Catholic values pop out of major novelist's mystery

"Where Are You Now?",

by Mary Higgins Clark

With more than 30 titles under her belt, Mary Higgins Clark knows how to write a mystery.

In "Where Are You Now?" she pulls out the expected array of clues and characters.

The story-line starts 10 years after a college senior disappears. Once again on this Mother's Day he calls home. His attorney sister decides to try to locate him, but the police detectives she turns to quickly make a connection: the brother may be their best suspect in a murder and the disappearance of three young women in the same New York neighborhood.

All the good mystery pieces are there: the passionate protagonist, the love interest that may or may not be true, the greedy landlord, the nervous apartment caretakers, the demented perpetrator, the likable victims, the suspicious chauffeur, the pain of post-abortion trauma.

What?

A major American novelist works the pain of post-abortion trauma into a book that a major publisher -- Simon & Schuster -- prints and promotes?

Catholic writer includes her values

Okay, I'll be clear: "Where Are You Now?" is not a mystery about abortion.

It's just that the way abortion usually is found in mainstream publishing is that it is extremely one-sided, treating the taking of the life of the in utero baby either casually and matter-of-factly or sympathetically toward the pregnant woman with no regard whatsoever for the other living being in the picture.

It's usually "Abortion? Nothing to it. Get it done and get on with your life."

Author Mary Higgins Clark has found a way to live her Catholic faith in the marketplace in which she is one of the high-ranking celebrities.

And it's a good read!

Like all good, page-turner mysteries, Clark works interesting characters through clues and dead ends, throwing suspicion on a number of them, challenging readers to ponder motives and to try to guess "who-dun-it."

Oh, did a mention the kindly and wise old Irish monsignor? -- bz

Look and learn about the places you've read about in the Bible

"Oxford Bible Atlas,"

Edited by Adrian Curtis

If you've never been to the Holy Land or other places mentioned in the Bible, this is the book to take you there in absentia.

If you've been to any of those ancient sites, this Oxford University Press large-format paperback is the book to rekindle memories.

It was nearly 50 years ago that the Oxford Bible Atlas first appeared in print, and this fourth edition blossoms like none of its predecessors thanks to color photography throughout. As you might imagine, satellite photos of the Dead Sea, the River Jordan, and that portion of Earth from Egypt to the Arabian Penisula weren't in that first edition in 1962.

As Adrian Curtis explains, the primary aim of the atlas is to provide the reader with an awareness of the world in which the biblical stories are set. Aerial photographs do what one's imagination never can to show what the hills of Galilee, the road from Jerusalem to Jericho and the City of Jerusalem are really like.

While many of us are accustomed to looking at an atlas for directions, the Oxford Bible Atlas does so much more, offering not just geography and history but archaeology and geology, too. There is as much text and photography as there are maps.

We don't just see where Babylon is on the map, for example, but we learn how the exile of the Jews there came about.

Curtis, a Methodist lay preacher, is an excellent teacher with a background as a lecturer on the Hebrew Bible for 40 years at the University of Manchester in Great Britain.

You can very easily sit down with the atlas and read it as any other work of nonfiction, chapter by chapter. It would be great for Bible study, small group, faith sharing or adult faith formation purposes, reading a chapter a week. Most chapters are just a few pages, with full-page maps included, and they tend to read chronologically.

Where did the Ephesians live?

While many are likely to have a fairly good idea where Damascus is (in Syria, north and east of Israel), how many times have those of us in the pews heard the lector proclaim names of biblical places such as "Cappadocia" or "Ephesus" (Paul's epistle to the Ephesians!) and not had a clue that both are part of modern-day Turkey?

A couple of the later chapters offer a real education in archaeology, including a two-page spread on ancient writing systems.

I enjoyed reading and finding my way along on the maps, but I could see where others might enjoy and learn about biblical lands just by looking at the many photos and reading the captions. That alone is an education.

Bravo to all involved in bringing Bible places to life. -- bz

Sea-going adventure keeps you turning pages

"Blindfold Game,"

by Dana Stabenow

"Blindfold Game" has been out for three years now, but if you're looking for a good read and a glimpse of life in some new places, find it and take it to the beach.

The bulk of the action takes place aboard U.S. Coast Guard vessels in the Bering Sea. That's that cold and rough-water part of the Pacific Ocean between Alaska and Russia, and Dana Stabenow's thriller puts readers right into the salty spray.

The scene: Terrorists are taking aim at an Alaskan city with a rocket filled with deadly chemical substance.

CIA agent Hugh Rincon and his off-at-sea-too-often Coast Guard officer wife Sara both get pulled into the effort to prevent the attack.

It's only partly romance, but a better-than-average yarn. Stabenow's an Alaska native, so her descriptions of her home state include an authentic love of the land.

Landlubbers will enjoy learning something about life at sea and an arm of our services that doesn't get all that much ink. -- bz

Small-town editor, big-time stage

"Picking the bones of Eleven Presidents and Others,"
by Jerry Moriarity

The subtitle of Jerry Moriarity's self-published collection of notes and anecdotes identifies it as a work "By a Journalist with Presidential Credentials."

That's both the good news and the bad.

Working for and editing small-town newspapers like the Star-Courier in Kewanee, Ill., Moriarity was able to get press credentials to cover presidential events -- including White House press conferences. Over a 40-year newspaper career, that gave him the ability to collect a double-handful of interesting stories about U.S. presidents from Truman through Bush II.

You got to hand it to the guy, a self-proclaimed Irish Catholic Democrat who lives half the year on Little Pine Lake near Perham, Minn.: He was there, he was paying attention, and he kept great notes. Along with those interesting anecdotes, Moriarity pulled together a fun and insightful bit which he called "creating an ideal president." Naming each of the 11 presidents he interviewed, he offered his opinion about the characteristic of each that he valued.
For example:

• Truman -- feisty decisiveness;
• Eisenhower -- popularity;
• Reagan -- intuition.

Too close to the newsmakers?

As good reading and as insightful as "Picking the Bones" is, I couldn't help but get the sense that at some point Moriarity's "covering" the presidents wasn't more about his own being near the seat of power than about reporting. I'm not sure what the editor of the Kewanee, Ill., Star-Courier gets for his readers by being at a presidential press conference.

I have a hard time with all the posed photos of a newsman and the person he is supposed to be writing objectively about.

And some of the questions that Moriarity writes that he asked those presidents made the journalist in me squirm.

There's a wonderful little story about the author being in the right place at the right time to show Sen. John F. Kennedy -- campaigning for the presidency in Peoria, Ill., in 1959 -- the way to the men's room! Moriarity says he'll direct him if Kennedy will answer a question for him. The future president comes out of the restroom and makes good on his promise to answer a question in return for the favor.

So what does Moriarity ask? "What is Peter Lawford really like?"

Yikes!

Balance, for the most part

Moriarity doesn't pull punches for the most part, telling it like he saw it. He calls Lyndon Baines Johnson "a dangerous egotistical hypocrite," but one who knew how to wield power and did some good by pushing civil rights legislation through Congress.

Moriarity himself became a bit of a celebrity by writing an editorial that called for reasonableness in judging a disgraced Richard M. Nixon. The piece was carried -- by Moriarity's count -- in 573 newspapers across the country.

The chapter on Nixon is where a touch of hypocrisy blooms. Moriarity acknowledges that he "supported Nixon," but them is critical of the folks at National Public Radio when, touring NPR studios, he sees a sign that reads "Impeach Nixon." Pretty hard to charge others with being biased when you are, too.

On balance, though, by publishing this memoir Moriarity has preserved some great anecdotes and given a glimpse of a world of reporting that is no more, for better and for worse. I'm glad he did. -- bz

Fine mystery, fine writing woven into politics surrounding fall of Communism

"Victory Square,"

by Olen Steinhauer

Characters you find yourself cheering for get involved in the chaos of an Eastern European country as its Communist government falls.

That's the storyline behind this well-written novel with flashes of -- even a foundation in -- real-life history.

There's global politics, too, and international intrigue as people on a list start dying. Emil Brod, the chief of detectives just days away from retirement, and detective/spy Garva Noukas search for answers.

Olen Steinhauer makes you care about what happens to these two, and that's key to any good novel. The plus is that "Victory Square" is as much literature as it is mystery.

What's unique in a mystery, too, is that it offers an other-than-American point of view of the global politics of that time when the Soviet empire was crumbling, and seeing historical events through others' eyes can bring clearer vision to readers.

Pick up this 355-page St. Martin's Minotaur paperback for a great read. -- bz