Dracula, Christian Hero!

In this article, Raymond Ibrahim argues that Count Dracula, Vlad the Impaler (1428-1477), was a Christian hero whose image has been tarnished by fake news.  Interesting.  In the 15th Century, the Ottoman Turks were ascendant.  The Turks had finally conquered the Byzantine Empire's capitol of Constantinople in 1453 and would surge to the gates of Vienna by 1688.  Vlad's Romania was not spared the Islamic Jihad that battered the waning Christian kingdoms.  It is noteworthy that Vlad fought fire with fire.  Muslims practiced impalement, but none of them have come down through history as such & such the Impaler.  Why is that?  Fake news.  Why is Dracula associated with Christianity gone bad rather than a warrior against Islam?  Fake news.

This is a fascinating reconsideration of Count Dracula, but it fits with other twisted history.  All too often whenever one talks of the clash of Christianity and Islam, apologists will declare that the West had the Crusades.  Yes, but why?  In the 7th Century, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, North Africa, Turkey, and Syria were dominated by Christianity.  Islam conquered all of this territory and, by 732, fought the Battle of Tours in France!  The Crusades was a pathetic response against the ongoing attacks.  Even today, the conflicts between Muslims and Jews is almost always laid at the feet of the Jews.

Yes, I'm sold.  Dracula got bad press.

News of the World (2020)

It is 1870 and Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks) is a news reader in reconstruction era Texas.  He travels from town to town and reads newspapers at a public gathering, charging a dime for entry.  On his way from Wichita Falls, he comes across an overturned wagon and a black man hanged from a tree.  He also encounters a girl in Indian attire.  Documents at the wagon show that Johanna Leonberger had recently been 'rescued' from Kiowa - her parents and sister had been killed 6 years before and she was kidnapped - and was being returned to family in Castroville, Texas.  Kidd is still trying to reassure the girl that he means her no harm when a patrol of Union soldiers arrive on scene.  After demanding to see his loyalty oath and making sure he wasn't armed (his shotgun was only loaded with birdshot), they left the scene unchanged.  Ah, those friendly blue bellies.  Yes, they leave it to a former Confederate officer to cut down the lynched black man from the tree and give him a proper burial.  Of course, he does, because he's a good man.  Riding into the next town, Kidd tries to hand Johanna to the locals.  No luck.  Finally, he decides to take her himself.  There then follows a series of unlikely adventures as the pair travel south.  First, central Texas has become a desert that looks very like New Mexico.  Well, that's not as bad as Texas Rising, but is still distracting.  They must contend with a trio of pedophiles, an unrepentant Confederate who is slaughtering buffalo, a faulty wagon drawn by a frantic horse down a cliffside road, a haboob, and an inability to communicate with one another.  Johanna speaks only Kiowa and a few words of German while Kidd speaks English and a few words of German that do not overlap with Johanna's words.

Kidd views the troubles of his life as a punishment for the things he had done.  One is led to believe that he is speaking about his service in the Civil War.  Kidd served in the 3rd Texas Infantry, which fought exactly one battle.  Mostly, it had garrison duty in Texas.  Hardly a record to deserve divine punishment.  Prior to the war, he was a printer, which explains his current profession of newsreader.  Again, hardly something deserving of divine punishment.

A slow-paced Western that missed the point of the story.  Clearly, this is meant to be a story about the growing attachment of the two main characters, but instead it is a series of unfortunate events on the road to Castroville.  Mediocre.

General William Jenkins Worth - The American Murat

In his PhD dissertation, Edward Seccomb Wallace researched the life of General William Jenkins Worth, hero of the Battle of Monterrey.  That battle was the high watermark of Worth's career.

The book details the Worth family and how the son of a whaler became a soldier rather than a sailor.  Joining the army during the War of 1812, Worth found himself serving with Winfield Scott.  The two would become fast friends for the next 30 years.  Worth was seriously wounded in the leg and had a limp for the remainder of his life.  He became the first Commandant of Cadets at West Point, a position he held while Robert E. Lee was a cadet.  The man who succeeded him, Ethan Allen Hitchcock, became a lifelong antagonist.  From West Point, Worth became the commanding officer of the newly formed 8th Infantry.  The 8th was posted along the Great Lakes to prevent a Canadian independence movement from using the US as a hideout and also to prevent Americans from supporting the rebels; a very peculiar situation.  He was later sent to Florida, where he became the leader who finally 'won' the Second Seminole War (1835-1842).  The annexation of Texas in 1845 saw Worth and the 8th Infantry posted in Corpus Christi and later marching to the Rio Grande.  Thinking that there would be no fighting and having been disrespected by the military (as he saw it), Worth resigned.  A month later, the war had commenced and his men had fought both Palo Alto and Resaca de La Palma without him.  Chagrined, Worth withdrew his resignation and hastened to the Rio Grande again.  Now he had to somehow restore his tarnished reputation.  He intended to achieve promotion or death.  His standout performance at Monterrey in September 1846 earned him the promotion he desired.  He served with Windfield Scott again during the march to Mexico City, but they were no longer friends.  After the war, he was posted in San Antonio, TX, where he died from cholera in 1849.

The most interesting part of the book is the political rivalry among the generals.  Though often mentioned in books on the Mexican-American War, it is generally told from Hitchcock's perspective.  As such, Worth is often seen as one part of a spiteful triumvirate of officers.  Here, that story is flipped on its head and Ethan Allen Hitchcock comes across as a devious manipulator.  Hitchcock had been Worth's subordinate at West Point.  Later, he was given the rank of major in Worth's 8th Infantry but did not report for duty.  No, he was on long term detached assignment, something fairly common at the time.  However, that left Worth without a major.  Later, when the 8th was in Florida, Hitchcock somehow wrangled repeated extended leaves from duty.  Worth developed a very low opinion of Hitchcock.  However, Hitchcock was a master of regulation and the lawyerly side of the military.  Both Worth and Hitchcock were on the Rio Grande in April 1846.  Worth, who had a brevet rank of brigadier general but a lineal rank of colonel, viewed himself as the obvious second in command to General Taylor.  However, Colonel David Twiggs had only the lineal rank of colonel but this pre-dated Worth's lineal rank.  Hitchcock argued on Twiggs side (behind the scenes, of course) despite the fact that he well knew that Worth was the far more competent commander.  Taylor dodged a decision on the matter by sending it to Washington.  Washington, lobbied by Hitchcock, favored Twiggs.  When word returned to the Rio Grande that Twiggs outranked him, an indignant Worth resigned.  A few days later, Hitchcock requested leave and also departed.  This was not the last clash between Worth and Hitchcock.  As Worth died in 1849 and Hitchcock lived until 1870, history mostly remembers Hitchcock's point of view.  Hitchcock was a prolific writer and diarist.  By contrast, there is only correspondence to tell Worth's side of things.

Unsurprisingly, my opinion of Worth was greatly improved by this book.  Though certainly possessed of an inflated ego - he wasn't called "Haughty Bill" for nothing - he was a competent and diligent leader who could be relied upon to get the job done.  Here is an outstanding biography of a now little known general.  Fort Worth, Texas was named in his honor.

Quigley Down Under (1990)

Matthew Quigley (Tom Selleck) arrives in Freemantle, Australia in the 1870s.  He has hardly gotten off the ship than he gets into a brawl with a trio of men trying to load Crazy Cora (Laura San Giacomo) onto a wagon.  The fight is somewhat comical, and it turns out the three men were also there to escort Quigley to the Marston Ranch.  Elliott Marston (Alan Rickman) greets Quigley and demands a demonstration of his marksmanship.  Quigley impresses everyone with his accuracy.  Marston fancies himself as a quickdraw and demonstrates his skills on a pair of British deserters.  The two men retire to the main house for dinner where Marston explains his need of a marksman.  The aborigines are a real pain and vanish before his men can get in range.  Quigley reacts poorly and soon finds himself dragged into the desert to die, Crazy Cora at his side.  Instead, Quigley turns the tables on Marston's goons but is still left stranded in the desert.  Can Quigley survive the desert and exact revenge on Marston?

Though entertaining, there are some plot holes that grate.  When told that he was being hired to shoot Aborigines, he assaulted Marston.  How did he expect this to end?  How about his insistence on using his rifle?  The big reveal at the end when it turns out he is quite skilled with a revolver makes you wonder why he didn't make use of revolvers throughout once he was roped into this game of death?  Why is he a great marksman?  We are never told what he was shooting in the United States.  Was he a Civil War veteran?  Why doesn't the wanted poster feature a picture of Quigley?  Regarding Cora, what ship would sail from Galveston, Texas to Fremantle, Australia?  That is an interesting trade route.

Oddly enough, this reminded me of another moving from 1990: Dances with Wolves.  Kevin Costner is sent to the frontier during the Civil War and joins the Indians.  In this movie, Selleck finds himself allied with the Aborigines, though he doesn't go so far as to adopt their ways.

Definitely an entertaining movie.  Good popcorn fun.

The Buck Passes Flynn

The book opens with Flynn assassinating the President of the United States.  It's a mock assassination, only meant to prove that Flynn's agency - N. N. - is quite capable and worthy of contract work for the government.  Shortly afterward, Flynn is assigned to find out why envelopes filled with $100,000 are flooding random locations and causing havoc.  He starts in the abandoned town of Ada, where every resident received an envelope and left.  Population 1800 to 3 in less than a week.  He found many of the former residents in Las Vegas, most worse off than before.  In a resort island town in Massachusetts, the reverse happened.  The residents stayed but kicked out the tourists.  Not a single business is still open but there are frequent delivery boats to cater to the hermit-like residents.  Who is dumping all this money and why?

Flynn has become a less interesting character here.  Rather than an odd police inspector, he is now an international spy.  Sure, there were hints of that in the last book, but here we see his spycraft.  Meh.  His infiltration of Russia is played for laughs.  He has adopted more of Fletch's non-sequitur comments that play more to the reader than to whomever he is addressing.  His super agency that seems to know all on short notice totally fails to make any effort to identify a tag along character claiming to be sent by the president.  Really?  And now we discover that N.N. is opposed by the nasty and villainous K agency, which has a campus in Russia.  Good grief, this is sounding like KAOS vs. CONTROL from Get Smart!

The plot has holes the size of Texas.  Suddenly a bunch of non-counterfeit bills are appearing and, it is finally revealed, that they were bills that should have been incinerated over the last many years.  Um, you know bills have serial numbers.  That first batch with real money should have revealed that someone wasn't incinerating money.

Though it begins well enough and certainly piques one's interest, it devolves into a screed on inflation, the petrodollar, and the monetary system.  The constant harping on inflation grew more and more tedious.  Of course, when the book was written (1980), inflation was double digits.  The impact of the $100K envelopes is one long tale of woe and disaster, to which Flynn responds with smart ass commentary.  The mix of 'comedy' with his clear concern regarding the eroding value of money didn't work.

Though warned that Flynn was just hiding out as a Boston Inspector and his real job was being a 'spy' for some No Name (N. N.) agency, it would have been better to just leave him as the quirky detective.  Beyond the opening assassination, he never uses a gun, he never gets in a brawl, doesn't break-in or infiltrate anywhere.  Heck, all the doors and gates are literally open or unlocked.  Even the Russian police officer proves to be nothing but helpful to an obvious foreigner without any documents.  Sigh.

Skip!

Flynn

Inspector Francis Xavier Flynn (Confess, Fletch) arrives home at 2:30 AM to find his 12-year-old daughter awake and mooning over a fancy pin she received from I. M. Fletcher.  It is far too valuable for a girl her age and he intends to hang onto it until she is 18.  While he explains this, his twin 15-year-old sons enter yawning to declare that their violin was stolen from a locker at school.  Flynn is quizzing them about it when the sky explodes and the kitchen window shatters.  A plane departing Logan Airport plummets in three flaming chunks into the harbor.  He has had no sleep when he is summoned to see the commissioner about the plane crash.  Among the passengers were a boxer who just one the championship, a Federal judge, a famous actor, and a finance minister from a Middle-Eastern country.  No, Flynn is not expected to solve the crime, but he is to serve as liaison for the FBI.  After meeting with the taskforce, Flynn generally ignores them thereafter and proceeds to investigate on his own.

Not dissimilar from a standard Fletch novel, Flynn has plenty of wisecracks for the authority figures and often unusual questions or requests for the various folks he interviews.  It is repeatedly noted that he has little knowledge of the law and isn't really a cop.  Indeed, it is made clear that his position in the Boston Police Department is unique; he is the only inspector and housed at the hall of records rather than a precinct.  He has high-powered contacts that provide international intelligence.  Of course, where Fletch is just as likely to come to the wrong conclusion, Flynn makes some connections that lead to the solution.

Though his backstory from Confess, Fletch is not rehashed, it should be noted that his parents were killed in Munich by the Nazis toward the end of the war.  He had been something of a teenaged spy and continued in that line of work thereafter.  The book takes place in the 1970s, so Flynn is probably in his late 40s.  He has a contentious relationship with the police sergeant assigned to him, in fact, often insubordinate.  Of course, Flynn calls him Grover, which isn't his name, so there is cause for discord.

Interestingly, when the story is all told, there are still several items that are unresolved.  That actually made the mystery all the more real.  There are often conflicting reports in such events, many that don't pan out.  Not just suspects who prove to be innocent, but witness testimony that doesn't mesh with the final conclusion.  So common in real life but rarely found in detective fiction; all those loose ends are nicely resolved by Holmes or Poirot.

Good read and recommended.

History of Texas

This Captivating History telling of Texas history is little more than a collection of thumbnail articles that scratch the surface of Texas through the centuries.  Not exactly a dispassionate telling, the book takes the side of Mexico in the Texas Revolution, the side of Mexico again in the Mexican-American War, and regrets the fact that Texas joined the US as it could have dodged the Civil War if it had stayed independent.  After the Civil War, Texas had an oil boom, became home to NASA, and was also the site of JFK's assassination.  Oh, and there are Texas Rangers.

To say I am disappointed would be an understatement.  This was in no ways captivating and only marginally history.  The Texas entry on Wikipedia is a far better source.  Avoid!