{"id":21251,"date":"2025-10-22T20:00:23","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T00:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21251"},"modified":"2025-10-22T20:00:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T00:00:23","slug":"romeos-truth-by-james-scott-bell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21251","title":{"rendered":"‘Romeo’s Truth,’ by James Scott Bell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I always look forward to a new entry<\/strong> in James Scott Bell\u2019s Mike Romeo series. The latest volume, Romeo\u2019s Truth,<\/a><\/em> is (as I announced yesterday) adorned by a quotation from a review I did, on this blog, of a previous installment, placed first among the review blurbs at the front. Proving that not only is author Bell a good writer, but he recognizes fine criticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mike Romeo, if you aren\u2019t yet familiar with him, is a very big, strong man. He\u2019s a former cage fighter and a self-educated genius. He goes about doing good in the world, kicking butt and quoting the classics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Romeo\u2019s Truth<\/em>, Mike is on a job for Ira, his lawyer boss, when he stops at a diner in California\u2019s Central Valley. He observes a big guy beating up a little guy in the parking lot and (of course) steps in. This is the inciting incident that will soon have him involved in a simmering dispute between a local rancher and anti-meat agitators (in case you\u2019re wondering, this book is entirely on the side of the carnivores). Soon his lawyer will have a new client (the little guy who got beat up, up on a murder charge), and a great need to tear the cover off a conspiracy of people who do not hesitate to blow up buildings or shoot people. No matter \u2013 getting Mike Romeo mad is one of the classic strategic errors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Romeo\u2019s Truth isn\u2019t the best of the series, but it\u2019s plenty of fun \u2013 a fine entry in a series which provides the joys of hard-boiled detective stories for audiences who prefer their fiction clean. Mike\u2019s relationship with his new wife, Sophie, sometimes approaches the realm of the cutesy, but never goes quite that far. Self-awareness saves them from that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My only real quibble is with a \u201cfact\u201d delivered in a throwaway line \u2013 Mike says that the Vikings had double-headed axes, which isn\u2019t true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is, of course, unforgiveable. But otherwise, it\u2019s a great story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I always look forward to a new entry in James Scott Bell\u2019s Mike Romeo series. The latest volume, Romeo\u2019s Truth, is (as I announced yesterday) adorned by a quotation from a review I did, on this blog, of a previous installment, placed first among the review blurbs at the front. Proving that not only is … Continue reading ‘Romeo’s Truth,’ by James Scott Bell<\/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":[1385,1877,5736],"class_list":["post-21251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-james-scott-bell","tag-mike-romeo","tag-romeos-truth"],"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\/21251","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=21251"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21254,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21251\/revisions\/21254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}