The Mystery of the Missing Heiress by Carrie Cross

Rating: WARTY!

This is the third in a series of which I've read no others - and have no intention of doing so since I didn't like this one. I made it through only two chapters before I gave up because of first person voice and poor writing. This is a Nancy Drew wannabe novel and while admittedly that bar is low, this novel failed to clear it.

The story is supposed to be about an evidently spoiled-rotten Skylar whose parents have moved her into a mansion, which of course automatically has a mystery. Skylar finds a clue written in code in a jewelry box, which inexplicably "opens the door to a world of danger."

Skylar is supposed to discover a "shocking image" that "glows in the beam from Skylar's black light" Why the author is so afraid to use the term 'UV light' I don't know. 'Black light', which is a contradiction in terms, seems to be her go-to phrase, but the thing is that if Skyler were so smart, she'd know that blood doesn't glow in UV light, so the image is not done in blood, but something else - so not really shocking! Forensic scientists can only make blood glow in UV light by spraying the area with a substance like Luminol.

The book blurb tells us that there are poems in Xandra's diary - which naturally Skylar uncovers - and which contain clues to the location of a key, but why would Xandra - the murdered heiress - write clues in her own poems? Was her memory so bad that she couldn't remember where she left the key? If so how would she remember that she'd left clues in her poems? LOL! And how would she ever solve them?! None of this makes a lick of sense at all. Neither does the idiot book blurb when it asks: "Can the team determine how the heiress went missing...before Skylar suffers the same fate?" because we know this author isn't going to kill off her cash cow. Duh! There's no danger to see here. Move along.

Fortunately, I never made it that far because the first person annoying voice irked me, and the stupid description of Skylar's first day back at school - a school she had already been attending - was written like this was a brand new school where she knew no one! Barf. Also the ridiculously caricatured school bully nonsense was a major turn off. I know this isn't aimed at my age range, but come on! I've read a sufficient number of decent middle-grade novels to know that it's perfectly possible to write an intelligent 'grown-up' book for kids instead of playing to every lowest and most childish denominator an author can find. I can't commend this garbage at all.

Cold Press by David Bradwell

Rating: WARTY!

This backlog of reviews is defintiely more nagative than positive, I'm sorry to say! I've been away from Britain for so long now that I like to read a good Brit novel from time to time, to reconnect in a relaxing way that doesn't involve airports and rental cars, but this really wasn't the escape I'd been hoping for. I think any novel that has to announce itself on the cover as "A Gripping British Mystery Thriller" has some sort of an identity crisis. It's also listed as "Anna Burgin book one" which means a series, and so I'm usually not interested, but I started reading anyway and I got what I deserved.

For reasons unknown, it's set in London in 1993. London I can understand. 1993 not so much. I'm not a fan of novels set in the past, but I let that slide. Investigative journalist Clare Woodbrook is working on an exposé of police corruption, specifically of Detective Chief Inspector Graham March. Now you know from this that when Clare goes missing it's March who's going to be looking for her, and sure enough, that's exactly what happened. Predictable.

Clare of course took off one afternoon for a secret meeting and despite Danny being her investigative assistant, she tells him nothing about this 'risky venture' she's embarking on, Clare's a moron. Her behavior is predictable in a story like this, and realistically, it makes no sense. Danny has a 'flat mate' - someone who shares an apartment (called a flat in Britain) with him - who is a " feisty fashion photographer" named Anna Burgin - the one of the series title. She doesn't appear until chapter five and when she does, there's an abrupt shift to first person - a voice I typically detest and a shift in voice I abhor.

That was when I quit reading because I was already sick of this dumb book by that point and first person voice just made it ten times worse. It's like shifting down from third gear to first. Obviously there's no reason to ever do that, and it turned this novel into a grind for me. I can't commend this based on what I read of it. I sure wasn't about to read some 300 pages, let alone a whole series of it.

The Vanishing Statue by "Carolyn Keene"

Rating: WARTY!

Keene is the usual pseudonym for these books which are not doing well in their present incarnation as far as I can tell. Carolyn Keene never actually existed - not as an author of Nancy Drew anyways! Having listened to about half of this one, I can understand why. The books are tedious. Nancy is reduced to a fashionista talking about dresses and makeup and showing almost zero interest in the vanishing statue of the title even by halfway through the novel. I grew bored and gave up on it.

Damn Straight by Elizabeth Sims

Rating: WORTHY!

This is one of a series known as the "Lillian Byrd Crime Stories" because of the protagonist, Lillian Byrd. Note that this is book 2 in the LGBTQIA series, and I have not read book 1. Also I traded an email or two with the author, and I do appreciate her kindness, so I'm not exactly unbiased here! But my review is true and honest - you have my word as a gentleman.

I'm not normally a fan of this kind of story, or of series in general, which is what made this one interesting to me, because Lillian is not your normal "sleuth." In fact I flatly refuse to read any amateur detective story that uses the word 'sleuth' in the book description, so this author was lucky in that regard! She also chose an amusing title which I appreciated.

Lillian is a lesbian and also a little older, I believe, than your usual amateur PI. She was happily (maybe not quite so happily) ensconced in Detroit, with her pet rabbit Todd (who was an amusing, endearing, off-beat and unexpected pet), until friend of hers called from California in a complete mess. I got the impression that her friend was a drama queen. Her name is Truby. It ought to have been Trouble, because I had to wonder how much of a friend she was when she virtually demanded, without offering any explanation, that Lillian drop everything and come running across the country.

When Lillian finally arrived after that frantic phone call, it turned out that this crisis was nothing more than Truby thinking she might be a lesbian. Personally I would have been pissed-off if a friend did that to me, but Lillian takes it all in stride and tries to pass on information that she thinks will be helpful in Truby's exploration of her sexuality. The impression I got is that Truby is bi and in denial!

But this was just to get Lillian across the country, because Truby has tickets to a soirée in celebration of the upcoming Dinah Shore women's golf tournament. It's there that Lillian meets the real subject of this story, in the shape of Genie Maychild. I'm a big believer in making the character's name fit the character in the context of the story, and this particular name is very à propos of that tenet. I liked it! It turns out that Genie is an ace golfer and is playing in the tournament, and expected to be up there with the leading contenders.

She also has a rivalry with an upstart prodigy golfer named Coco Nash - another name I liked. In fact I think I liked Coco best of all in this novel. While Lillian seemed to have a habit of alternately annoying and then intriguing me, I never was keen on Genie who was like this needy vacuum, sucking up all Lillian's attention. I didn't like Truby at all, who was seriously high-maintenance and evidently not too smart, but Coco I could have read a novel about, especially if she'd become involved with Lillian (maybe a future installment in the series - hint, hint!)! But I digress. Genie has a secret past and this is where all the mystery lies - along with Genie's current troubles.

The mystery was multi-faceted and kept me guessing. Although some red herrings were easily fished out of the mix and I fixed on the wrong perp, I did guess right that someone's motives were hardly spotless, but I'm not about to reveal who that was! Lillian is a Freelance journalist, so: amateur detective, and she's quite inventive and definitely dedicated. She's also a freaking angel when it comes to handling Genie who really didn't deserve her. But I liked the way Lillian thought and planned her moves, so for me, while I can't say that the story was exactly entrancing, I can say without fear of landing in the rough, that it was eminently readable and a satisfying whack down the fairway.

If I had a complaint, it would be two of them! One was the golf, which was a bit too much for me, who is not a golf fan, but obviously the story centers around golf and a golfer, so I couldn't really make a legitimate complaint about all the golf!

The other complaint is one I've made in many reviews, which in this case is that Lillian and Genie fall into bed far too quickly and without a word about sexual health, which to me is a problem in this day and age of rampant STIs. Naturally no writer wants to bring the story to a screeching halt with a lecture about sexual diseases, but there are ways it can be worked into the story naturally and organically, or at least touched-on in passing. That said, I did enjoy the story overall, and I consider it an eminently worthy read.

And Then There Were Nun by Dakota Cassidy

Rating: WARTY!

For purposes of my own, I've recently been taking a look at some of these detective stories that I quite honestly despise, especially the ones that make a pun out of something - typically the main character's name - in every title. It blows, and this story was predictably yet another fail, despite the premise being a lot more interesting than most.

I liked the idea of the detective being an excommunicated nun, and her 'Watson' being a demon, but after a short time the story became cloying and one-note. It was too extreme and inauthentic even within the premise we're given. Having written a novel myself which features an incarnate demon, I was hoping this would entertain me, but that hope was dashed with disturbing rapidity.

The novel became annoying, in particular at one point where the inevitable body was inevitably found, and the police were called in, and the detective outright asked the main character if her name, Trixie Lavender, was her stripper name. I'm like "WTF?" I seriously do not get why female writers seem to enjoy going out of their way to marginalize, slut-shame, or otherwise denigrate their female characters, and it was at that point that I quit reading this one. I can't commend a novel that has a female cop gratuitously insult a female witness at a crime scene and there's no pushback from anyone, not even the author.

Arsenic in the Azaleas by Dale Mayer

Rating: WARTY!

I despise what are laughably called 'cozy mysteries' and I particularly despise any novel which has a dog or a cat as a main character. Not that I dislike dogs or cats; I just find their use in detective stories abhorrent. Since I'm interested for my own purposes in this genre, and this one was at loss leader, I decided to give it a try and it fully met my exceedingly low expectations - and then some!

The main character is of course the "recently divorced Doreen," (recently divorced so she can have a love interest because a woman without a man is begging for a handicapped sticker according to the majority of authors of this and other genres such as YA). She's accompanied by one of the few dogs I do dislike, because it is an unhealthily-bred Basset hound and anyone who supports this so-called pedigree breeding cult needs to read up something about Nazi "doctors" like Eduard Wirths, Aribert Heim, and Josef Mengele. The dog breeders are no better, really.

The antique-named Doreen is starting over (of course!) in a house owned by grandmother, but the dog finds a body in the back yard. We're laughably asked, "Can Doreen prove her grandmother's innocence?' No, of course not. Her grandmother is going to be found guilty as sin and given a lethal injection. Seriously?

Of course she'll prove her innocence, and then she'll inevitably go on to prove the innocence of endless others in a tedious series wherein this little community she just moved to proves to be have a higher body-count than cartel-infested regions in Mexico, with victims falling like flies, all of them suspiciously connected with Doreen the Exploiter and her interests and activities. Why more of these amateur "sleuths" aren't arrested for causing all these murders is the real mystery here. And no, I don't read any book with 'sleuth' anywhere on the cover. I'm allergic to them.

This one started out badly. After a road trip ending at grandma's house - and bringing the wolf with her (or at least a descendent of one), Doreen's very last thought is to get the poor dog set up in the house with food and water. No wonder it's out digging in the back yard for bones. I can't remember exactly where I gave up reading this, but rest assured it wasn't far into it. I can't commend this garbage based on what little I could stomach of it.

Murder Above the Fold by Regina Welling, Erin Lynn

Rating: WARTY!

This is one of those detective novels I usually laugh at and deride - especially when it has a dumb-ass title like this one does. I flatly refuse to read any such book that has the word 'sleuth' anywhere in the blurb and this one didn't, but it may as well have for what it was. My mistake was in thinking that this might be different in that it was a pair of witches that were the amateur investigators. I was curious as to how this would work. Couldn't they just do some witchcraft to determine who the perp is?! The trick in writing a novel like this is that you have to put in some valid reason(s) why they couldn't do precisely that (which would have meant a very short and boring series!). The problem is that these authors failed to do so and simply left the question begging. That's a really poor way to treat your readers.

So what I got was the absurdity of two quite powerful witches doing the detecting job precisely like someone who isn't a witch would do it - apart from a sprinkle of pixie dust here and there (apparently pixie dust can detect traces of blood, but it also destroys those traces). So I have to wonder what is the point of making them witches in the first place? Having done that, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to have Witch One say, "I wish we could wave a wand and solve this" and have Witch Two retort, "Now Esmeralda, you know perfectly well that when a person kills another person, their true self is horribly warped by the violence done to their soul. Because of that, we can't see who it was, so we have to solve this the old fashioned way!" or words along those lines (and perhaps not quite so baldly!), but these two authors either were too clueless to see there was a major plot hole, or they simply didn't care. Either way, their readers deserve better.

To write about these characturds being very able witches and then have them pottering around without being able to lift a wand to solve the murder is just silly. The author has made the witches 250 years old, too, so there's that issue! Why she chose to do that I do not know, but the issue here is the same one that those asinine young adult vampire novels suffer. Someone who has been around for a quarter of a millennium isn't actually forty or fifty even if they look like they are. Such a person would not remotely behave like a person of that age (or be interested in a boring teenage slip of a girl unless he was into child pornography), yet these two authors write about the antique witches like they're really the age they appear to be. That's like saying a fifty-year-old would have the mentality of a ten year old. It doesn't work. Neither does the claim that witches age until twenty-five and then their ageing slows dramatically, which 'explains' how they continue to look young. Fine, if that's the way it is, but to say that's how it is and not even pretend you have a valid reason for that is just lazy writing. Why 25? Why does it slow? These authors don't give a shit.

Worse than this, we have these biddies in the story tampering with evidence. This happens all-too-often in this kind of story, going all the way back to Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot. He frequently keeps the police from solving a crime by withholding evidence. He won't even share his suspicions - all because he's an arrogant little tool who thinks he's better than anyone, and evidently deems it more important that he gets the celebrity value of solving the crime than it is to bring the criminal to book with all haste and by any means necessary. In reality, such a 'sleuth' would be arrested for obstructing justice!

In this story, the first notable thing that happens after the body is discovered is that their pixie dust destroys the blood evidence, but before that, they failed to report a scrap of torn fabric they found which is from the victim's clothing. As soon as they found that scrap stuck in a door jamb, they immediately leapt to the conclusion that the dead woman had been murdered! The discovery of the blood came afterwards. These things are precisely why I have a problem with these 'amateur sleuthing' series. I'd thought adding witches to the brew might make it readable, but I was wrong. It actually made it worse! I quit this nonsensical story right after the destruction of evidence.

I don't object to amateur detectives, not in principal, but I do object to sloppy-writing where things are just taken for granted, evidence is destroyed or withheld, and the 'sleuths' simply don't care about collaborating. That's just simplistic, stupid and lazy, which is why I rarely even look at this kind of a series. I certainly cannot commend this one based on how poorly-written the opening chapters were.

Troublemaker by Janet Evanovich, Alex Evanvovich, Joelle Jones

Rating: WARTY!

Illustrated by Joelle Jones, this is a classic example of it's not what you can write, but who you know. The blurb doesn't even pretend that daughter Alexandra Evanovich (or Evanvovich as idiot Amazon, known for screwing-up of author's names, has it!) had any writing involvement at all although she's credited with it, so maybe she did contribute. We'll never know. But what a great way to get your foot in the door, huh, on the fly leaves of your mom?

I thought I could kill two birds with one stone here, reading an Evanovich, which I'd really had no interest in because her titles are far too gimmicky, and seeing what her daughter might have contributed, and all in a short graphic format, but it was a complete fail! I should have paid closer attention to the blurb: "Alex Barnaby and Sam Hooker are back together and fighting crime the only way they know how - by leaving a trail of chaos, panic, and disorder." Yep, that's how to successfully fight crime all right! Not! In the end it was nothing worth my time.

The first problem I had was with how the two main characters are set up. Masculine Sam is the leading man - the daring racecar driver. Alexandra Barnaby is his lackey. No surprises there. It's about what I'd expect from someone of Evanovich's generation, where playing it safe and by the numbers is an unwritten rule. So, a man has gone missing and since all police are pretty much universally useless in these interfering meddler stories, twin clowns Barnaby and Hooker evidently have to go deep into the "underbelly of Miami" (which in this era of climate change is actually underwater), delving int "Voodoo, explosions, gift-wrapped body parts, and a deadly swamp chase." Yawn. This novel sucked, period. That's all it merits as a review. I'm done with these two authors. Nothing to see here. Moving along.

The Ophelia Cut by John Lescroart

Rating: WARTY!

I thing I'm going to quit reading any novel that has a Shakespeare quote or reference in the title. I didn't realize this at the time, otherwise I would have left this on the library shelf, but it's book fourteen in a series featuring a protagonist defense attorney with the ridiculous name of Dismas Hardy. If the only thing you can characterize with is a bizarre name, then you're not doing your characters right and you're certainly not doing them justice.

Worse than this though, the story was boring as all hell and moved at a sluggish pace. Worse even than that, most of it had nothing to do with the promised story, This is why I DNF'd this. And yes, you can review a novel without finishing it if it's as appallingly bad as this one was.

I should have paid more attention to the blurb which begins, " Brittany McGuire is the beautiful..." Anything that rates a woman by her looks and nothing else is to be disparaged and junked. I know the author isn't responsible for the blurb, but still! We need to move away from this objectification, and yes, authors and blurb writers, I'm talking to all of you.

The problem with an established author, especially one with a series, is that Big Publishing™ is so avaricious that they don't want to criticize any of their golden geese, so editing the novel is out of the question. That's why these novels get so bad and why I will never write a series. It's lazy and derivative and it leads to sad-sack novels like this one. I cannot recommend it and will not read anything else by such a lazy author as this.

Celine by Peter Heller

Rating: WARTY!

This was another audiobook experiment and I was initially quite intrigued by what it offered. Although this wasn't clear from the blurb, the protagonist was an older PI - much older than is typical for these stories and, always looking for the road less traveled as I am, this appealed to me. Celine is sort of semi-retired from PI-ing, and is working on art projects when she feels called back into the field by a woman whose husband has disappeared. Tracking down lost people is Celine's specialty.

So far so good, but for me, the problem with this was the, if you'll forgive the bad pun, arthritic pace at which the story moved. It was glacial, and when I was over a fifth of the way into it and quite literally nothing had happened, I'd had quite enough. The entire first twenty percent was family history and flashbacks and it was so boring. I wanted to see how this woman tackled this job, but I was so tired of listening to pointless, time-wasting reminiscences which did nothing to move the story or even address the plot, that I couldn't stand to listen anymore.

To me, if you're going to go outside the genre norm, which I salute in principle, and in this case, have an older PI, then you have to bring something to the table other than the fact that she (or he) is an older PI! That can't be all there is. And you really need to get rid of the inevitable detective tick, idiosyncrasy, or quirk. It is so tedious to read of a PI or a detective who has a quirk, because everyone is doing it. Find something new: something different. If you're going off-road in your story, at least find an interesting trail to follow or you'll just end up in a rut. I cannot recommend this one.

Two Nights by Kathy Reichs

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher. I requested this from Net Galley because it sounded interesting. I've never read anything by this author before, so it was also a chance to explore a writer who is not new to writing, but who was new to me.

I have to say up front that I'm not a huge fan of first person voice novels, which automatically puts private investigator stories off limits since pretty much every author in that genre seems obsessed with writing them exactly the same way as every other author. This means of course that once you've read one you've effectively read them all.

These old soft slippers of stories doubtlessly appeal to a certain segment of the population who like to slip them on regularly, but it's like those authors have never considered that it might appeal to a larger audience if they could only find the courage to break the mold. I know it's always easy to play it safe, but I'd have appreciated this one a lot more had it not done so.

I've never read anything by this author before (and seriously doubt I will again), and the blurb made it sound like this might be interesting, assuming I could get past 1PoV. I'm always game for a good story involving a strong female lead, so: an author who might be able to carry a first person story and not make it irritating to read? Potential strong female character? Maybe this wouldn't be so bad? Those were my hopes going in.

Let me begin by saying that I did appreciate that the first person PoV wasn't as annoying as I feared it would be, although it did still kick me out of suspension of disbelief on occasion, and it did still annoy me from time to time. The main reason for that is that 1PoV is always about 'me' (the story-teller) all the time. You cannot get away from 'me': Hey lookit me! Look at what I'm doing now! Pay attention only to me! Now I'm doing something else! Look now! Annoying.

I honestly don't know how people can swallow so much of that. I'm amazed that they can, but herding animals can be habituated to anything, so I guess the same principle applies here. The real problem though is that it's the weakest voice in which to tell any story, let alone a PI adventure, because nothing can happen unless the 'me' is present to witness it! How unlikely is that? The only way to overcome that severe limitation is to have more than one first person voice which is even more annoying, or to have boring info-dumps periodically so the first person narrator can catch up on things which happened when they were not there. Again: annoying.

The amusing thing here was that the author openly admitted what a mistake it was to have limited herself to this voice because she added third person PoV 'mini-chapters' periodically. I quickly took to skipping those because I found them to be thoroughly uninformative and worse, they were nothing more than info-dumps which repeatedly stalled the story while contributing nothing materially to it.

This novel was not quite ready for prime time, which in some ways is understandable since it was an ARC. There was a spelling error of the kind a spellchecker will not find: "reversals that left a bade taste" where evidently 'bad' was required instead of 'bade', and having someone say, “Thus his interested in Baltimore, New York, and Louisville" when the 'his' should have been 'is', or alternately, the 'interested' should have been 'interest'.

There were occasional punctuation issues, such as, for example, a period missing at the end of a sentence, or a question mark (example: "He was taller than Capps, but who wasn’t.") and so on. This could use another read-through before publishing, but we've all been there and all missed something before publication, so these were no big deal for me. Other than that, it was generally well-formatted and in technical terms, well-written. The problem with it for me came from mired-in-the-mud trope and cliché. The farce was strong with this one.

Far from take a road less traveled, the author instead apparently made a checklist of tropes and clichés from the genre which must be included, and she checked off every one:

• First person voice? Check!
• Quirky name for female PI? Check! (It's Sunday Night which is too absurd by 100%)
• Thorny PI or with troubled history or both? Check!
• PI likes typically male sport (baseball in this case)? Check!
• Quirky pet? Check!
• Too much focus on, and detail of, ordinary everyday activities in life of PI? Check!
• Has relative or close friend for backup? Check!
• Has previous career in military or police? Check!
• Has questionable record in previous professional career? Check!
• Masochistic PI likes to suffer? Check!
• Drinks beer like a good old boy? Check!
• Investigation seems to be going one way; then it gets turned around and goes in another way entirely? Check!

So nothing new here then. I was truly sorry to see that.

There were also some writerly issues creeping in, such as having a character say, “Against whom?” No one says that in real life unless they're being very pretentious, or are an English teacher or an old-school actor, but I see writers using it all the time in character speech because they can't stop themselves! Personally I think 'whom' is long past its sell-by date and ought to be tossed out altogether. If writers want to use it in the narration, that's one thing, but to have real people actually say it is entirely another, and this is another problem with first person voice: the narrator is the one actually saying it!

So that's the technical writing portion of the review dealt with. Now onto the story itself! It didn't work for me because it revolved around a kidnapping of a young girl. The problem with this is that there was absolutely no rational whatsoever for kidnapping the girl, and even less to keep her alive. There's some vague hand-waving about using her for leverage, but it fails because there's nothing to leverage.

The bad guys are terrorists, so the kidnap victim is completely irrelevant to them. The terrorist leader is utterly ruthless and has no compunction about killing children, yet the one thing he threatens to do - kill the child - he never does.

The sole reason for this is of course so the PI can heroically rescue the girl at the end, but this makes the story so unrealistic as to be more of a joke than a thriller. I don't mind somewhat improbable events occurring in a novel if there's some sort of justification for them within the context of the story, but to just randomly have things be 'just-so' for the sole purpose of facilitating the PI cracking the case and saving the day makes the story look poorly written.

It didn't get any better when the PI takes a shot to the shoulder. There is a dumb gunfight in which, like Han Solo in the original film, she doesn't shoot first even though any realistic PI would have done so. She waits out the potential assassin who is in her hotel room. She waits for an ungodly amount of time, and never once thinks to call the police. Dumb. Worse than this, a host of other hotel guests go past her and see she has a gun, yet not a single one of them calls the police either! Double dumb. She's hit in the shoulder and gets a prescription for painkiller, but she never fills it! This doesn't make her look tough. It makes her look stupid.

If there was some valid reason offered for not getting the script filled - like she was in a prolongued chase, or there was no time to get to the pharmacy for some other reason, that would be one thing, but there's nothing! She has lots of time and nothing pressing, and she's out on the streets a lot. It would have been the simplest thing in the world to drop in to a pharmacy, get the script filed, pop a pill, and fix the pain, thereby making her more effective at doing the job she was hired for, but she never does. This doesn't make her look strong, it makes her look dumb or clueless. But not to worry! The entire injury seems to magically go away in short order, and isn't mentioned again - not in the portion I read, anyway.

What killed this novel for me though, was when the 'ruthless' villain kills one of two followers to try and get the PI off his back, but he delivers the other one to her trussed-up as a prisoner. Why didn't he kill that one? It turns out that the only reason he didn't dispatch her as well, is that she had a vital clue to impart which enabled the PI to track down the villain. This was so ridiculous that I quit reading the story right there, at about 75% in. I could not enjoy it when it was written so poorly, and I certainly couldn't take it seriously. I expected a lot better than this from such a seasoned writer. I cannot recommend this novel.

The Devil Went Down to Austin by Rick Riordan

Rating: WARTY!

Though it was read quite competently by Tom Stechschulte, and though it started out reasonably well after a slightly rocky first couple of chapters, this audiobook soon devolved into endless family politics with very little of interest to me happening, so I started skipping and skimming, and then quickly gave it up as a bad job. Life is too short to waste on stories which don't grip you. I skipped to the end before I dropped it off back at the library and discovered, not to my surprise at all, that the main suspect turned out to be not the real bad guy, and one of the guys I'd encountered briefly earlier, who I'd tagged as a possible main villain was actually the villain, so no real surprises at all.

This is apparently number four in the "Tres Navarre" series, that name (the first part of which is pronounced 'Trace') being the name of the main character. If I'd known that before I picked it up, I'd not have picked it up. As it was, it looked like it might be interesting, and it was a story set in central Texas, but it really could have been set anywhere and remained the same story (with local details changed of course), which meant it wasn't really about Texas. It was a stand-alone - that is to say, as far as I could see I didn't feel I'd missed anything by 'starting' this series at number four. On the other hand, I didn't really feel I'd missed anything when I DNF'd it, either!

I liked the idea of the PI coming to Austin to teach literature for the summer (although he actually does no teaching!), and that this brother is a software engineer who is in trouble with his new anti-virus app, but neither of these things really played a large part in the story except as a rather flimsy background.

Most of it (at least the parts that I listened to) was boring. There was far too much extraneous detail, and far too much tedious twisted family history which some readers might like but which turns me off a story. For me it made a stodgy dough of a recipe which the occasional nice turn of phrase did nothing at all to leaven in the long-run. Based on what I did listen to, and the uninventive ending, I can't recommend this one. Maybe Rick Riordan should stick to his Percy Jackson series?

IQ by Joe Ide

Rating: WARTY!

This was an advance review copy from Net Galley. I thank the publisher for a chance at an early read of this novel.

This is a long book and was a bit of a roller-caster ride for me, but unfortunately, not in a good way. I started out disliking it, yet pressed on and found it more to my liking, but in the end I made it only fifty percent of the way through it, and the reason for that was the endless flashbacks containing info-dumps about the history of one character or another. It felt like padding which, given that this novel is over three hundred pages long, was entirely unnecessary. Not that padding is ever a good idea. I get that authors like to do mini-bios on their characters, to flesh them out and make them 3D, but to incorporate all of this into the story, Stephen King style is definitely not to my taste, and is a major reason why I quit reading Stephen King novels for that matter.

When I read a detective story, which is what this is, I want to be on the job pursuing clues. I don't want to take regimented breaks to catch-up on character history. By all means weave it into the story if you think it's really necessary, but don't bring your story to a screeching halt every other chapter with an episode of This is Your Life. The feeling I got by the time I quit - in the middle of yet another character history - was that the plot was thin and this padding was felt necessary to plump it up and make a real novel out of it, but it didn't, because it simply wasn't appealing.

The other major problem was with the main character. He's presented as some kind of prodigy or genius, or Sherlock Holmesian detective, but I saw nothing in the first fifty percent of this book to indicate he was anything out of the ordinary. He wasn't very interesting to me except when he was working he case, and it seemed like this activity was low on the author's list of priorities. He also took so much crap the first day on the job, from the entourage of the guy he was trying to help (yet another rapper) that it made no sense to me that he'd suck-up gratuitous insult after abusive insult without turning around and walking out on their mouthy asses. It made him look weak and beggarly.

Worse than this, at one point, Isaiah (the IQ of the title) has identified the perp, yet rather than draw the attention of the police to him, he simply drives away. This was criminally negligent given that this guy is in active pursuit of an assassination. I get that maybe the police don't have enough to arrest him right there and then, but I sure wouldn't want it on my conscience if I didn't say anything, and this assassin ends up succeeding in his plan. It was irresponsible and finished the job of turning me off the guy, which is a sorry thing to do when it comes to your main character!

As always, I wish the author all the best in his endeavors, but this book was not for me and I can't in good faith recommend it.

Sixkill by Robert B Parker

Rating: WARTY!

Last trip to the library to pick up a requested book, I happened upon this audiobook, which is about a private dick named Spenser (and yes, he's for hire!) who is investigating the murder of a movie star's one-night stand. Over in the young readers section I happened upon a second audiobook also by Robert B Parker, titled Chasing the Bear, which was about the same character but when he was younger. I thought it would be an interesting study to compare and contrast.

Was I ever wrong! Nauseating was a more apt description, and the major reason for it was that this author sucks at writing prose. His problem is that he has all the individuality and inventiveness of a metronome when it comes to writing conversation between two people, and he writes a lot of speech with nothing to break it up. It's like listening to two automatic tennis ball throwers trying to play tennis with each other, and every bit as engrossing.

Of course this was first person because god forbid anyone should ever deign to imagine that it's legal under US law to write a novel in third person! Here's an example of this author's appalling conversational writing, from the beginning of chapter one. Note that this is a transcript of the audiobook, so my punctuation (and spelling of names) may differ from the printed page:

"Care for a coffee?" I said.
"Got some!" Quirk said. "Nice of you to ask."
"You ever read Frazz?" I said.
"What the fuck is frazz?" Quirk said.
[small descriptive section omitted]
"A comic strip in the Globe," I said. "It's new.'
"I'm a grown man," Quirk said.
"And a police captain," I said.
"Exactly," Quirk said. "I don't read comic strips."
"I withdraw the question," I said.
Quirk nodded. "I need something," he said.

Said, said, said? Has this guy never heard of words like, "asked"? Or exclaimed? Or "interrupted"? Or of simply adding no attribution once in a while? I quote this novel shortly afterwards in sheer disbelief that a grown man could write so god-awfully badly. It didn't help that Joe Mantegna's condescending, and I felt insulting version of an American Indian accent was vomit-inducing, and worthy of American western movies of the 1940's and 50's. I used to like Joe Mantegna.

I do not like this author and after listening to the opening portion of two different novels about the same guy at different stages of his life, I've come to the conclusion that there's no difference! I also have to ask how this thoroughly obnoxious lout - the accused murderer in this novel - ever became a major movie star. It's simply not credible. The story makes no sense at all. I'm all done reading Robert B Parker, I say.

Rhythm & Clues by Sue Anne Jaffarian

Rating: WARTY!

Not to be confused with Rhythm & Clues by Rachel Shane, this is your bog-standard first person PoV detective story, of which I am not a fan. The thing that interested me about this particular one is that the main character was older than you typically find in these stories, and she was a member of a defunct band. The problem was that instead of a detective, the main character and her mother both came off as interfering busybodies.

Actually, there were far too many busybodies: the whole family was this way evidently, as well as the daughter of the man with whom main character Odelia's mom was involved. Odelia Grey and her mom in particular, had no problem getting into an investigation that had nothing whatsoever to do with them, and in which they were in fact interfering with police business, and doing so after they'd been warned in no uncertain terms by police officers, to stay out of the investigation. At one point the mom calls a person who might be a suspect and gives him information which has not yet been made public, before the police even have a chance to talk to him. This is unacceptable and turned me right off the story and the characters.

In addition to this, the writing style was not very good. The writing focused way too closely on minor everyday activities, bulking up the page count without conveying anything of interest, and certainly nothing to do with the investigation. It made for somewhat tedious reading. Some of the writing made no sense whatsoever. For example, at one point, Odelia outright asks her mom if she's having sex with a guy who lives in the same retiree, gated community in which she lives. Seriously? What the hell business is it of hers? Well, she's a busybody. That wasn't even the biggest problem. After Odelia asks this of her mom, and her mom indicates that she is, I read this: "It was difficult enough getting the picture of Mom and Art doing it out of my head" so why the hell did you even ask? It made no sense.

At another point, there was an exchange between Odelia and her lawyer employer who is called in to help. He says, "I had to shave while driving 75 miles per hour," and she "points out" that he drives a stick shift. If he's doing seventy, he's not shifting gears, so how is that even relevant?! Other than that he's a moron if he's shaving and driving at that speed - or even driving at all. This guy is supposedly a lawyer and should know better, but then none of the characters I encountered in this story seemed blessed with an over-abundance of smarts.

Sometimes the writing was simply obscure: "She said she'd just flown in saying she was on a two week vacation from her job." Huh?! There were some intentionally funny bits, though, such as this one: For a minute I wondered if she was going to try to make a run for it. Or more like a shuffle for it, considering her age. That was amusing, but this kind of thing was rare. Mostly it was just annoying as Odelia's mom gets (or at least lets) her grand-niece break into a neighbor's apartment because Odelia's mom is in a fluster about why he's 'disappeared'. Then they call Odelia at 1:30 in the morning because they were both hauled down to the police station. Well deal with it. You broke into someone's house, morons. These people were stupid and insufferable, and I lost all interest in reading about them. I quit this after thirty percent, because I couldn't bear to read any more about them.

The front of the novel has some "praise" including one comment from Kirkus, which is pointless. Kirkus has pretty much never met a novel they didn't like, so their reviews are utterly worthless! I actively avoid books (when I know beforehand) that Kirkus has praised. The story (at least the thirty percent I read) had nothing to do with music other than that the guy who has disappeared (and without notifying Odelia's mom, with whom he's not really acquainted, of his exact itinerary! The scandal!), was once in a band, so the music angle was a complete let-down for me. This guy could have been on a cycling team or in a group of charity volunteers, and pretty much the same story could have been told about him.

So overall, while I do appreciate the chance to have taken a look at an advance review copy, and while I do wish the author the best of luck with this series, I was not impressed with the story. I have no interest in pursuing a series based on these characters, and I can't recommend this based on the portion I read.

Scents and Sensibility by Spencer Quinn

Rating: WARTY!

I was drawn to this because of the amusing title and the somewhat unusual premise, but mainly by the blurb announcing that the story was about illegal cactus smuggling, which struck me as an hilarious idea for a novel, so I jumped right on board and felt instead rather like I was jumping overboard into ice cold water, because the execution of the idea left me less than thrilled.

This is the eighth in a series. I haven't read any of the previous volumes, being unaware that this series existed, and not being a series fan - with a few prized exceptions. Perhaps this is the kind of series you have to build up to from the start. On the other hand this appears to be an episodic series, so it's not one which you have to have read all the prior volumes before reading this one in order to follow the story in this particular volume.

I have to say that Chet the Eighth did not grab me from the off. Quite the contrary - it was a bit annoying. It's told from the dog's PoV in first person, which is the most irritating voice for a novel, and it doesn't help in this case that the narrator is a dog. There was just something about it which turned me off.

I made it to page sixty, the end of chapter seven, which is about one quarter the way through this, and I couldn't bring myself to read any further. I don't know what it really was, but this novel simply didn't do it for me. I didn't find it interesting or engaging, and I felt neither empathy with, nor liking for any of the characters. The bottom line is that I was simply not interested in these people, much less who the perp was or what their motives were. I can't recommend this based on what I read, and life is way too short to keep on doggedly reading when the story isn't doing it, and there are so many other volumes waiting to captivate and entrance you.

A Witness Above by Andy Straka

Title: A Witness Above
Author: Andy Straka
Publisher: Brash Books
Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
"I'm in a bit of a vice" should be "I'm in a bit of a vise" unless of course he really means that he's conducting himself immorally! (p68)
Change of font in mid-newspaper headline (p72)
"...whole neighbors.." should be "...whole neighborhoods..." (p156)
"About whether I arrest you now or you turn yourself in down to the department." Makes little sense. Maybe "...turn yourself in down at the department"?

"kibosh" should be "kibosh" or "kybosh" from the Gaelic Caip bháis meaning candle snuffer (p38)
Not an erratum as such, but an oddity:
Nicole says of her friend "We were always chums" which sounds really odd and not something which is likely for a teenager, especially an older one, to say.

I've enjoyed a warm relationship with Brash books despite posting some negative reviews, so I'm glad to be able to post a positive one like this one! This novel, despite some issues I had with it, is a worthy read and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in a nice private detective story that unfolds comfortably, always moving forwards, with some really interesting characters.

This is your standard private dick story told, of course in the first person (since it's evidently illegal to tell a PI story in third person, as you know!). First person isn't my favorite voice by a long chalk, but some authors can carry it, and this one does. The PI is Frank Pavlicek (Pav-li-check). His quirk (because they all have to have a quirk right?) is that he's into falconry and goes hunting with a red tailed hawk in time-honored tradition. His baggage (because they all have to have baggage, right?) is that he has a wife who hates him and a rather estranged teen daughter.

I found myself thinking wryly that maybe the daughterly estrangement is due to the fact that he still calls her Nicky and she still calls him 'Daddy' despite the fact that she's old enough to go into bars if not to drink alcohol. This endearment felt a bit confusing given that he tells us at one point shortly afterwards that the last time he thought of his daughter as little was when she was nine, and later again refers to her as though she's just a little girl.

The wifely break-up has no solid explanation. What seemed to be a perfectly good marriage broke down for two putative reasons: he apparently hauled her from their old life to a Podunk town and begin a career as a PI all without talking to her about his plans, apparently. Also she developed a money-grubbing attitude out of nowhere, evidently, along with an inability to work. Frank also has the requisite love interest who is, of course, a wise divorced woman. Nothing new here. The only interesting thing about him to me, was that at the time of the story, he lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I lived for a time. It was nice to read a story for once, set in a place I know!

There's actually nothing in Charlottesville. It's dead, despite being a university town. It's the kind of place you leave if you want to have fun. I've had a lot of fun since I left! It is picturesque, with the mountains a drive away on one side and the beach a really long drive away on the other, but there's really no there, there, as the saying goes, which is why I left and never looked back. It was nice to reminisce here, though.

Of Frank's girlfriend. The first thing we learn is that "She was not the most beautiful woman in the world...". This is the exact opposite of what I usually complain about, but the problem here is that we have a case of what I shall term inverse objectification. The point here is not that she's outstandingly beautiful as way too many women are in your typical novel, but that she's not the most beautiful, and so once again we have a female character who is defined by her looks and for no good reason.

Yes, there are good reasons to have a character defined (I should say primarily defined, because it never is a definition by itself) by her beauty: if the story is, for example, about a woman who was beautiful, and now has to cope for whatever reason with not being so, but in most stories, a woman's good looks or otherwise are no more relevant or pertinent than a man's, and focusing attention on how attractive or unattractive a female character is, merely serves to reduce half the population to skin. Can we not simply describe her as we'd describe a guy, without going into any pseudo poetic declarations or the gratuitous employment of superlatives, or by going into stealth mode and telling us she's not the most attractive woman in the world?

The weird thing here that made me smirk is that even after we're told how not-the-most-beautiful she is, we're still told that she has a photogenic magnetism in her eyes. Because god forbid she would just be a regular girl. No room for regular girls in this world. If they don't meet the Aryan ideal, then they must be extirpated. That sounds so familiar. Where did I hear that? I also found it odd that when Regan discovers it's a boy. it's congratulations all around? What would they do if it had been a girl? Bought wreaths?!

But in this regard, this novel is no better and no worse than any other story out there, and as a PI story, it's better than many in how it treats women. So instead, let's side-step all of this, and look at the story itself. Pavlicek is out hunting with his hawk in his hand and encounters a dead body from which he removes evidence before calling in the police. Already I don't like this guy, but you don't always have to actually like the main character to enjoy a good story, so this is fine. The evidence links his daughter to a drug dealer, so it seems, and he wants to find out what's going on. But have no fear. His daughter will be fine. After all, she's not ordinary either, because she's been endowed "With the same spectacular good looks as her mother...". I know husbands have every right to deem their wife and daughter beautiful, but this constant worship of beauty was tedious to say the least.

Pavlicek's daughter isn't very pleased to see dad until she gets jailed for possession with intent to distribute, then she's calling him. Why isn't clear, since her mom was married to a rich guy and had no problem hiring a lawyer, so this was interesting, especially since mom was behaving rather dismissively if not in a hostile manner towards her own daughter! When when Frank visits Nicole in the jail (and calls her Nickita) he notes that her eyes are brimming with tears, but still is dumb enough to need to ask her how she's doing. Some dads never learn!

The story really takes off from there and in general, it's very well written. I could have done without the falconry interludes which really felt like 'ludes to me, but I skipped those few pages and focused on the story itself, which was a bit predictable but nonetheless well done and engrossing. It was fun for me to read about a place I'd lived, so this lent the story a certain familiarity to me, like meeting an old friend. I ended-up still not liking Pavlicek. He didn't strike me as the smartest PI in the deck, and consequently I don't feel any desire to read more about him, but I actually would have liked to have read more about his daughter and her friend Regan. Those two were quite complex and entertaining characters, but not in the story much. Who knows, maybe a few years down the road we'll meet Nicky and Regan, Private Eyes? Until then, I think this is a worthy read if you're into PI stories.

Post scriptum - here's an oddity from the Adobe Digital Editions reader - there's no page 268 in a 268 page document!:

Scarlett Undercover by Jennifer Latham

Title: Scarlett Undercover
Author: Jennifer Latham
Publisher: Little, Brown
Rating: WORTHY!

Erratum:
“Funny” on page 67 is missing a closing quote.

The last message on Jennifer Latham's website (as of this posting) is that she's here in Austin! Yeay! The website gives no clue as to where she is exactly, however; then I'm not a fan boy so I wouldn't go anyway, but I could have at least told you guys! Maybe it's hidden away on her website, but I sure don't have time to search for it.

Now this is an intriguing novel she's given to us. Scarlett is a smart (so we're told) and precocious 16 year old who graduated high school two years early, but has yet to take up college life. Judged by her bio (which we get about half-way through the novel), she hasn't always been so smart, but a good-hearted cop (or is he?) set her back on the straight and narrow, and that's how she got into the private detective business. In the meantime, she lives off...I have no idea who or what she lives off. Her parents are dead and she lives - nominally - with her older sister.

She seems to do very little with her life save for taking Muay Thai lessons, and those only half-heartedly. She holds down no job as far as I can see, unless you count the "job" of unpaid, part-time detective. Her new case is a nine-year-old girl who reports that her older brother is acting weird lately! Scarlett is inclined to take this report with a pinch or two of salt until she starts looking into it. An examination of the kid's room while he's not around, leads Scarlett to the discovery of a series of mysterious patterns scratched onto the back of his bedroom door.

Scarlett's "love" interest has the unfortunate name of Decker, and he equally unfortunately sports the young adult cliché of having gold flecks in his eyes. Seriously? He works part time in his mom's greasy-spoon restaurant, but the interesting thing here isn't the gold flecks; it's the fact that Decker is Jewish, whereas Scarlett is Muslim. They have more in common than you might think, as this story slowly reveals.

Given this knowledge of her origins, how the heck Scarlett ever got her name is a bit of a mystery. At first i thought she was Arabic, then I thought that maybe she's African American, then maybe she's Indian. The novel never says and ultimately it's not important except in that finally, we have a majorly kick-ass non-Anglo-Saxon protestant female main character. Why is it so hard for you female authors to come up with these characters?!!! Kudos to Jennifer Latham for introducing us to this one!

Decker informs Scarlett that the pattern which she's convinced she's seen before, but can't bring to mind, is called Solomon's Knot (although it's actually a link, not a knot). It's not only in her mosque, it's also in his synagogue, but neither place is where she's seen it. Decker's mom, who also waits at this restaurant which she runs, turned very nearly to stone when Scarlett showed her the image. She refused to discuss it and wouldn't say why. When Scarlett investigates, she gets drawn into an ancient web of danger and mystery that has her fighting - sometimes literally - to stay ahead of.

In addition to an interesting mystery, Scarlett seems to have picked up not one, but two tails, since she took this case. She managed to give both of these girls the slip (and not the kind you wear), but what the heck is she going to do when she meets a guy on a bridge, who is himself the size of a bridge and wanting to take her down hard?

As I mentioned, I have to wonder where Scarlett gets her money from. She takes taxis, eats breakfast and leaves ten dollars on the table, hands out five dollars to a homeless person. She has an office! Maybe she lives off her dead parent's insurance money? Her sister is a doctor doing a residency, which means she works long hours, is always tired, hardly home, and gets paid diddly for all this, so we know the money isn't coming from her, so this access to endless cash is a big plot hole, but that aside, I can't find any fault in this novel.

I do find fault in the cover. The flimsy child-model on it in now way, shape, or form even remotely represents the outstanding girl depicted inside. Why they ever let jackasses do the cover who quite evidently have never even read the novel is a complete mystery to me. It's the price you pay, however, for going the route of Big Publishing™. The cover is out of the author's hands, and while I don't blame her for this disaster, I do feel awful for her that she got saddled with a trashy cover like this for the superior novel she's written.

Please do completely ignore the cover when considering reading this one! I never judge a novel by the cover. it's a colossal mistake. This novel is beautifully told, expertly paced, has major action, danger, intrigue, and narrow escapes, all of which are believable, and it has a romance that's done to perfection - i.e. this is not a romance novel masquerading as a PI novel like one I reviewed quite recently, it's a serious private eye story with a pleasant - for once - dash of romance. It's told - perhaps tongue in cheek - with the best private dick story-telling technique (which I think some reviewers simply didn't get), and the romance is a minor side-shoot which neither dominates nor ruins the story. I praise Jennifer Latham for that and assure you she is a writer to watch.

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

Title: The Maltese Falcon
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Publisher: Books on Tape
Rating: WARTY!

Audio book read stiltedly by Michael Prichard.

Need I get into the blatant objectification employed in this cover? I hope not.

First published in 1930 and turned into what is now considered a film noir classic in 1941, The Maltese Falcon is what would, were it published now, be considered a stereotypical hard-bitten private dick story. This is where Sam Spade was born. He's hired by a Miss Wonderly to try and get her younger sister to return home.

Wonderly has no idea where her sister is (nor does the reader!), but she claims she's hanging out with a man whom Wonderly considers dangerous: a married Englishman with the unlikely name of Floyd - unlikely because no Brit would ever name their child 'Floyd', but Dashiell (How-About-That-Hair?) Hammett obviously didn't know this or didn't care. Wonderly requests that either Spade or Archer do this and she pays handsomely for the consideration. Spade's assistant, Miles Archer, is assigned to tail Floyd Thursby. Luckily for Spade.

That night Spade is awakened by a phone call notifying him of Miles Archer's death. Why they would call Spade rather than Archer's wife is a complete mystery, but Spade goes to the murder site and sees that Archer was shot before falling over a safety rail and rolling down an embankment. Spade undertakes (I use that word advisedly) to notify Archer's wife.

Even later that night (I guess Spade goes to bed rather early!), two police detectives, Polhaus and Dundy, visit Spade and take an interest in whether he has access to a gun. It turns out that Thursby has also been murdered and Spade is now a suspect! The fact that he was having an affair with Archer's wife doesn't help his case.

And so it goes. This story really wasn't very good at all. Maybe back in the day it was new, and fresh and different, but now it's really rather pathetic. I can neither recommend this nor the movie they made from it.

The Case of Tiffany's Epiphany by Jim Stevens

Title: The Case of Tiffany's Epiphany
Author: Jim Stevens
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!

This is novel two in my blog's Tiffany Day - two novels with the name 'Tiffany' in the title. This is the second one.

I made it about 15% the way through this before I gave up to go look for greener pastures. Life is too short to waste it gamely plowing through a novel that doesn’t entrance you from the off. There was nothing technically wrong in terms of the mechanics of putting words on paper, getting spelling and grammar right, etc, but it takes a lot more than that to make a novel a worthy read.

This is first person PoV, too, which is usually a mistake. Some authors can make it work, but ninety-nine times out of nine point nine, it fails because it's all "Me!" all the time and really, who cares? It’s especially hard to read when the narrator sounds like there's nothing more engrossing going on than reading-off a laundry list - and one that doesn’t even feature underwear to maybe perk it up a bit. It was tedious.

This is your bog-standard private dick novel, too. The author did try to de-cliché it by making the dick be the father of two daughters, but aside from that, he still sat it squarely in trope central. The dick is badly done-to, gets no respect, he's broke, has no love interest, and so on. Trope, meet cliché, cliché meet trope.... The dick is an ex cop who apparently got fired for hitting a superior ( I doubt that one offense, in absence of anything else, would merit a firing. A demotion and a transfer - and therapy - I can see, but summarily fired?

This does, of course, mean that he is actually a major dick. He seems to be clueless, too. He works (evidently part-time) and is really poorly paid for it, yet he's still paying alimony to his wife, with whom his kids normally reside, although he has full access to them, evidently. It’s apparently never crossed his mind to get a second job to buy the things he keeps whining that he doesn’t have.

His case? Try not to laugh, but the spoiled rotten daughter of his wealthy employer believes she was "roofied" at a dance bar one night. This is his 'case'. Seriously? This girl, Tiffany, is even more clueless than the Dick is, and she passed out in this bar. Those are the facts. According to the video surveillance, no one slipped her anything, so we don’t even know if she passed out from low blood sugar or something, or if she was drugged earlier (or very surreptitiously) or gassed, or something. We're told the dick gets a sample of blood, urine, and DNA. Seriously? What’s the DNA going to reveal? That she has a genetic predisposition to be clueless?!

Even if she was drugged, no crime took place (other than the drugging). She wasn't kidnapped or raped or anything. She simply passed out, was carried into the back office, and she woke up some time later and went home. It was essentially just as though she'd passed out drunk. Unless something bad happened in the back office (and there seems to be no suspicion of that in the portion I read), there's effectively no crime here and the girl just needs to find a better class of place to go dancing and never visit this particular dive again. Case solved!

My guess is that she was somehow made to give up some sort of password or pass code while she was woozy in the back-office and this was the crime - or at least the prelude to it: we're told that she has a whole palette of expensive classical artwork in her apartment, so maybe that's the motive. Or maybe she knows crucial things about her dad's business? Not that Private Dick thinks of that. He's obsessed with trying to track down all the people who were around her at the bar instead of focusing on what there might be to be gained from drugging her, and then apparently doing nothing with her.

But I was yawning too much over what I read in the first fifteen percent to want to fall asleep trying to read the last eighty-five percent. I just didn’t care about any of these characters, and especially not the Dick and Tiff.