{"id":21403,"date":"2025-12-05T19:49:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T00:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21403"},"modified":"2025-12-05T19:49:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T00:49:11","slug":"the-fragile-cage-by-scott-hunter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21403","title":{"rendered":"‘The Fragile Cage,’ by Scott Hunter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Author Scott Hunter <\/strong>has chosen to set his series starring English former police detective Cameron Kyle in the 1970s, when the world was (or seemed) a little simpler. I have no objection to that. In the first book, The Fragile Cage<\/a><\/em>, he seems to be paying homage to James Bond and the adventure stories of the period \u2013 and that\u2019s fine too, as far as I\u2019m concerned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cameron Kyle stopped being a cop when his partner was shot to death, and he himself took a bullet to the head, which left a sliver in his brain, in an inoperable spot. He now suffers from chronic headaches, and from personality change. Formerly a rather cautious man, he\u2019s now a risk-taker \u2013 not exactly optimal for a guy who\u2019s supposed to take it easy and avoid shocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kyle has a former girlfriend who does social work with prisoners. When he learns that one of her subjects has kidnapped her and escaped prison, he goes looking for them. The police warn him off, but he doesn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Fragile Cage<\/em> is pretty well written, and it kept my interest throughout. I thought the plotting \u2013 especially the character development \u2013 was a little weak; the villains tended to be unnecessarily cruel for no apparent reason. The first big scene of the hero and a female cop in peril struck me as improbably complex, like a scene in a supervillain\u2019s secret lair in a Bond movie. And the final confrontation between Kyle and the main villain was theatrical and unconvincing. So I don\u2019t rate the book highly on believability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I did enjoy reading it. I might even read the sequel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author Scott Hunter has chosen to set his series starring English former police detective Cameron Kyle in the 1970s, when the world was (or seemed) a little simpler. I have no objection to that. In the first book, The Fragile Cage, he seems to be paying homage to James Bond and the adventure stories of … Continue reading ‘The Fragile Cage,’ by Scott Hunter<\/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":[5792,5794,5793],"class_list":["post-21403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-cameron-kyle","tag-scott-hunter","tag-the-fragile-cage"],"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\/21403","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=21403"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21406,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21403\/revisions\/21406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}