Category Archives: Lilypad-Library

Books, blurbs, and bullrushes

The Lacey Confession by Richard Greener (2006) – BR00224 (R2023) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
May 22 2023

Plot or Premise

When a rich and powerful man dies, leaving behind a lengthy and vengeful document of his life, many powerful forces move to capture the document before the document can be revealed to the public.

What I Liked

Whereas the first book read almost like a John Grisham novel, this second one seems like more of a Jeffrey Archer saga across the ages. The Lacey Confession is a document best kept hidden, or so many think. But the terms of his will are quite specific. On the fourth day after his death, it is to be released. Including details about major events of the 20th Century, including the assassination of JFK. While the story could be historical, or more like the Da Vinci Code, Greener roots the story in a young Foreign Service Officer who is the one who receives the document. Some want to protect him, and one hires Walter Sherman, aka The Locator aka The Finder, to hunt him down and find a safe place to keep him hidden. An assassin with pluck and a mysterious powerful CIA fixer are great main characters in the story.

What I Didn’t Like

There are two giant plot holes in the storyline and chronology of events. In the first instance, a lawyer representing Lacey reveals to the Foreign Service Officer that he has the document and gives it to him. Except he wouldn’t. He needed it in order to honour his client’s wishes, as he has for many years. He expects to be “thwarted” in his plans, and that he won’t be allowed to release the Confession, but it makes no sense he gives up the only copy to the random US FSO who shows at his office. Equally, at the end, the person who ends up with the document has it for six to eight weeks while Walter is otherwise engaged. Yet he apparently does NOTHING with the document. He doesn’t act on its contents, he doesn’t tell his partner for whom he is doing all of it, nada. Everything stands still and waits for Walter to be back in the game. The first is a mere plot device, not egregious, while the second is ridiculous and makes no sense whatsoever. It detracts enough from the story to knock it down a star.

The Bottom Line

The best in the series, but alas, there are no more

The Knowland Retribution by Richard Greener (2004) – BR00223 (R2023) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
May 14 2023

Plot or Premise

Walter Sherman has one unique skill. He can find anything that someone is searching for, which, most of the time, is a person. His nickname is the Locator, which he earned in Vietnam. Now he earns a living doing 5-10 jobs a year when people come to him asking him to find someone. In this first book in the series, a bunch of suits want him to find whoever is killing off the business people who were involved in a tainted meat scandal.

What I Liked

The premise is unique. While lots of series have private investigators who take on cases, including missing person cases, or series with police detectives hunting a serial killer, Walter isn’t any of these things. He only works by referral from someone that he has done work for in the past; he doesn’t advertise, he has no office or website, etc. Finding an anonymous killer? Not something he normally does. But the money is too good to say no, and it seems like the killer is worth catching.

The book series was made into a short-lived TV show (The Finder), with a number of significant changes — they made it that he was injured in Iraq or Afghanistan and can now find things, he’s not living in the US Virgin Islands, but somewhere in Florida, there’s an on-again/off-again love interest who is also a US Marshal, etc.

The business side of the story is pretty well-done, although a couple of the “bad” business guys are a little bit of a cliché. Nevertheless, it has almost an early John Grisham feel to it in places. And the bar near his home, Billy’s bar, with Billy and Ike as his two best friends, is really well done.

What I Didn’t Like

While Walter doesn’t know the identity of the killer, the reader does. And it takes some of the mystery out. Walter is barely present for the first 20% of the book, so it’s pretty heavy on an exposition of additional characters. Plus, while one of the main characters starts to identify with the killer’s sense of “justice,” and you are meant to see the callousness of the original, the vicious deaths that are delivered are only mildly explained. I never felt any sympathy for the killer, and the ending is questionable. There’s also no explanation of how he knows everything he does or how he found it all out; he just shows up, kills someone, and moves on. There’s only one scene where it shows him “stalking” someone, and even that is relatively bland.

However, I think my biggest objections are a love interest that we are told is all about passion but doesn’t seem to really drive any chemistry except in a scene or two, and the original “hook” that gets Walter involved is glossed over. The reader knows they are scummy people, but Walter’s reasons to help are murky at best. Later he reacts as if he was betrayed, but most of what they told him was relatively true — they just didn’t tell him the whole story, and despite being an ace interrogator, he seems surprised to learn other details they hid from him. Yet the story moves along at a good clip, so while I would be tempted to drop it to 3 out of 5, the pace bumps it back to 4.

The Bottom Line

Come for the Locator…who eventually joins the story

McNally’s Luck by Lawrence Sanders (1992) – BR00222 (R2023) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
May 8 2023

Plot or Premise

What starts as a cat-napping morphs into poison letters, threats and murder.

What I Liked

There are some decent psychological elements, albeit not well-developed, and a wide cast of characters … a grieving husband vs. a trophy wife who doesn’t care about the cat; a poor poet with a rich wife; and a gang of bunko artists ripping people off through astrology. The police partner has a larger role, including saving Archy’s life near the end.

What I Didn’t Like

The trophy wife and rich husband are complete caricatures with virtually no role in the case(s). They spend time talking about a specific model of word processor as the big clue to see who’s involved, and it really doesn’t stand up well 30 years later. Add in a woman “done wrong by a man” whom Archy gets to use as a playmate only to find out she’s turned lesbian overnight and a showdown that reads like a bad action scene from a ’70s TV show, and it isn’t that great a read. However, what bothered me most is that there is a GIANT clue that both McNally and his dad miss, it’s completely obvious to the reader, and it cracks the case wide open. Yet despite being glaringly obvious. Archy has to re-enact it to explain it to his father and the police detective, both of whom are amazed at his deductive skills. Sigh.

The Bottom Line

Love Archy, but not the best outing in the series

McNally’s Secret by Lawrence Sanders (1992) – BR00221 (R2023) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
May 7 2023

Plot or Premise

The book is the first in the Archy McNally series. Archy is the one-man investigations unit in his father’s law firm, handling discreet investigations for Palm Beach’s wealthy locals. One of their clients has been robbed, but she doesn’t want everyone to know. She just wants her stamps back.

What I Liked

Archy is a great character, and I love his interactions with the various members of high society or their associated entourages. Many people COULD have stolen the stamps, we see a red herring or two plus lots of little sub-stories to confuse the narrative. Most of the sub-characters are decent, if not extensively developed. And we get to meet his on-again / off-again paramour, Consuela in addition to the client’s self-absorbed children and a gay family friend.

What I Didn’t Like

There’s a red herring early on, yet nobody seems to follow up on it hardly. They should at least be ruling it out. Or talking to the people to see if they have any insights, but nada. Secondly, there’s an odd love triangle in the middle with very little to argue for the supposed outcome they all agree is the reality. And third, a giant “surprise” at the end is just simply odd. It should challenge Archy’s sense of morality, but he blithely brushes it off. It’s consistent with some of his behaviour, but it would have been nice to see him wrestle with it.

The Bottom Line

Great intro, love Archy

Continuing Crime and Punishment (10-15%)

The PolyBlog
April 29 2023

I mentioned that I restarted C&P for the fourth time (third time from the absolute beginning, hmm, that means it was likely my fifth time reading, depending on how I count, but I digress). I just pressed my way through two really interesting scenes, one where he gets a letter from his mother, and a second while he is out walking while thinking about the letter. Needless to say, since I’m talking about the plot…spoiler alert!

For the letter, it is fascinating to see the stream of consciousness of another person (the mother) trying to explain what has happened in her daughter’s life (his sister). They have been sending him money as the male in the family and he was struggling, even though they themselves don’t have much. His sister was working in a house, the husband made a serious pass at her which was declined, the wife found out and blamed the girl, huge scandal for several weeks, and then the truth came out — with the wife realizing it was all the husband, the girl had resisted repeatedly and was not encouraging him but had no other job to go to, so couldn’t just quit, etc. The beauty of the letter is unrivalled. It has nuggets galore to think about and ponder…how the mother describes the daughter’s new suitor who has proposed marriage, the idea of the would-be husband that it is better to have a wife who will see the marriage as a saving act to rescue her from poverty rather than a wife who takes him for granted (there are TONS of refs to power imbalances in the letter, with assumptions all around), how the sister has reacted, etc.

And then while he’s walking, we get to see HIS interpretation or almost translation of what his mother has said. His mother and sister are happy, but he suspects it is all terrible, and should be stopped. The man’s designs, the family’s need, it is all a tragedy, and he should be the hero, not the new husband. Again, entirely in his head as he concocts huge scenarios based on the flimsiest of lines in the letter.

But as he walks, he is distracted coming upon a young woman, a girl by his standards, around 16, who is clearly drunk and in a state of disarray for her clothing. He deduces that she has been fed liquor to become intoxicated and then raped (“deceived by a ruffian”), and she is still incredibly drunk, going on about how some quite forward man “wouldn’t let her alone”. She is practically passed out on a bench at one point. He wants to help her, and suspects another passerby of ill intent, that he will take advantage of her too. So he calls a cop, gives him money to help her get home, gets the police involved, accuses the other man of ill intent (a proxy perhaps for his own desires that man always suspects others of having), and then the woman leaves with the police in tow. At which point, the narrator starts to wonder if he should have gotten involved at all, and why did he give away money to help her when he needed it himself? He even yells at the police for getting involved. It’s a bit of a wild ride for a scene.

Yet what strikes me most about these two scenes is that from my previous reading, I had the timeline for them completely different in my mind. I estimated they took place after the titular “crime” that is still to come. This is the third time I’ve read this opening section (0-15%) and yet because of the fits and starts previously, I couldn’t even keep the order of events correct in the timeline. Odd, that.

Anyway, another 5% out of the way at lunch this week. Onward!