Tag Archives: Lockdown

Fiction, Reviews

‘Lockdown,’ by Sean Black

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[This novel was published in 2014, so its title should not be understood to have anything to do with the current pandemic.]

A trend I have deplored more than once is the emulation of “action movies” in thriller novels. Action movies (and more so now that we have CGI) have traditionally incorporated greater implausibilities than action books. Because movie action happens so fast – not giving us time to think about things – and we actually see the implausible happening before us. Reading is a slower, more thoughtful process, so writers have always, in the past, had to work a little harder to maintain the reader’s confidence.

Not anymore, though. Nowadays, more and more frequently, action novels are just as implausible as movies. Such is the case, in my opinion, with Sean Black’s Lockdown, first in a series.

Ryan Lock is a private security expert working for a major pharmaceutical company. Animal rights activists have been protesting their practice of animal testing, which culminated in a few of them digging up the company president’s recently deceased wife and dumping her body on a street. Then the company met with the protest leaders. Surprisingly, they announced that they would be ending animal testing immediately.

Then someone is murdered, and everything turns into chaos. There’s a kidnapping, and Ryan Lock is on the case; he stays on the case even after getting fired from his job. Soon it will be impossible to tell friends from enemies, and a terrorist wild card will be added to the deck.

It seemed to me Lockdown followed the action film template too closely. Switch was followed by switchback so regularly that it got to be pretty predictable. And not very believable.

But the thing that really annoyed me about Lockdown was the villain – an over the top, Ming the Merciless type motivated by nothing more than pure grandiosity. I didn’t believe in him, either.

Also, the formatting was awful. Paragraphs and line endings bore no relation to my page layout. Which is annoying.

However, if you’re looking for popcorn reading that doesn’t get too political, Lockdown will keep you interested.

Publishing, Uncategorized

Sweet and sour times

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As we enjoy the collapse of Western Civilization, there are at least a few consolations to be found in the gradual reduction of lockdown restrictions. In Minnesota, our venerable governor has graciously eliminated occupancy limits in restaurants, and allowed us to go maskless out of doors, as long as we aren’t too friendly about it.

So I went crazy on Saturday and ate at a Chinese buffet for the first time since the Troubles began. Chinese buffets had come to occupy a disproportionate portion of my consciousness, such as it is. Many had already closed even before the pandemic; I feared the lockdown had wiped them out completely. I have an idea the place I went to had been open for a while, actually. But one of my great horrors is having someone tell me, “You’re not allowed in here,” so I waited until I was fairly sure it was OK now. (If you’re in the area and wondering where I went, it was Ocean Buffet in Brooklyn Center. In my experience, the majority of their customers are always Chinese. I tell myself this means something.)

And it was good. Not as good as one imagines after a year of abstinence, but good. I had to wear plastic gloves, provided at the door, at the steaming tables – the cheap kind of gloves made of the same plastic they use for produce bags in the grocery store. Prices have gone up, of course, but that’s a given. I felt a sense of closure. (Or anticlimax. I always get those two confused.)

Reduced restrictions means it looks like there should be some Viking events this summer. I need to take final action on getting my dead tree edition of The Year of the Warrior printed. The printer was going to get back to me, and hasn’t so far. I suppose I’ll have to call him. That book is loooooooong, you know, like something out of 19th Century Russia. It will be expensive to print.

My great fear is that I’ll sink a bunch of my savings into a stock of books, and then the lockdown will return and all my venues will vanish. And I’ll be left with a basement full of stock.

And my basement leaks a little.