{"id":13373,"date":"2020-02-13T19:36:15","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T00:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=13373"},"modified":"2020-02-13T19:36:15","modified_gmt":"2020-02-14T00:36:15","slug":"escape-by-john-w-mefford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=13373","title":{"rendered":"‘Escape,’ by John W. Mefford"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Now and then<\/strong> I start reading a book I can\u2019t finish, because it annoys or offends me in some way. Most of the time when that happens, I do not review it. I figure being a bad writer is punishment in itself for the authors of those books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But sometimes a book really annoys me, and I have to register a protest. I worked my way through about 2\/3 of John W. Mefford\u2019s Escape<\/a><\/em> (which I got through a Kindle deal), and I need to vent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First of all, I doubt that author Mefford cares about my\nopinion. He seems to be doing very well in book sales. It\u2019s for him to look\ndown on me, as far as pleasing the reader is concerned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I found Escape <\/em>impossible to finish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Escape <\/em>is Book 7 in the \u201cBall and Chain\u201d series. Judging by this particular specimen, it\u2019s about a man and a woman, Cooper Chain and Willow Ball, who are involved in an endless search for Willow\u2019s father. For some reason, which wasn\u2019t apparent in this book. She doesn\u2019t even like him much. Yet they put their lives at risk over and over to follow the obscure clues the old man leaves behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obscure clues. This is the main thing that bothered me. You\u2019re familiar with Hitchcock\u2019s concept of \u201cthe Macguffin,\u201d the object, worthless in itself, which becomes the center of the plot because all the characters are after it. (I\u2019ll admit I\u2019ve never entirely understood this. Nothing in a fictional story, including the characters, is of any worth in the real world, because they\u2019re all imaginary). This book is a multiple <\/em>macguffin story. In which the object of the hunt leaves convoluted puzzle clues that have to be figured out by the heroes. Like the National Treasure<\/em> movies, which also annoyed me. I raise my barbaric yawp to the world \u2013 This never happens in real life<\/em>. Never. And certainly not repeated times. It\u2019s just a trick by the author to jack the suspense up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is worse, the beginning of the book finds our hero in a\nposition in which he obviously was left in a cliff-hanger at the end of the\nprevious book. Which means this book will most likely also end with a\ncliff-hanger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am not going to plow through this implausible plot to be left with a cliff-hanger. That\u2019s an incivility to the reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story starts somewhere in the South (I forget where; numerous insults are slung at southerners as a group), and then follows Ball and Chain to New York City, where a character who used to be their enemy suddenly becomes their friend and they get involved in a side job helping him. It doesn\u2019t make much sense, but this series\u2019 numerous fans seem to like that sort of thing. Bless their hearts, as they say in the South.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m out of it. I’ve Escaped<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now and then I start reading a book I can\u2019t finish, because it annoys or offends me in some way. Most of the time when that happens, I do not review it. I figure being a bad writer is punishment in itself for the authors of those books. But sometimes a book really annoys me, … Continue reading ‘Escape,’ by John W. Mefford<\/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":[271,901,1491],"class_list":["post-13373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-ball-and-chain","tag-escape","tag-john-w-mefford"],"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\/13373","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=13373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}