Books

The Collapsing Old Order

August 20, 2011
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The Collapsing Old Order

In his review of Murray Rothbard’s Egalitariansim As a Revolt Against Nature, Andy Duncan notes how, even in the darkest days of the Cold War, Rothbard was already declaring the prevailing socialist/Communist movements to be doomed to failure, primarily because of their inability to stuff the genie of social and economic progress back into the bottle: The revolutions of the last few hundred years — particularly the Industrial Revolution — have made the world too complex for the Old Order to rule over in the manner to which it aspires. Yes, it can rule agrarian nonindustrialized societies, as it did with the Inca Empire, the Roman Empire, and the Athenian-dominated Delian League — though you’ll notice that none of these once-mighty edifices lasted. However, the world’s population will no longer stand for such serfdom and penury, even if it currently tolerates a pelf-extraction rate of 40 or 50 percent. The ratchet of liberty has clicked, and there’s no turning back the mass-industrial technological clock, says Rothbard. Even if we claim to be socialists, and allow the state to continually extract a pelf “protection” tax rate from us of 40 percent or more, we will only tolerate a society in which

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Raymond Chandler and British Detective Fiction (Part 2)

August 11, 2011
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Raymond Chandler and British Detective Fiction (Part 2)

Clearly the sophisticated and genteel milieus found in the detective novels of Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham could not have been much better designed by deliberate intent to grate on Chandler’s class-sensitive nerves. The testy hardboiled author felt much differently, however, about the plainer mystery fare offered by Freeman Wills Crofts and, especially, R. Austin Freeman. Even in “Simple Art” Chandler praised Crofts, best known for his methodical tales of patient criminal investigation and determined alibi busting, as “the soundest builder of them all when he doesn’t get too fancy”; and in his correspondence Chandler admitted that he knew Crofts’ work (and Freeman’s) “very well.”

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‘The Amateur Detective Just Won’t Do’—Raymond Chandler and British Detective Fiction

August 10, 2011
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‘The Amateur Detective Just Won’t Do’—Raymond Chandler and British Detective Fiction

The brilliant British-raised U.S. detective writer Chandler was infected with a disease that knows no borders: class envy. But he was no socialist. Part 1 of 2 By Curt Evans Reading Englishman Nicholas Blake’s mystery novel The Beast Must Die (1938) for the first time in 1950, the great American hardboiled detective novelist Raymond Chandler was moved to comment (in a letter to future mystery critic James Sandoe) on his disappointment with the tale.  Chandler wrote that he initially had found the story “damn good and extremely well written.”  He went on to lament, however, the “devastating effect” on the tale “of the entrance of the detective, Nigel Strangeways, an amateur with wife tagging along.” Chandler conceded that the “private eye”– the type of detective associated most prominently with his own work (and that of his contemporary Dashiell Hammett)–”admittedly is an exaggeration—a fantasy.”  Nevertheless, he asserted of the private eye that “at least he’s an exaggeration of the possible.”  Contrarily, Chandler declared, the “amateur gentleman who outthinks Scotland Yard is just plain silly.”  In fictional mystery, Chandler concluded peremptorily, “the amateur detective just won’t do.” Raymond Chandler’s most famous (or notorious) expression of hostile views toward British detective fiction is found

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Bertrand’s ‘Back on Murder’: Christian Mystery in the Big Leagues

August 5, 2011
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Bertrand’s ‘Back on Murder’: Christian Mystery in the Big Leagues

By Lars Walker Those of us who read both secular and Christian fiction tend to employ a double standard. There’s a full-out “excellent” category in the secular field, and then there’s “excellent for Christian fiction,” which is understood to be not quite as good as the secular stuff, but better than the average CBA fare. As a corollary, I find that I also have a counterbalancing prejudice. When I encounter really good Christian fiction, I think I sometimes depreciate it a little, just out of defensive critical snobbery. That’s something I need to watch out for. I may have done it with this book. J. Mark Bertrand, in his first police procedural novel, levitra rx for sale Back On Murder, shows himself qualified for a place on the shelf alongside successful mystery writers in the secular market. Perhaps not up in the highest rank (at least yet), but definitely big league. The hero of Back On Murder is Roland March, a Houston police detective near the bottom of his profession. Once he was a star, the cop who solved a dramatic case that got turned into a best-selling book. But a personal tragedy took the heart out of him. Now

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The Polished Menace of Eric Ambler

August 3, 2011
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The Polished Menace of Eric Ambler

By Shmuel Ben-Gad Spy stories are, at least sometimes, a secular equivalent of ghost stories, tales of mysterious menace. (Note that spies are sometimes referred to as spooks.) Eric Ambler (1909-1998) is unquestionably one of the best writers of spy stories in English. His stories are filled with mystery and menace and are distinguished by an air of realism, sophisticated plots, and polished prose. Ambler’s first tales appeared in the 1930s, and they reflect the tensions of European politics of the time. Ambler was then sympathetic to socialism, which is reflected in his stories of this period. The hero in two of his books, Background to Danger (1937, also published as Uncommon Danger) and Cause for Alarm (1938), is Zaleshoff, a Soviet agent. In an interview in the Times of London, Amber said, “Before the war I was very much an anti-Fascist writer, and after August 1939 and the Nazi-Soviet pact I`d really lost my subject matter. I was of the Thirties, and long after the tears had been wiped away there was still a sense of loss, a loss of belief.” Nonetheless, one of his major themes at this point was non-ideological and even anti-ideological: an ordinary Englishman visiting

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‘The Days of Laméch’ — A Preview

July 29, 2011
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‘The Days of Laméch’ — A Preview

For an idea of how extensive, comprehensive, and just plain fascinating Jon Saboe’s latest novel, The Days of Laméch, is, read the following chapter headnotes: Chapter 1: Abduction “The irony of what brought about the end of the Family Wars was the realization that the abhorrent dehumanization inherent in those wars would be replaced by a surreptitious scheme to redefine humanity itself.” Chapter 2: Discovery “The savaged, broken masses who survived the Family Wars welcomed the civilizing philosophies of the Semyaz as a drowning man welcomes air. It required subsequent generations who had never known the horrors of war to realize that the Semyaz were patiently engineering their own pervasive and furtive agenda.” Chapter 3: Curse “Until the advent of Aenoch’s city design, establishing settlements was always fraught with the difficulties of holding the ever-encroaching growth of the thick forests that blanketed the planet at bay. By laying a marble foundation that rested upon the invariably soft soils and erecting surrounding walls which separated societies from the elements, large cities and centers of commerce were finally able to flourish.” Chapter 4: Research “For centuries, the Librarian class provided the repository of all human knowledge and culture. However, as inscribing became

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Elizabeth Daly: One of the Last, and Best, of Golden Age Mystery Writers

July 26, 2011
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Elizabeth Daly: One of the Last, and Best, of Golden Age Mystery Writers

Blessings be upon Felony and Mayhem Press (http://www.felonyandmayhem.com), which is currently engaged in reprinting all sixteen of the detective novels of Elizabeth Daly. (They are now up to seven.) Daly (1878-1967) ought to be even better known than she is. She came along at the tail-end of the so-called golden-age of detective fiction which emphasized puzzle plots and brilliant detectives, and she was one of the finest practitioners of that style. She was of a privileged background. Her father, Joseph, was a judge of the New York County Supreme Court, and her uncle, Augustin Daly, was a prominent theater owner and producer. She received a B.A. from Bryn Mawr and an M.A. from Columbia University. She was a reader in English at the former from 1904 to 1906. Although she did some other writing before embarking upon her career as a mystery writer, she reached her prime as an author when in her sixties and early seventies. Her seventeen novels (all save one a detective story) were published between 1940 and 1951. All of Daly’s detective novels feature Henry Gamadge, a wealthy expert in manuscripts and rare books who does detective work as a sideline. He is highly cultivated though

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“Altamont Augie:” Talkin’ About My Generation

July 26, 2011
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“Altamont Augie:” Talkin’ About My Generation

By Lars Walker Will this book have the same visceral effect on other readers as it does on me? Perhaps not to the same extent. Altamont Augie is, in the first place, a book about my own coming of age years—the late ʹ60s. The main characters are about four years older than me. On top of that, the bulk of the action takes place on my home turf—Minneapolis and its environs. Mostly the University of Minnesota, where I did not attend, but visited often. I could easily have bumped elbows with these people. The main female character comes from the suburb of Robbinsdale, my present home. The somewhat confusing title of the book is a double reference. “Altamont” means the Altamont Free Concert at Altamont Speedway in northern California in 1969, where four people died in the terminal delirium of the Woodstock Era. One of those dead remains unidentified to this day—a young man who climbed a fence and jumped into an aqueduct where he drowned. “Altamont Augie” is the speculative name hung on that unfortunate man by the novel’s fictional narrator, a young Californian named Caleb Levy. It’s a reference to Saul Bellow’s novel, The Adventures of Augie March.

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Robert E. Howard’s Puritan Pulp Hero

July 25, 2011
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Robert E. Howard’s Puritan Pulp Hero

I grew up reading both comic books and stories about various pulp fiction heroes.  My favorite in the pulp genre as a kid was Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze.  He traveled with his group of highly capable friends and resolved various terrible threats to humanity.  I recently picked one of the Doc Savage stories up in a thrift store and found that, despite the sentimental value, it didn’t hold up all that well.  Other notable entries in that publishing space include The Shadow, The Spider, Sherlock Holmes (a contender for the greatest), John Carter of Mars, Tarzan, and Zorro. Despite my disappointing return to Doc Savage (maybe I just got one that was subpar), I have enthusiastically continued to read in the genre.  The Amazon Kindle has facilitated the habit marvelously as I now download the stories very inexpensively. First, I downloaded Sherlock Holmes (to discover a character somewhat more interesting than the one I’d seen on television as a child).  Next, I stumbled upon Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane.  Jackpot. Howard is much better known for creating his most popular character, Conan the Barbarian (and his Atlantean predecessor Kull the Conqueror), but his first big success was Kane.

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“The Final Hour” Is a Compelling One

July 22, 2011
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“The Final Hour” Is a Compelling One

By Lars Walker I’ll get out, I told myself. Rose’ll get me out. Two months, maybe three. I just need courage. I just have to survive. That’s what I told myself. But I was way wrong. Andrew Klavan has completely realized his purpose in writing The Final Hour, the fourth and last in his The Homelanders young adult action series. He’s crafted a moral story that’s so exciting teenage boys will put off going back to their video games until they’ve finished it. Is it over the top? Unquestionably. Poor Charlie West, the hero, caroms from one deathly peril to another, chapter after chapter. It’s like an Indiana Jones movie, except that Indie wouldn’t be able to keep up Charlie’s pace. If you’ve been following the series, you’ll know that the first book, The Last Thing I Remember, opened with Charlie waking up bound to a chair in a strange room, with terrorists outside the door discussing how much further to torture him. Since then he’s escaped and learned that (during a year that he’s forgotten completely) he’s been arrested and convicted of the murder of a high school friend. He’s escaped from custody since then, and has been on

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“Scaramouche”: A Sense That the World Was Mad

July 21, 2011
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“Scaramouche”: A Sense That the World Was Mad

By Lars Walker. When writing a review of Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche, it’s almost obligatory to quote the first line, often considered one of the best in English literature: He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony. (I added the second line as a bonus, because I’m in a generous mood.) Rafael Sabatini is chiefly remembered today as the author of Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk, which had the good fortune to be turned into classic movies starring Errol Flynn. Scaramouche has been filmed twice, once as a silent with Ramon Navarro, and once in sound and technicolor with Stewart Granger. Granger isn’t quite up to Flynn’s standards as a swashbuckler, and the film is pretty radically telescoped from the book’s plot, but I understand it’s not bad. Haven’t seen it myself in a while. “Scaramouche” is not the hero’s real name, but the name he takes on when he joins a traveling comedy troupe. Stage comedy in those days, only slightly evolved from the Italian Commedia del Arte, was kind of like a TV situation comedy, if there were many networks and they all broadcast

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Book Review: ‘Voyage of the Mind Carriers’

July 20, 2011
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Book Review: ‘Voyage of the Mind Carriers’

By Mike Gray Voyage of the Mind Carriers — By Gary Wolf — iUniverse — 2011 — Philosophical science fiction novel — Trade paperback: xv + map + 189 pages — ISBN: 978-1-4620-0433-1. Gary Wolf doesn’t write conventional fiction, and more so for his science fiction. He may occasionally use a common SF trope, but you can bet he’ll put his own unique spin on it. You almost never know where his stories will go. Wolf’s science fiction trenchantly explores the same territory that many “crime fiction” and SF authors only rarely and tangentially venture into with their works: the contested battleground of culture, the professed — and often hypocritical — acceptance of certain norms, and the cognitive dissonances that result from these clashes. In short, Gary Wolf could be unique in specializing in what might be termed “cultural science fiction.” In Voyage of the Mind Carriers, the main character is a police detective (who once spent some time in a sanitarium) trying to solve a murder (and another one later on) while dealing with his adolescent daughter’s teen angst; he’s fallen in love with one of his best suspects; and he’s come to seriously doubt his own place in

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"Culture is the expression of the guiding philosophy of the day."—Murray Rothbard
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