The Burning by William W. Johnstone
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Another Frank Morgan tale. This one reaches a bit too far as Frank builds a city….with random gun play involved.

It’s all very silly. The main character is strapped with too much cash. Angry at some bad guys, he takes his cash and starts having churches, banks, jails, etc built. Just to spite the bad guys. The excuse given is the “Drifter’ sometimes doesn’t want to drift and wants to stop and settle in. That would be fine,if he was to stay there and upcoming books were about his being in the town. Readers know he’s building it for no reason other to then drift. Thus the ending is apparent. I find this approach frustrating. A better approach would’ve been to have Morgan with a wealthy companion and they both built the town and the companion stayed behind.

This one also has the now, after 7 other volumes, familiar ending of chapters with a gunfight is to occur. The beginning of the next chapter has the gunfight occur. Then someone doesn’t die and a few pages goes on with drivel about why someone doesn’t get a doctor for the dying man. Geez. A few times is OK, but this happens through a few chapters and many books.

The plot is good, but construction falters in logic and, I found, the tale falls in. Making it worse is an odd stringing out of the ending which appears to be more padding than adding to the story. Adding to that is the representation of a continuation of the story in the next volume. That doesn’t happen, which is just another frivolous bit of the book.

Another complaint is another set of sheriffs/barkeeps/store owners/etc. that are near duplicates from other volumes. More of the mechanical effort.

Finally the title has nothing to do with the contents of the book.

Bottom line: i don’t recommend this book. 4 out of ten.

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The Haunted Hotel: A Mystery of Modern Venice by Wilkie Collins
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I usually like Wilkie Collins work. This book gets mired in being over written for the first 2/3rds and, less then than now, typical cute playing games with names ploy. I knew where the book was going early on.

The story starts with a couple characters that are caught in romance and then there’s a bit of trading places and then a death. Then a disappearance. Then the story really drags as the pieces of the story get shuffled further. The last third of the book is the best part of the story, but not worth all to go through to get there. Especially as i saw it all coming in the first 5th of the book.

The characters are very good. A few are too much alike adding confusion to the similarity of names. Very good dialogue. The settings described is the best part of the book. The exterior and interior structures well place the reader at the scenes.

Bottom line: i don’t recommend this book. 4 out of 10 points.

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Showdown by William W. Johnstone
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

‘The Last Gunfighter’ series is appearing to be the better of the many Johnstone Clan series. This one one starts badly and then continues into a fun tale.

It’s a tired tale, even among the hundreds of Johnstone Clan books. The book tumbles into the premise with a whole series of outsiders suddenly finding the famous Frank Morgan. How this happens is not really explained except for some mention of detectives. Considering the book states Morgan happened to the town, that was quick work by detectives and travel from the northeast to Arizona.

All goes awry as the outsiders plans go out-of-control as bad guys will be bad guys. Seems a stretch the outsiders – not a one – expected even the potentiality. All leads to the fun of Frank Morgan cleaning out the mess. That is the fun and worth of the book.

Writing is standard Johnstone clan. Many characters are duplicates of so many before. Dialogue standard. Great characters.

Bottom line: I recommend this book. 7 out of ten points.

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Z Is For Zorglub by André Franquin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

To note: The past couple of years I’ve been adding comic/graphic novels to the reading list to keep my head in a good part of my training: Sequential storytelling.

This is the best of the Spirou series I’ve read. The plot is rather simple. It’s the execution and all tied to it that has this a more complicated and fulfilling graphic novel. The bad guy is well introduced through pages and then a splash of an image. From that point the tentacles of the plot spread and snares all in one form or other. How the duo heroes and squirrel and the odd animal get caught up and wrapped into the story is full of clever situations and good storytelling. One welcome missing element are pages of slapstick.

The artwork is very good. Especially negotiating through large crowds and giant machinery.

A major drawback is the font and size used throughout. With such an involved tale, the font setting makes too much hard to read.

Bottom line: I recommend this book. 9 out of ten points.

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Here’s a big part of my annual Christmas illustration of Florida critters at the 70 year old The Candy Kitchen in Madeira Beach. I’m posting different portions on my pages.