The Camp of the Saints (1973) - Jean Raspail

 

The Camp of the Saints is a French dystopian novel I probably would have never heard of if Amazon had not "accidentally" decided to quit selling it on April 17, 2026. From what I remember, audio and e-book copies of the novel continued to be sold by Amazon even after the paperback edition had been removed from the site, but the resulting backlash was immediate and loud. Within hours, the physical copy of The Camp of the Saints was available again - and it would be hard for Amazon to convince anyone that it all happened because of some kind of fluke in their system. 

So my curiosity was aroused, and I decided to get a copy to see what all the fuss was about. 

The Camp of the Saints is a book about the end of Western society as we know it when the West allows itself be overwhelmed by the influx of roughly one million impoverished migrants from India who arrive on the southern coast of France on the same morning aboard a fleet of decrepit ships. 

So is this a racist novel or is it simply a prophetic one that warned the Western world about something that was already inevitable in 1973? The answer is yes. The Camp of the Saints is eerily prophetic - and it uses racism and racist terms to make its key points. Take this passage, for instance:

"You're nothing to them, you and all you stand for. Your world doesn't mean a thing. They won't even try to understand it. They'll be tired, man. Tired and cold. And they'll build a fire with your big wooden door. And they'll crap all over your terrace, and wipe their hands on your shelves full of books. And they'll spit out your wine, and eat with their fingers from all that nice pewter handing inside on your wall. Then they'll squat on their heels and watch your easy chairs go up in smoke. And they'll use your fancy bedsheets to pretty themselves up in. All your things will lose their meaning. Your meaning, man. What's beautiful won't be, what's useful they'll laugh at, what's useless they won't even bother with. Nothing's going to be worth a thing." 

 In the end, first France and then the rest of Europe (with Switzerland being the last holdout) are quickly overwhelmed by sheer numbers and the violent refusal of the migrants to be stopped, or even slowed down, by those with the responsibility for protecting the borders of their countries. If Jean Raspail had stopped there, his novel might not have received the backlash it suffered when first published in 1973. The legitimate claim that The Camp of the Saints is overtly racist comes primarily from the way that Raspail portrays the Indian migrants. He treats them as one undifferentiated mass, every one of them portrayed as filthy, disease ridden animals interested only in filling their stomachs and having sex with whomever is handy. 

The Camp of the Saints is a shocking novel, but it is not a particularly well written one. Its translated prose is difficult to read, all of its characters are pretty much despicable, and its legitimate message is smothered by Raspail's racist take on mass migration. I don't really recommend wasting too much time on this one unless your curiosity about why Amazon attempted to throttle its sale in the first place makes it worth your while to find a copy. I don't regret reading The Camp of the Saints, but I found it to be a huge disappointment.

The Body in the Bath (November 2026) - Ragnar Jónasson

 

I've read some of Ragnar Jónasson's work in the past, and was particularly taken by his Hulda series featuring a 64-year-old Icelandic female detective facing imminent forced retirement. That series is particularly well crafted in the way that it delivers an early gut punch to the reader before recounting Hulda's entire story in reverse chronological order. The first three books in the series (along with U.S. publication dates) are: The Darkness (2018), The Island (2019), and The Mist (2019). A fourth book in the series, Hulda, was published in 2024 but is not yet available in an English translation, although French language readers have recently been treated to the French edition. 

The good news for Hulda fans is that Hulda and her past play prominent roles in the third book in Jónasson's Helgi Reykdal series, the soon-to-be-published The Body in the Bath. Helgi Reykdal is the young detective for whom Hulda was pushed out of the Reykjavik police department at age sixty-four. While never having met her personally, Helgi is aware of his connection to Hulda and uses that attachment as a distraction from his own troubles with the department. Please note that despite not having read the first two books in this series, I was pleased to see how well The Body in the Bath works as a standalone crime novel. 

As the novel opens, Helgi has just recently returned to work after grieving the death of his girlfriend Anita in a car accident for a month. His superiors would have preferred that Helgi not come back so soon, but realizing how dazed and angry Helgi still is, they allow him to work some old case files at his own pace. Helgi has good reason to be angry: the driver who struck Anita is none other than his old girlfriend Bergpóra, a violent alcoholic who was often physically abusive to Helgi during the course of their relationship. Helgi is convinced that Anita's death was no accident, and he is determined to prove it.

But then Bergpóra is found dead in her own bath tub, and Helgi is the prime, if not the only, suspect in her murder. Now he is struggling to convince his fellow cops that he is innocent - but that will not be easy.

Note - I suspect that anyone reading The Body in the Bath will want to at least take a look  at the first two books in the series: Death at the Sanatorium (2024) and The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer (2025).

Will Reading Fewer Books at a Time Mean Greater Retention?

 

My daily routine has been so different these last few weeks that I've slipped into, what is for me, an unusual reading pattern. I have been forced to squeeze in reading time wherever I can find it, and reading in short bursts has considerably lessened my retention rate. That means that reading in and out of eight or nine books at a time is out of the question right now, and I'm down to reading one physical book and one e-book instead. And surprisingly enough, I'm enjoying the change.

But still, I'm way behind on reviewing the handful of books that I've finished in the last month or so, and I'm not sure how that is ultimately going to work out. I suspect my reviews will be shorter than they've tended to be in the last year, but I want to write them anyway, even if just as an self-exercise to help me remember as much about the books as possible.

Finished but not yet reviewed are: 

• Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth,
• Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne,
• Eifelheim by Michael Flynn,
• The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail,
• Crows by Charles Dickinson, and
• The Body in the Bath by Ragnar Jónasson.

Honestly, it's going to be a push to get those all written, but my intentions are good...at least for now.

I just finished The Body in the Bath this afternoon, an ARC that will be published in November. Those of you who enjoyed Jónasson's Hulda series a while back when several of us were reading it, will want to get your hands on this one as soon as you can. The three Hulda books comprise one of my favorite crime series ever, and it was really fun to watch Hulda's successor start to nose around in what may have happened to her right before she was scheduled to resign her detective position with the Reykjavik police department. The Body in the Bath is actually the third book in Jónasson's Helgi Reykdal series - but it works well as a standalone for those of us who have not read the first two books yet.

I hadn't been to the library since June, but managed to drop by this morning to see if something would catch my eye. The Radiant Dark did just that, and that's the physical book I'll be reading for the next few days. From the book flap: "It's March 1980, and Carol Gerrard and her husband are living an ordinary life in a small town in the Adirondacks. They have just had their first child, and though Carol is struggling with the challenges of motherhood, her future seems clear. Until something extraordinary happens: an inexplicable flickering of light in the sky, which is ultimately determined to be communication from intelligent life on another planet. But these beings are eleven light-years away, and nothing is known about them other than the fact that they seem to know we exist too. And so begins a decades-long exchange of messages with this mysterious, faraway civilization." The Radiant Dark was published in April 2026 and weighs in at 412 pages. I have high hopes for it. 

The e-book I'll be concentrating on is Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner. I decided to make this one my first attempt at reading something for my 1926 project. I'm still hoping to read at least three or four from 1926, but this one has gotten off to a bit of a rough start with me. The set-up is taking a long time, but I've read so many good things about it, that I'm going to read on until the plot finally arrives in the present day. It's the story of a middle-aged spinster forced to move out of the family home by her brother. And there she makes a pact with the devil and discovers that her true calling is witchcraft. I think it's an early feminist novel that uses satire to make its point.

I think this less distracting pace is just what I need right now if I'm going to be able to remember anything about my reading...now I just need to find the time to read and write a little. I hope you all are doing well out there. It's so hot and humid in Houston that we are all keeping our heads down as much as we can. Theoretically, that means more reading time. We'll have to see about that. 

I See You've Called in Dead (2025) - John Kenney

 

To say that I've been overwhelmed by life lately is a gross understatement. We are still in the early stages of dealing with the aftermath of my brother-in-law's sudden accidental death on June 23, and that is likely to remain the case for the next several months. Because we do not live particularly near any of the locations we need to meet with contractors, lawyers, insurance people, and public authorities, we have been on the road an average of twice a week for the past five weeks...something like nine trips and about 2,000 miles at this point. 

But in a case of serendipity, the right book for the moment hollered out to me a few days ago. I was looking around my library website for something to read and stumbled upon "Libby Reads Global" and the chance to read John Kinney's I See You Called in Dead immediately. No waiting list, just borrow the book and begin reading it along with thousands of others around the world at the same time. The timing was perfect.

It's the story of an obituary writer named Bud Stanley who is going through a traumatic midlife crisis at the age of 44. Bud's wife has left him for a much more interesting and successful man, and Bud is back into the modern dating scene. Let's just say that's not going particularly well for him. He bottoms out one night when he is waiting for his blind date to show up - only to learn that she brings her ex-boyfriend along with her to tell Bud that they have decided to get back together. Bud is humiliated by the experience, goes home to get drunk on his own, and ends up writing his own obituary as a joke. The problem with that little exercise is that he decides to post the obituary on his newspaper's live website. 

Of course, the paper wants to fire Bud, but they learn that it is illegal to fire a "dead person." Until they can work out that little snag in their system, Bud is suspended without pay, and is own his own. With all of that free time on his hands, Bud begins, along with a couple of friends of his, to attend the wakes and funerals of total strangers. I know...let the hilarity begin.

As the author puts it, Bud Stanley is "an obituary writer who is afraid to live." This is his chance. As Bud delves into the lives of the strangers whose funerals he attends, he learns more and more about life and what it means to be human. Along the way, the rest of us get to meet the fascinating people in Bud's inner circle: Tim, his wheelchair-bound best friend and mentor; Clara, the woman who first drew Bud into attending all those funerals; Leo, the little boy down the block who truly believes that he and Bud are best friends (and maybe they are); and Tuan, Bud's gay obituary co-writer who helps Bud adjust to life more than he knows. 

"How rude of the dead to die. How selfish. Wherever they are, no pain, in eternal darkness or wondrous afterlife. And here we are, tears streaming down our cheeks, the knotted stomach and clammy palms, a feeling akin to falling, in a dream that won't end."

Don't let this quote mislead you. True, much of I See You Called in Dead is quite poignant - but it is often laugh-out-loud funny, too. The whole package is quite inspirational, in fact, because it's a reminder of just how short life really is, and how easy it is to waste it.

I think you'll like this one a lot.

Have Courage (November 2026) - Craig Johnson

 

For me, reading a Craig Johnson novel or short story is very much akin to enjoying the kind of comfort food I grew up on as a kid. After having read Johnson for so many years, I feel completely at home in the Absaroka County world that he has created for the sheriff, and I always look forward to the next chance to visit Walt and his friends there. 

Have Courage, scheduled to be published in early November, is Johnson's latest collection of Longmire short stories. Each of the thirteen stories takes place during the Christmas season just when the sheriff's office is as short-handed as it ever will be and everyone is expecting things to have pretty much quieted down for the rest of the year. But as Walt has learned the hard way, that's not the way things work in Absaroka County, Wyoming.

The thirteen stories cover the entirety of Walt's policing career, from the early days when Walt was just a green young deputy learning the trade at the knee of Lucian Connally, to when Walt has become a fixture in the job he ultimately inherited from Lucian. Along the way, a cast of familiar deputies comes and goes - although I do think that Walt's best friend, Henry Standing Bear, is under-utilized in this collection of stories. (I am one who doesn't think that you can ever have enough Henry Standing Bear.)

The stories offer insights into Walt Longmire's character and how he got to be the man he turned out to be. They are stories of reclaimed lives, violent hostage situations, seeing the best in people during the worst day in their lives, havoc caused by the surprising results of DNA testing, dealing with a skunk that decides to crash a Christmas party, an old dog needing a new friend, and much more. And best of all, no matter how violent or sad the situation might be, it's all narrated with the same wit that Craig Johnson fans have come to expect over the years. I don't usually do "Christmas in July" stuff, but I'm grateful that that reluctance didn't keep me from reading Have Courage when I got the chance. 

This one is for the Walt Longmire fans.

What I'm Reading This Week (7/17/26)

 As far as my reading goes, this last couple of weeks has really been hit or miss for me. I've found it hard to concentrate even when I've had a little time for myself, and that's caused me to change some of my book choices as I try to find books a little less concentration-demanding. I've really only put one book aside for the long term, however, and that is the huge, in every sense of that word, James Jones novel From Here to Eternity. No matter how hard I try to get into that story, it's just not working for me at all right now. I've temporarily tabled a couple of others (The Longest Walk and the Mark Twain bio), but plan to get back to those sooner rather than later. 

On the positive side, I've made surprising progress with the controversial French novel The Camp of the Saints that I've been reading for a while now. And pretty decent progress on the book on Cajun history I've been reading, The Acadian Saga. Misleadingly, I did also finish three books in the last couple of weeks, but I was already relatively near the end of two of those (The Cyclist by Tim Sullivan, Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth, and Eifelheim by Michael Flynn).  

These are the new ones I've started in the last few days:

A lot of you probably have already read Donna Everhart's Women of a Promiscuous Nature because I remember seeing it reviewed on several blogs a few weeks ago. It's historical fiction focusing on that period in American history (well into the 1940s and 1950s, it seems) during which husbands or fathers of sexually active females could solve the "problem" by having the women institutionalized. The first couple of chapters haven't hooked me yet, but I'm still hoping this one will grab me soon.

I think this new collection of Walt Longmire short stories is scheduled to be published in early November. Have Courage is one of several Christmas story collections that Johnson has published over the years, and I've read them all, I think. There are thirteen stories in Have Courage, covering different periods in Longmire's law enforcement career from the early seventies to the present day. Each story is set either on Christmas Day or thereabouts. Walt Longmire stories are, for me, fiction's equivalent of comfort food.

Charles Dickinson has been one of my favorites since the eighties even though no one would ever describe him as anything remotely close to prolific. I first read Crows around 1992, but it was published in 1985. Honestly, I remembered very little about it when I started this re-read other than how much I enjoyed it the first time around. And now, 83 pages into it, Crows is still reading like a book I'm reading for the first time. Great characters, quirky family, good story...loving this one already.

So Old So Young follows a group of college friends for about 20 years, starting in 2007. This one got some pretty good early press when published a few weeks ago, and that's when it caught my eye. I'm hoping it's not just another one in a long line of novels that use this exact set-up, but I'm already beginning to have some doubts. The writing is good, so I'll keep going for another 50 pages or so before deciding whether or not to DNF So Old So Young. It's hard to show much patience right now, and that's probably not fair to Grant Ginder.

So that's me for the next couple of weeks. I hope you are all doing well and enjoying your reading time. Make the most of it!