I was excited to see that one of my favorite authors (Stephen White) decided to put out his annual mystery (KILL ME) starring his re-occurring character -- Alan Gregory.
Alan Gregory is psychologist and for the past 15 or so years, he seems to get caught up in some sort of murder mystery where he must rely on his psychological prowess to somehow solve the crime and save the day.
I enjoy these books as White is an intelligent writer who has a good sense of misdirection and is able to incorporate his former career as an actual clinical psychologist into the mystery.
Alan Gregory as a character is easy to associate with as he is flawed and has some very real qualities about him. He enjoys success yet remains true to his roots. I enjoy whatever adventure he gets himself into.
For weeks, I have been receiving emails from the Stephen White email list advertising and teasing me with the latest Alan Gregory novel... and I couldn't wait.
The library had a copy on the first day... so I picked it up... of course... and I read it in a few days.
However... I wasn't happy with the book when I realized what White had done. He had changed the protagonist to be a new character while Alan Gregory was a peripheral character. The new fella was easy to like to so it wasn't hard to get into him... and he would visit Gregory various times throughout the book.
The gist of the story is cool. A man hires a company to kill him if he ever reached a point in his career where he was diagnosed with a terminal disease... he also makes some interesting relationships with lost family members and they all interesect somehow.
The plot was irrelevant in the long run but it did instill in me some questions about mortality... none moreso than this...
Would you rather know WHEN you are going to die? So much of our lives are spent about the IF we are going to die... would you lead your life differently if you knew the actual when....
I would.
Book was really good and the last 200 pages was fast paced and exciting... I am glad that White tricked me into reading this...
Next up... Chris Moore -- The Stupidest Angel, Vol. 2.0.
2 comments:
I've thought about this fairly frequently, actually, this notion of knowing when you're going to die. If I knew I had two years to live, for example, and I would be healthy for some subset of that time, I sure would quit my job and travel the world with you. And I'd prefer that the two of us die together, if I could really have it my way. I think about this entirely too much.
So now I know where I stand... muh wife wants to kill me at the first whiff of her mortality...
Crap.
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