Twillyweed: A Claire Breslinsky Mystery by Mary Anne Kelly

Rating: WARTY!

This novel highlights the serious problem of choosing to write in first person PoV. The author is confined to reporting only what their primary character sees and hears. They cannot move from that perspective, which severely restricts and limits the story. It's also an appallingly arrogant PoV: everything is "I" - what I did, what I saw, what I felt - who cares about anyone else?! It's the most obnoxious form of writing and few writers can carry it without inflicting pain upon their readers. This novel makes it worse by bouncing back and forth between PoVs so much that the reader risks whiplash.

The author of Twillyweed acknowledges that this is a real problem by beginning this novel in third person before making an uncomfortably clunky shift to first person: primary antagonist Claire Breslinksy's PoV. It did not make for good reading. The novel also has a prologue which turned me off. Prologues are antique and I always skip them. I have never read a novel yet where skipping the prologue put me at a disadvantage, which is testimony to how pointless prologues (and introductions, prefaces, etc., etc.) truly are.

The story here is that in seeking her birth mother, an Irish girl travels to Long Island and "stumbles upon a terrible secret"! Jenny Rose Cashin is Claire Breslinsky's niece - the illegitimate offspring of Claire's sister Carmela and Claire's ex-husband Johnny. Jenny says, "Oh Gee, I'm sorry"? I haven't lived in Ireland - visited only briefly once, but I felt this was more of an Americanism - Oh gee! - than something which the Irish person would say, but maybe I'm wrong on that score. I would think they'd be more likely to say, "Oh Jeese!", but it's no big deal.

I've read none of the Claire Breslinsky stories to this point (assuming there are others), so I'm meeting her afresh, and I wasn't impressed. She first appeared as a truly whiny woman bemoaning her fate. She had gotten rid of her husband Johnny, who she now whined was failing to support their sons who are in college. Yes he's morally at fault, but not legally since both boys are now over eighteen and an insurance payout paid for the boys' college tuition anyway. Claire has gotten herself involved with a fireman now, sporting the unlikely name of Enoch, who seems at first blush to be rather condescending towards Claire who seems at second blush to invite condescension.

Jenny is consistently referred to as Jenny Rose which I found annoying in short order. There were also some odd words used in the text. Once example used to indicate, presumably, that she opened a package is: "She kipped it open..." which makes no sense unless there's an alternate meaning (in Irish usage) of a word which means taking a nap! (p15). The author ought to be aware that not everyone will get colloquialisms.

At the end of a section on page 16, right before the story returns to Claire's first person PoV, there's a weird section that's italicized and appears to be told from the PoV of an acquaintance of Jenny's (always referred to as Jenny Rose!) named Wendell. It comes out of nowhere and makes no sense. Then we're back to Claire's 1PoV. I think this section might have been intended to represent thoughts of the killer, but it came after an italicized sentence which was Jenny's thought, and there was only a line break between the two, so initially and confusingly, it appeared to be a continuation of the thoughts she had begun. It was not well done, and this seemed to be a pattern in this novel.

It was at this point that I really started to feel like I didn't honestly want to read any more of this. Jenny was completely boring to me. There was nothing going on with her except her own idle thoughts and the random impressions she had of her surroundings as she arrived at the house where she would be staying and started to get settled in. It wasn't interesting at all.

Claire's next section was simply more whining. She gets a call from Carmela, but rather than let us in on what this evidently important call was all about, she breaks the fourth wall and talks to the reader about some incident from the past, which really tripped up any momentum the story might have garnered for itself with this evidently urgent phone call. I was not thrilled by yet another digression.

I made it through ten percent of this book, but I couldn't stand to keep going. I mean who says, "...sit down and attend to your brunch"? Seriously? Maybe a hundred years ago people spoke like that. Maybe that's what Enoch will turn out to be - a time-traveler from the past. He has the name for it. Actually he turns out to be something Claire didn't expect: it looks like he misled her and now there's yet another thing in her sorry life to bemoan.

For a book which includes as part of its blurb: "Jenny Rose Cashin arrives from Ireland to take a job as an au pair in a fading Long Island resort town, hoping to reconnect with her long-lost mother. But something evil lurks in the quiet beachside residences of Sea Cliff. There is a killer on the grounds of this strange art colony, and Jenny Rose will need all the help she can get from her aunt Claire to uncover the truth--and to stay alive." there was nothing happening. Nothing at all. No dead bodies or even hints of them. No hint of a killer except for the afore-mentioned misplaced and obscure italicized segment consisting of three paragraphs or so, and even that was so obscure that it was hard to tell what the heck it meant. Certainly Claire and Jenny are going to have to save the day because as you know, this is a private dick story, so the police are, of course, utterly useless.

The book came off more as a pretentious and artsy memoir than ever it did a thriller or a mystery. It was simply depressing to read, and offered nothing to interest me. None of the characters garnered my support or empathy. I didn't like any of them, and I cannot recommend this based on what I read. I know I didn't read much of this, but life is far too short to continue to plow on through a book that has failed you in every way when there are so many other books out there, taunting me with their siren calls.

Carrots by Colleen Helme

Title: Carrots
Author: Colleen Helme
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WORTHY!

I've said frequently that you can get away with a lot with me if you tell a decent story, and this novel is a classic example of that. Now you know I'm a man of my word!

This is the first in a series about a character named Shelby Nichols. It's told in first person, which is the worst of all voices. Most writers screw it up, which makes for an obnoxious read. A few can get it right, and this author managed that, for which I was very grateful. It was an easy read and easy to empathize with this character even though she was far too focused on, nay obsessed with, clothes and looks for my taste. Neither was she very smart, but she made up for her lack of smarts with a certain amount of inventiveness and pluck. I didn't like the way she was far too ready to take a back seat to her husband. It undermined the adventurous spirit with which the author was trying to imbue her elsewhere.

On her way home one evening, Shelby stops at the supermarket for a bunch of carrots, and gets into the middle of a robbery of the bank which is within the store. She's grazed by a bullet, which skims her head. From this point on, she discovers that she can read people's thoughts if they are close by. Unfortunately, "Uncle Joey", a local mobster, manages to learn of her ability and by threatening the welfare of her family, he 'persuades' her to work for him part time, listening in on conversations he has with his lackeys, to alert him to any signs of unrest and dissent.

As if this isn't trouble enough, the bank robber is out to kill Shelby so she can't testify to his appearance in court should he be apprehended, and the new hire at her husband's law firm, Kate, is definitely after her husband and doesn't care if Shelby knows it.

I liked this story because although it was a bit far-fetched, it stayed largely true and real, and it was believable. Yes, the mind-reading is nonsense of course, but this is fiction, and that's a part of the framework for the story so I had no problem with that, especially since it was presented in an interesting and realistic-feeling way. I also liked that Shelby was married and had children, so we didn't have to deal with dumb-ass romances. That would have spoiled this story, so I felt that it was a smart decision on the part of the author.

I enjoyed Shelby's struggle to cope with the demands on her, especially in light of her new power and her subsequent 'gray-area' employment. I think her husband's acceptance of her lying to him about it was a bit to easily glossed over. I think it should have been more of a problem, and more of an argument than ever it was. Yes, he loves her and isn't about to divorce her over this, but he's a high-priced lawyer and could have helped her with this, at least by giving advice and support. He also probably would have been far more suspicious of her than he was.

The fact that she got into so much life-threatening trouble and shared none of her situation with him should have been more of a hot spot than it was, too. I also didn't like that he often tried to take over her life and control her behaviors - such as when she replaces her car and he gives her the third degree about it. Yes, she isn't too smart, but his domineering attitude and her passive acceptance of it was a bit disturbing to read. One example which comes to mind is that Shelby has some pain pills from the time she was shot in the head and later, we read: "When Chris offered me a pain pill, I gratefully accepted." This makes it sound like he was hoarding her pills and doling them out to her as he saw fit. That probably wasn't the author's intention, but that's what it read like to me! If you're a good little girl and do what I say, I'll let you have your medicine! Rightly or wrongly, that made me bristle a bit!

I had a huge problem with the cover since it in no way represents the main character in any way whatsoever other than gender. Normally I ignore covers because they have nothing to do with the writer, and you can blame their ill-fit on the publisher and the fact that the cover artist never, ever, ever, ever reads the novel for which they're illustrating the cover, but in this case it's self-published through Amazon's Create Space scheme, so I'm not convinced that we can let the author off lightly here here!

There were a lot of other problems, too, which a good book editor or even a decent beta reader might have caught. This is another author who can't tell the difference between 'stanch' and 'staunch' when she writes: "He staunched the bleeding with a bandage". The antique 'whom' shows up here not as part of the narrative, but as part of a character's speech: "...identify the guy whom...", but shortly afterwards we get "There’s too many things wrong..." when it should have been "There are" or even "There're". You can't have it both ways - either your characters are going to speak correctly or they're going to speak like almost everyone else does. Mixing it up, especially with the same character doesn't work.

We got a "My name is Detective Harris..." when his name is just Harris. It's his title that's "Detective". I know it's a minor thing and a pet peeve of mine, but little things matter, especially when there are a lot of them. Why not just have him say, "I'm Detective Harris"?! It's that easy.

There was one part where it looked like one sentence had been cut and pasted smack into the middle of another sentence: "I’d barely hung up the phone when Then they’d probably want to stay me as possible.it rang again...". Then there's the flirtatious redhead who has auburn hair! Yes, I know that technically auburn is classed as red hair, but when people think of a redhead they typically don't think of auburn, so if you've directed them down Redhead Road, it's a bit of a jolt for them to discover that they're really on Auburn Avenue! It was for me anyway!

One or two things made no sense, such as when Shelby thinks to herself that she "...could read minds. I’d know when he was around. I could make it work...." The problem was that this came right after she had failed dismally to detect an assailant in the parking garage! It was inconsistent, or it made her seem really stupid, one or the other. I liked Shelby and it was annoying to have her portrayed as an idiot on more than one occasion.
Also obsessed with saying, "the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes"

Another thing which made little sense was where it was revealed that Shelby helps her husband with legal work. This came as an announcement out of the blue because we had not been told that she was employed by the law office where her husband works. it sounded bad - like confidentiality counts for nothing in this law firm. I doubt the clients would have appreciated that their lawyers randomly have family members wander in and do odd jobs. I certainly wouldn't.

Those quibbles aside, I liked this story a lot. It wasn't something which made me desperate to read the next in the series as soon as possible (especially not now that I've seen the cover!), but I don't doubt that I will read it if I come across it on sale somewhere. This was, in general terms, an engaging, fun, and enjoyable story, so overall, I rate this one a worthy read.

Disposable Assett by John Altman

Title: Disposable Asset
Author: John Altman
Publisher: Severn House
Rating: WARTY!

This one annoyed me in the second sentence, where I read, "To anyone watching, she would look like an average young woman of nineteen or twenty, perhaps a bit prettier than most...". I had two issues there. If she was prettier than most, then certainly she wasn't average, but what actually bothered me was this "prettier than". Why? Why is it necessary to make this woman prettier than most? Why is this shallow, skin-depth assessment so vitally important to authors when dealing with female characters?

The front cover describes this as a "riveting espionage thriller", but even by grandiose publisher standards, that doesn't even begin to describe this novel It's superficially espionage, but it's neither riveting nor thrilling. At best, the blurb writer is batting a .333.

Superficially, the story is supposed to be about CIA assassin Cassie Bradbury, who was set up to kill a defector in Russia before being abandoned by her agency. This is the reason I picked-up the book, but as usual, the blurb lied. It's not really about Cassie, although she does make a few cameo appearances in this story. It's really about supposedly disgraced ex-CIA agent Sean Ravensdale and how he 'undisgraces' himself when turned loose in pursuit of this supposed rogue agent.

This business of having a retired agent brought back in to do something no one else purportedly can is nonsensical, but it's what we have to deal with here, and the story checks off pretty much every cliché in the book: Disgraced, retired, disaffected agent, check, check and check. Has old contacts inside the Soviet Union, er Russia? Check. The guy is in a poor relationship? Check! Ravensdale is a single dad, who, though retired and disgraced nevertheless doesn't think twice about sucking up to the very agency that treated him like dirt, abandoning his kid, and taking off to some dangerous pursuit where he might die. Some dad, huh? I sure didn't like him and wasn't interested in him.

The problem for me is that this was neither riveting nor thrilling, which is why I gave up after reading just over a quarter of the story. Life is too short to spend any more time on a novel than that if it isn't doing it for you, especially when there are scores of other novels out there begging to be read, many of which actually are going to be thrilling and riveting, I have no doubt.

The bottom line is that this one was boring for me. There was nothing interesting happening, and what did happen was tedious and repetitive. The entire story of Cassie, in the portion I read, was of her running and hiding, and hiding and running - all the time.

Ravensdale was doing much better, hanging out with old cold war contacts, drinking cognac and vodka, and seemingly making no effort to actually find this supposedly rogue agent. There was no urgency to his actions or to the endless leisurely descriptions of the faded glory of tsarist Russia. I had to quit this and move on. The novel is baroque and badly in need of a Renaissance.

Off and Running by Philip Reed

Title: Off and Running
Author: Philip Reed
Publisher: Brash books
Rating: WORTHY!
Erratum:
"...heart trouble run in the family." should be "...heart trouble runs in the family."

Set towards the end of 1999 (for reasons unclear to me), this novel began with a very short prologue which I skipped as I always do. The first problem I ran into was that there was a character named Jack - the most clichéd of all character names. I took a vow a while back never to read another novel which has a main character named Jack (in this case, Jack Dillon, can you believe?!) and that vow is the most pathetic one I ever made, because I have somehow managed to saddle myself with several such novels since then. This one looked interesting from the blurb, so once again I swallowed my pride, integrity, and commitment, and decided to try it out. I sincerely hoped that this author wouldn't make me regret it! He didn't.

Jack is undertaking (I may be employing that term advisedly given Walt's age!) to write a bio for a renowned comedian of yester-year, Walt Stuckey. Nobody does this kind of show any more, but Walt had a well-regarded TV comedy and variety show running from 1967 to 1973, when it was abruptly and mysteriously canceled.

Jack begins meeting with Walt regularly, and the two of them get along like pants on fire until Walt is stricken by a stroke and his eldest son Garrett (which in this story is evidently an acronym for Gloating, Arrogant, Ridiculously Retarded, Expletive-Terminated Twat), muscles in and takes over. He's a officious little jerk who happens to be the executor of Walt's will, and who rapidly pisses everyone off, including Walt's girlfriend, Mary, who has no power in this situation because Walt never married her, so she would inherit nothing if Walt dies. He also fires Walt's nurse.

It's at this point that Jack starts drawing close to Mary, which is rather a surprise, because up to this point we've been given no idea whatsoever that anything is wrong with Jack's marriage, and now it seems like there are issues galore with it. That seemed way too jarring because no hint had been given of this to begin with.

What this felt like to me was that Mary was manipulating Jack somehow for some purpose of her own, or perhaps in collaboration with Garret. I certainly didn't trust her, but jack throws his lot in with Mary after Garret fires him from the book-writing project and they end up kidnapping Walt! That's all the story I'm going to give you.

One thing which seemed a bit anachronistic, even for 1999, was the use of tapes by Jack to record his interviews with Walt. Maybe he was old fashioned, but even in 1999 it was becoming hard to find recording tape, which was antiquated by then, even in digital form! There were several issues of this nature which others may or may not notice let alone find irksome, but fortunately, the overall story was compelling enough that I decided to overlook them as reasons to reject he story.

It was a bit of a kick in the pants to see Garret muscling in on Jack's turf as soon as Walt was disabled, but Jack's agent evidently screwed him. This is why we self publish, folks! It would have been nice to have had a few more details earlier so we understood this when it happened, but when Jack fully grasps how poor of a grasp on this biography he really has, and that he doesn't even have ownership of his own tapes, this certainly gives him (he believes) a good reason to kidnap Walt so they can finish the book, although given that Walt is largely incoherent at that point, I don't see what advantage this gives him.

So Jack, Mary, and Walt head off to Mount Whitney. Let's hope Whitney's up for it.. That was a Walt Stuckey style joke. One thing the local police do not understand is the California Penal Code section 207(a)! The police chief claims it depends on how far the victim is taken, but it really doesn't:

Every person who forcibly, or by any other means of instilling fear, steals or takes, or holds, detains, or arrests any person in this state, and carries the person into another country, state, or county, or into another part of the same county, is guilty of kidnapping.

You'd think a police chief would be more up on the codes than that, but this is a small town. That said, the chief actually doesn't know whether Walt consented to go or not, so he's a bit limited in what he can do without more information, and he is a lot sharper than that idiot Garret credits him for.

The story dragged a bit - it ought to have been shorter I felt, and for a while I went back and forth on whether this was a worthy read, because some of it made little sense (for example, where did Slade manage to find himself a camper trailer on the mountain - in a national park?! He didn't have one earlier), and some of the motivation seemed off, but overall I liked the story and the characters. It made me want to read to the end even as I skipped a bit here and there, so it was really that which made me decide this was indeed a worthy read, and I'd recommend it with the above-mentioned caveats in mind.

The Girl Who Wouldn't Die by Marnie Riches

Title: The Girl Who Wouldn't Die (unable to find this on B&N or Amazon)
Author: Marnie Riches
Publisher: Maze Books (website not found)
Rating: WARTY!

Erratum:
Sgraffito should be graffito?

Note this is not to be confused with J Montecristo's The Girl That Wouldn't Die (which I haven't read).

I love an author who knows that it's chaise longue and not chaise Lounge. Same letters, different order, and Marnie Riches knows the difference! That said, I had some seriously mixed feelings about this as I read it. There were parts where it got really slow, with student conversations - boring conversations - being relayed in too much detail, but just as I was wondering if I really, honestly, wanted to read this, it would pick up again and some interesting material would play out, so I kept reading. In the end, however, the slow nothing happening pages far outweighed the action and I grew too bored to finish it.

It's split into two interleaved parts which initially seem to have little in common other than that the main character in each is a young female, but it becomes crystal clear later, what's going on. One part, set in Britain, features Ella, a girl in high school who is talked - by a cop - into joining a local drug gang as a narc, to help out her mother's criminal case which is pending. Ella puts her life on the line to infiltrate the gang and has a hard time doing it initially, and then another hard time keeping herself out of trouble as much as possible and avoiding the advances of the young drug lord, a hot guy whose girlfriend is downright mean. I was more of a fan of Ella than I was of George, the other female character. George really wasn't likeable at all.

One big issue I had with this is that we're tossed back and forth not only between those two story lines, but also between a score of characters, police officers, unsavory philandering college professors, and a whole bunch of interchangeable students, many of whom have their own story line. It was really hard to keep track of who is who and why I should care about them anyway, a lot of the time. Plus it seemed like the villain was one of two characters: one a main character who seemed to me to be a huge red herring, and the other a minor character who showed up just often enough to make me suspicious, but as I said, I didn't care in the end, so I never did find out if I was right, I'm usually not!

People are disappearing, and some of those who disappeared showed-up in the rubble of a bombed building the bomb still strapped to them. By around page one hundred it became pretty obvious what was happening, and the only mystery really, was how long it would take George to figure it out, but the MO was changing, so my interest was sustained for a while. The problem here was that George should never have been involved in any of this in the first place. There was no reason for her to be other than that the author simply wanted it this way, and the more I read of George, the less I liked her. She was really a jerk and a busybody, and I found nothing to either empathize or sympathize with.

Then there was the deus ex machina factor. At one point George was breaking into apartment. She opens door and alarm starts counting down. Just as she’s trying to guess what the four digit code is to silence it, she gets a text with the answer. That struck me as way too convenient and didn't make George look very smart. There was no reason for her to break in where she was breaking in. She was, once again, just being an annoying busybody.

There was a minor writing issue, too, which I like to raise since my blog is all about writing. One of the characters is named Ad. Chapter 20 begins like this: “Had Ad not had a stinking hangover…”. I think I would have reworded that. It sounds really awkward, which would be fine if you were going for comedy, but this novel is not intended to be a comedy. For me, I would have written something like “The beauty of the Church of the Holy Spirit was lost on Ad, condemned to hell as he was by the debilitating power of his hangover” or something along those lines. But that's just me.

In short, I can't recommend this. The writing itself wasn't too bad at all, in general terms, but the pace was agonizingly slow, and the character motivations were simply non-existent. It just wasn't realistic. The thing is that I might even have been willing to let this author get away with that, had it not been so damnably boring, and had her main character been remotely likeable.

The Complete Raffles Volume One by EW Hornung

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Title: The Complete Raffles Volume One
Author: EW Hornung
Publisher: Leonaur
Rating: WARTY!

I have to say that the title of this amused me – I mean how is it in any way complete it if it’s only volume one? And yes, I do know what they mean, but it’s still amusing to me.

I ended up with this from the library having failed to get my hands any Sexton Blake – which I had decided I wanted to read after having heard it mentioned several times in a Phryne Fisher story. I found that I liked this, but only in small parts. A lot of it was uninspired and uninspiring. The thefts weren't really very thrilling, and nothing like as complex as the misdeeds in your average Sherlock Holmes story - from which era these stories also hale, so be warned it’s not everyone’s taste. If you’re into this kind of story (adult historical which was actually adult contemporary when it was written), then you might like this.

EW Hornung was rather a prolific writer, and Arthur J Raffles, described as a gentleman cracksman – that is a thief - was perhaps his best known creation. How gentlemanly a thief could ever actually be is a matter for debate, but I guess Raffles fills the bill for some definitions at least. We meet him, as we meet Sherlock Holmes (to whom raffles came second in popularity in his own time), through the agency of his chronicler – a public school friend of his, who goes by the highly unlikely name of Bunny – which was no doubt quite likely in those days. His real name is Harry Manders.

Note that in Britain, a public school is actually a private school such as Eton or Winchester, which is where Bunny “fagged” for him. Note that a fag in this context represents a sort of servant (or more accurately, a slave!) who would run errands and perform other chores for this superior, such as cleaning his shoes and even doing his homework for him. It has nothing to do with homosexuality, although in some cases it could have, I suppose!

Raffles has other things in common with Holmes. At one point, he and Bunny are caught red-handed whilst committing a theft aboard a ship. That story is included in this volume. Raffles dives overboard to escape apprehension, and is presumed lost at sea, but after Bunny finishes his prison sentence, he discovers that Raffles is alive and well, and the second, and somewhat modified phase of their joint career is launched. That takes place almost literally half-way through this volume. At the end of this volume, Raffles is killed in the Boer war in South Africa, so god only knows what's included in volume two! raffles ghost stories?!

The best stories for me were Nine Points of the Law, which was very much in the mold of a Sherlock Holmes story, although from the PoV of the thief of course, and the one which followed it, The Return Match. Both of these were rather different from the stories which came before, which all seemed to be centered on jewel thievery. In both of these stories, Raffles was acting to help someone, although what he was doing wasn’t really legal in each case! In the latter case, he wasn’t even getting paid for his actions, although he did feel he was repaying a debt, if not being blackmailed.

One very much appreciated aspect of the stories is that Raffles doesn’t always get the job done, but despite that and some other bits and pieces I liked, overall these stories were tame and boring. They included very little atmosphere setting,and very little descriptive prose in terms of setting the scene. Most of it was simple conversations, in which Raffles is usually unnecessarily and tediously mysterious, and in describing, but in nowhere near enough detail, his exploits, so it was rather unsatisfactory all around for me. I can't recommend it.

Roughly half the book takes us to where Raffles literally jumps ship. The second half takes up form where raffles disappears until he's killed in the Boer wars. What's in volume 2 I have no idea!

One thing which both amazed and horrified me was how profligate these two villains were with their money. They have stolen jewels that they sold on for literally hundreds if not thousands of pounds. They stole other things too, and they retrieved a painting which netted them two thousand pounds each, yet they're always on their uppers, looking for the next opportunity to steal money? Where did it all go?!

Two thousand pounds is a significant amount (for most of us!) in 2015. In 1915, one pound was worth roughly five dollars, so we're talking about ten thousand dollars, but that fails to address the buying power of money then as compared with now. According to Measuring Worth two thousand pounds in 1915 would be worth somewhere between 140,000 and a million today depending upon how it's calculated. Even if we take the lower of those two, it's still an inconceivable amount of money to wade through, especially back then - maybe five million dollars?!

According to US News, In 1915, you could buy a house for three thousand dollars (=six hundred pounds). A car cost almost as much as a house! A decently-paid (by 1915 standards) woman would earn sixty pounds a year. A loaf of bread cost 7 cents, a dozen eggs 34 cents, a gallon of milk about the same as the eggs, and a pound of steak 26 cents (using the US News values) . What the heck were these guys doing with all their money?! And why should we feel any kinship with people who are so appalling wasteful and who actually help no one, especially not the common people. These guys were no Robin Hoods, let's face it!

Holy War by Mike Bond

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Title: Holy War
Author: Mike Bond
Publisher: Mandevilla Press
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. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

Frankly, this novel is a mess. It begins not on page one, but on page nineteen, the first eighteen pages being filled mostly with advertising. The actual novel itself is 365 pages long, one for every day of the year and judged by how much it's padded with extraneous detail, aimless rambling and flashbacks, it could probably be at least a hundred pages lighter and healthier for it.

It never hurts to lose some excess weight! Whether this is how the print book will look or whether this padded bra of commercial material up front is confined to the ARC version, I don't know. I wish that publishers and writers would have more respect for trees though.

The author has actually been a journalist in Beirut, so he knows the deal there, but that doesn't mean he can write an engrossing fictional story about it. This one was too splintered and fractured to be coherent. The book was really hard to get going on, because it was bouncing around all over the place, jumping from one set of characters to another, from one scenario to the next so quickly that I couldn't get comfortable with the characters, nor was I left with a feeling that I was going anywhere.

The author gets the lyrics wrong to the Chicago song If You leave me Now. It's not "If you leave me now, you'll take away the very best part of me", it's "If you leave me now, you'll take away the biggest part of me" which, when you think about it, sounds like impotence, doesn't it? I don't know if that's the way Peter Cetera intended it when he wrote it, but it is a beautifully embedded double meaning - if you get the lyric right! I guess the dope-smoking sabotaged Neill's brain cells and prevented them from nailing down the lyrics....

So Neill is the main character. He's an American journalist, but he's been recruited by MI6 (the British equivalent of the CIA) to go (as a journalist) to Beirut, his mission is to try to contact a terrorist named (highly originally) Mohammed, who is linked to Hezbollah. Mohammed can apparently stop the slaughter, although how that works is anyone's guess. Mohammed is also evidently married to an ex of Neill's, named Layla (another original name).

To try and add a little zest to the recipe, the author has also thrown in André, who is a commando in the French armed forces, and who wants to murder Mohammed to avenge the death of his brother, who died in the Beirut Marine barracks bombing in 1983. Additionally, there's a female terrorist named Rosa (the choice of names in this novel frankly sucks) who is as deadly as she's dedicated. No doubt both of these characters will conspire to thwart Neill's aim.

While the timing is obviously 1983 or later, the actual dating of the events in the novel isn't clear - at least not in the portion I read. I noted that one reviewer considered it contemporary, but I don't see how it can be given that it appears to follow hot on the tail of events which took place a generation ago.

The pacing is excruciatingly slow and constantly - I mean constantly - interrupted with flashbacks which completely destroyed the story, the atmosphere and any sense of immediacy for me. It takes forever to actually get to any real and current events (current within the story's framework, that is), and those are irritatingly fragmented.

Instead of getting to the action, the story wallows endlessly (and mindlessly) in flashbacks, dalliances and memories, multiplied by two (one set for Neill, the other for André). Rosa seems to be the only one who is actually getting anything done! No wonder terrorist keep on blind-siding us! For example, Neill spends an inordinate amount of time in Holland doing nothing more than sitting around and smoking dope. André appears to be wandering aimlessly around Paris.

If you like gory detail, there's plenty to be had here. For me, describing how a bullet goes through a supine victim's head and then bounces back off the cement floor and returns through that same head is, if you'll forgive the pun, overkill. I already got that Rosa was coldly obsessed. I don't need to have her putting one bullet after another into her victim from several different angles and read about how he's still spastically moving even then. This added nothing to the story or to her character portrait, so I don't see the value other than gratuitous violence for the sake of it.

In the end I could not get past the first third of this novel. It really was not for me. It was far too jumbled and disjointed, which spoiled the story and made me quickly lose interest. I can't recommend this. This is the second Mike Bond novel I've reviewed. The first was Tibetan Cross and I didn't like that one either, so I guess I'm done with this author, too.

Skewed by Anne McAneny

Title: Skewed
Author: Anne McAneny
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. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

Erratum:
Page 212 "...either approving of either..." - too many eithers!

This novel could have been a classic example of how you can get away with murder with me and still get a positive review. All you have to do is tell a good story and have interesting characters and I'm willing to forgive a lot, but in the end, there was too much to forgive here.

Also, I have to say up front that this is a first person PoV novel, a voice I detest because so few writers can carry it off, and it ends up being arrogant, self-absorbed and self-obsessed. In this case it wasn't so bad - and the author knows the difference between stanch and staunch, so kudos there. but the problem remains that there are several serious problems with 1PoV even for authors who can get away with it.

The first and foremost of these is that it doesn’t work suspense-wise, because you know the story gets finished – so there's zero drama over whether the narrator will survive! For example when main character (and narrator) Jane gets trapped somewhere during this novel, it doesn't make for a chapter-ending cliff-hanger because there is no question of the outcome.

Another problem, which became apparent in the way that this novel was written, is the extreme limitation of being a first person narrator: you're stuck with you! The narrator can't relate anything that they don't experience personally, or the reader ends up with long info-dumps, or boring conversations where the reader has to sit and wait while someone relays what happened elsewhere. It's completely unnatural.

Maybe some readers (and far too many writers, particularly those of the YA persuasion!) feel it brings more immediacy, but to me it brings irritation and annoyance. I routinely put books back on the shelf at the library or the book-store as soon as I discover that they're 1PoV, but it's a lot harder to do that with ebooks - and no book blurb ever gives you the PoV!

The interesting thing about this is that the author here evidently agrees with me: in this story, we periodically reverted to 3PoV because of these limitations, and for me it failed because it kept halting the story at the interesting parts while we went back in time, and I'm asking myself: "So now who's telling the story?" and I'm losing faith in the reliability of what I'm being told. Is the narrator reliable? Is the third party reliable? Who is the third party? We don't know. More on how I dealt with this anon.

As I said, the main character is Jane Elizabeth Perkins, the narrator, who's a police crime scene photographer. That is to say, she's a police employee who photographs crime scenes (not necessarily only ones where police have committed crimes...).

She doesn't sound like she's very good at her job, but she does sound like she has a ferociously nauseating case of YA romantic interest in one of the detectives. We get bitch-slapped with this on page eight (this is only five pages in, since the novel unaccountably starts on page three). Indeed Jane's obsession with Wexler is pathetic and worthy of a trashy YA nomance, not a serious adult novel. It seriously mitigates against Jane being a likable female character. She pulled her chestnuts out of the fire with sufficient dexterity for me to let this slide by, but it was still annoying.

Jane and John (who-is-tediously-and-inevitably-called-Jack) Perkins are inexplicably famous as 'The Haiku Twins'. Fortunately Jack was a minor character or I would have ditched this novel on principle. I don't read novels any more which have main characters named 'Jack' because that name has gone wa-ay beyond cliché, past ludicrous, and well into plaid by now.

But I digress. Jane and John's mom was in her seventh month of the pregnancy with them when she was accidentally shot by Grady McLemore when he was attacked by a third party - someone who got away Scot-free since the police thought Grady had shot Bridget Perkins deliberately. Now Jane's getting anonymously-sent photos of the crime scene - photos which seem to prove that there was indeed a third party present at the scene - namely the guy who took the pictures.

John Perkins doesn't have any interest in solving his mother's murder. He's more interested in his run for DA. Indeed, he sounds like a complete jack-ass, so maybe he was named appropriately. There are two things which bothered me at this point. The first is that the author expects us to believe that some three decades after their birth, everyone still refers to John and Jane as haiku twins, and everyone recognizes them on sight. Frankly, that took far too much to believe. The second problem is that Grady McLemore is still alive. How this works in a nation which has pretty much Universal death penalty - and has been that way for decades - is the real unsolved mystery here! Virginia has been aggressively pro-death penalty, so how did McLemore escape the electric chair in 1985? No explanation!

I had thought that chapter one, which takes place 30 years (and zero hours!) before the present was the prologue, and praised the author for incorporating it into the body of the novel (I don't do prologues), but then I reached chapter five and now we're 30 years (and eleven hours) into the past again. This I did not like because now we're not reading a story, we're riding a switch-back and are risking whiplash!

I'm not really very fond of stories that continually interrupt the flow of the narrative and the action for a flashback. I really don't care for a blow-by-blow account of what happened thirty years ago. I care about what's happening now, and the author is denying me that knowledge. So do I skip the flashback chapters? After reading chapter five - a second flashback chapter - and discovering how utterly irrelevant and boring it was, I decided I was indeed going to skip any and all future flashback chapters (there was a bunch of them). Rest assured that I did not miss them.

Those problems solved, I was able to get on with what turned out to be really a rather good novel (previous complaints aside). So Jane takes these photos she received, and accompanied by Wexler and Nicholls - another detective - delivers them to Sophie Andricola, supposedly some sort of Sherlock Holmes consulting detective type, who evidently doesn't grasp that you can buy decaf coffee pretty much everywhere, even in Virginia. Jane wants her to look at the photos and see if Sophie (name means wisdom, you know!) can provide any further clues. Frankly, I'm not sure I understood the point of this part of the novel. Ultimately Sophie's contribution was irrelevant.

Some parts of this story didn't ring true. For instance, Jane's grandfather is ill and when she visits him in the hospital, he re-writes her mother's last words telling Jane something slightly different from what he's previously told her. This is also rather irrelevant, but anxious to know if he's rambling, Jane asks an "orderly" what medications he's on - trying to decide if he's likely to be coherent.

An orderly? Seriously? Is this the fifties and the military? No, if you want to know what meds he's on, you ask the doctor, or more likely the nurse, who is the one who actually administers the meds, yet despite the author being female, we get a male doctor, a male orderly, and no nurse, male or female. I didn't like that and I find it hard to understand why female authors so routinely marginalize females in their work. Maybe I'm just reading the wrong authors?

The author does do a good job of writing a mystery, and of dangling red herrings misleading throughout, and the romance wasn't as god-awful as it had threatened to be with annoying hints being dropped loudly and routinely, but by this time it was too late. I read about 90% of this novel and then gave up because it was dragging on way too long and it was becoming ever more boring. I got to the point where I really didn't care how it ended and I gave up on it. Life is too short, and there are far too many books out there calling. Every one of them (although doubtlessly many are lying!) promises to be more gripping. I can't recommend this book, but this author does have a future, I think.

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.

Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood

Rating: WORTHY!

I first met Phryne Fisher on Netflix where two seasons can be found as of this writing, both of which I've seen. there will be a third series and perhaps more, since this is a real money-spinner for ABC (that's the Australian ABC, not the US ABC!) and deservedly so. I fell in love with Phryne from the first episode. Essie Davis is magical in the title rôle, and the whole show is smart, fast-paced, daring, socially conscious, and majorly fun. Note that the name is pronounced Fry-Knee - which is why the TV series came to be titled "The Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries" - no one wanted to have to teach everyone they spoke to how to pronounce the name!

The problem is that when you're hit like that and become so on-board (with a movie or a show), it's a tough decision as to whether to go to the book, just as it is in moving the other way. Books and movies/shows are very different entities, and the trick when you wish to migrate one to the other is to capture the essence if not the letter. In this case, it worked, because now having read the first in the series of books which kicked-off the shows, I can come down very favorably for both outlets, although be warned, the two are quite different in many respects.

The basic plot is the same. Phryne Fisher is (or rather becomes during this introductory edition) a very feisty, plucky, and successful Lady Detective. She's of independent means, so she never charges for her services, and her cases frequently lean towards supporting the downtrodden. Having successfully and very speedily solved a jewel theft at a soirée she was attending in London, Phryne is asked if she would travel to Australia to uncover who might be poisoning. The TV shows starts with the Honorable Phryne Fisher arriving in Australia and taking up residence in a charming house. The book begins with the jewelery theft and then has Phryne travel to Melbourne, where her roots lie, and where she installs herself at the exclusive Windsor Hotel.

Phryne was originally of exceptionally humble means, and came into money (that story deserves telling, but it hasn't yet been told, to my knowledge), so while she thoroughly appreciates (indeed, luxuriates in) the amenities which money can bring, she has not lost sight of where she came from. Phryne knows Doctor Elizabeth MacMillan, an ex-pat Scot who dresses like a man and is as good as any one of them. She's a physician in a women's hospital and this is how Phryne learns of an abortionist (abortion was sadly illegal back then, even in Australia) known as the Mad Butcher, who like to rape his pregnant victims before he virtually kills them performing his 'surgery'.

Cec and Bert, two Aussie blokes who each have a share in a run-down taxi-cab, find themselves with a girl named Alice, post op and tossed into their cab, bleeding onto the seats. They rush her to the hospital, thereby saving Alice's life - just.

Meanwhile Phryne begins to socialize with a view to becoming intimately acquainted with Lydia Andrews, the poisoning victim. As if these two events are not enough, there's also the King of Snow - the cocaine dealer who has taken up residence in Melbourne with a view to making a killing in an untapped market.

Both the show and the novel have all these ingredients, and the end results are largely the same, but the details are different. In the show, Phryne ends up buying Bert and Cec a new cab to replace their cranky aging vehicle - on the understanding that they'll give her priority when she needs them, but she also, in the show, owns the gorgeous Hispano-Suiza that she drives, rather than just leases it for a week. Dot, her maid in the novel becomes a companion in the TV show.

Detective Inspector Jack Robinson is a much more important figure in the shows than ever he is in this novel, but perhaps, as the series progresses, his prominence will increase. Constable Hugh Collins is a non-entity in the first book, and Dot, his girl-friend, is unacquainted with him. Also Dot isn't the one who pretends she's looking for an abortion. This rôle is taken in the book, by WPC Jones, a female police officer. This is interesting because in the second series TV show Phryne mentions to jack that there are no female officers on force, a rôle which she fulfills independently!

To cut a great story short, I recommend both this and the TV show! My biggest complaint about these books is that you can't find them in the book store! I did find a couple in the local library and I am sure they're available on-line.

The Last Fairytale by Molly Greene

Title: The Last Fairytale
Author: Molly Greene
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!

Not to be confused with The Last Fairy Tale by Laura Dawn, or Last Fairy Tales by Edouard Laboulaye, The Last Fairytale: Rise of the Princesses by M'tain A Dubois, this last fairy tale is about Cambria Butler ("Bree"), who is a journalist, after a fashion, and on the night when she's heading out to interview someone, she runs into an old college friend named Gen Delacourt. The way her first name is used here suggests it's the pretentious form of Jen, but it's actually short for Genevieve. Gen has a "1950's physique"?!?!?! I have absolutely no idea what that means. Luckily for Bree, Gen happens to be a lawyer. Luckily, because when Bree arrives for her interview, the man she's supposed to interview in his office is dead, possibly murdered.

A complete jerk of a man (remember that for later) named Taylor Vonnegon (note that this is the kind of novel in which no main character can be cursed with having an ordinary name!), who worked with the deceased, finds her in the office looking at the body and verbally launches into her as though she just murdered him. Bree is treated like dirt by the police - improbably so, in fact, almost like a caricature or a parody. It took a lot to try and convince myself that the detective would be like this when it hadn't even yet been established that there was a murder. I failed. This behavior made no sense whatsoever.

Having Gen's card in her pocket from their earlier meeting allows Bree to call her with her legal predicament, and Gen immediately comes to her rescue. When Bree arrives home at her apartment that same evening, Vonnegon (remember this jerk?) is there waiting for her. He says he wants to apologize! Yep, this guy stalks her and lurks around waiting for her to get home rather than simply calling her, or leaving her alone and simply telling the police he was wrong about her, which would be the decent thing to do if you were actually not a self-important stalker dick.

And this isn't the worst part of this novel! Bree agrees to meet him for lunch the next day in order to get him to speak up for her to the police! Gen has no problem with this and she is Bree's legal counsel! So now he's blackmailing her and she still has no problem with him? He admits he knows she's innocent and he claims he wants to apologize and explain, but he's behaving like a complete dick.

Despite this, weak-kneed, sad-sack Bree caves-in to his blackmail and agrees to meet with him - the guy who could well be the murderer himself! I am not very fond of Bree or her smarts at this point, or of Gen's competence. Gen doesn't, for example, even think for recording the conversation with the man who could be instrumental in exonerating her client.

Had it not been for the goodwill the writer engendered in me by the writing she had displayed in the first few pages, I would have quit reading this then and there. As it was, it went downhill fast, and I couldn't get past chapter ten - about 25%. The author had been on probation from that earlier point onwards, and she violated it too often! I was rather desperately hoping that this would not be yet another novel which shows a woman who, despite being completely snow-plowed by a guy, falls in love with him anyway! This isn't a YA novel, it just plays one between the covers....

At the meeting, Vonnegon explains his behavior, but it doesn't constitute an excuse. It merely proves that he's still a dick. He starts out using his guests' first names, then unaccountably retreats to calling them "Miss...". Meanwhile It's painfully obvious that Bree is in love, or at least in lust with this jerk who treated her like dirt. Now she can see how cultured and wealthy he is, this evidently excuses his dickishness, so it's fine to fall in love with him because he's going to spoil her rotten with his riches, and after all, diamonds are a girls best friend, aren't they? Who needs hearts when you have diamonds with which this guy is going to club his mate, and get her spade, er spayed...? Vomitous maximus.

Bree's biggest problem was not the possibility that she could be arrested as a murder suspect, but that she was desperate for a relationship when she was no-way-in-hell actually ready for one emotionally. She's also too dumb to see that. That's what this story (judged by what I'd read by the time I quit at 25% in) was really all about, deep down. It's yet another story about a female character, written by a female author who is telling us that if you're a woman, you need a man to fix you and then validate you, and the best person to do that is the biggest dickhead of a guy that you can find as long as he's rich and studly-looking. How sad is that?

Bree's utter lack of smarts is repeatedly thrown in our faces. It's the lawyer who has to tell her that there's a story here, which she could write: one about murder and corporate espionage. Bree didn't have what it takes to see that. No wonder she's not a real journalist! We're told that she is a writer who does "Bios, press releases, newsletters, website content, ghost writing, book editor, blogs, social media." She evidently has no work at the moment, so how she manages to live the rather profligate lifestyle she pursues, swanning around doing nothing all day and eating out routinely, I have no idea.

Gen is no better. We're told she is a lawyer who chases straying husbands and finds lost pets. Her partner is a Secret service agent, who I am sure gets paid decently, but who is hardly paid richly, yet these two live in luxury. Gen evidently has no work either since she immediately starts working full time with Bree on this 'case' without blinking an eye, yet she lives like she does and eats out routinely without a hint of financial concerns. In fact, the conspicuous consumerism in this novel was not only beyond the pale, it was about two states over from that. It's sad to read about these people who (according to the author's lack of mention of same) never lift a finger for a good cause or a charity, yet they supposed to be the good guys?

It was depressing to have to read yet another story about a female main character as lame as Bree is: one who you know is never going to grow. Her life is going to stay exactly as it is until a guy fixes it for her. How convenient is it then, that in investigating all this, she will be required to spend copious time with Mr Dick Bucks?! And why is she even "investigating"? Yeah, she's writing a story, but that doesn't mean that she's a police detective for goodness sakes. Her name should have been Brie, she's so cheesy and soft.

The two of them begin their investigation by trying to dig into Vonnegon's past. They visit his neighborhood while he's at work, but apparently they've never heard of GPS, because they're using paper maps.... This is where the story was not only bad, but now began to be as boring as a manicured lawn, and I lost all interest in these characters and this mystery.

There was nothing going on, no real activity, no real investigation. Maybe it picked up after this, but in order to get me to read that far, you would have to get me engaged with these characters and I had no interest in them. I didn't even like them! I can't recommend it and I couldn't waste any more of my time with it when there are so many other novels out there waiting to be read, many of which I know will really move me.

Steths: Cognition by Karl Fields

Title: Steths: Cognition by Karl Fields
Author: Karl Fields (no website found)
Publisher: Pleated Press (no website found)
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 book is often enough reward aplenty!

Here's a novel which gets right to the point - a cover, a title page, and then chapter one! Screw antiquated Library of Congress rules and antique publishing methods! You've got to admire that. This is the world of ebooks, not of trays of lead characters pressed together rank and file waiting to be slathered with sticky ink and squished onto a galley page. So off we go!

The world in this novel is one of people who have special powers - not supernatural powers, but enhanced human powers. Devin Chambers, the main character narrates this story, unfortunately. I say unfortunately, because it's a first person PoV format - something which I normally rail against. As it happens, it was done well on this occasion, and didn't feel to me like someone was scraping their fingernails down a chalkboard as I read it! That was a major relief.

Devin is known as a 'steth' - short for stethoscope, presumably - because he can detect, at a distance, the faintest sounds of someone's heartbeat which allows him not only to know if they're alive, but to some degree, what they're feeling and whether they're lying. How that works, exactly, goes unexplained. Yes, you can detect a change in heart-beat, or a particular rhythm, but what does that really tell you, and in how much detail? He cannot, however, detect the heartbeat of another steth - and certain other people as will become clear to readers.

He first begins to feel he's really different from others (even other steths) when his school class attends a trial and he's the only one who thinks the defendant isn't guilty. Shortly after this he's visited by a guy, Mickey, who offers him a place at the prestigious Faulkner Academy. His good friend Travis, who's also invited, is pumped about it, but Devin has doubts because the Academy has no athletic program (no, honestly!).

Devin is also obsessed with the innocent guy saddled with a guilty verdict and one day when he goes to the jail to visit him, he encounters a girl, Sarah Shaw, who was already visiting this same guy. He follows the girl, only to discover she's a special, too - but a 'bouncer' who, he learns, is supposedly his mortal enemy. Is this be the clichéd love-hate relationship whereby these two are destined to fall in love? I can't tell you!

The writing in general is very good, with only one or two questionable areas, such as on page 17 where we read: "Shaw, the defendant, who sat beside his attorney in a white jumpsuit..." Who was wearing the white jump suit?! How about, "Shaw, the defendant who was wearing a white jump suit, sat beside his attorney..."? Just a suggestion! Apart from rare happenstances like that, it was well-written, entertaining, and engrossing.

I have to say (and without confirming if I was right or wrong - I'm usually wrong on these things!) I didn't trust Carissa Watson, a fellow student at Faulkner who became involved with Devin. She seemed a little too convenient for me. I much preferred Sarah! I also liked Travis, although he initially seemed to me to be like a victim waiting to happen. Whether that does happen I'm not going to tell you!

It struck me as odd that Devin tells us he couldn't talk about movies with Carissa on their first date because there was no movie theater in town. What, they never saw one on TV or rented a video?! That struck me as strange, but that and some misspellings, such as "planed" in placed of "planned" (which a spell-checker won't find!) were about the worst issues I had with the technical aspects of this story, apart from the one I'll discuss next, which needs its own paragraph!

At one point, about halfway through this novel (which is a surprisingly fast read) there was a really improbable situation where Devin, obsessing way more on a missing photograph than ever he had any reason to, went on a highly unlikely "expedition" to a place he thought it might be. This made no sense whatsoever - first that the photograph would be hidden (and hidden there of all places) rather than simply destroyed, and second that Devin would ever become so focused on it, let alone dedicated to finding it. There was no rationale for it.

Devin had what was termed in the book, Hypersensitive Tympanic Syndrome. This isn't a real disorder as far as I know, but it is the condition which steths are supposed to have. What bugged me about that was that if steths's hearing is so sensitive that they can clearly detect a heartbeat (and from a distance, yet!), then how come every noise out there doesn't drive them crazy or deafen them? This issue is never even discussed, much less explained!

Those things aside, I really liked the characters and the story. It was well-thought out (for the most part!) and interesting. Devin was a really likable character and, again for the most part, the story was believable and made sense. This was a refreshing change from way too much YA 'literature' that I've had to read. Also kudos for having a believable guy as the main character. Devin was an African American, but one who isn't somehow tied-in to gangs or rap! It was such a relief to find stereotyping was absent here: Devin was just an ordinary everyday guy, and I appreciated that. I'm looking forward to the sequel to this novel.

Ryder: American Treasure by Nick Pengelly

Title: Ryder: American Treasure
Author: Nick Pengelly (no website found)
Publisher: Random House
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 book is often enough reward aplenty!

Errata:
On page 8 in the Adobe Digital Editions version, there is the full name of the Israeli organization, the Mossad, but one of the characters in the name is rendered as a box with an X in it (X-Box!). In the iPad Bluefire version, there is no problem with this name.
"...cavalry have arrived" is Wong. Calvary is singular. it should be "...cavalry has arrived"

This novel is a mix of Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Robert Langdon, and I found it to be, overall, a worthy read despite some issues I had with it.

I love irony! On page nine of this novel, I read, "…the capitol the British had looted and burned in 1814, during the war of 1812…." This phrase was highly amusing to me because it makes it look like the British were two years late (and a dollar short) with their burning and looting, doesn’t it? The fact is that "the war of 1812" did indeed run for three years!

It’s important to this story because of the burning down of the White House. The conceit here is that something possibly taken from the White House at that time, a letter which might impinge upon the success of a candidate in the current US election campaign, was believed to have ended up in the possession of Lord Kitchener.

A problem I had here was with one of the central premises of this novel: it's not really believable! The contention is that a past US president knew of a spy in a high level position, yet did nothing about it. In that era, where spies were rapidly dispatched via rope or rifle, this made no sense to me, but there's a really nice twist at the end that I did appreciate.

1812 was quite a year. It was a leap year. It was the year when Lord Byron first addressed the House of Lords, the year Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, and Edward Lear were born, and Sacagawea died, and it was the year in which Napoleon introduced metric measurements in France and begun his ill-fated invasion of Russia. It was not the year in which Tchaikovsky wrote his 1812 Overture to commemorate Russia's defence of its homeland against Napoleon.

This novel is the middle of what's so far a trilogy: Ryder, Ryder: American Treasure, and Ryder: Bird of Prey. I have not read any of the others, but I plan on doing so, having found this to my taste, but nevertheless hoping for better in other volumes.

It's about Ayesha Ryder and her tracking down of this "treasure". Ayesha is tall and dusky, of Middle Eastern origin and already accomplished when the novel begins (from the previous volume, Ryder). She's at a ceremony where she was presented with the British George Cross for her services to the nation. She's trying to calculate how quickly she can leave this event without seeming rude, but she's trapped by the formidable trio of Dame Imogen Worsley, the head of MI5 (the Brit equivalent of the FBI), Susannah Armstrong, the Brit prime minister, and the American Secretary of State, Diana Longshore. How cool is that?

Yes, all women. I really want to know why it takes a male writer to put a host of women in prominent positions?! I've read far too many novels by female writers where women are given disturbingly short shrift (if not shift) and it bothers me. I know there are some excellent novels penned by female writers which do give due prominence to female characters, but there is nowhere near enough of these writers.

On the other hand, my fear at that point, once I’d seen this bevy of female influence, was that the author would betray it all by turning Ayesha into some wilting vaporous girl swooning in the arms of some tough American operative as the story progressed. I could only wait and see with baited breath (and baited breath is pretty disgusting when you think about it, so I didn’t like that at all...).

Rest assured that Ayesha turns into no such thing. There was, however, an issue with these powerful women which bothered me and which is hard to discuss without giving away too much, so let me confine myself to saying that lesbianism should be conflated neither with stupidity nor with women in positions of power. The two sets overlap in places, but they are not equal sets!

Ayesha is very much a female Indiana Jones - chasing after the ark of the covenant no less! She's irritated that she's been deflected from her course by some American nonsense in which she has no interest. What she doesn't know is that she's about to come into collision with someone else who has a much greater interest in finding what she's been tasked with uncovering.

In this world which the author has created, Israelis and Palestinians have united and formed a new nation known as the Holy Land, but some movers and shakers in both the US and the Holy land want to return to the days of Israel's independence. There are all kinds of unexpected alliances (and dalliances) and unusual undercurrents in play in this novel, and the power players are not neglected in this wild and crazy interplay, although some of them behave rather foolishly at times and it's a bit hard to credit that a woman would put her position at risk. Unlike men, women know they've not only worked damned hard, but succeeded against the odds to get where they are, and they're not so foolish as to put it all at risk like that. But this is fiction, so I guess it could happen.

As always, no matter how much I may like a given novel, there are issues to be found with it. In this case, the most disturbing one is that Ayesha isn't always presented as the smartest cookie in the box (or, since this is set in Britain, I guess I should say, 'biscuit in the barrel'. I can understand a need to have your prize character have flaws, and to put him or her into gripping situations in a novel like this, but in my opinion, integrity and faithfulness to your character trump excitement every time!

For example, at one point in this story, when under fire, Ayesha could have used a truck to shield her friend and protect him from gunfire, but she never thinks to do it, exposing him to the fire by her thoughtless inaction. Now you can argue that she wasn't thinking straight, but this takes place immediately after we're given a flashback which shows us how admirably cool and calculating she is when her life is threatened.

At another point, someone tries to set her up as a murderer. This stupid given who she is and how well-known and well-connected she is, but the plan is to kill her so she can't clear her name. This is also flawed (as the finale shows!). The author went for dramatics rather than realism, which can sometimes work and be more entertaining, but it can also back-fire. In this case it seems to me that a deadly killer like the one who is after her, would use much a more simple, sure, and direct method of assault. It's issues like this which repeatedly kick a reader out of a story.

At one point Ayesha directly observes an easily-identifiable man planting an object which will set her up as a murder suspect. Immediately afterwards, she runs into a cop who she knocks out. If she had taken a second to tell him that she saw someone plant the object and tell him where it is, before disabling him, she would have been in a lot stronger position. Instead, she knocks him out and runs, and makes herself look guilty.

Indeed, she assaults several police officers quite brutally over the course of her escape, almost killing one, and pays no kind of penalty whatsoever for this. That was too much of a stretch, and her actions only served as a confirmation of her guilt. I began actually disliking her during this part of the story and wondering if I really wanted to read on. I'm sure that's not what the writer intended, but it is what was achieved in my case. It's hard to like characters who are, we're told, smart, but who routinely act foolishly! Fortunately things improved.

Ayesha personally knows some very important people, yet never once does she consider calling any of them to let them know what's going on. Instead she runs like she's guilty, and acts like she's guilty, and thereby digs herself deeper into the hole which has already been opened-up for her by the very people who are trying to set her up! She plays right into their hands, which doesn't make her seem very smart.

Fortunately the villain is even less smart. He's one of these James Bond types who monologues instead of dispatching his captured secret agent and accompanying love interest du jour Fortunately, I was on-board sufficiently with this novel that I was willing to let a few clunkers get by, but I do have my limit! This author managed to avoid exceeding it, and on top of that gave us a non-white, non-American, non-male hero, and I think that deserves encouragement. So here's to more - and steadily improving quality - volumes!

Deadly Accounts by CR Wiley

Title: Deadly Accounts
Author: CR Wiley (no website found)
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
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. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

The author of this novel actually emailed me and asked me to remove this review from Amazon because "...it contains so many spoilers and plot points that it could end up ruining the story ...". I disagree, and there was a warning at the head of the review on Amazon just like this: WARNING! MAY CONTAIN UNHIDDEN SPOILERS! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Detailed reviewing and discussion of writing is what my blog does, so I refused to accede to censorship and outright remove it, but as a pure courtesy I did remove parts of it and refer readers to Goodreads, or to my blog. Since I don't plan on reading anything else by this author, I consider this matter closed.

Note, please don't confuse CR Wiley with author RC Wiley or you're risking ending up paying a hundred and forty some dollars for a paperback!

So, gorgeous cover, nothing to do with the story as usual! This story recounts the adventures of Nora Wexler, a new FBI agent, which is hilariously, how her colleague introduces her to his family. I found that rather strange. Would someone really introduce a colleague like that rather than just saying, "This is my colleague, Nora."? Why introduce her as a new FBI agent?

Yes, if the guy was really nervous or inept, he might, but that's not what Agent Greer has shown himself to be - quite the opposite, in fact, so he didn't sound realistic to me, phrasing it that way. It sounded more like the author had forgotten that this had already been established, and tried to establish it in that way.

This wasn't the only odd thing which caught my attention. Throughout this novel, Travis Greer was always referred to as Travis in the narrative, whereas Nora Wexler was always Wexler. Why? I've seen a lot of writing where females are referred to by first name whereas males are just the last name, so was this to try and balance that out? It was just odd and distracting! Why not use both firsts or both lasts?

Nora is new and idealistic, and obsessed with going after Internet offenders of one kind or another - mostly pedophiles and stalkers. This brings her into conflict with her boss, who wants her to focus on bigger pictures - such as terrorism. Nora gets a break when someone begins stalking three women who are successful and independent, who meet once in a while as friends, and who now find themselves under the brutal attention of a psycho.

Nora's not the sharpest knife in the drawer. At one point she introduces her self with: "...my name is agent Nora Wexler". No! Her name is Nora Wexler. Her professional title is 'agent'. She should simply say "I'm Agent Nora Wexler." It doesn't make a character look smart if they introduce themselves this way, although it does happen more often than is helpful. We don't improve our readership by talking down to them, we improve them by lifting them up to join us.

Their first encounter with this fate is when Jenny Iverson receives a parcel containing what appears to be her missing cat's head. Next, her friend Erin Clausson discovers that her assistant, Ricardo Lantham has been 'poisoned'. Finally, Lyla Robbex is targeted via her high-school age daughter, whose new car is bombed. Fortunately, Lori wasn't in the car when the bomb went off.

Very soon, Wexler and Greer have a suspect - Christopher Walden - in their sights. I didn't buy it though! It was too early in the book, and there was no evidence other than the single fact that he'd had one date with each of the three women (not that any of them knew he'd dated the other two as well). They were evidently all using a dating site on which he was also a member.

My suspect, pretty much as soon as I "met" her, and for reasons I can't really articulate, was Clausson. Like I said, I don't know why, and I'm sure not going to spoil it by telling if I was right or wrong (I'm usually wrong, FYI!), but that was where my money, for better or for worse, went. I was probably wrong because when I quit reading this it seemed like there was a much more realistic suspect (than the first one identified in this novel) in the agents' sights.

The really weird thing is that the FBI agents, one and all, were completely convinced right away that this initial person of interest was their guy! Based on this flimsy evidence, they were able to invade his home, search it and lie in wait for him arriving home from work I found that hard to swallow, and I sure hope the FBI isn't so gullible that they can so easily convince themselves of their rectitude based on a coincidence, when there's nothing else whatsoever condemning him. I hope our judges are not so clueless as to grant search warrants based on such flimsy 'evidence', either. OTOH, they have done some really dumb stuff.

Truth be told, by the time I was a third of the way through this novel, I was seriously starting to doubt the smarts of our two FBI agents. Lori, the girl who was almost blown up, was rolling in money which her mother could not have given to her, yet neither the agents nor her own mom seemed seriously interested in pursuing that damning fact!

In addition to this, and as he left Lori's hospital room with Wexler, Agent Greer noticed that someone was spying on them from a closet, yet he never stopped the elevator and went to find out who this was. I'm sorry, but this is at best incompetence, and at worst, gross negligence on his part, and made me lose a lot of faith in this story. I don't mind law-enforcement having road-blocks to overcome, but when the roadblocks are glaringly artificial, or make the main characters just look stupid, I can't help but find the writing wanting.

Another issue I had was that the poisoning episode wasn't food poisoning (the immediate suspect), but potassium chloride poisoning. KCl is essentially the same as NaCL - the sodium chloride with which fast food joints baby-powder your fries. It's salt. It never fails to fascinate me that you can get a deadly poisonous gas (which was used to kill people in World War One, and which is still used to wipe-out germs in bleach) and mix it with a metal which explodes on contact with water, then sprinkle the result on your fries, and they taste great! Better living through chemistry....

The problem is that while KCl is used as part of the lethal injection trilogy of chemicals, it actually does have to be injected. You can't eat it and die. Well, technically, you can, but you'd have to consume so much at once that you'd end up throwing-up. So this had to be delivered via a needle, yet we don't learn of this from the coroner who should have been looking for a needle site as soon as he or she discovered what the cause of death was! More incompetence.

As it happens, Nora is on the verge of being dumped from the case and sent back home because of her incompetence, but of course, the psycho comes to her rescue. Now he's sent a taunting email to her, and just as she's reading it in her room before getting ready to take a plane back home, some guy shows up at the door to the B&B where she's staying, and the owner shows him up to Nora's room. Nora has no idea whatsoever who this guy is, but she blindly assumes it's the psycho without any evidence whatsoever - in short, she makes exactly the same mistake which got her thrown off the case!

Worse than this, she could have apprehended the perp right there (if it was him), but she ran away! Seriously? She could have called the FBI, but instead she texts Greer for help! Double seriously? Instead of opening the door and confronting him, thereby taking him by surprise, she dives out the window. Instead of seeking out his vehicle, which would have been easy, and getting a line on him, and even disabling it, she hides by the front door to the B&B until the owner comes back out. By this time, the visitor has gone and the lead has been lost. Nora Wexler is the worse law enforcement officer ever.

It was at this point that I decided I didn't care who the perp was or how she, he, or it was brought to justice. This novel was not something in which I had any more interest when there are better reads begging for my attention. I cannot in good faith recommend this novel.