Lis Wiehl always succeeds in writing interesting thrillers with the "Triple Threat" club. Even when the book itself is weak (such as the previous book, Hand of Fate), the byplay between the characters is always good.
I recently had the pleasure of reading and reviewing the third book in the series, Heart of Ice. This one's a bit different than the others, as one of the viewpoint characters is sociopath Elizabeth Avery. I always find it interesting when we see sociopaths in action (only in books!), because it gives the author a chance to explore the two faces of the character: the one they present to the public, and the truly evil self.
"The "triple threat" team - federal prosecutor Allison Pierce, FBI agent Nicole Hedges, and TV reporter Cassidy Shaw - is up against a menace in their midst. Elizabeth Avery is a beautiful woman with issues. She manipulates everyone around her, causing some to commit crimes and others to lavish her with affection - and one man to kill for her. She befriends Cassidy and worms her way into the trio's lives, trying to set one friend against another in an attempt to keep them away from her dark secre, as she leaves a number of bodies in her wake."
Wiehl has done a lot to win me back as a fan.
This is especially true because I now understand what Wiehl's doing with the characters. I was very critical of the first couple of books because the character arcs seemed to distract from the main story. However, it seems that Wiehl's trying to build strong characters to carry the series along.
That's something I can get behind, even as I disagree with some of Wiehl's choices. I still find Cassidy to be way too vapid for my tastes.
But to each their own!
Check out the review and let me know what you think.
Just wanted to let everybody know that I'm taking a break from the regular music posts. Just a couple of weeks.
I know, I know. I said that missing them would put me off of ever doing them again.
But we're going away for 10 days starting tomorrow, and I just wasn't up to it today. We'll still be gone next Sunday, so that's out too.
I will be back in two weeks, though! To finish up the last three or four episodes.
And then I don't know what the hell I'm going to do.
Y'all haven't been that forthcoming with ideas. :P
I may be posting on the road, so the blog itself won't be taking a break (at least no more so than usual). But these posts take a lot of time, and I just won't have it.
Maybe I'll make up for the humour deficiency by doing a couple of "Disturbed" posts.
Do you have fond memories of those smoky arcades back in the '70s? Where rock music blasted through the overhead speakers, pinball machines were lined up one right next to the other, so close that you were almost holding hands with the guy playing the machine next to you? The thumping sound every time you pressed the flipper button? The "ding ding ding" when your ball kept hitting the bumpers?
Yeah, I don't either.
No, I'm kidding, though by the time I was of the age to go into an arcade like this, I was usually more interested in the video games than the pinball machines.
I played my fair share, though.
Pinball FX2, an Xbox Live downloadable game on the Xbox 360, definitely helps bring that feeling back.
Having caring professionals around at the worst possible times is so important in this life. People who will make what you're going through just a little bit easier, removing some of the burdens from your shoulders.
We want that in our own medical care, but we also want that when it comes to our pets.
For a while now, whenever our rats have needed surgeries (for lumps, or to have them spayed/neutered), we've been taking them to Arbutus West Animal Clinic, on the corner of 16th and McDonald here in Vancouver. They're one of the few vets in Vancouver that deal regularly with rodents.
Another great one is Westwood Heights Pet Hospital in Coquitlam. We used to take them there, but our living in downtown Vancouver made them really inconvenient, especially when the only day they did rat surgeries was Wednesday. Getting off of work for a day in order to take our rats in became an issue. They're definitely good, and we highly recommend them too, if you're out there. But we just can't use them due to the distance and inconvenience. When all of that became an issue, we researched and found Arbutus West. They also have the added benefit of working with some of the small animal rescue organizations in Vancouver, so we already knew that they were good people. They've performed many rat surgeries for us, and our file there is getting quite thick. They pretty much know us by now.
When a rat needs surgery, I can drop him/her off on my way into work and pick him/her up on my way home. It's very easy.
As regular readers know, we had to put our cat down last week. We've been thinking about it for a long while even before this, due to the issues described in that post (I'll let you read it there if you're interested).
While we had been taking our rats to Arbutus for years, we actually had another vet who had been looking after our cat. They didn't do rodents, which is why we found Arbutus, but we didn't want to change our cat's vet.
However, after the 2-3 years of issues discussed in the post mentioned above, we decided it was time to look into what we would need to do to finally put her down when the time came. If the cat worked around our final accommodation and peed on something, making it impossible to live with it anymore, would we be able to take her in and have her put down?
The wife called the vet, explaining the situation and just asking questions.
And she was made to feel like she was evil for even asking about it.
"We won't euthanize pets for the purposes of convenience" the woman bluntly stated (not a direct quote, but basically that). After trying to explain the situation further, the woman grudgingly relented ("I guess you've thought about this") and said she would make a note on the file.
What would happen if we finally made the decision that it was time? Would we have to go in there and be put on the defensive by the vet him/herself, trying to justify our decision? Would we be made to feel like we were this small because we had come to the end of our rope after three years of accommodation? When everything we had tried had stopped working?
We knew we couldn't do that.
So we called Arbutus because they had been so good to our rats. I called and set up an appointment, explaining what had been going on, and said that we just wanted to discuss quality of life issues with the vet. We wanted to lay the groundwork so that there would be no issues when the time came.
Instead of attitude, I got nothing but sympathy and understanding. In fact, I don't even think I used the term "quality of life." The receptionist did after I had explained everything and said that we wanted to bring her in to be looked at. She knew immediately what I was talking about.
They booked us for at least 45 minutes (it may have been 60), because they knew that this kind of conversation would take time and they didn't want to rush us. We saw Dr. Emilia Gordon, a wonderfully caring woman who was just oozing kindness.
We explained everything, giving her a timeline of what had been happening, and our concerns about our upcoming trip and how the cat would handle us being gone (we had scheduled somebody to come in once a day for 30 minutes to check on her). She listened with (and I know I keep using the word, but it's the one that best fits) understanding. She knew that we had done everything we could for her. She didn't condemn us for possibly making this decision out of "convenience." We finally decided that we would board her at Arbutus while we were gone, so that she could be looked after if anything happened, and she would have people around.
That was about three weeks ago. Thursday, I came home and discovered she had fallen ill (details, again, in Saturday's post) and decided that tonight was the night. I called the vet and they immediately said "did you want to bring her in tonight?" even though they would be closing shortly after we got there. She even offered to do the payment over the phone so that we wouldn't have to deal with that when we got there. Since I knew time was of the essence, I didn't want to take the time to do that, but I was very thankful that she even thought of it.
This time, we saw Dr. Burstyn, but he was just as kind as Dr. Gordon had been. They made the process very easy and painless (other than the pain of having to have it done in the first place), giving us all the time we needed to say good-bye.
They are wonderful people. I highly recommend them for any of your pet's medical needs.
(I know this is long, so here's the link again so you don't have to scroll up)
But that's not all of what Jenny and I talk about in Episode 13 of Down the Hall (like our new name?).
We also talk about the problem of Summer learning loss, which is a serious problem. Over the Summer, kids lose a lot of what they learned in school for the past nine months. There are ways that this can be prevented (or at least lessened), and we go over some of those in this episode.
Take a listen and see if you can tell how hoarse I am from being at Game 7 the night before we recorded.
Of course, if you don't want to listen, that's fine. You can ignore the big guy in sunglasses hanging around outside your door, slapping a baseball bat into his hand again and again and again and...well, you get the picture.
Hey, is that my intern from Boston talking to those guys? I wonder what they could be talking about?
Anyway, I like to think that these 20-30 minutes are the best of the year for them and their dads. They get to maintain that special bond that's developed over the years.
It's not like they have much time on any other day.
We all want what's best from our dads, even more so on this very important day. Some of us want our dads to come support us when we join the theater, giving us valuable insight into our performance.
Or how about supporting your bad music? Because that's why we're here, you know.
Welcome to this week's episode of the one-hit wonders of the 2000s. I won't be making the usual "pre-game" jokes and everything, because I already droned on long enough about this stupid "Dad" thing. In this era of conservationism, one must save as many electronic bytes as one can, you know.
We shouldn't be wasting them.
As usual, you can find the list I've taken these from here. Don't jump ahead of me (not that there's much left to jump ahead of), because if you do, Dad will get very angry.
I'm a sucker for interesting animation, so this already is cool.
I think I went through about 10 different thoughts as that video went on, though. Started out seeming like a wonderful tribute to human achievement, and then came crashing down into some chilling indictment of...totalitarianism, I think? Of course, not real totalitarians. It turns out to be an indictment on humanity's ability to create things and yet channel that creative ability into destructive things. It's a very "pro-peace" song in that sense.
It would make its point even better if it didn't have the incredibly violent and sadistic Che Guevara portrayed as a hero in it.
Sorry, getting too serious here. Time for something light.
This is late in the video, but did they just use a shot of him cutting a steak when he says "mistakes we have made"? With the steak shot being right where "mistakes" was said? Wow, is that deep or what?
Or is he saying "steaks that we made," like lamenting the fact that he can't barbecue with his woman anymore? He was talking about drinking earlier, and he's sitting down to a nice (if thin) steak dinner.
It's Saturday, three days after the Canucks lost Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, and the disappointment still lingers a bit.
But that's not why the NHL is a joke. Or at least that's not when it became obvious to us that it is becoming one. It just reinforced the issue.
The NHL, under Gary Bettman's tenure, has turned into an organization that is destroying our love of the game of hockey.
(Thanks to...well, you can find this picture EVERYWHERE)
The Stanley Cup Finals just showed a spotlight on everything that we're growing to hate about it.
It's becoming a league where thuggery is not only being allowed, but encouraged. Now, I'm not one of those "ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, get fighting out of the game!" type people. I love a good fight between two willing combatants, when one guy comes to the defense of a teammate. I love me a good body check, and even more so a good hip check.
That, along with the goal-scoring, is what hockey is to me.
It's not cheap shots after the whistle, or even during play.
It's not slashing somebody to the point where two of their fingers are broken (like the slash Alex Edler received in Game 6 of the Finals, making him largely ineffective in Game 7). The organized, post-whistle activities were just sickening to see.
But again, this isn't just about the Finals, and it's not a whine-fest about the Canucks losing. This sort of thing has been going on for a while now.
There's the inconsistent standards of officiating, where what a penalty is doesn't just change from game to game, but from period to period. It's gotten to the point where the players don't even know what a penalty is anymore. Is it any wonder that there's an epidemic of diving going on? When somebody gets cross-checked in the back ten times, with no penalty called, I wouldn't blame somebody for thinking they have to dive to make sure the ref sees the play.
It's not just the penalties, but the supplementary discipline as well. There were two horrible hits in the Stanley Cup Finals. First, Aaron Rome knocked Nathan Horton out of the series with a huge open-ice hit that was late. It was a hockey-play gone wrong (it was definitely late and should have been a penalty for that), but it earned him an unprecedented 4-game suspension. Playoff games are widely considered to be worth double a regular season game, so it would have been 8 games.
The reasoning for this was given, among other things, as the lateness of the hit and the severity of the injury. Yet in Game 6, Mason Raymond gets a compressed vertebrae after being crunched into the boards by an extremely late hit. No penalty on the play, and no suspension.
What the hell?
Personally, I don't think either should have been suspended, because they were hockey plays gone wrong. But if you use that reasoning to suspend Rome, you have to be consistent and suspend the Bruin player too.
Suspensions during the regular season have been just as questionable, mostly on the "way too low" side. Somebody gets run into a stanchion and almost breaks his neck, and there's no suspension for it. Vicious slashes and cross-checks to the head get a game or two at most.
The on-ice product has deteriorated markedly since the NHL lock-out supposedly "fixed" things by calling the rulebook as it is. There would be no more hooking and holding to slow the game down. It would be called no matter when it happened.
Over the years, that standard has slowly disappeared. It's not completely gone, and fast teams can still play well in the regular season. But it's now inconsistent. What's called in the 1st period probably won't be called in the 3rd.
These issues have made it a lot less fun to watch hockey.
I'm a Canucks fan through and through. I bleed blue and green. I will never stop supporting the Canucks.
We have season tickets, but we have seriously considered dropping them because of what a gong show the NHL has become. Every year, we have to make that decision to renew, and every year, we come close to saying "no more."
But we keep coming back. Because these are the Canucks. Would dropping them be cutting off our noses to spite our faces? While the Canucks do have to give a cut of the money to the NHL, we would be hurting the Canucks by abandoning them more than we would be hurting the NHL.
The Canucks players, to a man, talk about the wonderful fanbase in this city, and how well they're treated (despite the intense scrutiny that they receive, and the sometimes unwarranted criticism by fans who get on players way too easily). They talk about taking less money to play here because they love the organization and they love us, the fans who support them. How can you turn your back on that?
Our compromise is to never buy any merchandising, as the NHL gets reams of money off of that. We will not be getting NHL Centre Ice this year (NHL Centre Ice is a package for your digital cable TV package where you can watch almost any hockey game that's on, rather than depending on what your local stations are showing). We will not be spending a cent on any kind of merchandise with the NHL logo on it. It's sad that the Canucks can't sell anything without that logo, as we'd love to give our money to the Canucks. But we just can't do it.
The NHL (and the Canucks, admittedly) made a mint during this Stanley Cup run, with Canucks merchandise flying off of the shelves. I wonder how many people who were buying stuff are bandwagon fans, not even caring about any of these issues.
And I wonder if the true fans who continue to buy the products have thought about how much of that money is going to an organization that is running hockey into the ground.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't buy anything. That's a personal decision, because the Canucks (or the other teams, if it's their stuff) are getting a big cut of that as well.
But it's not something that we can support. The Canucks will get our ticket money. Their TV broadcasts will get our viewership (not that we're a Nielsen family anyway). They will get the one Diet Coke that we buy at the game every time we go.
But the NHL will not be getting any of our money directly.
And if we ever discover that Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini voted to keep Gary Bettman in place as Commissioner of the NHL, we might abandon the team as well.
I recently had the pleasure of reading and reviewing the third book in the series, Heart of Ice
. This one's a bit different than the others, as one of the viewpoint characters is sociopath Elizabeth Avery. I always find it interesting when we see sociopaths in action (only in books!), because it gives the author a chance to explore the two faces of the character: the one they present to the public, and the truly evil self.
