Even though National Ice Cream Cone Day is over, I don’t see why you can’t still celebrate it with a cone and one of these cold cases! Check out my blog post for some fun mystery reads.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme. Read the rules and more teasers at The Purple Booker. Anyone can play along.
I am just finishing up Randall Wayne White’s Gone, the first book in his new Hannah Smith series. This is a difficult one for me to review. Although I am all for books that expose trafficking and predatory practices to the light of day and inform people in an entertaining way, I had difficulty with the characters in this first in series. Randall Wayne White’s Doc Ford series is quite popular and well-reviewed, but I think writing a woman from first person point of view was difficult for this author. Even positive reviews frequently mention the difficulty White seems to have writing from a female perspective. I am not a fan of the “beautiful swan who doesn’t know she’s no longer an ugly duckling” trope. Nor of the woman standing in front of the mirror analyzing her assets. White seems to have wanted to include LGBT diversity to his cast of characters, but they don’t come out feeling genuine, just sexually confused.
Gone is suspenseful, a satisfying PI mystery, and has a good climax in the swamp at the end. The plot and storyline are good. Lots of details about boats and the Florida keys. But I think the author “missed the boat” on characterization in this one.
Some people are like that. Unaware of their vulnerability, secure in their own illusions.
Randall Wayne White, Gone
Hannah Smith is a tall, strong, formidable Florida woman, the descendant of generations of strong Florida women. She makes her living as a fishing guide, but her friends, neighbors, and clients also know her as an uncommonly resourceful woman with a keen sense of justice, as someone who can’t be bullied—and they have taken to coming to her with their problems.
Her methods can be unorthodox, though, and those on the receiving end of them often wind up very unhappy—and sometimes very violent. When a girl goes missing, and Hannah is asked to find her, that is exactly what happens…
