Margin Al

Hardboiled, not spoiled

Revisado: 04-02-23

In a world where whiney wallowing in narcissistic sensitivity might pass as virtuous suffering, it’s refreshing to follow the forward momentum of a man who’s all about action. —A hard man in a hard world where revenge without regrets can be righteous, and where morality is manifest in how and for whom one will fight for what’s right, despite risk. A fun three-book series. Parker would be proud.

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Mandatory title here

Revisado: 02-19-23

It’s a mistake to require 15 words in a review. People can have opinions without commenting. Stars can be enough.

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Same old clichés

Revisado: 02-27-22

The writing is ok, if you can overlook the over-use of tired old too-woke tropes. A southern white man is the oversized devil, New Orleans gypsy magic lives on in a black girl’s mysterious powers, gangsta killers are sad expressions of hopelessness (oppression), the ghetto boy was born to play those Memphis guitar blues. Did I mention it has to be made very clear that the woman is dominant in every male-female relationship?

Regretfully, I’ll be taking nice, restful naps rather than reading anything else by Stephen Mendel. Somebody please give me a nudge if an original idea should appear in one of his subsequent books—especially any kind of idea that doesn’t reek of pitiful author virtue signaling. Do writers really have to spout these woke clichés in order to get published? I had higher hopes for this author.

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Story ok, narration annoying

Revisado: 02-21-21

The story is alright, as long as realism isn’t an expectation—it’s just supposed to be an interesting distraction, perhaps happily entertaining. What spoils that potential (in this edition) is that almost every character sounds like an inveterate whiner. I’m referring to their voices, not their personalities. This seems to be a narrator talent problem, but it could just be a failure of imagination (if the narrator imagines he’s doing other types of voices). For me, that kind of narration is the wrong kind of distraction, constantly leading me to think about the irritating performance when I’d rather be inhabiting the story. But it may not rub you wrong, so enjoy it if you can.

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Preachy & repetitive, still some fun

Revisado: 08-03-20

I like this book series, but I’m pretty tired of hearing the same character background stories in every single book. I’ve now been introduced to Dave & Clete 21 times, and many other characters multiple times as well. In fact, every new book is padded with enough re-introductions + thumbnail reminiscences to make me feel a little cheated; if the author thinks he’s paid enough to flesh out a whole novel, how about stretching the non-repetitive content to the length of a typical novel, and letting us treat the repeat content as “gravy” for flavor (or just get rid of it, and let those who care for it go back and read it in the earlier novels)? I could also get along just fine without what passes for Dave’s “wisdom” about how humanity and how we ruin the whole world, especially Americans, and businessmen, and most especially white people who had the misfortune of being born Southerners. Through his 21 Robicheaux novels, Burke has slowly taught me distaste not for any of those groups, but for the author himself, as a person. After all, the people who populate the novels, and their morality & actions, are not faithful portraits of anyone; they are, primarily, expressions (reflections) from the novelist’s own character and mind. I don’t say that Burke is not an entertaining novelist, as I find the books well worth using (i.e., “reading” by hearing) as distractions from boring daily tasks. Anyone who might absorb Robicheaux’s (Burke’s) attitude toward or “wisdom” about humanity as some kind of insight, however, has my pity. Enjoy the descriptions of nature and the action scenes, but look elsewhere for truth about most of humanity and the great majority of human relations.

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Not the author’s best

Revisado: 06-09-20

It’s sad when a good writer descends into the clichés of political bigotry (capped off with a final good people kumbaya moment), particularly when the author has grown wealthy by creating fantasies of mayhem, torture, perversion and rationalized vigilantism. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the vigilantism, but the preachy “Republicans are evil” passages are sooo tired, especially from a character whose primary claims to fame include explosive failures of self-control and serial episodes of energetic disrespect for the rule of law.

Most of the story is apolitical, but (even disregarding the political whining and the stereotyping) this book is not nearly as good as the previous novels in the series. I found the plot too weak, the violence scenarios too improbable, the romances mainly unattractive, the rescues too convenient, the very world in which they all took place too shallow to care much about. Where is the author’s formerly charming facility for describing local landscapes and cultural habits—were the dull stereotypes of this book just a half-hearted, uninspired attempt by a tired, distracted or overly-comfortable author ? I hope this book represents only a limited departure from earlier, better expressions of the author’s talent.

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Less angst, more action, please

Revisado: 11-29-19

For my money, the interpersonal dramatics are like sawdust filler in an otherwise tasty treat. I liked the action scenes, but the remainder was mostly either too contrived or too emotionally indulgent. Not the best work from this usually better author.

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Get a serious editor

Revisado: 12-18-18

I once heard it said that there is, inside every grossly overweight man, a inner man of steel who carries around all that excess fat (and is stronger than most thin people). Well, inside this novel there's an acceptably solid story, but it's weighed down by a whole lot of excess bulk that a good editor, like a responsible coach, should have made the author lose before the whole sloppy shape was presented to the public.

Speaking strictly for my own tastes, this book disappointed mainly in its pacing, digressions, dialogues, coincidences, and lack of realism (behavioral and physical). Any and all of that is tolerable in entertainment fiction, but in this book each of those categories reached the level of distraction for me.

I like the individual characters, up to a point. The author still occasionally has Bernie overdo the self-doubting or long-suffering angst routine (though less than in the previous book). The author has practically turned Leaphorn into a ghost, so one is left to presume that she either isn't confident she can present him well, or perhaps just wants to overthrow the male patriarchy in favor of a more petite protagonist. The characters remain well-presented, it's just curious that Ms. Hillerman has effectively erased Joe Leaphorn. But just having him shot in the head (previous book) wasn't sufficient. In this book, she takes the trouble to undermine his integrity (as a coherent type) by making him apparently blind to the pig-headed incompetence of a fellow Navajo Police officer whom he personally trained (but who somehow escaped mention in all of the earlier Leaphorn - Chee series books). Maybe Leaphorn's been rehabilitated in later books?

As for the premise for this book's plot, I found it both silly and poorly managed. Sure, Hollywood made westerns in Navajo country, and I appreciate this book's giving a little exposure to that bit of history (albeit liberally mixed with fiction). But I'd prefer to get my shallowly presented Hollywood jerks and my zombie movie-making shenanigans elsewhere, thank you. (If ever). I come to this series for very different things.

Yeah, I'll go ahead and buy the next book in the series. I like the desert scenery, I like the Navajo cultural descriptions, and I certainly do like cop stories.

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Artificially shortened

Revisado: 11-06-18

These books seem ever shorter & faster, so I compared this book to the first book in this series.

The Cold Dish: 448 pages = 13hrs 17m, so about 107 seconds per page.
Junkyard Dogs: 352 pages = 7hrs 33m, so about 77 seconds per page.

I presume this acceleration was accomplished electronically, not by forcing poor old George Guidall to read 39% faster.

If this book (Junkyard Dogs) were read aloud at the same speed as The Cold Dish, this book would last 10 hours, 28 minutes (would be 39% longer).

My take on the practice of electronically time-compressing audiobook narration is simple and cynical: I think that Audible (or Amazon, or Recorded Books, or whoever) is simply robbing their customers by artificially truncating narration time so listeners will buy more books, sooner. In my view, the practice is dishonest and unethical.

Is this type of narration time compression occurring across all Audible books, or only with titles "presented by" the Recorded Books label?

Does anyone else care?

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Excellent story. A bit short for the price.

Revisado: 10-31-18

Two good stories that dovetail into one.
Vietnam, the Cheyenne nation, old mystery leading to new mystery, detective work, humor, evil, tragedy, triumph, friendship, ghost town rattlesnakes, and more. Need I mention that the characters seem real enough to visit?

George Guidall, certainly not among my favorite narrators, nonetheless does an excellent job that I can't help not only respect, but like and enjoy. He seems to be in his element with most of these characters, and one easily suspects that he enjoyed (enjoys?) narrating this novel series.

One of my pet peeves is Audible's short book format. At 8+ hours, this one is especially short, and I really can't help perceiving such brevity as an expression of unseemly greed. It might seem odd to ask an author to work a little harder and produce a full-length novel, but it doesn't seem unreasonable at all to ask that Audible provide an hour of audiobook for every dollar in the price of an item. That would be roughly two books of this length for one Audible credit. If Audible (or the publishing industry writ larger) is not exerting a compressive influence, novel length should vary very widely. My very unscientific impression is that novel length, as a variable product of author and story styles, should vary more broadly than it does. More about my narrow-sample impression of this apparent anomaly follows.

Many of the novels I "read" through Audible seem to magically end up being somewhere around twelve hours long. Often the narration proceeds so quickly that I can comfortably listen at 85% of "normal" speed. Often a narrator reads so rapidly that I can't believe the original performance pace was naturally or actually that quick. I strongly suspect that Audible makes it policy and practice to electronically hasten narration speeds so as to decrease the average purchase interval (i.e., simply to increase profits). It's quite clear that pauses in narration are often truncated, and often to bad effect (such as when a transition between settings occurs, and, without a slightly elongated pause in the verbal flow, a listener's first clue to the scene change is context confusion). This is a fairly small point, but one I think is important because it illustrates just one of numerous ways in which the audiobook production industry lacks full professionalism (read: standards of competence). Audiobook "performance" production has been improving, but still has some very basic problems, such as lack of quality control with respect to word pronunciation and context-appropriate emphasis. This book is exceptionally well-produced, I'm just discussing a tangential aspect of the audiobook industry's focus on profit before quality, which affects this book, I think, only by tolerating its brevity without discounting its price. The book is very good, I'm just sayin'.

All in all, this is a very enjoyable read.

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