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Speak of the Devil : A Novel

by Richard Hawke

Fritz Malone is a former cop and the illegitimate son of the former police commissioner of New York City. WIth that background, you’d expect him to be a super gumshoe; when he casually stops to watch a Thanksgiving parade and sees a gunman firing into a crowd, he gets dragged into a duel of wits (or wills, really) between someone calling himself Nightmare and the mayor of New York.
Malone is a likable character, in part because he’s a sort of Everyman PI. He’s not blessed with the physique of Lee Child’s Reacher or Robert Parker’s Hawk, and he makes some critical mistakes as he tries to get to the bottom of Nightmare’s plan. The supporting characters (including Malone’s girlfriend, his highly dysfunctional family, and a couple of NYPD beat cops) are well-enough drawn, and Hawke moves the plot along rapidly. Unfortunately, the denouement was unbelievable, at least to me; it wasn’t plausible to me, and that undid a lot of the work that Hawke had done to build a credible story. Not a bad read, though.
(Note: this is billed as a “debut novel” but it’s not. Richard Hawke is a pen name for Tim Cockey, an accomplished mystery writer. For that reason, I guess I expected a bit more.)

There’s an interesting article in last week’s InfoWorld that compares four Exchange management tools: the MS MOM Exchange management pack, DYS Analytics, Quest Spotlight on Exchange, and Zenprise. Zenprise came out on top because of its powerful troubleshooting engine, which is about to be expanded (look for an announcement later today).

Disclaimer: I’m on Zenprise’s advisory board, though I don’t claim (or deserve) any credit for their troubleshooting engine.

The Ghost Brigades (Sci Fi Essential Books)

by John Scalzi

I really liked Old Man’s War, so I was naturally predisposed to like the sequel… except that The Ghost Brigades (or just TGB) isn’t really a sequel. It’s set in the same universe as OMW, but it focuses instead on the Colonial Union’s special forces, a race of human-derived troops who are essentially created to serve as a warrior caste. After Charles Boutin, a prominent scientist, turns traitor and disappears, the Union creates a clone of Boutin and attempts to imprint the traitor’s consciousness on it– but the result isn’t what they expect, and neither are the consequences. The clone, Jared Dirac, has his own consciousness and ends up doing some things which neither Boutin nor Jared’s bosses in Special Forces expect (including a terrific twist of an ending that, in retrospect, might have been predictable but wasn’t.)

Scalzi’s writing is still crisp and tight, which makes this a faster read than I expected. I started regularly reading his blog after reading OMW, and I definitely noticed some of the same stylings in both– not a bad thing at all. If I were going to complain about this book, I’d have to say it was too short (not a criticism I often levy). I’m already looking forward to the third, and probably final, installment in this series. Highly recommended.

Update: If I’d known that Scalzi was going to see my review I would’ve, y’know, fawned a bit more over the book. Really.

XB360 Full Auto

by Sega of America, Inc.

Sega might just as well have called this game “Torque and Recoil”, because that’s what it’s about. You drive a car as fast as you can, shooting up your opponents and all sorts of environmental objects (gas tankers, telephone poles, cafe tables, other cars). We’re not exactly talking great strategy here, but it’s fun enough in small doses. The computer opponents are fairly stupid, at least at lower levels. I’ve only played a couple of matches on Xbox Live; I can’t say it was really compelling. I’m glad I rented this before buying; I’d pay $20 for it, but not $60, so back to Gamefly it goes.