Just a reading report today. Two books (one of which I finished), that I don’t think require full reviews.

The first was another Dick Francis, Straight. Reviewing Francis is kind of a redundancy. The details differ, and provide a lot of interest (don’t get me wrong), but in general the things you can say about one apply to all of them. However, Straight did displease me in two minor ways, which I shall elucidate:

First, an extramarital affair (actually two of them) was treated more sympathetically than I like. But hey, we all know I’m a prig.

Second, the hero, a jockey, starts out the story with a broken ankle. And he steadfastly refuses to let a doctor put a cast on it, even though the bad guys keep re-injuring it—often on purpose—throughout the story. If you just tape it up, apparently, you don’t lose muscle tone, and you can race again sooner. All I could think about that was, “Hey kid, you’re not young forever.” Eventually age will bring pains, and this guy was asking to be crippled at sixty.

The second book is an obscure one, The Geronimo Breach, by Russell Blake. I got it free for Kindle, and thought it might be an amusing light thriller. I think it’s meant to be comic, but I couldn’t be sure, because We Were Not Amused. The main character is a drunken, slightly corrupt diplomat in Panama, who agrees to help smuggle a Colombian citizen out of the country, not knowing the CIA is after him. I plowed through a lot of scenes of drinking and vomiting, and a fair number of scenes of violence committed by evil American agents, before I gave up on the thing. Not a likeable character in the heap.

I generally feel guilty cutting a book loose before it’s done, but knowing I didn’t pay for it helps.