Tag Archives: Nook

The Edge by Dick Francis (1988) – BR00056 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
May 6 1999

Plot or Premise

An arrogant horse-owner in England joins The Great Transcontinental Mystery Race Train across Canada, with the train stopping at several sites along the way for horseraces, with an actors troupe on the train posing as real passengers.

What I Liked

Francis is a master at moving players around in the story and having them interact in interesting ways. His descriptive prose and his keep-it-simple style make it easy to both imagine the scene and understand the characters. The sports element is there, as it is in all of Francis’ books, but he again shows his mastery in leaving it as the backdrop against all the other characters’ interactions.

What I Didn’t Like

The overall feel of the book is similar to that of a play or film with an ensemble cast — no one is really well done, but most are sufficiently interesting to hold our attention for awhile. However, some characters are still left hiding in the background as mere caricatures. As for the villain and the protagonist, both needed to be better developed, and I never felt the villain was particularly evil nor the protagonist particularly interesting — too much on their actions and not enough of their thoughts to reveal their true character. Unfortunately, I also figured out the plot fairly early, although there was one character at the end who was slightly different than expected. I also saw three or four points in the story where Francis could have easily taken the reader down a darker or more interesting path, yet the opportunities were left abandoned alongside the tracks in the story.

The Bottom Line

Another good mystery from Francis.

The Dead Pull Hitter by Alison Gordon (1988) – BR00061 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
February 3 1999

Plot or Premise

Dead Pull Hitter feels like it picks up where Gordon’s non-fiction left off: the Toronto Titans have finished in fourth place the previous year and are starting to pull it together for a pennant race; the protagonist Kate Henry is a woman sportswriter who’s covered them for five years; she works for the Toronto Planet which is sandwiched in the news market between the stodgy World and the bimbette-littered pages of the Mirror. At times it was hard to remind myself that this was the fiction category!

What I Liked

The fun doesn’t really take off until after the first body arrives. Up until then, it is basically a baseball story. After that, the murder mystery takes hold. The clues are there for the finding: some obvious, others more subtle. Nicely written, and combines the baseball storylines with an appropriate emphasis on the mystery. And the cop-as-a-romantic-partner and mystery-antagonist-theme is alive and well in the book.

What I Didn’t Like

The start on the baseball story gives you a fairly large cast of characters that may be easy for a baseball fan to keep straight (i.e. player X is a catcher), but the names all seemed to run together for me. The baseball players also seem to have an enormously large and direct role in Kate’s life, which doesn’t seem to fit with her being a member of the objective sports press that covers them regularly.

Disclosure

I was not personally friends with the author, but I did interact briefly with her online.

The Bottom Line

Nice start to the series

Dying to Get Published by Judy Fitzwater (1995) – BR00075 (1998) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
August 18 1998

Plot or Premise

The main character, as-yet-unpublished author Jennifer Marsh, decides to plan a murder in order to liven up her writing. A touch of realism, or writing what she knows by planning it. But when the murder really happens, her plans make her suspect number one.

What I Liked

It’s an easy, quick-paced story, and Jennifer is a bit quirky. Nice, occasionally a dingbat, she has her moments, but quirky. She has a new romantic interest that adds some fun to the story, and lots of female friends who are supportive. Plus, the victim is obviously deserving of murder — a book agent. In addition to being well-written, with great storylines, there were some seriously funny moments that made me smile repeatedly (people seem to frown on you laughing out loud when you are by yourself reading on buses or in restaurants, so I held myself to grinning).

What I Didn’t Like

The book was a little tough for me to get into at first, and I initially hated the main character who talks to her future, as yet unconceived, child on a fairly regular basis as a plot device.

Disclosure

I am not personal friends with the author, but I have interacted with them briefly on social media.

The Bottom Line

Liked it enough to get the next one in the series

Murder in C Major by Sara Hoskinson Frommer (1986) – BR00076 (1998) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
July 3 1998

Plot or Premise

Joan Spencer, widowed, moves back to the town of Oliver with her son Andrew and joins the local orchestra in her spare time. The second week of rehearsals is marred by the death of an unpopular oboe player. Joan helps the police investigate the murder (big surprise!) and does a pretty good job of spotting essential clues.

What I Liked

The story is well-written, and the characters are nicely developed, including some hints of romance between Joan and the cop. Interesting was the switch between the two characters as the narrator — not quite third person, not quite first person and surprisingly well-executed in the writing. The story moves along fairly quickly and doesn’t drag.

What I Didn’t Like

Perhaps too many characters with too many motives and opportunities. Unfortunately for me, I figured out the ending far too far in advance as well as the reasons for it — and yet I still got the murderer wrong! (Missed it by that much!)

Disclosure

I am not personal friends with the author, but I have interacted with them briefly on social media.

The Bottom Line

A nice light read for a Sunday afternoon.

The Staked Goat by Jeremiah Healy (1986) – BR00037 (1998) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

The PolyBlog
June 21 1998

Plot or Premise

John Cuddy is a former insurance investigator who lost his job when he started drinking too much following the death of his wife to cancer. A friend from Vietnam calls him up unexpectedly while visiting Boston, arranges to meet him for dinner and drinks, and misses the date only to show up dead the next morning. Cuddy smells a rat in the official story and sets out to help clear his friend’s name and help his family.

What I Liked

Well, I was supposed to be studying French today. I even promised myself I would spend the evening doing that. Then I made the mistake of wandering over to a bookstore and looking through the Mystery section to see if there was anything that leaped off the shelves at me. Jeremiah Healy’s “The Staked Goat” was feeling particularly restless and somehow not only forced itself off the shelf and into my hands, but also managed to take hold of my wallet and steer me to the register. That was, I think, somewhere around 5:00 p.m. Except for the time on the way to the diner and the time to walk home, I’ve been subjecting myself to the simply wonderful story contained within its covers ever since. I’m almost tempted to read it again over the next few days, s l o w l y this time, to see if there is anything I missed, and if not, just to savour it a while longer. In any event, a very enjoyable four hours.

I liked the very realistic portrayal of the friends — biting their tongues when they used idioms (“dead to the world”, etc), laughing occasionally, etc. But regardless of the fast-paced action after the visit to Pittsburgh, the part I loved the best was the portrayal of the gay couple. I lived with a gay male couple with about the same age discrepancy, who had been together for nineteen years, and it seemed like I was back in their kitchen having breakfast when I was reading the story.

What I Didn’t Like

I did wonder about the accuracy of some of the details surrounding “sitting shiva” for Al (i.e., a funeral on Saturday? Jewish Sabbath? I didn’t think that was kosher, no pun intended). But it did say at the start that Al didn’t go very often — hope that wasn’t a cop-out…could’ve been an interesting sub-area.

The Bottom Line

I was only going to read a little — and lost an entire evening!