By now I suspect that many Jeffery Deaver fans know he has gone over to “the dark side.”  Either he’s an Ian Fleming wannabe, is tired of Lincoln Rhyme, has run out of ideas to write about, or was enticed by a multi-million dollar contract, but his new 007 adventure Carte Blanche has been released.  Too bad.  Even Jeffery Deaver can’t haul me kicking and screaming back to 007.

Now, don’t get me wrong—writers pick up famous series and do marvelous things with the settings and characters that are already established.  The continuation of Ludlum’s Bourne series comes to mind and even some of the Star Trek books aren’t bad as space operas, although they’re more fantasy than sci-fi, of course.  The difference is that the writers of those series’ continuations aren’t as well known as Jeffery Deaver.  C’mon, Jeff, what gives?

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A second edition of the FBI’s “Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide” is currently under revision and will be out on October 1.  Is this a new and improved version?  Hardly.  While emotional rants from organizations like the ACLU are expected in this and all similar cases, a saner review tells you that it’s just more of the same—and that’s the problem.  What are reasonable limits on our privacy?  How much of our privacy are we willing to lose in order to protect ourselves from criminal elements and terrorism?

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This was available for some time for next-to-nothing on Amazon Shorts.  Alas, the latter has been sacrificed to the marketing gods–Amazon’s loss, your gain, especially if you have read my sci-fi thriller Full Medical. An old friend was upset that I killed off his favorite character in that book, so I resurrected him, in a sense.  Enjoy.

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Character Assassination

Steven M. Moore

Copyright, 2007

“Your holiness, sir, I really want to lodge a complaint.”

St. Peter twirled the keys to the gates to heaven with his left hand, his right perched jauntily on his corresponding hip.  He was assuming a defiant pose as this was the first case where a fictional character had wandered up to the heavenly gates.  He didn’t know quite what to do with him.  In the meantime, he was twirling the keys to the kingdom with his left hand so that Old Bob would know that the saints were ambidextrous, not favoring either the left or the right, but the old drunk apparently was not impressed.  So the bearded saint decided to demand an explanation.

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Many people view AARP as a relatively harmless special interest group.  Now this view might become more cemented in the national conscience since Betty White is doing some irreverent and risqué commercials for them.  However, I’m not particularly a fan of AARP.  During the debate about drug coverage for seniors, they sold out to Mr. Bush and Big Pharma.  The result was Medicare Part D with the famous donut hole, that extension to Medicare that confuses many seniors and allows insurance companies to play fast and loose with their drug needs.

In addition, I always have resented the idea that 50+ meant “retired,” which is absurd and probably why the original name was changed to the acronym.  Of course, the threshold was put in place in order to latch on to more members.  While the cost of membership is minimal, it all adds up to a tidy sum, I’m sure, but not to nearly as much as what they make selling insurance to elders.  In many ways, they are part of the medical insurance problem.

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I’ve been back over a week from our trip to Alaska.  I’ve been debating what to say about it.  I’m not much into travelogues (go buy a Fodor’s), so I’ve been thinking of something clever and different to say.  So, here goes—maybe not clever, but probably different.

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