Not even close. Had I the time and space I’d list the beter ones, but I’ll content myself with simply observing I’ve never read worse, at least that I can recall (and since this one was so spectacularly bad, I doubt I’d forget coming across a worse one).

The characters were completely unbelieveable, the “mysteries” (I use the term loosely) were simple enough, even considering the author couldn’t be bothered with leaving anything like clues (the stories are attempts to write suspense, rather than puzzles, you see). At least that’s what I’m assuming, because I don’t know how else to describe it. For example, when the Culprit in one story is first introduced the author goes to great lengths to point out the person has a key (stopping only just short of having the wife exclaim “Oh look, dear, they have their own key to the crime scene”). It was almost embarassing, like watching a magician drop the deck of cards he was shuffling.

It was really hard to care about characters when they didn’t even remotely resemble real people, and the task was made even harder when the author tossed in other impossibilities (husband is an ex-president — handsome, wealthy and popular beyond your wildest dreams, of course — while wife is a sitting Congresswoman, yet we’re expected to believe the Secret Service would just take some time off and not be around for hours?) that a T. Rex would have trouble swallowing.

If this is a fair sample of her work, I confess I’m mystified by her apparent popularity. I kept hoping to run across a story I could read without cringing, but it didn’t happen. It wasn’t hard to stay at least ten pages ahead of these “sleuths” (cover blurb, certainly not a characterization I’d make of them).

I can’t honestly think of any class of reader who might like this book. It’s not offensive, so if you really don’t have anything at all to do, it’ll help pass the time, but, frankly, recounting the change in your pocket will be more engrossing.

But it was good to see Felicity Kendall in action again. Sigh. I really had something for her back when we were both young. Good Neighbors. I scoured the video stores for episodes of Solo. And she still looks good today. Deeper Sigh.

Now, if they ever did a buddy series with Felicity Kendall and Lis Sladen, I don’t think my heart could take it.

It’s a well-written thriller, in general, but the historical research is amazingly shoddy. As fiction, I’d give it a B, but if he submitted the “research” behind it as a term paper, it’d get an “F” at most, and we might even have to invent a lower grade for it. He begins with a page stating “facts”, virtually none of which is actually true in the strictest sense, though a few items you could “spin” into being acceptably true, in the sense that claims made in TV commercials are “true.”

You see, I’ve been down this “historical” road a few decades ago, when I read “Holy Blood, Holy Grail”, but it seems Dan Brown lacks the critical skills required to be a researcher or historian. He seems to believe everything he reads (‘it’s in a book, therefore it must be true”) which is a fatal flaw when doing research, though quite essential, if only in a temporary sense, when reading fiction.

First off, let me say I don’t have a problem with the theological ramifications of much of the “data.” Though he’s clearly way off base, when you examine the historical record and the dating of old manuscripts, with the assertion that Jesus wasn’t considered divine until Constantine, the rest of the assertions aren’t really troubling. Jesus being married or having children, for example, doesn’t change anything, though it certainly doesn’t square with anything written in any of the historical documents.

My major problem with him is that he doesn’t play fair. When an author paints a historical backdrop for his fiction, he should take pains to get the history right. When he doesn’t, the cognitive dissonance he causes me forces me to drop out of my “suspension of disbelief” and moves me awya from the story. Brown’s use of easily recognized historical fallacies and proven hoaxes means that instead of writing about history, he’s writing an “alternative history” novel, Harry Turtledove’s specialty (to name one popular writer in the genre). Yet whether out of a desire to avoid that “ghetto” or just good marketing sense, he denies that’s what he’s doing.

His major source seems to be “Holy Blood, Holy Grail,” (this doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes, as that’s the prime source for everything written in this vein) yet he interestingly seems unaware that one of the authors, in an interview given after the book was published, admitted that he didn’t believe the book’s contention was factual. He simply thought it an intriguing possibility. Brown claims to be unaware that the Priory of Sion (claimed as “fact” by Brown in his book) was a hoax perpetrated by a man wanting to prove himself descended from the Merovingian Kings. (Notably, after the publication of HBHG this man quickly retreated from his claim; he wasn’t comfortable claiming Jesus as an ancestor, apparently.) Far from going back to the 11th century, it was invented in the 1950’s.

Many of Brown’s mistakes can be easily detected by using a mere smidgeon of common sense. If that’s Mary in DaVinci’s picture, then where’s John? (There are only thriteen at the table, and one is clearly Judas, so there’s a disciple missing.) If Constantine invented the idea of Jesus’ divinity, then why are there important manuscripts dating before that point making the same claim? If, as Brown says, the vote was close, why do the records of the conference show the vote to be hugely one-sided? (That’s the beauty of conspiracies, though. If the evidence is lacking, then obviously it’s because “they” have erased or changed it all. But when faced with that proposition the only proper response is, “then how did you find out about it?”) And why would anyone hide secret documents on the shelves of a research library? And if they would do such a bizarre thing, why would they ever choose to clearly label them as secret documents (“Les Dossiers Secret” in french)?

See what I mean? It beggars the mind that someone would not ask such common-sense questions. Other questions that should be asked require a bit of knowledge. One that immediately springs to my mind is that if Constantine selected the four Gospels in the New Testament, then why were they the only four on most lists of scripture we’ve found that were circulating as much as a century before him, and why were they the only ones selected when the Bible was officially compiled, long after Constantine’s death? (Oh, you thought Constantine was at that council, too? You must be reading too much Dan Brown.) Constantine’s role was clearly the same as King James’ would be later: he locked warring factions in a room and told them don’t come out until you’ve settled the question among yourselves.

As an amateur historian, the main reason I dislike Brown’s book is the way he plays so carelessly with history. He seems to think that you can change the authorship or dating of a manuscript almost at will, and that there will be no “ripple effect.” The dating of manuscripts is a difficult thing, and there are many points we use in figuring it out. In many ways, it’s like solving a sudoku puzzle; if a manuscript is mentioned in a known document, then we know it predates that document. If it shows the writer was familiar with another document, then it postdates that one. Slowly we block out the years the document cannot have been found in, and arrive by elimination at when it was probably written. But that process means that if you change the date of one document, that will cause you to completely revise other dates, and eventually, as in sudoku, you will end up with an insoluable puzzle because you’ll find documents that cannot have been written by people whom you have absolute proof wrote them.

I wasn’t at first able to maintain the suspension of disbelief required to fully enjoy the book, and this was the author’s fault for being such a careless researcher. But once I realized Brown wasn’t writing about reality, but rather an alternate universe where these bizarre assertions might be true, that changed.

When dealing with Da Vinci Code, I’m reminded of Errol Flynn’s intro to Robin Hood, “believe only what you see, and then, only half of that!” When reading the Da Vinci Code, remember the book is fiction, not fact, and remember also that most, if not all, of the “facts” claimed in it are also fiction. It helps to remember that in one of the plagiarism lawsuits that followed publication of the book, the judge called Dan Brown a liar. He writes fiction for a living, so why would it be surprising that most of his “facts” are fiction as well?

Ick.

First, ifyou’re expecting to see anything resembling the books, you’ll be disappointed. This Tempe Brennan also a Forensic Anthropologist, but that’s where the resemblance ends. This one seems to go out of her way to physically deck at least one person every show. There’s also more sex in the show than the books, and none of the supporting cast seems to have made it into the show intact, either.

The writing is incredibly spotty (one show Boreanz calls her”Bones” all the time with no issues, another everytime he does she snaps”Don’t call me bones!”). There are all the cliche characters and gags, nothing real in it at all. You might be watching Quincy reruns, except the plotting isn’t as good.

As a show about Temperance Brennen, it stinks. As a show about a forensic anthropologist, it’s no better than average, maybe worse. If you watch the show, my advice is to turn off your brain before you turn the show on; you’ll enjoy it more. The more you think about what you’re seeing, the worse the show will seem. If you have to watch TV, I suppose this is OK. But you’re better off reading any of Kathy Reichs’ books than watching it at all.

Evanovich has a way with dialogue. Her plots are more from the thriller genre than the mystery genre, as she doesn’t require anyone to do much thinking. For example, as soon as she introduced the evidence for the existence of the WebMaster in this book, I knew the rest of the story. It wasn’t at all hard to see who the main villain was, and I ended up cursing the supposedly intelligent characters in the book for not recognizing something so obvious right away. The remainder of the plot required the good guys collectively act like idiots for the remainder of the book.

Between that and the annoying characters she’s populated her world with, there’s every reason for me to avoid stopping by here again. Even though Lula did manage to discover the major drawback to the Atkins diet (there’s blessed little to crunch on in it) I really never want to meet up with her again. Life’s too short to spend it with characters who make you wince.

And that’s the bottom line. I cringed often in this book, mainly at the characterizations of ethnic minorities, but at other points as well.

Their new actress has her loving murder mystery stories.

Yes, that’s what turned me off about her. Jane Marple, as she reminded me in Nemesis, hates reading about murders. She really doesn’t like them, and further, isn’t really interested in crime at all. Not one bit. But why then does she seem to be in the middle of crime so often? She considers herself to be one of those people murder just happens around. Rather like one of her relatives, who had been in so many accidents (by both taxi and railway) that no one else in the family would travel with her. Murders just seemed to happen in her vicinity, and so she would get drawn in. Not by choice, but by circumstance.

I really can’t take any portrayal of Jane Marple seriously that involves her actually being interested in solving crimes. No, Joan Hickson’s portrayal may not have been perfect, but she’s miles ahead of anyone else I’ve ever seen in the role. Aunt Jane is one of my favorites, and I simply won’t watch the new series at all. To this point I had been impressed with the casting choices the BBC had made with the heroes of my youth (Suchet as Poirot and Davidson as Campion were both nothing short of inspired selections — I danced with joy when I first saw them — Petherbridge as Wimsey and Bret as Holmes took some getting used to but were brilliant, at least while Bret’s health held up, and Warwick and Annis as Tommy and Tuppence were simply wonderful) but this Jane Marple has been a serious mistake; they’ve slipped up horribly with her. It’s an even worse choice than Simon Williams as Roderick Alleyn, which they immediately rectified with Patrick Malahide, who while nowhere near perfect was a definite improvement. (OK, since my eldest daughter’s middle name is Ngaio, perhaps I can be considered a bit hard to please when it comes to Alleyn.)

She has a way of creating characters you enjoy being around, and a way of creating characters you want to avoid being around. She has a way of making them speak as if they were in the room with you. She has a way with plotting, and a way with pacing, that keep you interested, keep you turning pages.

But that’s not what I meant. I’ve been holding off on writing this because it’s going to link to something else; I know it. but here goes.

Sara Paretsky has a way of pulling topical happenings into her books, and making abstract things seem more real for doing it.

In Blacklist, the topicality is provided by the PATRIOT Act. The subplot is about a boy at a private school who happens to be the wrong ethnic group, and has the wrong place of worship, who attracts blame for all sorts of things for no other reason than that. And it’s about what rights the US Government has taken away from us so it can hunt down anyone it so chooses to hunt, regardless of the facts in the matter.

The story is good, but I have to admit she didn’t “palm the ace” quite as deftly as she usually does. One of the breathtaking revelations in this novel was so painfully obvious to me the moment it first appeared that I began to lose some respect for Ms Warshawski when she didn’t immediately reach the same conclusion. It seemed to me that Paretsky intentionally dumbed down our intrepid heroine in a weak attempt to sneak one by the reader. I don’t mind it when an author tries to sneak one past me, but I feel cheated when she doesn’t put her heart into the effort; almost insulted by the lack of respect she is showing for my attention.

But the major point here is the side effects of the nefarious Act, and how much it requires us to trust that our government will only do good things and only has good intentions. To one who has lived through Watergate, and all the subsequent “gates” (schemes from both parties, I’m an equal-opportunity mistruster) this indeed seems like we’ve slid through the looking glass. I’m supposed to trust people I wouldn’t buy a used car from? Oh, there are individuals in government that I feel I can trust, but just give a blank check to anyone in a uniform? Come on, get real. I’ve spent time in a uniform myself. I know the kind of heroes who wear one, and I know that villains can wear one, too. (Remind me sometime to tell you why I left the military; I met some fine people there, but I also met some real scum. And the scum was winning.)

I’m sure I’l soon launch into some more analysis on the political side of this, but suffice it to say this is a good read, if you’re sane enough to be able to stand the politics.

I really don’t remember when I’ve read a book that irritated me this much. I’m generally a sucker for old manuscript-based thrillers. Possibly it’s because I collect old books myself, but for whatever the reason, a search for old documents will generally find me coming along for the ride.

So it’s no surprise I bit on the premise here: a man is contracted to catalog the book collection of a wealthy family, looking in particular for a specific book. The book is one of those mythical beasts, the only evidence for its existence is what is generally accepted as a forged printing of it. The book doesn’t exist. Or does it?

The plot and the pacing go well enough, though we are expected to swallow several rather large presuppositions to get the story started, such as that the man contracted to catalog the collection knows next to nothing about books, and even less about cataloging them. We’re never given an acceptable reason why he was offered the job in the first place (the closest it gets is the old “I knew I could trust you when I saw you” kind of thing) and worse, we don’t have a good reason for him to accept the job. He seems to have no real interest in books, old or new, he’s due at a top-paying job across the Atlantic in two weeks and he’s spending the time with eleven crates of musty old books and playing what sounds like a prettty boring computer game, rather than preparing for the trip. Yeah, right. That really makes sense.

If you manage to swallow plot setup points like those, the pacing moves along fairly well, and the story develops as the Duke wantshim to drop the search while the Duchess wants him to continue). Then, abruptly, it ends. No climax, no ultimate struggle. Nothing. It just ends. Our hero shows up, breathless, with the codex in his hand, the crypto solved, and nothing whatever comes of it. Nothing changes, nothing is rescued or destroyed. We don’t even know whether our hero gets to start his new job (he was threatened with its loss during the quest for the codex) or what happens to the software company of his friend/acquaintance (which was also threatened with destruction by the Duke’s men).

This non-ending reduces the book to triviality. Why did the author even bother telling the story? What was the point? Basically we have a passably well-written book with nothing to say to us. If all you want to say is that everything is futile, and nothing can be achieved, then be consistent and shut up; if everything’s futile, then your story is as well, so don’t bother anyone else with it.

The structure of a thriller calls not only for a real ending, which Grossman fails to propvide, but for a brief “cooling-down” period after the climax, in which we are given the opportunity to recover our breath while the author fills us in on what finally happens with many/most of the sub-plots that were introduced along the way to keep the suspense building. Here, the author shirks his duty to his readers completely. We get nothing in return for our investment in the characters. No satisfaction at all.

Avoid this book. I can’t think of any circumstances under which I’d support buying it. Counting the speckles in the plaster on the ceiling will pass time more enjoyably. There’s no joy in this read, and if you’re a masochist, there are several other more efficient ways of inflicting pain on yourself, most of which will cost less.

Egad, a consecutive string of turkeys. I need to read something good to get this bad taste out of my mouth.

Les Standiford, you should be ashamed of yourself. Mentioning Seychelle Sullivan in the same breath as John D [MacDonald] is a crime. I’ll admit I’m probably not a good judge of potential, and since it’s her first book maybe I should cut her some slack, but if John D had written this it would lining a bird cage or a cat box somewhere.

The link to Travis McGee is obvious; Sullivan is in salvage. But it stops there. There is the stupid but thorough cop who adds 2+2 and gets the square of the hypoteneuse, the old friend cop (only this one’s recently retired; seems like you can’t have a good guy on the force in this particular world). There’s the home for wayward girls (and you know what it really does to the girls, don’t you?) the ex-lover too nasty to be with but of course too noble to be part of the plot against her. Sullivan herself is too smart for the bad guys to put up with having her around, yet everyone believes nasty things said about her by a drunken racetrack loser. Yep, I can believe that, I can.

I got the feeling for about the middle third of the book the author was stuck for how to stretch it out. So we have a bunch of hand-waving (some hands containing weapons) and water-churning until enough pages have gone back to draw the tale to a close.

Maybe it’s just the linkage with MacDonald that’s triggering this in me; if so, that’s not Kling’s fault. But this tale was tiresome, I frankly almost didn’t finish the book. Life’s too short to waste it reading really bad books. This book seemed to hover gently right on the line between mediocre and bad. It’s quite possible the author has grown past this level now. If you think so and are willing to check it out, try one of her latest books. The only defensible reason for picking this one up is to complete a collection.

Of the eight stories presented, half are Poirot, and few of them of the automatic variety. Two more are Miss Marple’s, but those are among the more pedestrian of her adventures, and could be missed without regret. And finally, there are two examples of Christie’s gothic touch (non-series). Dame Agatha wrote a number of gothic stries as well, and they are interesting outings as well.

The longest story in the batch, The Theft Of The Royal Ruby, gets reprinted in nearly every Christmas Mystery collection; there are elements of the heart-warming in it as much as mystery. “Wasps’ Nest” plays the least fair with the reader, but that’s OK, in its way, because it’s not really a mystery story. It’s more of a brief step by the Belgian over the line from dectective story to gothic. The question to be solved isn’t so much “who did the crime?” as it is “What’s going on here?” As such, the lack of fairplay is forgivable.

This is one of the better books in this stretch of Christie, probably due in no small part to being comprised of earlier stories. Recommended.