war | Top 10 Book Reviews

The Templar’s Cross is a tightly-written murder mystery set in 15th Century Scotland.

It moves along briskly and will keep readers turning the pages. Author J.R. TOMLIN vividly recreates a late medieval Perth, an ancient city of central Scotland situated on the River Tay.

Under Tomlin’s pen, the Perth of 1424 comes alive in all of its dreary, muddy, damp and noisy vitality – streets are filled with common folk, peasants and barking marketers selling kale, leeks and bloody cuts of butchered meats, as well as crusts of bread and the occasional spicy sausage.

Our hero is a Scottish Knight who is damaged goods. Sir Law Kintour was badly injured fighting the English in France at the Battle of Verneui – now back in Scotland sporting a bad limp, he is desperate to find a new patron to fight for, but who wants to hire a crippled knight?

Holed up in a drafty, seedy room above a lowly tavern, Sir Law’s luck suddenly turns when he receive a visit from a mysterious stranger who has a job for him – but it’s not the kind of work befitting a battle-tested knight.

Desperate for coin, Sir Law agrees to take on a mission which quickly embroils him in a double-murder mystery. Worse yet, he quickly becomes a prime suspect. Now he must solve the murders in just days or hang for the grisly crimes himself!

This is the second J.R. Tomlin novel I have read. I thought the first, FREEDOM’S SWORD, was an okay read, but with this offering, Tomlin shows that she has grown considerably into her craft. She is emerging as a polished writer with an excellent feel for pacing, command of place and subject, and an ability to captivate readers — immersing us in a long-past era of history that comes alive in all of its harsh majesty.

I think it’s inevitable that ‘Templar’s Cross’ will be compared with the hugely best-selling ‘Hangman’s Daughter’ by German author Oliver Pötzsch, also a murder mystery set in a grimy European city of antiquity – if ‘Templar’s’ is perhaps not as richly imagined as ‘Hangman’, it has better pacing, is more tightly written and leaves us hungry for more.

In fact, that’s my only (very minor) complaint about this book – it ends in a satisfying bang, but truly begs for an epilogue. Tomlin misses an opportunity to not only “cool down’ her readers, but to also let us enjoy a satisfying mug of ale with Sir Law as he warms his aching bones next to a peat fire while munching on a spicy sausage – as he contemplates his next mission.

But, whatever – when a writer leaves us eagerly wanting more, that means ‘mission accomplished.’ You have that feeling that you’ve just enjoyed a great book.

Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

This is a short, intense and gripping novel that holds the reader in a state of tension almost from first page to last, and that tension is released by a masterfully-handled description of a bloody firefight in the steaming jungles of Vietnam.

The book succeeds because the author captures the reality of war by showing us what it truly is — a frightening combination of intense boredom and endless fatigue punctuated by horrific moments of frenetic combat in which men are shot, stabbed, wounded, bleed and die.

It tells the story of a U.S. Army infantry corporal leading his men on patrols in the steamy jungles of Vietnam in an area near the Cambodian border. The area is infested with the enemy; the U.S. soldiers, some barely more than boys out of high school, are playing a constant game of kill or be killed. They are in a frightening foreign, alien environment that are the nightmarish jungles of South East Asia.

All the gloves are off – this is a bitter fight where the only goal is to see which side can kill or maim as many as possible on the other side.

It’s takes a remarkable amount of writing skill to capture the brutal reality that was the desperate fight in Vietnam. Author ALLEN TIFFANY does everything a writer can do right to place his readers inside the story — to tell a story — to create characters, set a scene, build a plot and impart a theme.

Allen Tiffany

The writing is tight, without a wasted word. Each sentence is no-nonsense, clean and lean. What’s truly amazing is that the author manages to introduce us to five characters and brings each one of them to life as believable figures we quickly get to know – and thus we care about them and feel empathy for their dire situation.

Great writing is also about illuminating small details – the nitty-gritty aspects of just getting by – such a filling a canteen from a muddy stream and dousing it with iodine tablets — a soldier curled up in his poncho sleeping in the mud – or showing us how a knife blade can be too wide to penetrate the brain if you stab a man in the eye.

Best of all, the author understands that if you tell a story, and tell it well, all the rest takes care of itself. That is, you don’t have to get on a soapbox to rant and rave about whether you think the Vietnam War was right or wrong.

There’s no lecturing or bland moralizing. Yes, there’s a sense of guilt, regret, confusion and horror – of doing one’s duty for one’s country — but all of this falls out naturally by illustrating a situation thrust upon innocent American young men by the ever-so-wise “Powers That Be.”

YOUTH IN ASIA is more than just a short, punchy war novel – it’s great literature.

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