The Sacred Disc

Rating:
Summary: An entertaining debut mystery from a new author!
Review: Charles West is an English teacher in Fresno California and lives in the Sierra foothills. He has impeccable credentials for writing, having been a Fellow in the National Endowment for the Humanities in Shakespeare, the recipient of an award in Chicano literature from the Council for Basic Education, and a fellow at the Teaching Shakespeare Institute at Georgetown University and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C.. The Sacred Disc is his first novel, and it earned West the Salvo Press Mystery Novel award. Bob Fisher is about to embark on his first assignment as a private investigator. He inherited the Anderson Agency, after working as head of the Collections Division. His first case appears, in the guise of Baba Der Ursus, Yogi Ben Barr, and Cooper Page, attorney-at-law. Yogi and Baba were co-founders of the Eternal Truth Temple, another cult organization situated near Yosemite National Park. Fisher's job is to find a missing computer disk that ostensibly contains the sacred text of the Eternal Truth Temple. They claim one of their committee members is probably responsible, Fisher agrees to take the case, and the search is afoot. Fisher must be a dude, because his presence around women seems to elicit similar results: "That was more than I wanted to know about the weather. It was always hot in San Joaquin during the summer. The variations didn't interest me. Nor did it interest Mrs. Baker very much, though she continued to smile, probably more as a result of the drink she was finishing than pride over her husband's meteorological expertise. It seemed her robe was either shrinking or getting shorter. A latent chauvinist impulse made me wonder if she was wearing anything under the robe." Fisher gets himself into enough mischief to satisfy the reader, while getting closer and closer to the answer to the puzzle. Fisher's sidekick, Holly Pena, is an interesting secondary character who promises to emerge in subsequent sequels. Holly runs the "office," but she also seems to come to the rescue whenever Fisher gets in over his head. All in all, The Sacred Disc is an interesting and entertaining first mystery for Charles West. The writing is crisp, characters are well thought out, and the plot line is simple and believable.

Shelly Glodowski Reviewer

Rating:
Summary: An entertaining debut mystery from a new author!
Review: Charles West is an English teacher in Fresno California and lives in the Sierra foothills. He has impeccable credentials for writing, having been a Fellow in the National Endowment for the Humanities in Shakespeare, the recipient of an award in Chicano literature from the Council for Basic Education, and a fellow at the Teaching Shakespeare Institute at Georgetown University and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C.. The Sacred Disc is his first novel, and it earned West the Salvo Press Mystery Novel award. Bob Fisher is about to embark on his first assignment as a private investigator. He inherited the Anderson Agency, after working as head of the Collections Division. His first case appears, in the guise of Baba Der Ursus, Yogi Ben Barr, and Cooper Page, attorney-at-law. Yogi and Baba were co-founders of the Eternal Truth Temple, another cult organization situated near Yosemite National Park. Fisher's job is to find a missing computer disk that ostensibly contains the sacred text of the Eternal Truth Temple. They claim one of their committee members is probably responsible, Fisher agrees to take the case, and the search is afoot. Fisher must be a dude, because his presence around women seems to elicit similar results: "That was more than I wanted to know about the weather. It was always hot in San Joaquin during the summer. The variations didn't interest me. Nor did it interest Mrs. Baker very much, though she continued to smile, probably more as a result of the drink she was finishing than pride over her husband's meteorological expertise. It seemed her robe was either shrinking or getting shorter. A latent chauvinist impulse made me wonder if she was wearing anything under the robe." Fisher gets himself into enough mischief to satisfy the reader, while getting closer and closer to the answer to the puzzle. Fisher's sidekick, Holly Pena, is an interesting secondary character who promises to emerge in subsequent sequels. Holly runs the "office," but she also seems to come to the rescue whenever Fisher gets in over his head. All in all, The Sacred Disc is an interesting and entertaining first mystery for Charles West. The writing is crisp, characters are well thought out, and the plot line is simple and believable.

Shelly Glodowski Reviewer

Rating:
Summary: First-time novelist succeeds in genre-bending mystery debut
Review: Charles West scores with this first mystery novel, the tale of an "accidental" detective named Bob Fisher who inherits a collections and investigations agency in a barely-disguised Fresno, California. The Fruit Basket of the World becomes for West the Fruitcake Basket of the Universe. It's a peculiar California demimonde the author depicts, where agrarain tradition is decomposing into urbanization and corporate corruption. It's in this environment that Fisher is hired by the founders of the Eternal Truth Temple to recover the Sacred Disc-- a floppy, in this case-- which contains the tenets of their faith. But any church with high priests who call themselves Yogi Ben Barr and Baba Der Ursus is its own worst enemy. Fisher, in fact, seems born beneath whatever star determines that his karma bring him into constant conflict with phony belief systems. His dissillusioned past is blighted by his televised attempted murder of a televangelist who was scamming veterans, and his relaxed exploration of his own elastic morals drives the development of this novel. West enjoys playing with the mystery conventions, and the characters in the book seem to recognize their parts in the formula, and the chafing against type is one of the unique elements of West's voice. The writing is lean and effective, the story-telling controlled and on target. Don't walk, run to get this book. Read it. Then impress your friends with the new talent you've discovered.

Rating:
Summary: First-time novelist succeeds in genre-bending mystery debut
Review: Charles West scores with this first mystery novel, the tale of an "accidental" detective named Bob Fisher who inherits a collections and investigations agency in a barely-disguised Fresno, California. The Fruit Basket of the World becomes for West the Fruitcake Basket of the Universe. It's a peculiar California demimonde the author depicts, where agrarain tradition is decomposing into urbanization and corporate corruption. It's in this environment that Fisher is hired by the founders of the Eternal Truth Temple to recover the Sacred Disc-- a floppy, in this case-- which contains the tenets of their faith. But any church with high priests who call themselves Yogi Ben Barr and Baba Der Ursus is its own worst enemy. Fisher, in fact, seems born beneath whatever star determines that his karma bring him into constant conflict with phony belief systems. His dissillusioned past is blighted by his televised attempted murder of a televangelist who was scamming veterans, and his relaxed exploration of his own elastic morals drives the development of this novel. West enjoys playing with the mystery conventions, and the characters in the book seem to recognize their parts in the formula, and the chafing against type is one of the unique elements of West's voice. The writing is lean and effective, the story-telling controlled and on target. Don't walk, run to get this book. Read it. Then impress your friends with the new talent you've discovered.

Rating:
Summary: The Sacred Disc Is Sure to Please
Review: This is a very entertaining and rewarding book. Charles West has a fine talent, and he has created a wonderful character in Bob Fisher, who vividly floats above the conventions of the mystery genre. Fisher is an "accidental" detective, inheritor of an investigations and collections agency, whose life is in something of recoil from his televised attempted murder of a larcenous televangelist. The name "Fisher" is resonant of both Christian and mythic symbolism, and it seems Bob's destiny to confront the phony and insincere in his own struggle for a belief system-- specifically in the book, when he is hired by Eternal Truth Temple to recover a Sacred Disc (floppy) believed to have been hijacked by a committee of disillusioned former acolytes. Bob himself is in some spiritual flounder as a result of his disillusions and disappointments, and attempts to find some comfort in the conventions of the classic crime fiction detectives. It's an overcoat which is mostly as ill-fitting as his former incarnations. The power of this book, and the development, is in the unfoldment of the main character. All takes place within that hotbed of cornpone/cult religiosity, California's Central Valley. It ain't LA, and it ain't New York. In fact, it ain't sure what it is, struggling with the transistion from agrarian fruit basket to urbanized fruitcake basket. What it is is Central California, a place West knows well, and finds a wonderfully believable setting for a delirious cult whose chief potentates are Yogi Ben Barr, and Baba Der Ursus. Charles West is a careful and controlled storyteller with a satisfying and sparse style. The pace is brisk, and West seems to be having a lot of fun with the conventions of a form he has mastered-- the mystery novel. If the characters are sometimes uncomfortable-- hilariously so-- with the familiar and subserviant roles which the genre assigns its players, West is very confident and easy with the assignment. Suspenseful and funny, poignant and cynical, The Sacred Disc is a highly successful first novel. It left me hoping I had not seen the last of Bob Fisher. Something tells me, I haven't.

Rating:
Summary: The Sacred Disc
Review: This is the story of a laid back private investigator, Bob Fisher who has inherited a collection agency and takes his first case to find the Sacred Disc for the Eternal Truth Temple. Suspects include former temple recruits. As he begins the investigation, bodies start to appear. The ending is great. This is the author's first novel and I can only hope this is the start of a series.