Stephanie Plum has settled in to her job as a bounty hunter, and so picking up a missing NJ girl who failed to appear after stealing her boyfriend’s truck seems like a cakewalk. And there’s a bonus — the boyfriend is willing to give her money too to find her and get some supposed love letters back from her. Easy peasy. Except nothing is easy for Plum, ever. The missing girl wants to stay missing, and her mother and co-worker are helping. Even when somebody else is looking for the girl too, and willing to hurt people to get them to talk.
What I Liked
Plum has an extra helper in this case, a guy who’s good with codes and clues. A flamboyant cross-dresser, he livens up the scene. And the relationship with Moretti leaps forward with the two cohabitating for a while. I love the scenes where the women were talking about guns and what type of gun to carry, use, etc.
What I Didn’t Like
There are some baddies who are painfully obviously involved, which Plum misses for most of the book. And someone who is out to get her is obvious as well. Also painful to watch. Oh, and one of my favourite characters, Ranger, has nothing to do for the entire book. More like an afterthought to include him.
I posted earlier about Michael Hyatt’s article about ebooks, and why he was switching to paper for 2016, and now there’s a semi-related post from The Ebook Evangelist (How do we define an e-reader? | The eBook Evangelist). In it, the blogger references how popular vernacular talks about so-called “e-reader” device problems:
small screens (they mean like phones, which are not e-readers but rather phones that also have e-reader apps);
large screens (they mean like tablets, which are also not e-readers but rather tablets that also have e-reader apps); and,
blue-light, back-light problems (generally meaning phones or tablets, as most e-readers are e-ink devices without backlighting of that sort, although some e-readers DO now come with a different form of backlight).
Mostly though I’m sharing the link above as she has the same reaction I do — the articles are “confusing” (as she puts it) and “worthless” (in my vernacular) as they frequently throw apples, oranges and a few internet devices into the same basket, and then hope to draw some common issues with all of them by reviewing only one. A one-size-fits-all that really often fits none. and it hopelessly confuses the debate. Some other things bother me too:
people who are passionate about ebooks over paper or paper over ebooks — personally, I don’t care about format, I only care if people read;
people who argue that reading retention is less on e-devices vs. paper and that this is bad (first, we need to quantify those metrics, because they also include the person who switched from reading to playing a game, and the real problem with their retention isn’t retention but that they got distracted doing something else and didn’t read it in the first place; and second, before we decide it is bad, can we also revise the metrics to also measure engagement with the passive books vs. active e-devices, the opportunity for greater engagement with e-devices if they are actually used effectively, not just dumping raw text onto an e-device, not formatting it for an e-reading experience, and finding people don’t remember it as well as the nicely formatting paper book? People also retain books better than they do loose-leaf hand-written pages, the same medium in different “format”, so medium isn’t the problem); and,
writers who claim an ebook is devaluing the work if it is sold for less than $10 or something.
This academic analysis of recent Canadian international development assistance is long on political economy and light on “realities on the ground”.
What I Liked
The text had a strong opening for its goals, even if the administrative context didn’t quite match their estimated / presumed political context. When it came to hard statistical analysis (Chapter 6) and mimicry of other donors, the paper was sound. Chapter 12 on children at risk, and the potential for mainstreaming, had potential but was undersold.
What I Didn’t Like
The book had a lot of rhetoric and assumptions than analysis of ethical consensus and normativism (Chapters 1-3), results reporting and power dynamics (Chapter 4, 5, 10), Corporate Social responsibility (Chapter 7, 15, 16), links to military spending for peacekeeping (Chapter 8, 9, 13,14), and soundbite announcements masquerading as policies (Chapter 11).
Disclosure
I am not personal friends with the editors, but I am friends with the author of one of the chapters.
A collection of 20 solve-them-yourself mysteries, perfect for reading on your break. For context, the stories are all short, suitable for reading one or two on a coffee break. If you have seen the 5-minute mysteries in the back of magazines like Reader’s Digest or remember the old Encyclopedia Brown series, then you understand the premise — you read a short-short story (almost flash length) with a mystery of “who did something”, ending with the narrator announcing that she or he knows the solution. Then, as the reader, you are challenged to figure out the mystery too. Turn the page, and voila, the solution from the story’s narrator to see if you’re right.
What I Liked
Sometimes when you see this type of story presented in magazines, the author doesn’t play fair — they hide a piece of evidence, or they play games with personal pronouns to trick you into thinking the character named “Chris” is a man but is really a woman. In this collection, I was happy to see that all of the mysteries play out completely fairly — in almost all cases, the information you need to solve them is provided completely within the text of the story. (There are three small exceptions to this where you need to have some basic knowledge of American or literary history.) I also really liked the Ask Martha “collection within a collection”. These are all stories with the same narrator — Crusher Davis, an ex-athlete turned sportswriter who also writes an “Ask Martha” column for the newspaper on the sly. It is odd, but the continuing character really helps the stories feel more vibrant, and more easily digestible. Of the six stories with Davis, The Arsonist and the Baseball Mystery are two of the best mysteries in the entire collection. Finally, the last story (Is It A Wonderful Life) is one of the best of the collection, except there aren’t enough suspects or meat to the story. Overall, here are the stories I liked the best:
The Pilgrim Thanksgiving — A holiday pageant at a school concludes with a test — which of the stories was historically inaccurate? Rating: 4.00;
Edgar Allan Poe’s Mysterious Visitor — A group of local Poe lovers want to take over the graveside vigil of the anonymous Mysterious Visitor who comes to Poe’s grave every year, but to be chosen, they must pass a test about Poe. Rating: 3.00;
The White House Ghosts — Four former Presidents decide to leave a gift for the new President’s children…but which President is represented by the gift? Rating: 4.00;
Ask Martha – The St. Patrick’s Day Mystery — Somebody spikes the drink at a fundraiser, but who turned the green celebration blue? Rating: 4.00;
Ask Martha – The Arsonist — Somebody is setting fires around town, and the tipline produces some leads…but only one leads to the firebug. Rating: 4.50;
Ask Martha – The Identify Thief — A group of friends go out for lunch, one comes home without a credit card. Rating: 3.00;
Ask Martha – The Jackie Mitchell Autographed Baseball Mystery — A dying old man has a special baseball on his mantle that goes missing as soon as he dies. Rating: 4.50;
The Miser’s Hoard — An old miser dies, leaving a small treasure hidden in the wall…but when it is about to be divided up, somebody sneaks an early withdrawal. Rating: 3.00;
The Gourmet Mystery — Who was a pig that ate the expensive truffles and didn’t want to pay for them? Rating: 3.00;
Is It A Wonderful Life? — An old man dies of an overdose — was it an accident, or a prescription for murder? Rating: 3.50;
What I Didn’t Like
All of the stories are rated PG — which is only a problem in the sense that some of the characters seem uni-dimensional like they’re stuck in an episode of Leave It To Beaver (one involves naive students pickpocketing people, which is dismissed as a prank because they apologize). At least three of the stories rely on an assessment of character (such as a person’s religious devotion) to eliminate suspects, which hardly registers as “evidence” to the normal mystery reader (in one case, a religious devotee is cleared of stealing a religious artifact because he is too devoted to stealing). The solutions aren’t that complicated, but if the nuance was added that the police/narrator would prioritize their investigation on the main suspect first, rather than the narrator declaring “I know who did it”, it would be a little softer to read. And easier to agree with the solution presented. Often times I had it narrowed down to two suspects and agreed the “correct” one was more likely, but I couldn’t eliminate the other one on the evidence alone. Here are my ratings for the short mysteries that I didn’t particularly enjoy:
Who Poisoned George Washington? — George is poisoned while visiting New York, and there are four suspects. Rating: 2.50;
A Dream of Old Salem — A girl dreams of a witch trial in old Salem, but which of the witnesses is lying? Rating: 2.50;
Stealing Second Base — A baseball base is stolen from a display case and three students had the opportunity. Rating: 1.50;
Lost (Stolen) and Found — A purse of money is found in the woman’s washroom at the diner…but who put it there? Rating: 2.50;
Ask Martha – The Pickpocket — People are losing their wallets around town, and a small pool of suspects has already formed. Rating: 2.00;
Ask Martha – The Shoplifter — Four people write to Martha for help, followed by the police — and all of them are related stories about potential five-finger discounts. Rating: 2.50;
What the Dickens – A Christmas Eve Mystery — A re-imagining of Dickens’ Oliver Twist and his reunion with his family. Rating: 1.00;
The Twelfth Night Mystery — The Three Wise Kings visit a little girl in modern times, bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh — and a kitten! Rating: 2.50;
The Crusader’s Robe — A ship is returning from the Crusades with treasures, and somebody pilfers one. Who was it? Rating: 2.00;
The Geneva Summit Goldfish Mystery — Reagan goes to Geneva to meet a goldfish. Rating: 1.00;
Disclosure
I received a free reader’s copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. I am not personal friends with the author, but I have interacted with them briefly on social media.
Suzannah is a mediator — she helps ghosts move on from this plane to the next. But when she’s not embracing her sixth sense, she’s earning money as a staff babysitter at a hotel/resort and dreaming about Jesse who haunts her current home. Then she meets trouble in the form of spoiled brat Jack who can also see ghosts, but doesn’t know that ghosts are actually real and is instead three steps away from a nervous breakdown. Suze has to help him figure out his own role with ghosts, at the same time that she tries to figure out more of the mystery with Jesse’s past life.
What I Liked
I really liked the idea of finding newbies who don’t know what they are supposed to do when it comes to ghosts — hey, didn’t they see the movie? I also still like the fact that Suze can actually interact with the ghosts (i.e., fight with them). The backstory for Jesse was cool, and knowing that Suze can move to another plane at least temporarily is really a good omen for future books. The interesting addition of negative mediators to counter-balance the good mediators is very Tru Calling-ish, and we’ll have to see how that plays out in future books.
What I Didn’t Like
Some of the repeated teenage angst might sit well with teenage readers, but it gets really repetitive fast for older readers.
