Jesse Stone

There’s nothing like a good takedown of libtard archeologists. I’m glad someone does the digging. But the interpreting is like reading an inkblot chart. You see what you want to see.

I finished A Divided Loyalty. It’s a book I got from my online library through the Libby app. If someone is looking for a detective novel, this passes minimum muster. There is much worse out there and this is worth a look if you don’t like the pap they are cranking out these days.

The novel did avoid being strung out too much (at least not to the point of being unreadable). It has some basic flaws however. The reigning flaw that effects most of these novels is the author’s infatuation with having Rutledge constantly roll-over in his mind almost every conceivable what-if. It’s tiring.

But I’ve had at least two of his books fizzle out to the point there I laid them down and just couldn’t finish them. This one at least was readable to the end.

However, there was a plot twist at the end that seemed a bit silly. Heavy spoilers forthcoming, although I think a true spoiler is something that takes away from the enjoyment of reading a book. Would it spoil it to tell you that The Wizard of Oz contains a scarecrow and a cowardly lion?

Because they were painting Chief Inspector Leslie as the prime suspect, and did so very early-on, I figured something was up. At about the midpoint of the novel, I was becoming more and more convinced that Leslie’s wife did it, although they never explain how or why she could have gotten his husband’s wartime lover in a field in the middle of the night in a fairly remote English village. This central plot gadget, alas, never worked although it was a good excuse to introduce some exotic English elements, including the henge at Avebury.

It become at least passingly obvious that Chief Inspector Leslie might have been covering for his wife — an old and tired plot gadget. “I’ll go to the gallows to save my wife...sister...brother...postman.” It rarely works in other stories and it didn’t in this one. For a while, and at the end, they did manage to put a more human face on Inspector Leslie. He understood early-on that his wife was probably the murderer, so he covered for her out of guilt. Because this was always somewhat of an inverted detective story, why not reveal to us some of what Leslie knows or expects? His actions then become a whole lot more interesting and rich. And I can certainly tell you that there is no commensurate payoff at the end in terms of some grand and satisfying surprise. Instead, you have this otherwise respectable Scotland Yard Chief Inspector who suddenly becomes a raging psychopath. And that never made sense. And the reader knew it could never make sense without some twist at the end. How much more interesting it would have been to be know a little more of the backstory, even if Inspector Rutledge does not. 

I think the strongest parts of these books is when we see the world through the eyes of Inspector Rutledge. But other than that, these novels (this one, in particularly) are extremely thin as far as fleshing out the rest of the cast.

If Mrs. Leslie did it, why not have some more interaction with her? Let us see how she is of a jealous and ruthless character. But basically she just comes out of the blue like a complete and total McGuffin.

That’s why I don’t consider this a spoiler. The pleasure of these books is seeing the world through the eyes of Inspector Rutledge. He’s methodical and a bit Columboesque in his calm demeanor and politeness.

But I was right to be suspicious that, with over half the book to go, the case was basically all wrapped up. The basic case was simple (not a bad thing unto itself) but the last half of the book tried to super-size it. At one point someone tries to run over Rutledge in London. Yawn. You can tell it’s a mother-son writing team. Surely the talented one is the one who writes the Rutledge bits and the other one writes the filler. That’s just speculation, but that’s how it seems.

I find Rutledge to be an interesting character. But these novels are to a large degree simply factory mills, stamping out enough pages to fill a book. That said, one is forced to grade on the curve. And I’ve tried picking up so many detective novels written in the last 25 years and most of them have the general Zeitgeist of artlessness conversant with a juvenile mindset.

The Rutledge novels aren’t art, but they are by no means artless. It’s just a shame they can’t add some more depth to some of the other characters, as well as to the plot. The only other character in this novel of note was the local doctor in Avebury who (after Rutledge had vetted him) was somewhat of a confidante and helper on the case.

There are similarities between the Jesse Stone cop and the Ian Rutledge cop. Both are dealing with physical/mental maladies that might otherwise take them down. But their demanding job provides an outlet. Jesse stops drinking (despite the ex-wife often being in his head) and Ian Rutledge is given a concrete focus to his life despite ongoing shell-shock and the voice of Hamish inside his head — at least while they are full-on distracted by their jobs.

These stories are set in the years following The Great War. I don’t think they lay it on too thick in regards to the difficulties of living with the aftermath. That is part of the appeal of these books, being set down in that time and place. Europe was convulsed in an orgy of organized murder and the physical, mental, and just plain social impact lingered. Women might find it difficult to find eligible men, for example. In A Divided Loyalty, they take up difficulty of many soldiers returning from the war (in one piece or otherwise) and having difficulty finding work.

One of these soldiers shows up in Avebury, possibly passing through on his way back home to Manchester on a circuitous route as he was looking for work to support his family, including a brother who was left severely maimed by the war. There was apparently little work to be found in the countryside in the winter outside of farming season. Most tried to find work inside the cities, thus it is presumed he is passing through. He is (somehow) murdered by Mrs. Leslie (apparently she conks him over the head and then somehow forces him to swallow a lethal dose of gin) as a way to try to pin the first murder on this soldier.

How did Mrs. Leslie go about unnoticed to commit this second murder? How did she find this soldier? There are a lot of loose ends in this novel that don’t make a heck of a lot of sense. She was the designated McGuffin so maybe making sense wasn’t really a priority in this one. Hysterical female. Well, maybe I can live with that explanation. (At the very end, she even tries to take out his husband's boss with yet another one of her kitchen knives. Rutledge is in the wrong place at the wrong time and is stabbed as well. Another add-on plot twist.)

A long time ago (one of my first jobs) I worked with an artist/audiophile nerd who was way into Nakamichi. He spent a lot of money on his sound system and it did indeed sound good. I don’t remember if the speakers were Nakamichi but I think everything else was.

I think Artler means McIntosh which is indeed some serious audio equipment. Not that you can’t play your turntable through your Macintosh computer. Mine is hooked up that way at the moment.