“Well,” I said, turning my head so I could give Lex a wicked grin. “If it’s a game she wants, then it’s a game she’ll get.” “What does that even mean?” Lex wondered, but I was too busy strutting away after my witty one-liner to answer.
Cal already had the pieces of the table spread out across the floor, everything else in the room shoved to the walls, and they sat in the center of the chaos, instruction booklet in hand as punk rock blasted from the Bluetooth speaker.
Josephine Simms slammed the door to her house. There were tears in her eyes that made the whole room blurry, but she hardly wobbled on her stilettos as she stalked across the room toward the bar she and her husband kept by the fireplace. She wanted to smash one of those fine crystal glasses, but she wouldn’t do that. People of her station simply didn’t go around throwing things at walls, no matter how badly they might want to. She poured herself a glass and downed it in one gulp, though the world was already swimming from the drinks she’d had at Marcus’s work function. Where she’d left him. She ran out that door like she was a jilted girl at a school dance, and she was appalled by herself, though they’d been making such a scene that she simply had to get out of there. Marcus would come home once he’d calmed down, and they would have a civil conversation about this. There was no reason that this had to be unpleasant. Josephine poured herself another drink and brought it to her lips with a trembling hand. Once she’d drained the glass, she tipped it upside down and put it back on the table. No more. She’d had enough to drink for one night. She would take a bath, she decided. That would calm her down, and then she’d be in a better state to explain herself to Marcus when he returned. She pulled her satin shawl a little tighter around her shoulders and started for the grand staircase at the back of the living room.
Before she’d gotten five steps, the front door slammed open, and a gust of night air blew into the room. “Josephine.” Josephine froze with one foot still in the air. Marcus’s voice was low and rough, still curdled by his anger, and she could feel the hot weight of his stare against the back of her neck. Josephine lowered her leg and slowly spun, moving as if Marcus were an animal she didn’t want to startle. He stood in the doorway, breathing heavily, his cheeks reddened by alcohol and the tears now drying to his face. His tie was loose, and there was a patch of dirt by the cuff of his suit coat. “Darling,” Josephine said, trying to keep her voice smooth and calm even as her heart jumped within her chest. “I didn’t think you’d be home so soon.” “You thought I’d just let it go, did you?” Marcus sneered. He stepped further into the house and swung the door shut behind him. The thud as it hit the wooden frame made Josephine jump. “I’ve let a lot of things go over the years, but not this one. Not this time. How could you do that to me, Josephine? I love you.” “And I love you, darling,” Josephine promised. She smiled at him, spreading her hands in front of her, offering comfort. “Stop calling me darling,” Marcus growled. He stalked toward her, each step so hard and purposeful that she thought they would leave marks on the floor. She heard something thump upstairs but barely registered it, more concerned by her husband’s anger. She could fix it, though. She could always fix it. “Marcus, I’m sorry, but I thought we’d talked about this. We agreed to have freedom in our relationship--” “Freedom to pursue our own hobbies and friends, not sleep with the first hot young thing to cross your path!” Marcus bellowed, cutting her off. Josephine quailed, drawing in on herself and holding her shawl close, hoping Marcus would see how he was scaring her, but his anger had overridden all else, and his bloodshot eyes were fierce within his reddened face. “Calm down,” she said as she began to back away from him. “I’m not going to have this conversation with you while you're like this.” She could regain control of this situation again. She had to.
She heard another noise from upstairs, some kind of scuffing sound like something was being dragged across the carpet, and she frowned, distracted even with Marcus still walking inexorably toward her. “Did you hear that?” she asked him. “I think there’s someone in our house.” “Don’t try to change the subject,” he said. “Have I not given you everything I have, Josephine? Have I not loved you enough? Am I not enough for you?” “Of course you’re enough for me, darling,” Josephine said soothingly, but that was the wrong thing to say. His eyes flashed dangerously, and she backpedaled. “It’s not a matter of enough. I love you with all my heart, I promise you I do, but I needed something different, too. Not more, not better, just different.” “I don’t understand.” Marcus’s voice cracked, and some of his anger washed away, replaced by growing despair. “I don’t understand.” She stepped toward him, no longer retreating, holding her hands out to him as if in supplication, begging him to listen with her eyes. His steps stuttered, and his advance slowed, and he was finally looking at her with something other than rage. Josephine smiled at him, the coy, playful one that she knew he liked.
The stairs behind them creaked. She spun around. She’d heard something for sure this time, and she had to see. A figure in black stood halfway down the staircase, freezing when they realized they’d been seen. Josephine pointed, whipping her head back toward Marcus to make sure he’d spotted the intruder, too. The stairs creaked again. The intruder was coming toward them. They had to do something, had to stop this interloper. Josephine turned back toward the stairs and started to move, glancing back over her shoulder to make sure that Marcus was still with her. The three of them were moving toward each other. Josephine kept looking back and forth between the intruder and her husband, wanting to keep them both in sight, and her head swam from her quick movement and all the alcohol still in her system. The room had gone blurry again, but she wouldn’t let that stop her. How dare this person break into her home? It simply could not stand. Something cracked against the back of her head. The world fuzzed black like a television screen losing signal. Josephine felt her knees buckle. It was the last thing she ever felt. She didn’t even have time for a final, fleeting thought.
~~~~
This book begins a new series for Matt Lincoln--one that presented several interesting issues that I found distracting. Was it on purpose? Or am I too involved in the books that I read, that I notice "issues" often? I don't have an answer, so I tend to use support to document my emotional responses when the author has written something that distracts me from the story.
First, I want to say that this is a fun book that most of you will enjoy if distractions don't pull you away from your reading. The book begins with a murder. I was 99% positive that I could predict what happened before the book was over. At that time I was 100% correct. But at least the author chose "Crimes" as his subtitle as opposed to mystery, because, this certainly didn't provide a mystery to ponder...
Moving forward, we begin to meet the characters that have thus far been hired into a new government office. MBLIS - Military Border Liaison Investigative Services. Every reader or movie watcher has gotten use to confronting organizations that are identified with the use of cap letters... This created name seemed just a bit much don't you think. M-B-L-I-S is extremely difficult to spit out as part of an introduction. Going with MBliss is a natural choice. But, seriously, folks, would you want to try to explain that you work for M-Bliss? A new governmental unit? I began to wonder whether sarcasm was being used by the author...
Introductions of this new unit was immediately provided to the local police, even though the unit's location was still in construction, with no furniture, etc. But once the offer was made to the police chief, he soon took advantage and turned over the murder of a local woman, which included a very valuable piece of jewelry being stolen. This began a number of heists with the same MO...
The thing is that even the new staff had never met each other, including the head of the office. And, of course, friction began as each of the individuals acted based on their former job. One former FBI agent, who becomes the main character, was given a former cop to be his partner. Tension began between the two almost immediately. Another federal employee from another unit was also assigned to MBlis, and a new tech individual was hired for the new unit. Let's just say that it took a while for each of the employees to begin to feel comfortable in their new roles with new people...
One of them even caused me a major distraction. And required that I do a little research about specifics, even though I had known of language changes being adopted through recent years... I found an adequate overview at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularthey...
I remember most of the rules that affected the English Language being taught when I was still in high school. I had never had any problem with accepting a basic rule, even if I didn't totally agree that the rule made sense. You know what I mean... If you don't know the sex of an individual then use the masculine form of the word. Of course, I began to see that sometimes you could tell it was a female because of the sentence, so the rule didn't really make sense... Still I went by the rules...
In this book, however, we have a known character, named Cal. Yes, it could be either a male or female. But the book clarifies that the individual has chosen pronouns of they/them. That means that the author specifically chose to complicate this book. Why? Let's take a look at the introduction of the new tech employee:
“Cal Vidal is our sole lab tech for the moment, though hopefully, we’ll find someone else to join them soon.” Cal gave me a jaunty little wave when Rachel said their name and then went back to flicking through something on a sleek, silver tablet, a lock of black hair falling into their pointy face as a white bud dangled from one ear. They looked like they were barely out of school and dressed in jeans and a t-shirt like they were out with friends rather than at an office. A fresh, floral pattern tattoo stood out against their light brown skin, the space around the lines still just a little red.
Folks, I hope by now you have a fair assessment of whether I am prejudice. I have read books by anybody and rarely, if ever, commented, except for reference, noted the sexuality preference of any character or author. So, when I say that I believe the decision to use a singular "they" is not only wrong, it is crazy and makes further grammatical errors mandated for this!
Look carefully at the sample introduction above. In fact, what has occurred is that by choosing a word that is defined for multiple people/characters, it has NOT at the same time mandated synchronization... Take a look at: They looked like they were barely out of school and dressed in jeans and a t-shirt like they were out with friends rather than at an office. By accepting a singular they, but not also changing the comparable verb or adjective, readers are left with total confusion... My tongue was trained--my mind was trained to match the subject with every other word in a sentence. That is no longer the case when singular they is accepted.
It is not my intent to get into the psychological aspect of HOW an individual has the right to proclaim why they choose to not be PLACED by sex. I have no other option for those individuals, EXCEPT to create an entirely new word for that person. For instance, we know of at least one word, Androgyny, which identifies some variation in sexuality. Transsexual is another word that has caused much disagreement but, still, is a new word that describes a different individual for some reason.
It is also not my intent to interfere with medical reasons to know the difference between he and she...
But I do disagree that social culture of any sort should be adjusted so that an entire language can be corrupted by such a decision.
Was this done purposely supporting the rationale? Or was it a form of sarcasm by the writer? Readers have NO idea. And, that, my fellow book readers, creates an unwanted distraction that does harm, in my opinion, in readers trying to get to know the individual who claims to be "they." while fumbling through the sentence that the one individual is sitting in the middle of a room and calling them a they. It should be noted that the author provided no comments in introducing this character into his book other than to say to another new employee who mistakenly called Cal him, that the preference was for they...
I have learned that American English is an extremely hard language to learn for those speaking another language and trying to learn our language. We need to think through the ramifications of what one change can make in trying to adjust to a grammatically incorrect use...of...just...one...word!
And then there was the absolute worse mistake a writer can make, in my opinion, in this book... Releasing the name of the villain!
The only salvation to this was that, later, the villain became a known named character... But that first sight of a new name not previously shared in the book--undoubtedly that of the criminal--was devastating. To me this is an immediate awareness that proper proofreading of the book had not occurred. The book had not received a final content edit...
“Agent Greyson!” someone called from down below. I thought maybe it was Barrett, but I didn’t have time to parse it out fully. Haddow’s body tensed, preparing for motion, but I couldn’t quite tell what she was going to do, where she was going to go, so I tried to ready myself for anything. She shot right toward me, and I got ready to snatch her arm, but at the last second, she spun around me, my fingers narrowly missing her tight sleeve, and then she raced for the edge of the roof. I twisted, feet digging into the stone as I tried to pick up enough speed to stop her before she did whatever she had planned. The thief planted one foot on the ledge ringing the roof and flung herself into the air, arms wind-milling as she aimed for the adjacent building. Surely, it was too far, I thought, as I watched her fly. But amazingly, her feet slammed down, and she turned the landing into a roll, popping back to her feet in one smooth motion. It was the stupid tree all over again, and this time, I wouldn’t falter. I ran faster, just a few feet between me and that ledge, and I steeled myself for the jump, well aware that the thief had stopped to watch me. At the last second, my feet dug into the roof, and I skidded to a stop, slapping my hands down on the ledge to check my forward momentum, heart jack-hammering in my ribs. I almost pitched right off the roof, but I planted a foot against the low wall and managed to drag myself to a stop. I panted as I crouched there, hands trembling, and when I looked up, the thief was smirking at me from the other roof, confidence flooding through her body. “So close,” she said. “Oh, so close.” “I will catch you,” I said, though my tough demeanor was somewhat ruined by the fact that I had flaked out at the last moment and was now breathing rather heavily.
I included the above excerpt to not only reveal that mistake, but to also share just how much the thief "controlled" this book. In fact, it was indeed clear right from the beginning that she was challenging the lead investigator to recognize that it really was a game that she was playing--almost a female Robin Hood, but who at least in his book, actually kept what she stole! LOL...
I consider this an opinion piece more than a review of the book. It seems to me that the United States has gone too far in one way. Specifically, just as we discovered with the Covid Pandemic, and, now, with the measles once again spreading, that many of our citizens have turned away from thinking, first, about all Americans and for the overall good of America, and rather, have chosen to think their opinion or desires are more important than the nation as a whole.
At the same time, I recognize that many who fight for justice are doing so because they have been physically, mentally, or emotionally abused by others to the extent that they have chosen to fight to be recognized as "special" in some way. To me, we should ensure all have similar rights, rather than pick out ways in which we can punish somebody for being different from the way You think they should be... I don't think anybody can now not realize what has happened to the United States since 2015 and, even worse, at present.
You know, folks, in many ways, I have learned more about the lives of All people around the world thanks to Donald J. Trump... More specifically, I have learned more about just how cruel, selfish, and hateful some people can and have become. I grew up in a small town, and even when I started working and began to meet people who were in some way different from me, I had no thought of thinking that they should be "more like me..." In fact, when the issue of separation of Church and State began to change things, I at first voted No not to have stores open on Sunday. Then I began to think, really think, about what I was agreeing to. I thought about the times that my sister worked on Sundays at a nursing home and that there were many who had to work on Sundays as required for supporting those who needed help that day and every day. I had begun to think beyond my own personal situation as I began to work...
I have also learned through my career that people could be treated differently due to policies and procedures, rules and regulations, but also due to power of a few versus consideration for priorities from an overall perspective. But nothing could have prepared me for what has been done to our country beginning in 2015 and which has gotten worse, stopping briefly, only during the years of Biden's presidency.
For the first time, I've known deeply just why Jesus gave His life for all creations... With free will, we were allowed to choose how we would treat others... For many of us, there didn't seem to be an issue before. But once we saw how one man via a nearly 1000-page report started working against anybody and everybody for whatever reasons a few people wanted to have things changed so that power and riches could be gained, I discovered in me an almost obsessive need to ensure that all people be considered in relation to the whole. And that something that a few individuals might want or prefer must be overridden for the good of the many... That...is...democracy as it works for a nation...
Knowing that the few people who want to be considered outside of a basic coding system; i.e., those who decide they don't want to be looked at as male or female, for whatever reason, may need to reconsider--or--be prepared with a plan that does not immediately affect the millions of other people. I fought all the way to the State with what was happening to me on the campus. But when the turmoil created appeared to be useless, in my case, I chose to withdraw and retire early. It did not affect anybody else and, in the end, my decision though difficult, was exactly what I should have done for my own well-being.
In turn, I've chosen a way to give back to people all over the world, by reading, reviewing and sharing my thoughts to those who have benefited from my time and support. In my opinion, we must work to ensure that we do not protest on behalf of our own desires to be recognized to the detriment of others... Rather, we have been shown by all that has brought millions and millions of people speaking out against a government that is no longer by the people, for the people, that we must work to support not only our own needs but those needs of all people, trying, insofar as possible to respond to everybody or to explain to each individual how or why their needs must be denied for the benefit of the whole. It is not easy to do. And our government must be prepared to make hard and non-partisan decisions to ensure the good of the whole country is indeed what they are working for. May God help us to find the strength to recognize that all that we might want cannot be achieved until all at least have basic needs of food, shelter, and a path forward...
The United States has come too far to ever consider moving backward--losing or rejecting achievements--that others are against for personal reasons. Yes, we must learn to balance our own desires and needs within a community--a nation--that ensures that all people are treated (respected) equally in today's world. Right now, that attempt to denigrate millions by a small minority is causing some of the worst changes ever seen--mostly for no sound political reason.
The star character, doing all the thefts, is an amazing character. Kudos for her. But you'll have to decide just how close to word selection means to you... I'll be giving on those sites requiring a rank, 3 out of 5...
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