Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 15

Investigation, Mediation, Vindication by Chris Tullbane

Investigation, Mediation, Vindication by Chris Tullbane

I love the idea behind this novel. Multiple fantasy races live side by side with humans without humans knowing it. Occasionally these groups come into conflict with each other. When they do, they use a mediator to try and resolve the problems peacefully because when open warfare breaks out, cities often get destroyed.

 

At the start of this novel, every mediator in San Francisco is murdered except one—an incompetent PI with no practical experience and no knowledge that anyone but humans live in the world. If he fails, it is likely the whole city will be destroyed.

 

I like the main character and I really like the demigod of nightmares. This story could have been great. Unfortunately, it is at least twice as long as it should be, and that extra length really dragged this novel down. Most of its charm comes in the hero responding to the supernatural and the demigod of nightmares trying to make himself understood. The mystery at the heart of the story was transparent from moment one. Before we even learned what item was stolen to precipitate the crisis, I had identified the culprit and the culprit’s motivations. That wouldn’t have been bad if the novel had been significantly shorter, but it isn’t, and I quickly reached the point (even before we met the demigod of nightmares) where I just wanted the book to be done. Fortunately, the demigod brightened things up for a while. And the stolen item is quirky enough to be worth a couple of laughs, but it wasn’t enough to salvage things and make this book the great novel it should have been.

 

So, I give the author lots of points for a fun idea with a couple of great characters, but wish desperately that he could have found an editor to help him make the idea work.

 

The Colonels by W.E.B. Griffin

The Colonels by W.E.B. Griffin

The soap opera aspects of this series go into high gear as Major Craig Lowell simply cannot keep his pants zipped no matter how stupid he knows he is being. Perhaps the alcoholism (which no one in the novel comes close to recognizing) is part of the problem. In any event, Lowell’s problems with sexual partners make up way too much of this story as Griffin appears to use them to pad the novel which continues to focus on the development of army air power and also the green berets. I think of this book as a positioning novel. Vietnam is coming, and to get there Griffin needed his get his cast out of the 1950s and into the Kennedy administration. Hopefully he will get back in his groove in the next book.

 

New York Dead by Stuart Woods

New York Dead by Stuart Woods

A couple of decades ago I read Stuart Woods’ novel, Dead in the Water, and loved it. I went on to read four or five more of his books and then for no reason in particular stopped picking up more of them. The other day I came across Dead in the Water again and was going to reread it when I noticed it was third in his Stone Barrington series and decided to start with book 1, New York Dead.

 

Stone is an injured NYC police detective who witnesses what may be a suicide attempt, or may be attempted murder, when a famous news personality falls to her near death. Then she disappears from the ambulance that picks her up leading to an intriguing mystery in which, for reasons that I didn’t think quite worked, the police department decides to move on from the abduction and possible murder without finding the body. Stone gets pushed off the force.

 

All of that was interesting, but the best part of the novel comes as he picks up his life as a lawyer / investigator / problem solver. He handles several mini cases that were awesome little short stories in the novel that I really enjoyed. And as the reader expects, as Stone’s life goes on he keeps stumbling across little pieces of evidence on the case that wrecked his career. He doesn’t want his career back, but he’s intrigued. And I must say that I figured out the villain from the beginning and that always makes me happy. I will also say that the abduction twist added a lot of punch to this novel. I really enjoyed the book.

 

A Will and a Way by Nora Roberts

A Will and a Way by Nora Roberts

I’ve read at least a dozen of Nora Roberts novels over the years, some of which were quite good (especially her J.D. Robb novels). So, when I heard this one was on a list of her top seven stories, I thought I’d give it a try. It’s a quick and enjoyable tale, but I didn’t think it was extraordinary. In fact, the basic ideas seemed a bit used to me and this one wasn’t a particularly fresh take—but it may have been fresh when it was written. I just don’t know the field well enough to make that determination.

 

The basic plot is that a beloved relative tries a little matchmaking when he dies by making a niece and a relative by marriage (i.e. not a blood relation) live in his mansion together for six months to gain their inheritance. Since neither cares about money, he threatens to give the inheritance to their worthless relatives if they fail to do as he asks. In doing so, he sets up two problems—enemies to lovers, and, of course, the villainous relative willing to do anything to get the millions.

 

Now I think the whole “I don’t care about money” character trait was an easy cop out. They don’t have to be greedy jerks to be able to recognize that inheriting a few million would be nice, but they actually looked bad to me pretending that money was not a factor in their thinking but not wanting their “horrible” relatives to inherit the dough. I also find the “enemies to friends” idea to be a tired motif that Roberts used a lot. (I seem to recall that several of her books start with the guy humiliating the heroine, which I have always thought was a terrible way to start a romance. But since Nora Roberts has sold tens of millions or more books, she probably knows more about it than me.)

 

Now all of this makes it sound like a terrible book, but it’s not. It’s a quick and enjoyable story. It just didn’t feel very fresh or believable.

 

The Menace from Earth by Robert A. Heinlein

The Menace from Earth by Robert A. Heinlein

This is one of my favorite collections of Heinlein short stories and I’ve listened to it several times over the past thirty years. It starts out with the tragic The Year of the Jackpot which has an absolutely stupid opening scene (which really doesn’t fit well with the idea of the story) but a wonderful and troubling theme which winds its way to its very sad conclusion.

 

By His Bootstraps shows that even a dense idiot can make it big in the end so long as he gives himself a lot of help along the way. Columbus Was a Dope is a short gimmick-dependent story that will make you smile. The title story, The Menace from Earth is simply delightful. Skylift is the most classically Heinlein tale in the set—an adventure story with an unexpected ending. And Goldfish is thought provoking.

 

Heinlein finishes up with my favorite two stories in the collection. Project Nightmare explores how psychic abilities might have influenced the Cold War if they exist and Water Is for Washing is a touching tale of people confronted by a natural disaster in a shockingly immediate crisis few of us would have thought of.

 

Dead Moon by Peter Clines

Dead Moon by Peter Clines

I’ve started a lot of reviews with the words, “I like zombie novels.” That’s true, but what’s even more true is that I like books with very creative takes on the zombie theme and Peter Clines’ Dead Moon is about as creative as it comes.

 

In the future, the moon has become a massive cemetery with something like 16 million bodies interned there. A space elevator makes transportation to the moon really cheap and the notion that bodies buried on the moon don’t decompose appeals to a lot of rich people. So, several cemeteries have sprouted on the moon and a new profession—caretaker—has developed to take care of the deceased.

 

On top of that, the moon is a tourist attraction with classes of rich students going to the moon instead of Disney World on elaborate field trips. Not to mention business ventures, etc. So, there are lots of potential victims for the coming zombie horde.

 

Matters begin in a pretty straightforward fashion. A meteor strike results in the undead beginning to rise and—very realistically I thought—no one believes it’s happening. Official reaction is extremely slow and further complicated by the fact that one of the first presumed victims of the zombies is the spoiled son of the company CEO.

 

Then things get really interesting. These zombies are not just mindless brain-seeking corpses. They have a disturbingly high level of cunning. They might even be smart.

 

I don’t want to spoil any of the surprises in the novel, so I’ll just say that the reader (with slightly more information than the characters) understands that there is more going on than the dead rising. Just what that is, however, is not immediately clear—even though Cline gives plenty of clues that I kicked myself for missing earlier in the book. This is a brilliantly plotted novel that also appears to be very well researched. I’m not an expert on the moon or conditions there, but the description of what a person goes through when exposed to the cold vacuum of space was riveting and totally believable. Even if the rest of the book had been terrible (and let’s be clear, it’s awesomely good) that one scene and it’s follow up chapter would have been worth reading the entire novel for.

 

Every time you think we’re approaching the natural end of the book, Clines shakes things up and ramps the tension even higher. I’m proud to say I figured out a big chunk of how our heroes were going to deal with the final monstrous problem, but I’m not sure how much credit that should give me because I didn’t figure out that that particular problem was going to need to be solved until Cline hit me over the head with it.

 

I’d like to wrap up by noting that novels can be made or broken based on the skills of their narrators. Fortunately, Ray Porter has the kind of voice and cadence that could make the wandering dead stop and listen to him. He does a phenomenal job, and it just makes a great book all the better.

 

If you’re looking for zombies in a new and interesting environment, you should listen to Dead Moon.

 

The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout

The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout

I recently reread this Nero Wolfe mystery and enjoyed it much more than I did the first time. I didn’t remember any of the details of the plot except that Wolfe was asked to do the impossible (again), only this time it really does appear to be impossible. The FBI is harassing a millionaire for distributing a book that is highly critical of the FBI. She wants Wolfe to make them stop and he wants the ridiculously high fee she is willing to pay to make that happen.

 

So how do you get the FBI to back off? Some people might think you turn to your lawyers or, seeing as how rich the woman is, to her senators and congressmen. Wolfe decides to try and blackmail them by finding a case they have bungled very badly and publicizing it, or better yet, one in which they have done something criminal themselves. Helping Wolfe very slightly is Inspector Cramer, who, like many local cops, doesn’t like the FBI. He also thinks that three of their agents murdered a citizen of NYC.

 

So, Wolfe is attempting to get some serious dirt on the FBI which he hopes to use to convince them to back off of his client and the effort pushes Wolfe’s peculiar sense of honor to its limits. This really is a very enjoyable case.

 

The Reyes Incident by Briana Morgan

The Reyes Incident by Briana Morgan

Despite succeeding in creating a very creepy atmosphere, this book doesn’t make a lot of sense. A young woman covered in blood shows up at a smalltown police station talking about killer mermaids. The story then proceeds on two plotlines—neither of which makes a lick of sense.

 

In the first storyline, the police chief recruits his daughter to interview the “witness”. For reasons I can’t comprehend, this interview takes many days to complete despite the author having the witness give her account to the reader in brief chapters. So, a first-person account that takes maybe ten minutes to read apparently takes a full day of listening. And this goes on throughout the short book. So what essentially should have taken no more than an hour or two of real time to relate, apparently takes a week.

 

I think the author does this to justify breaking for scenes showing the police investigator’s marriage falling apart. But it doesn’t work. Nor does the officer’s complete infatuation with a witness who is talking about killer mermaids eating her friends.

 

Now don’t get me wrong, I figured that killer mermaids really had done the job, but there is no way that a cop who does not believe mermaids exist would have the same reaction. I think that’s what explains the police chief putting his daughter on the case. He’d kept her to petty crime before this. Obviously, he knew she was credulous and would sympathize with the witness, which was a great way to get the witness to go on the record before he charged her with murder.

 

The second storyline is composed of the witness’ account of what happened to her and her friends—except they weren’t her friends and from her own account it made no sense that she had gotten together with them to film a weird exploration of a flooded bunker for YouTube. Neither does the decision of the five explorers to go deeper into the flooded bunker when they first encounter obviously predatory mermaids. Once they’re trapped deep beneath the earth with the monsters, their actions make slightly more sense, but no one sane would have gotten that far. So, the reader is right in sync with the police if they’re wondering what really happened to the kids.

 

I really wanted to like this story, but it just doesn’t work at all.

 

The Majors by W.E.B. Griffin

The Majors by W.E.B. Griffin

I took several months off from rereading this series before picking it up again with this book, but most of the characters were instantly familiar again. Griffin takes his growing cast into the world of army helicopter development in the 1950s. The Air Force has and wants to keep control of all air power in the U.S. military, but the army is extremely concerned that the Air Force’s obsession with nuclear bombers is leaving them no energy (or even interest) in developing a helicopter force that can move troops in and out of combat areas. What’s worse, they are totally opposed to arming those helicopters, but many in the army are coming to believe that helicopters may serve a role similar to tanks in the next war. As if all of this isn’t enough, there continue to be problems with internal groups within the army (such as West Point graduates) who seem more interested in looking out for themselves than the good of the service. All of this creates lots of tension for Griffin’s heroes as they attempt to handle their various missions.

 

It's a good story that moves quickly, even if there is a little too much soap-opera-esq drama. The end scene, however, is one that I remembered well from the first time I read this series twenty or twenty-five years ago.

 

Bake Off by D.M. Guay

Bake Off by D.M. Guay

Trust D.M. Guay to find a way to turn one of the most low key (dare I say, boring?) events in small town America into a hilarious and exciting romp with the supernatural. The event in question is the judging of the annual pie-baking contest which from the very first sentence Guay imbues with interest and excitement that I never suspected could be found in such an event. But here you have it—the pies are biting back this year which makes the judging unique to my experience.

 

The lead judge, however, continues to embrace her responsibilities with a solemn dignity one would expect to find on the Supreme Court. It’s that unflappableness that makes her such a wonderful character. She’s not oblivious to what’s happening but she’s simply determined not to let that drive her to undignified action. You can’t help but love the old woman.

 

It’s a quick read with a huge surprise (even bigger than the cherry biting back) so if you like a little dark humor in your stories, you should definitely give this one a try.