{"id":2529,"date":"2005-07-23T03:32:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-23T08:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=2529"},"modified":"2018-02-12T16:00:39","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T22:00:39","slug":"book-report-borderline-by-gerry-boyle-1998","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2005\/07\/23\/book-report-borderline-by-gerry-boyle-1998\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: <em>Borderline<\/em> by Gerry Boyle (1998)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I picked up <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0425161471\/ref=lpr_g_1\/002-6419971-9752856?v=glance&#038;s=books&#038;n=507846\" target=\"_new\">this book<\/a> from my to-read shelves for two reasons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I just read <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2005\/07\/20\/book-report-desperately-seeking-susan-by-susan-dworkin-1985\/\" target=\"_new\">a book<\/a> based on a movie starring Madonna, and this book shares the title with one of her early hits.\n<li>The Robert B. Parker endorsement on the front cover: &#8220;Gerry Boyle is the genuine article.&#8221;<\/ul>\n<p>Man, I hope I get a book published before Robert B. Parker dies so I can get a quote.  That would be the highlight of my life, werd.  (Except for <a href=\"http:\/\/angelweave.mu.nu\" target=\"new\">you, honey<\/a>, but fortunately you&#8217;re not entirely consistent in reading this far into book reports, so I might be safe.)<\/p>\n<p>The book chronicles a freelance writer, former <i>New York Times<\/i> reporter (not that there&#8217;s anything wrong with that), who is working on a travel story following Benedict Arnold&#8217;s march and assault on Quebec when he finds a mystery.  A man has stepped off of a bus at a rest stop in a small Maine town and didn&#8217;t get back on.  Jack McMorrow&#8217;s curiosity is piqued, and when he finds the man was travelling under a false name and paid for his ticket with a bad check, his big city reporter instincts take over.<\/p>\n<p>So McMorrow investigates this possible crime amid his paying job, an article that follows the path of Arnold&#8217;s march on Quebec and ultimate rebuff at the hands of the English at Quebec.  As he meanders through his investigation, the police don&#8217;t believe him, and actually offer to set him up for a crime to get him out of their small town.<\/p>\n<p>As such, this book has a very Existential subcurrent running through it; McMorrow&#8217;s connection to history, personal life, and alienation from the professional law enforcement led me to think of it in those terms before the author\/main character invoked the names of Camus and Sartre.  So I related to the character in a way I hadn&#8217;t before, and I didn&#8217;t mind so much the slow pace of the book or the ultimately less-than-climactic resolution.<\/p>\n<p>I won&#8217;t dodge Boyle&#8217;s work in the future, and I might even spend a couple bucks on further hardbacks in this series.  I&#8217;m wonder, though, whether prolonged exposure to the book&#8217;s pacing and its ultimately only slightly heroic main character might wear upon me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I picked up this book from my to-read shelves for two reasons: I just read a book based on a movie starring Madonna, and this book shares the title with one of her early hits. The Robert B. Parker endorsement on the front cover: &#8220;Gerry Boyle is the genuine article.&#8221; Man, I hope I get [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2529"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19505,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2529\/revisions\/19505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}