“The Jumper: A Rick Rose Novel”

“Any idea what you call a dentist who gets caught drinking on the job? How about unemployed? That was me in 2019. Six months later, I graduated summa cum laude from an AA program, but my patients weren’t the least bit impressed. They’d already found other dentists.” 

But Rick Rose, the endearing creation of Chico novelist (and retired dentist) Mike Paull, is not lamenting. He’s become a forensic odontologist. “It looks good and sounds a lot better than unemployed. You see, for the last four years I’ve spent a lot of time in the morgue, working for Dr. Alexandra Keller, the chief medical examiner for the city and county of San Francisco.”

Now, in late 2023, the morgue contains the body of an unknown man who had, at 3:00 am one morning, jumped to his death from the Golden Gate bridge (alas, before the nets were installed). Yet it turns out that’s not exactly what killed him. So Rose is tasked with determining the identity of “The Jumper” ($15.95 in paperback from Amazon; also available in a Kindle edition).

Something under the victim’s tongue may be a clue. What Rose discovers leads to an oncologist, a maker of leather bags, the owner of an exclusive apartment complex, a taxi driver, and a bucketload of cash.

Rick, 40, lives alone, except for his feisty cat Einstein inherited from a failed marriage (though he and his ex are on somewhat friendly terms; she sells coffee from a truck he helped her buy). When he learns that Josie has been taken advantage of financially by a shyster, he resolves to track him down. Little does he realize the two seemingly disparate investigations will have international implications and put his life at risk.

Over the course of three novels (including “The Mouth Mechanic” and “The Head Case”), Paull gives readers a character worth cheering for, a man who can be a wee bit sarcastic as the occasion demands. But Rick Rose is good at what he does, and so is Paull. “The Jumper” propels readers from chapter to chapter until the very end but (one can hope) not the end of the Rick Rose series.

“Infidelity Rules—A Menu For Disaster: The Perils Of Loving Food, Wine, And Married Men”

The metaphorical valentines lay in tatters for Quinn, perhaps in her late thirties, who describes herself as “six-foot-tall in bare feet” with “dark, wavy red hair that tumbles down my back and refuses to be tamed.” 

Her fiancé had ditched her two days before the nuptials. Later, “I divorced after stupidly marrying a different man out of friendship, not love. I had married Chris because he was safe, not because I couldn’t fathom a life without him.”

Outwardly Quinn is a successful sommelier at Persimmon, an upscale restaurant in DC. “I love the magic that happens when a great glass of wine pairs perfectly with a dish. It’s lusty and romantic, the only goal sheer and immediate pleasure. It’s akin to the ideal relationship, fleeting but swoon-worthy, each bringing out the very best in the other. … and, if you get a lucky match, the combination will make you moan. I swear it will.”

That fairly well describes what she’s looking for in men. “I don’t date single men anymore. I have affairs with married men instead. But I never, ever play with men in happy marriages. … I like my flings. Nothing but freedom and great sex. Love just gets in the way.” 

But when Marcus, Hollywood hunk material married to a woman who has grown distant, enters Quinn’s life, readers might guess that though she wants a fling, she will have to make a life-defining choice of whether to fling him away.

“Infidelity Rules—A Menu For Disaster: The Perils Of Loving Food, Wine, And Married Men” ($17.95 in paperback from Black Rose Writing; also for Amazon Kindle) is by Joelle Babula (Joelle Butler), Chico State grad, former captain of the Chico State women’s basketball team and Orion managing editor.

“I know I wanted a married man,” Quinn tells us, “and I’m trying to squash that nagging feeling in my gut that I’m getting too involved. That my lust is evolving into something more. Something I may not be able to easily shimmy out of.” All the shimmying makes for an upbeat romp—paired with a great glass of wine.

“The Oxford Handbook Of The Philosophy Of Love”

What is this thing called love, especially romantic love? Pure emotion? Some forty contemporary philosophers contribute their thoughts in “The Oxford Handbook Of The Philosophy Of Love” ($150 in hardcover from Oxford University Press; also for Amazon Kindle), edited by Christopher Grau and Aaron Smuts.

Though the work is designed for specialists in the area, the writing is accessible to those who want to hear some reasoning about what at times seems so unreasonable. While poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” some of the essays in the book ask not how, but why. Is love, can love be, reasonable?

It doesn’t seem the case that we can reason ourselves into romantically loving another. Yet, if we do love another, we can give reasons why—at least according to Hallmark. Here’s a Valentine for her: “You give me so much to love—your kindness, our closeness, the way you put our family first.” For him: “I can count on you to be right beside me with your strength and support. That feeling of being loved is one of the best things in my life.”

Troy Jollimore, the Chair of the Chico State Philosophy Department, tries to sort things out in a key essay, “Love As ‘Something In Between,’” which focuses on romantic love. “Even when falling in love surprises us,” he writes, “it is rarely if ever experienced as a purely brute and unintelligible psychological happening.” In fact, “nearly everyone can identify something they find lovable or attractive in their beloveds.”

Jollimore admits that “talking about having reasons for loving may strike us as cold, excessively rationalistic, or unromantic. We must allow that love is not entirely a matter of reasons….” It’s not that reasons drive our feelings, but rather that our feelings can, well, be reasonable: “That an emotion is spontaneous, immediate, or unpremeditated need not imply that it is not at the same time appropriate, fitting, and justified.”

The bottom line: “love is partly guided by and responsive to reasons. It is not an entirely rational phenomenon, but something in between.” 

Could Hallmark be on to something after all?

“The New Freedom Warriors: Children Of Heremone, Book 2”

Former longtime Chicoan David Dirks, now living in Brentwood with Karen, his wife of 55 years, is imagining a world somewhat like our own but where spiritual warfare takes center stage. The first book in the “Children Of Heremone” series, “The Redemption Of Elijah Kidd Kane,” finds young Elijah under the sway of one Grant Humphreys Harvard, president of the Harvard-Westwood Academy for the Gifted, located in the southern hills of Ojai Valley.

Sent by president Harvard to nurture a science and technology center in Botswana, under the guidance of a mysterious and evil spiritual force called the Keeper, Elijah is brought into the true Light of the Almighty One by Esi Ada Ogolla, a young Botswanan girl gifted with spiritual insight. Together they must confront the malevolent god Heremone and Heremone’s proxy, Sir Bitrus Bitrus Ghirmai, the Interior Minister of Botswana.

Through the mysterious “Spirit of Mars” Ghirmai has provided free, unlimited electricity to Botswana as he lusts to put the country under his sway. Though popular with the people, he “secretly specialized in a massive program of adoption and kidnapping of children and teenagers for sex trafficking.” With Esi (“the Almighty’s anointed warrior”) and her parents, and later a couple of wavering friends, Elijah hopes their small group can defeat Ghirmai and combat sex trafficking, one person at a time.

“The New Freedom Warriors: Children Of Heremone, Book 2” ($12.95 in paperback, independently published through Resurgam Books; also for Amazon Kindle) tells the harrowing tale of spiritual warfare on multiple fronts.

Elijah’s friend, James Darwin Carter, arrives in Botswana to carry out the Keeper’s sinister mission, but Esi’s father intervenes and guides “James through a detailed study of the ancient text and the redemption story.” He is set free. “Thokato—love—had freed him from the destruction of his soul.”

But James’ new spiritual roots do not go deep, and he proves an unstable ally. Elijah tries to get James to understand that “Ghirmai follows a different god, one perhaps more powerful than Keeper.” 

Then, when Esi is taken by Ghirmai, all seems lost. Will the darkness be overcome? The next volume will tell the tale.