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The Last Plea Bargain by Randy Singer

May19

This legal thriller may have begun with the question: “What if all of the prisoners in a jurisdiction got together and went on strike? Specifically, what if all the criminals who were arrested in Harris County today made an agreement NOT to accept a plea bargain of any kind? What if all of the cases in the Harris County DA’s office had to go to trial?

No deals. The wheels of the justice system would come to a halt. In The Last Plea Bargain, assistant DA Jamie Brock and her office must deal with just such a scenario. And it’s all designed to thwart the prosecution of one particular case, a murder prosecution that has become very personal for MS. Brock. Jamie believes in her heart that defense lawyer Caleb Tate murdered his wife, Rikki—just like death row inmate Antoine Marshall murdered Jamie’s parents years ago. And both men deserve the death sentence.

The Last Plea Bargain is a novel that provides food for thought in the areas of justice, revenge, repentance, forgiveness, memory, and psychological manipulation. I found the novel eerily believable and sort of scary. The publisher is Tyndale House, a Christian publishing house, but the themes and issues in the book are universal. Can we discern truth from lies, even in our own memories of events? What is justice? What about forgiveness?

I see that Mr. SInger has a long list of published novels. Although I don’t think this book quite comes up to the level of the John Grisham comparison on the cover, I’d be willing to try another of Mr. Singer’s books. Has anybody read and recommended any of the following?

False Witness (2011)
Fatal Convictions (2010)
The Justice Game (2009)
By Reason of Insanity (2008)
The Judge (Original in 2006)
The Cross Examination of Jesus Christ (2006)
The Judge Who Stole Christmas (Original in 2005)
Self Incrimination (Original in 2005)
Irreparable Harm (Original in 2003)
Directed Verdict (Original in 2002)
Made to Count (2005)
Live Your Passion (2005)

A Plain Death by Amanda Flower

May2

I decided to read as many of the books as I can find that are shortlisted for the INSPY awards this year. A Plain Death is one of the five books shortlisted in the Mystery/Thriller category.

This Amish country-setting mystery is the first in the Appleseed Creek Mystery series, and it’s an adequate beginning to a promising series. When Chloe Humphrey moves to Appleseed Creek to take a job as computer services director with a small private college, she doesn’t expect to gain an Amish roommate and a new crush on said roommate’s handsome brother all on the first day. Events snowball quickly from first-day surprises to real danger as a local Amish bishop dies in an accident that may have been more than an accident, and Chloe feels compelled to help out her new friend by investigating the death and the suspicious circumstances surrounding it.

I enjoyed this book as a “bedtime story” last night even though I did find a couple of continuity errors and some minor editing errors. I’m also not sure I totally bought into the ending, but the story was engaging enough that I didn’t really care.

What is it that’s so fascinating about Amish culture anyway? I don’t read a lot of so-called “Amish fiction”, but I do see the attraction. I guess it fits with my reading and life fascinations: communities, religious communities, broken relationships and healing of those relationships, prodigals, utopian communities. I do like reading about people who have chosen a different lifestyle from the norm and about how religious communities in particular work or don’t work to bring people to a saving knowledge of the grace of God in Christ.

A Plain Death isn’t a book with a profound message about being Amish or about gospel in general, but it did have a nice flavor of AMish country. I would enjoy reading the next book in the series, A Plain Scandal, which was just published in February. A Plain Disappearance, the third book in the series, is due to be published in September, 2013.

Reinventing Rachel by Alison Strobel

Apr15

Rachel just got hit with a triple whammy: her fiance is cheating on her, her parents have been keeping a big (BAD) secret from her, and her best friend and Christian mentor has a drug problem. So, Rachel goes off the rails, leaves her faith, and moves to Chicago.

To my discredit, I am normally impatient with characters and even real people who “lose their faith.” Like what, you misplaced your lifelong, deep-seated commitment to the God of the Universe who was so committed to his love for you that he became a man and died for you, kind of like you sometimes misplace your car keys? Did you spend any time looking for that “faith” you so conveniently mislaid? Did you ask any questions? Pray? Wrestle with God like Jacob did?

I know, I know. I’m unsympathetic. I blame it partly on the terminology. One doesn’t really lose faith. You decide, for whatever reason, to leave it behind, to repudiate it. And in Alison Strobel’s Reinventing Rachel, the title character does exactly that: her faith wasn’t working out the way she thought it should, so she leaves it behind to try out a new, God-free life of pleasing herself and avoiding annoying Christians. God didn’t keep his end of the bargain that Rachel thought she made with Him: she’d behave, and He would make everything work out right. Instead, Rachel decides she’ll have to work out her own life without God’s help or intervention.

At first, after Rachel moves to Chicago to live with her old friend Daphne, things do work out pretty well, without church and without God. Daphne is a free spirit and lots of fun. Rachel finds a job right away. And she even gets a new boyfriend who’s handsome, attentive, and willing to take it slow and easy. However, when you leave one idol, Christian legalism and bargain mentality, behind, you’re likely to pick up another idol before long because we human beings were made to worship someone or something. Rachel finds comfort and sustenance in some not-so-unusual places, and then she finds that the idols she’s chosen are just as fallible and entrapping as the “Christianity” she left behind. By God’s grace, she also meets few people who show her what true commitment to Christ really looks like.

So, the conclusion is that Rachel didn’t really lose her faith in Christ; she never had faith in Christ’s grace in the first place. She was trusting in her Christian checklist to keep her on God’s good side, and when life came at her with a whole lot of hard stuff, Rachel’s make-a-list of rules didn’t begin to answer the questions or provide the strength she needed.

Ms. Strobel is a good writer, particularly in the area of character development. I wouldn’t mind checking out others of her novels, which I suppose is the reason I managed to snag a free copy of Reinventing Rachel for my Kindle when it was being offered as a “special deal.” It’s full price now, but I recommend it as worth the money or the time it takes to hunt down a library copy. (I’m not a fan of the half-a-face picture on the cover, but ignore that and read the story.)

Poetry Friday: Discovering Poems

Apr5

W.H. Auden: “if I have any work to do, I must be careful not to get hold of a detective story for, once I begin one, I cannot work or sleep till I have finished it.”

Detective Story by W.H. Auden.

If you’ve read the article and the poem and returned to get my take on it, I must say I don’t know what the poem really means. I can make a stab at it.

Who cannot . . . “mark the spot where the body of his happiness was first discovered?” I take this to mean that we all know when and where we lost our innocence or our sense of innocence.

“Someone must pay for our loss of happiness, our happiness itself.” So the murderer of our happiness is someone else, someone who must pay? And what is that lingering doubt and that smile all about? I smile at the ending of the detective story because . . . I am the murderer of my own happiness? Because I know that the murderer in the story is not so very different from me? And I wonder about the justice of the verdict because . . . I don’t want to admit that I am guilty?

“But time is always killed.”

I can never figure out the who the murderer is in most detective stories either.

The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield

Apr4

Ah, yes, complex, multi-layered, “faith-informed” fiction. I speeded through this book, recommended to me by the blogger at Thoughts of Joy, because I really, really loved the characters and wanted to know what would happen to each of them. So, let’s start with the characters, almost of whom could be described as “central characters” in the book:

Swan Lake, an eleven year old, rather precocious, and full of mischief.
Bienville and Noble, Swan’s older brothers.
Samuel Lake, Swan’s Methodist preacher daddy. Samuel is about to go through a crisis that will test his faith, his commitment to his life’s work , his marriage, and his sense of who he is.
Willadee Moses Lake, Swan’s mama. Willadee makes good biscuits, likes for her children to run free as much as possible, and loves Samuel Lake extravagantly.
Calla and John Moses, Willadee’s parents. Calla runs a general store out of the front of the house during the day, and John runs an all-night bar called “Never Closes” out of the back.
Toy Moses, Swan’s uncle. Toy likes hunting and fishing in the woods, and he doesn’t talk much. He lost a leg in the war, and the rumor is that he killed a man after he returned from the war.
Berniece Moses, Toy’s wife who thinks that she is in love with Samuel Lake.
Ras Ballenger, neighbor to the Moses family. Ras trains horses and terrifies his wife and children.
Blade Ballenger, Ras Ballenger’s oldest son and Swan’s new friend.

I wish I could give you a feel for this novel. That list sounds sort of prosaic and humdrum, but the book is anything but. Jenny Wingfield captured the culture of the south that I grew up in just perfectly. These are real people, and I enjoyed reading about them. Well, mostly I enjoyed. I must warn sensitive readers that there are violent deaths, more than one, in the novel, and there is a very difficult scene toward the end of the book that could trigger emotional distress in some readers.

That said, I think the violence and abuse in the novel were described in a tasteful manner while not minimizing the horror of what happens to several of the characters. I also thought Samuel Lake’s perplexities and inner confusion were handled quite well. Lake is a man with a deep faith in God, and that faith isn’t ridiculed as it could easily have been. Nor is Lake’s faith cheapened by making it facile and shallow. He has to struggle with some very difficult questions, and in the end (which some people didn’t like) the answers God gives Samuel Lake are satisfying but not really complete. It’s a realistic ending, and one one that I did like.

More reviews:
USA Today: “But it’s Wingfield’s ability to set the stage, to transport her readers back to rural Arkansas of the 1950s, that takes this novel to another level.”
Book Snob: “The Homecoming of Samuel Lake will break your heart, make you leap for joy, and bring tears to your eyes. You will fall in love with the Lake and Moses family and become a believer in miracles.”
Literary Hoarders: “There are parts of this novel that are difficult. You’ll want to holler “watch out!” at critical moments. You’ll want to hold the hurt, and will want to save the helpless. Luckily, you’ll have Swan on your side. She’s eleven years old, and you will be eternally grateful that she has no patience for injustice.”

The Resurrection and the Life

Mar29

I thought I’d post a few times today and tomorrow about the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and what it means to me and to some of the authors and fictional and actual characters that I have on my bookshelves. I’m going to take turns blogging and house-cleaning and see how that goes.

I first read Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities when I was in ninth grade. Three of us—Christina, Teresa, and I— wrote a chapter-by-chapter summary of the entire book, making our own little study guide to the novel as a school project. We did this before the age of personal computers and before any of us knew how to type. I can’t remember exactly what the finished product looked like, but it was a lot of work.

The themes of death, burial, imprisonment, rescue and resurrection are woven throughout Dickens’ tale set during the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Doctor Manette is rescued from a living death inside the Bastille. Jerry Cruncher is a “resurrection man” who digs up dead bodies to sell them. Charles Darnay is rescued and recalled to life twice during the novel, once when he is on trial in England and again when he is headed for guillotine in France.

But the most vivid representation of death and resurrection comes at the end of the novel when the reprobate Sydney Carton gives up his life to save Charles and Lucy Darnay and to ensure their future together. Carton is walking down the street when he remembers these words from Scripture read at his father’s funeral long ago:

“I am the resurrection, and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.”

Now, that the streets were quiet, and the night wore on, the words were in the echoes of his feet, and were in the air. Perfectly calm and steady, he sometimes repeated them to himself as he walked; but, he heard them always.

The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge listening to the water as it splashed the river-walls of the Island of Paris, where the picturesque confusion of houses and cathedral shone bright in the light of the moon, the day came coldly, looking like a dead face out of the sky. Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, turned pale and died, and for a little while it seemed as if Creation were delivered over to Death’s dominion.

But, the glorious sun, rising, seemed to strike those words, that burden of the night, straight and warm to his heart in its long bright rays. And looking along them, with reverently shaded eyes, a bridge of light appeared to span the air between him and the sun, while the river sparkled under it.

The strong tide, so swift, so deep, and certain, was like a congenial friend, in the morning stillness He walked by the stream, far from the houses, and in the light and warmth of the sun fell asleep on the bank. When he awoke and was afoot again, he lingered there yet a little longer, watching an eddy that turned and turned purposeless, until the stream absorbed it, and carried it on to the sea.- “Like me!”

A trading-boat, with a sail of the softened colour of a dead leaf, then glided into his view, floated by him, and died away. As its silent track in the water disappeared, the prayer that had broken up out of his heart for a merciful consideration of all his poor blindnesses and errors, ended in the words, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

On Good Friday, when we are in the midst of death and sin and darkness, it does sometimes seem a if “Creation were delivered over to Death’s dominion.” A blogging friend sent out a tweet earlier today saying that he had “difficulty ‘pretending’ on Good Friday that Jesus is dead.” Of course, Jesus isn’t dead, but as far as imagining the feeling of despair and “being delivered over to death”, I have no trouble whatsoever. Sometimes things in this world are very dark, and the hope of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and our eventual resurrection with Him is all that keeps from utter despair.

Thank God for Resurrection Sunday!

No Wind of Blame by Georgette Heyer

Mar20

I’m definitely a fan of Golden Age detective fiction—Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Rex Stout, Josephine Tey—but I’ve read all the books I can find by those authors. And I’ve tried a few others that are supposed to belong to that particular club, Margery Allingham and John Dickson Carr in particular, and I just didn’t care for them. So, Georgette Heyer’s mysteries have that Christie/Golden Age flavor, and I’m pleased to find another writer from that era that I can recommend and enjoy myself.

No Wind of Blame has lovely, interesting characters, somewhat stereotypical but still memorable, and that’s what makes the book. There’s a fortune hunting Russian (or perhaps Georgian) prince with an impossibly long name, a histrionic and very wealthy Aunt Ermyntrude, a dogsbody poor relation with a pleasant personality and a pretty face, a very pretty daughter who tries on a new persona every time she descends the stairs, a smarmy neighbor who’s involved in some dubious business deals, and a police inspector with a refreshingly normal, down-to-earth take on the whole case. The case itself, a murder of course, is not the focus of the novel, and the solution is beyond my understanding and limited mechanical abilities. However, I didn’t care that I didn’t understand exactly how the murderer did it because I enjoyed the company, the dialogue, and the interactions between the characters so much.

I’ve read one or two of Ms. Heyer’s Regency romances, and although the wit and good characterization are still there, I don’t much like straight romance novels. An element of romance is good, but I prefer my love stories mixed up with something else, perhaps a good mystery. I plan to look for more of Ms Heyer’s mystery novels and see if they’re all as good as No Wind of Blame.

A list of Georgette Heyer’s “thrillers” or detective novels:

Footsteps in the Dark (1932)
Why Shoot a Butler? (1933)
The Unfinished Clue (1934)
Death in the Stocks (1935)
Behold, Here’s Poison (1936)
They Found Him Dead (1937)
A Blunt Instrument (1938)
No Wind of Blame (1939)
Envious Casca (1941)
Penhallow (1942)
Duplicate Death (1951)
Detection Unlimited (1953)

For a while Ms. Heyer published one thriller and one romance every year. However, her British publisher and her American publisher both disliked the book Penhallow, published in 1942, and she mostly stuck to romances with some historical fiction after that.

January Justice by Athol Dickson

Mar5

Mr. Dickson, one of my favorite Christian authors, has this new entry in the genre of detective thriller with a complicated hero in a sticky situation. And there’s no explicit sex, bad language or nastily descriptive violence.

Malcolm, recently released from the mental hospital, recently widowed after the murder of his rich-but-secret wife, and recently unemployed as a result of both events, is trying to pick up the pieces of his life and his job as chauffeur and bodyguard to Hollywood’s celebrities. Then, he gets mixed up in Guatemalan politics and possible terrorism and ghosts from his past come back to haunt him, and it all gets messy and violent and confusing, especially with the drug flashbacks and the females with secrets.

I’m really looking forward to reading the books in this series and finding out more about the tough guy with a good heart, Malcolm Cutter. As a character he reminds me of Michael Westen from the TV series Burn Notice. Westen and Cutter both are rugged, resilient guys, ex-military, with a past that gets in the way of the present. Both men are unsentimental, but they have plenty of ability to love and be loved and a gift for friendship that shows in their interactions with old buddies who become allies. Westen and Cutter have both been cut off from their respective military or para-military professions. Westen is a burned spy; Malcolm Cutter is a court-martialed ex-marine.

However, unlike Michael Westen, who never as far as I know once mentions or thinks about a connection to God or a spiritual dimension to life, Malcolm Cutter needs a spiritual connection to God, something to help him understand what’s real and trustworthy and stable in his life. Malcolm has a friend, Bud Tanner, a chaplain from his old Marine unit, who tells him to cling to something when “the threat of madness” comes to torment Cutter:

“It was Bud who showed me where it says in the Good Book to think about true things. Noble things. Whatever is right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy. It was Bud who helped me see that such things were always there, even when I could not think of them. They had not died with Haley, and they had never stopped existing, even when I was lost within the chaos in my skull. And because they were always there, because they were external to me and did not rely on me in any for their existence, I could hold on to them, or the idea of them, and in doing that, regain some sense of stability.”

This passage is about as “religious” as the book gets, but it’s enough. Malcolm Cutter has been forced to become aware of his own helplessness and dependency. We think of ourselves as competent, sane people, in control of our own minds and bodies. But really we are only one step away from total vulnerability, insanity, and lostness. And we need a reference point outside ourselves. We need a saviour.

“Without God man has no reference point to define himself. 20th century philosophy manifests the chaos of man seeking to understand himself as a creature with dignity while having no reference point for that dignity.” ~R. C. Sproul

The second and third novels in The Malcolm Cutter Memoirs series, Free Fall in February, and A March Murder, are coming out in 2013.

January Justice: First Look, the first few paragraphs of the novel.

Futuristic Computer Techie Fiction

Feb19

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow.

For the Win by Cory Doctorow.

Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.

OK, I made that genre name up all by myself. “Techno-thriller” and “genre-busting” are the terms I’ve most often seen applied to these novels. The thing I like about these books is definitely NOT the testosterone-fueled language, violence, and general boy-ness, but rather it seems that unlike many of us both inside and outside the gaming world, Mr. Doctorow and Mr. Cline have thought long and hard about the implications and trends in our technological culture, particularly those related to immersing ourselves in video games and internet alternate worlds. And the scenarios are not necessarily pretty, although the books cited above avoid an alarmist hatred of the virtual world while showing the possible dangers of our rush toward a world enmeshed in and enthralled by the virtual world of computers and computer gaming.

Cory Doctorow is, according to Wikipedia, “a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the weblog Boing Boing.” He’s also the author of the first three books on the above list, and maybe the partial inspiration for the fourth. In Pirate Cinema, Doctorow’s latest (whoops, it looks as if he’s just released a sequel to Little Brother called Homeland, so not his latest), the language is rough and there is support for stealing and for recreational drug use. However, Doctorow’s insight into the underworld of hacker culture is still fascinating, even if I don’t agree with all of his hobbyhorse ideas. In the book sixteen year old Trent is obsessed with making movies on his computer. The problem is that he uses cuts from old movies to make his new, artistically reassembled, movies. And in this England of the near-future, this plagiarism or pirating of old movies is highly illegal and punishable by death. OK, not death, but near-death: loss of all internet privileges. Because he’s caused his entire family to lose access to the internet, access which has become indispensable to workers, students, and anyone else who wants healthcare or economic or government engagement, Trent leaves home and immerses himself in the underground London world of the homeless and the disenfranchised. He also meets the artists and activists who are trying to change the law to make his work and the art of others like him legal and socially acceptable. The message of the book is obvious and a bit heavy-handed: copyright law is bad and stifles artists. Whether you agree with that premise or not (I disagree mostly), Pirate Cinema will make you think about who owns what and why. In keeping with Doctorow’s copyright philosophy, Pirate Cinema is available at his website as a free download.

Ready Player One is obviously a tribute of sorts to Doctorow’s books and ideas. In fact, at one point Doctorow, along with actor Will Wheaton, are mentioned as minor characters in the book, two of the “good guys.” In the year 2044 Wade Watts escapes the poverty and hopelessness of the real world by spending most of his time plugged into the Oasis, a virtual world that has in some cases overtaken the real world. Wade goes to school in the Oasis, and after school he spends most of his waking hours looking for the answers to the riddle that Oasis creator James Halliday encoded into his virtual universe before he died. The person who solves Halliday’s puzzles, based on the pop culture of Halliday’s youth in the 1980’s, will win a fortune.

Unfortunately for me, I missed most of the 80’s. I was busy being a newlywed, graduate student, librarian, and then having babies. Pop culture in the 80’s passed me by, went over my head, and generally didn’t interest my twenty-something self. Now if you ask me about the 1970’s . . . Fortunately for me, some of the stuff Halliday used in his puzzle tribute/Easter egg that is embedded in the Oasis began in the 1970’s and extended into the eighties, so I knew about Star Wars, Back to the Future, PacMan, Dungeons and Dragons, and lots of other stuff from the book. Other eighties cultural memories that the book references were completely unknown to me. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. The story is great, and Wade is a likable, flawed, and engaging hero.

Geeky grown-up kids of the eighties (and seventies) and geeky kids that have grown up since then will all enjoy this tribute to our computer-driven culture that still manages to showcase some of the problems with our obsession with games and computers and virtual worlds and social media. I won’t spoil the ending, but Wade learns that real face-to-face relationships have their advantages. The book does contain positive references to homosexual behavior, and God is considered irrelevant throughout the book. The bad language is typical teenage boy-type stuff, but somewhat offensive.

I recommend both Cline’s book and those by Mr. Doctorow for those who are mature enough to sort out the ideas and philosophies contained in the futuristic worlds that the authors have created. Mr. Cline and Mr. Doctorow both raise questions worth thinking about in regard to our tech-permeated world, even if I don’t agree with all the “answers” they sometimes take for granted.

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Feb17

This novel from a Nigerian/American author is classified as young adult fiction in my library, probably because the narrator is fifteen years old, but I think it will resonate with adults of all ages, and with readers around the world because the themes–abusive relationships, religious legalism, freedom, and the source of joy–are all universal themes.

Fifteen year old Kambili and her older brother Jaja live with their mother and father in a wealthy or at least upper middle class Catholic home in Enugu, Nigeria. Their father’s strict, legalistic Catholicism pervades the family’s life, from twenty minute prayers before meals to reciting the rosary on car trips to fasting before mass every Sunday. Not only is the family required to be strictly Catholic by Kambili’s papa but they are also held to a stringent schedule made up of course by the father. Kambili has conflicting feelings about Papa: she is pleased, even thrilled, when he approves of her words or actions, but of course when harsh punishment comes her way, Kambili is crushed.

Then, the catalyst for change enters the life of this silent, repressed family: Kambili’s Aunty Ifeoma invites the children to visit her home in Nsukka. Aunty Ifeoma is a widow, a teacher, much poorer than her brother, but the joy in Aunty’s home is overflowing and overwhelming for her love-starved niece and nephew. Kambili and Jaja learn another way of life, without rigid schedules and authoritarian rule-keeping, and most of all without fear. Kambili, who comes across as much younger than fifteen throughout most of the story probably because of her repressed childhood, doesn’t know what to think or do with all the freedom that she is given in Aunty Ifeoma’s home, so she mostly does nothing and remains very, very quiet, even silent. Jaja sees the possibilities of freedom and becomes rebellious. However, it is the children’s meek, long-suffering mother, who has also suffered abuse at the hands of her husband, who takes the most surprising action of all.

The story is terribly sad. The depth of the dysfunction and abuse in the family is revealed slowly, a little at a time, until it becomes overpowering. Papa is not a wholly evil man; he publishes the truth about the government in his newspaper and he is generous to the poor, to family, and to many others. But of course, this generosity and honesty displayed to outside world makes the secret, petty evil that Papa perpetrates inside his home even worse.

I hope I haven’t spoiled the narrative arc of this novel by telling what it is generally about. I don’t think so. Ms. Adichie is quite skilled in the way she spins her story, and she enlists our sympathy as readers for all the characters in the novel, even Papa to some extent. One senses that he is caught in a web of legalism himself, and he cannot see a way out. That emotional captivity certainly doesn’t justify the abuse, but it explains to some extent why the children and their mother take so long to escape and why their feelings about Papa are so contradictory and confused.

Recommended.