Unwanted: Dead or Alive - Gene Shelton

   1996; 205 pages.  Book 1 (out of 2) in the “Buck and Dobie” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Classic Western; Crime Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    Meet the cowpunchers Buck Hawkins and Dobie Garrett.  Best friends.  Good workers.  Loyal to whoever is willing to hire them.

 

    Right now, they work for W.C. Milhouse, owner of the Singletree Ranch.  At the moment, they’re freezing their tushes off because winters are mighty cold out there in the Texas panhandle, and they have to routinely go looking for Singletree Ranch cattle that have strayed out to the wilds, in a couple feet of snow, and are starving to death.

 

    Alas, that’s a hopeless task.  Even the cows that haven’t strayed away are dying from a lack of food at the Singletree Ranch. W.C. Milhouse is in financial trouble.  Buck and Dobie are worried that he's going to be forced to lay them off.

 

    I’ve got news for you two.  You’re about to find yourselves in a heap more trouble than that!

 

What’s To Like...

    Unwanted: Dead or Alive is written in what I’d call “classical western” style that you find in novels by Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour.  But Gene Shelton infuses it with a bunch of wittiness which gives the story a more lighthearted tone.  The text, especially the dialogue, is written in “Texas cowboy drawl”, which fits nicely into the book’s tone without ever getting tedious.  I was impressed.

 

    Dobie and Buck quickly find themselves out of work and framed for crimes punishable by hanging.  Since they’re being accused of being outlaws (or “owlhoots” in cowboy vernacular), our pair of heroes decide they might as well become desperados to make ends meet.  After all, how hard can it be to poke a gun at a store owner or a bank teller and tell them to “hand over the cash!”

 

    I enjoyed it that most of the story is set in the Texas Panhandle.  The company I worked for had three chemical plants in that area, including one on the Canadian River, which gets mentioned frequently in Unwanted: Dead or Alive.  The two towns cited here, Mobeetie and Jacksboro, are real places, but I'd never heard of them.  I spent my time in Dumas and Borger.

 

    There’s lots of action and plenty of clever dialogue, but things never descend into outright silliness.  Despite a scarcity of ill-gotten money, Buck and Dobie’s reputation as murderous robbers grows rapidly.  So does the bounty on their heads.  They eventually take on a third partner (revealed in the Amazon blurb) who, despite also having no experience as an owlhoot, helps them nicely learn the trade.

 

    The ending is both over-the-top and heartwarming.  Everyone gets their just desserts and our protagonists ride off into the sunset, although I wouldn’t say that they live happily ever after.  There is a sequel, but that’s as far as things go, series-wise.

 

Excerpts...

    The wind had eased a bit.

    “I’ll be glad to get back home,” Hawkins said.  “Hope the boss has got that old potbellied stove fired up.  Can’t tell where my toes are.”

    “You’ll find ‘em.  When you pull off your boots and socks, they’ll drop off on the floor.  String ‘em up on a rawhide thong and they’ll make a right nice necklace for some gal.”  Garrett spat again and wiped a gloved hand across the dense stubble on his chin.  “Ain’t toes I’m fretted over losin’.  I’m gonna have to pee sometime before August.”  (pg. 99)

 

    Buck said, “How did you find out so much about him?”

    Marylou’s slight smile held a slightly wicked touch.  “Women have certain advantages over men when it comes to gathering information.”

    Hawkins’s heart sank.  “Marylou, you—you didn’t—”

    “Sleep with him?  Hell, no.  I just let him sneak a few peeks down the front of my dress.  Get a man’s eyes busy and his brain locks up.”  (pg. 148)

 

Kindle Details…

    Unwanted: Dead or Alive presently is free at Amazon.  The sequel, How the West Was Lost, is priced at $4.99.  Gene Shelton has another dozen or so e-books at Amazon, most of which are Westerns, none of which I’ve read.  They are in the $2.99-$7.99 price range.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Swamper (n.) : a general assistant; a handyman; helper

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.2*/5, based on 3,783 ratings and 695 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.05*/5, based on 1,458 ratings and 112 reviews.

 

“Grabbin’ a wildcat by the hind leg ain’t the hard part.  Turnin’ loose is where it gets chancy.”  (pg. 160)

    There’s a moderate amount off profanity in Unwanted: Dead or Alive; I counted 15 instances in the first 10%, about evenly split between “damn” and “hell”.  Once or twice, adult situations are hinted at, but there’s nothing R-rated about it.  See the second excerpt, above, for an example of this.

 

    There were only a pair of typos, and both were punctuation errors: two persons speaking in a single paragraph; and a period where a comma should be.  Kudos to whoever did the editing.  There were also a half dozen weird links (labeled “wes1” through “wes6”) that linked to what appeared to be some sort of editing notes.  I suspect the blame for those falls on the formatters, and that they will be deleted in future e-book editions of this. 

 

     I had some difficulty keeping track of which horses belonged to which outlaws, but that cleared up once I realized that several of the characters used two horses, one for riding, the other for carrying supplies.  See the cover image above.

 

    That’s all I can quibble about.  For me, Unwanted: Dead or Alive was an interesting tweak of the classic western novel, which is not a genre I read very often.  So if you are tired of the same old formula used in writing oaters, you'll probably find this a refreshing alternative.

 

    8 Stars.  One last quibble.  The rabbit dies.

Vita Brevis - Ruth Downie

   2016; 366 pages.  Book 7 (out of 8) in the “Medicus” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Cozy Mystery; Rome; Historical Fiction.  Overall Rating: 8*/10.

 

    Heads up, Imperial Rome!  Gaius Ruso has arrived!  He’s brought his wife Tilla, and 7-month-old daughter Mara, along with him.  And not much else, other than a bunch of medical equipment, since Ruso is a Medicus (“Doctor”) by trade, and just recently discharged from serving in a Roman legion.

 

    The first thing to do, of course, is to open up a practice and get some money coming in.  He hopes his former military superior, Publius Accius, who’s somewhere in Rome, will put in a good word for him.  Open some doors.

 

    Well, speaking of opening doors, one just did.  Kleitos, a doctor here in Rome just left town unexpectedly, leaving a whole bunch of patients in the lurch and a fully furnished, doctor’s residence.  What a perfect opportunity for Ruso!  He’s moving in today, along with his family.

 

    He plans to set up quickly, and start seeing Kleitos’s patients immediately.  Oh, and he needs to get someone to remove that barrel sitting on the front porch.  It’s sealed, so who knows what’s in it, but it’s stinking to high Olympus.

 

What’s To Like...

    Vita Brevis is the seventh book in Ruth Downie’s (completed) Roman historical fiction “Medicus” series.  I’ve read the first six books, but that was ten years ago.  The series is set in 123 CE, at the height of the Roman empire, although I think this is the first one where Ruso actually sets foot in the capital city.

 

    The mystery angle starts almost immediately; the reeking barrel is left on Kleitos’s porch on page 4, with Ruso making his entrance shortly thereafter.  The chapters are short: there are 76 of them covering 366 pages.  There’s a “Cast of Characters” section at the start of the book, which I found really helpful, due to my 10-year hiatus from this series.

 

    As expected, a relatively simple mystery (what’s in the stinking barrel?) quickly becomes more complex.  Where did Kleitos go, and why?  Why do thugs keep knocking on Ruso’s/Kleitos’s door asking for payment for “services rendered”?  Can Ruso and his former boss patch things up?  Why didn't Kleitos label his potions bottles?

 

    One of the things I love about this series is Ruth Downie’s skill at setting the story in a believable historical epoch.  One example: all cities had “dung carts” in those days.  Horses and donkeys make great beasts of burden as transportation on the streets of Rome, but in a city this size, they generate a lot of poop on a daily basis.

 

    I thought the author’s handling of the sensitive issue of slaver was also deftly done.  The fate of being a slave was a dicey affair.  It all depended on the master.  Slaves also came in all colors., and many of them eventually garnered enough money to buy their freedom.  The medical scenes were also skillfully rendered.   Herbs and potions were of course commonly prescribed, but sometimes surgery was necessary.

 

    The ending is well thought-out.  It’s not filled with thrills & spills, but that's okay.  Instead it's a product of Ruso's deductive reasoning.  And his ingestion of poppies.

 

Kewlest New Word…

Bodge (n.): something that is completed quickly and carelessly.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 1,098 ratings and 96 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.13*/5, based on 1,456 ratings and 157 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “And how is your wife enjoying Rome?”

    “She’s very busy with the baby,” said Ruso.

    “Oh, dear, yes.  I heard something about that.”

    “Parenthood is a marvelous thing,” Ruso assured him.  “You should try it yourself.”

    “I’m glad to hear it,” Metellus told him.  “Especially after the rumors.”

    Ruso said, “It never pays to listen to rumors.”

    “Actually, I find it pays rather well.”  (loc. 437)

 

    “Horatia was only one opportunity among many.”

    “That’s all he thought of her?”

    “Don’t be silly, Ruso.  Daughters of rich families are part of the business.  They’re born knowing that.  It’s their duty to contribute, and since they can’t do much else, the least they can do is provide helpful alliances and grandchildren.  Not everyone can marry for love and live on beans like you do.”  (loc. 4348)

 

Kindle Details…

    Vita Brevis presently sells for $9.99 at Amazon, as do the other seven books in the series.  Ruth Downie also has a short story, The Bear and the Wolf, and a novella, Prima Facie, both set in the Roman Empire for your Kindle, priced at $0.99 and $2.99 respectively. 

 

Across the room, Mara put her toes in her mouth and sucked them.  (loc. 1371)

    The profanity is sparse in Vita Brevis, so little of it that I forgot to keep count.  I’m sure there were less than ten instances in the entire book.

 

    The quibbles are negligible.  The only one I can think of is subjective: Ruso can be dense at times.  You might solve the mysteries and the crimes before he does.  Heck, it took him, and Tilla, an unbelievable amount of time to determine why that barrel on the front porch smells so rotten, and why someone wants payment for delivering it to Kleitos's house.

 

    Overall, the plusses far outweigh the minuses in Vita Brevis, and it was nice to read a cozy mystery where the author pays just as much attention to developing the mystery as she does to the "coziness".  There’s one more book in this series, Memento Mori, so I gotta hit the used-book stores to find a copy since I can’t remember the last time I saw Ruth Downie’s e-books discounted at Amazon.

 

    8 Stars.  One last thing.  Early on, Ruso scrapes up enough money to buy him a trio of slaves.  Two of them evolve into important characters in the story; but the third simply runs away the first chance he gets.  We aren’t even told his name.  I kept waiting for this plot thread to make an impact on the storyline, but it never does.  I’m hoping he shows up in the final book.

The Devil Wears Scrubs - Freida McFadden

   2013; 300 pages.  Book 1 (out of 2) in the “Dr. Jane McGill” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Medical Humor; On-the-Job Romance; Doctors & Hospitals.  Overall Rating: 8*/10.

 

    It’s July 1^st, and Jane McGill’s first day at work!  She’s been hired as a medical intern at County Hospital, in Manhattan, New York.  She’s very excited!

 

    Her days at medical school have ended.  Now she’ll get to put into practice all the things she learned there.  She’ll be surrounded by doctors, nurses, other interns, and all sorts of medical professionals who she can learn from.  This internship will be a life-enriching experience.

 

    True, Jane’s has a lot to learn about the way things are done at County Hospital.  But she has no doubt her boss, Alyssa Morgan will show her the ropes.  And Jane’s a quick learner.

 

    And when this day’s over, she can go back to her apartment-suite and swap stories with her roommate, whoever she is.  Jane hasn’t met her yet.  The payoff in all this is that pretty soon patients and co-workers will be calling her something new.

 

    DOCTOR Jane McGill.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Devil Wears Scrubs is humorous look at the daily grind of working at a hospital.  Freida McFadden is quite qualified to write about such a setting; she’s a practicing physician in the greater Boston area.  Stylistically, this book reminds me of Coffee, Tea or Me, which I read recently (the review is here), and which gives similar treatment to the 1960s career as an airline stewardess.  The title also alludes to movie/book, The Devil Wears Prada, but I’ve neither read nor watched that one.

 

    The story is told in the first-person POV, Jane’s.  We tag along with her as she tries to cope with back-stabbing coworkers, psycho suite-mates, and way too many patients to properly attend to their health.  Each of the 33 chapters closes with a brief summary usually formatted in terms of the time Jane gets off duty that day, the hours she’s been awake, and the percent chance she has of quitting her job.

 

    Silliness abounds, mostly in Jane’s thoughts, of the snarky quips she thinks but prudently avoids saying out loud.  Yet underneath all this, the reader gets glimpses of what it’s like to work in a busy metropolitan hospital.  Working an “on call” shift can mean being there for as long as 30 hours straight.  Some patients are very skilled at faking excruciating pain in order to con an intern into prescribing pain meds such as Percocet for them.  My wife worked in the medical field, and assures me that both the 30-hour shifts and scamming for meds are common occurrences.

 

    If, like me, you don’t work in the medical field, then you’ll find the technical details both entertaining and informative.  I could relate to be echocardiogram scene; I get those twice a year.  But learning why the hospital elevators didn’t go all the way to the top floor where the “call rooms” are was a surprise to me, and to Jane as well.

 

    The storyline stops at a logical place, although there’s not much “building to a climax” involved.  There is a sequel (see below), but there’s a 10-year gap in the storyline between the two books.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.1*/5, based on 19,920 ratings and 995 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.45*/5, based on 63,920 ratings and 5,157 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    If there’s a seat available, there exists a very clear hierarchy of who may sit.  First, the attending gets to sit.  Then if there’s another seat, the senior resident can sit.  Then if there’s another seat, someone can put their purse there.  Then if there’s another seat, a homeless drug addict who wandered into the building can sit there.  But after the attending, the resident, the purse, and the homeless guy are all settled, any available seats are all mine.  (pg. 37)

 

    “Wow you really like him.  You’re in love.”

    “Oh my God, I am not in love!”  I’m really not.  “I hardly know him.  Actually, he’s kind of a jerk.”

    “No, you’re in love,” Kali insists gleefully.  “You luuurve him!  You lurve him and you want to have like a million of his babies.”

    I cringe.  “Don’t mention having babies.  Please.”

    Kali sighs, suddenly glum.  “You’ve got a cute surgeon and all I’ve got is a diabetic cat.”

    “I think I would take your cat over the surgeon,” I say.  “Really.”

    “Well,” Kali says thoughtfully.  “He is a very sweet cat.”  (pg. 186)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Devil Wears Scrubs e-book goes for $2.99 right now, as does its sequel, The Devil You Know.  Freida McFadden has a bunch of novels in the Medical and/or Psychological Thriller genres, and generally in the $3.99-$7.99 price range.

 

“You’re presenting a patient to me and you didn’t even look at his buttocks?”  (pg. 7)

    There is a moderate amount of cussing in The Devil Wears Scrubs.  I counted 21 instances in the first third of the book, none of which were f-bombs.  I presume this reflects the normal amount of cussing that goes on when working in a hospital environment.  The editing was impressive: I didn’t see any typos, which rarely happens when I read a book. 

 

    There are lots of interesting interactions between Jane and her patients/coworkers, but they don't result in much progression in the plot.  Jane seems to screw up quite often, even after a year on the job, and her relationships with Alyssa and her roommate don’t improved much over time.

 

    As mentioned above, the ending is neither exciting or twisty.  Although both the “Job Training” and “Romance” plot threads are resolved via the Epilogue, Jane’s relationships with Alyssa and Julia are left dangling.  But hey, that’s what sequels are for.

 

    Nevertheless, I enjoyed The Devil Wears Scrubs.  I loved Jane’s snarky wit when contemplating the craziness of working in a hospital, liked the variety in the patients she encounters, and was even amused by the Romance angle of the storyline.  This was my first Freida McFadden book and I gather a majority of her novels are Medical Thrillers.  I intend to make a trip to the bookstore in the near future and purchase a couple of those.

 

    8 Stars.  One last thing.  The low Goodreads rating for this book surprised me.  It seems a lot of the reviewers were horrified at the work conditions and personal goings-on that Jane is subjected to.  And while the medical details herein seem quite accurate, I’m sure Freida McFadden “stretched” some of the character development and wacky events in Jane’s life.  Hey, let's not forget that The Devil Wears Scrubs is filed under “Fiction”.

Contact - Carl Sagan

   1985; 374 pages.  New Author? : Yes, at least since the creation of this blog.  Genres : First Contact Sci-Fi; Hard Science Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    Let’s suppose Intelligent Life exists in the Universe somewhere besides here on Earth.  How would we know?

 

    Well, we can look through telescopes at bright lights and hope to see some sort of “intelligent transmission”, although I’m not sure what that would be.  Is there anything that travels at the speed of light, besides light, of course?  Why yes, there is!  Radio waves.

 

    But radio waves come in all sorts of different wavelengths.  How can we tell which particular one an Extra Terrestrial would use to send out a signal?  And how would they transform a radio wave into a message someone on another planet would understand?

 

    That’s what Ellie Arroway has been working on for quite some time.  On taxpayers’ money.  And so far, she hasn’t found diddley squat of any intelligence via radio waves, on any wavelength, from any of the thousands of stars that’s she’s pointed her radio telescope at.

 

    Maybe we are alone in the Universe.

 

What’s To Like...

    Contact is divided into three parts, namely:

Part 1: The Message (chapters 1-9)

Part 2: The Machine (chapters 10-18)

Part 3: The Galaxy (chapters 19-24)

    Contact is a work of the “Hard Science Fiction” genre.  Carl Sagan makes an in-depth examination of how we Earthlings would (sometimes as opposed to “should”) react to finding out we aren’t alone in the Universe.

 

    The Message postulates that the most-likely means of initial contact is receiving radio signals from Outer Space.  Logical, but how do we figure out how to decode those transmissions?  The Machine theorizes that the Message gives us instructions on how to build a transport machine.  Fine, but do we have the materials and technology to build it, and dare we test it out before firing it up?  The Galaxy invites five Earthlings to sit down in the transport machine and enjoy the ride to intergalactic parts unknown.  Awesome, but are we sure we built it correctly, how do we choose who goes, and what if those ETs just want five specimens to dissect and study?

 

    The character development is superb.  Ellie is the protagonist, of course, so we expect she’ll be one of the Five selected to take the interstellar voyage.  But the other four in the group are richly developed as well, each having their own discrete traits.  Ditto for a host of secondary characters, including a number of government officials who are less than thrilled about this expensive space travel project (what if it doesn’t work?), and a fundamentalist preacher and a televangelist who are worried that God Himself, or even Satan, is the Entity behind those radio waves.

 

    Things build to a great ending, which is simultaneously cynical, revelatory, sad, and ingenious.  To give details would entail spoilers, which we eschew here.  Things close with a genealogical surprise twist for Ellie, which might sound irrelevant but explains a lot of the details in her life.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Samizdat (n.) : the clandestine copying and distribution of literature banned by the state.

Others: Armillary Sphere; (n.); Chiliasm (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 6,428 ratings and 687 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.15/5 based on 148,202 ratings and 5,016 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    Now the pulses were washing against a warm world, blue and white, spinning against the backdrop of the stars.

    There was life on this world, extravagant in its numbers and variety.  There were jumping spiders at the chilly tops of the highest mountains and sulfur-eating worms in hot vents gushing up through ridges on the ocean floors.  There were beings that could live only in concentrated sulfuric acid, and beings that were destroyed by concentrated sulfuric acid; organisms that were poisoned by oxygen, and organisms that could survive only in oxygen, that actually breathed the stuff.  (pg. 51)

 

    How much better if a few of your cells could be preserved.  Real living cells, with the DNA intact.  He visualized a corporation that would, for a healthy fee, freeze a little of your epithelial tissue and orbit it high—well above the Van Allen belts, maybe even higher than geosynchronous orbit.  No reason to die first.  Do it now, while it’s on your mind.  Then, at least, alien molecular biologists—or their terrestrial counterparts of the far future—could reconstruct you, clone you, more or less from scratch.  You would rub your eyes, stretch, and wake up in the year ten million.  (pg. 340)

 

“The Earth is an object lesson for the apprentice gods.”  (pg. 247)

    There’s a smidgen of cusswords in Contact.  I counted four of them in the first 25%, all of which were of the “milder” ilk.  I don’t recall anything that I’d label an “adult situation”.

 

    Some reviewers felt the “science versus religion” angle was overplayed in the text.  They have a point, but frankly, I think Carl Sagan accurately anticipates the religious response.  Life on other worlds, in other solar systems and other galaxies, is hard to factor into spiritual dogma.

 

    The pacing felt slow in the first two section, but keep in mind their subject matter—decoding radio pulses and building a spaceship—is highly technical by nature.  You don’t want any thrills-&-spills to take place during those phases.  The “first contact” stage also felt rather anticlimactic.

 

    But hey, if I were one of the five human space envoys, I'd hope the initial contact with Extraterrestrials was a slow-paced, peaceful affair.  A “Star Wars” scenario, while exciting to read about, would not be a promising introduction to alien species.  I don’t want to come face-to-face with a Stormtrooper, no matter how bad of a shot he is.

 

    Overall, I found Contact to be a thought-provoking work, grounded in real science and logical in presenting one possible way that humanity would react to a “We Are Not Alone” scenario.  If you don’t get bored during the “Message” and “Machine” sections, you’re in for a fantastic read in the final section, “Galaxy”.

 

    8 Stars.  One last thing.  Somehow, both Hydrofluoric Acid and Laetrile make it into Contact’s storyline.  I worked for a company who manufactured HF acid for many years, and had a moonlighting venture to develop a manufacturing process for Laetrile.  Who would've thought that Extraterrestrials are familiar with, and make use of, both these compounds?

Ye Gods! - Tom Holt

   1992; 296 pages.  New Author? :No.  Genres : Humorous Fantasy; Mythology; Satire.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    It’s not easy being the son of a Roman god.  And the head honcho, no less, Jupiter himself.  Just ask Jason Derry. 

 

    Oh, it certainly has some benefits.  You’re a physical masterpiece: you can run at super speeds, dodge flying bullets, and beat the daylight out of any human foolish enough to get into a fight with you.

 

    There are limits however.  Jason’s mom is a mortal, which makes him only a half-god.  Full-blooded deities are more powerful than him, and probably smarter as well.  That means he’s susceptible to being manipulated by the gods, if they so choose.

 

    And Jason has a sneaking suspicion that they are so choosing.

 

What’s To Like...

    Ye Gods! is a clever blend of several Greek mythological tales (Jason & the Golden Fleece, Prometheus) and the modern-day quantum physics concept of multiverses.  If you have an infinite number of parallel universes, at least one of them will still be inhabited by the ancient gods and heroes.  The tale is told via 14 chapters covering 296 pages, with a plethora of fabulous footnotes added that would make Terry Pratchett proud.

 

    It was fun to watch Tom Holt add twists to the classical Greco-Roman myths.  Jason still procures the Golden Fleece, but it’s a minor part of this story.  The gods weren’t mad at Prometheus for giving Fire to humans; it was his second gift to us that got him chained to the rock, with an eagle sent daily to peck out his liver.  The second gift was . . . well, revealing that would be a spoiler.

 

    I’m a lifelong mythology lover, so Ye Gods! was a literary delight for me.  Eleven of the Romanized deities play parts here, plus a twelfth one that I had never heard of.  I was sure that last one was something Tom Holt had dreamed up, and then surprised when I found a Wikipedia page about him.  I’d tell you the god’s name, but that too would a spoiler.

 

    Tom Holt is a British novelist, thus the book is written in English, not American.  So for us Yanks, there were some odd spellings (cheque, sulphur, dialled) and weird words (shufti, git, biro), but I’ve gotten familiar with most of these.  The author also works lots of trivia-worthy items into the text, such as Perry Mason, Burger King, Mithraism, Vivaldi, and one of my heroes, Aleister Crowley.  Late in the story, we get to watch an episode of an alternate-universe TV Game Show called God’s My Witness.  That was exciting.

 

    The ending is vintage Tom Holt: unforeseen yet absurdly logical.  Jason (and the reader) finally get to the bottom of the godly skullduggery, and for perhaps the first time in his life, our hero is introduced to the concept of free will.

 

Excerpts...

    ”Virgil,” he said, “can I ask you something?”

    “Be my guest,” said the Mantuan.

    “If you had a little voice in the back of your head,” said Jason, “that kept telling you to . . . no, suggesting that you do things that you really don’t want to do, because they’re dangerous and you don’t understand why they need doing anyway, how would you react?”

    “I’d have a lobotomy,” Virgil replied unhesitatingly.  “Nothing worse than a chatty brain, I always say.”  (pg. 99)

 

   “Bad King Atreus looked out

    On the slopes of Pindus

    Lightning came and rubbed him out,

    Blowing him to cinders.

    Atreus, the silly sod,

    Came to Jove’s attention.

    People who offend a god

    Don’t collect their pension.”  (pg. 242)

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Nobble (v.) : to try to influence or thwart someone by underhanded or unfair means.  (British, slang)

Others: Chiropody (n.); Simpulum (n.); Profiteroles (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.1*/5, based on 210 ratings and 26 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.71*/5, based on 1,299 ratings and 40 reviews.

 

“Just because you’re omniscient doesn’t mean you don’t forget the occasional birthday.”  (pg. 157)

    There’s not a lot of profanity in Ye Gods!  I counted just 10 instances in the first 20%, all of the either the scatological or eschatological variety.  Later on, a couple of stronger cusswords crop up, including one f-bomb.

 

    There were only a couple typos: a missing comma, hopped/hoped, and two different spellings of a character’s last name: Bennett/Bennet.

 

    A word to the wise: don't be surprised if you get a third of the way through the book and suddenly realize you have no idea what the main storyline is.  This is trademark Tom Holt, and rest assured that the main plot thread will eventually reveal itself.  In the meantime, just enjoy being entertained by the author’s wit, storytelling, and the antics of a bunch of Roman gods.

 

    8 Stars.  One last thing.  At one point, a “CND symbol” is referenced, and I had never heard of such a thing.  This stymied me, but luckily Wikipedia is the fount of all knowledge.  “CND” refers to a British activist group called the “Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament”, and its symbol is what we ex-hippies call “the peace symbol”.  Peace on!

The Providence Rider - Robert McCammon

   2012; 516 pages.  Book 4 (out of 10) in the “Matthew Corbett” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Historical Fiction; Colonial America; Thriller.  Overall Rating: 8*/10.

 

    New York City, 1703 CE.  Someone is blowing up buildings!

 

    Whoever’s doing it is also painting graffiti on walls next to be exploding buildings.  Actually, the graffiti is rather minimal: just a single name: MATTHEW CORBETT.  It’s logical to suppose that’s the perpetrator, bragging about his crimes.

 

    When Matthew Corbett arrives upon the scene, he’s quite astonished to see his name scrawled on the walls.  He knows he’s not the arsonist, even if others in the crowd are giving him distrustful looks.  He’s more than ready to start investigating the crimes, and an obvious question is already giving him a starting point.

 

    Why is the real perpetrator painting Matthew’s name on a nearby wall each time he blows up a building?

 

What’s To Like...

    The Providence Rider is the fourth book in Robert McCammon’s “Matthew Corbett” now-completed ten-book historical thriller series.  The riddle of Matthew’s name being in close proximity to blown-up buildings is readily solved and Matthew and two companions, Berry and Zed, quickly find themselves on a ship headed for Pendulum Island in the Bermudas.  Several shady characters accompany our heroes in order to make sure they don’t change their minds.

 

    An old adversary is there to greet Matthew when the ship reaches its destination, wanting him to do a sleuthing job, and promising him ample recompense.  I love it when good guys are persuaded to get in cahoots with bad guys.  The book’s title references Matthew’s acceptance of the job; “Providence Rider” is colonial slang for “Problem Solver”.  Not surprisingly, the straightforward assignment rapidly becomes more complex and dangerous.

 

    The Providence Rider is first a foremost a Historical Thriller, with lots of Action and Intrigue infused into it.  Things proceed at a rapid pace, with a bunch of baddies for Matthew to rub shoulders with, a couple of which are beautiful and deadly women.  The 34 chapters average out to about 15 pages/chapter and there are five drawings included which I thought added a nice touch.  Timewise, the story is set in 1703-04 CE, and I’m really loving this historical fiction series because of the rarely used era that it's set in.

 

    Things build to an exciting climax that, with everyone—good-guys and baddies alike— fleeing for their lives.  There are casualties amongst both the white-hats and the black-hats.  The scene then shifts back to New York, where several secondary plotlines are resolved, plus one major romantic one.  The tale closes with a teaser for the next book in the series.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Fearnaught (n.) : a thick, heavy, shaggy woolen overcoat.

Others: Puffet (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.5*/5, based on 998 ratings and 171 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.24*/5, based on 3,517 ratings and 349 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “I may sit?”  Sirki motioned to a chair.  Matthew nodded again, though he was concerned about the chair’s survival.  Sirki eased himself into it and stretched out his long legs.  “Ah.  Now, I’m in . . . how would you say? . . . pig’s paradise?”

    “Hog heaven,” Matthew suggested.

    “Exactly.  Let me show you I have no weapons.”  Sirki lifted his arms, shrugged off his cloak, and patted around his midsection.

    “Do you need any?”

    This time a grin burst forth.  “No, I do not.”

    Matthew reasoned it was time to keep his mouth shut.  (loc. 842)

 

    “You had some trouble today.”  It was a statement of fact, as dry as the fish bones in the skeleton collection.

    “A mite,” Matthew allowed.

    “Hm.  One of my stone seahorses is missing from the library balcony.  Also the curtain cords are gone.  There is—was—a wine bottle on the ledge.  What can you tell me about that?”

    “Nothing.”  Matthew shrugged.  His heart was a furious drummer.  “Much.”

    “You shield your enemies.  Why?”

    “I take care of my own business.”

    “That’s admirable.  Stupid, possibly . . . but admirable.”  (loc. 3941)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Providence Rider sells for $11.99 right now at Amazon.  The rest of the books in the series generally range in price from $11.99 to $15.99, with occasional discounts on select e-books, usually to $2.99.  Robert McCammon has other series and standalone novels for your Kindle; they normally range in price anywhere from $2.99 to $11.99.

 

It was a good day, he decided, to not be a ghost.  (loc. 3651)

    I noted 19 cusswords in the first 20% of The Providence Rider, all of them being of the “milder 4-letter words” type.  Later on, there were a couple of f-bombs, plus some references to female dogs and posteriors, as well as one roll in the hay.  There were a couple of typos: assinine/asinine; whether/whither; was/were; and treel-imbs/tree-limbs; but these were sparse enough to not be distracting.  A number of mysterious “Kk” notations popped up between paragraphs, but I suspect this was more the fault of the conversion-to-Kindle software, not the author.

 

    Each character had his/her unique traits, but they were all either “all good” or “all evil”.  I’m partial to "gray" characters, but have to say it was interesting to watch white-hats and black-hats forced to cooperate with one another.  There weren’t a lot of plot twists, although that’s what you hire a Providence Rider to minimize.

 

    Enough of the quibbling.  For me The Providence Rider was a well-written page-turner, with oodles of action, intrigue, and skullduggery jumping up on almost every page.  Next up is The River of Souls, which is on my Kindle, awaiting my attention.  Stay tuned.

 

    8 Stars.  One last thing.  There is a lifesaving scene in The Providence Rider that’s incredibly over-the-top.  It reminded me of an old James Bond movie where Pierce Brosnan jumps out of an airplane in mid-flight over mountains, without a parachute, and ends up somehow deftly skiing up to ski lodge café.  If you remember and enjoyed that Bondian antic, you'll love the one here.

British Mammals - Richard Herley

   2024; 355 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Satire; British Fiction; Family Life; Romance.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    Take Colin Forrest’s advice: never break off a romantic relationship with an Albanian girl.

 

    Well, let’s tweak that just a bit.  Never break things off with an Albanian girl who has three psycho brothers who now feel you’ve dishonored their entire family and are about to come looking for you with guns and fists.

 

    It’s time for Colin to “disappear” into the hinterlands of England.  Maybe find a job up in the Norfolk area, and lay low for a while.  Make sure your name and picture don’t appear in any newspaper, at least until those three brothers quit searching for you and go back to Tirana.

 

    And for heaven’s sake, if an attractive girl crosses your path, don’t fall in love with her.

 

What’s To Like...

    Full disclosure: at its heart, British Mammals is a Romance novel.  But if you’re a male reader, don’t run away yet, there’s also a bit of violence in the tale, several dysfunctional characters to keep the personal interactions tense, and lots of nudity.

 

    The book is written in English, not American, and even though I’ve read plenty of British novels, there were oodles of new “Britishisms” in the text for me.  The most exquisite one is given below, but there were dozens more, such as: drumby, bint, twigged, posh totty, moggy, dekko, fizgig, wigging, yonks, hent, and coo, the last two of which I never did suss out.  I’m a language nut, so I loved all these new words.  There was even an Albanian phrase!  When’s the last time you ran into that language in a book?

 

    Colin finds a job as a groundsman at a resort called Bubthorpe Pines, which he thinks is a perfect low-stress, low-profile job.  Alas for him, and happily for the reader, such is not the case.  The resort is on shaky financial ground, and continued employment at the resort, for both the top dogs and the bottom-rung laborers, is iffy.  Tempers are short, solutions are few, and nudist resorts are losing popularity.

 

    I liked the nudism angle; it gives the opportunity for some comic relief in the storyline.  Resort employees, thankfully, do not have to "undress accordingly", but they do have to "bare witness" (pun intended) and cater to middle-aged practitioners who are developing wrinkles and sagginess.  Activities such as “beach cricket” and weddings take on a whole new aspect when done without clothes.

 

  As always with a Richard Herley novel, the character-building is excellent.  Each person's make-up is unique.  One of the main characters is a successful novelist, but presently dealing with some e-book issues at Amazon.  I appreciated the insights Richard Herley provides about e-publishing in general, and suspect he is drawing upon his firsthand experiences.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Playing Gooseberry (phrase) : an unwanted third party in a situation where two people want to be alone.

Others: many, many more.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 2 ratings and 1 review.

    Goodreads: 4.50/5 based on 2 ratings and 1 review.

 

Kindle Details…

    British Mammals currently sells for $2.99 at Amazon. Richard Herley offers about 16 e-books for your Kindle; they range in price from $0.99 to $3.67.  He recently discounted his entire catalog of e-books to $0.99 apiece, which I greatly appreciated and used to grab a couple more of his novels.

 

Excerpts...

    ”What’s he like?  Do you fancy him?”

    “No.”

    “Surely there must be some eligible male somewhere on Earth who can melt the ice in your veins.  What, O frozen-hearted maiden, undisputed queen of the polar north, does he look like?”

    “Tall but not too tall, blond, with no hint of a man-bun.”

    “Do you find him handsome?”

    “Sufficiently.”

    “Amy!  Your fervour astounds me!  So you’re made of flesh and blood like the rest of us!  Have you been drinking in secret?  Antifreeze, I mean.”  (loc. 558)

 

    “Do you?”

    “Do I what?”

    “Think about the future?”

    “Sometimes.”

    “What do you think about it?”

    ”It’s worrying,” Benny decided.  “I worry about the future.  Of the Pines, I mean, and other things.”

    “Surely the future will be like the past.  It always has been, for as long as I can remember.  I mean. What was the future becomes the present and as soon as it does that it becomes the past.  There’s not much difference between them, all three of them, except that in the present one is present and in the past and future one is not.”

    This was an unusually long and profound disquisition on Effy’s part.  (loc. 1737)

 

Trying to pin Effy down on any topic was like knitting fog.  (loc. 2115)

    There's a moderate amount of cussing in British Mammals.  I counted 21 instances in the first 20% of the book, most of which were f-bombs and uttered by two of the characters, Tez and Bert.

 

    I was surprised by the abruptness of the ending.  The tension builds as the various plotlines are cleverly brought together, but things end with just one of them being resolved, and even that one was done verbally.  Yes, I could deduce how the other ones would likely be tied up, but it would have been nice to have those wrap-ups confirmed, or even better, subject to some plot twists.  Perhaps these storylines will all be addressed in a sequel.  One can hope.

 

    Enough of the quibbling.  The romance in British Mammals could have easily become a slog for me, but fortunately Richard Herley’s storytelling and writing skills kept me turning the pages.  I loved his depictions of the English lifestyle, especially on topics such as class structures, the institution of marriage, and ecological considerations, such as deforestation to build housing developments.  British Mammals was a delightful read for me, and I look forward to the author's next novel.

 

    8 Stars.  One last thing.  Let’s hear it for NIMBY finding its way into the text here.  It's one of my favorite acronyms!