Once a decade I get an irresistible urge to revisit the hardboiled crime noir classics I was introduced to in high school but didn't appreciate at the time.

My latest binge included Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock, James Ellroy's LA Confidential, James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, and two books from Raymond Chandler.


Particularly with Ellroy, Hammett, and Chandler, their anti-hero heros are troubled, rebellious, and cynical - but can't ever escape from that ember of honor and hope smoldering deep inside. The authors paint a dark, bleak picture of the underbelly of society - usually LA. Why LA? Why not LA? Where the lights shine brightest the shadows cast deep and wide.

Their outlook was shocking when they wrote their novels - especially Thompson when he wrote from the killer's perspective - but is standard fare today. (Today, you might need to write with a positive buoyancy to shock people!)

I still read crime novels, but I'm not sure anyone has really bested the patron saints, Hammett and Chandler. That begs the question, who had the greatest character? Was it Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe?

I like both characters - but Marlowe is my favorite and I believe he was at his best in The Long Goodbye - which just edged The Lady in the Lake in my mind.

Marlowe befriends Terry Lennox - wealthy but haunted by his demons from serving in war and by the escapades of his nymphomaniac wife. No good deed goes unpunished and soon both the cops and the gangsters are after Marlowe when he begins to investigate the death of Lennox's wife after being told to back off. Telling Marlowe to back off is like pouring gasoline on a fire.

Rereading Chandler is a graphic reminder that California has always had problems - and a guilty pleasure from an era of tough guys, dames in distress, partnerships between the gangsters and dirty cops, and the discovery that even heros have flaws.


__________
Mark Gilroy is author of the critically acclaimed novel Cuts Like a Knife. A 30-year veteran of the publishing industry, he has served as publisher and executive vice president at several companies and currently runs a company that services retailers, publishers, ministries, and other organizations in the industry.

How The Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill. Anchor Books.

In 406 A.D the Rhine River froze solid - and the barbarians crossed this temporary bridge to strike one of the final blows to a lazy, corrupt, and aging empire. When Alaric, king of the Visigoths, showed up at Rome's gates in 410 A.D., the citizens still didn't know the end was at hand. Unable to defend themselves - it was a lot of effort after all - they negotiated a "sack" to spare the city from bloodshed:

"So they kept their lives, most of them. But sooner or later they or their progeny lost almost everything else: titles, prosperity, way of life, learning: especially learning. A world in chaos is not a world in which books are copied and libraries are maintained. It is not the world where learned men have the leisure to become more learned."

While working through Gibbons' The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for my nightstand reading, I realized I needed a shorter "boost" to keep going, so I decided to reread Thomas Cahill's much heralded work that shows the disappearance of learning, scholarship, and culture from the European Continent from the fall of Rome to rise of Charlemagne. All the great works of western civilization would have been lost were it not for the fact that as the Continent became illiterate, one small "unconquered people" at the edge of the Empire were just learning to read and write - with gusto. As peaceful Rome turned to chaos, chaotic Ireland grew more peaceful - the key word being more. Following the lead of their eclectic and passionately spiritual patron saint, St. Patrick, and his spiritual son, Columcille, they built centers of learning that not only drew visitors from the Continent, but sent a wave of missionaries that restored and returned the Greek, Roman, Christian and even "pagan" classic literature to Europe.

Just a fun note or two on Patrick. He was not actually Irish. He was a Briton - "almost Roman" - that was captured, enslaved and brutally mistreated by the Irish as a young boy. Following a vision from God - like King David he was a shepherd and solitude and deprivation turned his thoughts toward God - he escaped Ireland and received a seminary education. But his heart beat for Ireland. In one of history's unique footnotes, he became the first missionary since the Apostolic Age. Also, he didn't drive snakes out of Ireland, but he did curb the Irish passion for violence - curbing the passions of that day for hard drink and, um, ah, for a liberated sense of sexuality, is another matter. One of the reasons Patricus was so well received by his one-time tormentors was that he may have been the only man to stand up to the Irish of his century and say, "I am not afraid of you, I fear only God." That they liked and respected.

I'm only one in a long line of many to recommend Cahill's short, poetic, sometimes rambling, but always charming narrative that brings history to life.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

First things first. The title has nothing to do with IQ. The first character is the number 1 so the title is a play on George Orwell's 1984. Just in case you were wondering if I selected the title because of a possible correlation in title and my intellect!

If you aren't familiar with Japanese author Murakami, his novels are critically acclaimed - he has been awarded the Franz Kafka Prize, the Jerusalem Prize and many others - and are a fantastical mix of surrealism and a rich (sometimes dense) detailing of everyday life. He consistently deals with themes of loneliness and alienation and soul, the self and reality (and especially perception/imagination and reality). 1Q84 tackles all that and adds acute questions of the-ends-justify-the-means murder, religion and cults, destiny, sexual abuse, revenge, and parallel realities. Oh, it takes a while to catch on, but first and foremost, it is a love story.

Was it listening to Janacek's Sinfonietta that sent Aomame ("sweet pea") into another world with two moons? Did Tengo see the same two moons when he rewrote Fuka-eri's crude draft of Air Chrysalis? (And by the way, was that a story from the fevered imagination of a 17-year-old girl or was she describing things that actually happened?) Will either of them survive the revenge of a cult group called Sakigake and the brilliant and relentless pursuit of Ushikawa - a man with a large misshapen head that shouldn't be able to follow anyone without being noticed? And what of the "Little People" - who seem to hold special powers in 1Q84 and that seem to be looking for a bridge to 1984 - are they neutral or as malevolent as we suspect? And the big question: did Aomame and Tengo have to enter 1Q84 to find each other after 20 excruciating years of separation from each other and disconnect from the world around them? I don't think it's a spoiler alert to say that they became soul mates at age 10.

Enough. You're with me or not. If I've scared you off completely, don't run away before reading the last sentence of this paragraph. If you've read other reviews I've written what you might have already discovered is I don't actually review books - I recommend books. Sometimes quite different books.  I know Murakami is not for everyone - though 1Q84 sold a million copies in Japan alone - and I'll have to admit, it's not my usual fare. But I recommend this book for its dense, other-worldly beauty - reading it creates that curious sensation of wanting (even needing and willing) it to be done and to never end.

The original Japanese was publishing in 2010-11 and the English translation was introduced in 2011. I read the lovely boxed set (very reasonably priced on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and others) that was given to me as a gift by my son Merrick.

kisses from katie

Kisses from Katie. By Katie Davis. Simon & Schuster. 2011.

We moved to Brentwood, Tennessee, in January 2006. My youngest daughter, Caroline, was a junior in high school. You can imagine how nervous we were as parents on how the move would go for an almost-senior (and for the two other kids still in the house). Within days Caroline met two Katies who welcomed her to Ravenwood High School and made her feel as if she had grown up in their circle of friends. I'm still sighing with relief.

One of the wonderful Katies - Katie Davis - took a different path after graduation to say the least. She is now the unmarried mother of 14 young girls. Is that even possible? Is this one of those stories about youth gone bad?

I need to give a warning to any potential readers at this point. Do not pick up Kisses from Katie if you live a comfortable life and don't want anything or anyone messing up your comfort zone.

Katie's story is a story of youth gone good. It is both heartwarming and heartbreaking - and in reading it you will never be satisfied with a status quo lifestyle again. If you have never felt a gentle nudge from God that you have something beyond yourself to accomplish in this world - or if you have suppressed and ignored the nudge - this book serves as a loud, clanging, blaring wakeup call to hear and embrace your call.

"Kids" can be idealists - and when Caroline told me Katie was going to do a yearlong mission project before attending college, I thought that sounded great - that it would be good for her. Little did I know ... I did know Katie's parents were quite nervous when she said the project would be serving in an orphanage in Uganda. After surveying the situation in Africa carefully, her dad reluctantly gave his permission for her to go - with the condition that she promise to come back and enroll in college and move on with her life. She was true to her word - but even as she attended classes the fall of her return, she was miserable, thinking only of her "girls" back in Uganda.

Katie - high school homecoming queen and student body president and honor student and girlfriend to a handsome, committed, spiritual, star athlete - had every reason to "come home." But her heart was back in Uganda with the motherless children she had fallen in love with. Is it any wonder that the name she has been given by the people of her village is "Mommy." Katie's ongoing adventures in Uganda are  amazing and fit the adage that truth is stranger than fiction. In her case, it is not stranger, but more incredible.

My family has been blessed by the Katie who befriended the "new kid" at school. We've been privileged to meet two of her daughters, Patricia and Grace. Most of all we have been inspired to step out of our comfort zone and to look around to see what God is doing in the world that we need to take part in.

I can't recommend Kisses from Katie highly enough for the spiritual blessings you will experience reading this story of relentless love and redemption.

the day satan called

By Bill Scott. FaithWords, a division of the Hachette Book Group. Published October 2011. We live in a culture that is skeptical of most things spiritual - but that can't seem to get enough of dark, scary movies and books - from Rosemary's Baby to The Exorcist and a host of annual releases. So what more can be said about demons and evil spirits? I will establish up front that I am friends with the author of The Day Satan Called and worked with him a bit on the development of the project. But that doesn't mean I can't be a raving fan and recognize some special contributions Bill has made through this book, does it? I met Bill Scott and his wife Janet about a year ago to discuss a couple publishing projects they needed to work on for an organization for youth they founded and run. In the course of the conversation Bill mentioned off-handedly that he had written a manuscript (with more than a little help from Janet) of his experience with a ... witch ... who he had invited to live in his home in order to help her ... okay. Suffice it to say I watched Bill just a little more closely to see what kind of guy he really was. What I noticed then and have seen confirmed over and over in the subsequent year is that Bill is direct and honest to a fault. I took the manuscript home and was transfixed - and terrified. That's the first thing I would say about The Day Satan Called - it is a well-written, fast-paced, entertaining, and incredibly scary story. Bill seems to take you to the edge of the cliff at the end of every chapter. About the time you think what he lived through couldn't get worse - it does. I'm not going to give away any spoilers, but I'll note that the book has a totally unexpected ending. The story is great but it is Bill's observations that make this book special. In the process of looking back at how things started and ended, Bill asks and answers some poignant questions about demon possession: is it related to multiple personality disorder (MPD) - sometimes? All of the time? How much of what is called demon possession is someone's personal fantasy or even a con game? Or both? How prevalent is demon possession in our society and how concerned should we be? With all the temptations in the world that seem to work so well with so many, why would Satan even bother with possessing of some people? Can a Christian be demon possessed - or in the case of a person suffering from MPD, can one personality be redeemed and another personality be possessed? I mentioned that Bill is honest and direct. He doesn't claim to know all the answers to those and other questions, but he does a great job of presenting what happened to him - even the parts that are personally embarrassing and he'd rather forget - and reaffirming the scripture: "You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world" (1 John 4:4).

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

By Junot Diaz. Riverhead Books (Penguin). Published in 2007.

A number of friends and family members recommend books for me to read. With a few of them I take particular note: this is a good indication that I'm not going to like the book. But one person in my life who recommends a book two to three times a year - and almost always one I am initially suspect of because it is not something I would pick out myself - is my son Merrick.

I never would have read Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game), Haruki Murakami (Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World) or Yann Martell (Life of Pi - though I probably would have got to that one eventually) - to name just a few.

Honestly, I really wasn't interested in a novel that deals with the political history of the Dominican Republic under the brutal Trujillo regime - I can watch the news if I want to be depressed was my first thought - but Merrick recommended it - and Diaz's first novel did garner a few little awards like the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critic's Circle Award. But on the issue of awards, that's not necessarily a dealmaker for me; after all, there's more than a few Oscar-winning movies none of us liked. So it came back to Merrick's recommendation. I ordered it, promptly put it on the stack of books by my bed - where it dropped as low as the bottom third (usually the sure sign it's never going to be opened) - and read other stuff for six months before finally picking Oscar up. Reluctantly. Did I mention this book deals with the political history of the Dominican Republic under the the brutal Trujillo regime - AND includes footnotes with historical context and explanations throughout the novel?

Are you feeling as unenthused about Oscar as I was yet? I can go on!

But what a pleasure The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was to read. The jumbled but poetic wordsmything (along with those interesting and slightly disconcerting but somehow fitting footnotes) mark Diaz, the author, as an interesting blend of stream of conscious thought and carefully constructed and intellectual analysis of the world through the eyes of his characters and his out-of-story interjections as self-aware author. (I guess pulling that off is part of the reason he is a professor at MIT. I'm pretty sure he's a very smart guy.) The novel is a subtle and nuanced winding road with an occasional roadblock that delivers a direct, to-the-point, academic, sledge hammer observation on life.

Our hero, Oscar, is born in poverty in the DR - though his grandfather was a wealthy and famous physician in that nation whose unforgivable crime against the state was to hide a beautiful daughter from the lecherous Trujillo - and moves to a rundown, hardscrabble community in New Jersey that is bordered by a dump on one side and a six lane highway on another. There is a fleeting period of Oscar's life when he is the most handsome boy in his neighborhood and school and his mom and great aunt are convinced he is destined to be an international pop star - perhaps as big as Porfirio Rubirosa. But that is a short lived fantasy on their part as Oscar becomes a fat little boy who is the object of ridicule and relentless teasing from classmates. It doesn't help that Oscar's mother is distant and harsh to the point of cruelty - she would probably be reported to health and human services today - with he and his sister. (There's a reason this savage beauty is the way she is that can only be explained by the ravages of the curse described in the next paragraph of this review.) But Oscar is a survivor and escapes into a world of sci-fi and fantasy - he is a bonafide literature and gaming nerd - that allows him to be and dream anything but what he is. Speaking of dreams, Oscar has only two compelling visions in life:  first is to become the Domincan version of J.R.R. Tolkien; and second is to find true love, something he he feels he glimpsed in the golden age of his pre-adolescent youth when he seemed to be on his way to becoming the next Pofirio Rubirosa. Oscar writes novels by nightstand light and falls madly in love on a constant basis - always and inevitably to experience the anguish of heartbreak. Sometimes before the object of his affection even knew he was in love with her.

I should have started where the book starts and mentioned that Oscar is primarily about an evil spirit - the Dominican word is fuku - that has cursed Oscar's family from the moment Trujillo (master of or mastered by evil spirits?) heard rumors of the beautiful daughter of Oscar's grandfather. The evil spirit has destroyed or stolen anything good the family has had or might have experienced - from lands and wealth to beauty and health. (Oscar believes the original fuku landed at San Juan with Christopher Columbus: the Ground Zero of the curse.) So Oscar's family's story is that of a precipitous fall from grace to one of dysfunctional but heroic struggle against the weight of a brutal personal history. The ultimate question I got from the book is this: if you are cursed is there any point in fighting it? Isn't that what a curse is - something you can't fight? Or is there something one can do? How does a lost, downtrodden, forgotten, broken family - and a not-so-little boy who suffers from depression and inertia - stand up to all that an evil spirit - one that is still alive in human form through Trujillo's heirs - and all that it can send at them?

On a visit to see family in the DR it is the frightened, cowardly, non-threatening and non-physically-imposing, ostracized, outcast, loner Oscar that dons the armor of a knight from one of his fantasy novels and choose to face and slay the fuku beast on behalf of his family once and for all - and win the heart of his one and only true love while doing it.

Does his story end in the most improbably of victories - like Frodo Baggins in Oscar's author-hero's Lord of the Rings trilogy - or does his family's fuku prevail and claim yet another victim? If you're in the mood to read a book that deals with the political history of the Dominican Republic during the brutal Trujillo reign, you will discover the answer!

Sad. Humorous. Fanciful. Brutal. Optimistic. Fatalistic. Jumbled. Linear. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao has it all.

The Pillars of the Earth

Ken Follett. Penguin. Published in 1989.

My first exposure to Follett was in the early 80s with a trio of spy thrillers, Eye of the Needle, Triple, and The Key to Rebecca. I like the spy genre and though I didn't think Follett had the nuanced political and psychological depth of a LeCarre or Deighton, he delivered intrigue, twists, and turns at a Frederick Forsythe (Day of the Jackel) level. Smart, action-packed escapist reading!

Follett wrote The Pillars of the Earth in 1989 and I completely missed it. For 20 years. Once I've read an author a couple times and like him or her that usually doesn't happen. But it should have come as no surprise. In Pillars, Follett switched genres from international political thrillers to historical fiction with this 973 page tome. I'm sure his publisher was aghast when he brought the proposal to the table. Follett was undoubtedly told that this was a bad "self-branding" move for any author, that he would confuse and lost his core audience. I'm Exhibit One that his publisher was probably right in a business sense. But if Follett had listened, we would have missed out on a literary treat. It hasn't turned out too bad for Follett either, as Pillars is his backlist title that continues to sell the most copies every year.

So what prompted Follett to write a book that features a devout and godly monk who dreamed of building a cathedral to God's glory; the ups and downs of a couple of stone masons and their families; and some really rotten earls, barons, sherrifs, bishops and priests? Was it Follett's own act of devotion and religious fervor? In his preface he claims to be atheist despite a Plymouth Brethren upbringing. But he did have what can be described as a near religious experience on a business trip to Peterborough for the London Times. He had recently read a book on European architecture and was fascinated with Nikolaus Pevsner's description of all that went into the building of Gothic cathedrals. With an hour to spare before his train left for London, Follett took a tour of the Peterborough Cathedral and says he was instantly "enraptured." This began a personal hobby of visiting and studying cathedrals all over England and Europe.

Follett may have left modern politics behind in Pillars but not the politics of 12th Century Europe. With the death of King Henry, Stephen and Maude wage a civil war for the throne spanning decades, with a constant and ensuing political fallout for earls, cities, and counties. Even the building of a castle or cathedral became a political roller coast ride with access to lumber, stone or labor determined by which combatant won the last battle of the season and which barons and earls had the right allegiance to be rewarded or punished.

Follett shows Medieval churchmen at their superstitious and barbaric worst - and their enlightened, progressive, spiritual, and charitable best. I think he is very fair to represent the true spirituality of the Medieval - and modern - believer. He doesn't succumb to the temptation to paint crude caricatures. My own reading of Medieval history is cursory but from what little I know, Follett actually helps dispel the myth that these were simply "Dark Ages." Watching Jack - a stone mason and master builder - wrestle with how to make his cathedral roof taller but still safe and finally discover the pointed arch is a marvelous glimpse into the technological developments of the day.

Pillars is set around the building of the Kingsbridge Cathedral, but Follett takes us on a historically plausible side journey through France, over the Pyrenees, and into the Iberian Peninsula, where Medieval monks traveled to the library of Toledo, Spain, and were introduced to Euclid (his algebra and geometry play a role in the building of cathedrals), Plato, and other great writings from antiquity. Throughout the story Follett introduces the historical seeds that blossomed into the modern political mind and arena, from worker's and women's rights to the question of whether kings and nobility must answer to the law.

Toward the end of the book, Prior Philip, the stern, austere, kind, hard nosed, fair, loving hero of the story witnesses the assassination of Thomas Becket at Canterbury - carried out under the urging of his nemesis, Waleran, a bishop who made Machiavelli seem like an author of positive thinking and encouragement titles. Philip faces his ultimate test of faith, namely whether he will keep his faith in God and whether that faith in God has the efficacy to make the world a better place. As a reader, we have followed his life as orphan, monk, reformer, and builder for sixty years up to the year 1174 A.D. But the question he must face in the closing pages of Pillars is just as relevant today!