Jack Gatland’s Silver and the Christmas Caper – An Enjoyable Mystery

Silver and the Christmas Caper is the second in author Jack Gatland’s new series featuring Laura Carlyle and Sebastian Silver. You can read my review of the first book, Silver and Sunday Cypher here. They are both very enjoyable and interesting mysteries that feature an unusual hero: Sebastian Silver is a persona of Phillip Morris, a mild-mannered retired accountant from Boston. He has read about espionage and police detectives obsessively, and he has amassed an arsenal of tools and weapons. However, he can only use them when he assumes the personality of Sebastian Silver, and to do that, he must wear a trilby hat. When he is Silver, he becomes a brave, brilliant, and resourceful private investigator. Without his trilby, he reverts back to the shy and retiring Morris.

His partner in criminal investigation is Laura Carlyle, the widow of a highly placed British diplomat. Her social skills and general smarts complement Silver’s skill set perfectly. Rounding out the team is Laura’s college student grandson, Kyle, and her aunt, Celia. Celia does not suffer fools gladly, and she keeps everyone on an even keel.

Silver and the Christmas Caper begins with a cleaning woman, Dorothy Hartwell, in ancient St. Botolph’s church in the Cotswold village of Ashwood St. Botolph’s. It’s early morning, three days before the important Christmas Eve service, and Dorothy comes across a body at the foot of the stairs going down to the crypt. It’s the body of the church’s priest, Father Patrick. He is wearing a shabby overcoat, and his head is resting on a pile of hymnbooks.

His death is soon ruled an accident, but an extremely old and valuable pyx (an ornamental container for communion elements that priests used to take them to homebound parishioners) is missing. The pyx and other sacramental pieces belong to Lord Robert Sinclair and his wife, Lady Margaret. Lady Margaret hires Silver and Carlyle to recover the pyx for the Christmas Eve service, and when they begin their investigation they quickly realize that Father Patrick was most likely murdered.

They soon find themselves embroiled in a tangle of village politics and secrets going back centuries. Just before he died, Fr. Patrick had been researching the history of St. Botolph’s, and he had uncovered some interesting details about the Sinclair family’s traditional ownership of the religious treasures. The Sinclairs were deeded the land and the church’s possessions by Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Roman Catholic monasteries.

The local expert on antiquities, Geoffrey Thornton, has also been researching old documents, and he is convinced that St. Botolph’s contains even more treasures that were hidden in it by Catholic priests to prevent Cromwell from confiscating them. Also, there appears to be a longstanding feud between the Sinclairs and the Hartwells (yes, the family of the cleaning woman) over who should have been chosen by Henry VIII to rule over Ashwood St. Botolph’s.

Throw in a corrupt local policeman, a new young village doctor with a complicated past, an ambitious young priest hoping to replace Fr. Patrick, as well as lots of gossipy villagers, and you have a very tangled web for Silver and Carlyle to unravel. Gatland does an great job keeping the reader in suspense right up to the final unveiling of the culprit. The device of Silver switching personalities with Morris is very clever, and his teammates take it in stride. In fact, Laura goes out of her way to give the shy and humble Morris credit when it’s deserved.

Gatland already has the third installment in this series ready to be released in April (he’s one of the most prolific authors I’ve ever come across!), and I can’t wait to see what Sebastian’s and Laura’s next adventure will be!

John Kennedy’s How To Test Negative For Stupid

A friend gave me this book for Christmas. I don’t usually read books by politicians, but How to Test Negative for Stupid by Senator John Kennedy (R, Louisiana) is one of the funniest and entertaining memoirs I’ve read in a long time. He is definitely one of a kind, known for the very humorous quips and questions he makes during Senate hearings. He has a thick Southern drawl, which can lead an unsuspecting witness or nominee to underestimate him, but he is smart as a whip.

Practically every page has a laugh-out-loud passage:

For as long as I can remember, one thing has been true about me: I have the right to remain silent, but not the ability. (Page 1)

Most Americans imagine the Senate as this grand theater filled with distinguished lawmakers delivering erudite speeches. In reality, it’s usually empty as a timeshare salesman’s heart. (Page 13)

I observed to a reporter one time that you can lead a person to Congress, but you can’t make him think. (Page 21)

I’ve never heard either Susan [Collins] or Jeanne [Shaheen] raise her voice. Composure is their super power. They are as polite as they are effective. Imagine a cross between a hall monitor and a class valedictorian. I honestly believe that Susan and Jeanne think WTF stands for Well, That’s Fantastic. (Page 22)

“Thom [Tillis] may not like my bill, but I still think he’s a good man. He has many friends, including me. Let me tell you what one of Thom’s childhood friends said about Thom’s first sexual experience. Thom was thirteen. It was night. It was dark. He was nervous. He was scared. And he was alone.” (Page 26)

That’s Lindsey [Graham] – unafraid and able to talk the hinges off a gate. That doesn’t mean he’s always right. Sometimes I think his motto is “Don’t be part of the problem – be the whole problem.” But he’ll say the quiet part out loud, and I respect that. He’s also unpredictable. Invite him to dinner, and you don’t know if he’ll sit  down for an intelligent conversation or get drunk and vomit in the fish tank. But that’s why I like him. (Page 14)

Even though Kennedy is a Republican, he began his political career as a Democrat, and he doesn’t let party loyalty get in the way of his principles. One thing that comes through loud and clear is his desire to cut through Washington D.C. BS and make sure the federal government serves the American people.

As Kennedy relates the high points of his life, we learn about his growing up in the small town of Zachary, LA, his time at Vanderbilt University as an undergraduate, then UVA Law School, as well as some graduate work at Oxford. I have to quote him on when he first arrived at Vandy (my own alma mater, BTW):

   Then and now, Vanderbilt ranks as one of the top American universities. So many people I met there seem to have attended private school. This made no sense to me. Back in Zachary, everyone went to a public school. The only reason you’d go to a private school was if you were a badass who kept getting in trouble. That would get you sent to a private military academy that was supposed to straighten you up and teach you discipline. March to class and do push-ups and that kind of stuff. So, as I walked around the campus of my new college, meeting people who went to private schools with names like Woodberry Forest, Montgomery Bell Academy, and Phillips Exeter, I remember being shocked.
“My God, ” I thought, “I’m going to school with a bunch of juvenile delinquents. They must have turned themselves around in military academy to get into Vanderbilt.” (Page 41)

Some of the most interesting passages involve Sen. Kennedy’s interactions with Pres. Trump. He gets along well with Trump, but he isn’t in awe of him. He understands that Trump likes to take credit for successes, even when it isn’t warranted, and he supports Trump’s attempts to reform “The Swamp”.

Kennedy also gives the reader a glimpse into the Byzantine workings of the US Senate, providing a few of his “greatest hits”, viral moments from various hearings. He wraps up How to Test Negative for Stupid with a speed round: his thoughts on various issues like immigration, the media, crime, etc. If he has a consistent ideology, it’s basically libertarian: it’s the job of the government to provide a safe place for Americans to live, work, and worship as they see fit. The lower the taxes and the fewer the regulations, the better off we all are.

Regardless of your political leanings, How to Test Negative for Stupid is a very entertaining read, and it gives me hope knowing there are men like John Kennedy in the Senate. He’s not afraid to say what he thinks, whether it angers Republicans or Democrats. He marches to his own drummer, and I respect him for that.

Nadya Williams’ Christians Reading Classics: What the Ancients Can Teach Us

I love old books, but sometimes the gulf between the culture in which a book was written and my own is so great that I fail to get the original intent of the author. Nadya Williams’ new book, Christians Reading Classics, is an invaluable guide to some of the most time-tested classic works from the ancient world, and it can help bridge that cultural divide. It is divided into five parts, in rough chronological order.

Part I is Longing for Eternity, and it covers Homer’s The Iliad, Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, Pindar’s Odes, and the Histories of Herodotus and Thucydides. Each chapter is relatively short but packed with profound insights. For example, in her analysis of The Iliad, Williams writes,

The externally governed nature of this heroic code – that one is only a great hero if this person is recognized by others and has accumulated great prizes of honor, including prizes that are real people! – is a warning to us as we consider how aspects of such a code appeal to our own desires even today. Each of us wants to be declared good – as God once spoke when he created Adam. In fact, we would like to be declared “the Best”, and we would like this coronation to come unconditionally from absolutely everyone around. But our worth and any declaration of goodness, excellence, and ultimately righteousness is to be found in God alone, not in other people’s view of us. The suffering of the heroes in The Iliad and in other ancient epics, where heroes do all they can to be declared “the Best”, is an important warning of what happens if we place our value in others’ opinion of us. It reminds us of the empty promises of this kind of glory – it cannot satisfy. (p. 9)

Part II: The Formation of Virtuous Citizens, covers Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides, Plato, and Aristotle. These authors’ works are the high point of ancient Greek literature, and Williams makes the case that they wrestle with the issue of what qualities are necessary to be virtuous. Aristophanes used comedy and political satire to make his points, while Sophocles and Euripides used tragedy. At the end of each chapter, Williams includes some helpful questions. Here are the ones at the end of her chapter on Plato and Aristotle:

1. What do we learn about Socrates and the Socratic method from Plato and Aristotle?
2. What is the difference between eunomia and isonomia? Why does it matter?
3. Why did Aristotle consider poetry so important for the education of citizens? Do you agree? Why or why not?
   (page 113)

In Part III:  Words of Power and The Power of Words, we transition from Greek culture to Roman. It includes ancient Athenian forensic speechwriters, an entertaining overview of ancient “how-to manuals”, Cicero, Caesar, and Ovid. If there’s one obvious difference between Greek and Roman authors, it’s that the Romans are much more practical and pragmatic.

Part IV: Heroes and Role Models features Cato, Livy, Vergil, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Plutarch. These writers were alive from when the office of the Roman emperor was established through the turbulent and unstable second century AD. Williams makes an interesting point about how the new religion of Christianity made profound changes in Roman culture:

We can learn a lot about a culture’s values from seeing who its heroes are. In the ancient world before Christianity, these heroes were always famous politicians and generals – an overlapping category, for to be one was to always to be the other. Only after the rise of Christianity do we see different sorts of heroes arise: the meek, the lowly, and the ones willing to die for their faith. The rise of these new heroes correspondingly changes the genre of biography.
(page 218)

The final section, Part V: Virtues and Vices in the Age of Anxiety, brings us to the end of the Classical Age. We meet Apuleius, Marcus Aurelius, Augustine, Perpetua, Cyprian, and Boethius. Williams makes a very compelling case that Athens (rationalism) needs Jerusalem (heart and soul), and Jerusalem needs Athens. You can have political leaders that are brilliant, but without virtue, they will turn into tyrants:

Socrates students were renowned as brilliant. They had received an excellent education. But lacking genuine character formation in the virtues, some of them turned that education against fellow citizens, overthrowing their democracy and ruthlessly killing anyone who opposed them. After all, selfishness and desire for power are the only impulses that do not have to learned – they are inbuilt.
(page 251)

Christians Reading Classics is an excellent introduction to some of the greatest thinkers and writers who ever existed. It is not a deep analysis of their works, but rather an appetizer that ideally encourages the reader to check out the actual plays, speeches, histories, and dialogs these men and women wrote centuries ago. Williams makes a strong case that they still can entertain and enlighten us. She includes recommended translations of every work she refers to at the end of each chapter. There’s a reason these are classics – they have stood the test of time, and generations of readers have benefitted from reading them.

P. G. Wodehouse’s Uncle Dynamite: The Title Says It All

I’m a huge fan of P. G. Wodehouse. He is one of the funniest authors in the history of literature, while at the same time maintaining an extraordinarily high quality of writing. Very few writers can turn a phrase as cleverly or more beautifully than Wodehouse.

The uncle in Uncle Dynamite is Lord Frederick Ickenham who has been featured in several Wodehouse tales along with his nephew, Pongo Twistleton. Traveling on a train to visit Pongo, Lord Ickenham meets Bill Oakshott and engages him in conversation. Bill is returning from South America where he went to try to forget the love of his life, Hermione Bostock, the daughter of an annoying uncle of Bill’s who has moved in and made himself at home in Bill’s manor. The modest Bill confides in Fred how much he dislikes his uncle, but refrains from disclosing his affection for Hermione. Which is a good thing, since Fred casually mentions that his nephew Pongo has recently gotten engaged to a young woman named Hermione Bostock!

Uncle Fred would like Pongo to rekindle his engagement to a protégée of his, the young sculptor Sally Painter, but Pongo is dead set on Hermione, despite her preventing him from drinking any alcohol and disapproving of Uncle Fred. And so the stage is set for another complicated farce in which Uncle Fred will work his magic to ensure all the young lovers are paired up properly.

Of course, there is lots of hilarious wordplay throughout. Right off the bat in Chapter 1, Uncle Fred explains that he is enjoying some freedom, because his wife has left England to attend a relative’s wedding:

‘Yes, my dear wife, I am glad to say, continues in the pink. I’ve just been seeing her off on the boat at Southampton. She is taking a trip to the West Indies.’
‘Jamaica?’
‘No, she went of her own free will.’

Wodehouse, P. G.. Uncle Dynamite (p. 8). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Uncle Fred has a penchant for posing as someone he’s not, which invariably leads to lots of hilarious encounters with people who actually know him. Pongo has learned not to trust him to behave himself, and has left him at Ickenham to spend the weekend at Oakshott, where Hermione, her parents, and Bill live. Through a series of event too complicated to explain here, Uncle Fred shows up, pretending to be Bill’s friend from his Brazilian adventures, Major Brabazon-Plank. The fly in the ointment is the fact that practically everyone at Oakshott either knows Uncle Fred or the real Major Brabazon-Plank, including the hapless village policeman, Officer Potter. Bill’s Uncle Aylmer Bostock is convinced Pongo is an imposter trying to steal his priceless “African curios”, when poor Pongo is practically the only person who is who he says he is.

Uncle Fred brazenly and breezily adjusts his story and his identity depending on circumstances to the point of absurdity. And that’s the point of reading a Wodehouse novel: the plot depends on utterly absurd coincidences and setbacks that could be overcome if someone actually came clean and told the truth, but it wouldn’t be such nearly so much fun. As always with Wodehouse, there are laugh-out-loud scenes and incomparably witty prose.

When Officer Potter remembers Uncle Fred from a previous time when he collared him at the dog races, Frederick Ickenham remains unflappable:

‘Brabazon-Plank, eh? You call yourself Brabazon-Plank, do you? Ho! You look to me more like George Robinson of 14 Nasturtium Road, East Dulwich.’

Lord Ickenham stared. He removed the cigar from his mouth and stared again. ‘Don’t tell me you’re the cop who pinched me that day at the dog races!’

‘Yus, I am.’

A bubbling cry like that of some strong swimmer in his agony proceeded from Pongo’s lips. He glared wildly at the helmeted figure of doom. Lord Ickenham, in sharp contradistinction, merely beamed, like one of a pair of lovers who have met at journey’s end.

‘Well, I’ll be dashed,’ he said cordially. ‘What a really remarkable thing. Fancy running into you again like this. I’d never have known you. You’ve grown a moustache since then, or something. My dear fellow, this is delightful. What are you doing in these parts?’

Wodehouse, P. G.. Uncle Dynamite (pp. 125-126). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Eventually, the real Major Brabazon-Plank shows up, as well as Sally’s brother, Otis, who is a nascent book publisher. He is eager to publish Hermione’s next book, so her father will call off the lawsuit he threatened. Like I said, it’s complicated. However, Uncle Fred comes out on top, “spreading sweetness and light”, and everyone ends up engaged to the one he or she truly loves, including Officer Potter.

Here is a small sampling of the understated but hysterical humor Wodehouse employs liberally throughout:

[Pongo] beamed on the girl, and having released his tongue, which had got entangled with his uvula, spoke in a genial and welcoming voice.
‘What ho, Bean.’
‘What ho, sir.’
‘It’s you, is it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You gave me a start.’
‘You gave me a start, sir.’
‘Making two starts in all,’ said Pongo, who had taken mathematics at school.

Wodehouse, P. G.. Uncle Dynamite (p. 136). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

‘I want to tell you about Pongo.’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s worried to death, the poor pet. My heart aches for him. He was in here not long ago, and he just sat in a chair and groaned.’
‘You’re sure he wasn’t singing?’

Wodehouse, P. G.. Uncle Dynamite (p. 207). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

‘It happened just after breakfast. My aunt was waiting for me to bring the car round, and Uncle Aylmer made some unpleasant cracks about the hat she was wearing. So she went up to her room to get another, and as she reached the door she heard someone moving about inside. When she went in, there was nobody to be seen, and then suddenly there came a sneeze from the wardrobe, and there was Pongo, crouching on the floor.’
‘She was sure?’
‘Sure?’
‘It wasn’t a shoe or a bit of fluff?’
‘No, it was Pongo.

Wodehouse, P. G.. Uncle Dynamite (pp. 211-212). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Wodehouse wrote several novels featuring Uncle Fred, Lord Ickenham, and you can pick them up and read them in any order. If only we could all live in a world where we each had an Uncle Fred who could step in and fix all of our financial and romantic troubles!