Well, this book slump is getting worse. Books I put on hold ages ago and was looking forward to I'm not even reading, I just can't get into them. I saw this Erle Stanley Gardner at the bookstore and bought it, knowing it wasn't one I owned. I love the Perry Mason books, and I needed something to read on the plane, which I did. I'm sure I've probably read it before, since I read as many as I could get my hands on back when I was younger, but if I have read it it's been at least 15 years, so I didn't remember it, and honestly it didn't thrill me. I don't know if it was overly complicated or if I'm just *that* down about books right now. A young woman comes into Mason's office carrying a canary in a cage. Rita explains that her sister, Rosalind, is in the middle of a messy divorce and she's trying to help her. Rita was at her sister's house, trimming the canary's nails, when her boyfriend Jimmy came by to see her. While they were embracing, there was a car accident out front of the house and Jimmy ran out to help. The police officers took his name and address, and now Rita is worried Rosalind's husband will try to make out like Jimmy was there to see Rosalind and not her. Then the husband, Walter, turns up dead. That's when things got *really* complicated.
I was really looking forward to Dean Koontz's latest, since his last few have been pretty decent. Right off the bat, this one rubbed me the wrong way. Bibi Blair is a young (22) woman, a published author with a bright future ahead of her. She is very wise and mature beyond her years, and I know there are definitely people out there like that (I was accused of being one for many years when I was around her age. I believed it then, but I doubt it now. Looking back, I didn't know *anything*. But I digress...) but if he'd only aged her a bit it would have been less ridiculous. Bibi is diagnosed with inoperable, incurable brain cancer and given a year to live. The night after her diagnosis, she is visited by a strange man and a golden retriever, and when she wakes up in the morning she has been miraculously cured. She is told by a diviner her parents hired (because of course Bibi doesn't believe in that sort of thing) that her life was spared to save another: Ashley Bell. Bibi goes on a quest to discover where Ashley is and why her life is so important. She's being followed by an evil man with a seemingly endless supply of resources, who wants Ashley dead and will kill Bibi to make sure it happens. I finished it, but I didn't like it. Normally his preaching doesn't get to me, since I agree with 99% of his sentiments, but for some reason coming out of the mouth of a barely out of her teens girl made me irritated. I don't know, I guess I'm turning into a cranky old lady :)
No comments:
Post a Comment