Tag Archives: new

High Five by Janet Evanovich (2000) – BR00101 (2017) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
January 19 2017

Plot or Premise

Plum is on her fifth outing, looking for her missing uncle and one angry little man. Uncle Fred was complaining about paying for garbage pickup, and the truck skipped his house. So he went into complain and disappeared. Of course, he’s in the Plum family, so the weird part is he left behind photos of severed body parts in garbage bags. Aunt Mabel wants Stephanie to look for him, although she’s not entirely sure she wants the cheap bastard found and brought home. Plus, a midget missed his court date.

What I Liked

Stephanie’s family is definitely on the wild side, and the uncle is pretty out there for 70. Fun to see all the pieces at play. Plus Stephanie decides she needs to “diversify” her income sources, so asks Ranger to help mentor her in new areas (i.e., to work for him), so we get to see more of his line of work and meet his crew/employees (like Tank). And Lulu and Stephanie chasing the short guy are hilarious to read.

What I Didn’t Like

Morelli’s family is not as much fun as the Plums, and fairly one-dimensional. Plus Benito Ramirez is back, and is just annoying. My biggest objection though is a “cliff-hanger” ending on the romance side that deliberately plays with point-of-view to keep it vague who Stephanie is talking with at her door.

The Bottom Line

Fully embrace the crazy.

Trace by Warren Murphy (1981) – BR00100 (2017) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
January 14 2017

Plot or Premise

Devlin Tracy is a claims investigator working for an insurance company. The VP gives him a case to investigate — a friend of the President of the company is in a sanatorium, one of the other patients changed their beneficiary on their insurance policy just before they died, and the doctor at the sanatorium got the winfall. The President is afraid that his friend will be pressured to do the same, and the President wants Trace to make sure there’s nothing weird going on.

What I Liked

Warren Murphy was the creator of several other series, and while some of those were kind of pulp-style, this one is a full “standard” detective novel. Wise-cracking, determined, but not always the fastest to figure things out. Trace works hard, keeps poking until something shakes loose, and then grabs on and won’t let go until whatever scheme falls apart. All the elements of the series are here — drinking like a fish, sleeping with suspects, wearing a little frog pin that records conversations, and a bit of a blundering style that worms his way into lots of situations. There are sub-stories with drugs and potential lawsuits, but mostly it is just about Trace shaking things up.

What I Didn’t Like

He has a girlfriend, of sorts, and her portrayal in this one is more annoying than usual for the series. Plus she comes in near the end as a super-detective to help solve the case, but Trace was doing fine on his own. She helps him out, as she often does, but she was mostly superfluous for this outing.

The Bottom Line

Great intro to a great series.

Four to Score by Janet Evanovich (1998) – BR00074 (2016) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
March 28 2016

Plot or Premise

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.

The Bottom Line

Fast-paced, silly plot

Rethinking Canadian Aid by Edited by Stephen Brown, Molly den Heyer and David R. Black (2015) – BR00191 (2015) – 🐸🐸⚪⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
March 9 2015

Plot or Premise

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.

The Bottom Line

More rhetoric than real analysis.

Snap Shot by Meg Chittenden (2003) – BR00049 (2005) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
May 25 2005

Plot or Premise

Diana Gordon has retired from being a private investigator after being shot, and is living the simple life in Port Findlay, Washington running her own photography studio. But a local woman is murdered, and when Gordon finds the body, she can’t resist doing a little personal investigating. And she turns up links to her past and how she got shot — for taking a photograph of someone who didn’t want to be captured.

What I Liked

Diana’s character is relatively straightforward, and it is an interesting cast of sub-characters. Hard to tell if this will be a series or a one-off book, but it works either way. The politics of a photography show provide a nice backdrop, and this would work as almost-cozy, except for a little direct violence in two places.

What I Didn’t Like

Her partner in Port Findlay, Conor Callahan, is a bit neurotic and there is a major change in his perspective by the end of the book. Gordon doesn’t reveal her past to everyone as she goes along, and it is a “secret” that causes problems early on — for no apparent reason as she knows she’s going to have to spill eventually. Equally, the reason the photograph is causing problems is so obvious to the reader, it is grating to see our star investigator proceed through most of the book before figuring it out.

The Bottom Line

A great almost-cozy.