Musings from Brian J. Noggle

I spotted this book in Barnes and Noble while I was gorging on new books for some reason. I think I had a little time to kill, so I thought I’d go into the book store and let the children pick up a book or two, and suddenly I had a stack of books, including this one.

Woody P. Snow is a local radio personality; I catch bits of his show in the mornings sometimes. And, as you know, I’ve done a little research of my own into the Yocum Silver Dollar (well, I read Traces of Silver). I’ve thought about writing a piece of nonfiction about it, but not about writing a novel about it.

This book has a couple pages of modern day narrative to frame it: a diver finds one of the silver dollars in the lake and shows it to his grandmother, who told him stories about it but now is in the grip of dementia. Then, without ado, we go back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. James Yoachum loses his wife in childbirth, goes mad, and wanders into the wilderness. He eventually makes his way into the Ozarks and is rescued and later adopted by an Indian tribe. He wins the heart of the chief’s daughter and learns the tribe’s secret, and the source of its silver jewelry: an old Spanish silver mine. A fur company puts in a trading post, the area surrounding the trading post grows, but the citizens are left without a currency when the fur company moves out. Yoachum begins making the coins with the help of his brother and his Indian wife. All goes well until the United States Government moves in, surveys the land, and makes the residents pay for their land, and some try with the silver dollars.

It’s a decent, straight forward story, but it does suffer a bit the same way that Downton Abbey suffers: time passes, often in blocs of months or years, and nothing seems to change in the characters during the interim. It’s a minor flaw, but one nevertheless. The story ends thirty years after it begins, and at the end, one of the characters announces a pregnancy, and she must be into her forties by that time.

At any rate, I enjoyed the book.

Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself, “Brian’s read two historical novels this year set in the Ozarks. I wonder how he would compare them?” Well, friends, I’m probably the only one in the whole world who would dare compare Daniel Woodrell’s The Maid’s Version to Woody P. Snow’s book.

Here’s how they’re similar:

• Both authors have “Wood” in their names.
• Both books are based on historical (or perhaps legendary events).

Here’s how they differ:

• Woodrell’s book goes backwards and forwards through time and jumps points of view. Snow sticks to the semi-omniscient narrator.
• Snow’s prose is more straightforward than Woodrell’s.
• Snow’s book does not have much in the way of unrelated asides or actions from characters who aren’t integral to the plot.

None of this is unexpected, of course, given their respective writing careers and goals. But it’s still amusing to consider comparing and contrasting the two.

Worth a read.

Books mentioned in this review:

It seems like I read one Ross Thomas book a year, so I picked up this book. It looks as though my reading has been skipping through Thomas’s decades of writing, with my first read being 1972’s The Porkchoppers and my second being 1982’s The Mordida Man

Like the latter, this book is a straight ahead thriller, and it’s the third book using the same set of characters–but the first I’d read. I was going along, thinking Thomas’s books were all one shots and appreciating the wonder of the detailed back story he’d created for each of these characters until I researched it and realized he was rehashing things from earlier books. I don’t know if this soured me, but I think that the glimpses of the back story stood in for character development. The motives of some of them were unclear, but it was responses to earlier actions not covered in this book. Sadly, this was less effective.

The plot revolves around a London-based, American-run detective agency that is hired to find two hypnotists. The hypnotists were hired to consult with a Hollywood film actress arrested for the murder of her boyfriend, a wealthy producer. After consulting with her, the hypnotists vanished, and no one is sure whether they vanished because they found out something or if they are to blackmail the starlet with revelations she made while under oath.

The two detectives get the old band back together. This band includes a former Secret Service agent they have to spring from a Phillipine prison; a con artist; and an aging fixer/procurer/scrounger. They rent a house in Malibu and begin their investigations.

As I said, I think ultimately, the author relied a bit much on the reader being familiar with the previous books in the series. Individuals really weren’t that well delineated in the text, and the ensemble plotted a bit behind the scenes against itself. Which was revealed a bit in the climax and beyond, but not so much in text. And the ultimate solution to the murder–which differs from the solution for the problem for which the agency was hired–was kinda tacked on and not integral to the main story arc.

The book wasn’t the best of the Thomas books I’ve read. It’s his penultimate work, and at the back of the book, they have the page to order a number of his other books. None of which I’ve read (yet). I thought this book was so-so, and I’m hopefully that reading his earlier work will show that it evolved to this book: that is, a straight ahead, indistinguishable paperback thriller whose predecessors, so to speak, were better.

Books mentioned in this review:

Am I cheating in my annual book count by counting this book? You bet I am. I actually re-read this book.

I picked this up at a mall on the corner of Fond du Lac and Silver Spring back when it was a little mall with shops and everything. I was in middle school or high school, and by the time I was in college, the mall was just a record store (Mainstream) and a bowling alley at the other end. But for a moment in the 1980s, it had a five and dime in it, and I bought this book for a quarter or something.

At any rate, my oldest child has found my Garfield collections (which I also count). So I remembered this volume and got it out for him, and he was unimpressed.

It’s a collection of cat pictures with speech bubbles. And it’s a sequel to another book that apparently sold enough to warrant the sequel. But. The little quips are amusing, but not what I’d call funny.

You see, the novelty is that it’s cat pictures. With speech bubbles.

It’s the 80s equivalent of half the Internet. It’s a bit of arcana. And it’s amusing to me because the quips are amusing and because I remember being amused by this book when I was young.

But your mileage may vary.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book continues my recent trend of military history paperbacks, almost. The trend began with The Battle Off Of Midway Island and continued with Sink the Bismarck!. I guess the trend is also from nonfiction to fiction, as this is not a book about the actual exploits of US GIs. Instead, it is a collection of six short stories set in World War II and the Korean War.

The Collaborator tells the story of an ex-GI living in China when the Japanese invade. He is forced to collaborate with them, culminating in them using him as an infiltrator during an American invasion of a small island. However, their hold on him is broken, and he can finally get revenge.

The Soldier Who Had No Gun shows the story of a chaplain who accompanies a tired, dispirited platoon on a dangerous mission to flank a German stronghold and how he rejuvenates the group.

In The Trap, a British guerrilla war expert is in a plane shot down over a jungle. Pursued by the Japanese, he and his two American airmen have to sneak to safety, and the Brit learns a little something about guerrilla warfare from a native American.

Set in Korea, Night Attack covers a ROK assault on a thinly stretched American position immediately after a platoon sargeant is promoted to lieutenant, and his new platoon sargeant is another man passed over for the job.

In The Raid, a team of specialists is sent to a Japanese prison camp to rescue a submarine commander with knowledge of an upcoming assault. They are to extract him if they can, and to kill him if he cannot.

Operation Christrose tells about a fresh lieutenant coming to a quiet part of the front and leading his platoon on a scouting trip across the river–and into the camp of a German army massing for a surprise break out.

These stories appeared in men’s magazines and The Saturday Evening Post between 1944 and 1963, so between Right Now and 20 years later. They’re pretty vivid accounts and better reading than the normal pulp paperbacks I read.

The one Korea story, and the Korean veterans I saw speak at a recent memorial dedication, have brought to mind how forgotten that war is. Whereas World War II continues to throw off films and culture and whereas the Vietnam War overserves as a metaphor, you don’t get a lot of fiction or film out of the Korean War. And what a brutal place it was to fight.

So I enjoyed this short collection and really see myself going on a 20th century war tear here for a bit.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book is the third of the three in the Conan set by Robert E. Howard.

This volume includes:
“The Servants of Bit-Yakin” wherein Conan climbs into a hidden redoubt with a temple in it. Priests seek audience from an oracle within the temple, and a faction has brought along a woman to act as the oracle and to order the priests to put Conan to the death. Conan, of course, has other plans, including collecting the mythical jewels said to be in the temple or nearby.

“Beyond the Black River” which takes place in the wilderness at the Pictish frontier. A shaman of the Picts is getting ready to lead the clans against settlers in the area, and Conan and some others try to delay them enough for the settlers to escape.

“The Black Stranger” A nobleman has brought his retinue to a coast of the Pictish wilderness to escape someone pursuing him. One day, pirates show up looking for a treasure rumored to be nearby, and the nobleman might have to ally with two competing bands of buccaneers to escape his pursuer. Then Conan shows up with knowledge of the treasure, and he plays all ends to get a ship of his own.

“Man-Eaters of Zamboula” deals with an inn and a town with a deadly secret–at night, certain savages collect those out-of-doors and those unlucky enough to stay in a particular inn for a grisly feast. And Conan finds himself in that room.

“Red Nails” finds Conan pursuing a woman warrior who has fled from their mercenary crew after fending off an unwanted advance with deadly result. Conan and the woman find a strange city on a plain where a society has degenerated to two warring factions opposing each other from different sides of the large building that is the city.

So these plots, again, are more complicated and less repetitive.

It’s interesting that these, the last of the Conan stories, often take place on the frontier and Conan takes on a certain Natty Bumpo/the Deerslayer vibe to him. I wonder how much Howard wanted to do that. Of course, in the writing chronology this holds true, but in the chronology of Conan’s life, he is not relocating further and further from civilization, and certainly not for the same reasons.

So I was a bit sad to have finished the Conan stories. I mean, I’ve got the other Howard things to go through sometime (after I buy them), and there are some non-Howard Conan books to read. But not the original. Not the original.

And Howard did all this by the time he was 30. Sometimes, when I was young, I thought I’d like to live the pulp writer lifestyle, banging out these works for a couple hundred bucks a throw and living in a seedy apartment while I did so. I never did make many sales. As a matter of fact, by the time I was 30, I’d only sold a single short story for five bucks to a magazine made on a photocopier. Ah, well, I guess I still have a chance to make it as a pixulp writer if I turn my mind to it.

And good reads like these Conan stories are just the thing to inspire one to become a writer.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book is the second in the three books that make up the complete set of stories that Howard wrote featuring Conan the Cimmerian. As you will remember, I read the first, The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian in January.

This book features three tales:

“The People of the Black Circle” features Conan carrying off the queen of a country to use as ransom for some of his followers. She’s seeking revenge on a band of magicians for the death of her brother, and as Conan and she flee from a magician following them, they team up to defeat the magicians.

“The Hour of the Dragon” is the only Conan novel, and it tells the story of how Conan loses the kingdom of Aquilonia and works to get it back.

“A Witch Shall Be Born” talks about a female ruler deposed by her presumed dead twin sister who was left to die at birth because she had a witch’s mark upon her. Instead of dying, she goes onto become a witch and impersonates her sister, a benevolent ruler, until Conan puts a stop to it.

One of the knocks I had on the first book was that the stories were a little formulaic and repetitive at times; with this book and the three stories within it, Howard has concocted some more elaborate plots that are difficult to sum up in the single sentences above. Which is good.

Not only am I continuing to be impressed with this series, but I think I’ll pick up some of Howard’s non-Conan work. Maybe with Christmas’s gift cards.

Books mentioned in this review: