Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Hebrews 13:7-8 (NIV)
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James Scott Bell is the king of lawyer snark. He writes fascinating stories that feature attorneys with serious flaws. Imagine that, you say, an attorney with flaws! Suffice it to say Blind Justice features Jake Denney who's about ready to pack it in, maybe once and for all.
Jake's a jerk. Major. Big time jerk. He's divorced with a 5 year old daughter Mandy who sees deep into his tattered soul. He gets visitation with her, but the whole situation with his ex-wife and her husband stinks, and he's not about to make it friendly – even for Mandy. His cases have dropped to zero since his drinking has pre-empted everything else. He managed to perform poorly in a court appearance and that pretty much shut down his ability to land cases and pay the rent on his office space. Until . . .
A childhood friend's mother calls Jake and asks for his help. "Howie" is now grown up, sort of, married, one young son named Brian. He's been working construction in Alaska to make the kind of money his wife seems to want. Howie's bringing her a Teddy Bear, flying home one day early, but when he arrives, the house is dark and quiet and he's locked out. Howie manages to break into the sliding glass door and goes to their bedroom where his wife Rae reveals she wants a divorce. Howie cries and pleads with her to change her mind, and then . . . that's all he remembers. Except for the appearance of the devil.
Howie is accused of murdering his wife, stabbing her 25 times and then wounding himself, and his parents and sister ask Jake to be his attorney. When Jake takes the case, Howie's sister Lindsay insists her brother could not and would not kill Rae. Jake finds he's attracted to Lindsay and tries to explain to her how the evidence looks pretty convincing. She refuses to accept it, and although Jake admires her pluck, he's convinced the best he can get is some reduced charge.
Jake calls his Shakespeare-speaking P.I. to help him with the case and investigate Rae. He finds a kid who'd been sleeping with her and who says he saw someone running away from the house after hearing a scream but went home without telling anyone.
Howie is slow and considers Jake his only real friend. Jake can tell Howie looks up to him which only makes his alcoholic regression that much more despicable. But Jake can't help himself, and nothing seems to slow his demise, even the fury he feels after his wife refuses to allow Mandy to see him again unsupervised since their last visit didn't turn out too well.
Through all of the drinking, the investigation, the determination to get Howie acquitted, and the bully prosecutor's handling of the case, there's a creepy undercurrent in the proceedings. Jake's investigator "Triple C" feels it and even Jake senses something wrong, but Jake immerses his fears and doubts in the bottle.
When multiple things go terribly wrong, Jake is forced to realize his answers can't be found at the bottom of those bottles. And injustice can't turn a blind eye to the truth.
Blind Justice by James Scott Bell is a well-written, thoroughly entertaining story about a young attorney on the skids who somehow manages to do just enough damage to himself to wake up and search for a reason to quit retreating from life. With a hopeful and satisfying (albeit a tad convenient) ending, Blind Justice is a quick and valuable read that captures the destruction of alcoholism and the beauty of unconditional love while taking a hard look at the evil Howie recognized.
Good story. Highly recommended.
Father, James has been writing books to honor you for many years. Please continue to bless his life, family, and inspiration. Please continue to supply the readers for his books and give him many more stories to tell. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
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Saying "Thank you" seems inadequate so much of the time. The synonyms don't do the feelings justice. The embellishments of "so much" and "very much" and "from my heart" don't serve their purpose no matter how intense the feelings of gratitude are. They're never enough to reveal how deeply the feelings dwell. So. Insufficiently, I want to express my thanks to Tim George and Jessica Thomas for making a Kindle version of The Famous One possible. Because of your efforts, several more people have read the story and blessed me with their responses.
And thank all the rest of you who've read this novel. I appreciate each one of you.
All I can offer are infinite thank yous.
Thank you, Lord, for giving me Joey Parr's story through the unique circumstances of that experience. I'm always grateful for all you've done for me. There are no words for that. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
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You can ask writers all kinds of questions and get such different answers to the same topics.
Ask writers what they hope to accomplish with their novel(s). Ask them if they have a purpose in writing a particular book. Ask them what their goals are in writing stories. Ask them if they write for a specific audience. Ask them what they hope to achieve in publishing. Ask them whatever you want.
In rereading Tender Is the Night I realized something about certain authors with certain books, and I discovered I wanted that quality in at least a couple of my own. Timelessness. I say "a couple" because an author doesn't arrive there easily. He has to swim to a depth that feels like drowning and then make his way back to the surface of his current reality.
Even though they write in an era past, present, or future, their novel speaks to the ever present because it captures the humanity of its characters so precisely that time no longer is a factor. It doesn't matter if the mode of transportation is a horse and wagon, a Ferrari, or a space traveling vehicle. If the gown belongs to a flapper or the Levis are hip-huggers or the telephone is a dial-up land line or a smart phone, the characters are as everlasting as the sunrise and sunset, and the crisis is always personally experienced.
What about you? Is there something specific you wish to achieve with your writing?
Father, only you can put those stories on pages that permeate time. Only your inspiration makes lasting quality. Only you. We're all desperate for you, Jesus, whether we know it or not. I love you, Lord. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
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I had a glorious remembrance of the book Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. He gained a favored spot in my heart when I was in the 17 to 20 age bracket, so planted in me that I remember his writing with a certain feeling I can't describe. I loved his writing.
I just finished rereading Tender Is the Night because I couldn't remember much of it and wanted to revisit why it held such a memorial in my heart. Published in 1934 and filled with what researchers lament was a lot of autobiographical experiences for Fitzgerald, it apparently debuted with less than scintillating sales and supposedly broke the author's heart. He never completed another novel after Tender Is the Night and didn't live to realize it's impact or fame in the literary world.
After finishing the story this time, the melancholy creeped over me, and I realized that hopeless overtone which permeated the book was probably what captured my existential outlook at that time of my life. I was lost spiritually even though I knew there was a God. The symbolism of stories which accentuated the pretending of vitality, while really owning none of it, resonated with my young and foolish soul. There's a particular "cool" wrapped up in masquerading that all of life is caught and celebrated in your worldly ways, and the couple in TItN lived in the pleasures money could buy them, running out of pleasure while money still prevailed.
From the writing standpoint it was brave and bold in style, unflinching and different. Dick Diver was both a tender man and a cold cad. Nicole was delicate, unstable, stubborn, aloof, and selfish. Neither were good parents to the two children they had together, the son and daughter more like expected fixtures in a marriage. Their lives were filled with amazing and disgusting people, parties, entertainment, and sometimes Dick managed to make his psychology degree work for him. They lived the deluxe ex-pat European lifestyle.
He fell in love with the wealthy and beautiful girl-woman Nicole, traumatized by a terrible event in her childhood, determined to make her well, but when she got there, neither of them had much left for each other.
The story's end is abrupt and ugly. It's a quick stab that leaves an endless scar. I can't decide if it was brilliant or he'd had enough of writing his story which took him several years to complete. Suffice it to say, in a sad way that speaks volumes about lost lives of any stature, I still cared about this novel but only because it captured the nuances of those who refuse to look at life through any lens but their own and those directly in their circles. The feigned meaning of life evaporates for some while others carry on the charade.
Father, you're here, there, and everywhere for all of us. Waiting. Asking. Saving. Thank you for rescuing me from meaninglessness. You are all that truly matters. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
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Signet Select; Published by the Penguin Group
If you want thrills, horror, philosophy, just a dab of humor now and then, teen angst, grown-up angst, professionalism, genius, a smidgen of spirituality, and killer killers, you need to start with The Pawn and read all the way through to The King by Steven James. With intricate and complex storylines, this Master Storyteller weaves in the successes of horribly evil characters and the sometimes failures of all types of law enforcement to stop them. Given their advantages in committing heinous crimes when their intellect is way above average, Patrick Bowers and his associates use every method available to fend off future attacks and capture these human monsters.
About these killers . . . Richard Basque is out of prison on a technicality, and there's nothing he likes better than kidnapping women and eating some of their organs, preferably before he kills them. He relishes the "hunt" and thrives on confounding Patrick Bowers. He's left a bloody body trail, but those murders aren't connecting until one day after a picnic with Patrick and his step-daughter Tessa, Patrick's Special Agent FBI profiler fiancée Lien-hua Jiang returns to her car to find a huge surprise as Patrick and Tessa depart from the park.
In the meantime the Director of the FBI's (Margaret Wellington) brother has committed suicide, and she wants Patrick to figure out why. His history with Margaret is checkered and uncomfortable at best, but Patrick assures her he will do everything he can to find anything that might've been missed. And of course he does. Which brings back another escaped psychopath from The Queen, the self-nicknamed Valkyrie who is really the alter-ego of Alexei Chekov.
The King, like every book in the Patrick Bowers Series, is primarily told from Patrick's POV, but Steven takes us down the dark roads of his venemous criminals' thoughts. The strange conclusions of his killers – although not off base for self-evaluations – remind us of how evil begins within our nature. Could we become them if we allowed ourselves to delve into our true instincts and abandon personal restrictions?
Tessa's emotional struggles are not atypical of maturing teens, but her high intellect often provides too much stimuli, while coming in handy other times, seducing her away from the desire to pursue her deceased mother's wish for Tessa. Losing her mother pre-empted serious belief in any deity and destroyed and toppled a timid faith. Will Tessa overcome her pain to find true relief from all that she's taken on and assumed about herself and the world around her?
Peripheral characters become essential and a vital part of each story, aiding the big picture of crimes and relationships. Always done well, the reader is filled in at so many levels with important, fascinating, and meaningful data. (Steven does manage to plug his new series by making a character reference the amazing magician "Jevin Banks" from Placebo.)
The brilliance of the Patrick Bowers Series lies in Steven's ability to thread complex plot details efficiently throughout the stories, braiding them together and binding them with that small splayed tail at the end of each book which assures us that as much as we need the pursuits of these crazy men and women to end, as a reader we're amped up to find out how in the world Patrick and his associates will be allowed to chase them down and eliminate them. We yearn for resolution, face our need for justice, and actually hope that "justice" allows them to be exterminated. It's in our nature after all.
Father, you've given Steven incredible talent and he's following his gift. Please help him to continue down the path you've designed just for him. Bless him for all things he does to honor you. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
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But the man who loves God is known by God.
1 Corinthians 8:3 (NIV)
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All Souls, A Gatehouse Thriller (#1) by K. T. Kaufman (aka Karin Kaufman), is available on Kindle for readers who enjoy contemporary speculative thrillers.
K. T. Kaufman has written a thoughtful, disturbing story for the first book in her Gatehouse Thriller Series. Jane Piper is a hunter of "Sacks". Sacks are those who kill "innocents" assigned to them by upper echelon members of their organization. Just as these innocents' names appear on a list, so do those mysteriously dubbed Sacks' names come down from Gatehouse to those in charge (called "porters") of the hunters. The hunters have been personally affected by the Sacks' killings, losing a loved one at their merciless hands. Jane lost her younger sister to a ruthless, brutal killer, and her parents blamed her after the tragedy. As a result, she applied to be a hunter at Gatehouse.
So, are the hunters primarily vigilantes dispatched by their porters via Gatehouse to impart justice? Are they just people hell-bent on revenge? Are they really sadistic hedonists as their counterparts appear to be? How exactly do they view their roles in the heirarchy of murder?
There appears to be a serious leak in the Gatehouse leadership which puts Nathan, Jane's porter, Jane, and fellow hunter Zach on the run. Supposedly there's a woman who has turned away from her high-ranking Sack position to defect to Gatehouse. Nathan vetted her and is convinced she's legitimate, but Jane and Zach aren't as certain because of her hideous crime as a Sack. When all of their lives are threatened and it seems the "safe" houses are coming under constant Sack attack, Nathan and his friend Claude, number 3 in the Gatehouse leadership, must find a way to keep the four of them from being killed by the relentless assaults from groups of low-ranking Sacks who used to work alone.
Jane's, Zach's, Nathan's, and Claude's constant running, their incessant need for sleep, and the twist you know is coming but aren't sure exactly what it's going to be, are very well done by Kaufman. The story doesn't dawdle, and the threats, the new exposures, and the need to discover the culprits keep those Kindle pages clicking to the next one. There's a considerable amount of profanity used in this general market offering, but God does make it into the final pages more as a reckoning and revelation to the heroine who can't quite ferret out the difference between justification and redemption. This process seems to lay the groundwork for both the title and the development of Jane Piper in future books.
I could not decide if All Souls fit into any of the following classifications:
"Allegory is a literary device in which characters or events in a literary, visual, or musical art form represent or symbolize ideas and concepts." Wikipedia
"A parody (/'pær?di/; also called spoof, send-up or lampoon), in current use, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on or trivialise[citation needed] an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of satiric or ironic imitation. As the literary theorist Linda Hutcheon puts it, "parody … is imitation, not always at the expense of the parodied text." Another critic, Simon Dentith, defines parody as "any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice."[1] Parody may be found in art or culture, including literature, music (although "parody" in music has an earlier, somewhat different meaning than for other art forms), animation, gaming and film." Wikipedia
The American Heritage Dictionary's secondary meaning for irony: "incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs".[5] This sense, however, is not synonymous with "incongruous" but merely a definition of dramatic or situational irony. It is often included in definitions of irony not only that incongruity is present but also that the incongruity must reveal some aspect of human vanity or folly. Thus the majority of American Heritage Dictionary's usage panel found it unacceptable to use the word ironic to describe mere unfortunate coincidences or surprising disappointments that "suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly." Wikipedia
An interesting conceptual novel, not generally my type, but All Souls is a quick, well-written read and a good first entry to this series.
Father, you know how hard Karin works, you know her heart, you know her desires. Please continue to bless her efforts to do as you ask, to honor you, and to be the one you designed her to be. Encourage her as only you can do. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
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Visiting over here again. So as you virtually sit in this pretty place with a book or e-reader, perhaps you can leave a comment about your thoughts on being a reader over there.
Lord, thank you for always accompanying me even when I'm wrong. I'm desperate for you. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
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It has been my honor and my pleasure to have read all of Vince Flynn's novels and to share my reviews of them with you. If you haven't had the privilege to read these amazing stories which nail down the current state of our country, I hope you will make the time to read each one and absorb the insights and revelation transmitted on the pages of these stories. Truly, there is no time like the present.
God bless Vince's family in this time of mourning and God Bless America. Lord, we're all desperate for you. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
