{"id":1833,"date":"2017-01-05T15:29:06","date_gmt":"2017-01-05T23:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=1833"},"modified":"2017-12-18T08:28:13","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T16:28:13","slug":"review-the-burglar-who-traded-ted-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/05\/review-the-burglar-who-traded-ted-williams\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>
\n The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams<\/a> by Lawrence Block<\/a>
\n My rating: 2 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

I wish I had given the previous Bernie book 2.5 stars instead of 2, so I could give this one two stars and not worry that folks will think one’s as good as the other. Cause they’re not. Mondrian<\/i> is an okay book, but Ted Williams<\/i> suffers from too much of the same-old same-old, and rests on its own laurels, and is too confusing and convenient.<\/p>\n

Too many coincidences, distracting me the whole time, and I was just waiting for it all to explained to me at the end. And when the big explanation does come, it’s so meager and phoned-in. And then a room full of people hear a man confess to murder and they don’t care? Not even the side-character who had nothing to do with the plot whatsoever?<\/p>\n

This one was water-thin. Nothing happens in half the book. I mean nothing. I mean there are chapters (plural) with Bernie and Carolyn getting drunk and doing nothing. If it’s supposed to be symbolic of something, fine, but maybe keep it to a few pages, not a quarter of the book.<\/p>\n

On the flip side, we only get a few pages dedicated to an idea that could be the basis for a whole novel. It’s just slipped in there, like the writer thought of it at the last second but by then just needed to finish the darn thing and tie up a few loose ends.<\/p>\n

Who knows, maybe all of this is because there’s an 11 year-gap between this one and the previous ones. Maybe the next will be better. I sure hope so.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams by Lawrence Block My rating: 2 of 5 stars I wish I had given the previous Bernie book 2.5 stars instead of 2, so I could give this one two stars and not worry that folks will think one’s as good as the other. Cause they’re not. Mondrian is … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-tz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1833"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1834,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833\/revisions\/1834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}