IDYLL HANDS

Idyll Hands                

By Stephanie Gayle

ISBN: 978-1-63388-482-3

A 2018 release from

Seventh Street Books

Not to mince words, this is an excellent novel. The story travels between 1972 in Charleston, Massachusetts, and 1999 in Idyll, Connecticut. In its emotional beginning, Susan, the sixteen-year-old sister of a new policeman, Michael Finnegan, is running away from home, at least for a few days. Why, we don’t know for sure.

Twenty-six years later, in a town not far from Charleston, the new chief of police in Idyll, Connecticut, named Thomas Lynch, is confronted with allergies and the preserved bone of an unknown woman or girl, the cops in that town have named Colleen. The bone is from a body unknown and unnamed found years earlier.

And so the story begins. As it unfolds, Michael Finnegan, now an experienced detective and his boss, Chief Lynch, working together and separately, among the small force of law enforcement people, confront questions of other missing young women. And throughout the novel, the hard loss of Finnegan’s still missing sister is always present.

In carefully measured chapters, the search for the woman found in the grave in Idyll is laid out and the detectives draw ever closer to the murderer. At the same time, detective Finnegan continues to pick away at random small clues to the enduring mystery of his sister’s disappearance.

Scenes are carefully and sometimes elaborately described; the pace of the novel is intense, and readers will be treated to a small cadre of police individuals whose emotional investments in their careers are carefully laid out, along with the civilian sides of life. Readers will also be treated to an interesting look at the process of crime detection in this town where the authorities are anything but idle.

In carefully measured chapters, the search for the woman found in the grave in Idyll is laid out and the detectives draw ever closer to the murderer. At the same time, detective Finnegan continues to pick away at random small clues to the enduring mystery of his sister’s disappearance.

Scenes are carefully and sometimes elaborately described; the pace of the novel is intense, and readers will be treated to a small cadre of police individuals whose emotional investments in their careers are carefully laid out, along with the civilian sides of life. Readers will also be treated to an interesting look at the process of crime detection in this town where the authorities are anything but idle.

CAKE, THE MOVIE

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Jennifer Aniston stars. Yes, that glamorous, wonderful-looking Jennifer A. You almost don’t recognize her as Claire Simmons, a pain-wracked survivor of a terrible accident. She is struggling to recover. Her body doesn’t work the way it is supposed to anymore and she uses copious amounts of pain pills. She attends therapy sessions which seem to depress her even more than she already is. Depressed, that is.

This is a movie about depression. There is no glamour here. No make-up, frumpy clothes, no hair styling. This is a movie about pain, enduring, persistent, stultifying pain. And this is a movie about one woman’s struggle, through her inquisitiveness about another woman’s suicide, to come to terms with her life and its ongoing reality.

Aniston is the star and she lifts this movie out of the doldrums of hundreds of ordinary Hollywood flicks. Cake lets its audience experience some of the weighty characteristics of pain and depression. I wonder if some of the negative elements of some reviews are not because the reviewers were experiencing personal feelings of déjà vu. In the end, this movie is affirmation of life and gut-clenching determination.

Anniston should have received an Oscar nomination for Cake. For a lot of reasons, I strongly recommend this movie, not just to the depressed among us, but to everyone.

INSPIRING CHRISTMAS MUSIC

Tonight we were treated to the fine music of two local college departments. First an hour of vocal music from several excellent vocal aggregations  of St. Olaf  University, then an equally fine series of new and old songs and pieces from the musicians of St. Thomas University in Saint Paul. In both cases we heard passionate performances from students of the universities, offering a wide variety of music from several nations. The recorded performances are undoubtedly available on DVD and in repeat television performances from the local public television station,  I commend them both to your ears.

A JOURNEY TO DIE FOR

      

By Radine Trees Nehring

ISBN 978-1-60364-020-6

Wolfmont Press, trade paper

296 pg., May 2010

Here’s a good example, if readers at large still need one, of a crime novel that fits comfortably into the fine tradition of fiction that relies on good writing, a fine plot, odd and usual suspects and an interesting setting. The author relies on a good story rather than tortured or crass language, logical development rather than constant physical action.

Carrie King a neighborly, bright woman of late middling years and her husband, Henry King, a retired cop from Kansas City, are making an exploration into Arkansas history with a trip on a restored train to a small historic community on the shores of the Arkansas River. At the halfway point passengers leave the train to enjoy a brief sojourn in the town of Van Buren. When Carrie and Henry reach the river and a large historic mural to study, the possibility of encountering a dead body of the farthest thing from their minds. But alas, there it is and then there are the buttons.

A charming and delightful mystery ensues. Nehring’s unerring ear for dialog and her sense of what constitutes a well rounded character serve the reader well as the Kings travel between home, Van Buren and Kansas City where Henry had a solid career as a police officer. There have been allusions in the past to Henry’s rather abrupt retirement and in a powerful emotional scene at the Van Buren police station, Carrie and readers will receive serious and deep insight into Henry’s secret.

In the tradition of traditional American mysteries, A Journey to Die For is an excellent and satisfying entry.

NEW MYSTERY RELEASE SOON

Ther new adventure of former stripper Marjorie (Kandy) Kane and her companion, retired Army intelligence officer, Alan Lockem, involves the strange and convoluted attemps by Mr. Lockem to retrieve a piece of old intel for hnis old comrades in Britain. Murder, attempted robbery, kidnapping and assault all play a  part. The novel will be released later this year.

POLITICS AND ECONOMIC REALITIES

The snow is gone for a time and I look for a quiet if brief pause in mid-winter to relax and contemplate life. Alas, such is not to be. Today's(Sunday) newspapers arrive with two excellent columns I commend to your attention. The first, in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press is by that eminent thoughtful observer of Real World Economics, Edward Lotterman, a fine, well-traveled economist. In this first of several, he takes on the history of Social Security and Medicare and carefully relates it to Free Market Capitalism, Progressive Democracy and Socialism. It is an excellent column completely devoid of the current distortions and yammerings and misguided mud-slinging of some far-right ideologues.

The second column I commend to thoughtful reader's attention is in another newspaper I read daily, the Minneapolis StarTribune. Written by careful, thoughtful and (alas) retired columnist, Lori Sturdevant, it comes on the occasion of the run-up to an important announcement from the senior Senator from Minnesota, Amy Kloubuchar. She will announce, later today whether she will be a candidate for President. But the column in question is about a growing and important phenomenon in our political tent, the idea of Ranked Choice Voting. Sturdevant explains very well why this is an important topic on the eve of the presidential campaign start. I commend both columns to everyone the least bit interested in the role of politics and politicians in the future of our nation.

POLITICAL ADVERTISING

I will not engage here in long rants back and forth about the politics of the day. This will be a one-time commentary, although I am interested in your responses.

 In Minnesota we are beginning to see, sadly, ads with no or obscure attributions designed to make  it difficult or impossible to determine who paid for the ad. Reasons are obvious. Out-of-staters want certain individuals to be elected because they believe those individuals will support their goals, regardless of the needs or goals of local voters.

I do  not care what reader's of this blog entry political positions may happen to be. In my view, nobody who runs for political office ought to be subject to the kind of scurrilous, misleading and  downright lying that is the norm in campaigns today. Indeed, No one who is  elected to public office should ever be subjected to the kind of nastiness which seems to be part of government today. Nor should elected officials families be subject to the kind of abuse that is fast becoming normal.

If  you and I want a government that is operated by people like the late John McCain or Hubert Humphrey, you will join me in protesting the kind of nastiness which is becoming more and more prevalent. Fewer talented people interested in serving will be atttracted to being elected. More and more venal, self-serving types will replace them. Is that what we want?

Candidates and campaign workers need to protest and work to make campaigns clean  and positive in nature. I care what your attitudes and views are, not who you will work against. Casual insulting campaign literature and ads ought to become grounds for dismissal from any current campaign. Seems harsh? The rules, at least in the state of Minnesota seem to me to be too lenient.
I want people to serve who want to serve, not primarily make a fortune for themselves. We the People, deserve no less.

see my post on political advertising