{"id":9780,"date":"2017-07-27T20:53:37","date_gmt":"2017-07-28T00:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=9780"},"modified":"2017-07-27T20:53:37","modified_gmt":"2017-07-28T00:53:37","slug":"the-red-telephone-box-by-p-f-ford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=9780","title":{"rendered":"‘The Red Telephone Box,’ by P. F. Ford"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

The Dave Slater mystery series<\/strong> from P. F. Ford continues. In The Red Telephone Box<\/a><\/em>, Detective Sergeant Slater\u2019s partner, DS Norman, disappears. Norman has been taking secretive calls for some time, and Dave hasn\u2019t wanted to poke into his affairs. Now he has to.<\/p>\n

At the same time, a \u201cnew broom\u201d has arrived in the police station in Tinton, Hampshire. Detective Inspector Goodnews (seriously, that\u2019s her name) has been sent in to straighten out the somewhat chaotic organization of the department. Dave gets off to a rocky start with her, but gradually comes to appreciate her leadership qualities and detective skills. Also, she\u2019s quite attractive, and they\u2019re soon both hard at work denying to themselves their mutual attraction.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spoken condescendingly about the writing in this series, and in truth it\u2019s not top notch. But there\u2019s an interesting metanarrative in view here \u2013 minor subplots in the various books form an overarching narrative which (one assumes) will be made manifest in books to come. That helps keep the reader\u2019s interest up. And author Ford isn\u2019t afraid to mess with the cast. The characterizations, on the other hand, are a little ham-handed. Characters seem to do drastic things for inadequate reasons, just to move the plot along.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m enjoying the series. I\u2019ll read a couple non-related books now, and come back to Dave Slater. Mild cautions for adult situations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Dave Slater mystery series from P. F. Ford continues. In The Red Telephone Box, Detective Sergeant Slater\u2019s partner, DS Norman, disappears. Norman has been taking secretive calls for some time, and Dave hasn\u2019t wanted to poke into his affairs. Now he has to. At the same time, a \u201cnew broom\u201d has arrived in the … Continue reading ‘The Red Telephone Box,’ by P. F. Ford<\/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":[665,2124,3008],"class_list":["post-9780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-dave-slater","tag-p-f-ford","tag-the-red-telephone-box"],"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\/9780","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=9780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}