Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Michael Lister: a bright talent with a bloody tale
“The Body and the Blood,” by Michael Lister. Five Star. 330 pages. $25.95
BY PHILIP K. JASON Special to Florida Weekly
Do you enjoy mysteries with religious themes and characters? Forget Father Dowling. Forget Rabbi Small. Catch up with Michael Lister’s “John Jordan Mystery” series.
A former policeman now working as a prison chaplain in Florida’s panhandle, John Jordan wrestles with the conflict of justice and mercy on the one hand, and justice and vengeance on the other. Mr. Lister’s Jordan becomes a flawed everyman whose determination to become a better person and a spiritual counselor to others is constantly tested as he struggles to balance the demands of his chaplaincy with his work as a crime investigator.
In “The Body and the Blood,” the latest book in this series, something that seems completely impossible has happened at the Potter Correctional Institution: Justin Menge, an inmate just short of being paroled, is murdered inside his locked cell. Most peculiarly, the pool of blood spreading under the cell door is no longer in proximity to the bloodless corpse lying on the cot — a cot whose sheets are almost clean.
How can this have happened in a prison with multiple levels of security? And what does it mean that the danger to Menge had been suggested in two different ways? First, a sister who hasn’t seen him in years voiced concern that Menge might be in danger. Second, a mysterious handout appeared imitating an announcement for a prison worship service, but with wording that warned of such a crime.
While Jordan and the state prison system’s chief investigator, Tom Daniels, explore the locked door part of the mystery, they come up with a variety of suspects on the basis of motive — perhaps too many plausible suspects for a jury to find anyone guilty “beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
Daniels has a vested interest in the case because Menge was about to testify against Juan Martinez, an escaped and recaptured convict who raped Daniels’ wife. John Jordan has a complex relationship with vengeanceminded Daniels in that Jordan is working hard to rebuild his fractured marriage to Daniels’ daughter, Susan.
Suspicion falls on corrupt prison guards, on a female prison psychologist for whom records show improper time markers for entering and leaving Menge’s section of the prison, and on another prisoner, Chris Sobel — known to be Menge’s boyfriend. Since Sobel and Menge are very similar in appearance, it even seems possible that they might have switched identities at some point or been mistaken for one another, further confusing the permutations of motive.
As the investigation plot twists and turns, so does the story of John Jordan and Susan, complicated now by two additional factors. Susan, who has become uncharacteristically seductive, reveals that she is pregnant, a piece of news for which John is not prepared. Still, he is committed to making the best of the obligations he has taken upon himself. This means, however, that he must put an end to his relationship with Anna, a beautiful colleague on the prison staff who has thoroughly won his heart.
In both Jordan’s professional and personal life, he feels a current of failure undermining his commitment to the moral high road. He feels himself slipping away from faith and from the standards he had set for himself.
Mr. Lister’s sensitive, convincing development of this side of Jordan’s character is one of the more engaging and original features of “The Body and the Blood” and of the entire John Jordan series. The author keeps the reader sympathetic while Jordan struggles on to unexpected outcomes in the overlapping personal and professional sides of his life. The denouement of the novel is provocative and potent.
Another original aspect of this series is Mr. Lister’s gritty, disturbing portrait of life inside a large, rural penitentiary. His experiences as a chaplain in prisons similar to the imaginary Potter Correctional Institution allow him to portray the environment and dynamics of this microcosm with authenticity and power.
Not far from Panama City is a small town named Wewahitchka where Mr. Lister makes his home. It is also the home of the Gulf Correctional Institution. You do the math. Mr. Lister does the literature. And he does it very, very well.
— See www.michaellister.com for more on this highly original talent.
Friday, October 15, 2010
An Amazing Year for Author Michael Lister
The past 12 months have been fruitful ones for Michael Lister.
The author has seen the release of five books he either wrote, edited or to which he contributed as well as a review of his latest novel in the prestigious Publisher’s Weekly and a Florida Book Award.
First, there was the release late last year of Double Exposure, a nourish thriller set in the swamps of the Apalachicola National Forest. Lister also wrote a screenplay of the novel, the play staged by the Gulf Coast Community College Theater Department.
Double Exposure also received a Florida Book Award and has been translated into several languages, including German.
Thunder Beach, a mystery set against the backdrop of the annual gathering in Panama City Beach followed as did Delta Blues, an anthology of crime stories set in the Mississippi delta and having a taste of the blues.
Lister contributed a story to Delta Blues, which included an introduction by actor Morgan Freeman. The launch party, which Lister attended, was held at Freeman’s home in Mississippi.
Florida Heat Wave, a crime fiction anthology Lister edited, was released a few months ago and just out is Body and the Blood, the third in the series of novels Lister has written involving the character John Jordan, a chaplain and detective.
“For all to happen in one year is staggering to me,” Lister said. “I’m so grateful to be in print and to get the feedback from readers and the reviews that I have had. It’s been an incredible year and I am so grateful.”
Lister has paid his dues.
He started on the John Jordan series in 1994, the idea for the series seeping into his gray matter while he was in training to become a prison chaplain, which Lister was for more than seven years.
“I liked the idea of a clerical detective,” Lister said, noting that the genre dates back centuries. “But there has never been one in hard-boiled detective form.”
After living with the characters of the series for some 16 years, they have become old friends that he greets regularly when he sits down each morning at the keyboard to begin his daily regimen of writing.
“No question these characters are real people to me,” Lister said. “They are organic. They have evolved. I try to honor those characters when I write.
“If I wake up in the morning and I’m anxious to get to the keyboard to see what happens next, I think the reader will have the same feeling of wanting to turn the page. It really takes over. There is no set time I write, but it really does take over.”
Lister said he is happy with where John Jordan is at this point in the series and he is as a writer, believing the Body and the Blood represents growth for character and author.
“It is by far the best book of the series,” Lister said.
Getting to Jordan to the page is one thing, securing the character a place in a published book is quite another.
Lister said the already tough task of getting vision to print is even tougher in difficult economic times. Publishing houses see hundreds of titles each year but will publish just a minute fraction of those submissions.
“It is harder now,” Lister said. “Part of the reason I’ve had so many books come out this year is because I’ve had to secure a different publisher for each book. I have had three different publishers for each of the John Jordan books.”
The latest is being published by 5-Star Publishers, part of large media company.
On the flip side are rewards such as the review in Publisher’s Weekly, not an easy thing to secure for any rising writer.
“It is a big deal,” Lister said. “It made me feel so good. Someone noticed that this book (Body and the Blood) is something good and unique.
“It is more than entertainment to me. It is art.”
And the past 12 months have showcased the variety of that art.
* The Gulf County Chamber of Commerce will hold a book launch party for The Body and the Blood during the monthly Business after Hours at 5 p.m. ET on Thursday, Oct. 21
from The Star by Tim Croft
Lister Succeeds in The Body and the Blood
Florida writer Michael Lister returns in his new novel to the life of troubled prison chaplain John Jordan. When we encounter Jordan in The Body and the Blood (Five Star), he has been clean and sober for some time and is even reconciling with his estranged wife, Susan. That’s a good thing, since Susan’s father, Tom Daniels, is a senior official at the Potter Correctional Institution, where Jordan works.
In Chaplain Jordan, Lister paints a vivid portrait of a man who has conquered his addiction, but still has to face the causes of it. The protagonist’s temper occasionally flairs, and at one point, he slugs an inmate. It the same raw nerves that once drove Jordan to drink that now threaten to undo all the progress he’s made.
Jordan, by the way, isn’t your conventional clergyman. Not only does he refer to God as “She,” even in conversations with the prison’s part-time Catholic priest, but his father is the Potter County sheriff, and Jordan himself is a former deputy. So his investigation of Menge’s death isn’t the work of an amateur sleuth blundering haplessly into a crime. Daniels wants his son-in-law along ostensibly because Jordan is still, at heart, a cop, yet the inmates have come to trust him.
Lister puts a lot of coincidences into The Body and the Blood that could have derailed it in the hands of a lesser author. Fortunately, Lister handles them well. The story is not as edgy as his most recent Tyrus Books offering, Thunder Beach (2010). Instead, it’s comfortable, like an entry in a series that’s been around awhile and is more interested in keeping its fans than grabbing new ones. Still, Lister is one of the better writers working today. He doesn’t skimp on story development or the consequences of actions. Regular characters change and fall apart. And where this tale is at its best is in Jordan’s interactions with prison inmates. Some profess a disappointment when the chaplain tells them he’s not superior to them, that he struggles to be a better person every day in just the same way they do. What really disappoints them, though, and what the author portrays best, is how Jordan fails as often as he succeeds.
Fortunately for us, in this book, Lister succeeds. ◊
by Jim Winter from January Magazine
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