{"id":14510,"date":"2020-09-14T22:08:31","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T22:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=14510"},"modified":"2020-09-14T22:08:31","modified_gmt":"2020-09-14T22:08:31","slug":"lucky-draw-by-mark-stone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=14510","title":{"rendered":"‘Lucky Draw,’ by Mark Stone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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When I reviewed <\/strong>Mark Stone\u2019s novel Lucky Break,<\/em> first in his \u201cLucky John\u201d series, the other day, I said (in so many words) that the book was slight, inconsistent, but rather fun. Having read book number two, Lucky Draw,<\/a><\/em> I think I\u2019ve had enough. It\u2019s possible to be too slight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLucky John,\u201d the hero, is John Lucky, a former soldier and trucker who won the lottery and moved to Bonita Springs, Florida. He gets involved in investigating crimes, largely to keep himself occupied. In Lucky Draw<\/em>, he\u2019s hired to board a casino ship and participate in the world\u2019s top poker tournament, in order to recover sensitive data that\u2019s a threat to national security. He goes in accompanied by the girl who bought his winning lottery ticket, and they are soon surrounded by danger and betrayal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lucky John books show strong signs of being written fast and not proofed for consistency. For instance, in the first book we were told John won the lottery in Iowa, and then he went on to tell people it wasn’t Iowa, but Indiana. Now we\u2019re told it was in Illinois. I don\u2019t think the author cares much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The action is frequent and implausible, and in one scene I had no idea what was going on \u2013 the description didn\u2019t make any sense to me. There was a nice moment when John counsels a young man to avoid pornography, but overall the story was long on fistfights and shootouts, and short on characterization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was fun for a while, but I think I\u2019ve had enough now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I reviewed Mark Stone\u2019s novel Lucky Break, first in his \u201cLucky John\u201d series, the other day, I said (in so many words) that the book was slight, inconsistent, but rather fun. Having read book number two, Lucky Draw, I think I\u2019ve had enough. It\u2019s possible to be too slight. \u201cLucky John,\u201d the hero, is … Continue reading ‘Lucky Draw,’ by Mark Stone<\/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":[3438,3441,1769],"class_list":["post-14510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-lucky-john","tag-lucy-draw","tag-mark-stone"],"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\/14510","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=14510"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14512,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14510\/revisions\/14512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}