The Novel Approach

In Which The Plot Is The Thing – Faster Than the Speed of Light by Lucius Parhelion

Trying to squash a rumor is like trying to unring a bell. ~ Shana Alexander

The year is 1948: World War II has ended but the Cold War heats up significantly when the Soviet Union detonates the bomb that would serve to become the catalyst for a decades long arms race.

Racial prejudice has the backing of popular opinion at best, popular apathy at worst; while miscegenation and homosexuality are both considered crimes punishable by law. It’s a time in which better dead than red McCarthyism is in full swing, having little to do with empirical evidence and everything to do with suspicion and paranoia and rumor that the US, and Hollywood in particular, is rife with commie traitors to the country’s democracy. It’s a time in history when it’s just as dangerous to be accused of being red as it is to be suspected of being lavender.

And this is what some people call “the good old days.”

Frank Mackenzie is a WW II veteran studying physics at Clarence Tenn Polytechnic on the GI Bill. Frank is what you might call a regular Joe with a brilliant mind and a deep dark secret, a secret that young Doctor Collis Courtland shares. The two men meet under rather inauspicious circumstances, but what begins as a potentially disastrous set of affairs is only the beginning of a meeting of two beautiful minds.

Courtland is a prodigy, a genius in the truest sense of the word, who was already studying college physics while other kids his age were barely out of junior high. Col is also carrying a heavy burden on his conscience, weighted by the fact that he was an integral cog in the development of the atomic bomb that brought an end to the Pacific theatre of the war, but brought an end to scores of innocent lives as well. Which makes it all the more suspicious when the Feds show up in Southern California, sniffing around Col’s heels and insinuating he might very well be a communist sympathizer. That would be bad enough, but after a raid on a gay bar in which he and Frank were involved but managed to escape relatively unscathed after some quick thinking and the backing of the Courtland family name, it seems the FBI is not only interested in Col’s political leanings but his sexual leanings too.

It is an unwritten law of relativity that rumor travels at the speed of light, while truth is left to fend for itself and find its own way to the light. This is the heart of Lucius Parhelion’s Faster Than the Speed of Light, and is the soul of Frank and Col’s story, a friendship that is only that, a friendship, for years because for it to be otherwise would not only endanger them personally but would also compromise them professionally. The love that grows between these two men is built upon a foundation of restraint and mutual respect, and it progresses like a controlled burn, until the day they’re finally able to acknowledge and act upon their feelings and desires.

If you love a plot heavy book, then I don’t think this one will disappoint. It’s not a romance, this one, but there’s no denying that I anticipated the first kiss in this book more so than just about any other I’ve ever read, simply because of the circumstances surrounding Frank and Col’s enforced discretion. Their friendship was lovely, the sense of time and place perfect, and the supporting cast ideally placed to help tell their story, helping the reader to understand and feel a sense of empathy for what lengths men and women went to to protect themselves from scrutiny.

I wouldn’t hesitate to say this book is one of the better I’ve read so far this year. It certainly made me fully engage my brain, that’s for sure, and while I’m not at all sure that I feel any smarter for it, I gave it a good shot.

You can buy Faster Than the Speed of Light here:

In Which An Ox And A Cowboy Get Down To Business – Dry Bones by Lucius Parhelion

There is never jealousy where there is not strong regard. – Washington Irving

Lucius Parhelion may very well be the most anonymous author I’ve ever read. No “About the Author” blurb in the books, no website, no Twitter account, an unused Facebook page, no author page on Amazon or Goodreads. But that’s okay because, really, it doesn’t matter all that much when a story speaks well enough of you to make anything else sort of irrelevant.

Dry Bones is a short but entertaining tale that takes place in the American Southwest in the waning years of the 19th century, where Joss Lewis and fellow ranch hand Ox are looking for work and will, quite by accident, end up accepting an offer from an East Coast gentleman named Nathan Parr, who, speaking of ending up, coincidentally ends up knowing a little bit more about the enigmatic Ox than perhaps Joss is at all comfortable with.

Signing on to accompany Parr to a New Mexico ranch to secure a collection of dinosaur fossils to ship back east, Joss comes to learn as much about himself as he does about his partner; namely that Ox (aka: Robert Henry Montague) has run away from a life altogether different than the one he’s currently living, and that life includes a brief history with, you guessed it, Nathan Parr. Joss also learns the meaning of jealousy when he realizes that that history is something which, though foreign to him, may just be a heretofore unexplored territory Joss is more than willing to prospect and possibly lay claim to, especially if it means he might lose Ox to something, or someone, else. But first he needs to make sure Mr. Nathan Parr skeedaddles his fancy-pants right back to New York City, fossils in tow, so Joss can hammer out the details on what it all means.

There are not a lot of wasted words in this story, no long paragraphs waxing poetic about cowboys and the wide open ranges of the Old West, but that doesn’t mean the author is remiss at all in making sure the reader is fully aware of the place and the atmosphere and the feel of life in the dusty New Mexico territory of 1896. Nor does the author waste a lot of time in making sure Joss knows exactly where he wants to stand with Ox, but that doesn’t mean their relationship feels at all rushed. The pacing was just right, and the backstory given was just enough to make the HFN feel a lot more like it could be an HEA for these two men.

In fact, I wouldn’t turn my nose up at a sequel.

You can buy Dry Bones here: