RAGNAR JONASSON'S ISLAND

It is 1987. Benedikt thinks he is in love, and has driven up with Katla to her parents' cottage up in Iceland's Westfjords. Everything is going perfect for the young couple, but days later Katla is found dead, and eventually her father is arrested, charged and convicted of her murder. At the same time, CID detective Hulda Hermansdottir is expecting a promotion, but realises quickly although she is the most experienced detective on the force, the job is going to go to Lydur, with less experience but crucially, a man. And it is Lydur who breaks the Westfjords killing.

Ten years later, Benedikt agrees to a reunion with his three best friends from that time, to mark the anniversary of Katla's death. They travel to Ellidaey, one of the uninhabited Westman Islands, with a single holiday cottage atop the high cliffs. Over the weekend, one of the four falls to her death. Hulda is sent to investigate, but it's not until she's back in Reykjavik and the body has been examined that it becomes evident she has been pushed off the cliffs, and murdered. And when the connection between the killings is recognised, Lydur, now her boss, insists on keeping his hands on her investigation. Meanwhile, Hulda is coping with the loss of her daughter, to suicide, and her husband, to a heart attack. She has travelled to the United States, trying to find the father she never knew, an American soldier who never knew he had left a pregnant woman behind in Iceland.

The Island is the second of Ragnar Jonasson's novels featuring Hulda; his 'Hidden Island' series. The first, The Darkness, was a tour de force, with one of the most audacious and moving endings I can recall. This one is a prequel, set some 15 years earlier. It is not necessary to have read the first novel to appreciate this one, and there are no spoilers that would affect your enjoyment of The Darkness. But it is interesting, that having read the first adds a certain depth to Hulda's character, which is useful because, despite the new twists to Hulda's tale, she is not as central to the crime stories as she was in the previous book.

This is not like other Scandinavian crime writers who've gone back to series characters in their earlier days—Mankell with Wallander, Jonasson's fellow Icelander Idridason with Erlendur are good examples—in an effort to write about someone who is, in effect, a new character. Jonasson is, in effect, building his protagonist in reverse; Hulda is a sympathetic character whose virtues as a cop are also her problems as a person, and who has had to battle simply to establish herself as both person and police.

Another of the fascinating angles to Jonasson's writing has been the way his 'Dark Island' series, which preceded the first Hulda novel, reflect his love of the classic whodunit form; he was a translator of Agatha Christie while still a teenager. This book could be looked at as Jonasson's version of And Then There Were None, a murder on an island with a finite number of suspects, and as in Christie its less a police procedural than a character study, though when the policeman realises something about the character, the unknown truth comes out in testimony. He doesn't cheat on the mystery; though the solution becomes fairly evident about two-thirds of the way through. But he brings in secondary plot lines that keep Hulda's investigations intriguing, and, as in the first book, he ends with multiple ironies that strike a note of sadness.

While I tore through the novel, the way I did whodunits when I was younger, I admired the writing, but wondered a bit about the translation, something I hadn't done in the earlier books. When you get cliches, especially if repeated, you wonder if phrases like 'avoided like the plague' or 'trusty car' are equally cliched in their Icelandic versions, or if the easy English equivalent is being used. Since I don't know the answer to that in Icelandic, I can't make a judgement, but it is a question. It is not something that slowed me down as I read this excellent novel, and, knowing Jonasson is moving back even earlier in Hulda's career for the next book (see my Shots interview with him here) I look forward to that one with great anticipation.

THE ISLAND by Ragnar Jonasson

Michael Joseph, £14.99, ISBN 9780718187255

Note: this review will also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)

IN MEMORIAM: JOE BELLINO & FOOTBALL MEMORIES

When I was a kid I had a book about Joe Bellino, who died a few days ago aged 81. The star of Navy's 1960 football team, which went 9-1 and lost to Missouri in the Orange Bowl, Bellino won the Heisman Trophy overwhelmingly that year; the first Midshipman to win it, and what turned out the first of two Navy players in four seasons, as Roger Staubach followed him in 1963.

The book must've been published after he won the Heisman, so I might have got it for my birthday (which was the day before Joe's on the calendar) or it might have been the following Christmas. I suspect the latter, because although my dad was a Navy fan, having enlisted at 17 during World War II, I think we may have spent Christmas in Boston that year, and my Uncle Jack might have picked it up for me. Which is also a sign of how much I loved football in my youth.

In any case, I remember some of the book very well, especially about Bellino's exploits at Winchester High in Massachusetts. He was, apparently, known as 'The Wnchester Rifle' but honestly I didn't remember that at all. Besides football, he was a baseball star good enough to get drafted by the Pirates, and as a basketball player led Winchester to two championships before the school was moved up a division and they lost a third. In those days we paid attention to the Massachusetts' large school champs, because the two (from Eastern and Western Mass) would join two Connecticut schools and one each from the other four New England states in an annual high school tournament at the Boston Garden, an even dominated by Connecticut teams.

Doing some research, I also recalled Bellino did a post-grad year, at Columbian Academy,

where he scored three touchdowns against the Navy plebes (freshman) team in an upset win. This was ironic, since I would go to a prep school where we took in post-grads; my junior and senior years I would be the only one from my class not a PG who played. He would have done that to get his grade point average or his SAT scores up to the required level for admission, and interestingly Staubach did the same, at New Mexico Military Academy, in the alien-visit town of Roswell.

Of course that made both of them a year more mature when they started college, and each would have played on freshman teams before becoming eligible for the varsity. You can find some film on Bellino on you tube. He was listed at 5-9 185, and he is built low to the ground and strong-legged. You can see him break tackles easily; he has good vision and most of all surprising speed (he led the Navy baseball team in stolen bases).

Navy was never as much of a power as Army—West Point's greatest teams, of course, came toward the end of World War II, when they had older players like Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis who were grabbed by the army from other colleges. Navy had a great team coached by Paul Brown at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station near Chicago, but they weren't at the Academy. But under coach Wayne Hardin (with Steve Belichick, Bills father as a scout/assistant) Navy had a brief flowering in the early Sixties. The service academies were beginning to shrink: Yale had beaten Army in 1956, and Air Force had come into being and taken some glamour away. But as the lure of professional football grew (and the money) the four year commitment required in the service in return for your college education became a negative selling point. Nowadays the academies often waive the requirement to allow players into the NFL, and cash in on the patriotic publicity: back in the day Gen. Maxwell Taylor backed down from allowing Davis and Blanchard to go to the NFL, and neither Bellino or Staubach seemed to hesitate with their commitments. I can't begin to tell you how inspirational the book made Joe Bellino appear; I recall seeing picture of young Bill throwing a ball with Bellino and reading something about how he idolized him, and I could understand why. For a brief while, until Vietnam War protest radicalized me at age 15 or 16, I had a thought of going to Navy as well.

Ironically, when I was a sophomore at Wesleyan, we scrimmaged Army (well, mostly their second-string) at West Point, and at lunch in the huge mess hall, as cadets leapt onto our table screaming at us (the word 'hippie' might have sounded) I didn't regret my decision. We won that scrimmage, and went undefeated that season back at Division III, winning the Lambert Cup, the small version of the Lambert Trophy Navy won in 1960, as the top team in the East.

That Navy team was good. They had beaten Army the year before; Bellino scored three touchdowns in that game, no one had ever done that in an Army-Nevy game before. They were still lightly-regarded, but early in the season they beat Washington, with Bob Schloredt at QB, in Seattle; Washington would beat number one Minnesota in the Rose Bowl (the polls closed well before the New Year's Bowl Games in those days). Washington coach Jim Owens said 'he made us look like we hadn't practised tackling'. They beat Notre Dame, and took their only loss at Duke 19-10; Duke wound up rated number 10 and beat no.7 Arkansas (with Lance Alworth) in the Cotton Bowl. Goes to show you what the pollsters know. Navy was ranked number 4 (no. 2 Mississippi beat Rice in the Sugar Bowl; no.3 Iowa was second in the Big Ten and thus couldn't go to any bowl game). Missouri was ranked 5, and unbeaten, but with an asterisk, and looking that up I remembered the scandal vividly.

Kansas beat Missouri but had to forfeit that game (and one to Colorado) for playing Bert Coan at halftime, because TCU had violated rules recruiting Coan, who then transferred to Kansas. This was the Kansas team that had John Hadl still playing halfback, but with Coan joining Curtis McClinton, they moved him to quarterback in 1961. Coan, like McClinton, was big (6-4 215) but ran a 9.4 100 yards. His pro career never panned out, while McClinton had a good one with the Chiefs. 

Bellino's senior season was pretty spectacular. He ran for 834 yards at 5.0 per carry, caught 15 passes for 264 yards and 3 TDs. He threw two TD passes (though he was only 5/14 passing), quick-kicked (!) 11 times for a 47 yard average (a lot of rolling involved there) returned kicks , kicked a couple of extra points and like most of the players in the game, played defense too.

He won the Heisman in a runaway. Check out the photo at the top and compare with the Heisman pose! With points allotted 3-2-1 for first, second and third place votes he had 1,793 points; second place went to Minnesota guard Tom Brown, with 731. Yes, guard. Yes, he did play both ways, but still, football was a different game then. Third was Ol' Miss quarterback Jake Gibbs, who became a catcher for the Yankees and Senators. Gibbs was second in the South and Southwest; Brown in the mid-west, and UCLA tailback Billy Kilmer second in the west (he finished fifth. Mike Ditka was sixth; Ohio State quarterback Tom Matte (a halfback in the NFL with the Colts) was seventh, and center/linebacker EJ Holub of Texas Tech was 10^th: Holub would be the only player to start Super Bowls on both sides of the ball, center in one, linebacker in another, for the Chiefs. One name that I hadn't thought of in years was Pervis Atkins of New Mexico State, who was ninth in the voting but had an unsuccessful career in the NFL/AFL (but acted in the The Longest Yard).

1960 was an interesting year; I watched undefeated Yale play that year; they wound up ranked no14 in the country. Yale's Ben Balme was the other starting guard on the AP All-America team, but center Mike Pyle had a long career with the Chicago Bears. The quarterback Tom Singleton got written up in Sports Illustrated; he threw 70 passes all year, while the fullback Bob Blanchard was the running threat; he was a local hero from Hamden just outside New Haven.

In the rest of the country outside Connecticut, Norman Snead and Roman Gabriel were the 'best' NFL QBs, while Ernie Davis was just starting at 7-3 Syracuse and Bob Lilly was at TCU.

In the Orange Bowl, Missouri beat Navy 21-14, ending Joe's career with a loss. He was shut down completely as a runner, though he caught a touchdown pass. And it was the end of his football glory too. Because of the four-year commitment, he wasn't drafted until the 17^th round by Washington (pick 227); in the AFL draft he lasted until the Pats took him in the 19^th round (pick 146). He graduated in 1961; he joined Boston in 1965. He didn't play much, and mostly as a kick returner; he seems to have been effective as a pass catcher, but not as a runner. The years off obviously hurt. Although, in 1963 he was stationed in Newport Rhode Island, and he played for the Providence Steamroller of the Atlantic Coast Football League.

I knew the ACFL well too: those were the years when the Ansonia Black Knights played in the league, but it was a semi-pro operation. Later some teams would join the Continental League, then a couple return to the ACFL for a couple of pretty good years when teams were actual feeders to NFL teams. Oddly enough, Wayne Hardin's college coaching career would come to a screeching halt in 1966 when he went to the Continental League and coached the Philadelphia Bulldogs to the title. Why, I do not know, but Bill Walsh came out of the CFL too.

I couldn't find any stat line for Bellino, but he scored three TDs, and I believe played only three games for Providence. The Steamroller went 6-6 in the league (and won three exhibition games, two against non-league teams). They played the Boston Nu-Way Sweepers three times (one an exhibition) which I mention only because I love the name.

They beat the Black Knights in Ansonia, and beat the Harrisburg Capitols in the third-place (runner-up) in the post-season. While he was playing before small crowds, Staubach was winning the Heisman for the 1963 season; leading Navy to another 9-1 season. They were ranked number 2 in the country, despite losing 24-22 to SMU in the Cotton Bowl stadium in Dallas; they handed number four Pittsburgh their only loss of the year. They suffered another post-season loss, to top-ranked Texas in the Cotton Bowl game, meaning they were unbeaten outside the Cotton Bowl that year.

Writing this I feel a lot like the ten-year old kid who loved playing touch football (the Kennedys had turned us on to that), wanted to follow in my father's football-playing footsteps, read coaching guides from the 1930s that advised punting on first down inside your ten, and made football cards from magazine pictures and created a probability game, APBA-style, after sending for their free sample then making my own charts. It was so much fun, and so much simpler then.

Joe Bellino didn't leave the Navy after four years just to try pro football. His son was stillborn when he was on a ship in the Atlantic; his mother-in-law died while he was in Japan. As it was, he served 24 years in the naval reserve after his pro career ended (he was taken by the Bengals in the AFL expansion draft but retired rather than move to Cincinnati) and retired a captain. He was a successful businessman in Massachusetts, and is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. RIP.

SPRING EQUINOX: A poem for my niece's wedding

Last week my niece got married in Miami, and at the reception, taking a break from the dancing to music of a newer generation, I sat thinking and some moments from the past week put themselves into my mind. I picked up my place-card and on the back wrote a few lines, then sat for a while playing with them and thinking it through. What I was thinking about was the spring equinox, looking for the super-moon a couple of days before in Key Largo. I was thinking about Magnolia Warblers, and their migration, discovered in those few days in the Keys and Everglades. I was thinking about W.S. Merwin, whose obituary I had just written for the Guardian, as you will see just below. And of course the lovely wedding we had just witnessed. It all came together rather quickly, and after a few more days of thinking and tinkering, this is what I finished. I wrote it without punctuation, perhaps in homage to Merwin, but the unseen punctuation seemed self-evident, so I put some of it back. 

SPRING EQUINOX
                                      for Julia, Donald & Camilla

Mark that momentary loss of a sense of direction:
magnolia warblers circle, midway through their migration
while we pass the sun's centre, spinning station to station
seeking signs of devotion, stopping short of salvation

Miami, 23.3.19

W.S. MERWIN: THE GUARDIAN OBITUARY

My obituary of the poet W.S. Merwin went up on The Guardian online yesterday; it should appear in the paper paper soon. You can link to it here, it is mostly as written with just a few cuts for simplicity's sake, which is instructive because Merwin's was a complicated life to unravel. I actually wrote the piece a week earlier, just before I flew to Florida, and did some changes (mostly to clarify publication details) in the airport after I arrived but before I picked up my car and headed for the Everglades.

It was trying to sort the chronology of his relationships and his early work that was the most difficult, especially because things like wedding and divorce dates, maiden names and the like are important for the paper's sense of record. Before I filed I dropped a few things I found interesting, two in particular: his secondary education at Wyoming Seminary, a Methodist-founded school between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre and his relationship with Moira Hodgson. I'd know people who went to Wyoming, which tended to produce high achievers--but it was also interesting because Merwin claimed he applied originally to Princeton thinking it was an actual seminary. I found that somewhat fanciful. Hodgson seemed to be a steadying influence on him; the British-born writer was working at the UN in New York when she met Merwin; they lived together for ten years, mostly in Mexico, and he was still technically married to Dido for at least part of that time. Anyone who's read her food writing would be interested.

I also included a longer list of the fellowships which kept Merwin going through the Fifties and beyond. This ability to win them was the segue point to mentioning his charm, and I thought the idea that he was a successful 'establishment' poet was one that was necessary to make. I also mentioned that when he received the Academy of America Poets prize there was a minor controversy in that he was a Chancellor of the Academy, and the judges, inevitably were all friends.

This was interesting in light of the Great Naropa Poetry Wars. Ed Sanders had his students in 'investigative poetry' do a long report about it, and I think I read something by Tom Clark, who's the poetry equivalent of a tabloid journalist, about it at the time. But what I found fascinating was the way the poetic community divided as I describe, with Merwin representing the establishment, and some Naropans, representing the other side, the underground, whatever. I recall asking Anne Waldman about that at a reading, because it seemed to me the dispute, beyond the defense of students toward Trungpa their master, was one of 'business' of poetry, not poetry itself. She didn't like that question.

But I drifted back to it as I wrote the obit and tried to analyse Merwin's work in terms a general audience might understand. I was trying to draw connections, but apart from the obvious one to Auden (who stylistically, placing words to accentuate their ambiguities, is not as far removed from later Merwin) and the less obvious (but for proximity) one to Lowell, I felt I'd be getting into a kaleidoscope that would mean little to my audience. Merrill and Kinnell I mentioned, and would have liked to elaborate on in terms of their work.

I see links to a lot of the people who might be thought by casual observers to be on the other side of the Naropa wars. Given the obvious influence of Ezra Pound, some of the names seemed obvious. The most telling to me was Robert Creeley, who also worked as a tutor for Robert Graves, and whose work, albeit punctuated, is very similar to Merwin's in style, if someone more grounded in the personal, maybe even the romantic. I thought of Paul Blackburn, not immediately similar in the elegance of the language, but with a sense of rhythms and music that also draws from the Provencal. Merwin at his most elegant reminds me sometimes of Robert Duncan too--again not too close, too exact, but it is easy for me to think that as his own work was changing, Merwin was aware of these people already working in open (and projective) verse, and he is never looked at as someone related to that. The final comparison I longed to make was to Gary Snyder, like Merwin a Buddhist and an early champion of ecology. That's Merwin (above left) with Carolyn Kizer and Snyder, in Oregon in 1966

I was also thinking about Robert Bly, who on the face of it would look like an unlikely comparison, but whose sense of nature, if not the surreal, seemed like a fit. And John Ashberry, close than Duncan but also for the austere sense behind the words. It also occurred to me, after a comment by Helen Vendler, how many American poets were born in 1926-27: she mentioned a couple but the 1926  list includes Creeley, Blackburn, Ginsberg, Merril, Bly and W.D. Snodgrass (whose obit I also had the privilege of writing), A.R. Ammons and Frank O'Hara; while 1927 boasts Kinnell, Ashberry and James Wright. I wondered if this might have something to do with the Depression or the War, or maybe the burgeoning of poetry and new movements in the Fifties, or the growth of creative writing programmes in colleges which provided a living for many of these poets.

The Merwins' work with his Conservancy was also a step decades ahead of its time, and this might in some ways wind up being his most enduring legacy. I wondered, as I filed my copy, if perhaps he would have had a tougher road to success had he been born a couple of decades later, but if perhaps his poetry might have found a wider, more ecologically aware audience. I'm not sure the work would have been as good, but the thought that it will continue to find a new audience from that direction as well as the literary one is a heartening one.

ROB GRONKOWSKI RETIRES:GRONK, YO SOY FIESTA

I am going to really miss Gronk. I think he was probably my favourite active player, both on the field and off. He is certainly unique, both on the field and off. Remember when Gronk, trying to speak to an interviewer in his own language, announced ‘Jo soy fiesta’? It seems a perfect in-character coincidence that Rob Gronkowski should retire averaging 69 yards per game, as well as .69 touchdowns per game, for his NFL career. It’s as if he’s having one last Gronk laugh as he heads off into the football sunset. ‘Yo soy fiesta’ indeed. 

I’m not making this point facetiously. Well, not totally. Remember back in 2011 when the pictures of Gronk and porn star Bibi Jones created a furor? Remember Gronk’s apology for ‘letting down the Kraft family’? I would say that we live in different times now, considering what the Kraft family has been up to lately. Remember Gronk’s party ship? Jerry Jones’ bus got far less attention..

Then again you would have thought Gronk was Odell Beckham Junior II when the first photos appeared on the clickbait scandal sites of his partying on a boat after the Super Bowl (not during the season). It turned out that he was there with his current girlfriend, ex-Patriots cheerleader and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Camille Kostek as well as Jordy Nelson, his wife Jesse James Nelson, and others, just good wholesome family vacation, but a lot more fun than the guys from Deadspin have on theirs.We ought to consider the puritanical quality of the new cyber-wave of Jealousy Journalism.

I mention this because it seems like one of the most likely paths for Gronk post-NFL is reality TV of some sort—look what it’s done for Jay Cutler. Or maybe acting, though guys his size are hard to cast: he was in a movie called American Violence, and is in one coming out later this year called Deported in which he plays ‘Party Guy Jake’.

You may recall the last line of Martellus Bennett’s message to his brother Michael about his new Patriots teammates? Oh yeah, I forgot Gronk. He’s smarter than people think.’ Gronk will be able to make money simply being Gronk. Or Gronky, as Tom Brady’s daughter calls him. I see a line of children’s shows in the future.

THE ON FIELD LEGACY

Is Gronk the Greatest Of All Time? When I wrote a top ten listing last year I had Gronk fifth; behind Tony Gonzalez, Kellen Winslow, Mike Ditka, and John Mackey (you can link to that post here.) I was assuming his career needed to continue to amass more numbers and cement a legacy. The way it stands now, he’s caught in the classic rating dilemma first defined by Bill James writing about baseball, the difference between career value and peak value.

I have no problem calling Gronk the GOAT in terms of peak value. But one of the interesting things at the tight end position is the way most of the great ones had very short peaks, because the double burden of blocking and receiving, especially in the days before multiple tight end sets and receiving first tight ends came along, wore them down too quickly. Ditka, who was the prototype Gronk, really had only 3-4 great seasons. Jackie Smith, whose pass-catching style recalls Gronk’s was the same. John Mackey, Kellen Winslow (number two on my list) similarly. And Winslow wasn’t the blocker Gronk was (hint: no great pass catching TEs, save maybe Ditka and Mackey, were). Antonio Gates hung on for a long time, but at much lower effectiveness. Gronk ends his career a four-time first-team all pro and with five pro bowls.

On the career side of the argument, Tony Gonzalez’s 17 seasons of quality receiving but functional blocking pretty much ensure he’s in first place. That’s incredibly hard to argue again, though Gronk supporters will point to the three Super Bowl wins and his incredible post season stats. Coincidentially, Gronk’s post-season adds up exactly to one extra NFL season: 16G, 81 catches (130 targets, 62% catch rate) for 1,163 yards and 12 Tds. That’s a first-team all-pro season right there.

Jim Brown is still my GOAT running back, and he retired at about the same point in his career as Gronk did. But his body was not yet in decline, nor had he missed time to injury during his career. Anyone who watched Gronk this past season could see how much he was slowed by injuries; you could see the way he had to do a skip to build up speed. The injury part of his career could be foreseen: he fell to the second round in the 2010 draft because of back problems he’d had in college. Of his nine NFL seasons, he played in all 16 games only twice, and had four other seasons you could call ‘full’ (13-15 games). The other three seasons had 26 games combined.

My call is that at his peak he is easily the GOAT, given his ability to block anyone, defensive ends or tackles, linebackers or defensive backs, you could call him the equal at least of any blocking specialist TE, and probably the equal of all but a couple of receiving first TEs, and maybe even more than that given his catching radius, running ability, and ability to make catches while not being interfered with by defenders holding and hanging all over him. The NFL’s interference rule is all about gaining an unfair advantage, and you could argue Gronk’s abilities meant interfering with him gave defenders no advantage at all.

For his career, I’m still torn by that longevity argument, and in the end I might now leave Gonzalez at number one, and move Gronk ahead of Kellen Winslow, or at least equal (Winslow was a more transformative player, but Gronk’s talent is unique) into second. He’s got to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

GRONK’S LOSS IN NEW ENGLAND

While not totally unexpected, a lot of us thought that as the season grew closer Gronk's competitive juices would lure him back. He certainly goes out on a high note: you could make a case for his being the Super Bowl MVP in Atlanta. But it leaves a huge hole for the Pats, whose draft strategy has not included a future replacement for him (though I was highlighting Chicago’s Adam Shaheen in 2017 or Phailadelphia’s Dallas Goedert, in 2018, as long-term cover --both were smaller college guys who went in the second round). This surprised me, because the Pats’ offense is all about mismatches, and Gronk was a human mismatch with virtually any defender. Remember the stuff they could do with him and Aaron Hernandez?

With Dwayne Allen gone to Miami, they have no inline tight end except the recently signed Matt LaCosse and last year’s seventh round Ryan Izzo, while the receiving options, Stephen Anderson and Jake Hollister, remain unproven.

This is a strong draft for tight ends, but most of them fall in either the receiving or block-first category. TJ Hockenson will be the first one off the board because although he’s only 6-4 251, he can do both jobs well. With the Pats drafting at 32, it would take a steep fall for him to be available even for a package that could help them move up. George Fant and Irv Smith are said to be the next two: Smith is the more willing blocker, but he’s not really an in-line presence; I think Jace Sternberger might be a better fit. Kaden Smith of Stanford or Zach Gentry of Michigan might be considerations in round 2 or even 3 if they get lucky. But none is going to step in and start, much less be a Gronk.

The free agent market is limited, although the talk is of the Pats managing to snag Jared Cook away from the Saints, who had seemed to have beaten NE to the guy who had a fine season receiving last year. Or they could try to lure Martellus Bennett out of retirement to play with his brother.

Given that their wide-receiving corps is very thin as well (2 years/$10m for Cordarelle Patterson might seem more affordable now that Gronk’s opened up salary cap room) and with the best remaining free agency Pats-types being mostly on defense (DE Brent Urban from Ravens, anyone?) it’s hard to see them getting a big difference maker. They will adjust, as they always seem to do—last year’s success was as a run-first team in the last quarter of the season and the playoffs, and despite losing Trent Brown, Isaiah Wynn is expected to be the starting left tackle they drafted him to be (with LaAdrian Waddle gone they need a third tackle now too) – but the question is where the mis-matches will come from. Gronk’s presence made coming up with them easier: but as he dashes off into the sunny sunset, yo soy fiesta indeed.

NOTE: This essay was written for my Friday Morning Tight End column at Patreon
You can read it there for free, but subscribe because there will be more to write about in the run-up to the NFL Draft www.patreon.com/mikecarlsonfmte

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS: GIR-RUL POWERRR

So first Ginger Sov arrives from France with a stand-up do and wicked piercings. And she's all like Scotland's my country and accent and everything and you gotta make me queen. And she tells Posh Sov she wants to be BFFs. But Posh Sov's like fuck MQS! That ginger bitch is more in line for my throne than I am, so she tries to hook her up with the super-fit squeeze she fancies, but Ginger's too woke for that and she hooks up with Darnley, who's like next in line to Posh's throne after Ginger, but he's like anyone's, an-ny-ones! after a couple of red bull and meads. Ginger's also pretty sporty, ridin' horses and winnin' battles and stuff, but then Posh goes all Scary with these poxy bumps and scars and she uses a ton of goth makeup to cover them up and hide her real face. Then she watches horses giving birth cause she's jealous of Ginger's now Darnley's Baby Momma and the baby's another one who could steal her throne. But the Ian Paisley preacher guy with the huge false beard is all like she's a whore and a papist so they kill her gay singer song writer guy who also slept with Darnley and her best-bud kidnaps and rapes her and like this goes on for two hours....like an extended episode of Neighbours

I exaggerate. Sure there isn't much new in Mary Queen Of Scots; in fact it is a lot like the 1971 film, which itself seemed based, uncredited and with liberties taken, on Antonia Fraser's wonderful biography, There are two major themes to Mary's life: Mary vs Elizabeth, which is in part England vs Scotland, but more the English Virgin Queen versus the younger, prettier, French version. The other is Mary versus the Scots establishment, particularly the church, John Knox versus the Pope, intertwined with the usual Scottish betrayals and in-fighting over their crown and the big one in modern eyes, men over the 'mostrous regimen of women' or as Mary should have called it, 'We Too'.

But to put it simply, the major question in any story about Mary is her own agency: how much she acts and how much she is acted upon, and the biggest problem with this film's approach to that is how it ultimately reverts to cliché whenever it needs to make the dilemma of agency personal. When Mary decides she loves Darnley they ride off on their horses, away from the following lords, to the accompaniment of the inevitable helicopter shot. Later when Elizabeth watches a mare weaning her colt, she is mesmerised to the point of giving herself a shadow-puppet pregnancy. This horse metaphor is so good the movie will come back to it again.

They are serious about the centrality of the distinction between Mary and Elizabeth. The Virgin Queen suppresses her desire to the point of sending the man she loves to woo Mary. Mary, on the other hand, gets married three times, and, if the movie is to be believed, has sex one time with each husband. This is an extreme point of view, based partly on the 1971 film's reading of Darnley's gayness and partly on the filmmakers decision to make Mary the victim of Bothwell, which requires them to ignore a large chunk of her life after her kidnapping and rape, which is probably the most contentious of all the readings of Mary's life. They get around the alternate reading, that Mary might have been part of Darnley's removal, that she went willingly with Bothwell, got pregnant by him (a miscarriage was the result) and stayed with him until they lost the battle of Carberry Hill.

But the film's variations with history are not something that serious, at least if you can justify them in character, and that is the hard part. Bothwell is sympathetic to the point he turns on Mary: the possibility he is actually acting with her or to protect her is unraised. I don't have problems with most of the other deviations, apart perhaps Mary's having a Scots accent. Her English was likely better than, say, Bonny Prince Charlie's, but he had been raised in the French court.

Of course Mary and Elizabeth never actually met, but arranging a secret meeting between them is not a dramatic absurdity. The problem with this meeting is that the arresting shot of the laundry drying and the two queens manoeuvring around the hanging sheets (or whatever they are), each keeping out of sight of the other, loses its visual impact quickly. It's also larding-on the presentation of Elizabeth: after being struck with the pox, she relies on heavier and heavier doses of make-up, creating thicker and thicker white masks, until she looks almost like an sf movie villain.. In case you don't realise that the real woman is hiding behind the mask, the visual metaphor will be flung in your face until you do. Given too that Mary does not age from the time she first sets foot in Scotland until she is executed (oh, did I just spoil the film for you?) while Elizabeth ages rapidly is more of a dramatic license than actually having them meet.

The other major problem I had was the birth of Mary's son. By making Rizzio, generally referred to as her secretary, obviously gay, the movie registers its view on the accusations of her having an affair with him. When Mary's actual birthing is shown in detail as gory as Rizzio's murder, it is like RoseMary Queen Of Scots' Baby: the child is outsized and almost misshapen, which probably reflects the general opinion of the Presbyterians of the time. And when we see the young boy, he looks decidedly like Rizzio—and nothing like the picture we see of the young James I of England, which indicates that Mary won the long game over Elizabeth; dying but leaving her heir to take the crown.

There are things to like here, particularly in the interior scenes, which are dark and claustrophobic, and even occasionally lighted to reflect contemporary paintings. But overall it is directed and shot like a series of music videos (Elizabeth would be a natural) or commercials, a sort of short-span story-telling. I think of the visuals of John Ford's Mary Of Scotland, which makes Mary (Katharine Hepburn) into a Holy Catholic martyr, after its love-story with Bothwell (Frederic March) – which are consistent and build toward its climax, one which reflects Ford's obsession with Hepburn as much as anything else.

Saoirse Ronan is excellent as MQS—despite being limited by never aging—and I like her better than Vanessa Redgrave, who seemed too dominant, even while Glenda Jackson was more harsh. Ronan's finest moments come as she realises her position as Queen is nowhere near enough to triumph over being both a Catholic and, most fatally, a woman. Whereas, for Elizabeth, that problem is overcome by, in effect, denying her womanhood. Here Margot Robbie is more limited by the reading of Elizabeth's increasing one dimension of frustration, but there is something to be said for her starting out on more of an even footing. Guy Pearce as William Cecil is perfect, almost stealing scenes from Elizabeth. Brendan Coyle (Lennox), James McArdle (as a weak Moray) and Martin Compston as Bothwell all fill their costume drama roles well, while David Tennant as John Knox is appropriately intense, all Ian Paisley burning eyes hiding underneath a fake beard worse than the ones worn by Tom Berenger, Richard Jordan and Joseph Fuqua in Gettysburg, the greatest fake-beard movie of all time. And a special shout-out to Ian Hart as Maitland, who somehow manages to look (though not sound, thankfully) exactly like Harvey Keitel.

In the end, Mary Queen Of Scots is perhaps too much costume and not enough drama, and the various tensions between countries, relgions and queens are all subsumed into the crucial question of womanhood. Unfortunately, that seems resolved primarily in fashion terms, the movie becomes all costume no drama. Although the execution scene is visually stunning, especially when Mary is stripped of her cloak, a note from history might have been brought it more final drama. Because it took the executioner three strokes of the axe to severe her head completely. Even in dying, Mary was denied her agency.

Mary Queen Of Scots, directed by Josie Rourke

screenplay by Beau Willimon based on the book by John Gay

CHARLES MC CARRY: MY GUARDIAN OBITUARY

My obituary of Charles McCarry, one of the very best spy novelists, is online at the Guardian now; you can link to it here. It should appear in the paper paper sometime soon. It appears pretty much as I wrote it, some time ago, with just brief updating on the books he'd published since then. I particularly recommend The Miernik Dossier, an assured, structurally fascinating debut novel. Tears Of Autumn is a fine novel, which I mentioned whenever I was writing about the fiction of the JFK assassination; I was lucky enough to be able to review some of his later books in various places, The Secret Lovers, with its wonderfully ambiguous title, is one of the very best.

His late return to his Paul Christopher books came with Old Boys, which I reviewed for the Spectator. It's behind a pay wall, but maybe I can resurrect it. It is partly tongue-in-cheek, but great fun.  Christopher's Ghosts was not tongue-in-cheek and had an ending whose final line explained the whole of the Paul Christopher series; a tour de force of a finish (my review is here). I also reviewed The Shanghai Factor, which has another great ending; you can find that review here.

BETWEEN US (LOGATO): a poem from Italian Sonatas

I've been working a series of small poems, titled Italian Sonatas. This is one of them; they originate in little notes I've discovered in my notebooks and files, from the early Eighties. There is a theme....

Between Us (Logato)

There is nothing

soft, except

the way that night

Escapes your eyes

& drapes itself,

laughing light,

Round the arcs

Of shooting stars

Lost in their flight.






 

COLIN KAEPERNICK & THE NFL: THE BUSINESS AND THE GAME

Last week when Colin Kaepernick's collusion suit against the NFL was settled, I wrote about what the settlement meant, and the issues behind it. If you don't subscribe to my Friday Morning Tight End column at Patreon.com, you can now find the column at Arc Digital, here. A quick summary: the settlement has very little to do with knees, and lots to do with owners; note that I wrote it before Robert Kraft took his chauffeur-driven Bentley down to the Orchids Of Asia....

https://arcdigital.media/colin-kaepernick-the-business-and-the-game-37be3626619?sk=03f72df243354388786af77d496c1587

JOE IDE'S IQ

Isaiah Quintabe is a detective, a community problem-solver in the run-down East Long Beach area of LA. He doesn't get paid much, some muffins, a chicken, whatever. But one day his former friend Dodson, a small-time hustler with big-time attitude, brings him a case with a juicy payday: a drug-addled rap star whose life is being threatened, whose entourage contains nothing but suspects, and an attempted murder by a trained giant pit bull who recalls an urban Hound of the Baskervilles.

IQ is not a black Sherlock Holmes, of course: just listen to his lecture about inductive versus deductive logic. But he's as close as it's going to get in Los Angeles, and with Dodson as his even-more-unlikely Dr. Watson, he's soon caught up with a vicious killer for hire who has him firmly in his sights.

If this were simply a Holmes pastiche dressed up for modern LA, this first novel would be nothing memorable but two things make it stand out. First is Joe Ide's deft handling of character and dialogue, which allows the characters space to make the story move, rather than letting it be driven solely by plot. But even more impressive is the way Ide structures the story, taking it back to Isaiah's childhood, the death of his older brother, and his former relationship with Dodson, to fill in not only how he became IQ, but the wider picture of the environment, the hood, and the lives of the people who live there. There is a good analogy with the Holmes stories: part of their enduring charm is the portrayal of the world around Holmes and Watson, and the ways in which they navigate it: Ide had done much the same thing for IQ and his LA.

This is as impressive a first novel as I've encountered in years; which is not a daring thing to say as it was nominated for the Edgar for Best First Novel. I got the same sort of buzz I did when I read Walter Mosley's first, for much the same reasons. Easy and IQ are a nice comparison, though no one is a Mouse. It works because IQ is not a gimmick detective, but because for all his exceptional skills, he is a real character, one smart enough but not quite as worldly as you might think, which allows the rest of the cast to bounce off him. Which, when you think about it, is what Holmes does too. Though Watson is no way as hip as Dodson.

IQ by Joe Ide

Weidenfeld & Nicholson £8.99 ISBN 978147460718 

NOTE: This review will also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)

FOLLOWING THE FALCON IN MEXICO

After watching John Ford's The Seas Beneath over Christmas (see my essay on it here), I mentioned the Argentine actress Mona Maris, who was one of the most interesting characters in that film, and who, as if by coincidence, turned out to play a part in a Falcon movie I came across, one of the few I had never before seen.

The Falcon In Mexico is one of the Tom Conway Falcons; you'll recall he replaced his brother, George Sanders, when Sanders wanted out of what Saint creator Leslie Charteris called the 'bargain-basement Saint'  series. (I wrote about the best of the series, The Falcon Takes Over, based on Raymond Chandler's Murder My Sweet, here). Sanders' Gay Lawrence was replaced by his brother's Tom Lawrence, and adjustments were made for Conway's lesser talent. It is Conway at his most hapless; RKO wanted to play the Falcon for more laffs than the Saint, and made the most of Conway's trademark double-take,which, especially when women are confusing him at the same time he is being irresistible to them, has to be see to be disbelieved.

The story is actually a fairly complicated parlour mystery, built around the murder of an art dealer in New York, and the disappearance of a new painting by an artist, Humphrey Wade, who is supposed to be dead. Lawrence had been conned into breaking into the gallery by Dolores Ybarra, a young Mexican woman who claimed to have modeled for the painting. Of course Tom now finds himself in the frame, if you'll excuse the expression, for the killing, but he goes on the lam pronto.

The trail takes him to the artist's daughter Mona (played by Martha MacVicar, soon to be renamed Martha Vickers by Warner Bros.) who is haunted, she believes, by her father's ghost, and thence to Mexico, where her father lived and worked (and which enabled RKO to use some of Orson Welles' stock shots from his never-finished Brazilian film, It's All True). There they meet Maris, playing Wade's widow, and her slick new husband Anton, who's in the Falcon's face PDQ. A Wade collector, 'Lucky Diamond' Hughes (perhaps to distinguish him from Howard Hughes?) shows up trying to chase down the stolen 'new' painting. Emory Parnell plays Hughes with a combination of bluster and sneaky greed that is delightful, if a bit embarrassing (check him out in his jammies when The Falcon breaks in on him).

Dolores soon turns up dead, so throw in the local taxi driver (Nestor Paiva), his son, the mysterious hotel clerk (Mary Currier, a kind of B move Bette Davis), cops and Dolores' father and you've got a twisty mystery that Conway struggles to solve.

Maris (second right in the photo right) is again one of the best things about the film; she has more range than most of the actors involved, though her role doesn't necessarily demand it. She gets second-billing, after Conway, and deserves that, perhaps because this was her second Falcon pic; she played in Sanders' second one, A Date With The Falcon, as the exotic femme fatale who involves him with a gang trying to get a formula for artificial diamonds, which coincidentally prevents his marriage to long-term fiance Wendy Barrie, who, for all her pizazz, isn't as interesting as Maris.

Paiva as Manuel, the taxi driver (center in the picture above), does a nice job of insinuating more than the usual Mexican cliches in his role, but the hidden star is MacVicar (left). She seems to be sleepwalking through much of the movie, but then, when the mystery becomes clear, you realise that has been the effect of his haunting--and the closing scenes when he is 'herself' again her vitality jumps off the screen. It is no surprise Warners had things in mind for her, and it was her bad luck to have her part in The Big Sleep reduced when the film was re-edited to emphasize the Bogart-Bacall relationship, following their success in To Have And Have Not. I wrote about that for Crime Time many years ago, perhaps I'll need to revisit the piece myself. In the meantime, this is a fun episode of the Falcon series, helped by the setting and especially by the two actress leads.

LIAM NEESON AND DEATH WISH: THE ANATOMY OF A CONTROVERSY

In the days of click-bait celebrity journalism, identity-politics opinion, and memory that extends no farther than the last hit of the 'delete' key, it was hard to figure out exactly what it was that actor Liam Neeson had done forty years ago after a 'close friend' had been raped that merited the headlines it generated. The rapist had been a black man, and the tabloids, both printed and virtual, screamed that Neeson had gone out on the streets looking to kill a black man in revenge. And of course the tabloid headlines generated more 'serious' reflection. One opinion piece in Britain's Guardian explained that Neeson confessed to having 'entertained a racist lynching fantasy' and gone 'looking for a black man to murder'.

But what Neesom had actually said was something not so subtly different, and it rang a warning bell in my head, as it should have done for anyone with a passing knowledge of popular film. Neeson told the online newspaper The Independent that he had packed a cosh and gone to black neighbourhoods hoping 'to be approached...that some black bastard would come out of a pub and have a go at me so I could kill him'. So he was a man seeking vengeance for a rape going out and making himself an obvious target so he could exact his revenge? I've seen that movie.

It was called Death Wish, based on the novel of the same name by the recently deceased Brian Garfield, and it starred Charles Bronson and was directed by Michael Winner in 1975, and thus not long before the incident Neeson described. It was a huge hit, and it's not unlikely that the 23 year old Neeson saw it. Bronson plays Paul Kersey, a New York City architect whose wife is murdered and daughter raped by a gang of intruders (including Jeff Goldblum in his first film appearance). He begins setting himself up as an obvious target for muggers, then kills them.

So rather than seeking out any black man as a revenge victim, Neeson was specifically looking for an attacker, so his vengeance might be justified. Obviously, he never acted out those impulses, possibly because his local community, normally a hothouse of revenge violence, was unwilling or unable to provide the requisite 'bastards' to have a go at him, but the whole thing is so close to the plot of Death Wish to suggest he may have been acting out a movie fantasy in his head. Which is still something for which he can indeed still feel ashamed.

But perhaps we also need to remember that although he was not an actor then, Liam Nesson is one now, and actors do tend to see the world as an extension of their movies. Let's set some more background here: Neeson gave this revealing and controversial interview on a promotional tour for his new movie, Cold Pursuit, in which he plays a snow-plow driver seeking revenge against the drug dealers he thinks murdered his son. The film is a remake of the Norwegian thriller In Order Of Disappearance, and Neeson's casting is rather like Winner's casting of Bronson, because like Bronson, Neeson is best-known for action hero movies.

In Garfield's original novel, Paul (called Benjamin) is an accountant. The book was originally adapted by screenwriter Wendell Mayes for director Sidney Lumet, the Michelangelo of New York City's urban decay in the Seventies, and was to star Jack Lemmon. In Garfield's words, the story was that of 'an ordinary guy who descends into madness'. It was meant to recall the adage about digging two graves when you embark on revenge. But when producer Dino DeLaurentis acquired the rights, Lumet backed off the project and Winner (whom Garfield called 'an idiot') was brought on board, along with Bronson, with whom he had a successful working relationship. In Winner's subtle hands, the violence was played with voyeuristic celebration, something perhaps more requiring of apology than Neeson's own fantasies. Bronson, of course, became an heroic figure. Enough to propel Death Wish to four film sequels, a fifth film based on Garfield's own sequel, Death Sentence, and a 2018 remake starring Bruce Willis, which I have not yet seen because frankly, life is too short.

In his interview, Nesson mentioned his growing up in Northern Ireland, during what are euphemistically called 'The Troubles'. He grew up seeing the urge, the constant demand, for vengeance played out all around him. His film career reflects that, especially the series of Taken movies, in which he avenges himself on kidnappers. Cold Pursuit was getting none of the buzz of a Taken film, and indeed opened to disappointing returns in the US, bringing in the worst box office for any Neeson action film since Darkman in 1990, his introduction to the genre. Which leads to the question of why Neeson felt now was the moment to unroll this forty-year old fantasy tale of revenge?

The original novel was called Death Wish because Paul Benjamin was acting out his own death wish, and, as noted, Brian Garfield wanted to show his vengeance was leading to his own self-destruction. Winner and Bronson's version was more celebratory of Paul's transformation. Ambiguity isn't a motif in Michael Winner movies.

So was Neeson's a bold confession, aimed at pointing out this futility of revenge? Or was he seeing, as Michael Winner had, a simpler vision, that, as Rap Brown reminded us,'violence is as American as cherry pie', and thus he was using his own life to bolster his standing as an action-hero purveyor of violence? Or was he conflating his fantasies conveniently with a deeper reality?

The link between films and reality is especially strong in Neeson's own life, where the tragedy of his wife Natasha Richardson's death recalled one his own most moving roles, in the days before he became the Charles Bronson de nos jours, in Ethan Frome. Eschewing cynicism, it would not be unreasonable to believe that Neeson was not simply promoting his latest, that he would feel drawn to unburden himself of a memory of great unpleasantness in order to remind viewers that his characters in films are just that, only characters in only movies, and reality is much more cruel. If that be the case, he should be faulted only for not realising that the sins of the past are today grist less for deep reflection than for the internet mill of short-lived high-flame outrage.