Tag Archives: B&N

Pathways by Jeri Taylor (1998) – BR00084 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
October 10 1999

Plot or Premise

The Voyager crew are separated from the ship and captured by an alien race. The crew are placed in a prison camp full of various races. While awaiting rescue by Captain Janeway, the members tell stories from their pasts to each other at night to help pass the time.

What I Liked

Chakotay’s tale is of his rejection of his tribe’s ways and embracing the Starfleet ideals, and then joining the Maquis to chase the Cardassians. Harry Kim’s focuses on his privileged upbringing, discovering Starfleet hikers, meeting Boothbie, and his rough adjustment at the Academy. Kes’ tale is a bit odd, seems off from her character on the show, but covers her short life before meeting Neelix (told through some sort of psychic link with her essence that has already left Voyager) including pushing the Elders to reveal the history of the Caretaker and her decision to explore the surface. Tuvok’s backstory includes his double career with Starfleet, namely first joining Starfleet as a young man, and then leaving Starfleet, returning home to raise a family, having a spiritual quest in the desert, and deciding to rejoin Starfleet, reviewing Janeway’s first mission as part of his duties, and then being posted to her ship only to butt heads repeatedly with her over her impulsive nature.

What I Didn’t Like

I wasn’t totally comfortable with B’Elanna’s story about never being part of the life of either Klingons or humans, her decision to leave Starfleet Academy and work on a freighter, and meeting Chakotay and Paris in the Maquis. It seems at odds with her very Klingon personality at the start of Voyager, as if she didn’t have much experience with humans. Yet the backstory talks about even her first serious boyfriend having been human. Paris’ story doesn’t reveal much, it’s mostly rehash of excerpts from other episodes — his relationship with his Admiral father, joining Starfleet and starting a ski team, an chance to be the pilot for the Enterprise, an accident with his flight team (similar to the character he played on TNG episode with Wesley Crusher), his joining the Maquis, his imprisonment for firing on a Starfleet ship to protect the Maquis, and finally joining Voyager. Neelix’s story probably had the most potential as being different and unique, i.e. growing up on a quiet planet on the edge of war and the loss of his family and trading partners, and then meeting Voyager’s crew, but the story went nowhere.

The Bottom Line

Decent views of the various backstories.

Night Passage by Robert B. Parker (1997) – BR00083 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
October 10 1999

Plot or Premise

This is the first one in the Jesse Stone series. Jesse is a washed-up homicide detective from L.A. who climbed into a bottle and lost his wife to a L.A. player. But a small town in Massachusetts called Paradise recruits him as their new police chief…and Jesse jumps at it to save his own life.

What I Liked

Things are not as they appear in Paradise because the town leader has started his own little militia designed to fight back when the eventual downfall of America occurs. The previous chief of police has been sent packing and the town council wants someone they can control. Unfortunately, Jesse isn’t it. The focus of this first story is on Jesse getting sober, finding out what really happened to the last chief, finding out what is going on in Paradise with the town leader, and when he has time, figuring out what’s going on in his personal life. A refreshing change from the Spenser series because there is no Hawk and there is no Susan to back him up, there’s just him.

What I Didn’t Like

Vinnie and Joe from the Spenser series show up, but are more for comic relief than anything. Stone’s ex-wife and new girlfriend are more co-dependant than helpful.

The Bottom Line

Decent start to a new Parkers series.

The Face-Changers by Thomas Perry (1998) – BR00081 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
October 10 1999

Plot or Premise

Jane Whitefield is back, and she is trying to live up to her promise to her husband to not help any more fugitives to disappear. But then her husband brings her a Richard-Kimble-like friend who has been framed for the murder of his research assistant, and he can’t even blame a one-armed man. Her husband asks her to help because the friend is his old mentor.

What I Liked

The story expands outward pretty fast, as Jane discovers that other people have been using her identity and reputation to “help” people for profit, in some cases where the people didn’t need any help but were scared into thinking they did. Basically to create the demand for the service they can provide. So Jane has to figure that part out too, or she’ll never be able to save anyone else again, let alone her husband’s friend. Added to the mix is an FBI agent who wants to know what is going on, and knows Jane has the answers — and he’s willing to arrest her to find out. Aiding a fugitive is just the first charge of many he has in mind. Plus, just for fun, her husband is being hit on by one of the bad guys.

What I Didn’t Like

It’s a little hard to follow at times as she criss-crosses the U.S., and some of the sub-stories are a little over-developed.

The Bottom Line

Solid novel.

Extreme Justice by William Bernhardt (1998) – BR00078 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
October 10 1999

Plot or Premise

In the seventh in the series, lawyer Ben Kincaid has become disillusioned so he runs away from the law and takes up jazz music full-time. When a body shows up on stage (literally falling on Ben), Ben has to step up as a lawyer again to save the owner of the club who has been framed for the murder. Working against the owner and against Ben is the fact that the owner served time for the murder of someone else from the old days, a friend of the owner — and an old friend of the new victim! A few too many links and the police think they have their man. Ben wants to see justice done, but his return to the law is only temporary, supposedly.

What I Liked

The story-telling is first-rate, and the mystery aspects of it become almost secondary. Loving, Jones and Christina are all back on the scene, and you get to see one sub-mystery involving Christina.

What I Didn’t Like

Everyone is impatient with Ben and keeps telling him to wake up and realize who he is (a lawyer, not a jazz music) and the constant angst grates on the nerves. Loving and Jones don’t have much to do, and Christina’s mystery drops several GIANT clues that Ben doesn’t see. The ending reads more like an action / movie ending, and all three of the sub-mysteries are easily figured out by the reader well before they are unveiled in the story.

The Bottom Line

Stronger story-telling than mystery.

N is for Noose by Sue Grafton (1998) – BR00077 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
October 10 1999

Plot or Premise

Kinsey Milhone takes a case in a small town. Dead is a cop, apparently of a heart attack. But his wife, unloved by the community and perhaps deservedly so, knows that something had been bothering her husband before he died, and now she wants to know what, for her own peace of mind. So she hires Kinsey to find out what was going on, but not everyone shares the wife’s desire to know. Kinsey finds out relatively quickly that the cop had been investigating a year-old murder case, that originally looked like a suicide by hanging (hence the title). However, the method of suicide exactly matched another case, so he knew it wasn’t suicide — hence an investigation that had been going nowhere. Worse still, the only suspects were in the small town, and most of them were friends. Kinsey searches, finds the original path of inquiry and starts digging. In the process, she gets beat up, warned off, almost fired, belittled by her client, and pretty much treated badly by everyone in the town when they find out she isn’t the innocent little camper people mistook her for at the beginning.

What I Liked

The story is pretty linear, although Grafton takes her own sweet time bringing Kinsey to see it. There’s a short intro to some problems with Rosey back home, obviously something to come up again in a later book, but most of it is just Kinsey alone in the small town getting nowhere. Once she cottons on to the real path, the investigation is pretty straight-forward, but she doesn’t see the result until it is almost too late. There’s some really weird stuff at the end to do with some drugged-out hallucinations, and it makes for an interesting incapacitation plotline.

What I Didn’t Like

Grafton takes a little too long to get to the investigation, almost like the story started out as a short story, with all the stuff at the start added to expand the length. Although the tightness of the ending makes the story move along, it all wrapped up too quickly.

The Bottom Line

Solid entry, a different location than most of the stories.