Rumpelstiltskin<\/a><\/i> is the first Ed McBain book I didn’t like. Not Evan Hunter books–heaven knows the distaste I have for Last Summer<\/i><\/a>–but the first Ed McBain book. I’ve read quite a few.<\/p>\n It’s an early Matthew Hope novel. I don’t like the series as much as the 87th Precinct series, to be honest, and I get all of the Florida color I need from Travis McGee novels. But it’s not the series that does it for me.<\/p>\n The plot of the book’s okay. A former pop sensation (whoops, rock<\/i> since it was in the 1960s) is going to make a comeback at a small bar. She opens to bad reviews, and then gets killed. Matthew Hope, who spent the hours before her demise having curtain-climbing good sex with her, is briefly a suspect. The deceased had a trust fund due to pay out in a matter of days, so her father and her ex-husband make good suspects, with each standing to benefit depending upon the fate of the dead woman’s daughter, kidnapped at the time of the murder, don’t you know?<\/p>\n No, the plot’s all right, it’s the execution thereof that lacks. The book is paced poorly, and there’s no pressure on Hope. He’s a suspect, but he’s cleared quickly. So he’s got lots of time to meet new people, have a little wall-scarring good sex with another attorney, and jet to New Orleans for….well, his daughter’s around, so no sex, but just foreplay to the blossoming intrattorney relationship.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the author fits in his characteristic asides, but they’re rather clumsy. There’s a three page treatise about how a woman can have red hair and blonde pubic hair, including the relationship of melanin levels and genetics in the occurrence as well as the difficulty experienced by a woman in the 1960s and 1970s growing up with it and how it impacts her psychological and sexual development. Wow, that’s quite a bit of research, Mr. McBain. Thanks for sharing your report with the class. Fortunately, the three pages end with some lamp-crashing, nightstand-tipping good sex.<\/p>\n It’s a short novel, clocking in at about 215 pages. I slogged through it. If you’re a big fan, you will, too, but I don’t recommend it for someone looking for a good, light read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rumpelstiltskin is the first Ed McBain book I didn’t like. Not Evan Hunter books–heaven knows the distaste I have for Last Summer–but the first Ed McBain book. I’ve read quite a few. It’s an early Matthew Hope novel. I don’t like the series as much as the 87th Precinct series, to be honest, and I […]<\/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-612","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\/612","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=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22393,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions\/22393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}