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.
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