Strange Title, Big Book, Long Reach

Noumenon - Marina J. Lostetter

You’d think I’d know by now, wouldn’t you. Yep, the more superlatives heaped on a debut novel, the less I’m going to like it. Who knows: it might have something to do with the way literature has changed since my debut novel (the first one I read, anyway). Whatever. The reviews for Marina J. Lostetter and her (alleged) first novel, Noumenon, were glowing. They compared it to Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama (a comparison obviously made by someone who hadn’t read that novel) and Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves. They also compared it to Hugh Howey’s Wool, but I haven’t read it – my one exposure to Howey was unsatisfactory. But we’re not here to talk about Howey (or Stephenson), we’re here to talk about Noumenon…

Anderson Harp's "Retribution": The Spy Novel Comes in from the Cold

Retribution - Anderson Harp

When the Cold War sputtered and came to a halt, espionage thriller writers found themselves scrambling for new plotlines. A few ignored the change and some began writing historical fiction, but many moved the spying from politics to corporate espionage. The problem was simple: a Russian and an American (or Brit) pretty much look the same; but modern conflicts pit westerners against Asian enemies and natives of the Middle East. It’s tough to write a part for Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise as an Arab or Korean without invoking plastic surgery.

But then along came Bosnians and Chechens – Moslems who look less like Osama bin Laden and more like Zorba the Greek; some even with pale(-ish) complexions and light hair. A new breed of spies was born – and Anderson Harp’s man William Parker is at the vanguard.

Kill Game: definitive proof that quantity is not the same thing as quality

Kill Game: A Cold Poker Gang Mystery - Dean Wesley Smith

The blurbs for Dean Wesley Smith’s Kill Game: A Cold Poker Gang Mystery include one that describes it as an “exhilarating political poker thriller.” If you know who Harriett Klausner was you’re probably laughing at her grandiose description of yet another book she'd never read (she wrote dozens of book reviews a day). If you’ve read this particular book, well, you realize that not one word of her four is actually true.

Meet the Cold Poker Gang. Or perhaps not: supposedly a group of ex-Vegas cops who solve homicide cases while playing a weekly poker game, in reality only three appear in Kill Game (aren’t poker games usually among six or more players?). Two have strong connections to the cold case they’ve chosen to work on this time, however. Former Reno cop Julia Rogers is the widow of the man killed in Sin City twenty-two years ago; Stan Rocha was now-retired cop Bayard Lott’s first-ever homicide case. His murder remains unsolved all these years later.

It Ain't Carter Ross, and I Don't Care

Closer Than You Know - Brad Parks

Meet Melanie Barrick, a woman whose life is quite frankly a mess. Like many a fictional heroine, she’s been through “the system” and pulled herself up by her bootstraps. But wait, she managed to go through college on scholarship money, but combine her graduation year (2009) with her utterly ridiculous choice of major (English Lit? what good is an English Lit degree?), and yet she’s been able to work her way up from homeless Starbucks barista to dispatcher at a trucking, errr, logistics company. On top of that, Barrick was raped in her little apartment a year ago…

Maybe the first Davie Richards mystery should've been the last...

Pacific Homicide - Patricia Smiley

I happen to be someone who devours mystery-thriller novels, and if you’re going to read somewhere between fifty and 100 of them a year, you tend to have fairly loose standards. I know that not every writer can be Michael Connelly; but I certainly hope that not every writer is Tim Downs, either. My most recent read, sadly, is closer to the latter: that’s why I’m assigning a mere two stars to Pacific Homicide, the first Davie Richards mystery.

Richards, the newest detective of LAPD’s Pacific Division homicide squad, is a second-generation cop. Her dad, however, was unceremoniously drummed out of the department after he shot a teenager and paralyzed him. Unfortunately for Davie, the lawyer who lost the civil case is the newly appointed head of the police oversight board.

Not that this has anything to do with Davie’s current case, which is that of the beautiful teenaged Russian blonde whose mangled body was found in the LA sewer system. The diminutive (of course) but gorgeous (likewise) redhead with a streak of rebellion (I’m seeing a pattern here) will get the job done, though. That’s regardless of her recent officer-involved shooting (duh) while saving the life of the partner with whom she was having a fling (…). Never mind the complication of her ex's sudden reassignment to Davie's division.

You see where I’m getting to, right? Pacific Homicide is so full of tropes that it’s hard not to trip over a new one every page or so. Author Patricia Smiley (back in print seven years after the fourth Tucker Sinclair mystery) definitely didn’t go out on any creative limbs for her police procedural. Even Davie’s domicile is a trope of the female detective subgenre: she lives in a converted garage behind the house of a non-threatening older man: Kinsey Milhone, anyone?

All that derivative prose makes it hard to concentrate on the mystery aspect of Pacific Homicide, but to be truthful it’s not particularly well done, either. While the villain’s identity does come as a surprise, Smiley commits the sin of not providing clues to his identity for her readers to attempt to out-detect the detective. The bad guy’s tipoff? He’s a creep… not that being a creep is actionable in real police work.

There's also an ancillary plot: the aforementioned lawyer bears a grudge against Richards because, after he lost the case against her dad, the foxy mama of the paralyzed kid didn't spread her luscious legs for him. Give us a break, Patty! the guy hasn't managed to get laid in the past fifteen years? and he thinks it's the hero's fault?

Smiley’s pumped out a couple more books in the series, but given the snore-fest I encountered in Pacific Homicide, I’m gonna give ‘em a pass. I’d suggest you do the same.

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