Doomboy by Tony Sandoval

Title: Doomboy
Author: Tony Sandoval
Publisher: Magnetic press
Rating: WARTY!

Translated by Mike Kennedy

I could not get into this story at all, which is sad because I'm usually good at making choices with graphic novels, and I typically end-up liking them, but I seem to have picked several in a row here which failed to make a good impression on me! Maybe I'm losing my touch?! At any rate, this one didn't do a thing for me. I'm not sure what it was about this exactly, but I can suggest a few candidates.

The drawing was really scrappy and amateurish, and too simplistic, while at the same time being really busy and messy - scruffy-looking without even being a nerf-herder! It turned me off, so I know that was part of it, but the dialog wasn't very stimulating either. Indeed, some of the early dialog was simply squiggles in balloons, and completely unintelligible.

I know this was intended to convey random, unimportant conversation, but it was distracting and combined with the very many panels where there was no speech at all - or any kind of communication other than purely visual about what was happening, it made me wonder if the entire book was going to be as vague as this.

Frankly it made me feel like the writer didn’t really care what was going on, so then I'm asking myself "If that's the case, then why should I care?" and it was quickly downhill from there. I didn’t feel any interest or investment in any of the characters, or any growing desire to find out how this story went.

Bumbling Into Body Hair by Everett Maroon

Title: Bumbling Into Body Hair
Author: Everett Maroon (no dedicated website found)
Publisher: Libertary Co.
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new novel is reward aplenty!

This is a review that is, in some ways, tied in with another book I read during this time. The two are not related except in that they're about gender identification. I thought it would be fun to review them both together (but separately!), so while the reviews cross-reference a bit, they're different (although both books are worthy reads), and I invite you to read both. On my blog, the reviews were both posted next to each other on the same day, but if you're reading this at some other venue you may have to dig around to find the other review.

So this is a book which I decided would be fun to blog along with Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky. The two stories, one factual (this one) and one fictional, are like bookends to the entire spectrum of gender identity, which is a lot more complex than most people realize. Unlike the novel, which is middle-grade, this book deals with mature adults (or not so mature in some cases as the author testifies!), and additionally, carries the messy complexity of real life.

While Gracefully Grayson was fictional, it was the opposite of this story in many ways: it was about a young boy who identified more as a female than ever he did as a male whereas this one is of a very real journey from female to male. Indeed, this is almost a guidebook on what to do and not to do to make that journey successful and as painless as possible. For that alone, it's important and well worth the reading.

I have to say up front that I would have liked the author to have said a word or two (okay, Picky-Picky, some paragraphs!) about how this novel came to be - particularly about how it came to be so detailed. No one short of those with eidetic memories (and their attendant problems) can remember exact conversations and sequences of events, especially from several years ago, yet we read them detailed here, so clearly there is some sort of creative writing going on, even though the events and conversations depicted are, I have no doubt, real ones. I would have liked to have learned how this was done - how the author filled in the gaps (and the gaps in memory) since there's no mention of a detailed diary being kept.

Bumbling Into Body Hair is a true story about a man who was born in a woman's body and underwent a painful, amusing, rewarding, and educational transition to 'normalize' himself. The blurb for this book exaggerates the humor somewhat, and sadly underplays the trauma, but both are included in the story and are equally engaging. This story is very well written and very poignant. Sometimes it made me angry (ditch Pat already!), and sometimes it made me laugh, but mostly it made me feel for what Everett had to go through, and the fortitude and good humor with which he girded (yes, girded, I shall have it no other way) his, er loins!

Everett began life as Jenifer (one n), growing-up with a sister in a loving family home, and ending-up in a decent, although perhaps a somewhat monotonous job, but with great co-workers. Some might call it a comfortable rut. That's pretty much when the story begins for us, the readers, although of course it began long before this for Everett, trapped inside Jenifer and not even fully cognizant that there was indeed an escape route that didn't involve lying in a bath of warm water with a sharp knife.

Everett, as Jenifer, had long been identified as a lesbian, and I was intrigued that this author seemed to accept this label. I've read other accounts where a significant distinction is drawn between an XX person who identifies as a heterosexual male, and one who identifies as a gay female. I guess there's some dissent even among those who are more intimately familiar with all of this than am I!

The real hero of this story is the woman who plays a somewhat secondary role to us as readers, but who no doubt fulfilled a very primary role to the author: Susanne, who met Everett when he was very much an overt female, still struggling over what to do about his feelings, and who fell in love with him and stayed with him all the way through surgery and on into a marriage. That takes love, dedication, and courage, and I salute her.

It's actually because of Susanne that I had another - not so much 'issue', as 'bout of sheer curiosity' - over why so much painful detail was relayed about everything in Everett's life - which takes guts and a commendable commitment towards bravely informing others of what's truly involved in a literal life-changing pursuit such as this - and yet we're robbed of a lot of the intimacy of this remarkable relationship between his self and Susanne.

I don't know if this is because of personal privacy concerns, and I certainly wouldn't want an important story like this to spill over into pandering to salacious or prurient interests, but it struck me that a really critical part of this transition was the love and affection between these two, and yet we get not a hint of any joys or problems experienced as the two of them interacted physically, one very much a woman, the other transitioning from a woman to a man.

I would have liked to have read something about how they felt, how they perceived it, how their physical intimacy changed (or didn't) as this transition took place - or at least a word or two as to why Everett (and perhaps Susanne) chose not to share this! Yes, of course it's their life and they're entitled to share as little or as much as they wish, but given that he's already sharing such intimate details, a word or two about the nature of the relationship and how it grew and changed would not have been out of place, and would have been appreciated by me, at least.

In short, I recommend this story. I loved the detail, and the endless parade of things which cropped up - surprising things which might never occur to someone who had not undergone this change no matter how deeply they might have gone into it as a thought exercise. I loved the humor and the endless battle with bureaucracy as Everett gamely began to solidify these changes in terms of endless paperwork. It was all the more funny, I felt, because he worked in government, so in some ways he was getting a taste of his own medicine!

Most of all I loved this for the courage, honesty, and equanimity with which he pursued this dream, this need, and his sharing of this necessary course correction in his life. It's a warming message to us all, no matter what our own circumstances are - a heartening siren song telling us all that we can get there if we're willing to make the journey, no matter what our own personal journey is.

Note that Everett Maroon also has a novel out: The Unintentional Time Traveler. Note also that if you liked this story or Gracefully Grayson you might also like to read The Greatest Boy Ever Made a work of fiction which curiously has a lot in common with both of these books, and which I reviewed back in September.

Debbie Doesn't Do it Anymore by Walter Mosley

Title: Debbie Doesn't Do it Anymore
Author: Walter Mosley
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday
Rating: WORTHY!

For fifteen long, hard years, Sandra Peel Pinkney has hidden behind Debbie Dare, a white-haired, black porn legend with an eye-catching facial tattoo, who has had sex with literally hundreds of men and women, and she's still only in her early thirties. But that's the problem. The porn industry is even more brutal to mature women than is the hypocritical regular film industry and if you don't get out when it's dignified, you're inevitably going to be dumped unceremoniously.

Sandra has never articulated these thoughts before, although she's always been aware, but this one day, the day this story begins, she actually has an orgasm on set. At first she's not even sure what it is, this pleasure being so rare in her life, but then it takes over her whole body and is psychologically shattering. And that's not even the biggest upheaval she will face this day.

Sandra arrives at her elegantly-appointed home to find the police all over her house and yard. Her much older and not-so-retired porn flick husband is dead. He's lying in her bathtub with a sixteen-year-old girl on top of him. The two apparently died while making a porn movie, when the camera fell into the tub and electrocuted them.

This precipitates Sandra's desire to quit her life and start over - or simply to end it. But there are complications. Over the next few days, Sandra learns who her friends and enemies are. She's fired from her current in-progress movie by her producer, Linda Love(!), and bad guy Richard Ness starts cruelly leaning on her to pay off her husband's $79,000 debt, which she can't because her husband has them in hock to the balls, and when she blows "Dick" off (and not in a good way), he sells the debt to Coco Marinetti, who's unafraid to actually carry out the threats Dick only makes. And she has a son.

Sandra wanders blandly through her life trying to make sense, to figure out answers, and to determine direction. Often her actions don't seem to make sense, but as we learn, her actions are informed by her past experiences, and Sandra has two strikes against her: she's black, and she's a porn industry lackey.

We see examples of both of these powerful influences on her life experience as she is, in one case, summarily handcuffed by three white male cops for no crime other than leaving her mother-in-law's house early in the morning! Her mother-in-law is white and lives in an upscale neighborhood. Sandra was only there to patch up a rift between them now that Theon, her husband, is dead, and this is her reward for that generous act of kindness?

I'm still bemused by the review of this in the Chicago Tribune where Carol Memmott writes, "She's beat up by the gangsters to whom Theon owed $72,000." Why use the grammatically correct 'whom' alongside the grammatically incorrect 'beat up'? It should be 'beaten up'. The phrase 'beat up' implies something completely different, but the only thing looking beat up in this story is Sandra's porn life. Rest assured that Walter Mosley writes a lot better than does Memmott, and this is the trigger which finally made me pick-up this book from the shelf. I've never read him before but I did know who he was and I figured his hand on the keyboard might make a difference. It did. This is not a story of erotica or sleaze, but it is written for adults who can handle that world in their literature.

In some ways this book is reminiscent of Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny - a soul adrift, wandering untethered through life looking for something, but this book is leagues better than that crappy movie. Like I said, I'd never read Mosley before, and I passed this novel on the 'new' library shelves several times, looking at it and thinking it wasn't going to impress me, but finally I decided what-the-hell? and I didn't regret it. I owe Mosley for that. The writing is beautiful, well-paced, well-spoken, warm, engrossing, and revelatory.

Talking of crappy movies, this one has its title evidently influenced by Debbie Does Dallas a porn move which has a fame far greater than it deserves, but the title is as far as the similarity goes. The plot is twisted, in more than one way, and the events - and often Sandra's actions - are unexpected. If I had two problems with it, one would be that the racism is overdone. Yes, there is racism in society and it needs to be highlighted, but highlighting it with a strobe-light will only blind people to it, not keep them aware of it.

There's also a dual standard at work here, that only white people can be racist, which is glaringly untrue. You only have to compare the standard schtick of black stand-up comedians with white ones to see this. It's understandable, given what history has done to people, but the way to fix a problem with a pendulum having been stuck in one direction for far too long isn't to purposefully glue it in the opposite direction. It's to lock it dead in the middle and never let it move again.

The second problem was that the ending is abrupt, and seems out of character with the rest of the novel. I think perhaps that it's intended as a warning: even when things seem to have been amicably resolved, Sandra still has a long row to hoe, and it's that mis-applied 'ho' which has taunted and haunted her for fifteen painful years. It isn't going to set her free so easily. I recommend this novel.

Clown Girl by Monica Drake

Title: Clown Girl
Author: Monica Drake
Publisher: Hawthorne Books
Rating: WARTY!

After disliking two Chuck Palahniuk novels in a row, you might call me crazy for reading one which - though by a different author - carries an introduction by him. The overly enthusiastic sycophantic babbling of one author whom I do not know personally makes no impression on me when it comes to recommending another author with whom I'm even less familiar, no matter how gushing the first author is on the front cover! My second warning should have been that Hawthorne Books describes itself as an "independent literary press". You put the word 'literary' in there and you've already downgraded your material by several notches or even nachos.

So while I'm more than willing to admit that I'm definitely crazy, at least I'm not willing to dismiss an author just because another author I don't like says nice things about them! The down-side of this attitude is that I have on occasion lived to regret it, of course. My hope going in to this was that this one would be the exception which proves the rule (where 'proves' is used in the old fashioned sense). I have to advise you now that I was disappointed in my quest.

Not to be confused with Girl Clown by Mary Wise, this novel started out just fine, with clown girl Nita plying her trade making balloon animals at a street fair near her lousy one-room 'apartment' which is actually the 'mud room' of some low-life's house. I'm not sure how much clowning is honestly involved in sculpting balloons art, but Nita faints from the heat because she was too dumb to bring along a water bottle, and she's taken to the ER. There we learn that while Monica Drake may well have an MFA from the University of Arizona, she's yet another author who doesn't get that it's biceps, not bicep, under the bp cuff....

Despite my detestation of first person PoV novels, this one turned out to be not so bad. It was not obnoxious, and Drake has a nice sense of humor (yes, josh and Drake go together - and if you get that one you must be an ex-pat Brit like me...). My early assessment of this novel was that it was entertaining, despite a rocky patch here and there. I almost laughed out loud at the author's aside at one point: "...a hearse of a different color."

Nita is in a bad way, unfortunately. She's only two weeks past a miscarriage, the baby being that of the focus of her obsession: Rex Galore, a fellow clown, who is out of town at some clown college. He doesn't yet know that Nita has miscarried and probably doesn't care. Nita is underweight and not eating well at all, so she's more than likely anemic at the very least.

The hospital keeps her overnight and then sends her home with a urine collection kit which consists of a large jug and what's called in hospitals a 'hat' - which is a plastic catch bucket designed to fit on your toilet seat and catch your urine. Upside down it looks like a white hat. She's supposed to use this to collect urine for 24 hours, but she's not smart enough even to get that going.

Nita promptly loses her hat when running from a cop she thinks is going to accuse her of graffiti-ing a derelict building which she's passing through on her way home. Despite the fact that she recognizes the cop as the one who helped her the day before when she fainted, she flees from him with vigor that can only be ascribed to acute paranoia. Nita has issues. And some of her issues probably have issues of their own, too. Clearly this cop is going to be her love interest to replace the absentee Rex, even though he wants to run her downtown on mere suspicion of having stolen a lawnmower. What? This guy's a jerk. I had been mostly on-board with this novel until at that point.

The problem came when I put this one aside for another book where I had a deadline to read it. When I came back to this one, the first thing I asked myself was: "Why am I reading this?" I think once you start in on something you have an investment in it even if it's bad, and you feel like it might get better or overall you might like it, but this is simply a bad investment, and sometimes you have to get some distance from it to realize how badly you're squandering your time here, when there is other writing that begs to be read so it can reward you better. This is known as 'the sunk cost fallacy'. I see it often in reviews written by others, and that's when I ditched this novel. I had sunk too much into this to waste more time reading it. I can't recommend it.

Reamde by Neal Stephenson

Title: Reamde
Author: Neal Stephenson
Publisher: Harper Collins
Rating: WARTY!

The reader on this massive audio book version of this novel was rather annoying. He seemed obsessed with enunciating every single word with extreme precision, and it was really distracting. For example, instead of saying the indefinite article in its shortened form, as in 'hat', he insisted upon saying it as in 'hay' regardless of context. He also pronounced 'shone' as 'shown' instead of 'shonn' which just sounds weird to me.

The last thing I read of Stephenson's was his dreadful Baroque Cycle. I ought to have realized that anything which combines the words 'baroque' and 'cycle' had to be the most offensive collection of maximally tedious material ever put between six covers, but what can I say except that I was young and foolish? I pretty much swore off him after that, but Reamde struck me as something a bit different, something which harked back to his halcyon days of Snow Crash and Diamond Age, two of his which I did love.

Unfortunately, Reamde started out determined to prove that to was, very much, a Broke Cycle redux, if not in period then certainly in pedantry. There was a long and mind-numbingly tedious info-dump which seemed to be dumping as much flotsam as it was jetsam, and I found myself skipping track after track on the audio. Reamed is certainly how you'll feel if you read this drivel.

Florence of Arabia by Christopher Buckley

Title: Florence of Arabia
Author: Christopher Buckley
Publisher: Random House
Rating: WARTY!

Buckley wrote the novel which gave rise to the movie of the same name Thank You For Smoking which starred Aaron Eckhart and which I found amusing. It was one more reason to pick up this novel, the first being: how can you not like one with a title like this? Well it turns out that this novel failed to keep its promise which is no doubt why it's likely to be made into a movie.

Florence's real name is Firenze Farfaletti, an American of Italian descent who started using the Anglicized version of her name after too much teasing at school. In later years, she married a minor royal figure of the ruling family of Wasabia (yes, some of the names and other items are quite amusing). Florence discovered what a huge mistake that was, and she literally escaped his clutches to move back to the US, where she eventually wound-up working for the State Department.

After a traumatic encounter with an old friend, another bride of a prince, who she couldn't help and who was subsequently beheaded, Florence comes up with an outrageous scheme to liberate Islamic womanhood, and gets unexpected government backing in the form of a guy she thinks works for the CIA.

She refers to him as Uncle Sam, and he loads her up with massive volumes of cash. She uses this to fund her scheme, beginning with the recruitment of her team: a gay friend from the State Department, a James Bond style ex-marine, and a PR guy who has the morals of an alligator, and who took his tutelage from Nick Naylor, the morally-challenged protagonist of Thank You For Smoking.

Florence sweet-talks the Emir of Matar (which borders Wasabia) into allowing her to approach his wife on the topic of setting up a TV station, and she also then sweet-talks Laila, the wife of the Emir (and first lady), into running the TV station. They start transmitting rather slapstick and demeaning shows across the Middle East. In reality, no Arab nation would even allow this kind of condescending nonsense, yet here we're expected to accept that it causes a sensation and starts making money for the Emir from advertising. While i could see where Buckley was going here, I found this portion truly amateurish.

The Sheika is thrilled because it gives her a chance to get back at her husband who is constantly running off to his harem and he's thrilled because he's becoming ever more rich, yet things start going badly very quickly, and given the content it's hardly surprising. The neighboring nation denounces the TV transmissions. The news reader, a young woman, is stoned to death one day, and the Emir is killed in a coup.

This problem arises when the Emir's brother, who has been nothing but a playboy, is talked (by the French, who supply him with his Formula One race cars) into making a power-play for the throne. Civil disorder starts to brew, the marine ends up shooting someone in self-defense, a bomb explodes downtown, and the mullahs are stirred up by more French moolah into becoming vocal about the Emir's lifestyle. Oh and the ayatollah of the neighboring fundamentalist nation of Wasabia issues a fatwa on the westerners involved in producing the TV show.

The Emir's bother comes to power, yet despite all we've been told about his newly-found religious fanaticism, he fails to dispatch Florence despite having her in one of his jails for some time. Instead, she's inexplicably freed.

There were some real moments of laugh-out-loud humor in this novel, but for the most part it was plodding, juvenile, amateur, and worse: not very funny or very entertaining. I just kept reading wanting it to be over so I could go read something more interesting. When I put it down I didn't want to pick it up again and I found no reason for the story to drag on as long as it did.

Most of the humor simply wasn't that great, and this conceited fiction of having, once again, the white American come in and save the wee cute colored people (substitute which particular skin shade/ethnic region you wish here) from themselves simply wasn't funny at all. I can't recommend this one at all.

Praetorian by Jason M Burns

Title: Praetorian
Author: Jason M Burns
Publisher: Outlaw
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Ramon Espinoza

This was a comic I was handed at a comic con a couple of years ago which I read and put on a shelf and forgot about. I noticed it yesterday while cleaning off that same shelf. I read it again this morning and decided that, despite some minor issues, it was worth blogging positively.

Praetorian tells the story of four Roman guards who were present at the death of Jesus Christ, and who were granted immortality. Why? I have no idea! But you have to start a story somewhere and dumb is as good a place as any as long as you can carry a story with that dead-weight holding you back. Two thousand years later, one of these soldiers it seems, has become a serial killer, severing the head of apparently random victims and leaving the bodies to be found, while the heads disappear.

This is quite decently written except on a page towards the middle where a professor named Julian says, "...alive long enough to of broken bread with..." That's not how a professor would speak! Yes, real (and ignorant) people do substitute 'of' for 'have', but not a college professor. Bad writing!

I have to say I had some very mixed feelings about this comic. I really liked the main character, Rodriguez. She was strong, smart, and interesting. The other characters were just so-so. Rodriguez and her partner are tasked with tracking down this serial killer, but they're stymied by the apparent random choice of victim and the lack of any other evidence. The only thing they have to go on is the bizarre emblem carved on each victim's chest.

One problem I had was with the blind acceptance that there really was a son of a god crucified some 2,000 years ago. I don't buy that because none of it makes any sense, and because the only 'evidence' we have is a handful of 'accounts' all of which have a clear agenda and all of which were written by scientifically ignorant men. None of these accounts was written by a skeptic, none of them are logical or self-consistent, and none of them have any external supportive evidence. That said, I do enjoy a good religious fiction, because all religion is fiction to me.

Another issue I had was that these guards are described as Praetorian. It's become a trope in stories featuring the Romans or stories derivative of that (such as Richelle Mead's Gameboard of the Gods series, to have the Praetorians featured as some sort of antique 'special forces' unit, but they were not. They were just roman soldiers assigned to a cohort which was charged with protecting the emperor (and later to guarding Roman generals). They would never have been present at a minor crucifixion in Palestine, so this part of the story fails miserably.

There's also an unexplained anomaly during one of the assassinations - and here's a big spoiler - the serial killer is killing people of a certain bloodline, but while he kills a mom carrying her baby out to her car, he leaves the baby unharmed. Given his motivation here, it makes no sense that he would not have dispatched the baby, too.

In this case, and apart from those issues, I did enjoy this story, and the artwork was well done if a bit rudimentary. I really grew to like Rodriguez, not so much her partner, and I didn't get her attachment to him - it seemed unrealistic given what we were shown of their relationship. The story moved along at a good pace and was logical and intelligently written (except for one incident when the serial killer showed up in Rodriguez's hotel room intent upon killing her but does not. Given what we're told later, this made absolutely no sense at all).

However, like I said, the story left me with a good feeling, so I recommend it

I'll Give You Something to Cry About by Jennifer Finney Boylan

Title: I'll Give You Something to Cry About
Author: Jennifer Finney Boylan
Publisher: Shebooks
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

Here's another writer who thinks a book is entitled instead of just being titled. I'm in favor of entitlements, but not when it comes to books. I don't know of any entitled books, but I guess I'm fighting a losing battle on behalf of the English language and all who rail in her. Other than that (and the rather odd title itself), this novel started out intriguingly. I mean, what's not to engage the imagination in a Toyota Sienna minivan full of people of assorted ages, all of whom seem to be carrying a sorry-load of pills?

There's "Gammie" (shades of Dana Carvey) who comes armed with Lopressor (aka metoprolol, used for cardiovascular issues, particularly hypertension or high blood pressure). There's a young boy Otis, who carries Luvox (aka Fluvoxamine, used to treat OCD). There's the former son, now daughter Alex, who carries Spironolactone (an antiandrogen) and Premarin (a contraction of "pregnant mares' urine" - a type of HRT, or hormone replacement therapy) as well as stilettos and fishnet stockings(!). Riley, who's driving, has Celexa (aka Citalopram, an anti-depressant). Oh, and he has a prosthetic leg - a victim of cancer, for which he has an unfulfilled script. This is not a recipe written in Heaven, but it is a great recipe for a story!

The end point of that journey, but starting point of the story, is a ramshackle building in Manchester (New England, not Olde Englande) where Riley's estranged wife Junie decided to take a sabbatical to do something (writing) for herself.

Once she's on-board, the minivan heads towards Washington DC where Otis is supposed to play in a band for the vice-president. Road trip!

This novel bounces around between the characters. All is not well between Riley and Junie since they both have a different take on where their marriage is going (or not going). Otis is nervous about his performance. All is not well, either, between Riley and Alex, since he's not really on-board with her gender reassignment, which is why he's baulking at paying for her actual surgery. Right now she's what some people term a 'shemale': to all outward appearances female, including breasts, except for the fact that she still has male genitalia.

For me, Alex's story was the most engrossing and the best written. It really took an uptick, too, when she encountered a Geordie - amusingly while looking at the Liberty Bell! How portentous is that?! Lucas, in some regards, seemed to be a bit of a stalker, but in the end, his intentions were, whilst way too amorous, largely honorable. What really capped this for me was Alex's internal monologue. That, I thought, was brilliantly done.

I was less enamored of Riley and Junie, because their story was - intentionally, I should note - a complete mess, but even that had its moments, particularly when Riley had flashbacks to his younger self, right at the point where he first started becoming involved with Junie. The ending for me was a bit odd, and I enjoyed the part with Alex much more than the part with Junie and Riley.

Having said that, I recommend this novel for its originality and inventiveness, and for the really great character portrayals.

Ricochet by Mary Jo McConahay

Title: Ricochet
Author: Mary Jo McConahay
Publisher: Shebooks
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

This is a very short memoir (only 46 pages) but is packed with feeling and intensity. It's related by a print journalist who is resident in Guatemala. She covers wars and insurgencies throughout the area, but this story focuses on the El Salvador civil war, and the fighting going on during an election which the right-wing won and which then went on to rule the nation despite its association with callous death squads.

The narrator is friends with another journalist by the name of Nancy, whom she's known for years and with whom she's very close. The two take up residence in a nice, comfortable hotel along with a gaggle of other journalists from all over the world. In the past this pair has covered stories together, but here, though they share a room, they venture out individually and at risk of their life to cover potential stories for their US newspapers.

There is a stark contrast between their air-conditioned hotel life and real life (and death) out on the dusty, blood-stained streets. They're surrounded by shooting, bombs, and suffering, which hits hardest at the non-combatants - the families, the young children, the moms and dads, the siblings. The narrator seems able to compartmentalize this horror to an extent, but Nancy reaches a point, after a journalist friend is killed in a border crossing misunderstanding, where she cannot stand the idea of seeing another dead body, yet she remains in El Salvador to teach children how to be photographers (in between the times they must spend scavenging at the city dump).

The narrator doesn't believe Nancy will give up her reporting life, but she's wrong, and despite set-backs and a horror story, her friend makes a success of her newly-chosen avocation.

This kind of story is not normally my cup of tea (tequila?) but in this case, I have to say that I am so glad I read it. It's gritty and immediate, and regardless of the details: of how much is related exactly as it happened and how much is a filtered recollection, it's nonetheless as real as it's disturbing, and as depressing as it is heartening. I recommend this memoir.

Remnants of Passion by Sarah Einstein

Title: Remnants of Passion
Author: Sarah Einstein
Publisher: Shebooks
Rating: WORTHY!
pub. Shebooks

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

Go Shebooks! It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that this is a good idea, but it helps to have one on board, especially if it's Sarah Einstein. The only thing which might have tripped-up this publishing plan was poor reading material, but that's quite evidently not a problem from the sampling I've done, and which I'll review over the next couple of days.

This particular volume is a collection of shorts (no, not those kind of shorts!) with general observations on life - or at least something which resembles it - and it's hard to tell if they're memories or fiction. I hope not all of them are memories! When I say shorts, I really mean it, since this is only 37 pages long, so it's a good, solid read, and in nice bite-sized pieces.

A Meditation on Love is a memory of a trip to a summer-of-love style event where young people (and some not-so-young) free themselves from societal restraints and constraints and enjoy each other, and music and food, and comfortable, unpretentious clothes. This story amused the heck out of me because it seemed so realistic.

The Origins of My Problems With Fidelity tells a story of a sexually-confused high-school girl and her brief (no, not those kind of briefs) encounter with a fellow teen who may or may not have been a lesbian.

Self-Portrait in Apologies is exactly that; a series of apologies to people from the writer's past (real or fictional I know not), and it's both hilarious and sad, comfortable and discomfiting.

Fat is so mixed-up (to put it politely) that I can barely describe it, but it revolves artfully around the fact that there are two kinds of 'fat' when you're a woman: overweight, and pregnant. It's a sad story that really makes you want to go hug this girl and take care of her properly, even as you know you'll most likely be rejected by her if you make any such effort. I was in adoration of the segment relating the narrator's trip to the lesbian conference and the bizarre antics experienced there. This seemed so real to me that it tapped into my own recollections of various encounters I've had, and observations I've made. It's nice to feel that at least sometimes, I wasn't completely off-base with my views even if I was off the reservation!

I loved the honesty and the free-wheeling nature of this collection. It's warm and thoughtful, interesting and moving, and it decidedly has something to say. and I recommend it to both male and female readers who are looking for some honest and thoughtful entertainment.

Close Call by Stella Rimington

Title: Close Call
Author: Stella Rimington
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

This is a sad DNF for me - and another example of a novel where the author (or the publisher, which ever was responsible!) needed to survey the gazillion other novels with this same title before wisely deciding to choose a different one.

I could not get interested in this at all, and the poor writing only served to make it worse. it read like fanfic, not like a new novel from a professional, published writer. This is supposed to be another novel in the Liz Carlyle series, but in the first 21 chapters (out of ~60), she appeared in only 8, so how it's really supposed to be about her is a bit of a mystery! That's not the biggest problem, however.

You know this is no longer an era where the author hand-writes or typewrites their 'manu'-script and it has to be laboriously set in metal trays and printed by hand to provide review "galleys". This is an era of word processing, and spell-checkers and even grammar checkers (although Microsoft's grammar checker isn't worth spit). But there is no absolutely excuse for putting out a novel of the atrocious quality I found in the Kindle version, not even as an advance review copy, and trying to pretend that it's ready for review. It wasn't. I had more success in the Adobe reader version, but not everyone has that available to them.

I've reviewed well over a hundred 'galley' copies, and this novel was without question the worst I've ever seen in the Kindle format. There were multiple problems in the first few screens, and these were not oddball problems which are difficult to find, but gross spelling errors which any spell-checker would have caught, and sloppy errors which all but the most incompetent of beta readers or book editors would have caught, and yet here we are, expected to try and read this novel and review it?!

In the Adobe version, the first letter of each chapter was set as a drop-cap, an antiquated and nonsensical affectation which needs to be banned. That's the only reason I can think of as to why, in the Kindle, chapter one begins with the capital letter 'T' on line one, and then the rest of the word on line 2: 'he' when all of it should read: 'The' on the first line.

Beginning in paragraph two we had pairs of words running together ("shawarmaof" in place of 'shawarma of' for example, and this was obviously the start of a trend, because it continued to happen from then onwards The fifth sentence in that paragraph began with 'ere' in place of, presumably, 'There' or 'Here'. The last sentence of that paragraph has this phrase: "...of meat o the shawarmalike..." when it clearly should have been 'of meat of the shawarma like'.

There is a character named 'Az' introduced here, but apart from that first time, his name is rendered with a space between the two letters. I learned from the Adobe version that it's supposed to be Afiz. The next paragraph has "indierent" in place of 'indifferent', and on and on it goes. This is nothing but gross incompetence and is insulting to readers, whether they be beta or review. I quit reading this at that point and resolved to try and get through it in the Adobe Reader version, determining that if that didn't look a lot better, this was going to be one-starred after three paragraphs and done with!

So I switched to Adobe Reader and it looked technically much better. I saw none of the problems with it that I had seen in the Kindle version, so I can only assume that some automated conversion process was responsible for the problems. This means of course, that the real problem was that no one checked to make sure the conversion worked for the Kindle! But the reprieve was short-lived because switching to a readable version served only to highlight a whole new set of problems! Once I could focus on reading the novel without becoming annoyed, I could focus on the quality of the story, and it didn't start out at all well!

The first few pages are an account of this character in a souk in Syria (this novel is very tardily rooted in the so-called 'Arab Spring' which was actually over long ago), and he's attacked by a knife-wielding assailant. Why this assailant would carry out this attack in public in broad daylight is unexplained, but that's not the worst part. The worst part is that the subject disarms the assailant and hurries away, finally finding himself in a different part of the souk where, we're told, no one is paying any attention to him, but immediately after that, we're told that his hand is covered in blood, and it's dripping! In fact, he's lost so much blood that he starts feeling faint and has to be bundled into a taxi to go to the hospital. So I'm thinking: no one is paying any attention to a guy who is copiously dripping blood everywhere he goes? How likely is that? It just didn't work.

There were many grammatical errors. Some of these you can accuse me of being picky about, but they're there nonetheless. On page six, I read, "...the countries who support them." when it should really read, "...the countries which support them." or "...those people who support them." Countries are not people! On page sixteen I read, "...what is the sources of those weapons..." when it really should be "...what are the sources..." or "what is the source...". So again, it's still not ready for prime time, even in the Adobe version.

We meet the main character, Liz Carlyle in chapter 2. She's just returned from vacation, but instead of catching-up with her deputy (or whatever he/she is called), who was presumably in charge of her section in her absence, she gossips instead with her "research assistant" to get up to speed! I found that to be completely absurd.

I hit a problem two chapters later, because it seems like there is a two-chapter flashback in chapters 4 & 5 or 5 & 6, but there's no indication whatsoever in the test that we're in a flashback! I found myself wondering what the heck had gone wrong with the timeline!

The fact that Liz had apparently only been working at MI5 for eighteen months and was still on probation, yet was leading a counter-terrorism section and taking three-week long vacations made zero sense! As a flashback it did make a kind of sense, but I was unaware of this while reading it! I have no idea why the flashback was even there, because it contributed nothing whatsoever to the story.

So my problem at that point was that, if she'd been working at MI5 since she graduated from university, and it's been only 18 months, then how was she ever involved in the Northern Ireland peace process which was resolved years before? If she's running a counter-terrorism section, then how is she going to find the time to go on secondment to the Merseyside (Liverpool) police for training? Worse than this, we're told she had her vacation with a French security agent and then a few pages later we're told that the last boyfriend she had was a guitar player from Bristol! So is this a flashback or not? I was forced to assume it was.

I have to add that I found the depiction of the "sexual harassment" she supposedly received at the Merseyside police department to be amateurish at best and childish at worst. I frankly cannot believe that it went immediately to the level the author portrays it any more than I could believe there was none at all. To portray it so baldly and so obviously serves no purpose other than to negate the effect the author is trying so ham-fistedly to achieve. Frankly, it read like a poor rip-off of the TV show Prime Suspect featuring Helen Mirren.

At this point I decided this novel was not worth my time. I have no idea what happened to the book editor or beta readers on this novel, so I can only assume there were none. I know this is an advance review copy, but to put one out which is so appalling is just asking for trouble, and in this electronic age there is no excuse for putting out an ARC that's as shabby as this one is.

Even had it been in pristine condition, that would not have improved the disturbingly amateur quality of the story - a story which was all over the place, had no coherence, and read like poorly-written fan-fiction. This novel was lousy and I cannot recommend it.

Jane's Melody by Ryan Winfield

Title: Jane's Melody
Author: Ryan Winfield
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

I was attracted to this one because the blurb made it sound like an off-the-beaten-track kind of a story, which I'm always up for after so many cookie-cutter YA novels, and the other advantage this one had was that it wasn't YA (per se - in practice it was no better). Yeah, I know that blurbs nearly always lie (except mine, of course!), but the only way to find out how good the blurb is, is to actually read the novel, so I bought into this one. It appeared to be a romance, but it's written by a guy, which further intrigued me. It’s not that guys can’t write romances, but they tend not to (at least not under their real name!). I'm always fond of going against type, but not being rubbed the wrong way as this novel was determined to do.

When I finally got into it, I found myself significantly less thrilled. I hadn't expected a modern remake of Lady Chatterley's Lover! The writing is technically good, and the novel started out well enough: it’s descriptive and easy to read, and the characters are well-drawn to begin with. So what was my problem? It was far too trope-ish for my taste, and rather quickly, the characters began breaking the rules we’d been given earlier in the novel. I guess if the writer is going for an all-out romance, then it’s fine, but I’d expected (or at least hoped for) more than that with this novel, and it wasn't delivered. Fortunately, it wasn't so bad that I felt like tossing the book after two chapters, so I stayed on-board for a while, which proved to be not worth the time.

So specifically what was my problem? Well, there were several. The first of these was that the main character (Jane) is a recovering addict who has just gone through her daughter (who happens to be named Melody) dying of an addiction not that dissimilar to the one Jane herself has fought. We're expected to believe that Jane is racked with grief over this (we're frequently reminded of it), but disturbingly quickly, she magically forgets all of this debilitating grief and instead, begins lusting after Caleb (a suitably earthy name) - a guy she almost quite literally picked up off the street.

She met him accidentally and he was not very nice to her so, of course, she sought him out! She thought he knew something about her daughter. When she finds him that second time, he's been mugged (he lives on the street) and his guitar is gone - the one on which he played a song that caught Jane's attention. She takes him home (cue tired trope of the woman ministering to her man) and employs him to tidy up her yard, then she buys a brand new guitar for him. Apparently pulling $6,600 out of savings to pay him and provide him with a gift isn’t a problem for Jane. No word on how she came by such copious, free, and easy cash.

This whole relationship completely trivialized Jane's grief over her daughter's death and rendered it into a mere annoyance, quickly dispensed with. It was entirely unrealistic to me. Caleb went out of type, too, at this point. Instead of being the very reserved, laconic drifter we initially met, he transmogrifies into a perky, playful, flirtatious toy-boy and this turned me right off of his character. I just could not see such a dramatic about-turn occurring for either of these characters without some lead-in and some strong motivation and we’ve been offered neither before this occurs. So what's left when the novel's two main adult characters turn out to juvenile propinquents? Ditch it.

Caleb is also far too much of a trope hot guy. I'm tired of authors trotting out these shirtless guys with chiseled abs and tight glutes. Is this the best their imagination can do? It's pathetic. The other side of this coin isn’t any better: she stares at his sweat-soaked T-shirt covering his 'broad shoulders' and 'narrow waist'. She wears his newly washed T-shirt to bed the night they argue. Seriously? This is nauseating. Can we not find something a bit more realistic and less cartoonish? Why invent characters which you're simply going to caricature and turn into unfunny jokes? I was led into this novel thinking that it was about damaged people feeling their way back towards a life, and perhaps even helping each other get there. Instead, we’re presented with people who are 'damaged' one minute and perfectly fine the next, with zero transition time!

Caleb's gardening job achieves two things: one is to keep the two of them in close proximity, and the other is to get his shirt off routinely or to get him soaking wet so he has to strip down to his shorts when he's been resident in the house for only a couple of days. Jane isn’t even phased by his shameless disrobing! Neither of these ruses is very inventive, and they deviate not at all from the trope norm. I wanted more story and less yawning - or more accurately, I wanted something different. If we’re going off the beaten path, can we not go a bit further off than a chiseled body, wet clothes and girls dressing in men's shirts?

Caleb is portrayed as an idiot and a jerk, too, unfortunately. Jane supplies him with gardening gloves, yet he fails to wear them while he's pulling out thorny shrubs. This doesn’t convey to me that he's manly or tough; on the contrary, it conveys that he's a moron - someone who needs his hands for his avocation towards playing guitar, yet too dumb to grasp that he needs to take care of them.

So how is he a jerk? Well when he pats the couch for Jane to sit next to him, she meekly complies, and this leads to hugging after she starts crying over her life, but when she asks him to tell her about Melody, he argues with her that it’s off limits. This doesn’t tell me that he's damaged; it tells me that he's selfish and probably hiding something (he was). His behavior isn't acceptable given what Jane has done for him. This behavior is rendered even more out of left field by a later revelation.

As if that isn't bad enough he's knocking on her bedroom door in the middle of the night and opening it without even being bid to enter. This was the place where I decided I could read no more of this crap. Belief, no longer comfortably suspended, was laying with torn skin on the unforgiving asphalt, and driving right over it was reality, heading out of town on the last bus.

If you want to write stuff like this and get away with it, you have to set it up in a way that works - that makes it appropriate for characters to behave in these ways. You can't just have a character act in a certain way because your plot suddenly demands it right there and then. You have to make it credible by putting a few things in place, first; then when it happens, it doesn't seem like something out of day-time TV, and your reader can accept it all like it's normal and fine - even hoped for and expected.

The blurb for this novel asks: "What boundaries would you cross for true love?", but there are no boundaries crossed here. It tells us: "Jane’s Melody follows a forty-year-old woman on a romantic journey of rediscovery after years of struggling alone." In what way his she struggling? She overcame her addiction with abundant help. She evidently made a wad of money selling insurance. She lives in her own house in complete comfort. She can take time off work and not miss the paychecks. Her grief over her daughter is actually self-pity because she chose not to do for her daughter what others had done for her. She gets over this self-pity in record time once Hot Hunk™ shows up. I ask again: in what way is she struggling? The blurb says, "Jane must decide if it’s too late for her to start over, or if true love really knows no limits." Seriously? There is no "True Love™ here. There's an older woman's lust for a younger guy. Love never enters into it.

This author just doesn't get it. I don't know what kind of readership (or reader's hip!) he was aiming for, but it sure as hell ain't me, and it's sure as hell not anyone I can respect! This novel is warty and certifiably so.

Far Gone by Laura Griffin

Title: Far Gone
Author: Laura Griffin
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

Andrea Finch is a cop who, while in the middle of being dumped by boyfriend named Nick, shoots a guy in a restaurant. The guy had come into the kitchen to threaten his girlfriend with an automatic and Andrea, good cop that she is, got suspicious of his demeanor, and followed him in there. Now she's on leave pending an inquiry into the shooting, but a Senator's daughter, Julia Kirby, has been killed in a university bombing, and it looks like Andrea's going to be pulled back in, one way or another. I started liking this novel almost right away, but it slowly became bogged down by a really bad romance and by too much rambling in the text, unrelated to moving the story along. It went DNR at 63%. Yeah, I know most people call that DNF, but trust me, this wasn't going to be resuscitated.

I ran into two problems in the first twelve pages. They were relatively minor problems, but nonetheless important. The first is that the author, in her evident need to get her weapons chops down on paper asap, has the bomber check his gun right before he gets out of the van and triggers the bomb via his cell phone. I'm not sure why he even needed a gun, but the fact is that the weapon never leaves his pocket, so I'm lost as to how it was that he 'checked his weapon' in any meaningful way. He didn’t take it out to verify that it was loaded and that a round was chambered, so this struck me as the writer merely saying, "Hey, I know lots about this weapon, check out my research" without contributing anything towards moving the story along. It took me out of suspension of disbelief for a minute there.

The other problem, and this is worse in my opinion, was another instance of a female writer reducing a female character to nothing more than youth and beauty, as though nothing else matters. Julia Kirby is described as "beautiful" and "just eighteen years old". I'm sorry but who cares? What difference do her looks and age make? Would her death have been just fine if she'd been forty-five, and plain looking? What if she had been sixty, and gray haired? Would it have been okay then? I simply don't get why the writer chose to put in that particular description. It's demeaning for anyone to write it when it has nothing to do with the story at hand, and it's particularly obnoxious coming from a female author.

I can see the value of specifying that she was a Senator's daughter - not because such a child is more important than, say, the corner mechanic's daughter, but because the Senator might have a role to play in the novel by coming down on the police department to solve this crime. Her age and looks, however, contribute nothing save to tell all women that unless you're young and beautiful, you ain't nuthin'. What’s that song from the 1933 movie Roman Scandals: keep young and beautiful if you want to be loved? To see this coming from a female author's keyboard saddens me greatly.

That aside, I initially warmed to this novel quickly, and I liked the way Finch was depicted until I found out on page 233 that she's actually a complete moron. Until then, the trope romance aside, she was definitely someone I could have warmed to, and about whom I did want to read more to begin with. The problem was that I've traveled this route before only to discover that the woman morphs into a complete wuss of male appendage down the road, and you discover you're not on the highway, but in a cul-de-sac.

I got strong feelings of déjà vu when the unfortunately de rigeur male interest surfaced in the form of Jon North. He's a man whom Finch admits she would "have a hard time refusing", and who inappropriately cups her face and runs his thumb over her cut lip feigning concern before roughly kissing her as though he honestly doesn't give a damn about her lip. Barf.

I'm sorry but this is sickening, and it started going precisely the way I feared: the tough female main character turning to Jell-O® under the dominating gaze of the alpha male. It’s pathetic, and it’s what turned this novel sour when I was sincerely hoping it would grow into something sweet up until that point. It’s not like there was anything on the other side of this equation, either: North thinks of Finch in purely carnal terms, lusting after her hot bod, without giving a damn about what kind of an actual person she might or might not be. Frankly, it’s juvenile.

Whenever North thinks of Finch, it’s about her "lithe body" and "her sensual mouth", and "the way she'd tasted" like she's some kind of a burger, and he's sixteen years old. His reaction to her at one point when she visits him, is "either get her out or get her in bed". These are the only two options he can envisage. What a charmer he is. His behavior is precisely what's missing from Jeffery Deaver's James Bond reboot that I negatively reviewed. It would have been at home there (assuming Deaver was really doing what was claimed: emulating Fleming); it’s definitely not appropriate here because it renders the whole novel into a cheap and nasty florid romance.

On the positive side, there's no ridiculous pseudo-macho main male character name in evidence here. Sadly, that's all North has going for him, but even that's trampled under the repeated trope of sidelong glances and thudding hearts, with North being very quickly depicted as "impressively ripped". Finch was shown as dating a guy (for a month) who had a slight stomach paunch (this is the guy who breaks up with her at the start), yet now she's prematurely hot for a buff bod?

If the author had written this the opposite way around - being dumped by, or better yet, dumping the chiseled guy; then finding a slightly out-of-shape FBI agent appealing for reasons other than his body, it would have been new and fresh, and it would have made for a far better story, but we have to travel trope trail instead. This really disappointed me, because it took me out of the story with the distraction of wondering if there wasn't some wish-fulfillment going on here in the stead of serious story-telling. Quite clearly the non-ripped dude from the opening chapters was nothing more than a cheap throw-away to try and give Finch some undeserved cred., as though we're too dumb to see through a cheap ploy like that. Way to insult your readers!

I mentioned earlier that Finch proves herself to be a moron, so how's that, exactly? Well at the start of this one chapter she effectively breaks into North's home. Yeah, the door is unlatched, so technically it’s not breaking and entering, but she does enter when she's not expected by the host, and she enters without permission. It's in the early morning in the dark, and she blithely walks in without calling out to let North know she's there. Meanwhile, he's fast asleep with a gun by his bed. Seriously? How stupid, exactly, are these people? They don't lock and bolt their doors (the author keeps referring to doors as 'latched' or 'unlatched', like they don’t even have locks or bolts on them anyway!). These people are investigating a terrorist who has murdered people and threatened Finch's life, yet she cluelessly wanders unannounced into North's home where he could have shot her dead.

It was at this point that I decided that Le Stupide was too strong with this one, and I called, "Check please; I'm outta here!" It’s a real shame, too, because this novel had much potential to be really good. It had me hooked for a good fifty percent of the way through despite some issues (notably with the romance), but at this point it became too stupid to live. It had been on the skids since about the half-way point, forcing me to skim a page or two here and there, particularly the rambling chats between the two main protagonists where they had nothing whatsoever to do with the plot and were no more than juvenile flirting and pointless conversation unrelated to moving anything along. So at 63% in, I’d had enough of the stop-start action, and I no longer had any faith at all that the remaining third of this novel would be capable of digging itself out of the hole within which it had become so firmly entrenched.

The Burning by Jane Casey

Title: The Burning
Author: Jane Casey
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

This is yet another novel where the author (or the publisher - you can never tell who titles these things when Big Publishing™ effectively owns your work) should have taken a look at what's already out there before they buried this title with thirty more of the same by various authors! Ther was another more importnat issue which is that once agian we ahve a novel which is not even remotely well formatted for the Kindle. In the Kindle, when you click 'Beginning" as a location, it takes you right to the front cover or to the front endpaper, but in this novel, you get to 2% in. Yep. Not 1%. Not 3%, but precisely 2% in. I have no idea why, but it was really annoying.

This novel is about Maeve Kerrigan, a detective constable employed in London, UK. Her partner is Rob Langton and they're both assigned to the thoroughly uninventive serial killer named The Burning Man - that is a man who burns his victims, not someone like Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four. The novel isn't that interesting nor is it that engrossing. I felt no connection with any of the characters, and I had no real interest in reading about them. This made me rather sad because I really wanted to read a good novel about these London detectives. I was looking forward to it, but this police story left me feeling robbed. It's being plugged as "Mystery, Thrillers, Romance" but it's really none of the above.

The police investigation wasn't interesting or exciting. It was p-l-o-d-d-i-n-g, and that was the problem: this novel was a slog for me. I kept returning to it with little enthusiasm. When I was away from it I felt no great desire to get back into it. Kerrigan had nothing to offer me. She wasn't interesting. She wasn't kick-ass in any way. She had little self-respect. She was cluttered with cliché (lack of sleep, bad relationship, etc.). I felt tired from reading about her, and I felt like I was in a bad relationship with her as a character! She generated neither empathy nor sympathy in me.

Plus there was genderism in this novel - yet another case of it coming from a female writer, which I'm finding increasingly less palatable the more I'm forced to read it in novels like this. Check this line out: "It was a pretty nurse who showed us to Kelly Staples' room…" - because most nurses are ugly, so let’s be sure to point out the pretty ones? Seriously? Why is her prettiness (or otherwise) relevant here? Why draw attention to it when i has no bearing whatsoever on the action or events?

I'd reached less than one third the way through this - page 101 - when I decided I could not face reading it any more. That was the part where Kerrigan, having literally just showered, wrapped a towel around herself to go answer the door, when she has no idea who was there. Yes, she is expecting Langton to stop by "later", but she does not know it’s him right then. This seemed like such a pathetic cliché: the girl wrapped in a towel like some sort of present or offering for the guy's pleasure. I couldn't stand it.

What was actually worse, though, was how her partner 'managed' her. Prior to this towel encounter, he had forced her away from her desk at work and manipulated her into having him go round to her flat later, with the pizza and beer. I did not appreciate seeing yet another novel in which a woman is pushed around and manipulated by a guy who arrogantly assumes he knows what’s best for her. I did not appreciate seeing yet another novel in which a guy thinks its OK to do this. I did not appreciate seeing yet another novel in which a guy does this, and the woman sees nothing wrong with it. Is it really that hard to break the mould, and dump the trope, and come up with something original? Seriously?

I can see how there can be realistic places in a novel where your characters do things like this, but to have men and women depicted this way as though it should be the expected norm, and especially when there's no reason for it at all, is just shameful. It wasn't this one incident, either. There was a pattern of Langton treating her this way - though not always so overtly. If the novel had been really engrossing, and I'd been given some expectation of Kerrigan turning things around positively, I might have been willing to put up with this kind of writing temporarily, but I got no such expectation from this author. I know this is part of a series and I could see this author trotting out this same scenario in every volume.

You know, if you trot it out routinely enough, no matter how innocent you pretend it is in any one case, it becomes an established pattern - the behaviors become an expectation. I have no intention of subjecting myself to that when there are better novels awaiting me: novels with independent and strong women; novels with female characters I can respect and enjoy. Forget Burning! Go read Ash!

Hacked by Geri Hosier

Title: Hacked
Author: Geri Hosier
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

Please note that there are some serious formatting problems in the Kindle version of this novel. The formatting was better when the text was shrunk very small, but it was still a problem. For example, chapter 8 begins with the title, (which is simply 'Chapter 8') running on the same line as the last line of chapter 7, no page break, no paragraph break, not even a line break. The isn't the only example of a "run-on" chapter! And at 20% in I discovered a new make of helicopter: a Sirkovsky! Not to be confused with the much better-known Sikorsky...!

You know you don't actually have to give a brand name or a make (not for me anyway - I can do without them) - especially if you're not sure of it. You can just say 'helicopter'. I don't even care if you turn it into a verb and say that people were 'helicoptered' in. It's really not important to me as a reader what type of helicopter it was. There is no excuse in this electronic age, however, for formatting or spelling issues in a novel, not even in a so-called galley proof.

The inappropriate words I can understand to some extent in a first draft, but first drafts are certainly not ready for submission as advance reading copies! Given the general sloppiness of the writing overall, I have to take all this into account in this review. If an author cannot be bothered to make the effort - even to run a spell-checker once through their novel before submitting it for review - then why should I read it through once? I sound like an agent, don't I?! I'm not! I just care about writing.

Onto the story. Liv Paxton is the head of a London homicide team which is investigating a celebrity cell phone hacking scandal and some associated deaths. I guess someone dialed M for murder! The very first problem I ran into with this novel was the info dump problem. There was too much in the first few screens, with zero action. Take this sentence as an example: "She pushed her chin-length dark brown, red-hennaed hair behind her left ear and pushed her designer off-the-right-shoulder black lace dress, which was making her feel a little over-exposed, discreetly back up onto her shoulder." And this was at one percent in!

A sentence like this is way too packed. There may be readers who care about her hair being "hennaed" or her dress being designer. I don't. On the contrary, I find that kind of writing to be pretentious. As long as sentences like that are rare, I can read the novel containing them without them becoming an issue for me, but if I'm going to be encountering that kind of sentence frequently, it does not bode well for my rating of the novel! Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to play on, Macduff, and damned be him who first cries ‘Hold! enough!’.

I know how easy it is to miss something, or to let a grammar error or a misspelling go by. I'm trans-Atlantic myself, so I'm often finding myself in the position of wondering upon which side of "the pond" a given spelling belongs. Plus I tend to have 'dyslexic fingers' so while I know perfectly well how to spell the word, sometimes when I type fast, the letters don't always end up in the right order, which necessitates excessive editing and re-reading. I should just learn to type properly!

What all this means for those of us who have such problems, or aren't good at spelling, or grammar, or who might actually be dyslexic or something along those lines, is that we have to work that much harder! And whilst we do have spell-checkers, they can only tell us if the spelling is correct, not if it's the correct spelling for the way the word is used, and certainly not if it's the correct use of that word! Microsoft's grammar checker in Word is useless. I detest and loathe Microsoft, so I don't use their products at home. I run Ubuntu Linux on my computer, and use Soft Office, which is perfectly fine, but which offers no advantage in the areas I've mentioned. It does have a good spell-checker, however, for which I am really grateful (and definitely not 'greatful'!).

The only way to get a leg-up here is to read lots of well-written material, and as much as I disdain the so-called classics, they are well-written. That doesn't mean we should write all our novels like Jane Austen, for example, wrote hers, but we can learn some style from those people. We can learn how to tell a story, and from the really good ones, we can learn how not to jam up the first few pages with excessive description.

But back to the novel. The more I read of this, the less I felt I wanted to read of it. The story isn't outright bad, but it's not that great either, and the technical problems with the text became worse. There was an increasing number of spelling errors and typos, for example where the 's' from the start of word two is accidentally tagged onto the tail of word one instead. At one point there was the non-word Causcasians. There were variations on the word 'lairy' - which is a word, but which appears to be used in the wrong context here - and this was confusing. I'm wondering if 'hairy' was what was intended, but given the other issues with formatting and spelling, I have no idea whether it's right or wrong, whether it was intended or not, or whether it was supposed to be 'hairy' and not 'lairy'. In short, I could not trust the author here because of too many issues elsewhere! These are just a few examples.

The old excuse that this is a "galley proof" doesn't cut it today. Not for me it doesn't. There's no excuse at all for bad formatting or for spelling errors in an era where novels are written on computers and all word processors have a spell checker. Had the novel been more engrossing, I might have been distracted enough that I wouldn't get the fingernails-on-a-chalkboard feeling whenever I encountered one of these, but when the story drags, that's when you really notice the potholes in the road. I didn't like the main character Liv, or her best friend, newspaper tycoon Louise. Neither of them seemed to act their age and they were both snobs.

They also had some weird ideas about gender roles, too: for example, they're all for equality - head cop, head of newspaper, which is perfectly fine, but then Liv insists upon a guy who is 'masculine', and she defines that by a guy who opens doors for her and pulls out a chair for her when they go to dinner! Seriously? You can't have it both ways. Either the genders are equal (at least in intent) or they're not. If you're not equal, you can be treated "like a woman" (whatever antique notion that satisfies) and have your coat draped over your shoulders for you as you leave, and the door opened for you as you arrive, and your seat pulled out for you as you go to dinner. If you're equal, then you can pull out your own chair! Unless we're going to take turns pulling out chairs and opening doors. That's equality! What's Liv going to ask for next - to have her stool pulled out by a strong, masculine man?!

The biggest problem from a reading enjoyment perspective was that all this 'James Bond' style futzing around with expensive clothes, flash cars, dallying with a romance, and dog's dinners, was that it all-too-frequently put the actual story on a back burner. The reason I selected this novel was that I wanted to read the detective story. If I'd wanted a romance to dominate the story I'd have picked up a romance (which is unlikely, but it has happened!). Instead of getting on with the story here, I found it often tossed into the back seat in favor of pursuing the budding relationship between Liv and Mr Perfect, who was a decorated soldier and very much a Mary Sue. I had no interest in him or in their romance. Yes, I was interested in the potential link between him serving in Helmand Province in Afghanistan, and there being two hundred million pounds' (sterling) worth of heroin going missing there, and it would have been great had it turned out that he was behind it all, but having had the thankless task of wading through the swampy waters of the first 25% of this, I really had no energy and no interest in wading any more even to get to the bottom of that mystery. I can't honestly and in good conscience rate this novel a worthy read.