The American Spectator

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Getting Through the Boring Days Ahead with Murder Mysteries: Like football fans after the Super Bowl, those who follow American politics will have a lot of downtime in the next three years. Gerrymandered House seats and state borders guarantee Republican majorities, but not the 60 votes needed in the Senate to pass anything fatal to the Democrat coalition. So there is plenty of time to read murder mysteries. And if you read historically based murder mysteries, it seems more grown-up and serious. Here are some of the best available.

First, for viewers of the new HBO miniseries Rome -- a cross between Sex and the City and The Sopranos with togas and swords -- there are two series of detective novels based in the period from the collapsing Roman Republic to Augustus's empire. Steven Saylor's Roma sub Rosa series has seven novels and two books of short stories starring the Sherlock Holmes of his day, Gordianus the Finder. His most recent is a collection of short stories, A Gladiator Dies Only Once. John Maxwell Roberts' SPQR series has six novels featuring Decius Metellus as the detective.

Underpaid European history professors have created an entire industry of murder mysteries set in the Middle Ages. Most well known are the 20-plus Brother Cadfael novels written by Ellis Peters. Circa 1100 A.D., Brother Cadfael is a Welshman and a former soldier and adventurer, but now a monk with Agatha Christie's Miss Marples' knack for finding murder and mayhem in the countryside. Writing about the Ireland of 600 a.d., Peter Tremayne has penned at least six novels featuring the lawyer Sister Fidelma and her "friend" the Saxon monk, Eadulf. Leaping ahead to the 11th century, Edward Marston has written eleven Domesday Books featuring Ralph Delchard and Gervase Bret's adventures. Candace Robb has seven Owen Archer mysteries, set c. 1370. Paul Doherty has two protagonists: Hugh Corbett of Medieval Mysteries and The Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan, spanning post-1066 England. Doherty also has four books based in Ancient Egypt. These ought to keep you busy until we have enough senators to privatize Social Security.

Grover Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform.

Theodore B. Olson

My FBI by Louis J. Freeh: Honest, tough, and straight reporting from a man who just couldn't be corrupted by his service for eight years inside the Clinton administration as director of the FBI. Freeh had been an FBI agent, United States attorney, and federal judge before taking on the FBI job. Brilliant, strong, uncompromising. Just what the Clinton presidency feared most. With the integrity and the tenacity not to be seduced, undermined, or driven away until it was safe to hand the FBI over to a president who valued the rule of law as much as he did.

Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams by Paul Hemphill: A moving and revealing biography of a man who has inspired generations of songwriters and musicians; a short and tragic life of a genius of music, poetry, and emotion, whose words and music will never die. Listen to Lucinda Williams singing "Cold, Cold Heart" and you will be haunted by Hank Williams forever.

Thomas Jefferson by Christopher Hitchens: A short, brilliant, and insightful rendition of the life of Thomas Jefferson by one of the most captivating writers and keenest observers of life and politics alive today.

The Closers and The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly: Great reading for airplanes, vacations, bedtime, or in front of the fireplace by a master of crime, law, and Los Angeles.

Theodore B. Olson is the former solicitor general of the United States.

Alfred S. Regnery

You cannot really understand the 20th century without reading Witness by Whittaker Chambers. It certainly isn't a new book, but it is timeless. Not only is it beautifully written and superb literature, not only is it a great spy story, but it portrays the ultimate confrontation between good and evil, between oppression and freedom, and between Western civilization and Communism. When you are done reading it, give it to your children. And if you want even more about the greatest spy case, read Alger Hiss's Looking Glass Wars, by University of Virginia law professor G. Edward White, newly out in paperback. Why, White asks, did Hiss, an intelligent and well-educated man, spend 40 years lying about his past, dragging his family, friends, old colleagues, and, in a sense, the whole left-wing establishment into that lie, when it would have been so easy for him to admit that he was a spy when caught and then go on with the rest of his life? Good question.

I probably don't need to tell Spectator readers to stay away from Jimmy Carter's latest, Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (unless you want to help us find Current Wisdom), but I will anyway; it is our worst president's check list of everything that is wrong with America, most of which comes from everybody to the right of, well, Jimmy. For a little inspiration, read No Excuses by Kyle Maynard, born with no arms below the elbow, no legs below the knee, but unstoppable in everything he does, from wrestling, football, studies, and just living his life. No more feeling sorry for yourself after reading Kyle.

Alfred S. Regnery is publisher of The American Spectator.

William E. Simon, Jr.

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