Klavan

Andrew Klavan announces that his young adult series may be filmed:

Summit Entertainment–makers of Hurt Locker and the Twilight movies–have optioned Andrew’s Homelanders series of young adult thriller novels for film. Lorenzo di Bonaventura, producer of Transformers and Stardust, will produce. The series deals with teenager Charlie West’s quest to find out why he’s become the target of jihadist terrorists and the police.

I've enjoyed the two books in the series that have been published thus far. They are full of the kind of action that I assume would translate into a very intense, exciting film — and perhaps one I could enjoy without moral and political qualification, although as Klavan notes:

Those who know the movie business know that I will have precious little control over whether the Homelanders films will, if made, reflect the values of the novels. But who knows? It could happen. And if it did, it would be less amazing now than, say, ten years ago.

Not long ago it was announced that Klavan would write three more young adult thrillers for Thomas Nelson after completion of the four Homelander books. All this in addition to his books for adults, which I also enjoy.

The other things I've posted about Klavan.

Klavan's Homelanders Optioned for Film

Homelanders

Andrew Klavan wanted to write a series of books of the sort he would have enjoyed when young. His intended audience was boys between 12 and 16, but he has found a much wider one, including me. The second of four books in "The Homelanders" series has just been published and I am already within a few pages of the end. They have much the same appeal as the Thirty Nine Steps or North by Northwest: a hero who is being pursued by everyone, alone and thrown back on his own resources. The books are suspenseful and exciting.

Klavan was interviewed by John Miller at NRO. The interview is here. Toward the end he explained part of his motive:

[W]e've allowed our kids...to forget that...there's a reason we believe in liberty. There's a reason we believe in small government. There's a reason we believe in checks and balances, and a reason too that we believe in faith...And these things can be taught again...but we're gonna have to do it. It's not gonna just happen.

He is doing a part of that with these books. The first in the series was The Last Thing I Remember. The one just out is The Long Way Home. The books constitute a continuing story so they should be read in order.

A former [retired] high school social studies teacher, I was particularly interested in Klavan's account [in the second book, pp. 47-48] of his protagonist, Charlie West's, classroom disagreement with a teacher:

.... This was another thing that always annoyed me about Mr. Sherman. When you argued with him, he didn't exactly use facts and logic. He just tried to make fun of you and change the subject and tangle you up with words so you looked bad or the class laughed at you and you got flustered and couldn't make your point. And another thing that annoyed me was that a lot of times it worked.

I glanced around at the rest of the students. They were all laughing at Mr. Sherman's zombie routine. Even Rick Donnelly, one of my best friends, was laughing over at his desk near the window. I knew Rick agreed with me about Mr. Sherman. He thought this was a great country and even wanted to go into politics when he grew up. But he was the kind of guy who never argued with teachers, who was always trying to please them and say what they wanted to hear so he would get good grades. Maybe that's how you get to be a politician.

"So what part of the Declaration don't you agree with?" I asked Mr. Sherman.

Sherman stopped waving his arms around. He smiled. "Ah, my zombielike friend, that's exactly the wrong question. The question is: What part of it can you prove to be true? Prove that we're created equal. We don't look equal to me."

"That's not what it means. It means that we're created with equal rights:"

"Prove it, Charlie. You can't. It's just something Americans have come to believe, that's all. Other people believe other things. You can't even prove that we were created, that we have a Creator in the first place. It's just something you were told and so you believe it. Go on, Zombie Guy—prove it."

I opened my mouth to answer, but I couldn't think what to say. I didn't know exactly how you would prove something like that. Sherman made the class laugh at me again by opening his mouth and making stuttering sounds to imitate my confusion: "Uh, uh, uh!"

Then the bell rang. That was the end of class. ....

The books are published by Thomas Nelson, a Christian publishing house, and Charlie West is a believably portrayed Christian. Klavan has written thrillers for adults which might not be ideal for adolescents but these books are safe for just about anyone — and a good, compulsive, quick read too.

Update [2/9]: Another excerpt from The Long Way Home, this one illustrating how well Klavan writes action.

Andrew Klavan on The Long Way Home

Homelanders

John Wilson at Christianity Today reviews Andrew Klavan's The Final Hour:

I shudder to think of all the books occasioned by the 10th anniversary of 9/11. I won't read most of them, but I did make time for The Final Hour, the concluding installment in Andrew Klavan's four-book Homelanders series, in which Islamic terrorists seek to wreak havoc. The teenage hero, Charlie West, is a winsome Christian and a pretty tough customer. In publishing jargon, this is Young Adult fiction (in the subdivision known as "boy books"), but the unadulterated intelligence of a superb suspense novelist is very much in evidence throughout.

The first book in the series [the story is continuous] is The Last Thing I Remember. The hardbacks cost around $10 and the Kindle editions about $8.00. I enjoyed them and I'm a bit older than the target audience.

The books apparently will be filmed. Klavan, indicates that the script adds a "sci-fi element" to his story:

...I’d already heard about the “sci-fi element.” I don’t know what it is, but I’m assuming it’s to avoid confronting the whole Islamo-fascist part of the story. That’s Hollywood, folks, and there’s not a thing I can do about it. But the creative team is top-notch, and I have high hopes they’ll make a good film notwithstanding.

Wilson's Bookmarks | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction, Homelanders in the Hollywood Reporter

Juvenile suspense

I previously noted this review at Christianity Today of Andrew Klavan's Homelanders books:

I shudder to think of all the books occasioned by the 10th anniversary of 9/11. I won't read most of them, but I did make time for The Final Hour, the concluding installment in Andrew Klavan's four-book Homelanders series, in which Islamic terrorists seek to wreak havoc. The teenage hero, Charlie West, is a winsome Christian and a pretty tough customer. In publishing jargon, this is Young Adult fiction (in the subdivision known as "boy books"), but the unadulterated intelligence of a superb suspense novelist is very much in evidence throughout.

I thoroughly enjoyed these books as they were published and they definitely would have hooked me when I was in the target audience. They are now available combining the four books in a single volume paperback and as a Kindle edition.

Wilson's Bookmarks | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Crazy good

Crazy Dangerous was, for me, a very fast read. I thoroughly enjoyed it and so did Lars Walker: "Klavan’s ‘Crazy Dangerous’ is Crazy Good."

Andrew Klavan has taken a small (but worthwhile) detour in his writing career over the last few years, producing top-notch thrillers aimed at the Young Adult audience, published by Christian publisher Thomas Nelson. His previous four books, The Homelanders series, brought the Christian YA field to a whole new level. All in all, I think the stand-alone novel Crazy Dangerous is even better.

One improvement is the narrator/hero of Crazy Dangerous, Sam Hopkins. Unlike Charlie West, the hero of the Homelanders books, Sam is not an adolescent James Bond, outstanding at everything he does and equipped with a black belt. Sam will be far easier for most kids to identify with. He’s a smallish, not very popular, not academically outstanding, not very athletic teenager, struggling with the challenges of being a preacher’s kid in a small town in upstate New York. When he receives an odd offer of “friendship” from three of the shadiest kids in his school, he gets involved with them, just to escape the public expectations that face every PK.

But the situation changes when his new “friends” make an attack on Jennifer, a vulnerable classmate with mental problems. .... [more]

Klavan’s ‘Crazy Dangerous’ is Crazy Good | The American Culture

If We Survive

Andrew Klavan has recently added If We Survive to his books intended for younger readers. Amazon identifies it as part of the Homelanders series. It isn't. It is a stand-alone thriller like the earlier Crazy Dangerous — another that I found a very quick, and very good, read.

Here John J. Miller interviews the author about this book and a soon to be published thriller for adults. If you are the parent of an adolescent, you might consider Klavan's young adult books for Christmas. Miller interviewing Klavan:

Andrew Klavan: If We Survive - National Review Online

"Do right. Fear Nothing."

I really like Andrew Klavan's thrillers, whether intended for an adult readership or for young adults. The Homelanders series was so good that I had some difficulty waiting patiently for each subsequent book to get published (but if you want to read them they are now available in a single volume). His most recent young adult thriller is Crazy Dangerous. It is on my Kindle but I have yet to read it. John Nolte's review leads me to believe it won't take long to complete once I get started:

.... Sam Hopkins is a PK, a preacher's kid living with all the baggage that entails in a small town in upstate New York. Like many high schoolers, Sam has an instinct to rebel, and this instinct at first gets him into the kind of trouble many of us got into as youths when he falls in with a gang of thugs and car thieves. Quickly, though, Sam realizes he's made a mistake and that he has to get out of this situation without getting himself killed. Every day he's in deeper and eventually the solution comes along in the form of what you might call Sam's uncontrollable chivalry.

Jennifer is a classmate of Sam's, a strange but innocent girl who requires saving in so many ways. Above all, she's the victim of terrifying visions of demons and worse. But is she crazy? ....

But best of all, with Crazy Dangerous, Klavan remains an example of what an artist with something to say should be. There is no message in Crazy Dangerous, just a simple theme of "Do right. Fear nothing.," wrapped in an exciting, page-turning tale that extols the virtues of self-sacrifice, chivalry, honesty, and admitting you're wrong in a way that doesn't hide the fact that there's a price to pay in this world for believing such things or that the price is worth the ultimate reward. ....

'Crazy Dangerous' Review: Andrew Klavan's Latest Young Adult Thriller

Tough, patriotic, and a believer

Andrew Klavan, in an interview, explained what he was trying to do with his Homelander series of books:

...[I]f you want to tell a story that cool, you can’t preach and you can’t hammer people with your point of view, so I decided, okay, I just want to change the rules of the game, that’s all. Instead of the usual alienated teen, or the wimpy guy who finds a magical sword, I’m gonna make my hero the kind of hero I like to read about: a manly guy who loves America, believes in God and is ready to fight for liberty if he has to. I thought, in the current climate, that alone would be revolutionary.

The third book in the series, The Truth of the Matter, was published at the beginning of this month. From Lars Walker's review:

.... “Extreme” describes The Truth Of the Matter well—not in the sense of extreme shock content or extreme edginess, but in the sense of action that never slackens, but constantly ratchets up the dramatic tension. Poor Charlie barely gets a chance to grab a nap or anything to eat through the whole story. Wherever he turns, he’s got enemies on his tail. The premise isn’t terribly realistic, but that’s the whole point. This roller coaster of a story isn’t intended to give you time to consider its plausibility. The only drawback is that it’s so compelling that it’s hard to stretch the reading of it longer than a day and a half or so, and you want more. On the other hand, Charlie’s earned some rest.

Somewhere in the Bible—I couldn’t remember where just then—it says you’re supposed to be happy about the hard things that happen to you, you’re supposed to be grateful for the “trials” you go through because they test your faith and harden your endurance. Well, I definitely wasn’t happy—or grateful. The truth is: I was angry, ticked off to the maximum. I was sick of trials, sick of being tested. I was eighteen, for crying out loud. I was supposed to be getting ready for college. I was supposed to be with my girl. I was supposed to be preparing for life. It wasn’t fair that things should be so hard for me, so dangerous. It wasn’t fair that there was no one to help me, that God wouldn’t help me, that I was all alone. I wanted my life back, my ordinary life. I wanted to go home. It wasn’t fair.

This is the third volume in the Homelanders series (which, as I understand it, will be four books long). Charlie, who woke up at the beginning of the first book shackled to a metal chair in a torture chamber, unable to remember the entire previous year of his life, has been following up every lead he can think of ever since, to learn why a secret terrorist group is after him, and why the police think he murdered his best friend. In this volume, at last, he starts to get some answers, and his memory starts to return. Unfortunately, this does not necessarily make him safer.

But he’s a tough kid. Tough, and patriotic, and a believer. Just the kind of guy you want your own kid to hang out with. .... [more]

I've recommended this series before. Although the intended readership is young males, Klavan is so good at writing action and suspense that I read the entire thing in a couple of sittings and I don't really want to wait a year for the final volume. If you decide to read them, it is important to read them in order: The Last Thing I Remember, The Long Way Home, and then The Truth of the Matter.

Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments: Book Review: The Truth Of the Matter, by Andrew Klavan

Old enough

At CrimeReads, eight mystery novels written for children that are there recommended for adults. I haven't read any of them and so don't know whether I'd like them, but I certainly enjoyed the introductory paragraphs:

In his dedication in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis penned this note to Lucy Barfield, his goddaughter. “I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it.”

I love that part, someday you will be old enough to read fairy tales again. Later on, in his book, On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature he wrote, “When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly.”

C.S. Lewis was a smart man. He cherished the idea that children’s books are ageless and meant for all to experience. As adults, why do we feel there’s an unspoken rule that we have to read “adult” books?

There’s nothing that says you wouldn’t love a good middle grade or young adult novel. In fact, I’d refer you right back up to Lewis’ quote and say you’re probably “old enough” to truly enjoy one.

The last "middle grade" mystery/suspense books I read and enjoyed were in Andrew Klavan's The Homelanders series and I very thoroughly enjoyed them. I've posted about the series before.

8 Children's Mystery Novels That Are Enjoyable for All Ages | CrimeReads