"When DI Isabel Blood is summoned to investigate a body in the back garden of the house where she grew up 40 years earlier, she discovers she cannot escape the secrets of her past." So what do we have here? Yet another series where the main character's asinine name is used tediously in endless permutations in the title and an investigator who has a darkly secret past? So in short, there's not a single thing that's remotely new in this series! Nope. It's precisely the same as all other such series. What other titles can there be? Blood Will Out? Blood Brothers? Bad Blood? Blood and Guts? Blue Blood? Blood Diamonds? Fortunately this is going to be a short series. I do have a soft spot for the name Jane, but yawn!
Saturday, September 11, 2021
Prime Deceptions by Valerie Valdes
I got all excited thinking this was an exposé of Amazon's business practices, but it's actually just a novel. "When Captain Eva Innocente sets out to find a missing scientist, she crisscrosses space with the crew of La Sirena Negra, her estranged mother, and a contingent of psychic cats!" The captain is named Eve the innocent? Seriously? No, the truth here is that the crew are a bunch of pussies and the captain ain't as innocente as she seems! Dumb-assery at its best. Barf.
Charlotte's Search: The Complete Series by Simone Leigh
"In this erotic BDSM box set, Charlotte navigates life with her dominant lovers, James and Michael. Will a wedding bring her the happiness she seeks? An explosive ménage romance!" This title needs to be renamed Ménage to Society. Or Middling Ménage-ment. Barf. And if it's a boxed set I want a goddammned motherfucking box. okay?
A Thin Line by Craig N Hooper
"After being framed for murder by someone he was supposed to have killed, former agent Garrison Chase races to clear his name." Waht agent? Insurance? Travel? And Chase races? Toward the finishing thin line? Barf.
The Inverted Pyramid by AC Fuller
"In the lead-up to a presidential election, Alex Vane's business partner disappears, leaving behind a strange trail that leads right to a recently murdered hacker. Can Alex unravel the case" or will he have the smarts to get the fuck out of the way and leave it up to the experts in the Secret Service? There's no point to the inverted pyramid.
Treason Flight by TR Matson
"As US Navy pilot Jack "Rattler" Owen" Stop right there! Time to tell this author to jack off for using the world's most appallingly meaningless, over-employed, go-to tough guy name ever. Get a new shtick. Please.
The Case of the Green-Eyed Sister by Erle Stanley Gardner
Does anyone really care that Scott "I used to be an attorney" Turow thinks this is a brilliant series? The plot has it that: "When a case of blackmail leads to murder, defense lawyer Perry Mason must untangle a deadly web of secrets and lies." Nope. All he has to do is defend his client. The name 'Perry Mason means 'a bricklayer who dwells by a pear tree', but let's talk about the real culprit here: Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I put it to you that this author never was a gardener; nor is he an earl. So in truth, can we really rely on anything he says? With that last name maybe this should be retitled "The Case of the Green-Tumbed Sister"?
By Wind by T Thorn Coyle
The biggest problem with this story is that the author has actually drunk the Flavor Aid, and she believes everything she writes: the magic, the aroma therapy, the healing power of crystals, and so on. That's all bullshit, and it wouldn't even be so bad if she didn't preach her religion instead of writing a novel.
Worse even than this is that the story is so tediously lethargic that it drags and drags, and drags and goes nowhere. I dropped this at 30% because literally nothing interesting had happened except for endless Cassandra-style wailing about, as John Fogerty put it, a bad moon arising. In short, up to when I quit, there was no story and what there was instead was awful.
I mean, for example, Brenda, the leader of the 'coven' has a closer-than-a-sister best friend whom she's known for years, yet not once has she confided in her over this bad feeling she's been having until she's pretty much forced into an 'intervention' of sorts! How close can they be when Brenda won't even call or drop her best friend a text? It's tell one thing, but show another all the way here.
The plot, such as it is, is that new age garbarge shop owner Brenda, 'has a bad feeling about this' but what 'this' is, she can't say. She supposed to be a witch, but none of her purported magic, nor that of her 'coven' is of any value whatsoever since no one can tell her anything useful. Plus, she's hearing voices. This woman is in dire need of lithium and psychotherapy.
The other metronomc voice in this tediously tick-tock story is of her purported lover-to-be, Caroline, who is, of course a magical crystal saleswoman. The problem is that at 30% these two had barely even said 'hello'. The blurb asked stupidly (as usual) "Who - or what - stalks Caroline?" Well that would be her control-freak husband who Caroline is apparently too stupid to ditch despite all the freedom she has. The blurb boasts, "Brenda and her coven must act swiftly, before the coming storm blows them all away." Given how ineffective those losers are, it ain't gonna happen. This story was truly bad and boring.
Friday, September 10, 2021
Judas Horse by Lynda La Plante
"From an Edgar Award-winning author" who evidently didn't win for original character names. "After a mutilated body is discovered in an English country home, detective Jack Warr" Jack as a main character name is an automatic reject for me. But Jack Warr? Seriously? Barf.
The Devil's Bones by Jefferson Bass
"When a woman's burnt body is found seated inside a burned car" Wait, a burnt body inside a burned car? How in hell did that happen? That just burns my biscuits! Now if it had been written by Sam Bass, I might've been interested! Dumb-ass book description for sure.
Gold Mine Massacre by William W Johnstone, JA Johnstone
I donlt normally pay any attentiont o dumb-ass Westerns. "When two businessmen arrive in the town of Big Rock" Big Rock seriously? "to mine for gold, Smoke Jensen" Smoke? Seriously? "and his daughter, Denny," Tough horny hombres love to eat at Denny's.... barf.
Will Harper Mysteries: Vol. 1-6 by David Crosby
"Reporter turned private investigator Will Harper navigates Florida's waterways in his yacht as he hunts down the state's most slippery criminals." What are they? Porpoises? The police refer to them as poips - it's short for poipetrators. LOL! And Whip(smart) poor Will thought there was something fishy going on! Was he ever wrong! It was mammaly.... Barf.
Calculated Deception by KT Lee
"When professor Ree Ryland is framed for a crime, she joins forces with FBI agent Parker Landon to help pin the real culprit." What? She's going to pin him? Is she going to wear his letter jacket? How romantic! "But the evidence they find points to a diabolical plan" Diabolical? Oh my god! Call the FBI! Oh wait, he's already come! He'll get on it as soon as they get out of bed.... Ree Ryland? Ree-ly? Does the FBI memo about this case have a subject line that reads: Re: Ree? Why not name her Ree Ree Reeurboat? LOL!
The MacTaggart Brothers Trilogy by Anna Durand
"Who can resist a man in a kilt?" Me! I volunteer. This is another condescending look at Scotland by an American author: "When the sexy, Scottish MacTaggart brothers travel to the US, their charming brogues and fiery passion will lead to red-hot connections" and lots of penicillin shots. Barf. Stereotype much?
Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb
"Dragons have returned to Rain Wilds - but they can no longer fly." Oh my fucking god! What a tragedy! How did they get back to Rain Wilds? Uber? Electric scooter? Light rail? Dragon their asses overland? Yawn.
Caulky by KM Neuhold
"Newly single Ren isn't ready for another relationship" Of course he isn't. "...but he can't seem to resist hot contractor Cole," Hot - Cole? Get it? Barf. Is this contractor going to caulk his holes? You bet your ass. Because this is all about sex. Love and a relationship have nothing to do with it, nor will they ever in this ridiculous genre, and every single one of them who isn't ready for a relationship inevitably ends up in one....
Ignite the Sun by Hanna C Howard
"An evil witch queen..." Evil. Withc. Queen. Seriously? "...has shrouded her kingdom in shadow" Why? And how is this causing problems, just out of curiosity? Not that this plot hasn't been done to death. "...but 16-year-old Siria is determined to restore the light. With the help of a motley group of rebels," That's where I'm looking for the exit, right there. Motley? Quirky? Count me out. And Siria? Siriasly? What's her BFF's name? Alexia? Besides, the sun was ignited some four or five buillion years ago wasn't it?! Siria's a bit late to the party.
The Event by Whitney Dineen
"When an embarrassing faux pas cuts her dream career short, Emmie reluctantly returns home to Creek Water, Missouri. Can she survive as the subject of small-town gossip?" I'm guessing yes and she'll meet the heartthrob of her life. Yet another useless female main character running away instead of fighting back. How unexpected! Not! Barf.
Murder in the Paperback Parlor by Ellery Adams
"A clever whodunit"? How is it clever when it's the same as all the others: a murder in a bookstore which the proprietor has to solve, because evidently the police are too stupid? "When a famous writer dies at Storyton Hall's Valentine's Day book retreat, proprietor Jane and her book club must race to catch a heartless killer!" Why? The best thing, clearly, is to avoid bookstores like the plague because they're very dangerous places! 'Buy all your books online if you don't want to be murdered' is the take home message here. This is how Amazon is making a killing....
City of Shattered Light by Claire Winn
From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
I had high hopes for this story which seemed to promise two strong female leads, but once again, as they so often do, the book blurb failed to give an honest description of the story, so it was more of a lose than a Winn for me. It was slow to start and seemed very repetitive. I was ready to ditch it after chapter one, and I would have, except this was a review book, so I felt I had to give it a chance. It did pick up somewhat in chapter two, but even so, it never got going. It was such a long, repetitive slog that I grew bored with it.
It was a very pedantic 2-Person PoV story tick-tocking tediously like a metronome between the two main female characters' perspectives that it was putting me to sleep. At least it wasn't first person PoV, but the tedium was strong with this one and by 52% I'd had enough of the repetitive antics of supposed hero "Riven" and her hi-tech non-love-interest "Asa" that I could stand to read no more. I cared nothing for either of the characters or for their fate, and their supposed love story was dead in the water from the very start.
Asa Almeida is the 17-year-old heir to a hi-tech empire. Riven Hawthorne - which is a thoroughly stupid name, is a lowlife street crook who talks big, but consistently achieves nothing. She's supposed to be a no-nonsense girl who is a dead-shot with her antique pistols, but despite having two clear-cut chances to kill her arch-rival (in the half that I read) she fails both times and one failure leads to another. Riven is thoroughly incompetent: all talk and no traction, and she has no spine. Asa, who is supposed to be smart, is a complete dumb-ass and she persistently proves it.
The 'winterdark' MacGuffin in the story appeared to be a direct rip-off of William Gibson's 'wintermute' which is an artificial intelligence character in his novel Neuromancer but since in this story it really is just a name without, apparently, anything behind it (not in the part I read anyway), I guess it doesn't matter what it was. The other side of this coin is tha tthe auhtor evidently hasnlt ehard of a farady cage whcih woudl ahve made her little device undetectable at dradiofrwuencies
The writing had issues, too. I read, for example, at one point: "No doubt the rumor mill would love to grate her to a pulp. A mill grinds, it doesn't grate. Unless of course it hasn't been oiled in a while.... At another point I read, "The phoenix ruffled its wings." Nah! I’m guessing it ruffled its feathers! Then again: "Riven willed herself to be impassable," was used when the author needed 'impassive'.
Some of the technology wasn't very well thought-through. For example, Asa has a suit that she can use to make herself invisible, but this author - as do many sci-fi writers, sci-fi movies, and TV shows - conflates invisible with undetectable. Visible light is only one minuscule portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, and trapping that doesn't trap everything else, from gamma rays at one end to Am radio at the other. The suit wouldn't have worked, and the author even seems to admit this at one point where one of the guardbots stops and scans her. Clearly it detected something. The author also seems to forget that Asa's body is in motion, and emitting heat. Both of these things can be detected. The suit itself by its very use is emitting electronic frequencies.
A smock was actually developed that used tiny cameras to transmit an image of the scenery to the opposite side, so it made the smock close to invisible, but not quite. The thing is that even something like this is still actually there. If a bright light shone on it, it would cast a shadow of sorts, and any radar pulse aimed at it would bounce back faster and with a different 'feel' to it from her body than, say, the wall in front of which Asa was standing, so there was so much wrong with this that it was laughable. For a young kids' story it would have been fine, but not for grown-ups, not unless you're going to say it has magical powers (like Harry Potter's invisibility cloak) rather than hi-tech powers.
For me, the worst part was that the story quickly became bogged down in Riven's tedious, endless, and leaden-footed non-attempts to escape the absurdly one-dimensional criminal city, where every single thing is rotten to the core, and every single person is evil and amazingly good at finding and defeating Riven. It made this story truly boring. I can't commend this at all.
Murder at an Irish Wedding by Carlene O'Connor
"Siobhán O’Sullivan..." stop right there! I don't need to read any further to know this is yet another condescending Irish story. bring on the leprechauns and start the shillelagh-shallying! Only a quarter of the top twenty Irish names begin with the O'prefix! There's only one O'name in the top five, yet every single Irish story by US authors is uninventively and unimaginatively is larded with them! This author is an American who lives in Chicago, BTW. Yawn.
Strange Little Girl by John Dean
"When he’s called to the scene of a desecrated grave, detective John Blizzard..." stop right there. John Blizzard? Really? I'm out of here just based on the ridiculous name. It tells you everything you need to know about this style of writing, and none of it is good.
Ripple of Doubt by Jenifer Ruff
"When she retreats to a secluded lake house, FBI agent Victoria Heslin is looking for a quiet respite - but upon discovering a woman’s drowned body, she’s pulled into a disturbing murder case where every one of her neighbors is a suspect" Why? It's not her turf. It's the job of the lcoal police. And isn't this just another story where a 'retired' person is pulled back into the job? It's been done so many times now. Yawn.
Obliteration by Darren Wearmouth, James S Murray
"Humanity faces a war for survival when subterranean creatures begin to emerge from the ground." Holy shit! The last place I'd expect subterranean creatures to emerge from is the ground! Hasn't this been done already in Pacific Rim? Close enough? But it took two people to write it, so it has to be twice as good, right? Yawn.
Monday, September 6, 2021
The Royal Art of Poison by Eleanor Herman
Subtitled "Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul" this audiobook goes into some detail - often quite nauseating and gruesome, be warned, but at other times highly amusing, and then at others downright depressing to think people were once so ill-educated and poorly informed. It's read admirably well, given the subject matter, by Susie Berneis.
The sad, but in hindsight and with historical distance, amusing thing about the nobility of yesteryear, is that even as they had people to taste their food to catch would-be poisoners, these idiots were in fact slowly poisoning themselves by employing dumb-ass makeup containing lead and arsenic, and adding things to their diet for medicinal purposes, which were also actually poisons.
Herman's well-written book travels through history from ancient times to modern, reporting on various historical personalities, dignitaries, and royalty who had encounters with one poison or another in one way or another, from belladonna to plutonium, some of which survived, others who succumbed slowly or rapidly. This author has done her research, and it shows without being tedious.
The book is fascinating and very educational, especially if you're thinking of writing your own historical novel involving someone's untimely demise! Which I am not, but you might be! I highly commend this book as a worthy read.
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