Mini-Reviews #20…
[Two crime stories today that maybe justify the $0 price? Don’t take my word for it, of course. Reviews are always just a reader’s opinion. Yours is as good as mine—maybe even better!]
Eleven. Carolyn Arnold, author (Hibbert & Stiles, 2011). There’s a lot of publishing folklore out there. One bit of advice to authors is: give away the first book in the series so that readers are attracted to the rest of the series. Another, almost contradictory piece of advice: write the next book in the series because the new book will motivate readers to read the first ones. My answer to this bit of folklore is: it all depends on how the writer writes! If the series is a good one, books that use a few of the same characters and maybe similar settings but can be read independently, it doesn’t matter—but the writer has to spin a good yarn.
This writer has taken the first advice. She even puts an excerpt from the next book right up front. I paid $0 for this book, but I don’t like to see giveaways. The author might as well take a promenade in Times Square carrying a sign that says, “I put $0 value on all my hard work”! But this author was a believer, yet advice #1 didn’t work with this reader. The book’s OK, but I won’t be buying any more books from this series. It moves slowly in the beginning—the proverbial “hook” for me was completely absent (ho hum, another serial killer tracked down by an intrepid FBI agent)—but it picks up speed toward the end. The Redeemer (the serial killer) is already in jail, but he has disciples. The agents don’t know who they are. The reader doesn’t either. They come out of the woodwork throughout the novel. If mystery, that’s not misdirection, that’s using deus ex machina to save a plot. If thriller, that just doesn’t work for me.
Of course, this book is neither. The author is up front about it: this is a police procedural about those national cops, the FBI. As such, it has enough unsubs to satisfy any addict of CBS’s Criminal Minds—it’s a poor copy of that show, in fact—at least the author didn’t try to channel Dexter. Readers of those kinds of crime story might like this novel, though. Purists probably won’t, because the psychobabble explaining the unsubs’ actions is a bit like our local weather forecasters—it’s spot on only after the events occur. Of course, profiling is a bit like predicting the weather, isn’t it?
Loose Ends. D. D. Van Dyke, author (2014). Either there was a typo or the author misspelled his own pen name. No matter—I put a space between the Van and Dyke. This is another case where the author hopes a freebie will hook a reader into a series. I’m tempted in this case. The author writes mysteries/thrillers and sci-fi just like me. And the story, if lacking any serious themes, moved along and entertained me for a few hours.
But California “Cal” Corwin, female ex-cop and now a PI working in the Frisco area, was a character who presented a problem for me. First, a female protagonist can’t be hard-boiled. She can be tough, sassy, kick-ass, sexy, needy, crazy, confused, protective—you name it, but hard-boiled doesn’t work for me. There’s a reason Chandler’s Marlowe and Parker’s Spenser weren’t women. Hard-boiled is for guys. I know that sounds sexist, but I don’t care. My Castilblanco is hard-boiled; his partner Chen can be described by many of the listed adjectives, but she’s not hard-boiled. Here the author’s Cal might as well be Kojak standing on a corner sucking a lollipop. Remington Steele hired a hard-boiled surrogate. Cal just doesn’t work for me.
Second, and probably related, Cal as a “tough guy” is more of a bully than a sleuth. The author writes that off (pardon the pun) as her being an ex-cop, and cops on the beat are tough, don’t you know. You’d think Cal would forget about the cop tactics. She almost died when her superior sent her in against regs to help a bomb techie. Boom! Cal sued SFPD and that superior and won the case, but colleagues were probably justified in not liking the negative publicity…and Cal. In any case, you’d think the bomb blast would have softened the toughness.
Finally, the title says what I’ll complain about most. (Possible spoilers follow.) The author leaves too many loose ends: her relationship with the reporter, the mysterious hit man, and the rapprochement with SFPD. This is tantamount to a cliffhanger, and I don’t like them. Can you say sequel? And that’s the reason it’s $0!
***
Like edgy mystery, suspense, and thrills that treat some important themes? Have you tried the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series”? Some of the books are more thriller than mystery, but in either case the two NYPD homicide detectives, often with viewpoints that are yin and yang, make an astonishing crime-fighting duo. There are six novels in the series that starts with The Midas Bomb, already in its second edition and available in all ebook formats for $2.99 and paper for $9.99 (Create Space)—other ebooks in the series are still Amazon only. But check out The Midas Bomb first. The terrorist theme is even more current today. And this is where it all started, with Rollie Castilblanco trying to get past losing two previous partners and adapt to Chen, his new one.
In libris libertas….
