{"id":13007,"date":"2019-11-04T19:39:42","date_gmt":"2019-11-05T00:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=13007"},"modified":"2019-11-04T19:39:42","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T00:39:42","slug":"alter-ego-by-brian-freeman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=13007","title":{"rendered":"‘Alter Ego,’ by Brian Freeman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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After borrowing this book<\/strong> from the public library, I found that I\u2019d already read and reviewed an earlier novel in the Jonathan Stride mystery series. I said I found it well written, but I didn\u2019t love it. That\u2019s pretty much my reaction to Alter Ego<\/a><\/em>, Brian Freeman\u2019s ninth in the series. But I read it free, so why complain?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jonathan Stride is a police detective in Duluth, Minnesota. His two chief subordinates are an Asian-American woman and his wife. Both, needless to say, are gorgeous. As is also his teenaged adopted daughter, a former prostitute whom he and his wife more or less rescued, and who is beginning to reintegrate her life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s big news when a Hollywood film company comes to Duluth\nto make a movie. Jonathan is less happy than most of the locals, because it\u2019s a\nfictionalized dramatization of one of his own cases. He is being played by Dean\nCasperson, one of Hollywood\u2019s major players, but the whole business makes him\nuncomfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then a man dies in a freak collision with a deer on a\nsnow-covered highway. His ID turns out to be bogus, and a gun is found in the\ncar. Shortly after that, a local college girl who hung around with the movie\npeople is reported missing. Putting two and two together, the police start\nsearching the area near the auto accident, and sure enough \u2013 the young woman\u2019s\nbody is found in the snow, a bullet in her head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then she turns out to have been using an assumed\nidentity too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s all confusing, and it\u2019s not about to get simpler. On\ntop of the murder mystery, there are questions about certain behaviors on the\nmovie set, behaviors no one will talk to the police about. Stride and his\nco-workers (along with author Freeman\u2019s other series character, Florida PI Cab\nBolton, who shows up for his own reasons) will have to move fast and smart to\nprevent very ugly history from repeating itself, not on film but in real life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As stipulated above, I find Brian Freeman a good writer, and I can find no fault with his storytelling. I\u2019m not sure why his books leave me kind of cold, except for a certain political correctness I sense in their construction. Most of the cops in this story are women, and they\u2019re all beautiful. I don\u2019t know for sure, but I\u2019d wager that is not a statistically accurate portrayal of the Duluth police department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ah, but I\u2019m probably just jaundiced. I note that my review\nof the previous Jonathan Stride book complained about excessively explicit sex\nscenes. I\u2019m happy to report he seems to have toned that down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I might even read another book in the series \u2013 if I can\nborrow it from the library.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After borrowing this book from the public library, I found that I\u2019d already read and reviewed an earlier novel in the Jonathan Stride mystery series. I said I found it well written, but I didn\u2019t love it. That\u2019s pretty much my reaction to Alter Ego, Brian Freeman\u2019s ninth in the series. But I read it … Continue reading ‘Alter Ego,’ by Brian Freeman<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[156,393,1510],"class_list":["post-13007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-alter-ego","tag-brian-freeman","tag-jonathan-stride"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}