JO GAR’S CASEBOOK

Name: JO GAR’S CASEBOOK
Author: Raoul Whitfield
ISBN: 1-885941-76-5

by Raoul Whitfield ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 25, 2003

Black Mask fans will be especially intrigued to find just how quiet stories can be without losing their hardboiled edge.

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Although best known as the author of the hardboiled novel Green Ice (1930), Whitfield was in his time (1897–1945) one of the most popular and prolific suppliers of short fiction to Black Mask. Kicking off a new series, Tales from the Black Mask Morgue, this volume exhumes 18 of Whitfield’s 24 stories about Jo Gar, the Island Detective who plies his trade in the exotic Philippines. For a hardboiled private eye, the little brown man is surprisingly sedate—he rarely stoops to violence, raises his voice, or speaks in any more expressive way than “tonelessly”—and his patterns of speech and deduction owe less to the Continental Op than to Father Brown. At his best, in stories like “Signals of Storm” (declining to investigate two murders at a distant plantation, Jo Gar meets murder closer to home) and “The Great Black” (a magician’s killer depends on an ingenious alibi), Whitfield can solve a high-concept puzzle with as satisfying a thunderclap as G.K. Chesterton. Even lesser adventures like “The Mystery of the Fan-Backed Chair” present teasing riddles Jo Gar emphasizes to his official counterparts, friendly Lt. Juan Arragon and his less friendly successor Lt. Sadi Ratan, with Chestertonian wit. But only the last two stories, written for Hearst International Cosmopolitan, escape the lazy fondness for epithet that can make Jo Gar numbingly sententious (“Death is always bad. . . . It has the feeling of finality”).

Black Mask fans will be especially intrigued to find just how quiet stories can be without losing their hardboiled edge.

Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2003

ISBN: 1-885941-76-5

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Crippen & Landru

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2002

Categories:

RELIGIOUS FICTION

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THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS

by C.S. Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1942

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These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942

ISBN: 0060652934

Page Count: 53

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943

Categories:

RELIGIOUS FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ALL MY ROAD BEFORE ME
by C.S. Lewis

- BOOK REVIEW
PRESENT CONCERNS
by C.S. Lewis

- BOOK REVIEW
BOXEN
by C.S. Lewis

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THE CHOSEN

by Chaim Potok ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 28, 1967

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This first novel, ostensibly about the friendship between two boys, Reuven and Danny, from the time when they are fourteen on opposing yeshiva ball clubs, is actually a gently didactic differentiation between two aspects of the Jewish faith, the Hasidic and the Orthodox. Primarily the Hasidic, the little known mystics with their beards, earlocks and stringently reclusive way of life. According to Reuven's father who is a Zionist, an activist, they are fanatics; according to Danny's, other Jews are apostates and Zionists "goyim." The schisms here are reflected through discussions, between fathers and sons, and through the separation imposed on the two boys for two years which still does not affect their lasting friendship or enduring hopes: Danny goes on to become a psychiatrist refusing his inherited position of "tzaddik"; Reuven a rabbi.... The explanation, in fact exegesis, of Jewish culture and learning, of the special dedication of the Hasidic with its emphasis on mind and soul, is done in sufficiently facile form to engage one's interest and sentiment. The publishers however see a much wider audience for The Chosen. If they "rub their tzitzis for good luck,"—perhaps—although we doubt it.