Two weeks ago, Pirates fans were lamenting the fact that the team had traded relief pitcher and fan favorite Jason Grilli, and many of the comments were along the lines of "it's hard to watch when a favorite athlete ages and can no longer perform at his previous high level".
Well, the same can be said of just about anybody in any profession - actor, singer, Highmark Client Manager, and author.
Which brings us to Jeffery Deaver and his series of mystery/thriller novels featuring quadriplegic criminalist Lincoln Rhyme. I have read all of Deaver's Rhyme novels, and enjoyed them. They were gripping to read, and always featured a twist at the end that surprised you.
A couple of books back in the series, I thought that the tone of the stories was slipping into formula and that the characters were becoming really annoying. I wrote it off, figuring that anyone is entitled to an off-day, but with this most recent novel in the series, "The Skin Collector", I have to say that if Lincoln Rhyme were baseball player, it would be time designate him for assignment.
Rhyme's acerbic reactions to just about everybody, Amelia Sachs' fearlessness in the face of EVERYTHING, including how she drives her muscle car, and Rhyme's ability to be able to just pull his solutions out of the air based upon his analysis of evidence have all reached the point where I am just pretty much tired of it. Rhyme studies evidence, and the evidence in this story is presented in such minute and scientific detail, that I just want to say "enough, already!"
Also, the criminal protagonist in this book, does his dirty work by tattooing his victims. I didn't do an actual count, but it seems like Deaver went into SO MUCH detail about the art, history, and significance of tattoos in different cultures, that I am thinking the book could have been reduced by about thirty pages if he edited himself just a little bit. It all came across to me as a bunch of self-indulgent "look how smart I am" kind of writing.
I will say this, though. Deaver did come through with the twist ending. As with all of these books, it appears to be all wrapped up, when you realize that there are still about 75 pages left in the story, and the twist that you didn't see coming is delivered. Trouble is, by that point in "The Skin Collector", I had ceased caring and was just plowing through it to get to the end.
Deaver will no doubt continue to churn out the Rhyme novels (as a cliff hanger ending to this one assures us), but I am not so sure I'll be all that anxious to read them. Too bad that one of my favorite authors and characters have come to this.
Well, if you really want to know.....
Yep, after seeing the movie, I decided to reread the book for the first time since high school. Fitzgerald certainly had an elegant way of writing. His lavish descriptions of Gatsby's parties and a list of all the people who attended them were fun reading, and the story of the guy that everyone loves, until he gets down on his luck, is an age old one. Not sure either movie version I've seen - Robert Redford and Leo DiCaprio - does do the novel justice. An interesting read if you've never read it, and I am glad that I have read it again after experiencing life for going on sixty-two years. Not sure if I'll ever read it a third time, though.
A new Lincoln Rhyme novel is always one to which to look forward, and this newest one is no exception. Deaver has a way to come up with plot twists and cliffhangers (at least three in this one alone) unlike almost any other best selling author. However, the almost super human powers of Rhyme and his partner/lover Amelia Sachs is becoming pretty formulaic in these stories. Not enough to make me swear off of them and not read the next one, which is probably at least two more years away, though. If you haven't read the Deaver/Rhyme novels, you should, but don't start with this one. The very first one was "The Bone Collector". Start with that one or some of the other earlier ones.
I will say, though, that "Kill Room" deals with some issues very much in the news today. Things like personal privacy, abuses of personal liberties under the mantle of "patriotism", and the use of drones in warfare. Deaver does not come down on one side or the other, but how he lays it all out is thought provoking to say the least.
I finally got around to reading this Steve Blass autobiography that was published last year. If you are Blass fan and a Pirate fan, you will like it. If you don't like Steve Blass, then don't bother reading it. Blass deals very candidly with the control issues that ended his career, as well as with some issues in his personal life and marriage that could not have been easy to put out there for all the world to read about. (You should know that one very salacious rumor that has been circulating for years about the Blass marriage is NOT true.) The most interesting parts of such sports biographies, to me at least, are the parts that talk about the player in the years after the playing days are over, and this one was no exception.
One thing Blass says, and he says it a couple of times in the book, I found very good. In discussing all of his control problems, he mentioned that whenever someone offered a suggestion on how to fix it, he would try it because "I don't want to be sitting on my porch when I'm 85 years old and think 'maybe THAT would have worked if I only tried it.' " And he offered that same bit of advice to other players over the years. It's not a bad way to look at life, if you ask me.
