{"id":18262,"date":"2023-05-25T19:55:03","date_gmt":"2023-05-25T23:55:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=18262"},"modified":"2023-05-25T19:55:03","modified_gmt":"2023-05-25T23:55:03","slug":"bad-aim-by-alan-lee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=18262","title":{"rendered":"‘Bad Aim,’ by Alan Lee"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Working on catching up <\/strong>with Alan Lee\u2019s eccentric and entertaining Mackenzie August series of action mysteries. So I read a second one in a row, Bad Aim<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mack, an intrepid private eye with very good hair, lives with his fianc\u00e9e (technically his wife; it\u2019s complicated) \u201cRonnie\u201d in Roanoke, Virginia, with his toddler son (from a previous marriage), \u201cKix.\u201d Also resident in their house is his father and his best friend Manny Rodriguez, a US Marshal. Life is good for their odd little household. Mack\u2019s friend, Liz Ferguson, a former federal agent and now a private eye, asks him to help her with a personal protection job. Her client is Roland Wallace, a rich, elderly man who fears that someone is trying to murder him. Poison has been found in his medications, so it\u2019s not his imagination. Their job will be not only to protect him but to identify the killer \u2013 Roland says he wants to kill them himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mack has no intention of helping anybody to kill anybody, but the mystery turns out satisfyingly complex. Only a few people have access to Roland\u2019s house, and it\u2019s hard to see what motive any of them might have. None of them seems in a position to profit from his death, or to have reason to hate him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story proceeds in the breezy manner characteristic of this series, Mack narrating and speaking in a light sort of variation on classic hard-boiled diction. I\u2019ve disparaged the author\u2019s attempts at erudition in the past, but I must admit he threw out a word \u2013 \u201cIlleism,\u201d which means speaking about oneself in the third person \u2013 that I had to look up. So he gets a point there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bad Aim <\/em>is fun, and the references to Christianity are positive. The author seems to feel strongly about the rights of illegal immigrants, so I suppose he must be happy with our current open borders situation. And I thought the final showdown a little contrived. But other than that I have no objections to this amusing mystery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Working on catching up with Alan Lee\u2019s eccentric and entertaining Mackenzie August series of action mysteries. So I read a second one in a row, Bad Aim. Mack, an intrepid private eye with very good hair, lives with his fianc\u00e9e (technically his wife; it\u2019s complicated) \u201cRonnie\u201d in Roanoke, Virginia, with his toddler son (from a … Continue reading ‘Bad Aim,’ by Alan Lee<\/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":[127,4716,1731],"class_list":["post-18262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-alan-lee","tag-bad-aim","tag-mack-august"],"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\/18262","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=18262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18263,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18262\/revisions\/18263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}