Nicholas Whistler is a very unlucky young man, debt-ridden, and an easy target for someone who wants to recruit him for something illegal and dangerous in the Cold War 60s. But Nicholas has little choice in the matter and agrees to travel to Prague to fetch important state or technological secrets. The Night of Wencelas is non-stop adventure as his simple mission becomes life-threatening and he suddenly realizes what he has become involved with. No longer a tourist, he is now a hunted man in an enemy city and must find his way to the British Embassy to make his escape.
As I read the book I realized that Lionel Davidson had managed to work his magic twenty years after the book was written. I eagerly read the Rose of Tibet and the Menorah Men in quick succession. Though I enjoyed The Rose, it didn’t quite have the same hold on me that Night of Wencelas had produced. Then I started on The Menorah Men. My eyes bugged. Wow! Talk about mind candy. I couldn’t put it down.
Imagine what it would be like to be a young archaeologist who is sudeenly and unexpectedly recruited by the government of Israel to find a treasure that was thought to have been destroyed in Roman Times, but may still exist hidden somewhere in the Sinai. Young Casper Laing is intrigued, but unconvinced. He is even more hesitant when he realizes that Arabs from Jordan were also hot on the trail of the artifact. His partner in the search is a beautiful young Israeli soldier who has an archaeological background. She is also engaged to a Yemeni officer in the Israeli Army. Along the way, Laing is kidnapped, shot at, takes a prolonged bath in the Dead Sea and untilmately unlocks the code to where the true Menorah was hidden. He also wins the heart of his assistant. The history is so vivid and the codes so challenging that I was immediately convinced that this was the greatest treasure hunt novel ever written, better far than all of Indiana Jones’ adventures. It also became the benchmark for my own novel, The Cellini Masterpiece, as I perfected it over the next two decades.
From his website I learned that he was born in Hull, Yorkshire. He left school early to become an office boy at The Spectator in London. Later he joined the Keystone Press Agency. In the Second World War he served with the Royal Naval Submarine Service. In 1946, he returned to the Keystone Press Agency. He travelled all over Europe as a reporter. On one of these trips he got the idea for his first thriller. His first book was a tremendous success and he gave up his job to become a full-time writer. It turtned out to be a good move. He has won the Gold Dagger three times: in 1960 for The Night of Wenceslas, in 1966 for A long way to Shiloh (US title The Menorah Men) and in 1978 for The Chelsea Murders (US title Murder Games)Davidson lived in Israel for a time and then returned to England. In 2001 he was awarded the Diamond Dagger. Davidson lives and works in London.
I have never had the pleasure or opportunity of meeting this giant in the mystery field, but I do hope I will. For all of you who haven’t had the pleasure of reading his work, I invite you to find copies. You’re in for a wonderful treat.
John Anderson is a fan of Mystery/Adventure/Suspense. The Cellini Masterpiece is set on the island of Malta and involves a secret dating to the mid 1500s. He welcomes all questions and comments and invites you to his website: http://www.cmasterpiece.com
THE MORAL OF THE STORY
Lou Dubose and Jan Reid’s new book, THE HAMMER, a biography on House of Representatives Majority Whip Tom DeLay, is allegedly a story of God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congressand just how Tom DeLay took advantage of Newt Gingrich and fellow Texan Dick Armey’s Republican ascendancy and became himself the most powerful man in the House of Representatives. We’ll get into the “God part” a lot more than the money and political parts for nowbut just to warn you, the King of Tyre (money) and the King of Babylon (political power) have a whole lot to do about this most interesting story.
This is all the more fascinating now that the powerful Congressman has collected a whole lot of chips from fellow Reps. for past support and, consequently, has gotten the House GOP caucus (Nov. 18, 2004) to vote to end its rule requiring leaders to step down if indicted (which it now appears that DeLay will be for past indiscretions brought against him in Texas). The political intrigue is mounting, big time!
Now, the plot of this political-religious thriller intensifies as the “moral of the story” is discoveredenter Tim LaHaye (kind of a neat little rhyme going on here with Tom and Tim, DeLay and LaHaye). You see, DeLay eventually walked right into an evangelical church that had gotten a whole lot more “politicized” by folks like LaHayeso, when we get into the “God part” of DeLay, you’ll understand why we brought LaHaye along.
Now, LaHaye will act as Chairman of the Board for Jerry Falwell’s newly energized FAITH AND VALUES COALITION. The Faith and Values Coalition, according to the most beloved Baptist brother on the planet, the Rev. Barry Lynn (mouth for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State), is nothing more than “just another fund-raising vehicle.” Furthermore, Lynn so abhors these religious/political efforts that he likens them to “an old horror movieevery time they bring Frankenstein’s monster back, it just gets worse!”
One might be hearing “sour grapes” a bitcheck out Barry’s remarks, and comments on his remarks:
“Some things should be left dead and buried,” Lynn said. He noted that recent analysis of election results debunked early claims that “values voters” re-elected President Bush. In fact, Lynn pointed out, voter’s main concerns were terrorism, national security and the war in Iraq.
“The people do not share Jerry Falwell’s repressive vision of an America where church and state are merged and the views of intolerant TV preachers form the basis of our laws,” Lynn said. “I welcome Falwell’s new organization to the debate. I feel confident it will meet the same fate as the Moral Majority.” (see above for source)
Sure, I bet Lynn welcomes Falwell and LaHaye to the debateI bet he just can’t wait! Apparently, Falwell believes in the resurrectionI wonder if Barry does? But then, again, nothing like another “Son of Frankenstein” movie!
THE BOBSIE TWINS - FIRST, LaHAYE
DeLay and LaHaye do have some interesting things in common. For one, they know how to wield political clout and marshal conservative religious forces in America, while amassing vast sums of money for their causes (most of which are mutual). LaHaye co-founded Falwell’s original Moral Majority back in the late ’70s. He and his wife, Beverly, started campaigning for pro-life causes through their Baptist marriage counseling company, Family Life Seminars. In 1979 Bev founded Concerned Women for Americaa sort of counter weight to the National Organization for Women (NOW). Furthermore, LaHaye’s famous “Left Behind” serieswhose sales are off the charts, approaching (if not surpassing) over 100 million copies (and, catapulting the LaHaye’s literary fortunes close to that same figure)makes him one of the wealthiest evangelicals in America, if not the world.
Although Falwell held center stage in galvanizing conservative Christians to the polls and, ipso facto, to the Republican cause, LaHaye (as Falwell puts it) “ran under the radar.” In 1981 LaHaye founded the Council for National Policyclaiming, at one time, some 600,000 members. In the 1980s, the CNP was quite the political/religious machine; spawning countless campaigns and organizations. Included among its members were Ed Meese, John Ashcroft, Pat Robertson and, of course Falwellas well as key think tanks, and activists like Grover Norquist and Oliver North. A lot of the “right-wing jihad” against President Clinton in the 1990s was funded by CNP supporters like Texas oilman and silver manipulator, Nelson Bunker Hunt, Richard DeVos of Amway and beer magnate Joseph Coors (the same crowd that funded the contras in Central America).
Impeaching Clinton was allegedly conceived by the CNP in Montreal in June of 1997. Falwell touts the CNP for helping raise hundreds of millions for ventures like Liberty University (the second largest Evangelical Christian University in Americasurpassed only by Baylor (Baptist) University in Waco, TX). President Bush attended a CNP meeting at the start of his 1999 presidential campaign, and Rumsfeld took part in the group’s gathering last April in Washington, D.C. Republican political strategist, Paul Weyrich, once said: “Without [LaHaye], what we call the religious right would not have developed the way it did, and as quickly as it did.”
Brother LaHaye took a severe fall when he was linked, along with wife Bev, in taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from the wacky would-be messiah Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church cult (which most Christians really do view as laughably heretical). When Moon got entangled with tax evasion charges, LaHaye came to his rescue. Then the “pay off monies” came out into the publicso, LaHaye tried to back offbut it was too late. By the time LaHaye tried to regroup, his reputationalong with another one of his organizations founded in the 1970s, The American Coalition for Traditional Values, flopped! But LaHaye did regroupthanks to the multi-million dollar sales of Left Behind (see, he wasn’t about to be Left Behind).
LaHaye’s agenda mirrors that of Falwell’s; and is the heart and passion of the so-called Religious Right in America. Restoring the Nation back to Absolute Valuesfamily, pro-life (a.k.a., “the culture of life”), anti-abortion (just so you know what pro-life is), anti-gay agenda (the whole thing), pro-marriage (between Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve), pro-prayer in the public schools, pro-displaying of religious symbols and artifacts like the Ten Commandments wherever and whenever, strong “national defense” (as defined as “whatever it takes to get destroy the barbaric infidels”), etc., etc., etc.
NOT LEFT BEHIND - JUST DeLAY (BOBSIE TWIN #2)
A little evangelical background on Rep. DeLay would be helpful . . . so, after a couple of terms in the Texas Legislature (after a rather lackluster business life as a pest control operator), DeLay made a move on the US Congress, running in the suburbs of Houston, TX and winning! He headed off to Washington as a freshman Rep. and led the charge against the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts)and got a whole lot of fame for DEFUNDING THE LEFT (especially with the NEA’s propensity to spend huge sums of money on absurd and even pornographic “art”).
Notwithstanding the crusading efforts to purge the Left of its immoral efforts, DeLay himself had his own demons to corral. It was in the mid-1980s when the booze-drinkin’ (similar to President Bush’s story) DeLay rediscovered his Baptist roots and through a fellow Republican colleague, Frank Wolfe, was handed a tape by Dr. James Dobsonand the rest is evangelical history. DeLay claims he had a real born-again experiencemuch like President Bush. And, like Bush, eventually got involved in an “accountability group” compliments of the Promise Keepers; then, on to the Southern Baptist, avant-garde, Sugar Land First Baptist Church, where DeLay’s A-A-mens could be easily heard, as Pastor Scott Rambo (who, as Dubose describes was “as charismatic and engaging as Bill Clinton at a town hall meeting”) preached to the thousands who’d come each week to hear his “seeker-friendly” messages.
Yep, like President Bush, DeLay’s faith has utterly energized his politics. Listen to DeLay’s “mission statement” for America:
“To bring us back to the Constitution and to Absolute Truth that has been manipulated and destroyed by a liberal worldview.” (p. 58 - The Hammer)
BUSH, THE PATRICIAN vs. DeLAY, THE PLEBEIAN or
THE OIL MAN vs. THE BUG MAN
Continuing on with DeLay’s evangelical roots (his political evolution and machinations are also really interestingbut later on those) . . .
Like Clinton, DeLay grew up in a dysfunctional home where his father was an alcoholic. He hailed from the “roughneck camps of the Texas oil patchhome to the guys who drilled the wells and ran the casing for the bullies who owned the royalties and ran the state. His patrimony was the sort of dysfunction that is the psychological and biological inheritance of the children of alcoholics.” (p. 9 - The Hammer).
On the other hand, Bush picked up the Texan drawl, but, let’s face it, his family richly provided him an East Coast prep school, bachelor’s degree from Yale, an MBA from Harvardand, being the grandson of a U.S. senator and son of a vice president and presidentman, maybe, after all, he was born with a “silver spoon” in his mouth. Whereas DeLay’s background couldn’t hold a candle to the patrician Bush. Nope, DeLay was through and through a plebeian (Roman for “dirt poor” compared to the aristocrats among the Romans called patricians.).
Bush was an oilmanand, frankly, not a very good one (so everyone knows)but he had a deep well of never-ending resources through family-related investment capital. On the other hand, DeLay was a bug man. And, like Bush, not a very good one at that. Eventually, the rules and regs. of the EPA just about wiped out his businessand, that did it. “It’s off to Congress I go”so you wonder why the “counter-revolution” against the EPA, et al, continues to this day?
Right about the same time that DeLay was “finding Jesus” - President Bush was doing the samebut under very different “evangelical environments.” First of all, Bush’s drinking habits were getting the best of himand Laura had had it.
The time was ripe! However, Bush’s “conversion experience” differed from DeLay’s. When Bush, the prodigal son, returned home to the Maine compound in 1985, there was the Revered Billy Graham. They walked the grounds of Walker Pointthe Bush family estate on the coast of Maine. Bush prayed with Graham and he “surrendered himself to Jesus.” Returning back home in Midland, Bush joined a Bible Study “accountability group” that Laura also attendedeventually, he quit drinking.
In sum, Dubose describes the Bush and DeLay religious encounters as follows:
“DeLay had come up harder in all ways, all his life. He had absorbed enough Baptist teaching and upbringing to call himself a Christian, yet as he neared forty he knew he was a sinner. His road to Damascus was plebeian, and he choked in the dust of patricians like George Bush.” (p. 53)
“When Tom DeLay fell to his knees before a video clip of James Dobson, he was not only born again in Christ, he was born again in Republican electoral politics. This is not to suggest that his motives were anything less than spiritual, but the result was political. Not only did his return to the church provide him the focus and discipline he lacked when he had been ‘Hot Tub Tom’ of ‘Macho Manor’ in Austin (you’ll have to read the book to understand), DeLay immediately became part of a religious community that is also a political community. As a high-profile evangelical Christian, Tom DeLay connected to the Christian base without which the Republican Party cannot win national electionsand many state elections. Like George W. Bush, DeLay found Jesus at the precise moment in American political history when Jesus became a political asset. THE TIMING WAS SO PERFECT THAT THE NONBELIEVR IS LEFT TO WONDER IF IT JUST MIGHT HAVE BEEN GOD’S PLAN. (pp. 58-59 - The Hammer) (Note: My emphasis upon the “secularist’s remarks.)
There you have itsomehow, evangelicalism and politicsalong with this guy, Tim LaHayefound fertile ground in the Baptist soils of Texas. Two men from two completely different walks of lifeat about the same timegot the “old time religion” and it has shaped how they look at America and the worldBIG TIME! Likewise, it has shaped how “Liberal America” thinks about them and about most “old time religion” in Americajust in case you can’t see where I’m going with this!
To be continued . . . but first, contemplate what John saw in the Revelation:
“I was astonished beyond astonishment (i.e. ‘who would have ever thought it’) when I saw the woman. And the angel said to me, ‘Why are you flabbergasted, floored, amazed, and astonished beyond astonishment? Let me tell you about the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that supports her, who has the seven heads and the ten horns’” (Revelation 17:6b-7).
Tom & Tim
DeLay And LaHaye
Or
“Creatine Christianity”
Part II
By Doug Krieger
POLITICAL-RELIGIOUS CONVERGENCEDelay
