A Dead Red Miracle - R.P. Dahlke

   2015; 250 pages.  Book 5 (out of 7) in the “Dead Red Mystery” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Women Sleuths; Crime Mystery; Arizona.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    Bosses can be scumbags sometimes.  Just ask the cousins Lalla and Pearlie Bains, who are working for PI Ron Barbour as interns so they can get their Private Investigator licenses.

 

    Barbour’s business has slacked off recently, which means Lalla and Pearlie’s slice of the income has shrunk to a meager sum.  Now they’ve just discovered their boss has been hiding cases, and dollars, from them.  What a scumbag!  They're so angry they could just kill him.

 

    Except that someone has beat them to the punch… er… slaying.  They drive out the Barbour's house to confront him, and catch a glimpse the body of their boss dead on the floor of his house just before the whole place goes up in smoke.  The police soon arrive on the scene, and try to find out who did what to Barbour.

 

    Say, how come they’re looking at Lalla and Pearlie so suspiciously?  It’s almost as if they think Lalla and Pearlie might have done it.

 

What’s To Like...

    A Dead Red Miracle is the fifth book the R.P. Dahlke’s entertaining Dead Red Mystery series.  Pearlie, Lalla, her husband Caleb, and Lalla’s dad Noah have recently relocated from the fertile fields of Fresno, California to the desert dryness of Sierra Vista in southern Arizona.

 

    As mentioned, Lalla and Pearlie are in the process of applying for their Private Investigator licenses, which requires some on-the-job training.  Their mentor/boss’s demise puts those plans in jeopardy.  But it also gives them an opportunity to do some serious sleuthing.

 

    The case rapidly become more complicated.  There are several more deaths to look into, various suspects and material witnesses to track down, and two youthful delinquents (the Garza brothers) to find suitable foster parents to take care of.  Things become so hectic that Lalla and Pearlie have to hire additional help.

 

The story is told from the first-person point-of-view, Lalla’s.  Snarky wit, mixed with friendly banter, abounds between our two protagonists as they try to determine the perpetrators.  There is a nice bit of Native American culture blended into the tale, although the genre listed in the Amazon blurb, Native American Literature, seems a bit of a stretch.

 

    Things build to a suitably exciting ending, with all of the various plot threads (I noted ten of them) getting tied up.  The killings are solved mostly by Lalla’s logical thinking along wiht some fortuitous circumstances.  The story closes with a short but catchy Epilogue involving two pairs of siblings.  The sisters Velma and Zelma give our heroes a neat little plot twist, and the resolution of the Garza brothers’ future will warm your heart.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 1,429 ratings and 303 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.14*/5, based on 709 ratings and 72 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “I thought you enjoyed the company of your landlady.”

    “She wants me to become a vegetarian.”

    “Sounds like a good idea.  You are a heart patient, you know.”

    “I’m a secondhand vegetarian.  Cows eat grass, I eat the cows, and I’m going to continue to enjoy eating that way till I die, thank you very much.”  (loc. 1014)

 

    “If you can’t pay your rent, we have a spare couch.”

    “Ew-w-w.  I’m not that poor.”

    “Since we’re talking about men, how was your date with the trainer from the gym?”

    Pearlie’s mouth twitched.  “Just because a man has Genius printed on his T-shirt, doesn’t mean he is one.”

    I grinned.  “Not hunky enough to ignore his IQ, huh?”

    “Not if he was wrapped in bacon and came with his own trust fund.”  (loc. 1814)

 

Kindle Details…

    A Dead Red Miracle sells for $4.99 right now at Amazon.  The other six books in the series cost either $3.99 (first and last books) or $4.99 (the rest of them).  R.P. Dahlke has three other e-books available, ranging in price from $3.54 to $3.99.  Two are part of a romantic sailing mystery trilogy, the third, and most recent, is a paranormal mystery.

 

“Damian broke into your office again and you reward him with a job?”  “We’re short-handed.”  (loc. 1967)

    The cussing is pleasingly sparse, just five instances in the first 20%, plus one racial epithet later on.  I love it when an author doesn’t have to resort to excessive foul language to set a scene.

 

    My main gripe is my usual one for this series.  The editing is atrocious, and seemed to get worse as the book progressed.  The typos included: Ifinally/I finally; waived/waved, sixty’s/sixties, gapped/gasped, and the embarrassing Barber/Barbour; and Damion’s/Damian’s, just to name a few.  There were also occasional missing words and/or misplaced plurals, plus one continuity issue – referencing a person who wasn’t present.

 

    But if you don't let the errata bother you, you’ll find A Dead Red Miracle to be an engaging tale where character development is just as important as the whodunit aspect.  The book kept my interest throughout, which was also true of the first four books in this series.

 

    8 Stars.  At 250 pages, A Dead Red Miracle was still a novel of acceptable length, but Book 6, A Dead Red Gamble, drops off to 179 pages, and Book 7, A Dead Red Horse Thief, is a mere novella-length 119 pages.  That last book was published in 2019, so I’m assuming that means R.P. Dahlke is finished chronicling Lalla’s adventures.  If so, then I for one, am bummed.

Heat - Stuart Woods

   1994; 448 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Suspense; Thriller.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    Strange things seem to be going on up in the little town of St. Clair, Idaho.  It appears to involve lots of money and lots of guns, all seemingly under the direction of some crazy coot named Jack Gene Coldwater.

 

    The United States Attorney General’s Office wants someone to investigate Coldwater’s activities.  Unfortunately, the last two agents that were sent to St. Clair have disappeared without a trace, and are presumed dead.

 

    The government needs to find somebody else to send up there, but ordering agents to go on suicide missions is bad for morale.  They need to find someone… erm… disposable.

 

    Say, how about that disgraced DEA agent Jesse Warden, currently serving time in Atlanta Federal Prison? He was convicted of stealing drug money and killing a fellow agent in the process to cover it up, and he’s been in solitary for 14 months now.  Let’s talk him into “volunteering.”

 

    If his cover gets blown and Coldwater offs him, so what?  If he somehow succeeds, we can grant him a pardon.  Alternatively, after he gives us the incriminating evidence we can expose him to Coldwater's goons, and let them have the pleasure of killing another government agent.

 

What’s To Like...

    Heat is a Thriller novel by Stuart Woods, an author whose work I’ve wanted to get acquainted with for a while now.  Woods, who died in 2022, was a prolific writer, with (according to Wikipedia) seven series under his belt, including the 64-volume "Stone Barrington" series, his most famous work.  Heat, however, is a standalone story.

 

    The plotline is straightforward: Jesse wants to infiltrate the inner circle of Coldwater’s trusted council, learn what their aims are, and hopefully find something illegal enough to exchange for a government pardon.  Along the way he meets an attractive and available woman (Jesse is a widower), searches for the daughter that’s been taken from him, and tries to outmaneuver his former DEA boss who’d love to see Jesse be exposed and killed.

 

    I liked the “religious cult” atmosphere that Stuart Woods explores.  St. Clair is a small town totally devoted to Coldwater’s apocalyptic visions.  Everyone in town goes to his church every Sunday, and all the children are schooled in his teachings.  It’s very reminiscent of David Koresh’s Branch Davidians cult in Waco, Texas, or Jim Jones’s cult in Jonestown, Guyana, both of which ended in tragedy.  Koresh and his followers died in an ATF raid in 1993; Jones’s followers “drank the Kool-aid” and committed mass suicide in 1978.  I loved the way Stuart Woods depicts this sort of brainwashing.

 

    All the standard action-adventure tropes are present.  Jesse and his attractive-yet-unattached landlord Jenny fall in love, one of Coldwater’s right-hand aides remains convinced Jesse is a government spy (which he is), and there’s a long, drawn-out, north-to-south chase scene down the entire state of Nevada.  For the record, I’ve made that trek recently; Nevada is fricking huge!

 

    The ending is so-so.  On the plus-side, it’s sufficiently exciting and even has a plot twist or two.  On the minus side, it strained my “believability” tolerance, most markedly when Jesse’s imminent death is averted by a conveniently-timed disturbance that distracts his killer.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 2,385 ratings and 242 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.11/5 based on 3,476 ratings and 138 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “I’m moving up in the world,” Jesse said.  “Making nine bucks an hour, now, and I expect to get raised to ten any day.”  He told Kip about the promotion.

     “Glad to hear it, Jess.”

    “Not everybody is as happy as you are about my advancement,” Jesse replied.  “Fellow called Partain took exception.”

    “And what did you do about it?” Kip asked, sounding worried.

    “I hit him until he got over it,” Jesse replied.  (loc. 1630)

 

    “You know, Charley, it might have been interesting.  Up until the time we met in solitary, I had just been trying to stay alive.  But I think that after our chat, I would have started killing people, and you would have been first in line.”

    Bottoms grinned.  “I like you, Jesse; I always did.  You always handled yourself real good in the yard; took out some guys I’d have thought would have stomped you into the ground.  I’d have hated to kill you, but I’d have done it the minute you set foot out of that cell.  I’m glad our present circumstances don’t require me to do that.”

    “That’s sweet of you, Charley.”  (loc. 3736)

 

Kindle Details…

    At present Heat sells for $9.99 at Amazon.  Dozens of Stuart Woods's books are available in e-book format, for the most part ranging in price from $7.99 to $14.99, and occasionally discounted to $1.99.

 

“Jesse, can you fly an airplane?”  “Sort of.”  (loc. 4670)

    I found some quibbles when reading Heat.  For those averse to R-rated stuff, there’s a moderate-but-acceptable amount of cussing (17 instances in the first 10%), a half-dozen or so racial epithets (which I expected), a roll-in-the-hay, and at least one cursory drug reference (coke).

 

    There were more typos than I’d expect in a book by a top-tier author: saia/said; night clothes/nightclothes; hanger/hangar, and four Weather by/Weatherby (Jenny’s last name) oopsies before someone belatedly noticed and started fixing them.

 

    But those are all trifles.  My big issue with Heat were the WTF’s.  The plotline was rife with them.  We eschew spoilers on this blog, but here are some of the mind-boggling conveniences:

 

    Jesse just happens to have lock-picking and safecracking skills, both of which he'll need during this mission.  Jesse’s "cover” identity is a real but dead person), and his first name also happens to be Jesse.  At one point Jesse needs to learn to fly an airplane, and one of the baddies obligingly teaches him.  Jesse somehow wins every fight he’s in, even against the goons in prison.  Last but not least, he's given a tour of Coldwater’s stronghold and then is  given the blueprints to it as well.

 

    I noted at least a dozen of these WTFs.  I could’ve sworn I was reading a Clive Cussler Dirk Pitt novel.  There's a reason why I don’t read Thrillers more often.

 

    6 Stars.  Admittedly, there are a lot of readers of this genre out there who love it when the action is over-the-top.  Clive Cussler caters to those fans with his ultra-popular Dirk Pitt series.  I read one book from that series (I forget which one) and felt no need to try a second.  OTOH, a coworker of mine has read them all, and wishes there were more in Dirk's 26-book (soon to be 27) adventures.

Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming - Roger Zelazny and Robert Sheckley

   1991; 310 pages.  Book 1 (out of 3) in the “Millennial Contest” series.  New Authors? : Yes, and no.  Genres : Humorous Fantasy; Fairy Tales.   Overall Rating: 5*/10.

 

    It’s 1000 CE and you know what that means.  Well, actually you probably don’t, unless you’re a demon or an angel.

 

    Those creatures, for better and for worse, know it’s time for the Millennial Contest, a competition that takes place only every thousand years, and which will determine whether Good or Evil will control the universe for the next millennium.

 

    Azzie Elbub is a charismatic but malevolent demon who is determined to win the event for the Dark Side. His scheme is to reenact the age-old Sleeping Beauty tale but with a startling new twist: when Prince Charming finally makes it to where Sleeping Beauty reposes, his quest will end in disaster.

 

    Good luck, Azzie.  Somehow, I think this will turn out to be “too much of a bad thing.”

 

What’s To Like...

    Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming is a lighthearted 1991 novel featuring the collaborative efforts of two respected sci-fi/fantasy authors, Roger Zelazny and Robert Sheckley.  The other two books in the trilogy are If at Faust You Don’t Succeed and A Farce to be Reckoned With.  ANAICT, none of these are available in e-book format.

 

    The storyline is an amusing depiction of the differences, and similarities, between the nature of good and evil.  There are also several fairy tales – Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Aladdin – worked into the tale..  Azzie is a fun-to-watch protagonist; he may be an evil demon but he’s carrying out a noble mission, albeit for the dark side, and is repeatedly beset by the underworld's bureaucracy and his own ineptness.

 

    There are drawings, usually of one of the characters, at the start of each of the 10 parts.  Each part has between 5 and 13 chapters, with an average length of just about 5 pages per chapter.  There are critters galore to meet and dread, including talking ponies (as well as talking swords and talking spells), dragons, Harpies, Valkyries, dwarves. and the Morrigan.  Most of the settings are in Western Europe in 1000 CE, with an excursion or two into the Underworld.

 

    The book is a vocabulary-lover's delight.  There are a bunch of highfalutin ones such as: palaverations, fuscating, quiddities, ensorcelled, congeries, aftertides, scansions, ensor, and those were just the ones that dazzled me after I started keeping writing them down.  A couple more are listed below.

 

    The trivia details were also neat.  Mad King Ludwig, Peer Gynt, and Turkestan get mentioned, as well as the ancient Irish legends Finn McCool and Cuchulain.  Cuisine-wise, nachos and pho make an appearance, but so does fermented dragon poop.  And I’m definitely going to get me a pair of Seven League Boots, although they do have their drawbacks.

 

    You can pretty much figure out which side will emerge victorious in this contest, but the fun is watching Azzie getting vexed the all snags in his that crop up in his scheming.  More about the ending in a bit.  There’s a cute Epilogue at the very end.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.5*/5, based on 36 ratings and 15 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.74*/5, based on 3,638 ratings and 136 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word…

Bosky (adj.) : wooded; covered by trees or bushes.

Others: Seneschal (n.); Caitiff (n.).

 

 

Excerpts...

    “I love you; the bad enchantment has ended at last, and we can be together again, just as you have always wanted and I secretly have wanted, too, though I said otherwise.”

    “What enchantment?” Ylith said.

    “Did I mention an enchantment?”

    “You said, ‘Now the bad enchantment has ended.’”

    “I said that?  You’re sure?”

    “Of course I’m sure!”

    “Well, I shouldn’t have,” Azzie said.  (pg. 109)

 

    “Where is your sword?”

    “I need to get it.”

    “You’re supposed to have a sword on your person at all times.”

    “Give me a break, it’s my wedding day.”

    “Well, go get your sword, but be quick about it.”

    “Frike, you were practically a father to me.  How can you do this?”

    “Well, I’m playing a pretty traditional role,” Frike said.  “The crippled servant who is slightly sympathetic but still has a fatal bias toward evil.  Nothing personal, but we must fight it out with swords.”

    “Well, rats,” Charming said.  “Wait right here.  I’ll be back with my sword.”  (pg. 277)

 

“Cowardice is nothing to be ashamed of, Prince Charming. (…) It is like measles—most people get it at least once in their lives.”  (pg. 279)

    As expected in any fairy-tale/fantasy story, there’s very little cussing.  I noted just 4 instances in the first third of the book, and those were relatively mild ones.

 

    The writing style is adequate, the early hiccups to Azzie’s plans are humorous, but the main storyline drags and after a while I just wanted to get on with the Millennial Contest.  There is a decent amount of wit – that’s a trademark of both authors – but it seemed aimed at a junior-high reader, adult readers may find it simplistic.

 

    The big problem is the ending.  When we finally get to the climax of both Good and Evil’s projects, they both fizzle out.  Babriel’s is barely mentioned and a complete flop, and Azzie’s “Napping Beauty” scenario plays out in the worst possible way for Evil.  Both are without an iota of tension or excitement.  I was expecting more action and adventure in a book titled Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming.  Maybe each author expected the other one to come up with a boffo ending.

 

    5 Stars.

A Mighty Long Way - Carlotta Walls LaNier

   2009; 273 pages.  Full Title: A Mighty Long Way – My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School.  New Author?  : Yes.  Genres : Civil Rights; American History;  Non-Fiction; Black and African-American Biographies.  Overall Rating: 9*/10.

 

    I am old enough to remember watching on TV the struggles to integrate schools in the Deep South.  The one that remains etched in my mind is George Wallace, then governor of Alabama, standing on the steps of a building, presumably on the University of Alabama campus, impeding black students, who were being escorted by federal troops, from entering therein.  Bloodshed loomed in my 12-year-old brain.

 

    But before push came to shove, and after giving a short segregationist speech, Wallace moved aside.  Shooting and other assorted violence were averted, at least while the national cameras were capturing the moment.  The students walked through the doors.

 

    But I’ve always wondered:  What was it like for those black students, and those who integrated other schools throughout the South, on the second day of school, or a week later, or when the next semester rolled around?  What harassment did they did they suffer through when all the cameras, troops, and news crews were no longer present?

 

    Thanks to A Mighty Long Way, I have an answer.

 

What’s To Like...

    Carlotta Walls LaNier is one of the “Little Rock Nine”, a group of high school age black students that took the first steps in integrating the Arkansas educational system in 1957.  I was just seven years old at the time and frankly I don’t remember it at all.  A Mighty Long Way is Carlotta’s memoir about the experience and how it impacted her life for many decades to come.

 

There are 17 chapters plus a prologue in the book.  They can be roughly divided into:

    1.) Prologue + Chs. 1-3:  Family history and early life.

    2.) Chs. 4-9: High school years and Integration.

    3.) Chs. 10-11: The house-bombing.

    4.) Chs. 12-14: High school graduation and college years.

    5.) Chs. 14-17: Post-collegiate Life.

 

    It should come as no surprise that Carlotta’s traumatic 10^th grade year (some of the other Little Rock Nine were 11^th and 12^th graders) had a profound effect on the rest of her life.  It did surprise me, however, that for many years afterward, she avoided mentioning her role in the integration movement and turned down all requests to speak at schools, churches, and other public events about it.

 

    The “Jackie Robinson test” was enlightening, and I was in awe of Carlotta’s meeting the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  I enjoyed her (and my) grade-school memories of eagerly awaiting the Weekly Reader to be passed out, and I had to look up what the rules were to the card game “pitty-pat”.  I cringed when she had to endure being spat upon, cursed at and shoved in the high school halls while going to classes, and shuddered when she gave the details of the lynching of Emmett Till.  The dynamite-bombing of her family’s home and the relentless and untraceable telephone hate calls made me realize that integrating someplace in the South meant risking your life, as well as your family’s.

 

    The book closes on a high note: Barack Obama’s election to the presidency in 2008.  Carlotta sees it as a culmination of the Civil Rights movement, and one she never expected to see in her lifetime.  Even if she did favor Hillary Clinton early in the campaign.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.7*/5, based on 540 ratings and 70 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.14*/5, based on 1,365 ratings and 204 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

She-Ro (n.) : a woman regarded as a hero.

 

Excerpts...

    It never occurred to me as I grew up to question, even in my mind, why colored folks could go to the park only on certain days, why we had to climb to the back of the bus, or why stopping at a gas station to use the bathroom in most areas of the South wasn’t even an option.  Those were just the rules, and I learned to follow them like I learned to walk, by observing those closest to me and following their guidance until I knew the steps well enough to venture out on my own.  (loc. 340)

 

    Wherever I go to talk to students, I usually encounter some who know little or nothing about the Little Rock Nine.  Sometimes they’re African American.  Sometimes they’re white, Latino, or Asian.  But when they hear my story, often they get angry, like the white kid whose hand went up slowly in the back of the room after my first speech at Ponderosa High School in a Denver suburb many years ago.

    “Why am I just learning this?” he asked.  “Why haven’t I learned this in school before now?”  (loc. 3984)

 

That is the point of this book: to show that determination, fortitude, and the ability to move the world aren’t reserved for the “special” people.  (loc. 128)

    There’s not much to quibble about in A Mighty Long Way.  I counted just 7 cusswords in the entire book, and those were mostly when she was quoting somebody.  There is of course a slew of instances where she has to endure the N-word being screamed at her, but that was to be expected.

 

    There’s also a lot of name-dropping of people she met.  To name a few: Thelonius Monk (and many other jazz musicians), Thurgood Marshall, Satchel Paige, Langston Hughes, Herb Adderley, and Bill & Hillary Clinton.  But those encounters rang true, particularly the stone-throwing incident in Central Park, and it was kinda neat to see all the celebrities she rubbed shoulders with over the course of her life.

 

    I spotted only two typos – mid wester/midwestern and fifty-two-hundred/fifty-two hundred.  Kudos to the editors and proofreaders.  The book cover lists it as being written “with Lisa Frazier Page”, and the Foreword is by President Bill Clinton.  In Chapter 8 there are some family pictures of Carlotta and her kin.  Those were extremely heartwarming.

 

    9 Stars.  We live in an age where book-banning has once again become commonplace, and teachers, whether they are mentoring elementary school students or collegians, risk being fired for revealing what really occurred during critical moments in America's History.  Desegregation was an ugly time for the United States, but sweeping it under the carpet just makes it worse.  Thank goodness there are books like A Mighty Long Way, which tell the facts about the American Civil Rights movement, even if it is a harsh awakening.

Stonehenge - Bernard Cornwell

   2000; 482 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Historical Fiction; English History; Ancient Historical Fiction; Action-Intrigue.  Overall Rating: 9*/10.

 

    Stonehenge.  There’s a mystique about it even now when it lies in ruins.

 

    Thanks to archaeology, we know a fair amount about the “when” of Stonehenge.  It went through several iterations over the centuries and first arose around the Third Millennium BCE.  Thanks to geology we have a good idea about the “how” of Stonehenge, most importantly where the stones of Stonehenge originated.

 

    We know a lot less about the “what” of Stonehenge.  What was it used for and what did those stone arrangements signify?  The “why” of Stonehenge is almost a complete mystery to us.  We know that some of the stones are carefully aligned to greet the Summer and Winter Solstice, but why was that done?

 

    Bernard Cornwell’s book Stonehenge presents one scenario where the “how” and “when” are adhered to and a plausible “what” and “why” are presented.  Yes, it’s fictional, but it conforms to what we know about Stonehenge, and generates a literary aura all its own.

 

What’s To Like...

    Stonehenge traces the lives of three brothers – Saban, Lengar, and Camaban – who are cast as the main protagonists.  In nature, they correspond closely to the titular roles in the Clint Eastwood oater The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.  Most of the time we follow the “Good” guy, Saban, but there are occasional digressions into the lives of his two brothers, as well as several other secondary characters.

 

    There are two main storylines.  One of course it the building of Stonehenge from its very beginning.  The other is the internecine struggle between the three brothers to see which one will succeed their father, the ruler of a local nondescript tribe called Ratharryn.

 

    The tale takes place sometime during the span of 2000-3000 BCE England, during western civilization’s Bronze Age.  There were no kingdoms back then, just local villages raiding and trading with neighboring settlements.  Sorceresses and priests aided the village elders and family ties were flimsy at best when it came to being the group’s leader.

 

    I enjoyed watching as the Stonehenge temple gradually grew into the structure whose ruins we see today.  That might sound tedious, but Bernard Cornwell is a fantastic writer and storyteller, and the three brothers spark enough fighting and intrigue to keep the reader from getting bored.  I also liked the way various characters discerned the signs the various gods sent to their worshippers here on earth.  Divine communication methods have not changed much over the last 4000 years.

 

    The ending is logical and satisfying.  Stonehenge gets built, the fraternal squabbling comes to an end, and several characters relocate and/or shuffle off their mortal coil.  Stonehenge is not part of any of Cornwell’s series, nor AFAIK is there any sequel.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.1*/5, based on 2,613 ratings and 479 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.67*/5, based on 11,702 ratings and 735 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word…

    Plangent (adj.) : (of a sound) loud, reverberating, and often melancholy.

 

Excerpts...

    The gods talk by signs.  It may be a leaf falling in summer, the cry of a dying beast or the ripple of wind on calm water.  It might be smoke lying close to the ground, a rift in the clouds or the flight of a bird.

    But on that day the gods sent a storm.  It was a great storm, a storm that would be remembered, though folk did not name the year by that storm.  Instead they called it the Year the Stranger Came.

    For a stranger came to Ratharryn on that day of the storm.  It was a summer’s day, the same day that Saban was almost murdered by his half-brother.

    The gods were not talking that day.  They were screaming.  (pg. 3)

 

    Ever since he had left Sul he had been wondering why he was making this journey and he had found no good answers except for the dictates of instinct and duty.  He had a debt, and life was full of debts that must be honored if fate was to be kind.  Everyone knew that.  A fisherman was given a good catch so he must offer something back to the gods.  A harvest was plump so part must be sacrificed.  A favor engendered another favor and a curse was as dangerous to the person who pronounced it as to the person it was aimed against.  Every good thing and bad thing in the world was balanced, which was why folk were so attentive to omens—though some men, like Lengar, ignored the imbalance.  (pg. 252)

 

“It isn’t wise to pick a fight with wolves.”  (pg. 248)

    I thoroughly enjoyed Stonehenge, so finding things to nitpick about was a challenge.

 

    Foul language is close to nonexistent; I counted only four cusswords in the entire book.  At one point, where swearing was called for, Bernard Cornwell resorted to “improvised cussing”, coming up with the delightful slam “toad-dung made flesh.”  I loved that.

 

    I only saw one typo in the Harper Torch Publishing paperback version: though/through.  Kudos to their editors and beta readers.  There are a slew of gods and mortals to keep track of, so a Cast of Characters would’ve been nice.  Ditto for a map to show where the various settlements and spheres of influence were located.

 

    But I quibble.  For me, Stonehenge was a perfect blend of historical fiction with action-adventure.  The character-building was excellent, the world-building was convincing, and the Bernard Cornwell’s writing was, as usual, impressive.  Here’s hoping that he someday decides to write a sequel, chronicling Stonehenge’s impact on the next generation of early Britons who lived in its shadow.

 

    9 Stars.  Tacked onto the end of the tale is a 13-page “Historical Note” section, wherein Bernard Cornwell discusses what is known about Stonehenge, including a brief reference to its sister structure, Woodhenge.  The discussion was enlightening to me.  I have a non-fiction book on my Kindle, titled Stonehenge - A New Understanding, by Mike Parker Pearson.  Perhaps it’s time to read that tome.

Bob Moore: No Hero - Tom Andry

   2011; 174 pages.  Book 1 (out of 3) in the “Bob Moore” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Superhero Fantasy; Action-Adventure.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    Superheroes are humans too!

 

    Oh, they might enlarge into green beasts when angry, or watch bullets bounce off their chest, or toss balls of fire at their foes, or have quadruple-digit IQs.  But they still go home after work, fall in love, fall out of love, and occasionally lose their cool.

 

    Superheroes sometimes work in pairs, but they rarely stay together for a lifetime.  I can’t picture Robin forever being content to be Batman’s sidekick.  Tempers flare and sharp words are said, suspicions are raised, and questions about one's super-partners arise.  Superheroes may be borderline omnipotent, but none of them are omniscient.

 

    To get answers about their partners, suspicious superheroes need the services of a PI ("Private Investigator").  But not just any PI, it needs to be someone who specializes in working with super-beings.

 

    And that’s where Bob Moore comes in.

 

What’s To Like...

    Bob Moore: No Hero is the opening book in Tom Andry’s “Bob Moore” trilogy.  At 174 pages, it is barely longer than a novella, and is the shortest book in the series.  Book 2, Desperate Times, is 286 pages long, and Book 3, Hostile Territory, is 293 pages.

 

    I liked the way the various superheroes were portrayed.  They might be super fast, super smart, or super powerful (which is why they’re called “supers”), but emotionally, they are just as quick to get jealous or angry as ordinary humans (who are called “tippies”).

 

    The story is told in the first-person point-of-view (Bob’s).  The action starts immediately—Bob gets fired upon in the most literal sort of way—and there’s plenty of action from there on out.  There’s some backstory and worldbuilding early on, then the main plot thread gets started around a quarter of the way through.  A stereotypically brilliant-but-mad scientist hires Bob to investigate why some of his clients are disappearing without a trace.

 

    I chuckled at some of the details that Tom Andry works into the storyline.  Bob’s “Inertial Dampener” is a neat gizmo; the “Portable Persona Projector” was fascinating; and I chuckled at the “Super Lane” which is sort of an HOV lane on the roads reserved for superheroes zipping along at supersonic speeds.  It was also amusing to find out that unfaithful “sidekicking” was considered by superheroes to be much worse than a super-partner merely having a torrid love affair on the side.

 

    Things build to a decent, but not particularly twisty, climax.  The disappearing clients mystery is solved, and the main baddie is dispatched with anticlimactic ease.  The story closes with an Epilogue that was rather touching.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Tippy (n.) : a person without any superhero powers; a muggle.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.3*/5, based on 168 ratings and 87 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.69*/5, based on 337 ratings and 45 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    As you might have guessed, I’m a private eye.  As a PI, one of my most common jobs is figuring out if a spouse or partner is cheating.  While, for most PIs, this doesn’t involve a heck of a lot of tree immolation, I’m a specialist.  The people I investigate almost exclusively have powers.  Power to fly, power to throw cars at me and, way too often I find, power to set the tree I’m sitting in on fire from a great distance.  (loc. 22)

 

    I stumbled through the door and collapsed in a well padded chair.

    She organized some papers as she spoke, “You know, I couldn’t be sure until someone who rode it regularly came through.”  She looked up and smiled again, “You just got lucky I guess.”

    “Funny, I don’t feel lucky.”

    “Scotch?”

    “A bit early for that.”

    “Coffee?”

    “I didn’t say no to the scotch.  I was just pointing out the time.”  (loc. 1201)

 

Kindle Details…

    Bob Moore: No Hero is *FREE* at Amazon right now.  The other two books in the series go for $3.99 apiece.  Tom Andry has only one more e-book available, Touch of Pain, which appears to be the start of a new series and which came out in March of 2022.

 

“People like their PIs like they like their accountants . . . just a little slimy.”  (loc. 1254)

    There very little cussing in the book; I counted just 7 instances in the first 25%, which impressed me greatly.

 

    The editing was good.  I noticed only a couple of typos, such as: any more/anymore; skin covered/skin-covered; and crumbing/crumbling.  The main grammar issue was the repeated lack of commas when addressing someone directly in dialogue.  That occurred at least eight times, and was rather distracting.  To be fair though, the word “gravelly” was correctly spelled (referring to a surface that resembles gravel), which most of the time gets irritatingly rendered as “gravely”, and is always fully endorsed by MS-Word's Spellchecker program.

 

    My main quibble is with the world-building.  What was done in that regard is great, but there just wasn’t enough of it.  The setting felt very shallow to me.  For that matter, the whole storyline seemed to lack a sufficient amount of complexity and twists.  But perhaps that’s what the sequels are for. 

 

    All in all, I thought Bob Moore: No Hero was an above-average debut effort by Tom Andry.  The premise was great, the storytelling kept my interest, and sequels would seem to promise more complex storylines because of their greater length.  It’s been more than year since the first book of the author’s new series came out.  I’m wondering if he’s working on the sequel or if he’s retired from the field.

 

    7 Stars.  There’s a Note from the Author section in the back of the book and I highly recommend taking the time to read it.  Tom Andry gives a revealing and heartwarming look at the highs and lows of penning and publishing a debut novel.  I found it utterly enlightening.