[Holiday shopping?  Check these inexpensive ebooks out as an online gift for your reading friends and relatives.  Or, any ebook in my catalog.  You can also give them one of my trade paperbacks.  Full Medical, Soldiers of God, The Midas Bomb, and Survivors of the Chaos are all available in paper.  The Midas Bomb, Chen and Castilblanco #1, will soon have a second edition in all ebook formats as well as paper.  All quality entertainment at a reasonable price!]

The Dante Connection (Genieve Lenard #2).  Estelle Ryan, author (Amazon Digital Services, 2013).  I read and reviewed the first book in this series too, but this one can stand-alone if you just want to jump in (the sign an author knows how to write a good series).  All the original characters are back, including the villain, but enough backstory is provided to bring the reader up-to-date.  Genieve is a functional autistic who retreats into a dark place and writes out Mozart opuses when she gets overwhelmed, but she possesses an uncanny skill for reading body language, from facial expressions (which many people can do) to small movements and muscle tensions.  There isn’t much mystery here—it’s more a suspenseful thriller.  It moves along with enough twists and turns to keep any fan of the genre interested.  It’s also better than #1.  Apparently an entire multibook series is planned, so if the author can keep this up, I’m hooked.

Dead Wrong (Blackmore Sisters Mystery #1).  Leighann Dobbs, author (Amazon Digital Services, 2013).  The price was right (a freebie), so I decided to try a cozy mystery!  What’s cozy mystery?  A story about ordinary non-pros solving a crime—the MC (in this case four MCs) are usually librarians, teachers, housewives, and so forth, living in out-of-the-way places, who lose patience with the pros and practice DIY crime solving.  The out-of-the-way place in this case is Ogunquit, Maine (it’s called Noquitt in the book, for some strange reason, but all the other local names are the same—I know them well, including Perkins Cove).  One of the pros is hiding something (not resolved in the book); another is romantically interested in one of the Blackmore sisters—Victorian-style romance is another characteristic of this fluffy subgenre.

I don’t get it.  I thought we were past Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher (also hiding out in Maine).  There’s not enough meat on the bones to call this turkey a real mystery (not disparaging here, because I love succulent turkey meat), whatever that might mean now, although it was a pleasant four-hour read.  Is the only difference between cozy and romantic mystery the length?  I’m thinking of Mary Higgins Clark and Carla Neggers, who write longer pieces of fluff (i.e. no earth-shaking themes).  Fans of this subgenre (librarians, teachers, housewives, and so forth?) will enjoy this pleasant escapist piece, and I’ll have to admit it was very well written with some complex twists (some of the mystery still remains after you finish, so call that a series cliffhanger).  (BTW, I know “fluff” sounds condescending, but just think of cotton candy or whipped cream in Irish coffee—fluff can be good in the right circumstances.)

Kill Switch (Angel of Darkness #1).  Steve N. Lee, author (Amazon Digital Services, 2015).  Very little mystery here.  Tess is the Angel of Darkness aka old-fashioned Charles Bronson vigilante, except that she’s female.  She has some agenda we’re not sure about associated with returning to NYC and wreaking revenge on someone, and she has enough creds from training in India and China to do it, but Poland is a stopover where she helps a distraught and dying mother find a daughter kidnapped for a sex-trafficking gang.  Not finding out what Tess’ mission is a bit of a cliffhanger—that’s a negative.

This is definitely not for squeamish readers.  In one scene, for example, Tess calls the mother on her threat to kill one of the kidnappers, and she can’t do it, so Tess completes the job by sticking the guy’s switchblade into his eye.  Tess is a bad ass, but she has a switch that allows her to go from compassionate, sensitive person to a dangerous assassin (learned in the Far East?).  She reminds me of Barry Eisler’s hero, in fact.

If you’re OK with all the violence, let me insist that this is a great story about strong, intelligent women defending themselves from unscrupulous men and their criminal abuses.  In some of the fight scenes, I found myself cheering Tess on.  I agree with her vigilante sentiment—taking out these SOBs, even if it’s a drop in the huge ocean of bastards who exploit women, makes the world a better place.  I’m a firm believer that the world would also be a better place if women were running things—in that case, we probably wouldn’t need vigilantes like Tess.

In elibris libertas….     

In my 10/29 blog post, “Theme v. Plot,” I explained the difference between theme and plot and gave some examples.  The bottom line: themes are woven into plots; while some plots have no major theme worth mentioning (fluffy romances and cozy mysteries for example), mine usually do.  (Some people don’t like that.  That’s fine.  Don’t read my novels then!)  So, at the risk of being accused of blatant self-promotion, let me list some of the themes you’ll find in my novels.  Mind you, I don’t use these themes to proselytize–I often present both sides of an issue with one character espousing one view, another the other.  The themes are sometimes indicated in the blurbs, but those mainly deal with the plot, not the themes.  Here we go:

Environmental issues.  Climate control, global warming, green energy, carbon emissions, toxic wastes—these all fit into this theme.  It’s always been a big concern of mine.  I’m a long-standing member of The Nature Conservancy and sympathizer of the World Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club, and the various PIRGs that push environmental issues (I have to limit my financial support to just one unfortunately).  What we’ve done to our planet and continue doing is unconscionable.  Because I’ve neglected this theme far too long, it will be a main theme in Chen and Castilblanco #7, Gaia and the Goliaths (coming next year!).

Arms smuggling and gun control.  This topic is probably on everyone’s mind as the discussion sparked by the slaughter of twenty-six people in Connecticut continues (see Tuesday’s post, “Who are the Criminals?”).  I explore both the national and international problems in Angels Need Not Apply and Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder.  Do I have a solution?  Nope.  As long as the NRA is around, I can only point out the problems.

WMDs. These include dirty bombs, biologicals, and chemical and atomic weapons.  Whether you can call an IED like a pipe bomb or explosive pressure cooker a WMD is a matter of debate.  We haven’t faced the big stuff yet in this country, but is it only a matter of time?  While small groups of insane individuals or a solitary gunman can make the use of the small stuff more frequent (you can find directions on the internet), we should always be on the watch for groups who want a bigger bang for their effort.  My novels The Midas Bomb and Aristocrats and Assassins have this as a theme.  A form of biological warfare is considered in No Amber Waves of Grain.

Organ harvesting and cloning.  There have been rumors.  Whether unfounded or not, it’s only a matter of time because the financial rewards and desire for a longer life are strong motivators.  It’s the law of supply and demand at the criminal level.  There are never enough donors, so there’s a black market for this.  It can be highly organized, but probably not as much as in Full Medical—just fiction…for now.

Futuristic weapons and soldiers.  Soldiers with augmented skill sets through armor or breeding are associated with this common theme in sci-fi, but the technology is close at hand.  The situations in Muddlin’ Through and Evil Agenda could happen sooner than I imagined, though.
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(Linda Hall, The Bitter End, 2015, ASIN B017RM1R9G)

Emmeline (Em) Ridge is a female boat delivery captain.  In other words, she’ll follow rich people around the oceans and deliver their sailing yachts to them because they want to get from point A to B faster.  In the first book in this series, she had just lost her husband but still managed to solve a mystery.  Fate gives her another blow by involving her in a new mystery related to an uncle’s disappearance.  Here we go again.  Ready for a fun ride?  Sailing we will go.

Sequels are always suspect.  First, there’s the question of whether the book can stand alone.  This one does, and it does it very well.  There’s enough back story to bring the reader quickly up-to-date.  A few characters are the same—Em, of course, her cop friend, her old neighbors, and so forth, persons who are almost part of that Maine landscape, and the author does a good job of describing them anew without belaboring the point.  A new protagonist, Em’s uncle Ferd (short for Ferdinand), is mostly absent except for back story, but he plays the important role of a potential victim.  He’s also accused of murder, but maybe he’s really dead, and Em stubbornly pursues the case, even over the protests of her sage but conflicted cop friend.

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This ramp-up to 2016 elections has been noted for outrageous statements from the wannabe presidential candidates, most notably from the GOP side.  Just recently Ted Cruz opined publicly that all the criminals are Democrats.  He went on to say that’s why liberals or progressives are so easy on crime and want to reform prisons and reduce sentences.  This buffoon’s bombastic and bloviating blathering (I can alliterate with the best) might have its genesis in the Canadian’s desire to out-trump Trump, but it’s an insult to most of the voting public: does he actually believe any sane person will buy into the sewage effluent springing forth from his mouth?  (Note that I said “sane person”; there are rabid elements in our society who will believe anything—Trump depends on that.)

Only two states allow felons to vote while in prison.  I assume a corollary to that factoid is that only two states allow felons to register as a member of a political party while in prison, but maybe that corollary is wrong.  Some people argue that disenfranchising felons isn’t a good idea—I’m not one of them (if they want their civil rights, they can stay out of prison, except when it comes down to wrongful convictions)—but the current state of affairs implies that the prison population isn’t comprised of registered Democrats.  So, the brilliant senator who should be a terrible embarrassment to the state of Texas (they have to own up to many embarrassments, of course) must be saying that there are criminal elements who haven’t been caught yet…and they’re all Democrats?

I won’t dwell on the absurdities Cruz has said and is saying more than this.  Instead, let me turn the question around: why doesn’t the GOP own up to the criminal label?  Let’s start with the NRA (there are many other examples, including the pro-life rhetoric—the GOP has no commitment to protecting lives AFTER birth!–but the slavish pandering to the NRA is the most deadly one).  Every NRA member is a criminal because s/he enables murderous elements to commit atrocities against innocent victims.  This lobbying group pushes back on every reasonable move to limit arsenals like the one the recent California shooters possessed.  It’s become so bad that the NY Times decided to put an editorial about this on the front page last Saturday (the first one since 1920 and not strong enough in my opinion—I don’t have to coddle readers, but the Times still does).

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This post isn’t about the NSA or a peeping Tom (both are creepy and spooky, but something akin to the first is necessary considering terrorist threats to this country and the world).  I’m talking about a NY Times article two weeks ago (11/22/15) about a Times columnist looking over Lee Child’s shoulder as he wrote yet another Jack Reacher book.  We’ll forget about Child’s possible business motivations for allowing this.  We’ll even forget the following question: OMG, another Jack Reacher book?  (The article discusses #20!)  I want to consider the psychological reasons why any writer would even allow this.

I probably write thousands of words on any given day, Saturdays, Sundays, and U.S. holidays being exceptions.  I hammer out these blog posts, maybe do some social media (others might be tired of my verbose comments there—I’m an opinionated SOB—your saving grace is that I’m mostly a lurker), and work on my stories (generally procrastinating with the copy editing in preference to actual writing and content editing).  I really don’t want anyone looking over my shoulder.  I want the possibility of writing in my skivvies if it strikes my fancy.  I want the possibility of snacking on a forbidden tidbit or leftover (cold pizza can be a breakfast food) or having an extra cup of java, maybe laced with Jameson whiskey, without anyone being an eye witness.

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The Hunger Games: Mockingjay #2.  Francis Lawrence, Dir.  All bad!  I felt like I was a passive spectator of the video game Call of Duty, only it was about an inept bunch of futuristic warriors.  Never could get past the idea of bows and arrows, but I guess it makes sense if there’s no NRA around in futuristic dystopias (I always look for the positives, even in a dystopia).  The slimy gray zombies were the final touch, though—completely unnecessary (a plot gimmick in the original book?).  This ponderous series is based on Suzanne Collins YA novels, more fantasy than sci-fi (certainly not good sci-fi), and the movie reflects that target audience in almost every aspect (the dialogue is often infantile and reeking of sappy sentimentality).

I confess I didn’t see the first three movies.  Didn’t want to see this one either.  My only experience with this franchise was via “peeks inside” and reading the blurbs for the books on Amazon because I was curious to see what all the hubbub was about.  Never saw anything worth spending my time on.  (Although plenty of people feel otherwise, I can live with being the lone voice in the wilderness.)  Did I miss back-story info from those earlier movies?  Yeah, some of the lesser characters, hangovers from the previous movies, were a bit confusing to me at times, but for the most part everything was all too predictable and mind-numbing.  Like I said, Call of Duty has more plot.

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It seems every GOP presidential candidate now has a tax reform plan.  Guess who it favors?  Their reforms are all various schemes for shell games designed to redistribute wealth from the middle class to the wealthy, of course.  No one wants to tax the poor because even the GOP knows you can’t squeeze blood from a stone (of course, they still won’t raise the minimum wage either).  But at least the GOP is up front about enriching the elites and robbing the middle class.  The Dems just might be worse because they blather double-speak about helping the middle class out but are beholding to the rich and their special interest groups and lobbyists.  Only Bernie Sanders has eschewed the largesse of the rich elites.  I wonder how long he’ll last.

Wealth redistribution via taxes is insidious.  First, there’s the infamous payroll tax.  If you’re receiving wages from a company or the government, you’re taxed.  But many members of the rich elites pay less tax than you do because of loopholes and other ways accessible to them because they are NOT on a payroll.  Even a poor fast food worker receives a paycheck that has state and local and often city taxes deducted.  S/he might get it all back at the end of the year, but meanwhile s/he’s giving a zero-interest loan to the U.S. government.  And none of this discussion considers percentages.  They’re completely skewed to favor those payroll workers making lots of money, like in high tech.  And don’t forget FICA.  There’s a cutoff for that.  Eliminate it, and Social Security and Medicare would never have any problems keeping up with retirees!

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Movie Reviews #20…

[Apology from Steve: Either I missed reviewing some recent movies I’ve seen, or we were too busy this fall for a lot of movies.  No matter.  Here’s a long one for the Thanksgiving holidays in the U.S.  If you’re traveling during these days, have patience and be super careful.  Have a wonderful time with family and friends.  And, whether you’re religious or not, there’s always something to be thankful for in your own life and room for a thought or two about those who are in dire straits.]

SPECTRE.  Director, Sam Mendes.  The movie-goer will be shaken, not stirred.  Bond, James Bond, is back.  First, the shaken: This is the quintessential Bond movie, filled with gimmicks (“smart blood”—c’mon!), explosions, car and helicopter chases (lots of helicopters), and pretty much an absurd plot that harkens back to Herr Blofeld and SPECTRE, that crime syndicate that wants to dominate the world.  Of course, SPECTRE is modernized.  Bond’s loose-cannon status comes to the fore, the new M (Ralph Fiennes) is a wee bit ambivalent about 007, and C wants to end the license-to-kill program.  It’s all good fun.

Second, the not stirred: Skyfall had some depth, probably the most of any of the Bond films.  It also had Adele performing the theme song.  I figured SPECTRE would disappoint in comparison.  It sets the bar high for any Bond film that follows it.  Trolling the old films for ideas didn’t help my perception.  By the time Roger Moore became Bond, I was already tired of Blofeld and his Persian cat.  And frankly Daniel Craig was looking a bit old in SPECTRE like Roger Moore always looked in his Bond films.  Craig can still play the tough guy, but you wonder if he manages it by ODing on Boost, that nutritional drink for the elderly.

Lea Seydoux does a good job as Bond’s main squeeze in this one.  She just might be the most talented actor in this film.  I’m predicting a bright future for her.  Of course, if psychs were like this, all men would be in therapy!  Her profession is a wee bit farfetched, but she bounces from denying grief at daddy’s death into Bond’s arms in a convincing fashion, playing a kick-ass female rather than the usual Bond eye-candy.  Andrew Scott is completely miscast as C.  No way in hell someone this young gets this high in the Brit’s security establishment.  He looks like a lawyer just out of law school and without any experience.  Not convincing at all.

It was decades ago when I read ALL of Ian Fleming’s Bond stories.  I frankly can’t remember Blofeld and SPECTRE, but some days I have trouble remembering what I ate the day before, so that doesn’t count for much.  As is often the case, the books were often better than the corresponding movies (although Sean Connery matched my mental image of Bond in Dr. No), but the movie makers soon ran out of books and turned to original screen plays.  Except for Skyfall, they’ve always been lacking and quite formulaic.  The movie SPECTRE is no exception.  Still fun, though.  (PG-13.)

In elibris libertas….    

Item. Anne Frank.  Strange happenings here.  Was that book only based on her diary?  The recent extension of the copyright has been celebrated by some and decried by others.  The case opens the Pandora box of copyright law yet again.  Of course, the only reason that there’s a polemic is that there’s a lot of money involved.  For some reason, I thought this was all settled when the movie came out, but I guess I’m wrong.  Makes you think about copyrights for your own books if you’re an author.  Be sure and put that copyright statement in the front of your ebook, and get an ISBN, not just an ASIN for it, because that will help establish your copyright too.  In fact, also put the copyright statement on each MS.

Item. Some stats about pbooks v. ebooks.  In a digest by Jonathan Stolper of some recent Nielsen’s data, the pbook v. ebook split is now 74%/26%, but the ratio varies widely by genre.  Makes me wish I could afford some pbooks if that ratio holds true for mysteries, thrillers, and sci-fi (I still need the genre-specific stats to make a wise decision on that, plus some cash I don’t have).  Decisions, decisions.  I’d like to reach more readers obviously, but I’ve decided to start making some of my ebooks no longer Amazon exclusive and put them up on Smashwords too, which distributes to places like Apple, B&N, and Kobo.

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I’m not sure if I should be proud of it, but I just realized I don’t have one serial killer in my novels.  About half my books are in the mystery/suspense/thriller genre, and many of the sci-fi books have nods to that genre–for example, are Soldiers of God and No Amber Waves of Grain mystery, thriller, or sci-fi?  Readers can worry about the genre labels; I just write the story.  But it’s interesting in a self-analytic sort of way that I write a lot of crime fiction yet have no serial killers.

The first chapter of Soldiers of God reads like there’s a serial killer on the loose.  That’s intentional and about as close as I came to having one.  You might argue that Mary Jo’s John Hinckley-like pursuer in Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By is a serial killer, but he’s not; he’s just out for revenge because she jilted him (remember that Hinckley had a thing for Jodie Foster?).  Continuing my self-analysis—I don’t think I could go to any psychologist or psychiatrist to ask why I don’t have characters who are serial killers—let me ruminate here about some potential reasons I have for avoiding them as characters.

Serial killers are ubiquitous in fiction.  From Mr. Hyde and Jack the Ripper to Hannibal Lecter and beyond, mysteries, suspense and horror stories, thrillers, and police procedurals have featured these mad villains.  I’d wager that the number of serial killers in fiction far outnumber the real ones, at least those of the latter who have been brought to justice.  I’ve read a few Father Brown mysteries, for example, and some involve serial killers—so this is really old stuff.  Freud should have written a treatise on our preoccupation with them.  The fictional universe contains too many serial killers, so I don’t need to add mine.

Are stories about serial killers just avoiding other issues?  A typical story about a serial killer is about a psycho who murders in some particularly gross and gruesome manner, maybe taunts the authorities, and matches wits with somebody from law enforcement.  Yawn.  The only Tess Gerritsen novel I’ve read was about a serial killer—it turned me off from the rest of her catalog.  I don’t know how many of Sue Grafton’s alphabet novels involve a serial killer, but I’ll pass, thank you.  Somehow, this is a “safe topic,” though.  Everyone agrees that a serial killer is bad and some hero should match wits with him (or her) and bring the perp to justice.  Yawn.  But is this attraction because many readers don’t want to be bothered with or confront the other ills of society: the illegal gun trade, child porn and sexual exploitation, spousal abuse, hidden government agendas, the abuses of capitalism, pollution and global warming, the drug trade, and so forth?  I prefer stories that make me think; I often write stories with complex themes intertwined in the plots for that reason.
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