Paul Walker Books

Paul Walker, The Altar (Pocket, 1983)

I'm still trying to figure out what significance the title of this novel is a week after I finished reading it. Not that it takes anything away from the book, it's just a tad confusing. As was the marketing-- this is played, by title, cover image, and back cover blurb, as a straight horror novel. In fact, it's your basic mystery-- private investigator and all.

Elliot Kasavian is a writer of childrens' adventure novels. At least, somewhere in the world is a guy named Elliot Kasavian, and he's a bestselling author. The Elliot Kasavian who moves into an exclusive New York town, however, is a private investigator leasing the name, pretending to be the author so he can investigate seven deaths of young girls that plagued the town-- then came to a sudden halt three years previous. The town has never really gotten over the murders, and the mysterious entities who hired the PI think the murderer is still living there, waiting to start killing again. The agency sent "Kasavian" to town with a wife (Susan) and daughter (alternately called Margaret and Peggy), actually actors with pasts equally as dark as Kasavian's own. So not only does he have the town's mystery to wonder about, but he and Susan start the inevitable dance that happens between people when they're forced to live together in a small space without having previously known one another. And to make matters worse, Peggy fits the profile of the serial killer's victims.

If you're looking for a horror novel, you're going to be quite disappointed; all of the frights to be found here are somewhat mundane, in every respect. While it's reasonably well written and decently paced most of the time, those who read the cover and mistake it for a tell-all bio of the currently hot actor (who, as he was ten years old when this novel was released, I am reasonably sure is not its actual author) will actually end up not too far off the mark; Kasavian does a lot of snooping around, being followed, occasionally getting shot at or threatened, and eventually uncovers the mystery and finds out whodunit. Which, if you think about it, kind of sounds like the plot of The Fast and the Furious, except there's no Vin Diesel to keep the ladies happy, no Michelle Rodriguez to keep the guys happy, and no car chases-- in fact, only one car goes above the speed limit. And that's driven by a drunk person. (One of the most interesting moments in the book, for me, was comparing how a drunk driver was handled in 1983 to how the same scene would have been played out in a novel like this in 2006. They are starkly different.)

An amusing way to kill an afternoon, but nothing to go out of your way to find. **

The Sluggers Club is an okay book, but I think it is pretty boring. It has an exciting beginning and ending though. Most baseball finds would enjoy it.

The book was insightful. Nothing like the Custer Last Stand movie with Errol Flynn. In the book, Custer was brash and courageous and full of spirit BUT he always followed orders. He was not the maverick depicted by Errol Flynn.

There are too many "ifs" on who saved the Union at Gettysburg. Was Custer's role very significant? Was Lee's Pickett's charge a blunder or a masterpiece of strategy that suffered a few mishaps? Would the Union line have held if Pickett received timely reinforcements? Would the Union line have held if Jeb Stuart was able to defeat Custer and be able to attack the Union's rear?

We will never know the answer to this or other countless questions. We do know that the Union would rather not image the consequence had Custer not defeated Jeb Stuart's calvary.

The book was very enjoyable because it brought to light that part of the battle at Gettysburg that was largely unknown to mainstream America.

This is the absolute worst book I've ever read. Not just the worst Civil War book, the worst book, period. The author devotes 11 measley pages to the actual engagement referred to in the title. The editing is so sloppy, every few pages are typos. The maps offered in the book are useless. No orientations to North, no scales, lacking in all detail. The most upsetting thing is the lack of documentation. It was almost as if this guy saw the movie and used that as the outline of his book. He offered very little in the way of proof to any of his assertations. The worst thing is, this guy was an officer in the Army. As an officer myself, I'm extremely disappointed in my peer. Do not waste your time with this book.

After finishing this book, I wasn't sure if I'd read one that was intended to be fact, or a novel. Despite its title, only one small chapter is devoted to the cavalry fight on Gettysburg's East Cavalry Field. The balance of the book, mostly devoted to the Gettysburg Campaign itself, is full of so many errors it's laughable. John Buford's fight the morning of July 1, the first day, is completely screwed up. It appears as though the author has never been within 1000 miles of Gettysburg. Throughout the book, the author presents easily DISPROVEN myths about Gettysburg as though they were facts. Anyone reading this book is going to get a completely incorrect idea of not only Gettysburg but much of America's Civil War in general. I collect books on the Civil War (with some 2000), the cavalry specifically, and I have just thrown this book in the trash. I will NOT permit this "work" to have a place on my shelves, and I completely regret purchasing it. The sources are scanty, and the author relied mostly on secondary resources. If the author had simply done the minimum required research in primary resources, and just cracked open the Official Records just once, he would have had to completely re-write his manuscript. DO NOT waste your money. Go to McDonald's and have a Happy Meal. It would be money much better spent. Hopefully this book will go out of print and disappear VERY soon.

Purportedly an examination of the cavalry fighting on July 3rd, 1863.

Deeply problematic in its historical research -- quoting at length from reputable but old secondary sources and at even greater length from totally unknown secondary sources; making no apparent use of primary documents at all. This sort of 'research' may be responsible for the repetition in the text of many problematic anecdotes. Unorthodox in its use of punctuation and spelling -- Stuart's response to being called 'The Plumbed (sic.) Knight' not once but thrice can only be imagined, and various grammatical errors make their way even into quoted material. Limited at best in its evocation and analysis of the battle that is the book's subject. Strange in several of its assumptions -- that the Confederates who briefly broke through the Union line on Cemetery Ridge on July 3 spent "twenty minutes" just sort of looking around and waiting for reinforcements; that Ewell could have easily taken Culp's Hill on the 2nd; that 'Pickett's Charge' should have been followed immediately, over the same ground, by a shoulder-to-shoulder cavalry charge by Stuart's troopers. (After they trampled Pickett's men, their next move was to be...?)

Readers interested in this subject are encouraged to look at Longacre's THE CAVALRY AT GETTYSBURG.

Amazon needs to update its rating system to include minus stars for books like this. How this stinker ever got published is a mystery to me. Walker cobbles his narrative together from a handful of secondary sources (Bruce Catton, D. S. Freeman, Gregory Urwin), has apparently never heard of the "Official Records" or regimental histories or "Gettysburg Magazine", spends 11 pages in a confused and and mostly wrong retelling of his "subject", and sets up this chapter with 125 pages of an irrelevant (and often wrong) summary of Lee's command of the Army of Northern Virginia. He knows just about nothing of the Civil War and detracts, rather than adds to the literature of the conflict. As a retired Army officer and professional historian I symbolically throw my hands skywards in dispair.