Book Review, Hot Country and The Star of Istanbul by Robert Olen Butler:
While traveling these last two weeks via Istanbul, Venice and Trieste to Rovinj, Croatia I have been rereading Robert Olen Butler’s Christopher Marlowe Cobb novel, Hot Country and its follow-on, The Star of Istanbul. I think Hot Country is as good as any novel...
Codes, Ciphers and Cryptanalysis
Justin A. Day (pseudonym) with Jan Weeks published The Centerville Code forty-two years too late for me. It is a 10-13 year-old boy adventure book where the heroes require facility in cryptanalysis––the reading of codes. It is the type of story I read as a...Robert Olen Butler and A Small Hotel
Robert Olen Butler (A Small Hotel) I mean being a writer is like being a psychoanalyst, but you don’t get any patients. Al Alvarez Robert Olen Butler’s novel A Small Hotel is a gem. It is a diamond. It is an intense moment-by-moment psychological study of a...On the Eve of 2012, Peer Literary Criticism
It is New Year’s Eve 2012 in Madison, Wisconsin. Yesterday there was an alternating snow-sleet-rain storm in our Lake Wingra microclimate. Today this small world is grey and ice-covered. Tomorrow morning there is a winter weather advisory—high winds and sleet. I had...Towards the next novel
On reading War and Peace (Tolstoi), On War (Clausewitz) and War (Sun Tsu) March 15, 2011 In writing my next novel “Wounded,” I have been thinking how to create the eminence grise, Alexander Soroka, is a disillusioned Bolshevik Russian Jew who had had a...Featured Books
The Wounded
The Wounded is the second book of the Long War Series. Two young people, a brother, and sister die in a freak Lake Superior storm. Ricky Belisle, accused of murder, is freed for lack of evidence. In shame he leaves his hometown to prove himself worthy; worthy of Marie Jeanne, 'M.J.', Charbonneau, his childhood buddy, worthy of his family, worthy of his village.
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