A Fictional Mass Shooting at a Mosque in Quebec in A Deadly Divide

Mystery writer Ausma Zehanat Khan has been navigating the difficult path of Muslims in the West through her Esa Khattak/Rachel Getty series.  Each volume deals with cases taking place in different types of Muslim communities and the issues they face. The only novel in this series that I've reviewed on this blog was the first one, The Unquiet Dead which dealt with Bosnian Muslims who were survivors of the 20th century horrors in that part of the world. You can find that review here. In A Dangerous Crossing, the fourth book in the series, Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty became embroiled in a case involving Syrian refugees on a Greek island.

The fifth novel, which is the subject of this review, is A Deadly Divide set in a small town in Quebec. I was provided with a digital copy free of charge from the publisher via Net Galley.

                            

St. Isidore in A Deadly Divide definitely isn't a clone of Three Pines, the small town in Quebec that is the setting of most of the mysteries by Louise Penny.  Fans of Louise Penny may object, but my feeling is that Three Pines is a rather typical small town that could be located anywhere in North America.  This is why I tend to prefer the Louise Penny novels that aren't set in Three Pines.

In Ausma Zehanat Khan's Quebec the French speaking Catholic community see themselves as an embattled minority trying to preserve their heritage in the majority Anglophone culture of Canada.   Many readers are unlikely to be sympathetic to their perspective when we are presented in a A Deadly Divide with a number of right wing Quebecois characters who are intolerant racists.  Yet there are also Quebecois who are respectful toward other minorities and mindful of cultural diversity.  The local Catholic priest,
Père Étienne , is most notable in this regard.

In Khan's author's note, she discusses the actual mass shooting at a Quebec mosque in 2017 which inspired the mosque shooting in A Deadly Divide.  The perpetrator of  The Quebec City Mosque Shooting,  Alexandre Bissonnette, denied being a terrorist.  He said he was overcome by fear.   It seems to me that he was probably projecting his own intolerance on Canadian Muslims.   He must have believed that they were all religious fundamentalists who would impose their religion on all Quebecois.   

We all know that when religious fundamentalists achieve positions of power, they destroy religious freedom.   I only need to take a look at 17th century Puritan Massachusetts.  The Puritans were a persecuted religious minority who fled England for religious freedom, and then persecuted religious dissenters in Massachusetts.  Israel provides another example of what happens when religious fundamentalists become dominant.    For discussion of the religious situation in Israel see my post Are The Haredi Jewish Taliban?   So there is good reason to fear fundamentalism in any religion. Yet the assumption that all Muslims are intolerant fanatics is based on ignorance. The Islamic world isn't uniform in its beliefs.  For an excellent overview of the diversity within Islam, I recommend a book by a Christian who interviewed Muslims from a variety of approaches.  It's called Halal Monk, and I reviewed it here.

 One of the reasons why I loved A Deadly Divide is because it gave rise to thoughts like the ones above on the issues it raised, but it was also an excellent mystery.  I was never really certain about whodunit until the reveal at the end of the book.

I consider A Deadly Divide the best book that Ausma Zehanat Khan has written since The Unquiet Dead.  She continues to be one of my favorite mystery authors.

                              

Dreamer by Ja-Mel Vinson--Blog Tour and Review

I have been an early follower of the blogger Shealea.  Her blog can now be found at Shut Up Shealea.  When I learned that Shealea was embarking on her first blog tour, I read the summary of debut fantasy Dreamer by Ja-Mel Vinson, and was intrigued.  So I joined the blog tour.   I was provided with a review copy free of charge by Shealea's Caffeine Book Tours. My review is below.

                          

My Review:

I pretty much knew that I was in a very different world when protagonist Maya Lilac arrives at her college dorm.  The world building is detailed without being overwhelming.  Information is presented to readers on a need to know basis which I consider ideal.  There are no lengthy info dumps.

Dreamer is a New Adult novel which means that this is a coming of age narrative.  Maya retains a number of adolescent traits as the book opens, but she is forced to mature over the course of the intensely dramatic story line.

Maya is placed in the rather unenviable position of having to make some horrendous choices.  Sometimes there are ethical dilemmas in which all alternatives result in heart-rending consequences.  At such times there are no easy answers.  This is a dark novel, but I thought it was an honest and insightful one.

                                       Author Photo

                                 

                            

For more information about Ja-Mel Vinson see his website at
https://jamelvinson.com/


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The Shotgun Lawyer--A School Shooting Transforms An Attorney

The F2F mystery group that I attend selected The Shotgun Lawyer by Victor Methos to discuss at their upcoming meeting in March.  I wanted to make sure I read it on time.  So I started this legal thriller at my first opportunity, when I had free time between review commitments, in February. I purchased it on Amazon, and this is my review.

                       

   I saw a review from someone on Goodreads who raked this author over the coals. He read the bio included with the book which stated that he practiced law in Utah. That Goodreads reviewer said that he couldn't find a lawyer in Utah named Victor Methos.  There's a simple explanation.  Victor Methos is a pseudonym.  That's the first thing that occurred to me when I saw the name.  In fact, I'm convinced that it's a shout out to fans of  Highlander: The Series where Methos is the oldest Immortal.  The name of the protagonist in The Shotgun Lawyer, Peter Game, could also be associated with the Methos character on the Highlander series.  Methos was played by Peter Wingfield.  The Highlander Immortals fight one another in what is called The Game.  Of course Methos fans expect him to be the victor in The Game. Am I imagining these Highlander connections because I myself am a Highlander fan?  That could be, but it does seem to me that a character named  Peter Game in a novel by Victor Methos can't be a coincidence. 

For much of the novel I felt like I needed to have a great deal of patience with Peter Game.  I had expected him to be ethically challenged considering the type of law that he originally practiced, but he also made dangerous mistakes that showed a total lack of judgment, and he committed the same errors repetitively.  Around the time when I was considering that he was truly TSTL (Too Stupid To Live), I came to the realization that he had no sense of his own value as a human being.  Peter Game would only change when he became convinced that he was worthwhile.  His school shooting case did provide him with an opportunity to achieve self-respect.  He only needed to grab hold of the gold ring on the legal merry-go-round.

Characterization in The Shotgun Lawyer was nuanced and believable.   Victor Methos brought us into the experience of  Peter Game's client, Melissa, a mother who had lost her seven year old son in the school shooting.  Peter's former fiancee, Kelly, and Craig, the law school intern who became Peter's clerk, were also well-developed.  The author gave Peter even more dimension by showing us Peter's painful regrets about his conflicted relationship with his son.  I was blown away by the number of deeply honest and powerful scenes throughout this novel.

The Shotgun Lawyer is one of the best legal thrillers I have ever read.   I expect it to be in my top ten reads at the end of 2019.

                              

                          

                        

Braided Dimensions: A 21st Century Wiccan in Medieval Wales

I agreed to review Braided Dimensions by Marie Judson because I like to read books containing spirituality, magic and history.   It deals with a Wiccan former academic who time travels magically. So I requested the book from the author and this is my honest review.

                              

There were things I really liked about this book, and they were at the heart and soul of the novel.  Braided Dimensions is steeped in magic and Pagan spirituality.  The protagonist meditates, chants spells and has a more than surface understanding of  Norse runes and Tarot.   She is also a visionary who is able to trance deeply.   I was pleased with Judson's depictions of these magical and spiritual phenomena.

The character development of protagonist Kay Halefin was also a strong aspect of the novel.  At the opening, Kay has lost her position at a university due to false rumors about her research into shamanism.  She drifted into a non-academic job that ended up being routine and uninspiring.  Her life was ripe for change, and major transformation was exactly what she got.  We never learn why she was drawn to Kyna in 10th century Wales.  She could have been a distant ancestor, but Kyna was definitely a catalyst for the change that Kay needed.

Almost all my problems with Braided Dimensions had to do with the choices that Marie Judson made for the historical aspect of her book.   We are told that the historical characters spoke Middle Welsh.  Actual Middle Welsh dialogue would have been incomprehensible to modern readers.  I would have preferred an occasional flavoring of Middle Welsh or Gaelic words here and there.  Instead Judson gave us characters speaking Scots.  I listened to tapes of Welsh author Dylan Thomas reciting from Under Milkwood when I was involved in a production of that play, and I studied Scots for a theatre class.  So I know that the Scots and the Welsh sound very different from one another.

In addition, these Welsh people seemed to be culturally influenced by the Vikings. Although I learned from the Viking Answer Lady  that the village of Llanbadarn Fawr ,where most of the historical characters lived, was raided by Vikings late in the 10th century, there was no Viking settlement there.  In fact, there was relatively little Viking colonization in Wales as compared to Scotland where Viking colonization was extensive.  Many current day Scots are partly descended from Vikings.  So you could expect that some 10th century Scots might know all about Norse runes and ancient Norse deities.  Welsh Druids  who speak Scots, and do a bind rune spell using Norse runes just didn't sit right with me.  This cultural presence of Scotland in a Welsh village made me feel that Kay wasn't the only character who'd been displaced.

Late in the novel, a 10th century Welsh healer read Tarot cards for Kay.   Since I am a student of Tarot history,  this didn't seem at all possible to me.  While the concepts symbolized through Tarot images are ancient ones, the idea of making them concrete through a deck of cards requires the existence of playing cards.    According to a Wikipedia article on the history of playing cards, they were probably invented in 10th century China, but the Welsh of that century had no contact with China.  Playing cards came to Europe in the 14th century via Egypt.  So I find it too improbable that even handmade Tarot decks could have existed in early medieval Wales.

Many readers may not notice the irregularities that I've been discussing in this review.  They  could be considered quibbles, yet I also found the historical portion of the novel somewhat repetitive and predictable.  Similar incidents occurred over and over.  The narrative  could have arrived at its climax sooner if some of this repetition had been eliminated.

I wanted to enjoy Braided Dimensions a great deal more than I did.  I did like Kay, and the magical/spiritual elements were wonderful.

                                  

Algorithms of Oppression--Lack of Neutrality in Search Engines

I subscribe to the list for the Progressive Librarians Guild  which recently established a group on Goodreads.  They decided to select Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Omoja Noble as their first book for discussion.  I downloaded a copy for review from Net Galley last year.  So I prioritized it and started reading it as soon as I could.  I finished it toward the end of January, and this is my review.

                          

 Safiya Umoja Noble is described in About The Author as an instructor in the University of California at Los Angeles School of Education and Information Studies.  So UCLA combined their library school with the education department.   Since librarians are educators, this does make a certain amount of sense.  I should note that UCLA still does have a Masters of Library Information Science degree program.

The foundation of Noble's argument is her discussion of how search works.  This was an eye opener for me.  It shouldn't have been, but I hadn't examined the topic critically. She states that citation analysis is the basis for page ranking in search.

Citation analysis is used by scholars to determine the significance of  a book or article in a particular field.  Noble then  tells us that the problem with citation analysis is that there is no consideration of whether the material in question is being cited approvingly or negatively.  So the number of citations doesn't indicate whether other scholars thought it was well written or valid.  Similarly, search is supposed to give us the most popular results first.  The most obvious problem is that the most popular websites aren't necessarily the most relevant for any particular user.  I was taught in library school  that librarians need to be search professionals who know how to elicit relevant results with the most specific search terms.

 Is this perception of search as a neutral process really an accurate description?  Users of search tend to assume that the top results are indeed the most popular.  Noble interrogates our assumptions about search.  What is search engine optimization?  It means that some have found ways to game the system. Advertising is also a factor.  After all, users don't pay for their searches.  Search engines need to be profitable in order to survive.  So the top results in many cases are advertisers.  As users, most of us would say that we are willing to tolerate advertising in return for free services.  Are there limits to this tolerance?  What if the advertisers are offensive to users?  What if they promote racist or sexist attitudes?

Noble shows us numerous examples of  racist and sexist top search results.  She does admit that Google is eventually responsive to complaints, and makes changes to ameliorate the situation.  This means that activist users must be vigilant, and refuse to allow advertisers or gamers of the system to demean entire groups of people.

Algorithms of Oppression is a significant book.  Information professionals and students in the field should definitely read it, but I  think it's also illuminating to anyone who uses search engines.