’s American Poets Project. And I was in for a major surprise. Whitman doesn’t stand there by himself.

 

The list of Civil War poets includes some of the best-known writers and poets of the 19^th century. William Cullen Bryant. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. John Greenleaf Whittier. Herman Melville. James Russell Lowell. Bret Harte. Ambrose Bierce. Sidney Lanier. 

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

“Dead and Gone” by Stephen Puleston

The case begins with a phone call. A university colleague of his partner says he’s in trouble. And then he disappears. Another colleague is found in a ditch near a park; she’s apparently the victim of a hit-and-run driver. His boss at the North Wales Police believes the crimes are unconnected, but Detective Inspector Ian Drake knows there must be a connection. Somehow. 

The trouble is finding it. 

 

Drake and his team conduct an exhaustive, and exhausting, investigation. The missing man is later found dead, murdered by a stab wound to the neck. His computer suggests ties to both right-wing and left-wing groups, both of which border on terrorism. But evidence of a connection between thew two deaths is elusive, and suspects for each death re questioned but let go. Examination of the dead woman’s bank account shows she was receiving regular payments in the same amount that was being withdrawn by the other victim. That suggests blackmail, but why?

 

Stephen Puleston

Dead and Gone is the ninth DI Ian Drake mystery by Welsh writer Stephen Puleston. It’s heavy on police procedure; it’s lighter on Drake’s behavioral issues with being on the autism scale  than the previous books in the series. Drake is now divorced and living with his new partner, and the change seems to have done him considerable good.

 

Puleston publishes two series of Welsh police detective stories. Detective Inspector Ian Drake is with the North Wales Police Service, and Detective Inspector John Marco is with the South Wales Police Service. The author originally trained and practiced as a; solicitor/lawyer. He also attended the University of London. He lives in Wales, very close to where his fictional hero lives and works.

 

Dead and Gone is the story of what happens when a murder investigation seems to be leading to dead ends and blind alleys. But when the resolution finally begins, it happens very quickly.

 

Related:

 

My review of Written in Blood.

 

My review of A Time to Kill.

 

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.

 

My review of A Cold Dark Heart.

 

My review of A Cold Dark Heart.

On the wall

After Daniel 5:22-31 

The words appear

on the wall of the room

of the feast, a celebration.

Words seen but meaning

disguised, understanding

having fled to exile.

No one understands

the meaning, until 

the man was called. He 

sees the words; he turns

to the king; he speaks.

 

Mene: Numbered, 

your kingdom’s days,

 

Mene: Numbered, 

your kingdom’s end.

 

Tekel: Weighed, 

found wanting.

 

Parsin: Divided, 

your kingdom.

 

Mene, Mene, 

Tekel, Parsin:

words confirmed 

that very night.

 

Photograph by Randy Tarampi via Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

Saturday Good Reads - Nov. 12, 2022

It seems that history, like virtually everything else, has become weaponized in contemporary political battles. And it gets tiresome, to the point I get really cranky with people trying to use history to score points. All they really do is display their own ignorance (or lack of understanding, to be charitable). Ok, short rant over. 

I’ve been spending considerable time reading about the Civil War. It ended 157 years ago, but we’re still living its impact. That war transformed everything in America. Miles Smith IV at Real Clear History describes how we continue to undervalue its magnitude. 

 

The “Greatest Generation” lived through the Great Depression and fought a world war that not only profoundly shaped their lives but also the lives of their children – the Baby Boom. Michael Auslin at The Spectator considers that World War II is now fading from historical memory.

 

Randy Alcorn has been caring for his wife, who recently died from colon cancer. At Desiring God, he tells the story of his wife’s last years, and asks a question. Can cancer be God’s servant?

 

More Good Reads

 

Faith

 

Why Study Church History? – Jon Payne at Ligonier Ministries.

 

We Need More Good Christian YouTube Content – Chris Martin at Terms of Service.

 

Does the Future Have a Church? – Matthew Hosier at Think Theology.

 

Ukraine

 

Ukraine is becoming a showroom for modern weaponry – Mark Galeotti at The Spectator. 

 

The Slavic Battle of the Books – John Rodden at American Purpose.

 

How Russia's humiliating defeat in Kherson came to be – Illia Ponomarenko at Kyiv Independent.

 

Poetry

 

Autumn Trail – Dan Tuton at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Sudden Heaven – Ruth Pitter at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Two Poems by Du Fu – Literary Hub.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Through the Looking Glass of Early Reading – Elizabeth Russell at Story Warren.

 

Stories for a Lifetime – Millie Sweeney at Story Warren. 

 

I Remember All Too Well: Taylor Swift and Joe Brainard – JoAnna Novak at The Paris Review on writing in the present tense.

 

News Media

 

Media narrative of US election: Bad news for Trump, GOP – David Bauder at Associated Press.

 

Life and Culture

 

The Media-Friendly Sins of Other People – Jeff Bilbro at Plough.

 

Democracy Isn’t a Worldview: Politics Can’t Answer Our Deepest Questions – John Stonestreet & Shane Morris at Breakpoint.

 

When Partisans Cry Wolf and A Dispatch from the Exhausted – Katherine Epstein at American Purpose.

 

Art

 

How Does a Work of Art Become Great? – Andrew Wilson at Think Theology.

 

Way Maker (in Hebrew, Arabic & English (Worship by Jews and Arabs)

 Painting: Portrait of Emile Zola (1868), oil on canvas by Edouard Manet (1832-1883). 

The lesson of the grass

After Daniel 4:34-37 

After seven years

of eating grass have

passed, the man

turned beast turned

man again, foretold

by the dream, turned

king again, restored,

his pride humbled,

his pride removed,

his understanding 

restored, and he 

knows the answer 

to the question:

what have you created,

what have you wrought?

The answer is nothing;

it is all a gift, a blessing

conferred through

no effort of accomplishment

of his own. Insanity has been

translated into a severe mercy.

 

Photograph by John Thomas via Unsplash. Used with permission.