Dismissed With Prejudice by J.A. Jance

Dismissed With Prejudice by J.A. Jance

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a classical whodunnit, dun right.

We're introduced to all the characters fairly early, so there's no sudden introduction of the killer 90% of the way through the book. Everything follows logically, without outrageous coincidence (as detective Beaumont says, the police don't believe in coincidences, so why should mystery readers be expected to), and naturally, I didn't figure out whodidit, even with all the clues. 

I must say though that it was terribly dated - this library e-book had a copyright date of 2005, but the dead-tree-book was published in 1989. Nobody has cell-phones (Beaumont has a car phone), everybody apparently uses actual answering machines, and computer technology is primitive. How did we ever manage?

Second Son by Lee Child

Second Son by Lee Child

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A very interesting peek at the life of young (13 years old) Jack Reacher.

Reacher admits to a military-base bully that he's probably a psychopath, and he's probably right — but as Elliott Leyton, author of Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer, tells us, the majority of psychopaths aren't Hannibal Lecter. As with any psychological diagnosis, there must be a range of psychopathy, from those who are merely empathically challenged to those who have no empathy at all. Young Jack Reacher exhibits many of the signs of psychopathy, but he does care for his family. Can he empathize with them? Perhaps not, but he fakes it well.

Another Canadian Elliott, Elliott Barker, says of The Partial Psychopath: "For about half a century, we have known one unfailing recipe for creating psychopaths -- move a child through a dozen foster homes in the first three years." I wonder if it even requires foster families: could moving a child as frequently between military bases, even with a loving but emotionally stunted mother, have some of the same effect.

This story shows that, even at 13, Reacher was dividing the world into Us & Them, and consequences to "Them" were never important, while he would protect "Us" (his family) at all costs. For the rest of his life, the attitude clearly never changes, though his definition of family does.