Tag: Book Review

Book Review: ‘The Last Templar’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn beliefs, books, fiction3 Comments

The Last TemplarThe Last Templar by Raymond Khoury
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Raymond Khoury’s “The Last Templar” (2006) is part of a deluge of novels and nonfiction to step outside mainstream history to explore the real, prospective and imagined secrets about alchemy, the Knights Templar, and the origins of Christianity.

One cannot help but think of Katherine Neville’s “The Eight” (1997) which focused on present-day people fighting over and/or guarding the secrets of the Philosopher’s Stone and Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” (2003) which speculated about the true meaning of the Holy Grail and the bloodline of Christ. Many of Neville’s, Brown’s and Khoury’s fans were also attracted to such nonfiction as “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” (Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, 1982) and Lynn Picknett’s “The Templar Revelation” (1997).

It is difficult to read, much less discuss, Neville, Brown and Khoury without acknowledging the fact that fact that they are part of a rather unique genre of spiritual conspiracy fiction that seemed to fill a need in the public psyche for truths thought to be missing from the tenets of Catholic and Protestant theology.

Neville’s “The Eight” was, perhaps, the first to popularize this “genre’s” style and focus: hidden wisdom, long-time conspiracies, compelling present-day mystery/thriller action, and numerous (and lengthy) history lessons. Since her focus was alchemy, Neville’s “The Eight” didn’t ignite the kind of controversy generated by Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” which, some might say, hit us where we lived if not where we worshipped.

Like Neville, Khoury tells his story with a modern-day and a historical timeline. “The Last Templar” begins with what Booklist called “one of the most gripping opening scenes among recent thrillers.” Four horsemen dressed in Knights Templar regalia steal artifacts from a Metropolitan Museum of Art show of Vatican treasures, including a “decoder.” The other story line focuses on the last days of the Knights Templar as the Holy Land is “lost” with the fall of Acre in 1291 and the subsequent pilgrimage of a few surviving knights to safeguard the Templars’ treasure.

Publisher’s Weekly was less kind than Booklist, saying that the “war between the Catholic Church and the Gnostic insurgency drags on in this ponderous ‘Da Vinci Code’ knockoff.” Many readers criticized Dan Brown in “The Da Vinci Code” for constantly stopping the otherwise full-speed action of the book while one character filled in another character about the secrets of Mary Magdalene, the Grail, the actions of the Catholic Church, and Jesus’ bloodline.

In my view, “The Last Templar” carries such backstory diversions to an extreme. Picture, if you will, whether it’s plausible that FBI operatives investigating the raid on the museum, the stolen treasurers, and the continuing deaths would spend hours discussing Templar history in great detail.

The greatest fault with “The Eight,” “The Da Vinci Code,” and “The Last Templar,” is the fact that some characters must provide other characters with long-winded and unrealistic diversions into history, philosophy and theology because general readers are not likely to know the facts and the latest theories involved. The authors have felt that without these history lessons, the plots wouldn’t make sense.

I liked “The Last Templar” better than Publisher’s Weekly, but not as much as Booklist. The history was interesting, though I’d seen it all before. The plot was imaginative and included some page-turner action scenes involving the church, the thieves, the FBI and protagonist Tess Chaykin, an archeologist who witnesses the raid. The ending, while not wholly unreasonable was, I think, unsatisfactory, especially for those readers who not only want to know what the Templars’ secret but are angry that a real or a fictionalized church would deem it necessary to suppress the truth at all costs.

The romantic feelings between Tess and the head FBI agent add a variety of complications to the story, some of which lead into exciting action scenes even though the relationship within the book is rather forced and tedious.

For readers who have enjoyed the fiction and nonfiction in this wave of spiritual conspiracy books, “The Last Templar” is interesting escapist reading even though those who have seen it all before may speed-read through some of the Templar history.

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Book Review: ‘Evenings on Dark Island’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books2 Comments

Evenings on Dark IslandEvenings on Dark Island by Rhett Devane
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What do the rich and famous, a Florida swamp, an expensive upscale spa, a rat-faced dog, state-of-the-art galas, NASCAR, pot, an inner garden of rare hybrid plants and vampires have in common?

The standard answer is nothing.

But in Evenings on Dark Island authors Rhett DeVane and Larry Rock have turned the highly improbable into a hilarious and tastefully bloody neck biter that’s quite something.

Vincent Bedsloe, who has party planning in blood that’s not altogether his, is the flamboyant, details-oriented master of an exclusive spa set in the middle of an isolated Florida island where the rich and spoiled come to be drained of their income–and perhaps a bit more–while they are ramped up into an ecstatic level of health and fitness.

Bedsloe, who ponders over the emotions of his guests–emotions he no longer has–often retreats into an inner sanctum where he watches old movies and gets his kicks by debunking the silly vampire lore flowing out of Hollywood like blood from a burst artery.

Vincent is a kind-hearted vampire who cares about his human guests. Even his NASCAR-crazed, white trash vampire mechanic Jimmy Rob has an occasional redeeming thought: “He led her to the far, shadowy corner of the bar, behind a thick hedge. Kissed her again. Nibbled her neck. Bit down and drank until he felt her knees buckle. He pulled back abruptly. No need to kill the gal. She’d had a hard enough life.”

The only somewhat normal person in the book is DEA agent Reanita Geneva Register who has been inserted into the mix by the Feds at great expense to prove the obscure island is a haven for drug smugglers. Posing as a rich heiress, Register not only feels naked without her gun but a little nonplussed by her ability to enjoy the island’s pleasures.

The tight-lipped Dark Island staff are notoriously loyal to their employer and, with the annual Blue Blood Ball benefit for the American Hemophiliac Association fast approaching, much too busy to be easily questioned about the strange boats passing in the night.

The authors advertise Evenings on Dark Island as a fang-in-tooth spoof of the vampire genre. And what a spoof it is. This book is not only inventive and well crafted, but it’s filled with the kinds of one-liners and puns that will even wake the undead.

The plot, characters and setting work to perfection without blood, gore and body counts. While the spa at Dark Island may not be the transfusion you need for your physical health and well being in real life, DeVane’s and Rock’s collaboration has a high-clotting factor as well as the kinds of hijinks that will have you laughing all the way to the blood bank.

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Malcolm R. Campbell , who would never dream of writing about vampires, is the author of Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire, a novel that satirizes the blood suckers in government and the newspaper business.

Review: ‘Awakening of the Dream Riders’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, magic

Awakening of the Dream Riders Awakening of the Dream Riders by Lynda Louise Mangoro

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Kyra has discovered how to fly.

As Lynda Louise Mangoro’s magical novel “Awakening of the Dream Riders” begins, fourteen-year-old Kyra is trying out her new talent: “Her favorite unicorn poster suddenly loomed directly ahead. Pulling back, she slowed just in time to avoid a collision with the wall and sent herself tumbling backward through the air, rolling head over heels in a clumsy display of aero-gymnastics.”

Before Kyra discovers what she’s doing, veteran readers of paranormal fiction will guess that her joyful and liberating flight is astral projection. But she’s too elated to concern herself about technical terms. She can’t wait to share her stunning discovery with her best friend at school.

This well-told story moves at light speed, as fast as a person flying in their “light body” can soar across town in the blink of a thought. Soon, Kyra and her friends, Ray, Lauren, Crystal, and even the science-minded Noah are talking about “dream riding.”

On the back cover of “Awakening of the Dream Riders,” Mangoro describes Kyra’s world as “a quiet street in a picturesque English seaside town.” As Kyra and her friends discover, that’s only one reality, and it’s heavy and dense when compared to dream riding.

But unknown shadows await them within the infinite scope of the bright reality that knowing how to fly has offered them. Kyra and her friends will discover their unique dream riding talents, talents they must develop quickly in order to survive a tragedy their freshly opened eyes do not yet see.

“Awakening of the Dream Riders” plunges the reader into an inventive paranormal adventure. The high-energy magic of the story arises out of the fact that Kyra’s world on the ground and in the air appears very real. And there’s more to come: Mangoro’s debut novel is the first in a projected series of open-your-mind fantasy adventures for young adults and adults.

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Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of two magical realism novels, “Garden of Heaven” and “The Sun Singer.”

Fine storytelling: ‘Above the Fray, Part II’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books

Above the Fray Part Two Above the Fray Part Two by Kris Jackson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Part I of “Above the Fray” (CraigsPress, May 2009) follows the exploits of protagonist Nathaniel Curry, a fifteen-year-old telegraph operator from Richmond, with the Union Army Balloon Corps from the Peninsula Campaign during the spring and summer of 1862 through the Battle of Antietam that September.

Part II begins as General Ambrose Burnside, who was placed in command of the Army of the Potomac in November 1862, is pushing into Virginia with the objective of capturing the Confederate capital at Richmond. En route, the Union Army will suffer a costly defeat at Fredericksburg in December with a battle plan that Nathaniel sees as “simple to the point of folly.”

Richmond will not fall until the spring of 1865, two years after Chief Aeronaut Thaddeus Lowe has resigned from the balloon corps due to pay and logistics disputes. The Union Army Balloon Corps, a civilian contract organization, disbands in August 1863.

Curry, however, is not out of the war. There’s no precise way to say just how he stays in the war without giving away the inventive plot. Both the Union and the Confederacy want him to spy for them, for he is either an exceptionally streetwise chameleon or a man protected by the gods. He is equally at home with generals and prostitutes, with Southern slaves and northern infantrymen, and with soaring above the fray of a battlefield and with slogging it out under fire on both sides of the lines.

Taken together, parts I and II of “Above the Fray” give the reader a balloonist’s view of the Civil War from Atlanta to Richmond to Washington, D.C. Jackson’s research is broad and impeccable, his ear for dialogue is well-tuned, and his rendering of the war from multiple theaters and perspectives is stunning.

One evening Curry and his friend Vogler are sitting in camp with several of the many historical characters, Thaddeus Lowe, James Allen and Ezra Allen reading mail.

“‘Solly,’ Nathaniel Curry said, ‘you get more mail than the rest of us together.’

“‘Vogler looked over his glasses at him and smiled.

“‘What are you reading now? What language is that?’

“‘It’s German. This is the journal of the Royal Society of Prussia.’

“‘Wouldn’t they speak Prussian?’

“‘No. You’re thinking of Russia where they speak Russian.’
“‘Oh. The letters aren’t the same as ours.’”

Vogler then tells his fellow aeronauts he’s reading an account of several record-setting balloon ascents by aerialists Henry Coxwell and James Glaisher in England who reached a height of over 37,000 feet. The second flight occurred about the same time the balloon corps was at Antietam. The aeronauts are excited about the record, and they discuss the impact of the cold temperatures and thinner atmosphere on both the aerialists and their balloon.

Such accounts expand the reach of the novel to events far from the field of battle, greatly adding to the perspective of both the characters and the reader. Similarly, events Nathaniel observes at the Second Battle of Bull Run in “Above the Fray, Part I,” bring him to the attention of those conducting the controversial court-martial of Union General Fitz-John Porter in Part II where the issues of politics, command competency and scapegoats intertwine.

Is it likely that a young telegraph operator from Richmond would be on speaking terms with President Abraham Lincoln, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee, and multiple officers in both the northern and southern chains of command? Perhaps not.

But Kris Jackson makes it credible and entertaining. “Above the Fray, Part II” is fine storytelling by an author who knows the territory. When Nathaniel Curry approaches Appomattox Court House in the spring of 1865, he has come a very long way from that long ago day when he inadvertently rode a balloon into the sky with Professor Thaddeus Lowe, that day when Lowe said, “The sun’ll not rise today, Nathaniel. You and I shall have to rise to meet it.”

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Note: The trade paperback cover of Part II looks slightly different than the one displayed here by GoodReads.

Copyright (c) 2010 by Malcolm R. Campbell, author of “The Sun Singer” and “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire.”

Book Review: ‘Let’s Play Ball’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books

Let's Play Ball Let’s Play Ball by Linda Gould

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
If author Linda Gould isn’t an avid baseball fan, she covers it well, for her descriptions of plays, players, locker rooms, owner’s suites and game-time tension in Let’s Play Ball will easily take readers out to the ball game. But the games between the Washington Filibusters and the Florida Keys feature more than pitchers’ duels and homeruns. A conspiracy is brewing during the game that will decide the National League championship. Fraternal twins Miranda and Jessica are at the stadium, Miranda as a guest in one of the owner’s suites and Jessica to cover the came for her sports magazine. Jessica’s fiancé, Manual Chavez is at the game, too. He’s the Filibusters right fielder.

The highly competitive sisters snipe at each other during the game. Perhaps Jessica is envious of Miranda’s marriage and her high-paying career as a budget analyst for a government agency. Perhaps Miranda is jealous of Jessica’s high-profile job and her engagement to a handsome baseball star with an exciting past in Cuba. After the game, while the teams are in their locker rooms, Manual is the victim of a crime. As the true scope of this crime looms larger and larger in the days that follow, logic might suggest that the sisters should work together, to support each other and help the police find out who’s behind the outrage.

Instead, Gould ramps up the tension with twins who become openly hostile. Miranda’s marriage to Tommy, an attorney with political ambitions, is less than perfect, so she has her own distractions. Yet, she thinks Jessica’s shock over what happened to Manuel is impairing her reporter’s instincts about the case. After all, how realistic is it to suggest that the owners of the Washington Filibusters and the Florida Keys, the President of the United States, the Cuban dictator and an assortment of baseball players and shooting range friends who are actively racist and/or promoting an invasion of Cuba were all in bed together plotting against Manual Chavez?

Jessica is convinced the police and the FBI aren’t handling the investigation properly and that everything will be swept under the rug if she doesn’t get personally involved. When Miranda urges caution, Jessica suggests that Miranda and Tommy, who both have agendas as well as skeletons in their closets, may even be involved in the conspiracy and the cover-up.

Gould’s inventive plot features feuding sisters who become tangled up with baseball strategies, high-profile officials and international politics. Jessica thinks criminals lurk in every shadow. She follows real and imagined leads with a vengeance. Ultimately, when she goes on bed rest because of her pregnancy, she must ask Miranda to help uncover the secrets behind the crime. This forces Miranda to risk her well-paying job and step outside her comfort zone.

However, the novel’s potentially taut pacing bogs down, in part by the insertion of back story information during the police investigation to cover the twins past history and partly because the conspiracy’s probable ringleaders are outside the sisters’ amateur investigative reach. Without the authority or resources for confronting government officials or engaging in private undercover operations, Miranda and Jessica spend a great deal of time speculating about the involvement of major suspects while trying to maneuver the more minor suspects into making inadvertent confessions.

The action leads toward a dangerous confrontation that fittingly unfolds during another tense ballgame. Most of the suspects are near at hand with a lot more than a game to lose, and Miranda is in a position to either act with courage or to pretend the FBI will eventually figure everything out. Gould handles the resulting showdown well. But it’s not closure. Most readers will expect the novel’s next chapter to show how the feisty twins will resolve the rest of the story.

Instead, the author appends a 23-page epilogue. Since the twins are interesting characters, some readers will come away from this epilogue feeling that Miranda and Jessica have successfully navigated a major crisis as well as many crucial personal issues and can now get on with their lives. No longer in the forefront of the action required to bring the conspirators to justice in the epilogue, Miranda and Jessica are suddenly—figuratively speaking—sitting on the bench as Let’s Play Ball wraps up the fortunes of the good guys and bad guys at some distance in summary fashion well after the fact. Action-oriented readers may feel cheated when Let’s Play Ball lifts its primary characters from the game before the final inning.

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Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “The Sun Singer” and “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire.”

Review: ‘Torden, Hear the Thunder’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, reviews2 Comments

Torden, Hear the Thunder Torden, Hear the Thunder by C. Kirkham

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“Torden, Hear the Thunder” is a delightful story about eleven-year-old Niesje Brouwers and her powerful, high-stepping Friesian horse. Niesje, who is helping her aunt and uncle for a year on their Dutch farm, discovers a seriously wounded black stallion on the property. While her uncle is dubious about the horse’s chance of survival, Niesje is determined to save it; ultimately, a strong bond is formed. While the Brouwers don’t know where the horse came from, the reader knows it has survived an explosion on a World War I battlefield in Belgium.

While this historical novel was written for children 9-12 years old and older, it’s an interesting story for adults and young adults, especially those who love Friesian horses and/or who are attuned to the world of dressage The story focuses on Niesje, farm life, and her developing friendship with Torden. She worries about being allowed to participate in dressage–for which she must ride astride in an “unladylike manner”–and about what she will do when it’s time for her to leave the farm and go back home where there is no provision of keeping the horse.

C. Kirkham, who has written a realistic and accurate book, ends up indirectly teaching the reader a lot about a horse breed that almost became extinct. And then, in the final climatic chapters, an unexpected adventure teaches Niesje more about the world’s dangers than she expected to learn.

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Copyright (c) 2010 by Malcolm R. Campbell, author of “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire” and “The Sun Singer” from Vanilla Heart Publishing.

Book Review: ‘Nero’s Concert’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, writing1 Comment

Nero's Concert Nero’s Concert by Don Westenhaver

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“A Nero: Any bloody-minded man, relentless tyrant, or evil-doer of extraordinary cruelty; from the depraved and infamous Roman Emperor C. Claudius Nero.” – “Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable”

Almost twenty-one centuries after the Great Fire of Rome, most people believe that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. In reality, Nero–who ruled as Emperor between AD 54 and AD 68–played a lyre, and the fiddle as we know it had yet to be invented. Even the historian Tacitus discounts the rumor that Nero sang and played his lyre while enjoying the six-day spectacle of his city on fire. But the fiddling myth lives on.

Nobody knows whether the fire was accident or arson. Disgruntled Romans said Nero started it for reasons of insanity or to clear away land for a new palace. Nero blamed and persecuted Christians to direct the public’s antagonism away from himself. Don Westenhaver’s well-researched novel “Nero’s Concert” provides readers with a what-might-have-happened scenario for the calamitous days of July, 64 AD and their aftermath.

In “Nero’s Concert,” Nero does not start the fire. He asks his close friend Rusticus to investigate in hopes of proving Christians are responsible. Nero doesn’t get the answers he’s looking for. Tensions mount and the friendship between Nero and Rusticus becomes strained. Subsequently, Rusticus’ life and safety are jeopardized when Nero turns to Tigellinus, the sadistic prefect of the Praetorian Guard, for more appropriate conclusions and when Rusticus falls in love with a Christian.

In addition to Nero and Tigellinus, Westenhaver’s novel includes Seneca, Poppaea, St. Peter and other historical characters. Rusticus, who is wholly fictional, attends to both his duty and his heart, making him a wonderfully level-headed protagonist for a story about a chaotic city with an erratic Emperor.

When Camilia, a nurse helping the injured during the fire, tells a Tribune she’s found a murdered senator among the dead, the Tribune says he will take her information to Rusticus rather than Tigellinus.

“I don’t know Tigellinus obviously,” says Camilia, “but his reputation is that he punishes those who bring bad news.”

“Yes,” the Tribune responds. “Whereas Rusticus seems quite different–analytical and professional. Somewhat distant rather than friendly. But I worked with him on the fire and he was fair to everyone.”

Through the novel’s wide window into the past, readers see the workings of the Roman hierarchy via Rusticus’ investigation and his interactions with Seneca, Nero and Tigellinus. As Camilia and Rusticus spend time together, readers learn about daily life and about the horrors of being a Christian at a time when such beliefs are likely to lead to imprisonment, torture and death. The author has taken great care in his presentation of facts about Rome’s rulers, buildings and people. An author’s note at the end of the novel supplies additional details.

While Westenhaver’s writing is highly readable, his modern-day words and phrases add a disruptive casualness that doesn’t fit the time or place. When Thaddeus calls out to Rusticus with the words “Hey boss,” the reality of Rome within the novel crumbles a bit. So, too, when Nero’s efforts to improve his image are referred to as “public relations,” an individual is called “your guy,” a parade is called a “big deal,” and sexual encounters are described as “getting laid.” Personal taste may dictate whether or not this is distracting.

The research behind the story gets in the way of the story occasionally when the primary plot line is diverted into travelogue-style moments around the city and a vacation trip Rusticus and Camilia take to the Bay of Naples. Likewise, a visit with an imprisoned St. Peter strays past its intended purpose into a monologue about Christianity. Such information does provide interesting facts and insights into the characters and the times, but at the expense of the novel’s pacing. Some readers may skim these sections while others may enjoy the additional atmosphere.

On balance, “Nero’s Concert” is an engaging love story as well as an entertaining and informative account of a time that lives in our consciousness as myth more than fact. Readers will come away from the novel knowing that, in all likelihood, Nero neither played a violin nor fiddled around while Rome burned.

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Copyright (c) 2010 by Malcolm R. Campbell

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Book Review: ‘Her Fearful Symmetry’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books

Her Fearful Symmetry Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
–William Blake, “The Tyger”

When an acclaimed author (Audrey Niffenegger) takes a phrase from an inscrutable poem (“The Tyger”), readers (such as myself) are apt to expect a great story. Without a doubt Niffenegger’s prose is elegant, her place descriptions (London and Highgate Cemetery) are exceptional, and her intricate plot has great promise.

That promise is not fulfilled.

Niffenegger speaks of ghosts that dissipate in to the ether, so to speak, because they haven’t been dead long enough to figure out how to keep themselves together and harness their intent. I like this viewpoint within the story. Unfortunately, it also describes the story.

We are introduced to several sets of twins who, as it turns out, are so focused on being twins that they (in one case) do fearful and silly things and (in another case) are relatively boring. In each set, one twin wants freedom and the other wants the status quo. Interesting? Could have been, but it wasn’t.

At best, most of the characters were totally dysfunctional with the possible exception (oddly enough) of the man with OCD who lived in the flat upstairs, up above the American twins who come to London when their aunt (Espeth) dies and leaves them an apartment up above Robert who works as a volunteer at the adjoining Highgate Cemetery. He was Espeth’s lover both before and after she died.

Like ghosts without sufficient practice and power to organize themselves and enjoy the afterlife (with or without haunting the living), the plot becomes weaker and weaker as the novel goes on until on the final pages it evaporates altogether. Yes, there’s a grim resolution to it all, but it’s a weak one and we no longer care.

I suspect the author fell in love with the cemetery and wanted to write a story about it. Naturally, the dead came to mind. But they weren’t strong enough to frighten us or make us care about the symmetry.

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Other Blogs:

Morning Satirical News: Talking to a real reporter about Operation E-Book Drop

Mythrider: Natural, But Not Human (our poor perception of the natural world)

Sun Singer’s Travels: Writing one word at a time

Copyright (c) 2009 by Malcolm R. Campbell, author of the comedy/thriller “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire”

Book Review: ‘Staccato’ by Deborah J. Ledford

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books4 Comments

Staccato Staccato by Deborah J Ledford

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“Staccato” is staccato: sharp, crisp, almost percussive–like gun shots, like a cane tapping on the floor or striking a shoulder, like light reflected off a black Porsche Targa, like the piercing cold of a Great Smoky Mountains night.

Two years into his career as a world-class concert pianist, young Nicholas Kalman finds his absent father’s journal. It’s written as a warning to Nicholas, or perhaps a confession. “Beware of this man you call, Uncle,” it says.

The uncle is Alexander, the tyrannical, club-footed, cane tapping maestro and mentor. He’s crafted the talented Nicholas into a dazzling musician who crushes the competition in every venue. He drinks. He expects perfection. He lashes out when angry.

Alexander demands unquestioning obedience from Nicholas, the cloyingly submissive second-string pupil Timothy, the imposing butler Sampte, his niece Elaine, sheriff’s deputy Steven Hawk, and everyone else who dares enter his ten thousand square foot mansion in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Deborah J. Ledford’s thriller tears through mountains and music with a steady rhythm in perfect time with the maestro Alexander’s music room metronome. Nicholas finds a his lover’s body in his Porsche. Timothy perfects his Prokofiev to steal the limelight. Sampte does what he’s ordered to do. The metronome ticks and the cane taps as the bodies pile up, as Nicholas searches for a killer and runs for his life, as Hawk investigates a grim case, as Alexander orchestrates notes and lives, as readers turn “Staccato’s” pages, quickly, crisply, sharply throughout Ledford’s Toccata-like virtuoso performance.

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Tomorrow: A conversation with Pat Bertram, author of “Daughter Am I.”

Copyright (c) 2009 by Malcolm R. Campbell, author of “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire.”

Book Review: Karen Harrington’s ‘Janeology’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books4 Comments

JaneologyCoverJane Nelson “snaps” and tries to drown her two children in the kitchen sink. Her son Simon dies, her daughter Sarah survives, and Jane is placed in a mental institution after being found not guilty by reason of insanity. However, since society can neither understand nor tolerate flawed motherhood, it will go to great lengths to find extenuating circumstances to explain a mother’s crime.

Tom Nelson, the stunned and grieving husband and father, becomes a convenient scapegoat. As high-profile cases in recent years demonstrated, husbands are expected to know whether or not a wife under stress is a clear and present danger to her children. So Tom is charged with failing to protect his family from his wife.

In “Janeology,” as in life, Tom and his lawyer Dave take as a given that the evidence used in Jane’s trial to demonstrate that she was insane will be brought into Tom’s trial and used against him. The prosecution will argue that if Jane was crazy enough to kill her children, Tom should have noticed this fact and done something to keep Simon and Sarah out of harm’s way. How could he not have known?

Tom asks himself this question many times even before he is charged. He also wonders what happened to Jane, the loving wife and mother, to bring her to such a point. In her exceptionally well-written, carefully plotted and inventive novel, Karen Harrington considers where blame begins and ends and what, if anything, will bring us closure.
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Note: I’m re-posting a review I wrote earlier this year as a response to the news that the novel’s publisher has closed its doors. Fortunately, its books will continue to be available on Amazon and other booksellers until the end of the year. See also my review of another wonderful Kunati book, Rosemary Poole-Carter’s Women of Magdalene set during and after the Civil War.
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Malcolm
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