largely disappointing reading

hello reader

well, alas, the title of this post more or less (with emphasis on more) tells it like it is. once again i have not read just one, but not so many as three or five, books, look you see. custom or tradition has it that now i comment on such here, or "review", if you like. my expectation would be that this shall be briefer than usual; perhaps because as i write i am struck by plague but mostly as there is little to say of each. or either. strangely, then. this may be the most useful post of this nature what i ever gone done. 

so, then, a look at the two (2) novels (for i seldom do non-fiction) which i most recently, at time of writing, read, followed by non-spoiler nature comments. at first. 

going from left to right (i think) in the above, then, and The Pandemic Plot is a recent (one more has come out since, at least) 'Ben Hope' adventure off of, well, the only person what writes them (in any official way), Scott Mariani. yes, the title relates (kind of) to what you may think, and it is easily the worst one of the series. even more worse than the one what features someone building a "laser" to cut the planet on which we live in half, whatever that was called. next, or later (ha ha ha see what i did) is one called Later off of Stephen King. it's a fairly pedestrian crime novel, published by some firm what appears to specialise in "pulp fiction" throwbacks, and of course has a horror spin. not so bad, as such, but also really, really far away from any sort of better than good status. 

ok, so yes, right, from here on out one of them fancy, la-de-dah, oh so very important *** SPOILER WARNING *** things shall be in place. this is particularly true of the Scott Mariani one. read on, then, if such things do not worry you so much, or you would have no real intention of reading either novel anyway. if the latter is somehow true, that means you are reading just to read what i gone done wrote, so thank you very much indeed, cheers. 

this particular bout of reading adventures started, or if you like commenced, with The Pandemic Plot, then. i selected this one as the most most recent one by same author was out, so i kind of pick that one up then go and read the one which has been sat there for a bit. 

provenance of my copy? a lack of any sort of sticker screams Tesco, so there possibly. or it might have been a gift from the boys to celebrate some day, be it father's, birth or christmas. indeed it is bad of me to forget, but it seems my memories are getting ever more wonky. 

i suppose i have to do the plot, then. right. let me see what bits i remember. sure, there's a prologue bit. after that Ben Hope is chilling, or doing Ben Hope things, when wouldn't you know he gets a frantic call. this time it is his (biological) son, again, who has gone and gotten himself arrested for murder (possibly yet again) in what seems like an open and shut case. so of course Ben rushes off to try and get it all sorted out, and uncovers a sinister plot and dark secret on which a multi-billion dollar (or whatever currency) business is built. yes of course they are prepared to kill to keep it that way, but they hadn't banked on facing the supreme killer, Ben Hope, etc, etc........

allowing for the fact that these Ben Hope novels are meant purely as "old fashioned" boys own tales of great and exciting adventure, this is.......poor. some of the novels in this series have been really, really very good indeed, whereas a few have been rather rubbish. this most certainly is in the latter. 

oh, certainly, it is so that the use of the word "pandemic" in the title gives you every clue as to what's going on here. either by chance or by being "rushed" out, make no mistake - the basic themes and rudimentary plot of this novel (or series of chapters taped together) conveniently seem to catch on to the present day "pandemic" of the new plague. well, why not, i suppose, books are written and published to make money. 

cashing in on coronavirus is hardly a new or rare phenomenon. look, if you will, at various government deals and contracts, and some other stuff. but i did find this one page in the novel, towards the end (and i have provided ample spoiler warnings) just a little too much on the brazen cash in front. 

no one is to blame but me for reading this, of course. once i clocked the title i kind of knew it was likely to be utter trash, as well as disappointing. and indeed it was. yet i feel myself "trapped" in the series, intent on reading all ones what get published. the "adventure" parts are predictable and can probably easily see a volume or two skipped, but then i would miss out on the soap opera elements of the life of Ben Hope in these books. i would be afraid of missing out on something. 

earlier, following on, i did confess to having the next Ben Hope adventure sat here, ready to read. normally him what does them puts out two a year, i would wager the next one shall sit waiting to be read until i get the next one. why i feel the need to have one in "reserve" is a mystery to me, and a matter i would expect absolutely no one to waste time pondering. 

on, then, to a Stephen King book which is not a traditional or what you may call "classic" Stephen King novel, but then also very much is all him. even if he appears to have done it, like, rather totes quick. it's called (as mentioned earlier) Later, and is a "hard case crime" publication. he has done a couple of these before. one of them, Joyland, i have sat here but never read. 

it wasn't so long, or all that long, ago when i bought this, and it was certainly Tesco. from what i remember £3 or £3.50 is what the price was, be it as a standard or due to their "club card" offer. 

to the plot, and i shall try to keep it brief, bearing in mind this novel is not so far north of 200 pages in itself. effectively, or basically, it's a young kid, Jamie (i think) who has the inexplicable, unaccounted for ability to speak to dead people for a short time (usually) after they have become dead. he has twigged that the dead must answer all questions posed of them, and further must answer them truthfully. which is kind of scary, really all rather spooky and totes some sort of ability that someone or other might have a less than ethical, or legal, use for. 

referring to this novel as The Sixth Sense Meets The Exorcist Meets Scarface Meets The Evil Dead Via A Lesbian Police Officer feels a little unfair, but also astonishingly accurate. although for Scarface you could pretty much drop in any sort of crime film/novel, i guess. it's really, really hard to be critical of Stephen King for going ahead and doing a colour by numbers, let us use all of the cliches going novel, when it was he, over the last, what, half a century or so, went and created quite a lot of the things we now view as a cliche. that and, whereas some distance from even his most average, let alone best, he manages to pass it off as a reasonably entertaining read. brief, too. 

going on his prolific workrate in terms of published novels, i have every confidence, or suspicion, that Stephen King spent no more than one (1) weekend writing Later, if that. which is fine, i suppose. doing something not meant to be horror no doubt appealed to him, but of course it is he, and so a horror edge is (or was) required to it all. there are many (many) worse novels one could read than this, but also there are quite a lot of better, specifically Stephen King ones, that you could read instead. i am not as well versed in all this "pulp" or trash fiction as you may think, but yeah, go on, maybe i shall dig out that copy of Joyland i have and read it, eventually. and some of the others listed in the back of this book sound quite interesting, to be honest. 

so, anyway, that's that for another two books, read (i think) over the end of 2021 and the start of this present year, 2022. one, or i, can but hope that considerably better, more enjoyable reading is to be had by moi going forward. since we cannot, so far as i am aware, go back. 

for whatever reason you stopped by and read, many thanks for doing so. on the off chance any of this was useful, or slightly interesting, nice one. 

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!