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Fiction. Suspense. Thriller. HTML: Patricia Cornwell has a sixth sense about the men and women in blue. In Hornet's Nest, her page-turning novel about crime and police in Charlotte, North Carolina, Cornwell moved behind the badges of these real-life heroes to uncover flesh-and-blood characters who strode through her pages to reveal vulnerable, passionate, brave, sometimes doubting, always fascinating figures. In Southern Cross, Cornwell takes us even closer to the personal and professional lives of big-city police, in a story of corruption, scandal, and robberies that escalate to murder. This time, her setting is Richmond, Virginia, where Charlotte Police Chief Judy Hammer has been brought by an NIJ grant to clean up the police force. Reeling from the recent death of her husband, and resented by the police force, city manager, and mayor of Richmond, Hammer is joined by her deputy chief Virginia West and rookie Andy Brazil on the most difficult assignment of her career. In the face of overwhelming public scrutiny, the trio must bring truth, order, and sanity to a city in trouble..… (more)
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After the death of her husband, Chief Hammer decided to throw herself into work and has came up with a proposition to spend 12 months with state police departments who are 'in shambles' to shape them up. The first department to benefit is Richmond, Virginia. Hammer brought along 2 assistants namely Deputy Chief West & Andy Brazil. Unfortunately, things just were not working well for them. How do they tackle the Fishteria virus which disabled their network and the escalating violence in relation to the ATM robberies? And how do these things relate to each other?
The characters are not developed, and parts of their stories are hardly relevant. The plot is totally unbelievable: A kid hacks into a web-site and changes
I know I am going to butt heads with Patricia Cornwell die-hard fans but I will xeplain the 2 star rating. In the very beginning, we are introduced to several characters such as Popeye, our main character's dog, who is presented as though she can think like a human. Some of the story lines come from the dog's mouth; " "Popeye licked her owner's face and felt pity." " Popeye knew her owner was denying the grief and the guilt she felt about her late husband's death." How in the world could a dog, even stretching your imagination, know that ? Later, we meet Niles the cat, who has the same uncanny ability as Popeye the dog. There are other characters: Bubba (real name: But Fluck, wife's name is Honey), Smudge, Gig Dan, Smoke, Weed Gardener, Divinity, Wally Fling, Captain Cloud, Mr. Curry, Mr. Pretty, Mrs. Fan, ad nauseum. We are expected to accept these characters as real people. Each time I came across a new name, I took the book less and less seriously. We then meet the chairman of the Governor's Blue Ribbon Crime Commission (whose name is okay but suspiciously similar to Amelia Earhart), Lelia Ehrhart, who talks like this: " You're hanging out by a thread on a limb all alone on this one!". The only explanation we get is that Ms. Ehrhart was raised in Vienna and Yugoslavia and does not speak English well. I re-read several paragraphs, thinking my eyes had finally bought the farm, when I realized this was intentional. The plot? You won't be sure what it is until well past half of the book,
I will add that this book was much funnier than I expected. The fight between the police dispatcher, Patty Passman, and the traffic cop, Rhoad Budget, has to have been put in for pure comic relief. And there are other bits here and there that offset some of the horrific details.
As a Canadian, the pervasive use of guns is somewhat offputting. When Bubba goes to the gun dealer to by a gun to replace the ones stolen from his garage and talks about the rule that a person can only buy one handgun every 30 days, I was appalled. The only use for a handgun is to shoot another person and why you would need to buy one every month is beyond me.
Weed is ordered to paint the statue of Jefferson Davis in Richmond's cemetery. Because Weed is Black and he painted the statue to look like his late older brother, Twister, a college basketball star, you can probably imagine the horror and outrage that ensues.
One of the characters is Bubba, who has a belief about his employer, Philip Morris, that is crazy enough for the internet. Bubba is constantly being taken advantage of by his supposed friend, Smudge. Their cell phone conversation about going on a [ra]coon hunt is overheard by Judy Hammer and she immediately thinks of 'coon' as the racist slur for Black persons and assume they're intent on murder.
It took me almost two and a half-months to listen to all eight cassettes because I didn't care about most of the characters and events -- up until about cassette six, when it started getting interesting. The climax takes a potentially horrifying situation and turns it into a farce, so that wasn't bad.
Aside from the murder victim, of course, the book appears to be written as light humor. I wouldn't have given it as many as three stars if it hadn't improved so much during the second half.
Cat lovers should enjoy Nigel.
Dog lovers might like the coon hounds during their hunt. Boston terrier fans should enjoy Popeye.