Stephen Clark Harkess

I still love this series.

Revisado: 12-07-23

I listen to a lot of audiobooks and this series is among my absolute favorites. I look forward to the next one. The characters are diverse and unlike any other books I can think of. The good guys are each different with their own idiosyncrasies, yet each one is someone I would like spending time with. The series is just a lot of fun to listen to.

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Fantastic

Revisado: 09-16-22

I listen to a lot of audiobooks. This one is the most enjoyable book I’ve listened to in a long time. The story is fresh and funny, the characters are interesting and likable and I’m very interested in seeing what happens next. Best credit I’ve spent in months.

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Great Story - Intriguing beginning

Revisado: 11-01-21

This short story creates a world I would like to learn more about. It teases at a deeper mystery that could be explored in the future. I hope the author takes the time to explore it further.

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

What a ridiculous story.

Revisado: 04-20-21

I like the different voice actors, although the background noise can be loud at times. What I hated was how little thought went into the plot. There were SO many holes. I'm used to authors who do a little bit of research or at least sit and think about whether or not what they are writing makes any sense at all.

Just for starters, we're supposed to believe that wealthy and famous celebrities are purchasing their drugs directly from a drug cartel that is keeping track of the transactions (to include even the purchase of small amounts of marijuana) on a super secret encrypted ledger stored on the dark web. Further, we are expected to believe that the fact that some drug dealer typed a famous person's name on such a list is enough to make the list useful blackmail material. Really? Why? Because a drug dealer's business records are always accurate beyond question? That wouldn't hold up in any court. Maybe if the celebs were dumb enough to purchase their drugs with bit coin, the transaction could be traced to them, but that isn't the sort of transaction the book describes. The only way the bust is an actual threat to the rich and powerful is if their dealer actually testified that the ledge was an accurate reflection of real drug deals. The ledger alone would be worthless.

Also, people in prison somehow don't have access to television or newspapers so they aren't instantly aware that the highly publicized arrest of a murdering cop (who was having sex with the dead girl) is connected with the person sitting next to them pretending to be just another junkie instead of a cop. Really? Further, all the jail staff know who she is, but the inmates remain clueless? Nobody gives any of them even a hint? Not even the bad @## woman convict who "runs the place"??

In another section of the book, the detective steals his sister's brother's prized sports car and sells it to get funds for a sting, but it's OK because the seller (a stranger he meets at a swap meet) somehow agrees to give him the funds, but to just hold the car and sell it back to him for the same amount if he changes his mind in 24 hours. I'm sure that would really happen, right?

That's just scratching the surface of the ridiculous things that happen in this book. Good fiction should at least be plausible - especially if the story is supposed to be taking place in the real world. This author has an imagination, but not much of a grip on reality.

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Enjoyed the banter, still hated the book.

Revisado: 04-19-21

The main character is an opinionated loud mouth, but I actually find his rants amusing. The problem is that he doesn't actually have any redeeming qualities to offset his quirks. He's a poor excuse for an investigator and I have a hard time imagining that this guy was ever a police detective or that ANYBODY would hire him as a consultant for anything.

There is absolutely no indication that he has any particular skill at anything. He almost never does anything clever as he allows the people in his life to be brutally murdered around him. He's constantly one step behind the killer and only stays close on the killer's heels because the killer feeds him clues so he can keep up.

He's certainly not a workaholic. In between the killings of his friends and associates, he doesn't work very hard on the case and instead spends most of his time drinking and fornicating with all the beautiful successful women who throw themselves at him for no readily apparent reason. It's only as the "target dates" approach when he takes another stab at trying to figure out the killer's plan - in the meantime having left the potential targets largely unattended or ignored so that they are easy pickings. He does put guards on some of them, but then allows them to wander off alone at various times so that there is ample opportunity for them to be taken (go ahead and study in the library alone - just make sure you check in every hour. It takes more than 60 minutes to get grabbed by a serial killer right? Nope. Who could have guessed?) At the last minute he deciphers the clues intentionally left by the much smarter killer so that he can arrive too late to do any good.

He bills himself as the guy who "kills killers", but most of the time he heads out for a confrontation without even taking a gun with him so when he finds the killer cramming body parts into a lobster trap he has to simply stand in the water and watch until the bad guy slips away. He's a terrible investigator and a poor excuse for a detective. The only reason he survives the conclusion of the book is dumb luck.

Even having received these books for free, I can't bring myself to read books 2-4. When I read a mystery or suspense novel, I want an intelligent story about a bright detective matching wits with a deranged killer, not the story of a stumbling idiot who should be dead, but is saved by unforeseen circumstances and dumb luck at the last minute.

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Lazy author. Garbage story.

Revisado: 09-27-20

The evil mastermind in this book is completely incompetent which totally ruins the story. If you pay attention to what actually happens, you'll realize that the main character didn't really have to do anything to foil the villain's "plot" because it was so poorly thought out from the beginning. The writing is just lazy. The author comes up with a few ideas, but doesn't bother to think them through to see if they make any kind of sense.

I hate incompetent villains. What is the point of the main character fighting to uncover and thwart a dastardly plot if the plot never made any sense to begin with. In this book the idiot "mastermind" has a plan which never really worked. The main character gets involved because he is a shady fellow who often does morally bent things to earn a few extra bucks. For absolutely no reason, the "mastermind" decides to kill the main character even though the main character doesn't know anything about the underlying plot and poses very little threat to the villain until the bad guy's incompetent actions lead him to investigate.

The main break in the case comes when the bad guy's henchmen accidentally break into an apartment while it is occupied by another tough guy who is able to incapacitate them with ease despite being outnumbered. The main character did nothing to cause this to happen. He's just an incompetent idiot stumbling through the story while the even more incompetent bad guy's plot self destructs around him.

At the time of their capture, these henchmen were apparently planning to force the main character to commit suicide by showing him pictures of a well armed police officer who was an acquaintance of his that he was friendly with but wouldn't speak to for months at a time. This was apparently supposed to convince him to immediately kill himself rather than simply warning her and having them arrested.

In the climatic showdown the idiot "mastermind" threatens to deliver the notarized statements of dead people to the police which accuse the main character of being involved in a bank robbery and murder. Even though such statements would never be admissible in any actual court (and the bad guy should know this given who he is) he expects that the main character will immediately commit suicide to avoid the possibility of an investigation and jail in the future (even though the main character risks both of those things on a regular basis due to his lifestyle). If there had ever been any valid reason to try to kill the main character to keep him quiet, the stupid threats would certainly have had the effect of encouraging the main character to tell everything he know to anyone and everyone since he had little to lose at that point.

The absolute stupidity of the bad guy makes it impossible to feel any sense of accomplishment when the main character takes him down. The story was extremely lazy and poorly thought out. Not a good example of speculative fiction.

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I love this series.

Revisado: 09-27-20

I really enjoy this series. The author finds inspiration in a variety of places and uses it to produce engaging and enjoyable Eddie LaCrosse stories. This one is based on Shakespere - "The Winter's Tale". Other sources of inspiration for books in this series have included the 70's pop song Brandy and stories of King Arthur. The author makes no secret of these sources, incorporating some of the most famous parts of each, while delivering a completely original story for Eddie LaCrosse to navigate.

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The only competent person in the galaxy?

Revisado: 09-27-20

I just can't.

I enjoyed the first book and I really like the main character. She is kind and thoughtful and is very likeable. However, the small issue I had with the first book grows even bigger in this one. In the first book, it was strange that none of the professionals on the team the main character joins actually made any contributions to the investigation except at her direction. That seemed a bit odd to me, but it was just one investigation and the main character is something of a prodigy.

In this second book, not only does her team of investigators apparently fail to accomplish anything on their own when not following suggestions from the main character, everybody else in this galaxy is equally incompetent. This leads to ridiculous scenes where the main character has to risk her life and take wounds to defeat incompetent bad guys who are able to attack her directly due to even more incompetent good guys.

The main character is attacked at her home by cultist snake thieves who are going to kill her. Her home has high security (since she has been attacked there multiple times in the past) but apparently all it takes is a lab coat and a story about consulting for the guards to allow the bad guys to park their van at the house and be left alone to ambush the main character. It's not until an actual gunshot is registered that the security guards pay any further attention. They don't expect the homeowner to notify them of such an appointment (if it had been legitimate) or call their client to confirm like a 20th century gated-community guard would. In the future anybody is able to go to a house they are "protecting" and try to abduct the residents with very little effort.

Soon after, a group of crazy people covered in sores due to their highly contagious disease are able to leave the hospital, steal guns from a gun store, and then hijack a MILITARY SHUTTLE traveling to a WARSHIP in orbit. In the 20th century you cannot board a civilian cruise ship without going through a metal detector, and you can't even get into the port without showing a cruise ship ticket. But in the future you can get onto a military base with open sores and a highly contagious disease, hijack a shuttle into space without the warship blasting you out of orbit or even receiving notice until you are docked on board. This requires the main character to again risk her life and receive wounds single handedly stopping these armed intruders from infecting the warship with a deadly virus. All because - in the future - the military (like everybody else except the main character) is more incompetent than a 20th century cruise line.

As much as I like the character, I just cannot enjoy following her exploits where all of her successes come because nobody else in the future has any sense whatsoever. I expect good science fiction stories to be better thought out than that.

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esto le resultó útil a 8 personas

Enjoyable book.

Revisado: 09-27-20

I enjoyed the story and I like the main character. She is interesting and likeable. The strange quirk that the character has (a symbiotic relationship with a snake that keeps her from dying from a terrible disease) is a bit strange and doesn't really add very much to the story, but it is a good story nonetheless.

The one issue I had with the book is that the main character joins a team of supposed professionals as the 18 year-old newbie. I understand that she is the prodigy and 'special' but I was struck by the fact that none of her teammates appear to have any skills that she lacks. They basically just follow along in her wake while she solves the case and then they share the credit for her accomplishments. This is supposed to be a highly trained and successful group even before the addition of the main character so it would be nice if somebody else on the team occasionally came up with an idea or uncovered a lead.

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esto le resultó útil a 15 personas

A lot of production quality for some very mediocre stories.

Revisado: 05-21-19

It was free. That should be worth an extra star. Otherwise, there isn’t much good to say about this book. None of the stories are actually funny and only two of them were interesting.

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