Dirt
Long and circuitous route to get here. At this point, my library has an almost complete collection of all of the Stuart Woods novels from this series, and all in first edition hardback. While I found it on Amazon, a Half-Price deal was much less, even with shippng: $2.
Reading the library’s digital copy, I’m reminded of the deft craftsmanship that this author uses. Just clean prose, not too stylized, and intricately plotted material. Strange, to see early versions of the charcters, and bewildering, too, to see the protagonist not getting laid, at least, early on in the novel.
I was sure I had read this novel, and I was thinking there was a paperback version, laying about someplace, unattended, but no, as I started into the digital version, I realized I hadn’t read the tale itself. Kind of predictable — from the jacket blurb — but solid prose, executed in a workman-like manner? Still a pleasure, even if the topical references are somewhat dated. It is a 1996 imprint and copyright. Cell phones were truly cellular and not very common. Faxes. Remember faxes?
Thinking about the book, then the series, I kept hitting a dead bit of grey matter until I finely twigged, Mercury is Retrograde, realizations are slow, this is just like The Hardy Boys book series of childhood. Or Nancy Drew.
When I realized there was a shelf with a complete set of the Stuart Woods books, and then, reading an earlier one, the idea that this series is more like the Hardy Boys, maybe for adults, but just serial, episodic, each novel is a self-contained adventure, but recurrent characters? Settings, motifs, and plot elements?
Dirt
Hardy Boys for adults.
Or, in my case, adult–aged.
Dirt (Stone Barrington)
