Tag Archives: series

The Knowland Retribution by Richard Greener (2004) – BR00223 (R2023) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
May 14 2023

Plot or Premise

Walter Sherman has one unique skill. He can find anything that someone is searching for, which, most of the time, is a person. His nickname is the Locator, which he earned in Vietnam. Now he earns a living doing 5-10 jobs a year when people come to him asking him to find someone. In this first book in the series, a bunch of suits want him to find whoever is killing off the business people who were involved in a tainted meat scandal.

What I Liked

The premise is unique. While lots of series have private investigators who take on cases, including missing person cases, or series with police detectives hunting a serial killer, Walter isn’t any of these things. He only works by referral from someone that he has done work for in the past; he doesn’t advertise, he has no office or website, etc. Finding an anonymous killer? Not something he normally does. But the money is too good to say no, and it seems like the killer is worth catching.

The book series was made into a short-lived TV show (The Finder), with a number of significant changes — they made it that he was injured in Iraq or Afghanistan and can now find things, he’s not living in the US Virgin Islands, but somewhere in Florida, there’s an on-again/off-again love interest who is also a US Marshal, etc.

The business side of the story is pretty well-done, although a couple of the “bad” business guys are a little bit of a cliché. Nevertheless, it has almost an early John Grisham feel to it in places. And the bar near his home, Billy’s bar, with Billy and Ike as his two best friends, is really well done.

What I Didn’t Like

While Walter doesn’t know the identity of the killer, the reader does. And it takes some of the mystery out. Walter is barely present for the first 20% of the book, so it’s pretty heavy on an exposition of additional characters. Plus, while one of the main characters starts to identify with the killer’s sense of “justice,” and you are meant to see the callousness of the original, the vicious deaths that are delivered are only mildly explained. I never felt any sympathy for the killer, and the ending is questionable. There’s also no explanation of how he knows everything he does or how he found it all out; he just shows up, kills someone, and moves on. There’s only one scene where it shows him “stalking” someone, and even that is relatively bland.

However, I think my biggest objections are a love interest that we are told is all about passion but doesn’t seem to really drive any chemistry except in a scene or two, and the original “hook” that gets Walter involved is glossed over. The reader knows they are scummy people, but Walter’s reasons to help are murky at best. Later he reacts as if he was betrayed, but most of what they told him was relatively true — they just didn’t tell him the whole story, and despite being an ace interrogator, he seems surprised to learn other details they hid from him. Yet the story moves along at a good clip, so while I would be tempted to drop it to 3 out of 5, the pace bumps it back to 4.

The Bottom Line

Come for the Locator…who eventually joins the story

The Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton (1992) – BR00215 (2022) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
October 29 2022

Plot or Premise

Agatha Raisin retires from an active public relations life in London and settles down in a small town, expecting a relatively quiet existence.

What I Liked

The general premise is interesting, with a pie she enters in a contest ending up somehow killing someone. There are lots of characters running around, and once things settle down, it has the basis for a good universe to visit.

What I Didn’t Like

I struggled with three aspects of the story. First and foremost, Agatha herself is not particularly likable. She’s spent her career generally being oblivious to others, but now that she has moved to a small town, her intent is to get to know the locals and ingratiate herself. Except as she does, she basically does so rather offensively by trying to fake her way into winning a baking contest and condescendingly considering local efforts to organize anything as obviously underwhelming. Second, the whole murder is rather obvious to the reader, but even within the investigation, some elements are assumed away while ridiculous other parts are painstakingly investigated with no real avenue to pursue. And some of the information that people learn, with a weird out of place point-of-view shift at convenient moments, is held back. Finally, some of the characters are simple clichés, rather than fully formed. Supposedly that makes them “funny”, I just found them annoying.

I do have another complaint, but it doesn’t affect the rating. If it did, zero would be in the cards. The story is quite old at this point, and I was reading the first one from 1992. In the copy I bought, they included a short story as an extra, in honour of the 25-year anniversary of the book’s debut. Except there is no warning whatsoever about the story and what you’re about to read, and how it fits into the timeline other than it is present day. And yet, with no sense of spoiler, there are references to two characters and all that has gone on with them over the last 25 years. It’s not quite as bad as, say, reading the short story and it saying, “Oh, remember the case you had where the butler did it?”, it doesn’t give away murder mystery reveals, but rather it reveals the nature and extent of the relationship Agatha has had with two main characters in the series. I won’t even talk about it here, as they would be major reveals, and I confess I was quite dismayed to learn it from the shortstory. I am intending to read the whole series, but I’d rather not have known in advance.

The Bottom Line

Good start for a series, okay book on its own

Series premiere: Star Trek Prodigy

The PolyBlog
November 2 2021

I knew there was a new show coming called ST: Prodigy and that it was animated, with a holographic Janeway to help train a misfit crew. There have been other shows in the ST universe about raw cadets who are unseasoned but manning a star ship, but not animated nor as the full premise of the show. Episodes or books, not shows.

But I figured I knew a little of what to expect, as I’ve watched Lower Decks. I assumed it was similar in concept but with the LDers running the asylum. Star Trek shows are always good for multiple seasons, so I didn’t bother trying to predict renewal, it’s almost guaranteed to run two seasons at least.

Yet the show is nothing like what I expected. The animation and tone is way more like Star Wars’ The Mandalorian than it is traditional Star Trek. If it wasn’t for Janeway showing up at the end of the premiere to say hello, it could be AnyShip Inc.

The main character, Dal, is on a prison planet. There’s no explanation of why or how he ended up there, nor any of the other people in prison. Most of them can’t speak to each other as translators are forbidden. When a special psychic prisoner called Prisoner Zero shows up, Dal gets involved, a couple of them find an abandoned Starfleet vessel hidden deep in the planetary core, they recruit some other prisoners, and they try to get off the rock. Along the way, they kidnap the warden’s daughter.

The voice work is all well done, although I don’t recognize any of them from other stuff. The only one I do recognize is the warden, called the Diviner, voiced by John Noble. He’s always great to see/hear, but hard to say if it’s simply more of a show-by-show cameo or a regular full character.

As a Star Trek show, it fails completely. It is unlike any of the other shows and doesn’t even feel like it’s in the same lexicon. As a Star Wars show, I’d accept it in a heartbeat. It’s watchable, I’m curious to see where it goes. And I know there will be cameos of other ST characters (Chakotay shows up soon too, apparently). But is it Star Trek?

Series premiere: Invasion

The PolyBlog
November 2 2021

My first reaction to Apple TV’s “Invasion” series was based on the description and the trailer. And I was completely confused by two totally different marketing approaches.

Invasion on Apple TV is about an alien invasion, but seems like it is more about how one woman copes, trying to keep her two kids and herself safe, since the father is useless. But I can’t be sure as the description going around looks like “family-during-crisis” while the trailer looks like “monsters-are-here”. Pass, predict cancellation.

I gave EP01 a go, and well, I have NO idea where the woman’s storyline went. The episode looks like simply a generic “aliens are bad” plot. With completely unconnected storylines all over the place.

The only storyline that was mildly interesting was a sheriff who investigates a simple disappearance, assumes it’s the local yokels, and finds a strange crop circle and some crows. Later, there’s a storm of locusts, I think, and it looks almost biblical.

To be honest, I have no real idea what the plan is for the show. It jumped all over, nothing was really happening, and it was slow as molasses. I didn’t care about ANYBODY in the pilot. Well, maybe the crew going to the space station, but that lasts no time at all annnnnnd they’re dead.

Yawn.

I am giving it a hard pass, maybe the writers have some amazing story arc planned, and it takes several EPs to get going. In the meantime, I’m out. And I can’t see it getting renewed, despite the high budget commitment up front.

Series premiere: Chicago Party Aunt

The PolyBlog
October 20 2021

When I read about CPA in the previews, my reaction was this:

Chicago Party Aunt…an animated show on Netflix about a drunk 40yo woman partying in Chicago. Wait, isn’t there a show about a 40yo pretending to be 20-something in New York? Pass but I predict it will make it to at least season 2.

Then I watched EP1, and I’m changing that prediction to no renewal. Maybe the later EPs are good, maybe Netflix wants to be in the animated business, but EP01 is gratingly bad.

Low-bro lower-middle class can work with comedy, including 262 EPs of the life of shoe salesman Al Bundy and his wife Peg for the show Married…With Children. Or you can go wholesome family values for something like Roseanne which has some brashness but ultimately, everything comes back to family.

This show takes the worst of Peg and the worst of Roseanne, takes away any anchoring presence like kids or partners to call them on their bullshit when they’re acting looney-tunes, and ramps up the “if you judge me, I’ll judge you back, in-your-face, brashness is a virtue” motif.

There is no part of me anywhere in the entire episode that wanted her to succeed. She’s the worst of all of us, and you just want to see her fail. Hard. To get her come-uppance that being a rude asshat doesn’t get you ahead, and if you use other people, eventually the circle of life will come back and bite your ass. Nope. Her nephew loves her and needs someplace to live for a year, so his parents put him in their condo with her.

Maybe there’s some story arc here that turns her from a disaster into a functioning human being through the time with her nephew as he figures out his life, but honestly, she’s skated through her entire life with virtually no consequences, and just as they are about to land squarely on her head, there’s a reprieve. Really? I kind of wanted to see her squashed like a bug. I had no compassion for her character as she isn’t deserving of any. She literally tries to use anyone and everyone, and laughs about it.

As I said, maybe the show will go somewhere. But I sure hope not.