Book 52-53
These Honored Dead by Jonathan F. Putnam
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I think some of the buzz around this book gave me unrealistic expectations. It made it sound like Lincoln and Speed would be Sherlock and Watson and this is far more like a John Grisham courtroom drama. Which, fair enough because Lincoln (and the author) was a lawyer. My bigger disappointment wasn't that Lincoln wasn't out there solving mysteries it was that he's really not that much of a presence in the novel. It's told first person from Speed's point of view and I have to say I didn't like Speed much.
Some other reviewer said it would have been better with Martha, Speed's younger sister as the protagonist. Yes, she was far more interesting but bound by the huge restrictions placed on young women (or women in general) at this time period. The issues with Speed are he wasn't that interesting and the fact there were some real life problems with him that are reflected in the text.
Like most amateur sleuths, Speed is drawn into the case when his would-be love interest is suspected of murdering a family member and he is out to clear her name. As more bodies drop, things get more dire. It sounds like it could be a riproaring investigation but honestly it's not. Speed doesn't do much investigating at all and some of it just falls into his lap.
Lincoln is there to illustrate how American court of law has changed (Martha too, like when she's annoyed that women can't be jurors) Back then a case might last one or two days and you were hung almost immediately. PoC couldn't even give evidence no matter what they had witnessed. And Lincoln was given 2 days to prepare his case which was considered generous. We can only imagine how many innocent people were hung in those days given all this.
The ending was at least a bit more exciting and I enjoyed the author's historical notes, such as the fact Lincoln had been charged with helping defendants escape if he thought they were innocent but were unlikely to be judged that way.
So . What I didn't like about Speed is unfortunately from real life. He was raised wealthy and the family had about 60 slaves. He saw nothing wrong with it and he and Lincoln did argue bitterly about it (there are letters to that effect). That is a major plot point when his sister's slave, who had been brought along as a midwife for Martha's friend, the wife of the sheriff, is taken. Speed doesn't care about her or why she was taken (as he wanted Lincoln to lose because he thought the person was guilty and the slave might have evidence to the contrary) He was more annoyed that Phillis, the slave, wasn't more grateful to him for helping her because slaves should be grateful for all their white masters do for them.
So you can see why this makes Speed a less than likable protagonist. In real life, Lincoln lamented Speed's love for slavery (even if Speed did side with the North and Lincoln in the war). Putnam can't really change that. Speed and slavery are part of history. It might have been better had it not been a plot point but it was so that might make a reader uncomfortable but maybe that's the point. It should make us uncomfortable.
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Consumed by J.R. Ward
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Honestly I gave this a second star because maybe it's me not the book and it isn't badly written per se. I rarely rate something I consider one star unless I have a good reason and I feel like I do here. To be fair, I picked this up off a mystery book list but it's not really that. It's a romance with a mystery subplot and by 200 + pages in on a 400 page book there was literally one reference to Anne actually doing her new job and investigating an arson. If you haven't moved on the mystery by then what is the point?
Anne was a firefighter until one day she breaks protocol and ends up too injured to return to the job. Danny McGuire is a fellow rule-breaking firefighter who saved her but at the cost of both of their injuries (and he's so injured that he was able to return to firefighting seems unlikely but that's my own medical background talking).
It picks up almost a year later with Anne now an arson investigator which she seems to consider a worthless job. Yes it's not fire fighting. Hell, I lost m y own surgical career due to a hand injury. I know how hard it is to reinvent yourself but the way Ward chose to show Anne's disappointment in not being a firefighter was to denigrate arson investigation which seems very foolish.
Most of the action is Anne and Danny trying to get back on their feet and back together as a couple but you can't care about this because they are such unpleasant people as is Anne's brother who is the chief of the fire department. You can't have your main characters be complete and utter assholes to everyone and then give them quirks to prove they're really good people deep down (Anne adopting a stray pitbull, Danny tattooing the names of firefighters lost in the line of duty to himself). Anne and especially Danny are horrible to their friends and family so I couldn't root for them.
Once we get to the actual villain of the piece way too late in the book, he's so cartoonishly evil I expected him to be twirling his long mustache. Nothing about this book made it worth my time reading but that's not really my issue with it (honestly I only finished because it filled a requirement in a reading challenge)
Consider the rest of this a mild spoiler for the book, nothing major but still
If there was ever a job that required rules to be followed its first responders because people's lives depend on it. Anne made a mistake but she doesn't learn from it. In fact, she continues to rule break and it ends up getting a teenager hurt and her whole response it's oops. I wanted to slap her.
I wanted to slap her harder for even wanting to be with Danny. He's viciously ugly with her, gaslighting, emotionally abusing her. He is the quintessential Alphahole you hear about in the romance genre. It's the 21st century, why can't the romance genre move past this? Why are these cruel abusive men being held up as the ideal man? This story was up for a RITA award sort of a major deal (until they imploded in 2019 when this was up for the award actually) Is there some internalized misogyny at play here? Toxic masculinity, of which Danny is a prime example, is just that, toxic. I am SO tired of having this not only being shown as a great romantic choice, but being held up for awards. It's time to throw this trope in the trash where it belongs.
Anne's brother is little better. I can't see how he's chief of the department because he also is judgemental and just plain nasty. He treats the mayor of the city as an enemy and just assumes she's some sexual predator, literally trading sexual favors for political power (because we can't have women in power on their own merits). Again internalized misogyny?
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