10 posts tagged “books”
Some generations define themselves by heroism in battle, others by breaking cultural barriers, and others by making great strides forward in technology. My generation defines itself with a movie. A movie with laser swords.
I have been collecting Star Wars stuff for as long as I can remember. I had an AT-ST, the chicken walker from Return of the Jedi that would walk when you pushed the little button in the back. My pajamas, lunch box, and toothbrush were all adorned with Luke Skywalker's determined, banged-up face. I remember how excited I was when I got a package of Jawas made by the people who made Micro Machines. I was 23.
Obviously, Lucasfilm Enterprises loves nerds like me. They can slap a wookie on any old merch and they know I'll be drawn to it like a lightsaber is drawn into the force-powered hands of a skilled Sith lord. The books detailing the further adventures of Han, Luke, Leia, and the rest a good forty years after the movie takes place were meant for pitiful Jedheads like me and my ilk.
So I was surprised to be a little disoriented by Bloodlines. (By the way, spoilers ahead if you have any interest in reading Star Wars novels.) See the thing is, I kind of stopped reading the novels after the Yuuzahn Vong invaded Corellia. It was all just too painful. And the thing about licensed books is that their goal is to have huge, planet-shattering events sweep through the galaxy leaving all of the major characters entirely untouched. Sure, R. A. Salvatore got his one exception, but I was well versed enough in Star Wars literary canon that I knew about poor, poor, Chewie. I was a good disc and a half into this one, introducing myself to new relatives of old characters like Ben Skywalker and Thracken Sal-Solo and Britney Fett when I suddenly realized, "Hey, where the hell is Anakin Solo?"
I turned to Wikipedia (Wookiepedia, actually) and was shocked to find that Anakin was dead. In fact, not only was he dead, but he was so dead, and had come back to life and died so many times, that no one even mentioned him in this book. His name did not come up. That's really dead.
That bombshell aside, I was more enamored with this book than I thought I would be. I've read some Star Wars stinkers in the past (The Courtship of Princess Leia, anyone?) and figured that now, at a point when the original characters have reached retirement age, there's not a lot left to hold my attention. Boba Fett was 72, for crying out loud. Still, I thought this was pretty good.
Part of the charm of the book was the completely dedicated narrator. You know a narrator like this has to have a few Ewoks in a box in his basement somewhere. I'm still not entirely sure there weren't more than one narrator. Well, the settings were announced by a woman, I'm sure of that. And yet, this dude, Mark Thompson, in spite of having a female reading chapter headings for him, insisted on doing Princess Leia's voice himself. I noticed his credits included the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I was briefly excied about that until I realized that he's from the gritty new retelling of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles saga, and I have no interest in getting involved with that until the crossover special with Admiral Ackbar. Still, he did a spot on Luke, a pitch-perfect Boba Fett, and a reasonable facsimile of the other male characters.
I was impressed. You could almost hear the turbo thrusters scraping against the transparisteel rear shields when the Millennium Falcon dropped out of hyperspace. Sorry, my mistake. I meant you could literally hear the turbo thrusters scraping against the transparisteel rear shields when the Millennium Falcon dropped out of hyperspace, because this book included sound effects, and the John Williams score throughout. And I had no argument with that. Except when I was listening to the book while waiting in line at the drive-thru, and the cashier would give me a funny look when she heard laser blasters shooting droids somewhere in my car.
The story itself was OK, too. I felt like the whole Boba Fett searching for his family thing was a little bit of a stretch and seemed to be in the book because the author said, "I'm planning to write a whole bunch of books, but I need to make sure that Boba Fett doesn't play any role in them, so I'm writing something for him to do now." However, the family dynamics between the Skywalkers and the Solos was very interesting, and of course you could see a lot of subtle commentary of global politics from the last ten years.
So if you've ever dreamed of spending a weekend in stormtrooper armor, and you haven't listened to any Star Wars audio books, this one might be a good one to listen to. Not a great place to start, because like I said before, no Anakin, but not a bad read at all.
And fortunately for me, the library has a second Star Wars book on CD that I'm sure no other self respecting citizen would check out in public. Yes that's right.
There is another.
It's one of those great libraries where there's odd staircases that lead to odd book filled places and it's kind of a little maze lined with shelves after shelves of books. It reminds me of the library at college, which always inspired me to imagine secret collegiate espionage agents on chases up and down the stairs, grabbing at collars through open spots on the shelves, and the heroes only catch up with the evil library infiltrators by throwing a book through the security gate just as the infiltrators are leaving, locking it and causing them to fall helplessly to the ground.
The final blow against Chicago's library is that it's also good looking on the outside, making the "award-winning facade" of Rogers Park seem a little flimsy.
The one area where it's lacking, however is books on CD. There's a sizable audio book section, but they're all books on tape. I was so disappointed with last week's offering that I gave up and sought out the children's audio book sections.
I picked Artemis Fowl because I've often heard it mentioned in the same breath as Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket. And I can see that. All three prominently feature bespectacled adolescent boys. And all three have a chapter about trolls (except Lemony Snicket). But although I enjoyed the book, Artemis is clearly a distant third after Harry and
Klaus. He is easily the least likable and the least funny of the three, and his supporting cast of characters is not nearly as rich as either the world of the muggles or the world of the VFD.
I suppose it's unfair for me to compare this series against those two heavyweights, though. It's good on its own merits. I was pleasantly surprised to learn the Artemis, the eponymous adolescent kids are supposed to relate to, is the antagonist. He's the one doing all the mean things in the book, but he's still very interesting, and you find yourself torn between wanting him to win and wanting justice to prevail. He transcends the evil rich genius persona to be more of a tragic figure and less of a bond villain with a thing for leprechauns.
The heroes are also more ambiguous than most adult fiction likes to venture into. Me, I like that. Makes them more believable, easier to understand their motivations. Gives them someplace to go in the upcoming books. And oh yes, this book makes no qualms about setting up years upon years of sequels, several of which have apparently already come out. By the end of this book, you get mentions of various plot points of a few of them, and everyone is left in a position that could best be summed up as "ready to cross paths again for another rollicking adventure."
So I liked Artemis, I liked the pacing, and I really liked the narrator. Irish accents, Scottish accents, German accents, and even one of those adorable American accents by a British speaker who tries really hard but sounds kind of like if John Wayne was in the movie Fargo. I was a little let down by the supporting cast, the war cliches, and the big reveal at the end that explains why Artemis was so confident about his theft/kidnapping/boat-blowing-up plan all along. You know, the one about Santa Claus. Kind of lame.
Does it all balance out? Yes. It was a good "read". I'd try another Artemis Fowl book. Especially if the library's CD collection continues to favor kid's books over grownup books.
What's that? Did you think that maybe it might not have been on? Because it is on, my friend. Super, totally on.
Me listening to books on CD again is on, that is.
Since Jenna and I have been on a mega Terry Pratchett kick for months now, I was thrilled to find not only a Terry Pratchett book on CD, but a Terry Pratchett book about Sam Vimes and the city Watch. On CD.
I've been enjoying reading books about the Watch more than I liked The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. More than Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. More, even, than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In fact, I've been trying to match friends and family with specific books in the Watch series, just so I could recommend different books to different people. For Dave, Thud. For Becky, Monstrous Regiment (which isn't technically a Watch book, but Sam Vimes is in it). For Joe, The Fifth Elephant (mostly for the title, admittedly). For Bill, I think I might recommend this book. (Or Small Gods, which features a character named Brutha.)
So now that I'm back to the world of commuting and commuting, I'm also back to the world of books on CD. Guards! Guards! is a poorly titled book that introduces the Watch characters that you will surely come to grow and love. Surly alcoholic Sam Vimes, disgusting, disappointing Nobby, even Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler, the gang's all here. The plot centers around a group of mysterious hooded strangers who summon a magical dragon in an attempt to manipulate the people of Ankh-Morpork into re-instituting a monarchy. Meanwhile, Carrot Ironfoundersson's parents tell him he's not really a dwarf and send him out to seek his fortune. These two plots intertwine.
It was pretty much a given that I would like the book. I'm biased. But I also liked the reader, which is kind of the X factor in books on CD. He did a great job with the earnestness of Carrot, the cool stoicism of Venitari, the somewhat similar but never confusable Nobby and Colon, and the whole gang of dragon summoners. I was not crazy about the way he did Vimes, who sounded like he had a cold throughout the book, and so when he spent the first two CDs or so drunk, he was difficult to understand. Also, Sybil, the only female character with any speaking lines (pretty much), was a little cliched. But not so much as to interfere with the story.
I realize that when I was railing against earlier books on tape, I was especially dead-set against flat, completely unlikeable antagonists. The bad guys in this story really have no redeeming social values, but they're funny, and that goes a long way in helping me forgive them for being a little one-dimensional. I didn't feel like Pratchett was picking a type of person he didn't like, painting them as evil, and then killing them off as painfully as possible, as I sometimes feel with Carl Hiaasen books. The bad guys were crummy, but the good guys are never much better, and you always feel a little bad for the bad guys in Pratchett books when they get what's coming to them. Fortunately, Death is pretty funny too, so at least they start the afterlife off on the right foot.
Would I recommend this book? Yes I would. Is it a book for everyone? Yes it is. But would everyone like listening to it over and over again even after I spent hours and hours building it up to heights no book could ever possibly reach? Again, yes.
I liked this book.
With the release of book 7 less than a month away, I figured it was of the utmost importance that I record my Harry Potter predictions here, so that you'll all be amazed by my prescience and thoughtfulness when they're all proven to be true. I've tried to add some justification for these predictions, but I'd love to hear counter-arguments, if you've got them. Or whatever theories you've worked out.
If you haven't read the books yet, and you'd like to, I don't think I need to say that there are spoilers here. But I will. There are.
1. Harry does not intend to return to Hogwarts, and just when it seems that no one can talk him into going back, circumstances beyond his control will compel him to return to school and finish off his seventh year. That sounds vague, so I'll throw out a wild guess that evidence leads to at least one Horcrux being hidden somewhere in school grounds, so Harry starts there. My argument here is that the Harry Potter series is a specific kind of genre -- a boarding school genre -- with fantasy and mystery elements surrounding the framework. Book six was not the culmination of a maturing student's character arc that's been building throughout the series, therefore, Harry needs to grow more and accomplish more at school.
2. Of the total Horcruxes: the diary, the locket, the cup, the ring, the ?, the snake, and the scar, Harry will have personally only destroyed two: the diary and the scar. In the later books, Harry has had to deal with the limitations imposed upon him, and I don't think book 7 will be any different. There are plenty of other people doing the same work as Harry, and we don't know for certain that Dumbledore would have kept any knowledge about Horcruxes from the rest of his Order. Harry will finish the task unfinished by him at the end of book six and discover that the locket was already destroyed. All of the Horcruxes are McGuffins, but the ? I think will be especially useless. It will either be the part of the soul that's still in Voldemort (if this is the case, Harry will have destroyed three, not two), or some Ravenclaw trinket found and destroyed by, say, Kingsley Shacklebolt.
3. Harry will face Voldemort once again in the Ministry of Magic. He will realize that his scar is a horcrux, and although he sacrifices himself, his life will be spared via deus ex machina. My guess is that he will sacrifice himself by dragging Voldemort through the Veil in the Veil Room and Harry will be spared by some long shot plan, possibly involving the abilities of a Dementor's kiss. We will hear from Sirius again while Harry is in the Veil. One of the ongoing themes is that Voldemort fears death. Harry will have to face death in order to defeat Voldemort. Harry is the character who was originally slated to die but given a reprieve.
4. Harry and Ginny will wind up together. Harry will become an Auror and Ginny will take over operations at the twins' Hogsmeade branch. As a character, Ginny is not developed enough to be killed off and become Harry's great lost love. The development in book 7 will lead to her being an ingenue, not a victim. Their relationship was interrupted for whatever happens in book 7. Once it's happened, they're free to resume snogging. So they will.
5. More than two characters will die. They will be Wormtail, Snape, Voldemort, Hagrid, and George Weasley. Voldemort is a no-brainer. Wormtail owes a debt to Harry. He will show Harry lenience and Voldemort will kill him for it. He would be too much of a threat for Voldemort to keep alive. Snape will be vindicated as a good guy, but Bellatrix will finish him off, and Harry will ever only be able to respect him posthumously. Hagrid is a long shot here, but I think one of the characters needs to give plant the idea of self-sacrifice into Harry's mind, and I think Hagrid is the most likely character to do that. It's what he's been doing all along, and I can't help but wonder if there's something to the alchemy theory that passes a character through a black state (Sirius Black), white state (Albus) and red state (Rubeus). And character-wise, Fred and George are the practically the same, so one of them can die without removing the character from the story. Plus, since they're comic relief characters, the death would add a lot of dramatic weight to events.
6. Ron and Hermione will end up together. Harry will be convinced that they will die, but he will be mistaken. I see a paralle here to Return of the Jedi, where Luke watches out the window at the trap set up for his friends and finally lets them go. In this case, I see Draco Malfoy getting the upper hand against Ron and Hermione in a fight, but unable to actually kill them, and turning against his father instead. Hermione will dedicate her life to House-Elf rights. Ron will end up with Ludo Bagman's job, a cross of his father's job and his love of sports. There will be an epilogue that takes place long after year 7 to divulge this information.
7. The year 7 defense against the dark arts teacher will be Tonks. She will return to her Auror job at the end of the year, but give the post back to her boyfriend (husband?) Lupin, who will then break the curse. I say this because I think Tonks would be a good DADA teacher, but I know Lupin is a good DADA teacher.
8. Neville will incapacitate Bellatrix, but he will not kill her or use the cruciatus curse.
9. It will be revealed that the reason that Harry Potter survived as a baby was because Voldemort cast a horcrux making spell on him instead of plain old Avada Kedavra. His mother's charm caused the spell to backfire and created the horcrux scar, which explains why dementors take a particular liking for Harry, why he shares so much in common with Voldemort, and why his scar reacts to events in Voldemort's life.
10. The last sentence of the book will be, "Harry Potter Jr. will return in Harry Potter Jr. and the Case of the Lost Scar."
Here's a first. I'm not just spoiling this book. I'm pretty much spoiling the whole series.
I thought I might be done with books on CD for a while, but I still drive on the occasional Friday, so I headed back to the ol' library. I'd already read The End, but I liked the Series of Unfortunate Events, so I thought I'd give it a listen.
One interesting thing about the series is that the Audio books include a song specially written for the story. This one was about being shipwrecked. There's a commercial playing in Chicago about fax machines, and how there's a band called "the Fax Machines" and they're horrible singers, and dude, they sound exactly like whoever was singing this song. I understand they're not going for Aretha Franklin or anything, I was just wondering if they actually hired The Fax Machines to sing this song.
As for the rest of the book, well, I think this was a great series with a weak ending. One of the overarching themes of the book is "some things are better left unsaid", so it should come as no surprise that a lot of the loose ends stay loose. The story of the Sugar Bowl is dismissed, the details of Lemony's life aren't really touched upon here, all the interesting characters who came back in the Penultimate Peril are absent throughout (with one exception). It seems like all the events that have been building in all of the other books were cast away to tell a castaway story.
Don't get me wrong: it's still funny. There's a lot of metahumor here, and the whole story is jam packed full of allusions to other castaway stories, including a bunch I'm sure I missed. It's very intelligent humor and builds not only from book to book, but also builds on the humor of each book. I was very excited to read this book (much in the same way I'm excited about the last Harry Potter book). It's a great series. It's even a good entry into the series. It's just not a great ending. I was expecting something breathtakingly brilliant, and I just felt like there was more building, more character development, and no ending. Yes, I know that's the theme. I hope Harry Potter ends better.
Here's what I would have liked: A happy ending. Justice Strauss adopts the orphans, all the questions are answered in clever and funny ways, Count Olaf is sent to prison, everyone is deliriously happy... and then the story continues. Sonny's cooking skills make her a child celebrity, and she's rich and famous. Violet and Quigley meet up again and start dating. Klaus is accepted into a prestigious university. Sonny's celebrity leaves her separated from the family, feeling abandoned, and her money can't buy her happiness. Violet and Quigley realize what they shared was simply a childhood crush, and go through an awkward breakup. Klaus finds that the university is filled with people who love to do research, and feels like he loses some of his identity. And their lives, so soon after this wonderful happy ending, become dreary again.
Maybe there will be a fourteenth book. I'd have no problem with that.
Beggars can't be choosers. This is the abridged version, and it went by way too fast. However, since I'm at the mercy of the selection at the Rogers Park Library, I've got to take what I can get.
William Goldman was right: this story has everything. He made it relevant to boys even though it's got the girliest title imaginable by creating a subplot about a boy not being interested in it. That's genius. What's here is funny, structured well, and a heck of a lot of fun to listen to.
And now I want to hear Meathead read the whole thing unabridged. He really does a great job, and even the female voice thing didn't bother me. I'm certain he's trying to capture the sound of the actors from the movie (and he does a great job with the narrator voice, played by Peter Falk in the movie, that he doesn't even need to do voices for the rest). If there is a web petition floating around somewhere that asks the best-facaded library in Chicago (awarded 2003) to start stocking the unabridged version of the Princess Bride before June, let me know, because I will sign it, and probably re-sign it with several psuedonyms, which is why these web petitions aren't such a great idea in the first place.
This is a great story to read to your kid. This is a great story to read in an airport, waiting for the conditions to clear. This is a great story to read just before bed. This is a great story.
Aaron picked out my library books for me this month. They were: The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen Carter, and The Hornets Nest, by Jimmy Carter. (He had also picked out Candy Apple Death by Sammi Carter, but I limited him to two). Both are abridged from the original print version, and that reminded me of a column I read by my old nemesis, Marilyn Von Savant (damn you Marilyn!). Someone asked if listening to a book on tape was as valuable as reading it. She deftly sidestepped the issue by pointing out that some audio books are abridged, and therefore offer an incomplete, or "abridged" experience compared to reading the book as published on paper.
What if they are unabridged? What if the abridgement has been approved by the author? Do these count as books or not? Marilyn remains bitterly silent. I live in terror of going to the pearly gates and hearing St. Peter tell me that I never really read The Life of Pi or The Shining and therefore don't qualify for a spaceship.
Frankly, reading through the Amazon reviews of The Emperor of Ocean Park, most people found the descriptions too lengthy and drawn out. Listening to the story gallop along on five CDs, I didn't have that problem. Also, keep in mind that every original published work has already been edited by all kinds of people before it even hits the bookstore. And just because I'm not looking at words doesn't mean that I'm not absorbing the author's ideas, prose, and stylistic choices. Sure, occasionally I'll miss out on a clever pun or a helpful illustration, but the narrators do their darnedest to talk me through them. I even listened to a Dave Barry book on CD, which as every Dave Barry fan could tell you, was full of footnotes and zany clip art, but I was still able to follow what was going on.
On the other hand, that Dave Barry book was probably not a great choice for adapting for audio, especially as it was read by Chuckles the Clown, who emphasized wackiness with his wacky clown-voice on every wacky page. I can honestly say that reading Dave Barry is funnier than listening to him. At least, funnier than listening to Chuckles.
Maybe the reason people like Ms. Von Savant (puh-lease) tend to draw a line between audio books and written books is that audio books impose an element on you completely outside of the author's grasp. If I had listened to that Dave Barry book before reading anything by Dave Barry, I probably wouldn't go back and try another one.
So what counts as reading the book? Everything above the line of truth, of course.
Reading the unpublished manuscript originally written by the author
Reading the book
Listening to the unabridged audio book
Reading an author-approved abridgement of the book
Listening to the audio book with the abridgement approved by the author
-----------The Line of Truth-------------
Reading a renegade abridgement of the book
Listening to a renegade abridgement of the book
Watching the movie adapted by the book
Watching the movie loosely based on the book
Skimming through the book looking for sex scenes
Reading the Cliff's Notes
Reading the comic-book adaptation
Reading the Cliff's Notes of the comic book adaptation
Listening to the Cliff's Notes of the comic book adaptation
Piecing the plot together from Amazon reviews and hearsay
Reading only the jacket, even if you write a book report based on it
Hope this helps!
The latest book in my car's CD player was Augusten Burrough's Running With Scissors, timed pretty well with the DVD release of the movie based on the book. Will I spoil it for you if you haven't read it yet? Probably, but too bad. It was a memoir about a kid who leaves one clinically insane family to live with another. The blurbs on the book have called it funny, but I was mostly horrified. As a twelve year old, Burroughs had the kinds of experiences most parents desperately try to keep away from twelve year olds. He is given handfuls of drugs whenever he becomes upset. He is encouraged to drop out of school. He starts a relationship with a 40 year old who lives in an abandoned barn. His diet consists of McDonald's and dog food. He walks in on his mother having an affair, and later walks in on her cutting herself with broken glass. He's the kind of person who makes you feel guilty if you ever complain about any aspect of your childhood, ever.
It seems pretty easy to compare Running With Scissors to one of David Sedaris's books. They're both autobiographical short stories about quirky families by gay authors. But to call the characters in Running With Scissors quirky is like calling the Pacific Ocean damp. When David Sedaris talks about arguments in the car on family trips, you smile in recognition and laugh at the details that make his story unique. When Augusten Burroughs talks about how no one was allowed to flush the toilet without their bowel movements being inspected for messages from God, there's no knowing smile. You think, why hasn't anyone called the police?
This book is non-fiction, I guess, so I can't really criticize if some of the plot points didn't come together. I wanted to learn more about Hope, the woman who seemed the most put-together most of the time, and the most dangerous the rest of the time, but if this is all that Burroughs knows about her, I can't hold it against him. The moral at the end of the story, the idea that if children can survive a screwed up childhood like this, they can do anything, was really the best place for these stories to lead. The few moments of levity come when Burroughs explores his fascination with hair care products, but even when young Augusten talks about creating his hair empire, all I could think was he'd be lucky if he didn't end up throwing himself against a bus and screaming about people stealing his newspaper. (p.s. Jenna I hope your ride to work got better after that.)
It was disturbing, and at some points a little graphic, especially because it deals with children. Still, it was interesting enough to keep me listening, so I guess I'd recommend it to people who I didn't just spoil it for.
I finished listening to Neil Gaiman's American Gods. It was a huge improvement over the last book I listened to on CD. I like that the themes of the book all got worked into the big reveal at the end. I could identify with a lot of the settings (like an apartment building in Chicago or a small town in the Midwest). The bad guy had some motivation for his actions other than "they would cause a book". Shadow, the protagonist is flawed but likeable. He's just an ex-con who's trying to work his way back to his family, not unlike Bender the Defender, the lovable Ultimate Robot Fighter from Futurama. When Shadow learns something, the reader learns it at the same time. The supporting characters are all consistent, and they move the narrative along in a way that makes sense. It's a good book.
But I still have two complaints. So if you haven't read American Gods, and would like to, I'll try to warn you about spoilers. First, the person who read the book was not right for this book.
George Guidall sounds a little like Jim Dale, who does the Harry Potter audio books. They both infuse a kind of sense of awe in every word, and have a kind of grandfatherly quality in their voices. That's great for Harry Potter, but it jerks you right out of the narrative when Grandpa George is describing a graphic sex scene where, say, SPOILER WARNING! a man is eaten by a prostitute's vagina. [/spoiler]
You don't want to hear about that from a kindly old narrator who reminds you of the voice of Winnie the Pooh. Also, he runs into a problem a lot of male book-on-tape narrators run into which is that all his female characters sound the same. In in this case, they all sound whiny and a little drunk all the time. This is honestly not a bad book for that, because it's driven mostly by male characters, but the scenes where two women are talking to each other are really grating.
The second problem I had with it is that there are three main characters charged with moving along the main story, and at one point, they are all SPOILER WARNING! dead. That kind of drags out a little. They've each acted in ways that have lead to them paying with their lives, and so we hear from some minor characters for a while, and all of the main characters have to come back to life again in order to finish the story. If one character died and came back to life, it would have some emotional effect, but with all three, it kind of makes the story a little dull.
However, other than that, it's a great story that I would recommend to anyone who likes mythology, Americana, con artists, road trips, things that die, or vaginas that eat people. Or any combination of them. [/spoilers]
I have a long commute to work, so I've taken to getting audio books at the Rogers Park library. The selection is pretty thin, and I've "read" all of the books that have interested me, so now I'm at the point where I just pick a book and hope that it's good. The last book I picked up, Split Second, by David Baldacci, was not good. Not at all.
Here are some of the elements from Split Second that I would be happy never reading again:(Spoilers ahead, I guess)
- All the male characters are referred to only by last names (e.g. Agent Sean King is called "King" or "Agent King", all the female characters only by first names (Agent Michelle Maxwell is called "Michelle").
- The male protagonist says, "I'm getting too old for this"
- The male protagonist, who lost his job when he was held responsible for a man's death, finds a dead body in his office, and another one in his home. One of the victims was conclusively shot with the hero's gun. He is told, "We won't arrest you, but we might have to start keeping an eye on you, so don't skip town or anything." He later skips town with no consequences.
- The female characters' first interactions with the male hero involves them taking off all their clothes or offering to.
- The female protagonist is an Olympic medal-winning secret service agent who made national news when her charge -- a man who was running for president -- was kidnapped. She is personally held responsible. No one ever recognizes her.
- When the bad guy wants to go after the good guys, he A) sends a dozen men to sneak into the male hero's house, set up an elaborate fake fire while the hero is asleep, has them dress up like firemen with an authentic fire engine and ambulance, coax the hero into the ambulance, treat his smoke inhalation with an oxygen mask that contains a powerful sedative that knocks him out, and then bomb his house so it really does burn down, and B) sends some guy to shoot through the window of the female hero and then run away.
- Someone is breaking into the hero's house, but he doesn't want to get the police involved. What would they think?
- When the female hero is being strangled, she struggles and thrashes while the important clue she found is stolen by someone who basically walks away with it. Just as she is about to lose consciousness she remembers one last thing that might just save her life: maybe, just maybe she could shoot her attacker with her gun. The one she's had this whole time she was being strangled.
- The heroes are looking for clues where some woman has just been murdered. They're coming up empty handed. Her son says, she sure did love gardening, and today was supposed to be her gardening day. The heroes go out to the garden. Her son says it's funny but mom sure loved gardenias, even better than these prize winning roses. They check out the gardenias, where one is blue and the rest are pink. Her son says that gardenias can change color just depending on the pH balance of the soil. The hero gets a thought, it's crazy, but what if... WHAT IF... why, it's almost too crazy to contemplate, but what if there's a clue hidden in... the garden? But where? Why, it might even be under one of the gardenia plants that she loved so very much... but which one? They decide on the single blue one and are shocked to find... a clue!
- The police chief knows where to look for the bad guy because he notices that when three of the crime scenes are plotted on a map, they "form a kind of triangle".
- The female hero has become good friends with the police chief. The two of them meet on countless occasions to discuss the case, often alone. Then, just as they're closing in on the bad guy, she realizes that the police chief has been a bad guy all along. She takes cover. Seconds later, he starts shooting at her.
- The male hero has figured out who the bad guy is, what his motivation is and where to find him. Also, he knows the police chief is a bad guy. He tells the female hero he thinks he knows something, but instead of telling her a thing, he wants to think about it a little longer. Seconds later, he's kidnapped.
- The bad guy is hanging out in a hotel that he has filled with explosives, and is encouraging someone he barely knows to start shooting randomly. His success has all been carefully placed in the hands of this near-stranger.
- The bad guy calls women "my dear" and constantly refers to his complicated plot.
- The bad guy says, "You're not in my league."
- The bad guy is in love with someone, and tries to win her heart by making her husband murder some guy. It doesn't work. So he sets up an elaborate plot that involves hiring underlings, blackmail, extensive figure painting, hooking up light and sound systems, kidnapping victims, dressing them in the last decade's fashions, and then surrounding everything with explosives. In the time it has taken to set this up, the woman he loves gets engaged to someone else. He kills her and decides to continue with his plot anyway. When it still doesn't work, he just starts swinging poles at people.
- The hero says, "We just solved a complicated mystery"
- The bad guy turns out to be old man Caruthers from the gas station in a Frankenstein mask, and the lottery ticket he sold the heroes ends up winning $100 million dollars, and one of the dollar bills they receive has a clue to get them started on the mystery for the next book.
Okay, I made the last one up, but seriously. It was not a good book
