Linda Shelnutt has commented on (37) products.

Escape from Mount Moriah: Memoirs of a Refugee Child's Triumph

Linda Shelnutt, May 17, 2008

As Abraham’s God may have intended, a father’s child endures to honor a legacy lost.

This book is a winner within its own niche of brilliance, almost like the universe was holding a sun spot open for this author’s childhood chapters, for precisely his, "Memoirs of a Refugee Child's Triumph.”

The book felt almost like a child's book, but not like the sometimes silly stuff which is presented as children's literature. Instead, this book felt like it was meant for the children among us who were born adult, in the good sense of the word, born wise, born serious, born knowing there's much work to be done here; not work of the body, but work for the soul of humankind, which has been lost, ignored, pushed down, and choked.

What most makes me want to read Engelhard’s books, especially after [[ASIN:0595470793 The Bathsheba Deadline: An Original Novel]] (see my review), is the pleasant environment of his easy-flowing style, which percolates with a subtle sense of joy, possibly the result of his deep love of writing surging through every inspired or perfectly chosen word.

The next appeal for reading this author’s books is that I know I'll find truths in them I've looked for in print but have rarely found. The soul craves the freshness of finding something new, something regenerating, solidly hopeful in a quiet way which comes from facing ugliness without flinching, then moving forward again because there's still something of value ahead, something worth knowing. Nu, nu, nu (see the book’s introductory essays for an explanation of that saying).

I'm thankful that Jack Engelhard honored his resistance to attempting an overwhelming research project to write a different, redundant angle on this story. As he implied in his introduction, all the book needed was for his memories to be convinced he was dedicated, at that time, to collect them on paper.

Having received two of Jack Engelhard’s books together I couldn’t decide which I wanted to read first. When I was ready to begin one of them, I thought I might decide by reading a few paragraphs of the opening story of each. By default, I began with MORIAH, thinking I’d stop after a page or two, then do the same with INDECENT PROPOSAL. But, I didn’t quit reading MORIAH.

By the following morning I had read the whole of that balsamic bible of a book. I loved it. I was impressed as much as I hoped I would be...

When I first saw the book’s cover, I had puzzled at the biblical scene. I didn't immediately recognize it as the Rembrandt representation of God's request of Abraham to offer his son on Mount Moriah. I appreciated having the factual details presented inside the cover as well as on it. I was intensely intrigued about that event being said to have led to the creation of the Jewish people. I wanted to know more.

As I opened the covers of ESCAPE FROM MOUNT MORIAH, I was deeply curious about the childhood of a person who has come to write as Jack Engelhard has.

As I read further into the flap copy and introductory remarks, I began anticipating reading something special, not just a book I would welcome getting lost in, living in as a refreshing contrast to my daily routines; but a book in which I would find something worth knowing, something new, different from the repeated density in the majority of books available to readers, maybe something of actual truth.

The heart craves that, especially when it's rarely found.

Usually, I'm not attracted to short story collections, even knowing they might be true, significant, and well-composed. But, I was immediately attached to the chapter titles and blurbs here, especially the appealing Jewish feel of them. The meaning and number of Chai was magnetic to me, as were the type styles.

The book felt to me to be more of a bible than the established ones.

— Jack Engelhard may not have been the same type of prodigy as his father was (I have no doubt that his father, Noah ben Jacob, has gone to peace and is still there).

— Jack may not have assimilated every holy word and underlying truth in the Books of Moses, as his father had, but, with Jack’s light touch, he has written his own holy words of truth, and has honored his father in the process.

Jack wrote Noah as he was, as well as how he appeared to Jack in Jack’s efforts to know him in both his dark/wounded and bright/spiritual exposures, and Jack related to his father to the best of his straight-on, eyes-focused nature.

My favorite chapter was “A Telegram From Israel,” conveying a holy moment confirming compassion, even though it kept Jack’s father temporarily in the dark about his mother’s death. Describing the moment of that sacred omen, Engelhard writes, “... from utter darkness came incredible radiance.” The father’s response to Jack’s act of compassion was perfection, as was his father’s conclusion about the coincidence of the experience of brilliance breaking through dark clouds.

That situation made me wonder if God might have wanted Abraham to say “No” to His request of offering. I want to believe that Abraham's God was a loving one and would have made right either choice for that unique, splitting-of-universes decision.

Possibly my second favorite chapter was Engelhard’s holding to his words, “I resign,” (the chapter’s title) instead of damning himself with, “I quit.”

Or, was my next favorite the respect awarded to young Jack by the druggist, Mr. Roberts, following Jack’s successful grappling with fears surged in “The Purple Gang” territory.

The core of sadness for my empathy was in the uncle’s reaction to love from a nephew in “Relatives from America,” and the brutality trials Jack suffered in “The Fairmount Synagogue Choir.”

Jack Engelhard is the one who conveys emotion without emotion. (In his review of my Amazon Short, DARK DIAMOND TWILIGHT, Engelhard had said that of my writing style).

After finishing MORIAH, I felt great admiration for Engelhard’s father, and was devastated that Noah wasn’t allowed to live his life as the highest, holy Rabbi he could have been.

Yet, maybe he accomplished more, for his son, for himself, and for his world, through those dedicated times in the synagogues, in which he grew from a polite, quiet discounting of the officiating Rabbi’s inaccuracies in reading scripture, into a bold countering of the corruption of truth. Maybe the reason Noah never found his equal with whom to argue into the truest interpretations of the holy books, was because he had no equal in that. He had only the truth of the meaning in, under, and above the words. I would bet that every Rabbi Noah encountered with his corrections never forgot what Noah had said. Maybe those Rabbis went forth percolating with the right vision from Noah, somehow radiating that cleansing of misconception into our future, the future of rightness to come.

Through his books, Jack is continuing Noah ben Jacob’s legacy of synagogue interruption, contributing his literary voice, which I believe has surpassed the golden choir boy (Jack’s honed skill Vs the darling golden boy’s luck).

As I had read through each chapter, I noticed a flickering in the voice Engelhard used in MORIAH. He seemed to speak as the child he was, with flashes opening onto a voice of the present of his writing the book. One of my favorite uses of voice would be like that, the child writing about the child, except for those few cracks through time when the present heart slips back, sending wisdom gained through time, to heal the child that was, and still is.

To the child in each of us, living eternally,
Linda G. Shelnutt

Shelnutt is the author of several Kindle books, including MYRTLE’S ULTIMATE MYSTERY; including The Books of Gem: THE ROSE AND THE PYRAMID, FULL MOON RISING, NEW MOON BLUES, QUARTER MOON DUES; including in Amazon Shorts a serialized novel, MORNING COMES The Pre Dawn Blues (Book 2 in The Books of Gem); including a nonfiction series based off the Gem Books: MOLASSES MOON, and SLIDING DOWN MOON BEAMS; and including a VISCERAL HISTORY (my term) series of short true stories featuring the mining industry in a small town in Colorado.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(2 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)

report this comment

The Accidental Florist: A Jane Jeffry Mystery (Jane Jeffry Mysteries) by Jill Churchill

Linda Shelnutt, May 17, 2008

Play it again, Sam ... Spade? Why Did The Egg Shell Crack?

She did it again. Jill Churchill, an admirably incorrigible author, repeated what she did in BELL, BOOK, AND SCANDAL, # 14 in her Jane Jeffry series. In THE ACCIDENTAL FLORIST, # 16 in the series, Churchill stretched a toe out of the confines of the mystery genre, entertaining and intriguing this reader more than she would have if she had stayed within staid boundaries.

I wonder, though: Does this type of breakout appeal to me only because I've written novels, which allows me to identify with Churchill's creeping beyond containers of her craft, especially when making the first cracks in a long revered egg shell incorporates more of her author life into established appeals of Jane and Shelley? This time, the daily life and work of an author was inserted into the story with bravo perfection, in my copy of the book with a lusciously-fluffy, lemon-souffle aura, cat and bouquet included.

It's true that the author is expanding a recent trend in this series, a trend which has placed the murder and its resolution by amateur sleuth-hood on the back burners of subplot stews, so far back, in fact, that the murder and its investigation didn't take its usual active space in the story. Somewhat because of that fact, I enjoyed THE ACCIDENTAL FLORIST even more than I've enjoyed each of the prior 15 books.

Churchill is such a subtle genius at flowing undercurrents of cultural issues, that she's able to keep me above those undertows, at a level of an easy-flowing, craved type of reading entertainment. She accomplishes this through a narrative style of such natural grace that I doubt even Santa Clause could see the insights intended, until the final page is turned and cerebral spotlights are surged, and lighten up the cerebellum-gestalt of plot machinations.

Again, Churchill managed to subtly accomplish a collection of (not so fluffy) literary goals with such finesse that I didn't see them until I had closed the book that final time and allowed myself to ruminate through a few questions.

--- Why this title, with its play on the literary offering, THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST? (I'll give my speculation on this in a comment added to the review, which is longer than I wanted it to be.)

--- Why did Churchill have Jane basically leave the mystery solution to her soon-to-be new husband, detective Mel Van Dyne? (Well, except that, Jane did come up with a creative M. O. which Van Dyne expanded, and which ultimately worked efficiently to corral the culprit.)

--- Why did Churchill add Mel's new, young female assistant (thin, pale, and not really pretty ... until she smiled in shy pride of her accomplishments) to the mix?

To answer those questions, ask a few more:

--- How do amateur sleuth mystery series make even slightly believable, the excuses they offer to justify the amateur repeatedly taking over investigations, solving them ahead of or beyond the capacities of professionals involved?

--- How do professionals in real life respond to amateur sleuth mysteries repeatedly making them look like idiots or fools in a widespread genre which has become horrendously popular with mystery afficionados of all media presentations? (Don't get me wrong. I love amateur sleuth mysteries ... they're FICTION; I also admire and support investigative professionals.)

--- Did Churchill decide to design Jane's character, after having accepted herself as a successful, professional author, decide to do that job to her best ability, and let go of attempting to do other people's jobs? Has Churchill allowed Jane to self-actualize? Has Jane developed an inner strength and solid confidence to the point that she has learned the joys of letting go of responsibilities to those who should be allowed to shoulder them, more rightfully than she?

Within the subplot menagerie of THE ACCIDENTAL FLORIST, Jane has a full life around her work as an author, all of which was dramatized with simple literary grace in this landmark novel of understatement of a skill not to be underestimated.

When I finish the novel, as I usually do with a Jane Jeffry novel, I put it aside, and allowed my brain to make the connections, to see beneath the now stilled waters of Jane and Shelley's seemingly simple shenanigans.

I'm happy I could say again, "Oh. I see."

I see why Mel's new assistant was so endearing.

I see why Churchill exposed here even more than she did in previous novels in this series, an author's life and trade as it weaves through subplots of a real life.

This narrative opened a window onto the everyday life of an author who is also a good Mom, a friend, a companion, and a self-actualized woman who no longer catered to everyone and everything in her path ... who was able to say "No," simply, clearly, and unequivocally, to any approach or attack contrary to her well being or that of a loved one.

When Jane stood up to Thelma and Addie, several times in various ways, sometimes my automatic response was to feel empathy for the older women instead of for Jane. "How cold," I thought, or, "How bossy, or rude." Then, I reminded myself how I felt in prior novels when those women and others repeatedly and viciously ran over Jane when she didn't yet have the backbone to fully stand up to them. I felt like I always do when a woman in a novel lets people repeatedly walk all over her.

Jane has strengthened her backbone in this novel. Maybe she went too far. I don't know. I was very involved reading the book, and left it with much to contemplate.

Respectfully Submitted,
Linda Shelnutt

Shelnutt is the author of several Kindle books, including MYRTLE’S ULTIMATE MYSTERY; including The Books of Gem: THE ROSE AND THE PYRAMID, FULL MOON RISING, NEW MOON BLUES, QUARTER MOON DUES; including in Amazon Shorts a serialized novel, MORNING COMES The Pre Dawn Blues (Book 2 in The Books of Gem); including a nonfiction series based off the Gem Books: MOLASSES MOON, and SLIDING DOWN MOON BEAMS; and including a VISCERAL HISTORY (my term) series of short true stories featuring the mining industry in a small town in Colorado.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(2 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)

report this comment

The Accidental Florist (Jane Jeffry Mysteries (Paperback) ) by Jill Churchill

Linda Shelnutt, May 17, 2008

Play it again, Sam ... Spade? Why Did The Egg Shell Crack?

She did it again. Jill Churchill, an admirably incorrigible author, repeated what she did in BELL, BOOK, AND SCANDAL, # 14 in her Jane Jeffry series. In THE ACCIDENTAL FLORIST, # 16 in the series, Churchill stretched a toe out of the confines of the mystery genre, entertaining and intriguing this reader more than she would have if she had stayed within staid boundaries.

I wonder, though: Does this type of breakout appeal to me only because I've written novels, which allows me to identify with Churchill's creeping beyond containers of her craft, especially when making the first cracks in a long revered egg shell incorporates more of her author life into established appeals of Jane and Shelley? This time, the daily life and work of an author was inserted into the story with bravo perfection, in my copy of the book with a lusciously-fluffy, lemon-souffle aura, cat and bouquet included.

It's true that the author is expanding a recent trend in this series, a trend which has placed the murder and its resolution by amateur sleuth-hood on the back burners of subplot stews, so far back, in fact, that the murder and its investigation didn't take its usual active space in the story. Somewhat because of that fact, I enjoyed THE ACCIDENTAL FLORIST even more than I've enjoyed each of the prior 15 books.

Churchill is such a subtle genius at flowing undercurrents of cultural issues, that she's able to keep me above those undertows, at a level of an easy-flowing, craved type of reading entertainment. She accomplishes this through a narrative style of such natural grace that I doubt even Santa Clause could see the insights intended, until the final page is turned and cerebral spotlights are surged, and lighten up the cerebellum-gestalt of plot machinations.

Again, Churchill managed to subtly accomplish a collection of (not so fluffy) literary goals with such finesse that I didn't see them until I had closed the book that final time and allowed myself to ruminate through a few questions.

--- Why this title, with its play on the literary offering, THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST? (I'll give my speculation on this in a comment added to the review, which is longer than I wanted it to be.)

--- Why did Churchill have Jane basically leave the mystery solution to her soon-to-be new husband, detective Mel Van Dyne? (Well, except that, Jane did come up with a creative M. O. which Van Dyne expanded, and which ultimately worked efficiently to corral the culprit.)

--- Why did Churchill add Mel's new, young female assistant (thin, pale, and not really pretty ... until she smiled in shy pride of her accomplishments) to the mix?

To answer those questions, ask a few more:

--- How do amateur sleuth mystery series make even slightly believable, the excuses they offer to justify the amateur repeatedly taking over investigations, solving them ahead of or beyond the capacities of professionals involved?

--- How do professionals in real life respond to amateur sleuth mysteries repeatedly making them look like idiots or fools in a widespread genre which has become horrendously popular with mystery afficionados of all media presentations? (Don't get me wrong. I love amateur sleuth mysteries ... they're FICTION; I also admire and support investigative professionals.)

--- Did Churchill decide to design Jane's character, after having accepted herself as a successful, professional author, decide to do that job to her best ability, and let go of attempting to do other people's jobs? Has Churchill allowed Jane to self-actualize? Has Jane developed an inner strength and solid confidence to the point that she has learned the joys of letting go of responsibilities to those who should be allowed to shoulder them, more rightfully than she?

Within the subplot menagerie of THE ACCIDENTAL FLORIST, Jane has a full life around her work as an author, all of which was dramatized with simple literary grace in this landmark novel of understatement of a skill not to be underestimated.

When I finish the novel, as I usually do with a Jane Jeffry novel, I put it aside, and allowed my brain to make the connections, to see beneath the now stilled waters of Jane and Shelley's seemingly simple shenanigans.

I'm happy I could say again, "Oh. I see."

I see why Mel's new assistant was so endearing.

I see why Churchill exposed here even more than she did in previous novels in this series, an author's life and trade as it weaves through subplots of a real life.

This narrative opened a window onto the everyday life of an author who is also a good Mom, a friend, a companion, and a self-actualized woman who no longer catered to everyone and everything in her path ... who was able to say "No," simply, clearly, and unequivocally, to any approach or attack contrary to her well being or that of a loved one.

When Jane stood up to Thelma and Addie, several times in various ways, sometimes my automatic response was to feel empathy for the older women instead of for Jane. "How cold," I thought, or, "How bossy, or rude." Then, I reminded myself how I felt in prior novels when those women and others repeatedly and viciously ran over Jane when she didn't yet have the backbone to fully stand up to them. I felt like I always do when a woman in a novel lets people repeatedly walk all over her.

Jane has strengthened her backbone in this novel. Maybe she went too far. I don't know. I was very involved reading the book, and left it with much to contemplate.

Respectfully Submitted,
Linda Shelnutt

Shelnutt is the author of several Kindle books, including MYRTLE’S ULTIMATE MYSTERY; including The Books of Gem: THE ROSE AND THE PYRAMID, FULL MOON RISING, NEW MOON BLUES, QUARTER MOON DUES; including in Amazon Shorts a serialized novel, MORNING COMES The Pre Dawn Blues (Book 2 in The Books of Gem); including a nonfiction series based off the Gem Books: MOLASSES MOON, and SLIDING DOWN MOON BEAMS; and including a VISCERAL HISTORY (my term) series of short true stories featuring the mining industry in a small town in Colorado.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(2 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)

report this comment

The Bathsheba Deadline: An Original Novel by Jack Engelhard

Linda Shelnutt, May 17, 2008

A Kaleidoscopic Tapestry Seen Through A Glass Darkly. A Rabbi-Blessed-Cane Conjures Red-Votive-Candles

In his novel, THE BATHSHEBA DEADLINE, Jack Engelhard has crisply, brilliantly reflected our deadly world in its ugliest, dirtiest descents. Yet the novel's varied moods shift regularly into a barely perceived, underlying beauty, seeming to refract darkly, through a war-cracked looking-glass. Using a simple, yet subtly-sophisticated syntax, this author voices deeply-rhythm-ed Songs of Israel, back-dropped by the relentless clacking of dedicated Underwoods.

“Phil Crawford was easy to dislike, which is probably why I liked him.... Maybe I didn’t like him all that much, but he was okay. We had our differences, politically.”

I'm not merely impressed, but in awe, of how many threads of vital issues Engelhard has woven and mirrored in BATHSHEBA... right-now politics; media foibles and “facts”; deadly-dangerous, romantic roller-coaster rides; political correctness spotlighted in hypocrisy and lack of glory; spiritual moments dawned in the ebony richness of potential doom...

Yet the weave is not too tight. It allows spaces for contemplation between color contrasts; it allows repetition of subplots to prevent unraveling of wayward strings.

The result is a kaleidoscopic tapestry of an engrossing tale which should be terrifying and depressing by content, yet which gives an incredible amount of hope, because of, rather than in spite of, Jay Garfield's last line, which is as exquisitely honest as it is inevitable. Loved that line, though my favorite line was of political incorrectness gone right, from Jay to Lyla, “Can’t you stop being a girl for a minute?” I wanted to stand up and cheer.

A favorite plot twist was Jay’s Muslim friend’s wife breaking out in compassion to Jay, “Allah be with you.” THEE favorite plot twist was a Muslim acting rightly to save Jay’s bacon, no fuel intended! My favorite exposure was not a Northern one; it was the “going South” of the dark sides of religion and politics, as they enact the power and purpose to sink humanity in one tar glob, into the black holes of anti-life, where falsehoods are sold as truth. (That tar would not be aligned with environmental mania’s attempts to discard industrial waste; it would be the byproduct of philosophical idiocy burned balsamic into goo.)

Every word in this novel, alone and by its placement within phrase, syntax, paragraphing... speaks of literary power, full-on and brilliant. The reader receives those searing spotlights willingly (actually he begins craving them). This reception occurs within a strange type of comfort, within what could ironically be called light entertainment. I see this light touch as essential, since what the author is exposing through Jay is a world, now and through history, which should be irrevocably hopeless.

Engelhard's composing style, and gentle use of constant contrast ("This, but that, too") seem to serve as a continual release of the bondage of powerlessness... a bondage which sometimes arrives from setting in concrete a belief or stand, before the time has come to do so. As Garfield says, a true prophet always knows what time it is. Jay comes to his time at the right moment.

I believe Engelhard could accomplish this release for readers through fiction or through his type of journalism, as he chose. In this wholeness of effect Jack Engelhard has transcended the literary greats (who too often begin and end with nothing beyond eloquently detailed depression).

This transcendence comes through a painting in words of the elemental forms of profanity and powerlessness.

This transcendence comes within a syntactic paradigm of a not overdone, barely-there sense of hope for redemption, a sense of joy in the power of a soul connected to the Height of Good...

(... even if that good is way up there somewhere, barely reachable beyond ozone layers and holes in the Universe, beyond the broadest rainbow... yes it was a HUMAN who stole the ONLY pot of gold... and it wasn't John Galt!)

For me, the most potent segment of this novel is Jay’s journey to, and short stay in Jerusalem, where he sinks into the physically dark, spiritually enduring events and ambiance there. In that pilgrimage, this novel's power explodes and implodes. An uncanny dynamic balance comes to catharsis through a scene in a motel room in the middle of the night:

... the sense of a presence... the shadowed, mirrored image of a tall, thin, bearded man... the gifting, discovery, and working into acceptance of The Blessed Cane.

That scene had the seated feel of being lifted from a lucid dream Engelhard may have had, around which he may have written this book. The actual dream there served as a quantum kernel of hope, seeded within the essence of horror.

The motel room sequence felt like touching a spiritual force, delicately but absolutely, like touching a purity of potency which is not limited to any religion, book, or viewpoint, possibly not to be as easily found in any of those, as through the individual soul of each human being. It was so very appropriate that Jay would touch that through his father's heritage, sharing it from that paradigm. Icons of religious trappings, talismans, and traditions exude a mesmerizing magic. These can be good, as can an un-tethered soul in solitary search.

After contemplating the Jerusalem sequence in the middle of night, I clarified what I saw in connection to this novel, in a puzzling vision of red votive candles, which I had after reading the first part of the book. This novel subtly nurtures a type of hope I felt in my youth, from red-votive-candles flickering in church at night. I felt a clean, quiet sense of rightness to come. As I felt that subtle connection to BATHSHEBA, doubts flared, discounting the feeling and votive candle parallel:

Why would an image from my Catholic past intrude on a novel with Jewish spiritual symbolism (which has always fascinated me). Yes, Garfield's mother was Catholic; his father Jewish. But that joined contrast wasn’t woven into BATHSHEBA’S plot or subplot tapestry...

It was after reading the scene of the Rabbi-Blessed-Cane, that I realized the link of the cane to the candle. I was sparked to visualize those images artistically overlapped in a painting of spirit-in-oils which might do justice to this novel’s holy moment. I couldn't hold the symbols within the same visual, tactual space. They needed to be kept separate to avoid breaking down a reality, a reality which is working both those icons, and more like them, from different spiritual kaleidoscopes. Yet, I wanted to see them together.

I can recreate my vision of the votive flickering... or I can call up Jay's vision of the shadowed presence in the mirror (felt like a rabbi from higher realms), and the cane.

The red-votive flickers gave a welcome memory of my few times as a child going alone to the church at night, sitting in a middle pew on the right, breathing the presence, focusing the candle collections, always lit. Sometimes I would kneel by the candles and pay my coins to the box, then watch the flame I had lit, for a long, peaceful time. I enjoyed being in the church alone at night much more than I enjoyed the Masses with their Holy Words (they were supposed to be holy, were to me then, but I don't quite see some of the meanings that way now) voiced, read, and prayed, among the day's light and crowds.

The above doesn’t begin to hint what this novel draws to consciousness, even on the spiritual tumbles of the kaleidoscopic tapestry of BATHSHEBA. Then there are the political, journalistic, romantic...

Buy and read the book! See how this wealth of global microcosms works into a story of high entertainment, possibly better than any other book you’ve read, with more truth exposed than you’ll know what to do with. Months will go by; you’ll reflect on these scenes and schemes, and you’ll know.

With confidence I say that Jack Engelhard expertly manages the medium of the novel, as he does journalism and op-eds. He is an Nth degree, mastered professional of the effective use of the writer’s voice.

With greatest respect for those among us who walk with words,

Linda Shelnutt

Shelnutt is the author of several Kindle books, including MYRTLE’S ULTIMATE MYSTERY; including The Books of Gem: THE ROSE AND THE PYRAMID, FULL MOON RISING, NEW MOON BLUES, QUARTER MOON DUES; including in Amazon Shorts a serialized novel, MORNING COMES The Pre Dawn Blues (Book 2 in The Books of Gem); including a nonfiction series based off the Gem Books: MOLASSES MOON, and SLIDING DOWN MOON BEAMS; and including a VISCERAL HISTORY (my term) series of short true stories featuring the mining industry in a small town in Colorado.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(4 of 4 readers found this comment helpful)

report this comment

McNally's Secret (Archy McNally Novels) by Lawrence Sanders

Linda Shelnutt, June 9, 2006

Cure Cultural Volcanics with Bubbling Champagne. Design Life To Suit Taste & Times.

The opening of this novel was classic, and felt to be the initiation of what Sanders was born and itching to write, beyond the sagas of his other fine works.

Of course the first lines in SECRET, the sipping of champagne from a belly button would snag the attention of even the most sexually skittish reader of the nose-raised, neck-cricked, personality persuasion. But, truly and honestly, what sunk me with every hook were the few lines exposing why Archy could never be serious. I believe that passage, beginning on page 1 chapter 1, is one of the main selling points of the series:

?I had lived through dire warnings of nuclear catastrophe, global warming, ozone depletion, universal extinction via cholesterol, and the invasion of killer bees. After a while my juices stopped their panicky surge and I realized I was bored with all these screeched predictions of Armageddon due next Tuesday. It hadn?t happened yet, had it? The old world tottered along, and I was content to totter along with it.?

I?d bet my fortune (which is based on a skill of ?make do?; there are no bananas in it) that the above passage is what captured a collection of readers so absolutely in a ?right on? agreement that this series spanned the grave of the author and is still spewing pages and stretching shelves.


As I relished the final chapters and pages of SECRET, I had a thought about the beauty, warmth, lovely literary melancholy, and subtly complex richness radiating from those concluding textual treasures:

In retrospect, this novel didn?t feel like a planned pilot to a mystery series. It felt to be a singular novel, like but not like, the ones Sanders had written prior to it. What it felt like to me is that Lawrence hit upon a ?soul speak? story which couldn?t halt the cultural conversation it had initiated, however serendipitous that initiation may have been.

Based on Agatha Christie?s official web site, Miss Marple was not originally intended to be another Poirot, and look what happened there.

To me, Archy appears to be a gatekeeper for pure and primal, hidden wishes and dreams. Living home comfortably, guiltlessly at 37, on the top floor of his parent?s mansion in Palm Beach; eating drool-food from a house chef; having established a club like The Pelican as a side atmosphere to partake in daily; working at a cushy, just challenging enough, engaging career for discreet inquiries ... If an author?s (or reader?s) going to retire that would be da place (or at least an entertaining option).

Get the SECRET of the McNally collection.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(8 of 16 readers found this comment helpful)

report this comment

1-5 of 37 next