TARGETS OF MALICE: EDWARD CLINE
https://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/
This column is a follow-up of my “Amazon Bans Cline” column, in which I emulate Jeff Bezos’s fictional announcement that he is banning all my books from the Amazon sales platform. Now I link the ongoing, all-too-real farce of Brett Kavanaugh’s Judiciary nomination hearing to a fictional inquest in the Cyrus Skeen series, set mostly in San Mateo, California, in 1927. In this story, Inquest, a local assistant district attorney tries to pin a manslaughter charge on Skeen. The similarities between Skeen’s inquest, about whether or not he murdered a criminal, and Kavanaugh’s confirmation circus, are too similar to ignore.
Definition of inquest
1a : a judicial or official inquiry or examination especially before a jury a coroner’s inquest
b : a body of people (such as a jury) assembled to hold such an inquiry
c : the finding of the jury upon such inquiry or the document recording it
A succinct definition from Wikipedia is:
An inquest is a judicial inquiry in common law jurisdictions, particularly one held to determine the cause of a person’s death. Conducted by a judge, jury, or government official, an inquest may or may not require an autopsy carried out by a coroner or medical examiner. Generally, inquests are conducted only when deaths are sudden or unexplained.
The inquest in San Mateo was focused on the deceased Josephus Kringal. The Foreword to my novel reads:
Struggling to make a success of his detective agency, Skeen finds himself the target of an ambitious local assistant district attorney after an inquest is held surrounding the death of a criminal Skeen had tried to subdue and have him arrested; but the criminal resisted and chose to fight, resulting in the criminal’s death.
Skeen may be charged with manslaughter. The inquest is ended, over the medical examiner’s objections, with the assistant district attorney attempting to charge Skeen with manslaughter and demanding that he be arraigned on the charge. It is early February 1927. This is the twenty-seventh Cyrus Skeen detective novel. Skeen reflects on a case from earlier in his detective career, shortly after he had set up shop in San Francisco as a private detective.
It cannot be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that Skeen deliberately had pulled the trigger that killed the criminal, or that the criminal had inadvertently shot himself with the gun as Skeen wrestled to get it away from him. Ford cannot prove the truth of her accusations, which have no substantial, provable evidence
The Kavanaugh nomination hearing is synopsized here:
In July 2018, Christine Blasey Ford sent a letter to Senator Diane Feinstein claiming that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party in 1982. Feinstein held onto the letter as the hearing of Kavanaugh ended, choosing to reveal it and its contents thus delaying a vote on his confirmation to the SCOTUS. Keeping up with the Judicial Committee hearings, it has taken on the tone of an inquest into Kavanaugh’s character and history, in which he has been judged by mere unsubstantiated say-to.
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The longer that the Brett Kavanaugh sexual assault allegation scandal continues, the worse it looks for the accuser.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the lawmaker whom Christine Blasey Ford confided in with her accusations, has done a great job at destroying any credibility Ford had going into this. By being informed of her allegations in the form of a letter back in July, and waiting until a week before Kavanaugh’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation vote to release the details, Feinstein has tainted Ford’s claims. Now, many suspect the allegations are too politically timed to be believed. Even some Senate Democrats are displeased by the suspect timing.)
At the beginning of this saga, Ford could have made a real, substantive case about her alleged assault. She could have made the allegations and demanded a full inquiry. Instead, she waited to go public, and, in turn, undermined her own case. Now Ford is refusing to testify before Congress, despite her attorney agreeing that she would just days prior.)
But it gets worse. It turns out that Sen. Feinstein’s office is withholding a key piece of information related to the Kavanaugh investigation: Ford’s unredacted original letter detailing the assault.
Now, if Feinstein really wanted to get to the bottom of what happened between Kavanaugh and Ford, you’d think she would share that letter with the rest of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is investigating the incident currently.
In Inquest, the assistant district attorney attempts to force Skeen to confess that he deliberately shot the criminal. Skeen does not. In the course of questioning, he handily dismisses the notion that he deliberately shot the criminal.
The medical examiner, Hershel Frum, who is on the panel along with the county sheriff who found the criminal’s body, protests the assistant district attorney’s line of questioning. The assistant district attorney declares the inquest concluded:
Lawrence Werner read from a prepared statement:
“The addendum has been called at the request of County Assistant District Attorney Lawrence Werner. Mr. Werner asserts that he noted irregularities in the manner of Mr. Kringal’s demise when Mr. Skeen engaged Mr. Kringal in a desperate struggle for the revolver in Mr. Kringal’s possession, and with which Mr. Kringal had a number of times fired at Mr. Skeen, striking him once in a non-lethal manner. These irregularities, which will soon be discussed, have convinced Mr. Werner that the possibility of a charge of wrongful death against Mr. Skeen may be justified, and also a charge of manslaughter in a suit by the county and by Mr. Kringal’s survivors, if any….”
The medical examiner then read from his autopsy report on the death of the criminal.
Frum sighed and added, “Sheriff Nicoloff is holding the revolver as evidence in his homicide investigation. He has had the weapon test-fired to compare the slugs from this revolver found in Mr. Kringal’s cranium and those from the plaster ceiling of his domicile. Our forensics department attests that they are all indeed were fired from the revolver. The slug which grazed Mr. Skeen’s waist could not be found, as it traveled from Mr. Skeen’s waist through a screen door. Two other slugs from the same weapon struck Mr. Kringal’s vehicle, which was parked outside close to the porch, and while they have been extracted from the vehicle and tentatively identified, the department could not swear they are from the same weapon. They had been too marred and shorn of identifiable markings for having struck hard metal. Possibly the slug that struck Mr. Skeen is one of them….
…“Projectile fired by the revolver at close proximity to the subject entered the under space of the mentum with such force that it not unexpectedly traveled from the undershot jaw or mandible, and the expelled gas from the explosion was such that it left a burn mark on the deceased’s skin in that area. The projectile entered initially into the submaxillary triangle and up through the tongue and soft palate, and passed through the vomer, partially disintegrating the sella turica, thence to the sphenoid sinus, and finally burrowing upward through the brain, coming to rest near the top of the skull, about an inch from the uppermost extremity of the parietal bone….”
Werner made some threats against Skeen. Skeen’s lawyer takes action:
Rouse rose from his seat and asked, “Is Mr. Skeen is being charged with anything?” He paused and went on before Werner could reply. “I otherwise find these proceedings as frivolous and out of order, and lacking in dignity.”
Hershel Frum grinned, seemingly glad that Werner was being opposed.
Werner also grinned. It was a wicked grin. “That remains to be seen, sir. Mr. Frum, please read from Mr. Skeen’s deposition as recorded by Sheriff Nicoloff. Then Mr. Skeen will be orally examined…”
Frum read the dry statement I’d made to Nicoloff, taken by a stenographer and transcribed.
In answer to a question about his identity, Skeen says:
I smiled. “I am Jose Wannatabe, chief shaman of the Loose Goose Tribe of the Western Addition of San Francisco. My rain dances have ended many a drought.”
Several spectators snickered or laughed.
Hershel Frum abruptly rose and shouted at Werner. “I am done with this proceeding! This is a farce! We already know who he is and what he does! I would not blame him for turning this inquest into a greater farce than it is now!”
Werner shot up and faced Frum. “This is my proceeding, Mr. Frum! If you don’t sit down and be quiet I’ll have you escorted from the room!”
Frum jabbed a finger on the lapel of Werner’s jacket. “Pardon me, child, but this is my proceeding, and you are making a mockery of it! I did not understand in the beginning that you intended to railroad Mr. Skeen into a raft of false charges!” He turned, picked up the gavel near his mass of papers, and hammered the table twice. “This inquest is concluded!” He dropped the gavel, scooped up his papers, and left the table. He made to get past Werner, who stood in his way.
Sheriff Nicoloff also rose and his huge frame blocked Frum’s exit. The officer planted a hand on the wall and smiled at Frum.
Frum shouted at him, “Get out of my way, you pathetic oaf!”
I stepped forward and put a hand on Nicoloff’s shoulder. “Get out of his way, Sheriff,” I said softly.
Nicoloff turned to me.
“Or else what, Snoop?” So, we were back to that again. Nicoloff’s expression was an ugly one that dared me to touch him with anything but a hand on his shoulder.
Skeen escorts Frum away from Werner and Sheriff Nicoloff.
Rouse, Frum, and Skeen leave the inquest room. In the courthouse lobby, Skeen speaks with the local newspaper editor, who is covering the inquest, and learns that Lawrence Werner is a graduate of a Progressive law school near Portland, Oregon, the Sequoia Commons Law School, and was a recent hire of Hayden Sanger, the District Attorney, who is on vacation. Skeen investigates the school, which has a shady history.
Sanger dismisses Werner and exonerates Skeen. Skeen investigates the school, which has a shady history.
Werner was a law clerk for a late Oregon Supreme Court justice.
There was no political agenda that Skeen can see behind Werner’s wanting to charge him with a crime. Werner was a Progressive, and charging people with crimes without a smidgen of proof was and still is what Progressives do and have done for decades. Observe the Kavanaugh confirmation circus. That circus is simply the application of Rule 12 from Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism
Kavanaugh has been targeted. Who knew? Diane Feinstein is an Alinsky creature and Charles Schumer’s hand-puppet. .
What led to the aborted inquest was that Skeen investigated the murder of a retired Cuban campaign veteran in a nursing home in Redwood City and found the murderer, Josephus Kringal, an aid at the nursing home, in San Bruno. He also learns that Sheriff Nicoloff had stolen the murder victim’s life savings when he investigated the vet’s murder.
Inquest ends with the usual satisfactory duel between good and evil, between Skeen and the chief villain. Justice is delivered with a .38 bullet.
Posted by Edward Cline at 7:08 PM No comments: Links to this post
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Amazon Bans Cline: A Parody?
Moved by numerous customer complaints to Amazon that Edward Cline’s novels violated norms of current moral and community standards, Jeff Bezos, the owner of the book seller, has decided to banish the novels from sale on the platform. This is not an unprecedented action. He has recently banished other writers’ books for the same reason, such as Roosh Vörek’s Game, which is a harmless, “sexist”guide to dating.
Cline has approximately sixty-nine titles on Amazon, published by Create Space and Kindle, including several non-fiction titles that attack Islam and living politicians. These are collections of several of his Rule of Reason columns. Paramount among these titles is his seven-book Sparrowhawk series about the American Revolution – which does not conform to the current revisionist interpretation of the period and is offensive on several levels.
In addition to the historical series, are several dozen detective novels, dominated by the Cyrus Skeen series, set in the 1920s and 1930s. These latter novels, whose stories take place in San Francisco, unrealistically portray a period in which the detective combats and foils Communists, Progressives, all depicted as villains, and also run-of-the- mill criminals, because he is consistently of the conservative, pro-gun, and alt-right suasion. The baddies are irredeemably bad, and Skeen is always the good. The first of this series is China Basin, in which the author derogates gays, modern theatre, and lonely widows, among other offenses.
In An August Interlude he defends his wife’s artist’s model and portrays a convent that pimps out novitiates to a high class bordello next door to the convent. Amazon has received innumerable complaints from Catholic Church spokesmen about this title. It depicts and condones violence against women when Skeen shoots some nuns.
One of the most offensive titles is The Black Stone, in which the detective is at odds with the early agents of the Islamic civic rights organization, The Muslim Brotherhood, closely tied to today’s Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR). Skeen not only defeats and kills the agents, but subjects Islam to insensitive, disparaging mockery, as do his wife and a reporter friend. These are not characters one can admire and emulate when the subject is Islam.
Another top selling Skeen novel is A Crimson Overture, in which Skeen works to “avenge” the murder of a British spy. In this number he terminates a few Russian or Soviet spies and exposes a British diplomatic official as another “Red.” One admiring female reader commented, “A Crimson Overture is the latest in a series about the all-American Cyrus Skeen, my new detective hero. Skeen is smart, cultured, honest, brave, confident, handsome, and individualistic (which together, in my eyes, equals sexy). This and other of Cline’s Skeen novels are popular and sell dozens of Kindle and print copies every month. There are very few thumbs-down reviews. You have to question the tastes of the admirers as well as the credibility of the detective hero and the lingering yearning in our society for so-called plotted novels and squeaky-clean heroes as opposed to the struggling but enlightening literature of modern “steam of conscious” novels which tackle the real problems of our day.
The FBI, known then as the BOI, or the Bureau of Investigation, gets high marks from Cline and Skeen. Skeen has friends in the Bureau. It was not the compromised, corrupted federal organization that it is today.
Cline even takes a swipe at unions in The Gumshoe Guild, when Skeen goes nose-to-nose with San Francisco dockworker leader Harry Bridges, who has “organized” the city’s private investigators. Skeen refuses to join the “union,” but Bridges insists that he merge with the shape up, and sparks, of course, fly and men die.
Perhaps the most outlandish of the Skeen novels is The Daedâlus Conspiracy, set mostly in Daedâlus Grove in Monte Rio, California. The Daedâlus Society in San Francisco, like its doppelganger the Bohemian Club, holds an annual summer encampment in the Grove, surrounded by redwoods and attended by high-muck-a-mucks from all quarters of economic and political power. It is an ambitious title. Skeen is hired to determine whether or not a plot to assassinate one of the attending politicians is afoot. Discovering a strange code used by the plotters, he untangles and foils the scheme and inadvertently kills the assassin. This denouement takes him back to the city, and he finishes the job. There are more murders, of course.
Cline’s novels, especially the Skeen novels, are not of our time, demonstrably not of our disposition and spirit, and serve to encourage the individualistic and stand-apart arrogance of a bygone time. Therefore, they should be banished, pushed to the side as pettifogging retorts to what must be said and has been said. His other two series, set in our own sorry time, feature private detective Chess Hanrahan, and Merritt Fury, a James Bond-like a fist-happy entrepreneur, set in New York City, are of the same ilk and laughable mettle. Skeen, Hanrahan, and Fury are supposed to be super heroes without capes or costumes or super powers, armed with only their “smarts” and their steroid-inflated egos. It’s a wonder they have any powers at all because they smoke and drink to distraction, which should leave modern readers clucking their tongues.
They all pursue what passes in their stories for truth, justice, and the “American” way. His sparse non-fiction titles, which are collections of columns from his blogs, are the author’s way of venting his cerebral spleen, inadequate as it might be, but nevertheless are dangerous to the happy, content health to the national commonwealth. Readers would be better off not knowing they exist.
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