The Second Deadly Sin by Lawrence Sanders (1977) – BR00288 (R2026) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
January 9 2026

Plot or Premise

Victor Maitland is an artist of great passion and terrible interpersonal skills. When he shows up dead, knifed in the back in a low-rent painting studio, there are lots of possible suspects. Everyone hated his guts, as they say.

What I Liked

The original case had gone nowhere, looked like a faked robbery, but with no leads. Maitland’s uncle had some juice and put pressure on Thorsen to solve it, which pulled Delaney back in from retirement. Delaney starts working with Abner Boone and they make great partners and mentor/mentee with no BS, just hard talk.

I enjoyed the investigation into all the different possible suspects. And even into Maitland. Despite being a first-class jerk, Delaney admires his artwork. For the suspects, we meet his wife in denial, his art manager in greed, the art manager’s lawyer in possible cahoots, the son in anger, a model in ignorance, a model in luxury and notoriety, and his extended family in seclusion in the boonies.

It’s a great case to see all the moving pieces going nowhere fast, until you start to see some movement with some of the culprits. Fantastic procedural, particularly for the early times.

And I did not see the ending coming. Delaney has the nickname Iron B*lls for a reason.

What I Didn’t Like

There are a bit too many red herrings with so many suspects, most of which go nowhere useful, and there’s extra romance layered on for the home life of Delaney and Boone.

The Bottom Line

Even jerks deserve a homicide investigation

2026: G is for goals

The PolyBlog
January 9 2026

It seems almost ironic to have a post about goals…after all, all 26 of these posts are about goals. Taking stock of where I am, looking at where I want to go and how to get there.

So what would a separate post about goals cover that the other 25 won’t?

Well, the fact that I’m blogging 26 times to start the year for one.

I was inspired by a book about journaling, as I said earlier, and so I created a list of 26 items to blog about in January. I’ve covered A-F already, will do H-Z after this. For today, it is about how I’m doing on managing my goals.

I took a break before Christmas after writing twice about my writing goals and trying to apply the PACE methodology (primary, alternate, contingency, emergency) to setting priorities. It doesn’t quite fit, but I think I found a way to structure it. I’ll try to do the same for a few others, and when I’m done Z, I’ll do some sort of wrap-up and prioritization exercise.

Over the course of the year, though, I’m going to look at some other “insights” aka popular books about goals. Mel Robbins is huge in the popular press these days, and while I fear it’ll turn out to be the motivational equivalent of the decluttering fad about whether something gave you joy, I want to read what she has to say.

I also need to check in on my 60×60 list and see how I’m doing, which will likely kick off in February.

In the meantime, I have a new little tool. They sell these little whiteboards that look a bit like keyboards (about the same length and width) with a surface to write on and wipe off. It is designed to sit on your desk in between your keyboard and your monitor and give you a place to take notes, set a to do list, etc. I love it. Andrea and Jacob got me one for Christmas and I liked it so much, I ordered a second one to sit on my work desk, too. It’s perfect for my short-term to do list as I rarely like digital apps for managing smaller bits.

Stay tuned!

2026: F is for family

The PolyBlog
January 8 2026

I thought I knew what this item would be about up until today. I was going to write about board games. Andrea, Jacob and I play board or card games almost every night after dinner, sometimes even at lunch if we need a break from work, and sometimes during the day on the weekend.

We have even done a “tournament of games” this past year where I tracked who won all the games we played so we could see who was the grandmaster for the year (I have to still total up Q4 — Jacob won 2 of the first quarters, Andrea won 1, and I was equivalent of a “ball return” in bowling, I passed the cards back to the next dealer). And we’ll do it again this year.

I’ll also add some Lego activities, some video games with Jacob, etc. and some more activities outside the house with Andrea (more walking, most likely). Plus whatever comes if I retire this year.

But then today happened.

We got some really good news on one of Jacob’s health-related issues. I’d love to brag about it, but well, it’s not really my story to tell. And it isn’t necessarily amazing to anyone who doesn’t know Jacob’s story. The average person would think it was no big deal. But it was huge for Jacob, and one of the rare occasions I have seen him almost bubbling over in the last few difficult years. He’s not the most emotional of kids outwardly, but he was tickled pink today at his own performance.

And so I wonder if I need to think more about the family item and related goals. Most of the time since 2020, we’ve been looking for an “absence of bad news”, or some form of manageable normalcy. Actual good news has been rare.

That sounds a bit harsh, I know. We had good times in 2025, for example, I’m not saying we didn’t. We took a great trip to BC and saw some amazing things. And Jacob had a great time in the mountains, as expected. Switchbacks weren’t much fun for me, but the rest of the trip “worked” most of the time.

But I realized today that almost all of our family life comes with an asterisk. And while there is still an asterisk on the stuff today with Jacob, it’s a small asterisk and likely to disappear. It may not, but we’re taking the win for now.

How do I harness more of THAT awesome sauce than the “absence of bad” that we’ve been dealing with? We need more of those moments to celebrate. And it doesn’t have to be big wins.

Yesterday, Andrea had an appointment late in the morning, I drove over to pick her up, and we were both free together at lunch. So we stopped at Kettleman’s for a bagel lunch, BLT for her and club for me. Just a nice leisurely lunch, no kid, no appointments to get to, not rushed to get back to work, no work to talk about, just chatting. It was really nice, something we haven’t done in a while. Unrushed. Kind of the type of lunch or outings I would like more of in my retirement, although Andrea likely won’t retire quite yet.

Is it too simplistic to just say that I want “bigger”? More positive oomph in our lives?