Tag Archives: hardcover

Perilous Relations by Carole Epstein (1997) – BR00019 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
March 4 2001

Plot or Premise

Barbara Simons, retired airline exec, has purchased a ride-along-with-the-police-for-a-night in an auction, and this is her night — after several hours of boredom, the police respond to a murder scene. By happenstance, it is someone that she knows: a former exec of the same airline has been murdered. Ever inquisitive, Barbara comforts the widow, talks to the deceased’s sister, goes to the wake and then to the funeral.

What I Liked

There are several elements in this book that make the story fly along faster than the previous book in the series (Perilous Friends). There are fewer sub-stories distracting from the main plot, and the streamlining makes for a more coherent story. The writing itself is better as well, and the new characters are fleshed out where appropriate. Most importantly, there is the reintroduction of romantic options for Barbara in terms of the handsome cop Greg, as well as a not-yet-defined relationship with a new male sidekick.

What I Didn’t Like

There isn’t anything big that I didn’t like in this book, just a couple of small things. First, the relationship-cliffhanger from the end of the last book is not a major part of this book, and is instead left sitting there in limbo for a good portion of this book (until pg. 121). One of the reasons I tracked this book down was the ending of the last book — I didn’t like the cliff-hanger aspect, but I had to know what happened (normally, my To-Be-Read pile is so big that I never take the time to search for a specific book). But her out-of-town BF had been coming to visit her in the last book for what she thought was going to be a big weekend with some important announcement or question, and I expected some sort of resolution here. It doesn’t happen. For this book, the ending is a little weaker than the rest of the story, and it all comes together a little too quickly for my tastes, but it is handled rather well except for a small problem of logistics in terms of the bad guy transporting a gun around Montreal (can’t say any more than that without giving away the ending). A little unrealistic, but not enough to affect the rating.

Disclosure

I was not personal friends with the author, but I did interact with her briefly on social media.

The Bottom Line

Best in the series.

By the Rivers of Babylon by Nelson DeMille (1978) – BR00014 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

The PolyBlog
February 18 2001

Plot or Premise

Peace in the Middle East is almost assured and two Concordes fly to New York with delegates for final negotiations. Terrorists try to derail the peace conference by planting bombs on board and taking the passengers hostage. After one plane is destroyed, killing all on board, the second plane is forced to land near Babylon. At the last minute, the hostages manage to escape to the top of a small hill from which they attempt to defend against the terrorists through several days of sorties, knowing that the military probably doesn’t know where they are and therefore can’t swoop in and rescue them.

What I Liked

Long before there was Clancy, there was DeMille. This book takes the international realm and stands it on its ear — there are (excruciating) details of the relations between the characters on both sides of the peace conference who are forced to work together to fight the terrorists. In addition, the battle tactics are first-rate, the writing is almost perfect, and the story is superb as the “hostages” fight in small groups with every weapon they have — gas bombs from the plane’s fuel tanks, sounds from a war movie blasted over speakers to simulate larger weaponry, etc.

What I Didn’t Like

There are a LOT of characters at the start of this book and it is hard to keep track of them all. Up until the end, there are too many small sub-plots — some are good, and necessary to flesh out the experience, but not all of them. There are fewer characters by the end though and it helps speed up the plotting. However, the ending is a little over-the-top, resembling a scene from a Die Hard movie more than keeping with the slightly more realistic tone of the rest of the book. As well, there is a meeting between the hostage-leaders and the terrorist-leader that is absolutely surreal. The likelihood of both parties treating it like a military battle with truces, etc., is virtually nil but it was at least interesting to read.

The Bottom Line

DeMille is the master of the game.

Ruined by Reading: A life in books by Lynne Sharon Schwartz (1996) – BR00010 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
February 18 2001

Plot or Premise

Schwarz starts with a commentary by a Chinese scholar that some people are handicapped by reading too much, and not thinking enough about what they read. From there, she looks at the books she has read in her life and the role they have played. It is not a heavy analytical tone throughout, but rather a personal commentary on the books that have been important to her in her life, and the elements of her life that took place in and around books.

What I Liked

There are a number of sections that are quite well done, such as:

  • Emptying your mind for meditation vs. filling it up during a life spent reading (pg. 14);
  • On the un-importance of the authors vs. the impact of the words themselves (pg. 17);
  • A life spent reading (pg. 96);
  • Choices of reading material (pg. 107);
  • Ruined by reading (pg. 114); and,
  • On self (pg. 119).

What I Didn’t Like

Some of the sections could have benefited from a bit more analysis and historical context, not just the personal impact on her own life.

The Bottom Line

The tone was pleasant, but not a serious work.

Deathright by Dev Stryker (1993) – BR00006 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
January 21 2001

Plot or Premise

Amelia Pearce has a normal enough life, but with a soon-to-be ex-lover, she heads home to her parent’s house to heal her ego and ease the transition. However, she finds her life shattered by the truth about her father — he is not a simple journalist, but an operative for “The Network”, an ultra-secret organization of operatives on loan from the major intelligence agencies of the various countries with one goal: combat terrorism. It’s like James Bond and his counterparts working for Interpol, with only one person knowing all the agents. The father is killed by an assassin, as is Amelia’s mother, but Amelia manages to escape and starts using all the skills her father taught her as a child (through a long-running series of “survival” games).

What I Liked

The book was written by Warren Murphy and Molly Cochran, two of my favourite authors whether they use their own names or the “Dev Stryker” nom-de-plume. So, the style, the dialogue, the plot tools…all are superb, but I’m a little biased. This book is also unique in the field — the main character (Amelia) doesn’t even make an appearance until several chapters into the book. And seemingly-major characters keep getting killed off! There are not a whole lot of people left by the end of the book, so it becomes somewhat easier to follow. And killing off major characters does keep the reader guessing all the way through.

What I Didn’t Like

The bad guys are mostly one-dimensional except for the assassin, with the plot revolving around plans for Libyan terrorists to poison the water supply of America. And Amelia has the added problem that she can’t seem to trust anyone, even the head of the Network. Yet as much as I liked the writing, and as much as I liked the plot twists with the death of major characters, it made it very hard to care about some of the characters — why bother if they are killed off halfway through the book? As I said above, Amelia is the main character but doesn’t appear until several chapters into the book. Her father seemed to be the main character for the first few chapters, and then he dies. Four other key characters bite the dust before the end of the book too, nicely spread out through the book so you lose a character every couple of chapters. Too bad if you care about one…but after the first two check out, it’s hard to keep your interest.

After the death of the father, you find out that Amelia isn’t quite the helpless person she is initially portrayed as, because her father taught her survival skills — and yet she never wondered about her father? She always wrote him off as a small CIA bureaucrat or journalist, yet in the next breath talks about him with almost superhuman qualities? The collaboration between Murphy and Cochran is usually excellent — in this book, it reads more like they disagreed about the characters and maybe wrote chapters on their own. Kind of like the classic writing game where one person writes one chapter with twists and turns, and then asks the next person to pull the next chapter together, mesh the various elements, and give their own spin to it.

The Bottom Line

Too many plot twists, too many deaths.

End Game by Dev Stryker (1994) – BR00008 (2001) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
January 21 2001

Plot or Premise

A body is found with the letter “P” carved into its forehead. P stands for pawn, and it is dumped in upper Manhattan, using the streets as a chessboard. The Knight and Bishop follow. And the chess game begins.

Inspector Regal has been chosen by the killer to play the game, which he does through moves placed in the New York Times. As long as the game is interesting, no more bodies. But Regal is not a very good chess player, the game becomes dull for the killer, and another body appears. But Regal has an ace in the hole: a retired master player named Billy Abbott who left the chess world behind and disappeared before it took over his life. Abbott tells Regal the moves to make the game interesting, and for a while, he does — even turning the game around and winning. But having Regal win the game is not the object of the killer who targets Regal personally.

A series of sub-plots involve a cop working for Regal who had been killed during the line of duty while hunting down Panamanian drug runners, and a female cop who loved him and wants justice; a political side with Regal butting heads with his departmental rival who is in charge of both investigations; and a personal side, with Regal suspecting his wife of having an affair with a power mogul. This is the second “Dev Strkyer” novel, a nom-de-plume for Warren Murphy and Molly Cochran.

What I Liked

I love Murphy and Cochran’s work, and this one is no exception. Well-written, the chess strategies are well-mixed, and the story moves along fast enough with a lot of sub-plots mixed in to keep life interesting when the bodies are on hold. Even the political manouevering is interesting. The ending, although pat, is not a typical “everybody lives happily ever after” finish.

What I Didn’t Like

The climax is too pat, and too action-oriented rather than detection-based. I knew who the killer was long before they were revealed, and I’m not even sure why the authors chose to reveal the killer when they did, other than the realization perhaps that the reader already knows by then so the mystery is really gone. The only question was when and where they were going to be caught, if at all. As well, Stryker doesn’t really play fair with the reader at the start in terms of the depiction of the killer, but I still figured it out before the end despite the intentional misdirection.

The Bottom Line

You’ll never look at chess as boring again.