Most readers of this blog and my recent works know that I’m surviving the Covid pandemic by reading a lot, in particular, binge-reading entire series of British-style mysteries. I published a list at the end of my little collection, Sleuthing, British-style, written in honor of Dame Agatha, who started that story tradition. So here are some additions to that list (in alphabetical order, which coincidentally corresponds to the order of light-to-serious themes), the best of my recent binge-reading:

A. G. Barnett’s “Mary Blake” series. Interesting concept: The subtitle’s character is an aging actor who has lost her series role and her career; she discovers she has talents as an amateur sleuth. A bit of stretch for the reader’s imagination, especially concerning the patience of the inspector she often annoys (she’s a younger, meddling Miss Marple), but entertaining stories nonetheless.

M. S. Morris’s “Bridget Hart” series. The subtitle’s character is a single mom who struggles to make her mark as a DI in and around the hallowed halls of Oxford University’s colleges. There are many secondary characters readers will find interesting.

Gretta Mulrooney’s “Tyrone Swift” series. Here the subtitle’s character is a PI who has good creds—he’s no amateur sleuth because of past service with the Met and Interpol. He also has problems with the women in his life. These novels are a bit darker about their treatment of more modern and serious themes than those above. The main character harks back to hard-boiled, tenacious PIs of yore.

If you use a Kindle, it’s amazingly easy to sail through these series, one book after another. I found each novel is far more entertaining than the summer’s offering of droll telly shows, whether “new” game shows or reality crap or reruns. Sorry. Streaming video doesn’t appeal to me either, nor do computer games. Each novel is good for two to three nights of reading (they’re short).

Modesty aside, I’ll not refrain from mentioning Books Four and Five in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, Palettes, Patriots and Prats and Leonardo and the Quantum Code. The influence of all that binge-reading is obvious as Esther and Bastiann return to her home turf after their honeymoon only to run into more trouble on UK soil. The glossary in my collection mentioned above is extended in these novels as I continue to adopt the British vernacular if not the spelling, (The entire series represents ripe fruit for binge-reading, of course, but the novels are longish and hardly readable in two or three nights. Maybe the five in total equal fifteen of the above?)

I can only wish for other extended series in the sci-fi and thriller genres (besides my own, of course). The last one I read in the first genre was Asimov’s extended Foundation series, and that was years ago! Clancy’s “Jack Ryan” series is also too dated (not that it has the caliber of any of the books I’ve mentioned). (If anyone shouts back “Fifty Shades,” I might become violent. The “thrills” there are sicker than a story about a serial killer!) The fact that there are so many British-style mysteries shows they’re popular and a blessing for avid readers who still prefer books to streaming video and computer games.

In all these British-style mysteries, including mine, American readers have a chance to learn a lot about their English cousins…and sometimes those cousins will have a chance to learn a bit about us, the crazy Yanks!

***

Comments are always welcome.

A. B. Carolan’s Origins. You can’t say A. B.’s novels are British-style mysteries; he’s Irish, and he writes sci-fi mysteries for young adults. In this one, Kayla Jones has dreams she can’t understand. Her future seems determined as the brilliant STEM student who looks forward to a research career, but her past gets in the way. As if the chaos afflicting the world and leading to her adopted father’s death wasn’t enough, killers begin to pursue her. With some friends who come to her aid, she’s on her way to discover a conspiracy that can be traced to prehistoric battles waged by hominins bent on conquest of a primitive Earth.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Surprise, surprise! Regular readers of this blog might be expecting to find a politically oriented op-ed here this Monday morn. You will now find these at Pub Progressive (for example, my Afghan series continues there). Future articles posted here will now be restricted to those dealing with reading, writing, and publishing. I hope that’s not an inconvenience.

I’m not doing this to appease some disgruntled readers or to follow the advice of writing gurus who tell authors “Don’t be political.” The world is very political now, and I’ve been political since the Gipper set out to destroy the UC system and wanted to go after all those pink-o commies protesting against the Vietnam War. (I was neither pink-o—lots of California sunshine back then—nor a commie, just a progressive and a pacifist.) I was a progressive long before the members of “The Squad” were born, but I was, and always will be, one led by logic and reason and very aware that exuberance can lead to unintended and negative consequences.

Readers of my novels know that I don’t shy away from political or controversial themes in my writing. My stories are complex; I don’t like to read fluff, and I won’t write it. But today that’s not enough. So I created the narrowly focused website Pub Progressive in order to do the same for my blog posts.

The major reason I did that, though, was to bring a bit of order into my writing life. Articles appearing at Pub Progressive are my political opinions, not rants, reasoned spiels about what’s going on in our nation and the world. Articles appearing here in this blog are also opinions, but ones about reading, writing, and publishing (I might rant about Amazon). It’s like having your winter clothes in one closet, summer ones in the other. (That might not make too much sense for those back in my home state, California.)

Pub Progressive is still a work-in-progress, a DIY project where I’m doing a deep dive into the murky software waters associated with WordPress blogging. I plan to keep it simple; I have to do so, because I’m no website guru. (I hire the people at Monkey C Media to keep this older website going.) I can use your comments and suggestions about improving Pub Progressive if they’re free and you are a website guru. (You can contact me via steve@stevenmmoore.com. Both sites’ contact pages use that email address.) Scientists usually like to tinker and experiment; I’m an ex-scientist, so that’s what I’m doing with Pub Progressive. Bear with me.

And again, I hope this causes no one inconvenience. For some, the separation will cause a sigh of relief. For others, they’ll say, “Way to go!” I hope you’re one of the others.

***

Comments are always welcome.

A. B. Carolan’s Origins. You can’t say A. B.’s novels are British-style mysteries; he’s Irish, and he writes sci-fi mysteries for young adults. In this one, Kayla Jones has dreams she can’t understand. Her future seems determined as the brilliant STEM student who looks forward to a research career, but her past gets in the way. As if the chaos afflicting the world and leading to her adopted father’s death wasn’t enough, killers begin to pursue her. With some friends who come to her aid, she’s on her way to discover a conspiracy that can be traced to prehistoric battles waged by hominins bent on conquest of a primitive Earth.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

[As a native son of the great state of California, I can empathize with Irwin Pound’s sentiments found in this short novella (or long short story?). The distance from my current home in Montclair to California is farther than his distance from London to the Lake District, but the yearning is probably just as strong. I hope you enjoy this story, another British-style mystery.]

The Prodigal Son

Copyright 2021, Steven M. Moore

Chapter One

Irwin looked up to see the woman who was calling his name. “Irwin? Irwin Pound?”

He put down his bacon roll, smiled when he recognized her, but still had to mimic her. “Devon? Devon Blake? Is that you?”

She held up a finger, turned to the cashier, and paid for her mash-up. She then joined him. She offered him a biscuit, which he accepted

“What brings you back home to the Lake District?” she said.

“A bit of vacation time. Super suggested it. Insisted on it, to be more precise. I decided to take it here to see how things have changed. It’s been a while.”

“I’ll say, donkey’s years. But you found that not much has changed, I wager.”

She was correct, except for her. Two years younger than Irwin, that difference was largely irrelevant now. Devon wasn’t a pimply and gangly teenager anymore. He’d been like her big, protective brother when they were children. Now pigtails and freckles had turned into dark red, lush curls and the freckles had faded, and she’d become a woman. A stunner at that, to his mind’s eye.

He was at a loss for how to begin a conversation. “How’s the family?”

“Papa’s passed on; mum’s ailing a bit. A natural progression, I suppose, but it makes me sad sometimes.”

“Better than losing them in an accident.”

He immediately regretted saying that. Her expression needed no words. A driver had killed Irwin’s parents in a hit-and-run. Irwin had gone to live with his aunt and uncle in London.

“Yes, that was terrible. Tell me about your life since then.”

He was thankful Devon didn’t reinforce those sad memories even more. He thought a moment but then opened up to her as he’d always done before when they were children, even telling her about nearly getting killed during his last case, the event that had led to his unplanned-for vacation.

She’d always been a good listener, and he had always liked doing that for her too. So he learned she was now a nurse and had put all those skills to good use while also caring for her mum.

***

Irwin bid farewell with a promise to keep in touch followed by a hug and kiss to her cheek. He went off to begin his hike. Although “home” was in the Lake District, he’d always preferred hiking in Cumbria’s hills and mountains to fishing. His climb that day was one he’d mastered when he was fourteen. It wasn’t for amateurs, and he was a bit out of practice. His kit contained plenty of rope, pickaxe, hammer, and pylons; his old hiking boots helped to grip rock ledges slippery with mist and moss.

It turned out he only needed the boots. There was still a trail of sorts above the pub’s little village that he’d known well and still could envision in his mind. He headed for his favorite place, an outlook where you could sometimes see from west to east coast if faraway clouds didn’t shroud one or the other. There was another outlook about three hundred feet below him, but his special place offered the better view. He felt he could touch the sky as well. A complete panorama revealing some of Gaia’s magnificence.

He’d been there almost an hour enjoying the nearly forgotten vista when a sound behind him was a surprise at that desolate spot where few hikers ventured. He turned to see Devon scrambling onto the ledge. He offered her a hand up to complete her climb.

“There was a time when I’d have prohibited you from making such a dangerous climb,” he said, mitigating his reproach with a smile because he was happy to see her and have her share his view. “We could have come together, you know.”

She laughed. “I wanted to prove to you I can do it alone now. I’ve been making this climb for a while.”

“Without mum’s approval, I’d wager. She never liked my climbing and discouraged you from doing it too. Maybe the reason I discouraged you?”

“She was only worried that she’ll never have any grandchildren; still is. Always afraid too that I’ll catch some terrible disease at the hospital, even though she benefits from my nursing skills. I come here from time to time to get away from her, truth be told. I can’t afford a nurse for her, so I’m that person, like I said at the pub. A few neighbors help at times with her. And she sometimes visits an aunt and uncle on my father’s side.”

He nodded. Both her occupation and her dedication to her mother were evidence of a very caring person. “I suppose—”

***

Irwin was interrupted by a heated exchange of words from below them. Devon and he looked over the edge at the barney going on between a man and a woman. The man was older, a bit jowly and with bushy eyebrows; his face was beet red. They could only see the backside of the woman. She had straight red hair, not curled like Devon’s.

Both of them were dressed in hiking gear that might as well have had the price tags still on. Perhaps amateur twitchers, thought Irwin, spotting the man’s binoculars that swung on the strap around his neck. Around Cumbrian lakes and rivers and in the hills and mountains one could often spot birds not found anywhere else in England.

“I will not do that! No way!” Irwin heard the woman say. She then pushed the man over the edge.

“Oh my God!” Devon said.

Read the rest of this entry »

I used to like motorcycles. Even back in my tweens and teens, my mother would say, “Any motorcycle rider should be forced to sign up to be an organ donor.” She worried about the danger; I yearned to have enough money to buy one. I was a frustrated kid, seeing other boys having fun on their motorcycles yet knowing that I didn’t even have the money for a scooter. So I was relegated to being the guy on the back, a position useful for a drive-by assassin maybe, but never the fun ride one has up front. I suppose riding a horse might be a similar experience—wind in your hair, reveling in the sensation of speed—but even back then a horse cost more than a cycle.

Motorcycles don’t make many appearances in my stories, though. The terrorist’s night ride in Angels Need Not Apply provided a quiet and sinister hook—I hoped the reader would be wondering, “Who is this guy?” (they might have guessed if they’d read The Midas Bomb). Penny Castro’s brief ride along a post-apocalyptic LA freeway even made it to the cover of The Last Humans, and I hope the Hungarian assassin’s final ride in Leonardo and the Quantum Code provides an interesting climax for readers. Those reflect more my pubescent interest than any desire to make a cycle a main character, and I’d never want to encourage the risky, outrageous behavior seen in Sturgis, South Dakota, each year, Covid or no Covid.

Motorcars, or simply “motors,” is Brit-speak for automobiles, or “autos” (although the Brits say “car park” for “parking lot,” that usually have spaces for cycles too). My fascination with them isn’t so juvenile as the one with motorcycles and doesn’t compare with that or my brother’s strange predilection for unusual cars. He started with a ’52 Pontiac (a “blue bomb” that I inherited to use during high school) and went on to a pink Cadillac (a model with shark fins he bought from a Las Vegas gambler), the kind you saw in that famous X-Files episode; his last unusual purchase was a classic Porsche, the one with wooden floorboards, in which he carried grandfather’s guns to me from Ohio to Massachusetts. (I sold them to a gun collector—our kids were too young at the time to have guns around, especially antiques, and I didn’t want to deal with any NRA members.)

Maybe the little sportscar in Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By and Esther’s Jag in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series (her insurance pays for a new one in Palettes, Patriots, and Prats) are the cars I remember best from my novels, maybe because they’re the most recent; but a ’67 Vette plays a key role in one early short story “The Bridge.” (It’s my first and only zombie story and first appeared in eFiction, an ezine that’s now defunct, I believe, and also in Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape, Volume One—Volumes Two and Three can be found in the list of free downloads on my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page.)

Curiously enough in my prose, I’ve avoided the stereotype that male characters ride motorcycles and female ones drive motorcars, as you can see by some of the examples I’ve mentioned. The same is true about horses: A female character in The Collector frequents a stable in that story, while Survivors of the Chaos (see The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection) opens with a solitary male rider. Horses as a ubiquitous mode of transportation even make a comeback in the post-apocalyptic thriller The Last Humans: A New Dawn (Penny Castro’s cycle is long gone by this second novel). NYPD detective Castilblanco (that’s NYC, in case you didn’t know!) even befriends a horse in the short story “The Case of Carriageless Horse” (found in the anthology World Enough and Crime—it’s the young cop’s first homicide case).

Horses have the longest history as a means of transportation for human beings, of course. Maybe I should feature them even more? After that fiasco at this year’s Kentucky Derby, one can imagine a murder mystery with a racetrack setting. We’ll see….

***

Comments are welcome.

Sleuthing, British-Style. My binge-reading of British-style mysteries during the Covid pandemic has influenced the later novels in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, in particular Death on the Danube, Palettes, Patriots, and Prats, and Leonardo and the Quantum Code. I’ve also written short fiction to honor and celebrate Dame Agatha’s seminal work in this subgenre. Some examples are found in the little collection indicated here of six novellas, which also contains a glossary of words and phrases from the UK’s rich lexicon of dialects as well a list of British-style novels that I read and enjoyed. The collection is available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not on Smashwords). A second volume is available as a free download (see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at this website).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Starting 8/24/2021 (today), op-eds with a political orientation will exclusively be posted on my second blog, Pub Progressive. The same rules of engagement apply (see the ROEs on the “Join the Conversation” web page), but this site’s blog will now focus on reading, writing, and publishing topics. This might upset some readers and authors; others might breathe a sigh of relief.

Authors do have opinions. Maybe it’s better that they just creep into their prose as important themes? I don’t know. I certainly don’t do fluff, and my characters often express opinions contrary to my own. Editors and publishers certainly prefer that fiction authors aren’t opiniated, so that biases modern prose toward fluff.

In any case, this is an experiment. At the very least, it will help me keep things organized.

So…reading, writing, and reading topics are found at this site’s blog, and politically oriented op-eds at Pub Progressive.

Note: Yesterday’s post about Afghanistan is definitely a political op-ed. It will be repeated on the new website. (That will be the last time.)

Let’s face it: The evacuation from Afghanistan is another “Saigon moment.” But does Biden own it? Multiple presidents have committed blunders there. He’s just joined that gang. I want to go through this dark stretch of American history a bit here. It’s longer than you might remember.

Most people have forgotten the reasons why we were there, especially anyone under forty. “Wait!” you say. “9/11 occurred in 2001, only twenty years ago.” The frustration leading to the current evacuation (supposedly to be completed by August 31) didn’t begin with 9/11. That frustration began long ago and reflects four decades of failed Middle East foreign policy created by numerous US presidents. But the Biden administration’s evacuation will go down in history as the worst since Vietnam.

So I’ll answer that all-too-common reaction springing from the myopic memories of clueless Americans (that group obviously includes Biden and his aides in State and Defense, of course) with a series of what-ifs that summarize the mistakes that have been made.

What if the Russians hadn’t stood up a puppet government in Afghanistan? Sometime ago, “back in the USSR…you don’t know how [un]lucky you are, boy,” Leonid Brezhnev, the Kremlin’s capo back then, wanted to move into the Middle East to have more influence in the Third World (even Israel was in the Third World at the time). They first tried Egypt and that failed (Jimmy Carter got Egypt and Israel to sign a peace accord that has held despite all subsequent problems and recalcitrant Arab and Israeli governments). So old jowly Leonid tried his despotic magic on Afghanistan. The Russians smashed the Taliban tribes and stood up a caretaker government, a puppet of the USSR. Al Qaeda fought back, and the CIA thought they’d be clever and turn Afghanistan into the USSR’s Vietnam by arming al Qaeda terrorists and their Taliban friends. The USSR left in disgrace (it was indeed their first Vietnam moment—the Chechnyan Wars soon followed), but al Qaeda was now entrenched, the Taliban had a resurgence, and the two groups became the best of buddies, with the Taliban protecting al Qaeda and allowing them to plot 9/11. This is only a summary of a lot of bad history for the US, of course, but it all occurred before 9/11.

What if we’d gone into Afghanistan after 9/11 to hunt al Qaeda down and then left when we succeeded? Revenge is sweet, so they say, so the US wanted to taste it against bin Laden and his terrorists (mostly Saudis, by the way, and financed by Saudi Arabia, a country that probably financed the Taliban as well…all to promote radical Islam). We chased al Qaeda out of Afghanistan and eventually gave bin Laden what he deserved. Even before bin Laden’s demise, we should have ended our presence in Afghanistan. But no, we stayed. Why? In spite of Dubya’s focus on Iraq, that old nation-building dream that too many nations have tried in the Middle East, Africa, and even southern Europe (the old Yugoslavia), vocalized or not, kept us there. (The only notable success of this policy is Israel—sort of—some would say it’s also become a fascist failure in its turn to fascism.)

In the Middle East, we think we can create democracies and stable governments out of desert mirages where there are no traditions to serve as a foundation. History has shown many times over that citizens of a country have to rise up on their own. (That’s how the USSR eventually crumbled! A desire for freedom and a better life toppled the old Soviet Union, not Carter, Reagan, or any other American leader. Lamentably that desire wasn’t strong enough there, so Putin could take over and make things worse.) Nation-building can’t work if the people themselves don’t want to build a nation…or don’t give a damn, preferring autocracy. The Afghan army did not have the will to fight the Taliban at the beginning of the century; with all the billions spent on equipment and training for them, they still didn’t have it in 2021.

What if Biden had learned from Bush, Obama, and Trump’s mistakes and hadn’t wanted to out-trump Trump? For the last, I’m guessing here, but it sure looks like one of old Joe’s major motivations. He could have done a one-eighty relative to Trump’s meddling in Afghanistan (he did so for many other Trump idiocies), but chose not too, because, unlike Obama who fantasized about a new nation in Afghanistan, Biden wanted to get out of that hellhole. Most Americans agreed with that. Few agree with how the Biden administration went about doing it.

But here’s the rest of the sordid tale: The US tried nation-building in Iraq after Dubya decided to avenge Daddy Bush and correct the latter’s huge error of not marching all the way into Baghdad once and for all as a fitting end to the Gulf War. Obama then left Iraq, and the US got ISIS. ISIS was beaten down with the help of the Kurds, but Trump pulled out of Iraq again, leaving our Kurdish friends behind to be slaughtered by the fascist Erdogan. Now old Joe pulls out of Afghanistan, leaving our Afghan friends behind to suffer the same merciless fate at the hands of the Taliban, who make Erdogan look like a saint.

Okay, maybe old Joe was too senile to learn from Bush and Trump’s mistakes, but he was right there when Obama made the mistake that created ISIS. I guess you can’t teach old dogs new tricks, whether or not they’re senile. Biden was focused on just getting out; he forgot to have a reasonable plan about how to do it. Or his administration did. Not only has Biden turned Afghanistan into yet another Vietnam, continuing America’s string of foreign policy failures and America’s fall into international irrelevance, he’s leaving behind many of our Afghan friends to horribly die just like Trump did with the Kurds.

This is why I give Biden an F on his report card for Afghanistan. Yes, we should have left Afghanistan…years ago! And, especially now, it should have been a well-planned withdrawal. It wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination. But there’s a lot of people to spread the blame around: the CIA, several presidents, and a whole bunch of myopic fools in State and Defense who should have known better and told Biden so. They, and the American people, for that matter, forgot the debacle in Vietnam. We have abandoned trusted friends who aided us to realize our dreams about nation-building, dreams that inevitably have turned into nightmares.

The Taliban will mercilessly slaughter our Afghan friends. That blood is on Biden’s hands! I hope he can’t sleep at night thinking about it. There’s a special place in his Catholic hell for mass murderers like him. Beating the Donald to the punch—or even feeling constrained to continue Il Duce’s initiatives—hardly justifies his failures. Nothing does.

***

Comments are always welcome.

Sleuthing, British-Style. My binge-reading of British-style mysteries during the Covid pandemic has influenced the later novels in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, in particular Death on the Danube, Palettes, Patriots, and Prats, and Leonardo and the Quantum Code. I’ve also written short fiction to honor and celebrate Dame Agatha’s seminal work in this subgenre. Some examples are found in the little collection indicated here–six short novellas–which also contains a glossary of words and phrases from the UK’s rich lexicon of dialects as well a list of British-style novels that I’ve read and enjoyed. The collection is available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not on Smashwords). A second volume is available as a free download (see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at this website).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

[Note: This series will focus entirely on combatting fascism in America and around the world with my only weapon, words. (I’m not an NRA member!) It’s not antifa per se; it’s pro democracy. If you recognize words blasting your political preferences here, you’re part of the problem! To the rest of you, don’t worry about me. The fascist plutocracy of the 0.1% doesn’t do their own dirty work; and their toadies who do, don’t read very much, like their lord and savior, Donald J. Trump. So I doubt these essays will even hurt my book sales, mostly because that same plutocracy has already determined they will be low!]

Let’s get one thing straight: America’s potentially fatal sickness doesn’t depend on semantics; the words used to describe it are irrelevant. How the fascist plutocracy treats the sick patient is what’s terribly wrong and un-American. Differences between “fascism” and other names for the sickness are akin to the difference between “flatulence” and “fart”: both words describe a stench. America is no longer a democracy or republic—it’s a country where a fearful plutocracy does its best to ensure that it survives so they can become richer at the expense of the rest of us. Wealth distribution in America is the worst it has been during its previous history. You might call it “us vs. them,” but it’s really more “plutocracy vs. the common people.” It is in that sense that we now have the Fascist States of America.

I’ve discovered a little book (ooh, maybe a second book review this week?) that makes many of the points I’ve made in this series, probably doing it better than I have…except for semantics. Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson in Let Them Eat Tweets use the term “plutocratic populism” for “fascism.” I don’t understand why so many like them are afraid of the word fascism. I started this series with part of Wikipedia’s definition: “Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultra-nationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy….” That’s plutocratic populism as defined by those authors. Let’s not sugarcoat it by avoiding the word fascism.

Otherwise, I have to give credit where credit is due: Those authors have analyzed the hell out of our current conundrum, the turn to fascism in America driven by s plutocracy that uses the tools of outmoded institutions of American government and exploits fanatics who believe they’ve been stepped on (they have been, but by the plutocracy and their serfs, the Good Ole Piranhas). These fanatics are generally white males, who are uneducated, blue collar or rural, and religious to the extreme. They have been left behind and are unprepared for existence in the modern world, and they’re stupid enough to drink the plutocracy’s Kool-Aid.

Read the rest of this entry »

[This is the second part of today’s two-fer. A review of a non-fiction book? Yes, in addition to binge-reading mysteries, thrillers, and sci-fi novels, I delve into doorstops when they catch my eye. Here’s a review of one.]

His Very Best: Jimmy Carter. A Life. Jonathon Alter, author (Simon & Schuster, 978-1-5011-2548-5). The author, a fellow resident of Montclair, NJ, never responded to my email of congratulations and greetings, but he has written one hell of a biography about the least understood and one of the most successful presidents in American history. Because I was working in academia in Colombia, South America, during the Carter years, 1976-1980, there were a lot of things about old Jimmy I’d never heard about. The author fortunately focuses on those White House years and previous ones because I know a lot about his activities after leaving the White House, especially after my return to the US. By the way, those later years’ activities set the bar very high for every ex-president. (Mr. Trump will never come close, of course!) Like the author, I’ll therefore focus on Jimmy Carter, Mr. President, and even pass over the authors description of Carter’s early years, which is well done, especially his time at Annapolis and life in the USN.

I knew about the hostage crisis in Iran—who in the world didn’t?—and how William Casey probably made a deal with Ayatollah Khomeini and his cohorts to release the hostages after the election (most people have forgotten that, especially the Good Ole Piranhas who consider Reagan as some kind of messiah). Mr. Carter might have won otherwise, and that would have saved the US from Reagan and Bush I’s reign that started America down the road to fascism and Donald J. Trump. There’s good evidence now that Casey also set up the Iran-Contra deal and other tidbits during those same negotiations. Alter discusses most of this but with only a historical shrug, as if saying, “What do you expect in politics?”

Jimmy made mistakes, no doubt about it; he also accomplished many things during his four years in the White House that should ensure his legacy, often promoting policies and programs that have proven to be progressive and beneficial to many Americans, but only with reasoned hindsight. For example, Reagan got credit for the fall of the Soviet Union; Carter started that and should receive at least some credit. Same with his rapprochement with China that went far beyond Nixon’s feeble efforts and brought China into the modern era. (I suppose it’s debatable whether it would have been better to keep them isolated, especially considering Covid, but I think it’s better to have contact with them, if only to slap them around more easily.)

Carter began the serious fight for the environment and against global warming. While Alter mentions the solar panels Jimmy installed on the White House, he doesn’t say that Reagan took them down—GOP presidents after Carter backtracked most environmental initiatives Carter began (especially Trump). He set aside vast tracts of land in the Alaskan wilderness, initially causing wrath among Alaskans (not Native Americans, of course), and that’s now seen as a jumpstart for today’s healthy Alaskan tourist industry (not until Trump came along was that whittled away at). Carter was more of an environmental president than Theodore Roosevelt, which means that even today no one can compare with his initiatives and achievements in that area. (Trump, of course, did his best to undo all of it, flashing his imperial scowl of a wannabe dictator while doing so.)

Read the rest of this entry »

[This post is a bit repetitive with one back in 2020. Consider it an encore for the detectives. They deserve it. And today you get a two-fer, this post plus the following book review. Enjoy.]

I have a few series (at last count six; or seven, if you count A. B. Carolan’s “ABC Sci-Fi Mysteries”), so every once and a while I pause and take stock of that part of my oeuvre. None of my series are as long as Sue Grafton’s; I stopped reading hers at “C,” I believe, and she never made it to “Z.” It’s not that I tire of writing a series and end it. Okay, maybe a bit, but the end of a series for me, if it truly ends, is more determined by the way I write. When I start a story, I don’t even know whether it will be a dash (short story or novella) or a marathon (novel). The same goes for a series, where I sometimes decide the main characters deserve more stories because they’re so interesting as human beings (I sometimes describe that as a collaboration between them and my muses, who are really banshees with Tasers, all encouraging me to write more). Plots, themes, and settings change from story to story and novel to novel; series’ books are just independent stories with the same main characters.

The “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series is my longest so far (seven books), and its main characters have become dear and respected friends. I don’t know if there’ll be an eighth, and, in a sense the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series of five novels, the novella :”The Phantom Harvester” (available as a free download—see my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page), and the novel The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan all represent continuations of Chen and Castilblanco’s series with the detectives just having cameos.

Diversity is a key theme in all the C&C novels. The detectives’ cases start in NYC; some stay there while others explode to have national and international proportions. NYC is often considered the capital of the world, and it’s very diversity adds to that fame—more than eight hundred languages are spoken there. C&C reflect that diversity. Chen is a Chinese-American from Long Island; she’s a true conservative (not like today’s fascist Good Ole Piranhas) driven to pursue criminal elements and set things right for their victims. Castilblanco is Puerto Rican; he’s a progressive whose motivations echo Chen’s, if not more so. Chen is a stoic who shows her emotions from time to time, her thin smiles leading Castilblanco to call her his Asian Mona Lisa; he is more excitable and often stressed (he’s addicted to Tums to ward off ulcers), but he’s also cerebral, going beyond his Catholicism to become a Buddhist.

Politics also play a role in these novels, but in a good sense: Contrary to our current national political chaos, I intended to show in the very first novel, The Midas Bomb, how a conservative and progressive can work together to better the human condition. That goes beyond the fluff of the good guys vanquishing the bad guys so prevalent in today’s mystery and crime stories.

There are causes too. For example, environmental ones in the last novel, Gaia and the Goliaths, where I try to show that the solution to global warming is reducing fossil-fuel usage with Castilblanco insisting that nuclear power is part of that solution. He reflects more my views; Chen better reflects the extremist view in this case, that of environmental activists who are rabidly anti-nuclear as well. (This discussion, appropriately enough, is never resolved in the novel.)

The final series item I’d like to mention is our shared humanity. We need more of C&C’s empathy towards their fellow human beings. Both detectives would wear masks and get vaccinated, for example (I wrote the last novel before Covid), to protect others as well as themselves and their families. There’s no doubt about that. They’ve shown concern for their fellow human beings in spades throughout their cases in the series. We need more people like that.

Of course, this article is more a presentation of the themes this series considers. They’ll be transparent to most readers and reviewers who will just enjoy these mystery/thriller crime stories. Maybe it’s time for you to try one?

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Comments are always welcome.

“Detectives Chen and Castilblanco.” Binge-reading who-dun-its with enough action, suspense, and twists to entertain and educate any reader, most of these two NYPD homicide detectives’ cases start in NYC, but they often expand to national and international proportions. Castilblanco is the gentle Puerto Rican progressive who lives on antacids and becomes a Buddhist; Chen is the serious Chinese lady with that Asian Mona Lisa smile. Together the two make a great crime-fighting team. These novels can be found wherever quality ebooks are sold.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

“Sticks and stones may break my bones (the insurrection at the Capitol) but names will never hurt me” (Republican Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger being called Pelosi Republicans by a fascist Kevin McCarthy). McCarthy and the two Jims, Banks and Jordan, are fascist lackeys of their wannabe fuehrer Donald Trump! None of that trio is a true conservatives by any stretch of the imagination, only stupid serfs of America’s fascist plutocracy bent on destroying American democracy.

In my “Fascist States of America” series of articles (it will finish up this Friday), archived under FSA, I outline this very real plutocratic conspiracy America faces, one much more dangerous than anything right-wing fanatics can dream up as they promote Trump’s Big Lie. Let’s say it like it is: Even with Trump temporarily gone from the White House and banned from Facebook and Twitter, that plutocracy is still hard at work, using their surrogates to find every failure the Founding Fathers wrote into the US Constitution…and then some. Every glitch found there is being exploited, so much so that Biden or any other Democratic president won’t matter much at all, unless they go over to the dark side too, because there are fascist loopholes in the Constitution that allow the plutocracy’s evil servants to bring government to a grinding halt if their toadies aren’t in power.

McConnell, Graham, McCarthy, and the two Jims, along with Trump the Chump, are morons who don’t realize the shitstorm they’re creating. We barely squeaked by last January 6. Cheney and Kinzinger in the House and Romney, Murkowski, and Collins in the Senate, form a small minority of true conservatives, not fascists, who realize how destructive and dangerous the fascists controlling the Good Ole Piranhas have become. The dog days of August are upon us, and I can smell the stench of a coming revolution from the cesspool the plutocracy that the fascist morons are planning. But it might just go the other way too—perhaps a violent revolution?—when the majority of Americans rise up against the dictatorship created by the fascist plutocracy.

While I don’t want to malign Lucy, McCarthy’s actions are like that little obnoxious jerk’s as she takes the football away from Charlie Brown. We have too many Lucys controlling Congress now, and too few good old Charlie Browns who can serve as a legitimate and necessary foil against the exuberant Congress members on the far left, AOC and her little commies. Instead we have mostly fascists in the congressional GOP who are bent on destroying American democracy in their rush to do the plutocracy’s bidding.

That select committee that McConnell and McCarthy are disparaging (remember Moscow Mitch torpedoed the idea of an independent commission!), now with true conservatives Cheney and Kinzinger aboard, should keep answering this fundamental question right through the 2022 elections: Do the majority of American people want a fascist America run by idiots like Tweedledee and Tweedledum, McConnell and McCarthy? I think those two morons know the answer in spite of their kissing the butts of the fascist plutocrats: The majority of Americans would toss them out on their fat fascist butts if they only had the chance!

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