You have never heard Black Sabbath’s “Changes” the way Charles Bradley performs it. Stunning and heartbreaking.
Year: 2020
What do you get when you mashup Danzig and The Temptations? Yes, I said Danzig and The Temptations. You get “Mother Was a Rolling Stone.”
In case anyone needs a break from all the bad news, I saw baby ducks on my walk today.
Shout out to the @EmilyBestler/@AtriaBooks/@simonschuster staffer who hand-addressed my and who knows how many other envelopes for the sweet @JackCarrUSA patch.
I do not recall how I first became aware of British author Mark Dawson. Given his prowess at web and email advertisements which inevitably lead one to one of his books’ Amazon listing, it could very well have been via BookBub, but I do not discount other methods of discovery. However I came across Dawson’s early John Milton books, I was an immediate fan. So much so, that when Mark started his beta reader program, I was in. The chance to read the next Milton book before it was released? Sign me up! Dawson has expanded his Miltonverse with the Beatrix Rose and Isabella Rose series, both of which I also recommend.
Which brings us to The Man Who Never Was, the 16th novel in the John Milton series. Milton, who frequently goes by the nom de guerre John Smith, is formerly of Her Majesty’s Special Air Service, and the ultra-black and, so far as we know, entirely fictitious Group Fifteen. Tormented by the many dirty deeds he did in service to his nation, Milton drops out of the life, gets himself into AA, and now lives attempting to balance the scales. Balancing the scales is foremost in his mind in The Man Who Never Was, where we find Milton going after the drug cartel figures he feels are responsible for the death of a friend. The novel picks up a few weeks after the previous one in the series, Bright Lights. When a damsel in distress turned out to not be entirely who she seemed, it resulted in the death of Milton’s friend, Beau Baxter. Now, he wants justice for his friend, and it goes beyond the man who pulled the trigger.
Starting in the night life of Amsterdam, playing the role of an up-and-coming drug distributor, Milton, with the help of a small cadre of associates, including Beau’s son, infiltrates the cartel’s network. He manages to wreak a little havoc and find himself face-to-face with the boss herself in the jungles of Colombia. And it’s there that Milton learns things really aren’t what they seem, and the tension and action ratchet up.
If you’re new to the John Milton novels, I would not recommend starting with this one. Most of the time, you can pick one up and enjoy it for what it is without having read any of the previous ones, but that is certainly not the case here. To really understand Milton’s motivations, some of the characters, and the full weight of the plot, you should read the prior entry in the series. In the case of The Man Who Never Was, it is a solid brick in the John Milton wall, but not a must-read like some of the others. At some points of this book, I felt like Dawson wrote it simply because he felt he had to, due to the way he’d left things at the end of Bright Lights. Nevetheless, I enjoyed it, and cannot wait for the next John Milton adventure.
3.5/5 fins
In January 1990, the first week of the semester at LSU, my best friend, on his way home from a night class, was hit by a drunk driver. Twenty-four hours later, the head trauma Brett had sustained in the incident was too great for him to overcome. With zero brain activity being registered, his parents made the difficult decision to end the life support being provided by medical equipment, and would go on to bury the second of their two children, both killed by drunk drivers.
Brett and I met our freshman semester in August 1988, in AFROTC. We were assigned to the same flight, and along with John, formed a quick but deep bond over our love of country, LSU, and hard rock/heavy metal music. John and I, along with our friend Drew, were three of Brett’s pallbearers. AFROTC Detachment 310 led the way, with participation from our Army brethren across the hall, in giving Brett full military honors, inasmuch as we were able to for a bunch of college kids. After the funeral, John and I stood in Brett’s bedroom at his parents’ house in Abbeville, and one of the memories John brought up was how Brett’s left foot was always pounding out the bass beat when he was driving. Brett was a drummer, and it never stopped. Not when he was driving, not when he was sitting in a booth at Pizza Hut after that week’s marching on the Parade Grounds, not when he was sitting and studying.
John would drop out of ROTC before I did. We gradually lost touch, connecting once or twice through the years. Drew is still a good friend; until three years ago, we had spent the previous 15 years living in the same neighborhood, two short blocks from one another. We have literally watched one another’s kids grow up. And there was a fifth member in all of this, and that’s Liz.
Liz was the flight commander for me, Brett, and John that first semester in AFROTC. She became a friend, a big sister none of us had ever had. Brett’s brother had been older, and John and I both had younger siblings. Even as we each went our own way, Liz remained a common star we orbited around. One of the highlights, at least for me, of our family’s annual trips since 2012 to Horn Creek in Colorado, is to take one day to go meet up with Liz, who lives in Colorado Springs with her family. It was Liz who, after I fell down a mountain in the Garden of the Gods in 2016, sat with me at an urgent care in Colorado Springs, waiting until I could get x-rayed and see how broken my arm was, so my wife could take our boys to get lunch. We may be able to only see one another once a year, if that, but there’s Facebook for keeping up with one another, and calls and texting.
One such text came a couple of weeks ago. She was working on a spring cleaning of the house, and found a bunch of Brett’s CDs she’d taken from his apartment. His parents had let those of us who wanted to take things to remember Brett by. I kept his Fudpucker’s t-shirt, acquired during our base visit to Eglin AFB just the semester prior. Liz chose his music. But now they needed to go, and she wanted to know if Drew or I wanted them. Drew passed, but I accepted. Guess what arrived today?
So tonight I’m going down a rabbit hole, thanks to Ozzy, AC/DC, Van Halen — Brett loved Van Halen — and the rest. Memories of that year and half together are strong, as well as memories made after Brett’s death:
- the LSU basketball game John, Drew, and I went to later that semester, meeting up at the ROTC building before heading across the Tiger Stadium parking lot to the PMAC
- seeing The Hunt for Red October in the theater with John, Liz, Drew, Marshall, and Connor (he always went by his last name)
- testifying, to no avail, at the trial of the drunk driver who killed Brett, then road-tripping to Houston to go to Astroworld with Liz, Trish, Carey, Connor, and I don’t recall who else to drown our sorrows at the injustice in roller coasters and theme-park camaraderie
- the visit to England AFB in Alexandria, LA, where Carey’s dad was a flight leader with the 23rd Tactical Fighter Wing; we got to go to the gunnery range and watch A-10 pilots practice their craft
- watching Star Trek: The Next Generation at Drew and Carey’s apartment
- Liz’s graduation party at her apartment, then her commissioning ceremony the next day
Finally, it was at Brett’s funeral that a young lady in the Angel Flight auxiliary (now Silver Wings) first took note of one of the pallbearers. They would meet a couple of times over the next three months, but it was a mutual friend who set them up on their first date for the ROTC Military Ball that April. They have been together ever since.
So I will kiss my bride and raise a toast to you, Brett. Rock on, brother. Rock on.
Alright, time to bid farewell to the Pritchett clan. I’m watching the series finale of Modern Family.
Trevor, a former barista and current coffee roaster, has a great little ebook on brewing the best coffee that costs, for some, less than your super-fancy coffee from Starbucks. twitter.com/Bookstore…
“Before Covid-19, some of us had so many material and social needs met that we didn’t even know we needed them. More importantly, we didn’t know how much we were using all our stuff and experience to make up for the vacuity in our souls that has needed to be filled with love for longer than we knew, but that we have instead laden with other merchandise, material and otherwise.”
—Curt Thompson, What Do You Want?
My beloved crafted some outstanding homemade pico de gallo for dinner tonight!
