Banks and Gristhorpe hunt a psychopath.

Peter Robinson. Wednesday’s Child (1996) An early DCI Banks tale. A child goes missing, a gruesomely killed corpse is found above the town, DCI Banks and Supt Gristhorpe split the load, but the two cases converge (of course). The perp is a text-book psychopath. Robinson’s plotting is near immaculate.
     I find these books a good read. Robinson’s ability to invest even secondary characters with enough suggestive detail for realism, and his leisurely but steady narrative pace make for a better than average entertainment. He keeps the gore to a minimum, sets the scenes well, and traces the twisting and turning and occasionally dead-ended path of the investigation clearly. Recommended, as is the TV series. ***

Rumpole's Swan Song

 

 John Mortimer. Rumpole and the Primrose Path (2003) The last collection of short stories. Rumpole has recovered from his heart attack, but it takes some time for his career to restart. These tales show him in all his glory, objecting to and fighting against the inevitable miscarriages of justice caused by police tunnel vision and occasional corruption, presumptions of guilt by respectable lawyers who should be assuming the opposite, and biased judges. The impression that Mortimer is using Rumpole to vent his flustration at the misnamed justice system is stronger than ever. I won’t spoil you pleasure by recounting any of the tales. Buy or borrow the book, and enjoy finding out for yourself. For more information, check Wikipedia. Four novels were published after this last series of short stories.

Recommended ****

Spike Milligan at War

 

 

Spike Milligan. Adolf Hitler, My Part in His Downfall (1971), Rommel: Gunner Who? (1975), Monty, His Part in My Victory (1976), Mussolini, His Part in My Downfall (1978). Milligan’s “war biography”. There were three more books, which I haven’t found yet. Milligan was drafted into the Royal Artillery, rose to the rank of Lance Bombardier (corporal), and in Italy was demoted by a career martinet of a Major. He also suffered shell shock. The last book ends with his spending time in a psychiatric ward.
     The first volume has a good deal of The Goon Show in it, but as time and the war progress the tone becomes more realistic and darker. Milligan still attempts humour, but it feels more and more like a defence against the madness that surrounds him and that begins to affect his psyche. He suffered from bipolar disorder for the rest of his life; there is some evidence that the war either triggered or worsened it.
As records of how the war felt to a fighting soldier, these books are priceless. I read them compulsively. My uncle served with the Warwickshire Mounted Infantry in North Africa. Milligan’s book gave me some taste of what it was like for him, too. Recommended. ****

Covid-19 denial by people who have it:

 

An ER nurse in South Dakota tweeted about some of her patients who deny they have covid-19.: 

How does one react to this report? I can see that some people would deny their peril in any case. We don't want to face  the near-certainty of death. But I suspect that most such denials would be versions of hope, a clinging to the near-zero chance of recovery. What this nurse reports is something else: denial triggered by politics, by ideological poison, by delusions promoted by a demagogue. What's worst about is that it prevents the comfort of family connection, of seeing and talking with loved ones.

Update: On reflection, I think that in these cases politics and ideology complicate what is a normal human reaction to the prospect of imminent death. I don' t think it's common, though.

Update 2021-09-09: I've now read stories about the Delta variant surge in Oregon and other places. The anecdotes are heartbreaking. Yet vaccine-denial and covid-denial continue, even in those places hardest hit by the latest surge in infections and death. The sad fact is that an unvaccinated person admitted to ICU has a less than 50% chance of surviving.

 

Middle school kid adapts to real life: Judy Blume's Then Again, Maybe I Won't

Judy Blume Then Again, Maybe I Won’t (1971). Judy Blume annoyed a lot of people who believed that children’s and young people’s literature should present severely filtered versions of the real world. Why some adults think that protecting their offspring from reality will somehow help them is puzzle to me. Not that I want to push children into the dark, but when they encounter it, I want them to have some defences. Stories that acknowledge the dark, and show their protagonists as dealing with it, provide just such defences. That’s what this page-turner of a book does.
    Thirteen-year-old Tony Miglione’s father sells an invention to an entrepreneur, which means the family can move to Rosemont, and live in a big house, with a maid and such. The neighbours’ son Joel and Tony become friends, Tony develops a crush on Joel’s sister Lisa, Grandma is banished from the kitchen, and so on. Tony doesn’t know how to handle the stress of seeing the changes in his family, Joel’s shop-lifting, and the physiological and psychological effects of puberty. But he survives the year, and while there are no earth-shaking developments in his life, Tony realises that life is improving for him. The book ends on a note of “to be continued”, which may not be so for the book, but will certainly be so for Tony.
    Blume seems to have invented the “young adult” genre. This now almost 50-year-old book still reads well. Recommended ****

 

Comment on anti-vaxxers updated 2026-01-11 (link)

I've updated the post. Click on this one.

Long Covid

Comment on a report in New Scientist, October 31-November 6, 2020, pp. 10-13.

The latest data show that symptoms of covid-19 persist for up to four months in some people. Probably longer, as the study stopped at that point. The symptoms range from fatigue through “brain-fog” and memory loss through problems breathing. Blood clots threaten to provoke strokes. Headaches are common. Damage to heart, lungs, and other organs has been observed. Hospitalised people appear most likely to suffer these symptoms. The data are incomplete, but it’s likely that around 5% of people who recover from covid-19 will experience more or less serious symptoms two months or more after the onset of the infection.

I think that somewhere between one and five percent will suffer from “long covid”, defined as debilitating symptoms for two months or longer. That’s a serious consequence, since these people will need some continuing care, and/or accommodation at work. The more severe cases will be unable to work at all. The economic losses will be high, combining lost productivity and cost of care. Or, to put it another way: a significant proportion of human and other resources will be diverted from the usual economic activities.

Unanswered questions: Who is most likely to be affected, and why? What kinds of treatment will mitigate long covid? How long will it actually last?