{"id":34251,"date":"2013-08-10T21:27:34","date_gmt":"2013-08-10T21:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternativejonestown.com\/?page_id=34251"},"modified":"2023-01-02T17:17:39","modified_gmt":"2023-01-03T01:17:39","slug":"farrell1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=34251","title":{"rendered":"Peoples Temple as Plot Device"},"content":{"rendered":"

In\u00a0their continuing quest for gripping narrative elements with which to hook the reader, it should come as no surprise that authors occasionally mine tragedies involving \u201ccults.\u201d A. W. Hill\u2019s Enoch\u2019s Portal<\/i> uses the Solar\u00a0Temple, David Mitchell\u2019s Ghostwritten<\/i> alludes heavily to Aum Shinrikyo,\u00a0and Madison Smartt Bell\u2019s The Color of Night<\/i> contains a thinly-disguised reworking of the Manson Family. Indeed, I myself\u00a0even experimented with a science fiction parody of the Branch Davidian\u00a0disaster. Given that grand tradition, it seems almost inevitable that the\u00a0Peoples Temple tragedy has inspired many an author with grist for fiction. Some\u00a0draw subtle comparisons for minor flavor, but more often they wear the\u00a0influence on their sleeves, incorporating events as major plot elements. Past\u00a0issues of the jonestown report<\/i> have already touched on a few of these,\u00a0such as Steven James\u2019 The Pawn<\/a>,\u00a0Scott Blackwood\u2019s We Agreed to Meet Just Here<\/a>, Armistead Maupin\u2019s Further\u00a0Tales of the City<\/a>, and David Conn\u2019s polemic-pretending-to-be-a-novel, Lednorf\u2019s Dilemma<\/a>.\u00a0Below are five other entries that also delve into Peoples Temple in some way,\u00a0as well as a more in-depth re-visitation of The Pawn<\/i>. Before\u00a0tackling them individually, some collective observations are in order.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0the past thirty-plus years, the output has almost gone on a J-curve: few books\u00a0in the immediate years following the final White Night, lots in the past decade. Curiously, the quality of the books also follows this pattern: low to high. The few books from the immediate aftermath were quick-flip pulp pieces, the recent ones are complexly plotted novels. One could argue that the tradition of exporting Peoples Temple into a fictional narrative started as early as 1979 with William Rodger\u2019s Cult<\/i> Sunday<\/i>. However, the book is more of a proselytizing piece warning readers of the dangers of all \u201ccults,\u201d\u00a0using a lurid straw man stereotype of what the author thinks<\/i> cults are like. Although most of the members are murdered by their leader, and Jonestown\u00a0is mentioned in dialogue as a comparison to the book\u2019s fictional villainous\u00a0group, in practice the group bears no real resemblance to either Peoples Temple\u00a0or even reality, and is little more than a Chick tract<\/a> without the cartoons. Armistead Maupin puts Jim Jones himself into a subplot of 1994\u2019s Further Tales of the City<\/i>, but it is not until the\u00a0mid-2000s that the floodgates open.<\/p>\n

Each\u00a0of these books, either directly or indirectly, are crime fiction\/mysteries of some sort in which the character(s) investigate a murder and discover some sort of Peoples Temple connection. I suspect this is because the nature of the fatal finale at Jonestown simply lends itself best to this genre. Likewise, the books are all part of series. However, I think this says more about the publishing industry\u2019s desire to have something \u201cfamiliar\u201d \u2013 in this case, a recurring protagonist \u2013 than it is a commentary on the types of authors who would tackle the subject.<\/p>\n

Almost\u00a0none of the authors show much familiarity with the subject of Peoples Temple\u00a0beyond what could be gleaned through half an hour of surfing Wikipedia. The\u00a0exception to this is The Pawn<\/i>: James demonstrates a decent knowledge of the various conspiracy theories surrounding Jonestown, including a\u00a0few that are comparatively obscure. Although many of the theories have been\u00a0demonstrably debugged (at least to my own satisfaction), James takes the tack\u00a0that they are in fact true. As this is important to the narrative, I personally\u00a0don\u2019t have a problem with it.<\/p>\n

None\u00a0of the books portrays Jim Jones or Peoples Temple positively. This is understandable: while I acknowledge that Jones still has his supporters out there, he himself and the situation he created is still too infamous for any type of \u201crehabilitation\u201d or \u201ccritical rethinking\u201d in the public mind \u2013 unlike, for example, the comparatively positive protagonist portrayals of Lee Harvey Oswald in Don DeLillo\u2019s Libra<\/i> or the young struggling-artist Adolph Hitler in the movie Max<\/i>. Don\u2019t get me wrong: I\u2019m not saying Jones should<\/i> be \u201crehabilitated,\u201d I\u2019m merely opining that it might be refreshing to see some author take a more substantive tackling of him that fleshes him out or casts him in some light other than a cardboard cutout \u201ccrazy cult leader\u201d stereotype.<\/p>\n

Likewise,\u00a0the congregational members of Peoples Temple continue to be portrayed poorly,\u00a0usually as brainwashed sheep blindly following Jones. Indeed, in four of these\u00a0books, the villains are Peoples Temple survivors. Two of them have picked up\u00a0Jones\u2019 work and started their own doomsday cults. Curiously, the one book that\u00a0comes closest to giving a sympathetic portrayal is again The Pawn<\/i>,\u00a0though the sympathy is backhanded: it is the lack<\/i> of sympathy towards\u00a0the deceased that is the motive behind the villain\u2019s plot to unleash a deadly\u00a0virus upon the world.<\/p>\n

What\u00a0follows are more substantial reviews and commentary of the six novels, listed\u00a0chronologically by release date. I was unfamiliar with any of these works before beginning this article project. Each review contains a helpful context about the book, a plot synopsis (with spoilers), an analysis of the \u201cJonestown Connection,\u201d and a \u201cmy two cents\u201d commentary that may (or may not) help the curious decide if they would actually want to tackle these tomes on their own. As to the last, please keep in mind that these reviews are being written by someone whose favorite novel is Naked Lunch<\/i> and who thinks the movie A Clockwork Orange<\/i> is a comedy, so caveat lector<\/i>\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2022 Retreat\u00a0for Death<\/a> by Nick Carter<\/p>\n

\u2022 Terror In Guyana (Phoenix Force #47)<\/a> by Gar Wilson<\/p>\n

\u2022 Before\u00a0the Frost<\/a> by Henning Mankell<\/p>\n

\u2022 The\u00a0Pawn<\/a> by Steven James<\/p>\n

\u2022 The\u00a0Crazy School<\/a> by Cornelia Read<\/p>\n

\u2022 The\u00a0Hunter<\/a> by John Lescroart<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"08-02h-farrell1\"<\/a>
\n<\/a>Retreat for Death<\/em> by Nick Carter<\/p>\n

Publisher:\u00a0Charter (imprint of Ace)<\/p>\n

First printing:\u00a0August 1980<\/p>\n

Length: 213\u00a0pages<\/p>\n

Context:<\/strong> Although the\u00a0author is listed as \u201cNick Carter,\u201d that\u2019s actually the name of the\u00a0narrator\/protagonist, and the book was in fact ghostwritten by David Hagberg.\u00a0Nick Carter as a character<\/i> has a somewhat long-toothed history dating\u00a0back to 1915 with a pulp magazine called Nick Carter Weekly<\/i> that featured short stories and serialized adventures of Nick as a private detective. He has survived over the years through spin-offs on radio, a trio of movies starring Walter Pidgeon, and even a made-for-TV movie with Robert Conrad. After the success of Ian Fleming\u2019s James Bond series in the early \u201960s, Nick Carter was retooled to be a secret agent (his official title was \u201ckillmaster\u201d) working for the super-secret AXE, an off-the-books black ops organization responsible solely to the President. In Retreat for Death<\/i>, he still functions as a private detective by taking a case as a pro bono<\/i> personal favor for a friend. Apparently he has no qualms about using government personnel and resources in this private matter, but I\u2019ll give him a free pass on that: it\u2019s not like there was a cold war, hostage crisis, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Polish labor strikes, terrorist bombing in Bologna, assassination of the Turkish Prime Minister, or an upcoming U.S. presidential election that might have needed his professional attention\u2026<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Plot: <\/strong>Carter gets a surprise call from a former friend\/coworker\/lover named Pat\u00a0Staley, who is worried that her brother Don has joined what she calls a \u201ccrazy\u00a0cult\u201d (p. 12) known as The Church of the Final Reward. Don, who happens to be\u00a0worth about $50 million, is giving tons of money to the group, and has just\u00a0drafted a new will bequeathing all his assets to the church in the event of his\u00a0death. Pat thinks there\u2019s something suspicious about all this, and she\u2019d like\u00a0Carter to look into it. He agrees to snoop around, wondering if they might be\u00a0\u201c[s]omething like the Moon cult? Or Jonestown?\u201d (p. 16) and breaks into the church\u2019s\u00a0headquarters. After ransacking their computer database, he finds that several\u00a0thousand members of the church have made similar post-mortem arrangements that\u00a0leave everything to the sect. Carter concludes \u201c(t)he church, as it turned out,\u00a0was nothing more than a cleverly conceived scam to bilk people out of their\u00a0life savings. [The church officials] were nothing more than high class con men\u00a0who worked under the guise of their religion\u201d (p.\u00a096).<\/p>\n

Unfortunately,\u00a0Pat gets kidnapped by church henchmen and is secreted away to their\u00a0home-away-from-home, an immense plantation compound deep in the Brazilian rainforest\u00a0known as \u201cReward.\u201d Carter flies down to South America, and after a lengthy\u00a0journey up the Amazon that includes sporadic attacks alternately by indigenous cannibal\u00a0\u201cIndians\u201d and equally-hungry piranhas — cuz ya gotta<\/em> have piranhas in this sort of story — he reaches Reward. The entire commune is strung out on drugs\u00a0(tranquilizers to keep them docile) and shows signs of what he diagnoses as\u00a0brainwashing. Alas, Pat has become a smiling, compliant member of the commune.\u00a0Carter finally meets the church\u2019s founder, Franklin Knox, who tells our hero he\u00a0has arrived just in time for the culmination of the church\u2019s plans: The\u00a0Festival of the Final Reward. (Cue ominous thunderclap on soundtrack.)<\/i> Carter concludes of the man, \u201cHe\u2019s quite crazy, you know. I think he actually believes\u00a0in all this mumbo jumbo\u201d (p. 158).<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Festival of the Final Reward turns out to be an elaborate Rube Goldberg scheme\u00a0involving shooting each member of the church in the heart with a laser and then\u00a0letting their lifeless bodies fall off the altar and into the arms of some hungry cannibals below. Commune members are eager to line up for this. When\u00a0it\u2019s his and Pat\u2019s turn, of course, Carter is able to escape and miraculously rally\u00a0an insurrection among the masses. A three-way battle breaks out between Carter,\u00a0Knox loyalists, and the cannibal natives. Knox escapes in the bedlam, but\u00a0Carter finds him in the compound basement loading forklifts full of gold onto a\u00a0waiting C-130 Hercules cargo plane 100 yards away that somehow the entire\u00a0population of Reward had failed to notice in the past five years. Knox dies in\u00a0a gun battle, Carter is able to distract the natives with a hologram, and he\u00a0flies the remaining 425 survivors away to safety.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Jonestown Connection:<\/strong> The book\u2019s connection to Jonestown is actually a fractal of the novel itself:\u00a0superficial, ineptly handled, and collapsing under the slightest scrutiny. It\u2019s\u00a0the characters themselves who bring up the alleged connection, calling the\u00a0Church of Final Reward \u201ca Jonestown-like cult\u201d and such. Almost certainly this\u00a0was to help prejudice readers as to who the book\u2019s villain was, plus\u00a0superliminally program them \u2013 kind of like cults do \u2013 for the direction the\u00a0book was headed. Sure, there are obvious parallels such as the remote South\u00a0American setting and the mass suicide finale motif, but the similarities end\u00a0there. The theology of the CotFR is never explored, nor is Knox\u2019s back-story, save\u00a0for a two-sentence blurb that mentions he had started out as a Bible salesman\u00a0before forming his ministry. The book itself alternately calls Knox a charlatan\u00a0and a crazy true believer of his own brand. Likewise, his appeal to his\u00a0followers is never explained, so there is no hint if there was any sort of Messianic expectation of him that one would expect of a Jim Jones clone.<\/p>\n

My\u00a0Two Cents:<\/strong> Obviously, this book is not \u201cliterature,\u201d but it\u2019s not trying to be. It\u2019s a\u00a0pulp adventure novel, and as such it\u2019s okay for what it is. If you like this\u00a0sort of thing, turn your brain off and enjoy the ride. Or do what I did: treat it as the written equivalent of Plan 9 from Outer Space<\/i> and find\u00a0amusement in its over-the-top silliness. For instance, I found the trip up the\u00a0Amazon segment to be vastly improved by mentally projecting Martin Sheen\u2019s\u00a0voice as the narrator, turning it into a low-budget literary Apocalypse Now<\/i>.\u00a0Anyway, it probably goes without saying that the \u201cplot\u201d is filler to pad\u00a0between car chases, gun fights, and tawdry sex scenes. The story moves along at\u00a0an exceedingly brisk clip, in part because the author has jettisoned such\u00a0cumbersome cargo as descriptive detail, character development, words over three\u00a0syllables, and caulking to plug all those pesky plot holes.<\/p>\n

Buy\u00a0it<\/strong> on Amazon<\/a>.
\n\"08-02h-farrell2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>Terror In Guyana (Phoenix Force #47)<\/em> by Gar Wilson<\/strong><\/p>\n

Publisher: Gold\u00a0Eagle (imprint of Harlequin)<\/p>\n

First printing:\u00a0June 1990<\/p>\n

Length: 221\u00a0pages<\/p>\n

Context:<\/strong> Number 47 in\u00a0the \u201cPhoenix Force\u201d saga. Yeah, I\u2019d never heard of it either<\/i>. All books\u00a0in the series are written by various authors under the pen name Gar Wilson; Terror in Guyana<\/i> was scribed by William Fieldhouse, who helmed the\u00a0majority of the series. In the books, The Phoenix Force is a branch of Stoney\u00a0Man, an anti-terrorism outfit answerable only to the President (as\u00a0differentiated from Carter\u2019s AXE). The squad is multi-national, consisting (in\u00a0this book at least) of James (American), Encizo (expatriate Cuban), McCarter\u00a0(British), Manning (Canadian), and Katzenelenbogen (aka<\/i> Katz, Israeli\u00a0and the unit\u2019s commanding officer). Don\u2019t worry: I won\u2019t expect you to remember\u00a0any of that. While the ensemble struck me as interchangeable, there are\u00a0fleeting glimpses that each has a quirk or eccentricity to distinguish himself,\u00a0and I will concede the likelihood that this is expanded upon over the course of\u00a0the series and that fans could probably tell them apart better than I could.\u00a0Whatever the case, it is an unstated assumption that this team is the best of\u00a0the best at kicking ass and cracking skulls. Their skills are certainly aided by the special miracle equipment common to the genre that makes all shots fired by<\/i> them hit and all shots fired at<\/i> them miss.<\/p>\n

The Plot: <\/strong>News reaches\u00a0Stateside that residents of a small farming commune in rural Guyana are found\u00a0dead. Many had drunk cyanide-laced fruit punch, many were injected with\u00a0poisoned syringes. Last seen among the farmers \u2013 but missing among the bodies \u2013\u00a0were a U.S. Senator\u2019s son and his girlfriend, both down there on a humanitarian\u00a0mission. The Senator pulls some strings with the President, who sends in\u00a0Phoenix Force to investigate.<\/p>\n

After the group gets its marching\u00a0orders, there is a quick shift to Guyana where the reader gets to meet the\u00a0Villain of the Week: Otto Weissflog. The man is a second-generation Nazi: his\u00a0father was stationed in Guyana in 1942 by the Abwehr (Hitler\u2019s spy network) to\u00a0set up a potential Fifth Column. Fearing he might end up at a war crimes trial,\u00a0he stayed put after the war with the vague hope of somehow establishing a\u00a0Fourth Reich. His son Otto now carries the banner. He exposits that he is\u00a0responsible for the farmer commune tragedy, hinting that it was an unfortunate\u00a0but unavoidable speed bump on the path to his Master Plan. He calls in two\u00a0hired henchmen \u2013 mercenary commanders from Haiti and Nepal \u2013 and (while\u00a0grumbling under his breath about having to rely on non-Teutonic goons)\u00a0instructs them to begin Phase Two of his Master Plan.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Phoenix Force lands\u00a0in Georgetown. Two of the team members check into their hotel, where Weissflog\u00a0is conveniently having dinner. He invites them to join him and promptly\u00a0launches into a racist rant about Teutonic superiority. The two team members\u00a0wonder why an ostensible rubber plantation owner would need bodyguards and find\u00a0it curious the aforementioned muscle speak English with thick German accents.
\nWeissflog, conversely, wonders to himself why two ostensible photojournalists would not have cameras but would have physiques like Schwarzenegger.<\/p>\n

The Force decides it best to check\u00a0out the hamlet where the deaths occurred. Although the place has already been\u00a0combed over by police and the press, they find a spent shell and a shallow\u00a0grave containing the senator\u2019s son and his friend. One was shot by a\u00a0small-caliber weapon, the other sliced by a sword.<\/p>\n

Returning to the hotel, one Force\u00a0member finds two goons tossing his room. He subdues them, and the team busts\u00a0out the enhanced interrogation techniques<\/i> to learn that they are Haitian\u00a0mercenaries sent to find out who these \u201cjournalists\u201d really are. The Team also\u00a0learns the Haitians are camped in a valley not far away. This prompts the squad\u00a0to launch an impromptu assault on the Haitian base, which turns into a\u00a0bloodbath\u2026 for the Haitians, of course.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the ballistics on the\u00a0spent shell come in: it was fired from an old Walther P-38 \u2013 once the preferred\u00a0weapon of Nazi officers but otherwise not seen in over 40 years. At the same\u00a0time, the group learns of a refugee from the village. He had moved out a year\u00a0ago but has an interesting story to tell from that time: one day he was out in\u00a0the jungle and saw a bunch of soldiers firing rifles. They were commanded, he\u00a0said, by a blonde man who had a cavalry saber and barked orders in German.\u00a0Phoenix Force trips out to the site, and sure enough uncovers lots of spent\u00a0cartridges. Curiously, the shells came from blank rounds. They begin to posit\u00a0that someone was clandestinely holding military drills here, and formulate the\u00a0thesis that the villagers stumbled upon the mini militia and were killed to\u00a0keep them quiet. The senator\u2019s son was probably just in the wrong place at the\u00a0wrong time. Before Phoenix Force can work things out further, though, they are\u00a0ambushed by Nepalese commandos. The Force makes short work of them, of course, and then heads back to base to think this one out.<\/p>\n

The team considers the clues:\u00a0someone with a lot of money and fondness for German weaponry is secretly\u00a0training a small army. The penny drops that maybe \u2013 just maybe<\/i> \u2013 they\u00a0should take a closer look at Herr Weissflog. Fortunately, there is a gala ball\u00a0at the President\u2019s palace that very night which Weissflog is attending. The\u00a0team is able to swing invitations, and manages to plant a mic on both Weissflog\u00a0and Goddard, one of the Ministers he\u2019s chummy with. When the two go out for a\u00a0cigar smoke, they reveal that the Master Plan is to assassinate the President\u00a0and Prime Minister, orchestrating a coup that will swing Goddard into power and\u00a0establish Weissflog as the power behind the power.<\/p>\n

Realizing they have no time to lose,\u00a0Phoenix Force springs into action. Unfortunately for the innocent partygoers,\u00a0but not for the reader who hasn\u2019t seen a dead body in over 20 pages, their\u00a0attempt to warn the President and Prime Minister about the plot forces Goddard\u00a0and Weissflog\u2019s hand, and a free-for-all firefight breaks out. All the bad guys\u00a0get blown away except for Goddard (who gets arrested) and Weissflog (who\u00a0escapes to his plantation). Knowing the situation is hopeless, Weissflog\u00a0decides to go out in glory with a heroic last stand. All for naught: the\u00a0Guyanese Defense Force launches a full-scale assault \u2013 spearheaded by Phoenix\u00a0Force, of course \u2013 and Weissflog meets a gruesome end in his office.<\/p>\n

The Jonestown\u00a0Connection: <\/strong>Once\u00a0again, ties to the events at Jonestown are superficial, based on the Guyana\u00a0setting and the cyanide deaths of a small commune. Early in the novel, Phoenix\u00a0Force\u2019s Guyanese liaison speculates about the deaths, mentioning rumors of a\u00a0group of Peoples Temple survivors still at large and active in the jungle. It\u00a0is implied that Weissflog orchestrated the manner of the village\u2019s death to\u00a0look like Jonestown merely as a red herring to draw attention away from his own\u00a0group. The alleged cadre of survivors carrying on Jim Jones\u2019 work is otherwise\u00a0left unexplored, which is too bad: there\u2019s some room to run with the concept.<\/p>\n

My Two Cents:<\/strong> Now, I have to\u00a0admit a bit of skepticism and hesitancy when I saw this was published by Gold\u00a0Eagle. After all, that\u2019s a subdivision of Harlequin. Well, never fear: no\u00a0ripped bodices, boudoirs, or estrogen-fests here, no sir! Just touching the\u00a0cover of this book osmosised so much testosterone into me that I promptly\u00a0bench-pressed 500 pounds, beat up my neighbor in a \u2019roid rage, and registered\u00a0to vote Republican.<\/p>\n

In all candor, I was surprised at\u00a0how well-written this book was, at least for its type. Sure, the plot\u2019s an inch\u00a0short of ridiculous, but the prose was surprisingly solid. The author did a\u00a0decent job setting scenes with flavorful descriptions that helped paint a vivid\u00a0picture in my mind. Granted, many of those descriptions are lengthy (bordering\u00a0on fetishistic) detailing of various characters\u2019 weaponry, plus gruesome\u00a0depictions of how said items can cause bad guys to exit stage life. But hey:\u00a0I\u2019m a guy who grew up in the \u201980s, so I have a soft spot for macho\u00a0testosterschlock like Rambo<\/i> and Predator<\/i>, which this is the\u00a0literary equivalent of. If you like over-the-top macho action\/adventure, it\u2019s\u00a0pretty good\u2026 provided you suspend disbelief and lobotomize the lobe of your\u00a0brain that analyzes story lines.<\/p>\n

Buy\u00a0it on Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"08-02h-farrell4\"<\/a>
\n<\/a>Before the Frost<\/em> by Henning Mankell<\/strong><\/p>\n

Publisher:\u00a0Vintage<\/p>\n

First printing:\u00a0February 2006<\/p>\n

Length: 375\u00a0pages<\/p>\n

Context:<\/strong> Henning Mankell\u00a0is a Swedish author; this book was originally written in Swedish and translated\u00a0into (British) English by Ebba Sergeberg. Mankell had previously penned seven\u00a0books focusing on a small-town police inspector named Kurt Wallander. Although\u00a0Wallander does appear extensively in this book, the main character is his\u00a0daughter Linda. Much of the book consists of bickering between the two.<\/p>\n

The Plot:<\/strong> Linda Wallander\u00a0has just graduated from the Police Academy and is intent on following in her\u00a0father\u2019s footsteps. Kurt even takes her along on one of his cases: some sick\u00a0sadist is going around burning animals \u2013 first swans, later a cow, and\u00a0eventually a whole pet store. Meanwhile, Linda has a chance meeting with a\u00a0childhood friend named Anna Westin. Anna is excited that she has seemingly\u00a0caught a glimpse of her long-lost father, who disappeared back around 1977.\u00a0Linda and Anna make plans to meet the next day to catch up further, but when\u00a0Anna is a no-show, Linda becomes concerned. She takes it upon herself to break\u00a0into Anna\u2019s apartment to look for clues into her friend\u2019s sudden disappearance.\u00a0Seeing her opportunity to put some of her Police Academy training into practice\u00a0\u2013 especially her class on outmoded privacy rights of civilians \u2013she spends much time reading Anna\u2019s diary.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a random nature hiker\u00a0named Birgitta stumbles across a concealed hut full of odd religious artifacts,\u00a0only to be attacked by the hut\u2019s squatter. When Birgitta\u2019s daughter files a\u00a0missing-person report, Linda recognizes the name from Anna\u2019s diary and suspects\u00a0a connection. Following some conveniently-placed clues, she locates the hut,\u00a0which contains Birgitta\u2019s decapitated head, severed hands clasped in prayer,\u00a0and a blood-soaked Bible that the owner had seen fit to append with cryptic\u00a0notations and verse alterations.<\/p>\n

More concerned than ever about\u00a0Anna\u2019s safety, Linda pays a visit to Anna\u2019s college apartment and finds an\u00a0unopened (and unsigned) letter in the mailbox that simply says \u201cWe\u2019re in the\u00a0new house\u2026\u201d with explicit details on its location, and an exhortation to \u201cnever\u00a0underestimate the power of Satan. And yet we await a mighty angel descending\u00a0from the heavens in a cloud of glory\u201d (p.151).<\/p>\n

Linda visits the aforementioned\u00a0house (which is recently vacated) and does some digging around in the area\u00a0about its occupants. A real estate agent tells her the owner is currently a\u00a0shady Norwegian named Langaas. Linda tracks down his last known address in\u00a0Norway, but after being told by the flat-owners that they have never heard of the\u00a0man, she is assaulted by a dark stranger who tells her \u201cThere is no Langaas!\u201d\u00a0Further investigation finds the names of the flat-owners in Anna\u2019s diary. At\u00a0the same time, a pet store is burned down, with a fleeing suspect shouting \u201cThe\u00a0Lord\u2019s will be done!\u201d in a Norwegian accent. This is enough to convince Linda\u00a0and Kurt that the burning animals, Anna\u2019s disappearance, and Birgitta\u2019s murder\u00a0are all connected.<\/p>\n

Throughout this, brief interludes\u00a0pepper the narrative involving an unnamed man\u2019s journey from the jungles of\u00a0Guyana in 1978 to Cleveland through the \u201990s. The character survived Jonestown\u00a0with what he believed to be divine assistance, and has come to view himself as\u00a0a latter-day prophet on some sort of holy mission. Langaas was his first convert,\u00a0and he slowly built a homespun ministry of about 30 disciples before returning\u00a0to Sweden around 2000. The torching of animals was the burnt offerings of Phase\u00a0One of a Grand Scheme, and the character decides it is time to launch Phase Two,\u00a0which will result in the demolition of thirteen cathedrals. Two churches have\u00a0already been burned to the ground, and inside one are the (willingly)\u00a0sacrificed remains of one of his flock. In a \u201ctwist\u201d so blatant that even\u00a0Stevie Wonder could have seen it, it is revealed that the mystery villain\u00a0masterminding this is Anna\u2019s long-lost father, Eric Westin.<\/p>\n

As abruptly as she had vanished,\u00a0Anna reappears and reassures Linda she has been fine. She explains she has been\u00a0looking for her father, with no luck. Linda doesn\u2019t quite believe her, though,\u00a0and decides to subtly probe her for more information. Learning of this, Eric is\u00a0concerned that Linda might be getting close to \u201cThe Truth,\u201d so he orders her\u00a0kidnapped. In the midst of setting up Phase Two, he decides Linda must die.\u00a0Anna seemingly suffers remorse, so she slips Linda a cell phone. Linda calls\u00a0her dad, and they are able to figure out where she is being held. A SWAT team\u00a0stormtroopers the place, and Anna is accidentally (and lethally) wounded by her\u00a0own father during the shootout. Langaas fatally crashes his car into a tree\u00a0while escaping. Eric escapes unscathed, never to be seen again. (Mankell has\u00a0written several novels since this, but to my knowledge Eric does not appear in\u00a0any of them, so this loose end remains untied.)<\/p>\n

The Jonestown\u00a0Connection:<\/strong> The novel\u2019s prologue (pp. 3-8) is set in and around Jonestown on November 18,\u00a01978. An unnamed character (we eventually learn it\u2019s Eric) alternates between\u00a0hiding in the jungle and prowling the compound, looking among the deceased for\u00a0his wife and child. (Although never explored, it seems assumed that after Eric\u00a0left Anna and her mother, he remarried and had another child, and all three somehow\u00a0ended up members of Peoples Temple.) In an especially-unbelievable scene, we\u00a0are treated to Jim Jones himself chasing Eric around the corpses while firing\u00a0shots at him with a pistol. The next interlude (Chapter 21, pp. 138-144) picks\u00a0up with Eric in the months after Guyana, where he has slipped unnoticed back\u00a0into the United States. Much of this deals with his coming to terms with the tragic events he has just eluded, and how he increasingly believes it is divine providence that he survived. He views Jones as a false prophet and the fulfillment of 2 John 1:7 \u2013 \u201cFor many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.\u201d However, where Jones did it \u201cwrong,\u201d Eric plans to do it \u201cright.\u201d Although Eric\u2019s Master Plan is never fully explained \u2013 other than he plans to usher in an otherwise ill-defined New Age of Christianity \u2013 he does continue to acknowledge a debt to Jones: \u201cI could not have managed this without the help of\u00a0Jim Jones. He taught me how to overcome my fear of death, of urging others to\u00a0die for the greater good. He taught me that freedom and redemption only come\u00a0through bloodshed, through death, that there is no other alternative and that\u00a0someone must lead the way\u201d (p. 312). At one point, a theology expert offers her\u00a0commentary on the blood-stained Bible, assuring the Wallanders (and the reader)\u00a0that the marginal notes contain an internally-consistent religious message, and\u00a0that there is a method to the madness, if you will, but Mankell chooses not to\u00a0share any specifics with the curious.<\/p>\n

My Two Cents:<\/strong> As you can\u00a0guess, this book has a lot of subtle religion in it, most of it coming from the\u00a0author himself. The book fairly reeks of the stench of burnt offerings to the\u00a0god of plot convenience, and Mankell pulls a Jesus-like miracle of attempting\u00a0to feed the masses (of readers) with loaves of contrivance and fishy red\u00a0herrings. I have an exceedingly low threshold for such stuff. The novel is very\u00a0meandering, and absolutely chock-full of anecdotes that fill in marginally\u00a0relevant back-story but otherwise don\u2019t advance the plot or add to the\u00a0ambiance. The book is 375 pages, at most 100 of which are interesting. At\u00a0times, this book dared<\/i> me to like it. The nadir of this experience was a\u00a0scene late in the story where Linda and Kurt want to confirm that it is Langaas\u2019\u00a0voice on a 911 call. The tape has been accidentally misplaced, so Linda resorts\u00a0to doing an impression of the voice from it \u2013 despite having only heard it once\u00a0a few days previously and needing prompting on the actual verbiage \u2013 but the\u00a0witness who\u2019s met Langraas is able to say \u201cyep, that\u2019s the guy!\u201d Ow! Ow!\u00a0<\/i>Mommy, make it stop!<\/i> Although the heavy reliance of contrived \u201ccoincidence\u201d\u00a0is annoying, equally frustrating are the gaps in the narrative. I actually\u00a0don\u2019t mind books where key things are hinted at but left unexplored save by the\u00a0reader\u2019s imagination \u2013 something Ernest Hemingway and Philip K. Dick were\u00a0masters of \u2013 but I\u2019ll only give it a pass if I get the sense that the author\u00a0did indeed work out an internally-consistent narrative that, like the body of\u00a0an iceberg, is lurking murkily just below the water line. I didn\u2019t get that\u00a0vibe from this, especially in terms of Eric\u2019s story pre-Jonestown and his\u00a0warped worldview thereafter. Instead, it just feels like Mankell thought\u00a0\u201cwouldn\u2019t it be neat if\u2026\u201d and churned out some filler to bridge the gaps\u00a0between the endless father\/daughter bickering that he hoped would glue the book\u00a0together. I think he spent so much time working on Linda\u2019s back-story dynamic\u00a0to play off her father that the \u201cplot\u201d was merely an inconvenient afterthought.<\/p>\n

Buy\u00a0it on Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"08-02h-farrell3\"<\/a>
\n<\/a>The Pawn<\/strong><\/em> by\u00a0Steven James<\/p>\n

Publisher:\u00a0Revell<\/p>\n

First printing:\u00a0July 2009<\/p>\n

Length: 427\u00a0pages<\/p>\n

Context:<\/strong> This is the first\u00a0novel in an eight-part series of psychological\/crime thrillers, all of which\u00a0have chess-themed titles. The novels are centered around FBI agent Patrick\u00a0Bowers, an \u201cenvironmental criminologist\u201d who is more concerned with the space,\u00a0time, and geography of a killer\u2019s actions than the motives behind them. As he\u00a0puts it, \u201cI\u2019m not trying to get into the mind of the killer, I\u2019m trying to get\u00a0into his shoes\u201d (p. 74). Bower\u2019s wife has just died of cancer, and a subplot\u00a0throughout the series is the dysfunctional relationship between him and his stepdaughter.<\/p>\n

The Plot: <\/strong>Agent Bowers is\u00a0called in to assist investigation into a serial killer running amok in North\u00a0Carolina. At each crime scene, the murderer has left a chess pawn and tied the\u00a0victim\u2019s hair with a yellow ribbon. Although the press dub the killer \u201cThe\u00a0Yellow Ribbon Strangler,\u201d he prefers to refer to himself as \u201cThe Illusionist.\u201d\u00a0Like a stage magician, he is obsessed with misdirecting attention away from\u00a0what he is really<\/i> doing and, like a chess Grand Master, has thought his\u00a0actions out several steps in advance.<\/p>\n

The Governor, Sebastian Taylor,\u00a0calls Bower in for a private update into the case, and when Bower mentions that\u00a0one of the victims had left a clue \u2013 writing \u201cWhite Knight\u201d in her own blood\u00a0before dying \u2013 the Governor is visibly shaken. Although he claims to not know\u00a0what it means, Bowers doesn\u2019t believe him and makes a mental note to\u00a0investigate the Governor\u2019s past through some alternate channels. Meanwhile,\u00a0Bower notices a puzzling anomaly among the victims. In some, but not all,\u00a0instances, The Illusionist has left a foreshadowing trinket behind indicating\u00a0who the next victim will be. (This is another chess motif: game etiquette\u00a0states that if you touch an opponent\u2019s piece, you have to take it on your next\u00a0turn.) Two of the victims lack this, and between that and several other subtle\u00a0differences in methodology, Bower begins to suspect the work of a copycat\u00a0killer.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s right, and at this point the\u00a0reader begins to get hints of the back-story of the two killers. The\u00a0Illusionist was the son of a trailer-trash prostitute who used to lock him in\u00a0the closet while she was \u201centertaining clients.\u201d He would spend the time\u00a0playing chess in his head, but his games in the darkness ended when one of her\u00a0mother\u2019s johns strangled her to death with a yellow scarf. Already unstable,\u00a0this traumatic event pushed him over the edge. Police eventually placed him in\u00a0a state-run foster house for troubled orphans, and it was there that he met an\u00a0equally troubled youth named Aaron Kincaid, a survivor of the Jonestown tragedy\u00a0(he was playing in the jungle when the deaths began).<\/p>\n

Back on the case, a promising\u00a0suspect emerges: a local state park ranger and part-time journalist who not\u00a0only has intimate knowledge of the crime scenes but was also seen at several of\u00a0them. Bower leads a team to search his house, but The Illusionist has\u00a0booby-trapped it to explode. Bower and crew narrowly escape without fatality.\u00a0More convinced than ever that they are on the right track, they follow the\u00a0suspect\u2019s girlfriend to what turns out to be yet another elaborate trap set by\u00a0The Illusionist. In the darkness they shoot the suspect, but it turns out to be\u00a0the Ranger, drugged, gagged, and propped with toy guns taped to his hands.<\/p>\n

Bower\u2019s furious superior pull him\u00a0off the case. This gives him time to finish his inquiries into Governor Taylor.\u00a0It turns out the Governor was a CIA operative stationed in Guyana in the late\u00a01970s. What\u2019s more, the two victims of the copycat killer are revealed to be\u00a0apostate members of a strange cult run by Aaron Kincaid, the Jonestown survivor.\u00a0When Bower learns that the Peoples Temple code word for the fatal finale was\u00a0\u201cwhite night,\u201d he checks the crime scene photo of the bloody clue and realizes\u00a0that the \u201ck\u201d is a random smear: she was writing \u201cwhite night\u201d as a warning of\u00a0what her killers were planning to do shortly.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Bower isn\u2019t the only\u00a0one who realizes that the two anomalous homicides were staged to look like the\u00a0work of the Illusionist, so Kincaid can cover his tracks without suspicion on\u00a0himself. Kincaid gets a call from The Illusionist, who has not only realized that\u00a0Kincaid is the copycat killer, but also what Kincaid is ultimately planning. He\u00a0essentially blackmails Kincaid into doing a special favor for him lest he tip\u00a0off the law and spoil the surprise.<\/p>\n

The surprise is that Kincaid has\u00a0genetically bred a particularly contagious and deadly virus, and he plans to\u00a0poison everyone at an upcoming media conference the Governor is hosting. His\u00a0motive is two-fold: he recognized the Governor as part of a secret team that\u00a0had gone into Jonestown after the deaths to clean up evidence of CIA\u00a0connections, and he is getting revenge on how the media portrayed Peoples\u00a0Temple. \u201c(W)hen I arrived back in America, the media was saying the same kinds\u00a0of things the looters had said about my family [ie: that \u201ctheir brains were\u00a0asleep before, and now their bodies have joined them\u201d \u2013 p. 328]<\/i>. The world\u00a0has had thirty years to apologize, and no one, apart from a few fringe websites\u00a0and a couple of self-published books, has tried to imbue compassion and\u00a0humanity into their tale, has treated them with the respect and dignity they\u00a0deserve as human beings, as children of our common God. \u2026 That\u2019s why they\u2019re\u00a0all going to pay\u201d (p. 331).<\/p>\n

Bower confronts the Governor with\u00a0this, or at least as much as he has pieced together, but the Governor gets the\u00a0upper hand on him. Suddenly, though, Kincaid shows up, claiming to have a gift\u00a0for Bower. Before he can reveal it, a scuffle breaks out and both the Governor\u00a0and Kincaid escape. Bower chooses to chase Kincaid, and after another scuffle,\u00a0Kincaid commits suicide with a syringe full of cyanide \u2013 an authentic memento\u00a0from November 1978.<\/p>\n

Bower is able to get the CDC to\u00a0come in and prevent an infectious contagion, but then he discovers what\u00a0Kincaid\u2019s gift for him<\/i> was: his stepdaughter\u2019s locket. Realizing The\u00a0Illusionist intends to make a play for her, he rushes to her rescue but is too\u00a0late: The Illusionist already has taken her. At this point, the identity of The\u00a0Illusionist is revealed: he is an FBI agent who has been a minor background\u00a0character throughout the investigative narrative. Bower\u2019s stepdaughter is able to\u00a0free herself and cause the ambulance they were escaping in to plummet over a\u00a0cliff. The Illusionist\u2019s body is never found \u2013 but to my knowledge he does not\u00a0appear in any of the other books in the series. There is a brief coda that,\u00a0although the Governor\u2019s career is ruined, he too is still lurking out there and\u00a0planning revenge. Again, to my knowledge this is left unexplored in the other\u00a0books.<\/p>\n

The Jonestown\u00a0Connection:<\/strong> In\u00a0the novel\u2019s acknowledgements, credit and thanks are given to The Jonestown\u00a0Institute. Although James had not contacted any of the governing members of the\u00a0Institute, I don\u2019t doubt he spent considerable time researching the tragedy.\u00a0For instance, he was the only author among those that I read for this projectthat correctly spelled \u201cPeoples Temple\u201d without the apostrophe. While Bower was\u00a0researching Jonestown, he learns an impressive amount of the various conspiracy\u00a0theories that have circulated about the topic: that Jones himself had CIA\u00a0connections, that Jonestown itself was a CIA operation for the MK-ULTRA\u00a0mind-control experiment, that Representative Ryan was assassinated by a\u00a0professional hit squad, etc. All these are spread across pages 250-253 and\u00a0257-260. The especially-obscure Q875 tape \u2013 made the day after<\/i> the\u00a0tragedy \u2013 figures prominently in the book: Taylor himself had been \u201c\u2026in charge\u00a0of the wet work on the congressman\u2026 [and] (h)e\u2019d almost finished editing the\u00a0tape when the stupid kid [Kincaid] showed up\u201d (pp. 328-329). Many of the\u00a0conspiracies mentioned in the book have been either discussed if not debunked\u00a0in past issues of the jonestown report<\/i>. James takes the starting\u00a0position that they are all true, but since this is clearly a fictional novel\u00a0and those elements are necessary to the plot, I\u2019m willing to suspend disbelief\u00a0and allow it. For those curious and wishing to skip the novel and delve\u00a0directly into the recreations of Jonestown, the relevant sections are pages\u00a0122-126 and 327-331.<\/p>\n

My Two Cents:<\/strong> I liked this\u00a0book a lot, but I\u2019ve always had a soft spot for conspiracy-theories-as-plot-points\u00a0and villains who are super-geniuses with overly-elaborate schemes. Others might\u00a0not be as forgiving. Perhaps my biggest complaint would be the sketchiness of\u00a0The Illusionist\u2019s motives, which I never did fully grasp. Likewise, I never did\u00a0get a satisfactory glimpse into the workings and mindset of Kincaid\u2019s spin-off\u00a0sect. Still, James is a decent writer, and he did a good job weaving a fairly\u00a0intricate narrative. Things move quickly, and even the subplots were handled\u00a0deftly without being too distracting: unlike Before<\/i> the<\/i> Frost<\/i>,\u00a0I actually enjoyed the father\/stepdaughter bickering here. As with any crime\u00a0drama, some descriptions of what the murderer has done to his victims can be a\u00a0bit gruesome, but James was subtle enough to just hint at the gore and horror.\u00a0There was also a lurking undertone of religion throughout \u2013 James is a devout\u00a0Christian \u2013 but fortunately the book shied away from being overtly preachy.<\/p>\n

Buy\u00a0it on Amazon<\/a>.
\n\"08-02h-farrell5\"<\/a>
\n<\/a>The Crazy School<\/em> by Cornelia\u00a0Read<\/strong><\/p>\n

Publisher: Grand\u00a0Central Publishing<\/p>\n

First printing:\u00a0February 2010<\/p>\n

Length: 326\u00a0pages<\/p>\n

Context:<\/strong> The story takes\u00a0place in November 1989. <\/b>The main character and narrator in this,\u00a0Madeline Dare, also appears in other books by the author. <\/b>There are\u00a0brief hints of the previous book, A Field of Darkness<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Before becoming a writer, Ms. Read\u00a0was a teacher at the DeSisto therapeutic boarding school in Tanglewood,\u00a0Massachusetts. That school became the subject of controversy when one student,\u00a0Heather Burdick, ran away\/escaped from it and began telling horror stories\u00a0(some true, some not) about her experiences there. This was the first of\u00a0numerous problems for the school and its founder, Michael DeSisto. The school\u00a0was eventually shut down in 2004 due to a combination of low enrollment and\u00a0legal difficulties, including allegations from the Commonwealth that the school\u00a0promoted \u201can environment that endangers the life, health, and safety of\u00a0children enrolled.\u201d Read openly admits that the fictional Santangelo Academy of The Crazy School<\/i> is a thinly-veiled allusion to her\u00a0experiences at DeSisto, of which she says<\/a>:\u00a0\u201cI am still haunted by what was done there in the name of therapy, and have\u00a0never felt more strongly that I was in the presence of pure evil.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Plot:<\/strong> Madeline Dare, a\u00a026-year-old teacher, has just taken a job at the Santangelo Academy, a\u00a0therapeutic boarding school in the Massachusetts Berkshires that caters to\u00a0troubled teens. The students are mandatorily medicated with mood-stabilizers\u00a0and antipsychotics like Lithium and Thorazine. Everyone \u2013 faculty, students,\u00a0and parents \u2013 are required to participate in daily therapy sessions that are as\u00a0ineffective as they are ridiculous. Life on campus is heavily regulated, with things\u00a0like caffeine and tobacco being verboten. These rules are almost universally\u00a0broken by faculty members, including Dr. Santangelo himself, who has an\u00a0espresso machine in his office. With all the rules and security, Madeline\u00a0begins to wonder \u2013 only half-jokingly \u2013 if she\u2019s joined some sort of cult: \u201c\u2026if\u00a0I stay here one more week, they\u2019re gonna shave my head and make me sell flowers\u00a0at the airport\u201d (p. 46).<\/p>\n

When a favorite student of hers\u00a0named Mooney punches a window, Madeline has a quick heart-to-heart with him\u00a0while waiting for the ambulance. Mooney confides that he has just learned that\u00a0fellow student (and his secret girlfriend) Faye is pregnant, which\u00a0understandably has thrown a monkey wrench into their plans to run away together\u00a0in a few days when Faye turns 18. As punishment for the window, Mooney is\u00a0exiled to a secluded subdivision of the school known as The Farm. Faye commits\u00a0an infraction to get sentenced there so she can join him.<\/p>\n

About this time, one of the deans\u00a0named Dhumavati tells Madeline she\u2019s taking a brief sabbatical and wants to\u00a0know if Madeline would like to fill in for her. Madeline says it\u2019s a terrible\u00a0idea, but agrees to think about it. The scene for this is a small garden that\u00a0has a plaque reading \u201cEverything grows well in this place, especially the\u00a0children.\u201d A small bench is inside, in honor of Dhumavati\u2019s deceased daughter;\u00a0the dates read April 3, 1970 – November 18, 1978.<\/p>\n

Madeline manages to throw a\u00a0birthday party for Faye with most of the staff in attendance, but in the midst\u00a0of it begins to feel sick and light-headed. She goes outside, begins vomiting\u00a0and hallucinating, and passes out. Madeline awakens the next day at a faculty\u00a0friend\u2019s house, only to learn that the previous night Mooney and Faye had\u00a0apparently committed suicide by drinking poisoned punch.<\/p>\n

Madeline doesn\u2019t buy that it\u2019s a\u00a0suicide, especially when she finds Fay\u2019s treasured necklace (which she said she\u00a0would never take off) broken and in her coat pocket. She passes her concerns\u00a0onto the police, who agree to look into things. Unfortunately, their\u00a0investigation reveals Madeline\u2019s fingerprints on the poisoned cups the two\u00a0victims drank from. Between that, her unexplained possession of Faye\u2019s locket,\u00a0and her own dark, violent past (presumably detailed in A Field of Darkness<\/i>), she becomes the prime suspect and is arrested. She uses her\u00a0one phone call to redeem a favor from a very rich, influential uncle, who in\u00a0turn pulls some strings with a prestigious Boston law firm to get Madeline some\u00a0top-notch legal defense. Thanks to her attorney, she\u2019s able to make bail.<\/p>\n

Madeline and her attorney promptly\u00a0launch their own investigation to find the killer. A promising suspect is\u00a0another teacher named Gerald, who was in charge of punch distribution at the\u00a0fatal party. Madeline chums him up, during which he confesses his motives for\u00a0being at the Academy. His sister was a former student\/patient here, but she was\u00a0raped (he suspects by Santangelo), became pregnant, and was then found dead of\u00a0an apparent suicide. He has infiltrated the faculty in an effort to uncover who\u00a0is behind his sister\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

The culprit suddenly reveals\u00a0herself by bursting through the door and shooting Gerald. It\u2019s Dhumavati, of\u00a0course, and in a sudden fit of Super-Villain Expository Monologue Syndrome, she\u00a0spills the whole story. Both she and Dr. Santangelo were members of Peoples\u00a0Temple in its Indiana stage. Santangelo was her baby\u2019s father. When Jim Jones\u00a0relocated to California, Dhumavati followed him while Santangelo went off to\u00a0college. Dhumavati rose to Jones\u2019 inner circle, and did indeed give her child\u00a0the cyanide during the fatal White Night. Obviously, she had a literally\u00a0last-minute change of heart when it came to be her own turn. Santangelo finally\u00a0sent for her in Guyana, and the two resumed their rather warped codependent\u00a0relationship, with Dhumavati shifting her love and loyalty from Jones to\u00a0Santangelo. She killed Gerald\u2019s sister because of the rape\/pregnancy, and did\u00a0likewise with Faye because she, too, was raped by Santangelo. Now she intends\u00a0to kill Madeline because she knows too much, attempting to make it look like a\u00a0repentant suicide. During the struggle on the roof, though, it is Dhumavati who\u00a0falls to her death.<\/p>\n

In a brief coda, two disgruntled\u00a0students blow up Dr. Santangelo\u2019s helicopter\u2026 with him in it.<\/p>\n

The Jonestown\u00a0Connection:<\/strong> Although it\u2019s tempting to attempt to view the Santangelo Academy as Jonestown\u00a0and cast Santangelo himself as Jones, this is superficial and contrary to the\u00a0author\u2019s own stated commentary that the school and its founder are patterned\u00a0after the DeSisto School and Michael DeSisto. At best the parallels are a happy\u00a0coincidence. Still, the author went out of her way to plant seeds to foreshadow\u00a0where the book was headed, with about a half-dozen references scattered\u00a0throughout in dialogue and description. Most of them are obvious to people\u00a0familiar with the subject; indeed, at the end of the book, one of Madeline\u2019s\u00a0students snarkily points out that she should have figured this out from all the\u00a0blatant clues. Read has also clearly listened to Q042 (the \u201cDeath Tape\u201d of\u00a011\/18\/78) and has Dhumavati quote from it twice during her recounting of her\u00a0story on pages 296-297.<\/p>\n

My Two Cents:<\/strong> I liked this\u00a0book. Granted, I have a soft spot for spunky, sarcastic heroines, but there\u2019s\u00a0some clever dialogue and witty descriptions in this. I\u2019m half-tempted to call\u00a0it \u201ca hoot.\u201d Of course, the weakest aspect was the plot, but given the author\u2019s\u00a0intention to do a parody of her DeSisto days, I\u2019ll be lenient. She did a decent\u00a0job of crafting a paranoid who-can-you-trust?<\/i> vibe, and I\u2019ll give her\u00a0bonus points for references to counterculture and anti-pop like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas<\/i> and 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/i>.\u00a0Of the six books I read for this article, The<\/i> Crazy<\/i> School<\/i> wasn\u2019t the best, but it was the one I enjoyed the most.<\/p>\n

Buy\u00a0it on Amazon<\/a>.
\n\"08-02h-farrell6\"<\/a>
\n<\/a>The Hunter<\/em> by John Lescroart<\/strong><\/p>\n

Publisher:\u00a0Penguin<\/p>\n

First printing:\u00a0January 2012<\/p>\n

Length: 400\u00a0pages<\/p>\n

Context:<\/strong> This is the\u00a0third book in a series featuring a San Francisco private investigator named\u00a0Wyatt Hunt who runs a detective agency called The Hunt Club. The book contains\u00a0a hefty subplot about the burgeoning romance between Hunt and one of his\u00a0employees. Dismas Hardy and Abe Glitsky, respective protagonists in two other\u00a0series by the author, also have cameos in this.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Plot: <\/strong>In\u00a01974, Wyatt Hunt was adopted by a foster family, and since then the\u00a0number of times he\u2019s thought about his birth parents could be counted on one\u00a0hand. All that changes when he gets an anonymous text message asking, \u201cDo you\u00a0know how your mother died?\u201d Hunt didn\u2019t; indeed, he didn\u2019t even know who his\u00a0parents were or that one of them was dead. Somewhat intrigued, he begins\u00a0looking into the question and finds the answer in the musty archives of Child\u00a0Protection Services: his mother was murdered in 1971. What\u2019s more, his father\u00a0stood trial for it twice, both times resulting in a hung jury. When Hunt gets a\u00a0follow-up text asking if he\u2019s made any progress, the Texter drops a bombshell:\u00a0the murderer was not Hunt\u2019s father, but someone else who is still alive. Citing\u00a0personal danger, the Texter refuses to reveal more but encourages Hunt to\u00a0continue digging into the matter.<\/p>\n

Hunt\u00a0essentially hires himself as a client to look into both his mother\u2019s murder and\u00a0the identity (and motives) of the mystery Texter. One lead that at first seems\u00a0promising is a friend of his mother, Evie Secrist, who is described by people\u00a0who knew her as \u201ca fundamentalist, cult-following religious nutcase\u201d (p.\u00a089). It turns out that \u201cSecrist\u201d was a home-spun homophone for \u201cSee Christ\u201d and her real (married) name was Spencer. Using his Google-fu, Hunt discovers (on a site suspiciously reminiscent of the Alternative Considerations of Jonestown\u00a0and Peoples Temple<\/a> website!) that she was a fatality at Jonestown in 1978. Hunt thinks that this is literally a dead end, but when the Texter contacts him for a progress update\u00a0and Hunt mentions Evie, the Texter tells him he\u2019s on the right track.<\/p>\n

Evie\u2019s\u00a0ex-husband, Lawrence Spencer, is still alive and local. However, he seems\u00a0unwilling to dredge up the past to Hunt\u2019s polite probing, other to say that he\u00a0had been a former member of Peoples Temple but left due to Jones\u2019 manipulation\u00a0of Evie. Meanwhile, Hunt continues digging both into his mother\u2019s and Jones\u2019\u00a0past, and discovers that both were from Indiana. Suspecting a connection, Hunt\u00a0flies out to Indianapolis looking for clues. He finds them, too: in articles\u00a0relating to Peoples Temple located within the archives of The Indianapolis\u00a0<\/i>Star<\/i>, he discovers a half-dozen pictures of his teenaged mother. What\u2019s\u00a0more, he discovers that her mother \u2013 his grandmother \u2013 is still alive and well.\u00a0She confirms that his mother was in Peoples Temple, and that Jones had been\u00a0having a sexual relationship with her since she was eleven years old. Hunt\u00a0forms a hypothesis: his mother eventually left Peoples Temple and moved to San\u00a0Francisco to escape Jones, but when Jones relocated his ministry there and the\u00a0newly-converted Evie tries to reconcile her friend back into the fold, his\u00a0mother threatens to blow the whistle about her under-aged dalliance with Jones.\u00a0Jim Jones had her killed to shut her up.<\/p>\n

Back\u00a0in San Fran, one of the Hunt Club investigators named Orloff makes a follow-up\u00a0visit to Lawrence Spencer, only to be murdered minutes after. Lawrence himself\u00a0is found dead a few days later, ostensibly a suicide, and the police think\u00a0everything ties up nicely: Lawrence killed both Hunt\u2019s mother and Orloff, then\u00a0himself. Hunt doesn\u2019t buy it, though, and his suspicions are confirmed by a\u00a0message from the Texter: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t Lawrence.\u201d At the same time, Hunt gets the\u00a0penultimate piece of the puzzle: the location of his biological father, who has\u00a0been living under the radar in Mexico the past three decades. After a teary yet\u00a0cheerful reunion, Hunt\u2019s father fills in some of the last gaps in the mystery.\u00a0Lawrence Spencer, he says, lied about leaving Peoples Temple: he was a\u00a0high-placed henchman who was partly responsible for handling finances,\u00a0specifically squirreling away millions of dollars in Temple assets in various\u00a0secret bank accounts around the world. What\u2019s more, Lawrence had a brother\u00a0named Lance who was Jones\u2019 personal bodyguard and enforcer. A light bulb goes\u00a0off over Hunt\u2019s head: the murderer was Lance, and the Texter is his wife Dotie.\u00a0She had found out Lance\u2019s dirty secret, but had also previously hired Hunt on\u00a0an unrelated matter and put together who his father was. In the novel\u2019s\u00a0climactic scene, Hunt confronts Lance, who conveniently exposits the truth of\u00a0the Jones-put-a-hit-on-the-mom-to-shut-her-up theory before Hunt himself shoots\u00a0Lance dead. After that, everyone lives happily ever after\u2026 at least until the\u00a0next book in the series.<\/p>\n

The Jonestown\u00a0Connection: <\/strong>Peoples\u00a0Temple plays a major part in The Hunter<\/i> as background to several\u00a0characters, as well as serving as the mortar binding the mother\u2019s murder.\u00a0Lescroart clearly did a moderate amount of research on the subject, and a\u00a0fairly succinct summary of the events leading to the morbid meltdown of 1978\u00a0appear between pp. 128-130. One of the threads the author chose to expand upon\u00a0was the matter of the missing money, a matter that seemingly is traced back to old\u00a0newspaper articles containing the confessions of Terri Buford. Buford claimed\u00a0the deaths were partly to cover up the theft of over $26 million in Temple\u00a0funds. Elements of this appear in The Hunter<\/i>, where the Spencer\u00a0twins are pinned with the theft.<\/p>\n

My Two Cents:<\/strong> Most of North\u00a0America probably heard my sigh of relief when Hunt met his father, because I\u00a0had made a call early on that the twist in the book would be the revelation\u00a0that Hunt\u2019s dad was none other than Jim Jones himself. Fortunately no go on\u00a0that, so once past that potentially cornball roadblock, I let myself enjoy it.\u00a0Although this book takes a bit to get momentum, once it does get going. it\u2019s\u00a0pretty good. Lescoart\u2019s a solid writer, and occasionally amusing to boot. While\u00a0he\u2019s not as laugh-out-loud funny as mystery\/crime authors like Gregory Mcdonald\u00a0or Donald Westlake, I did chuckle a half-dozen times.<\/p>\n

Buy\u00a0it on Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(Matthew Thomas\u00a0Farrell is a regular contributor to <\/em>the jonestown report. His other\u00a0article in this edition is <\/i>Bungle\u00a0in the Jungle: A Review of <\/i>Citizen Lane<\/a>. His earlier\u00a0writings for this site are collected here<\/a>. He can be\u00a0contacted at saint@extremezone.com<\/a><\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In\u00a0their continuing quest for gripping narrative elements with which to hook the reader, it should come as no surprise that authors occasionally mine tragedies involving \u201ccults.\u201d A. W. Hill\u2019s Enoch\u2019s Portal uses the Solar\u00a0Temple, David Mitchell\u2019s Ghostwritten alludes heavily to Aum Shinrikyo,\u00a0and Madison Smartt Bell\u2019s The Color of Night contains a thinly-disguised reworking of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":34357,"menu_order":17,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-34251","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34251"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120504,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34251\/revisions\/120504"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}