BMOC - A book review


Novel by libertarian blogger and fellow Arizonian Warren Meyer is not as good as I hoped, but still plenty of fun.


When I was reading Warren Myer's Coyote Blog, I saw that he had written a mystery, BMOC. Intriguing, Arizona libertarian and businessman, now novelist. That justified ordering it from Amazon.

This book does a fantastic job showing some actual extreme abuses from tort law, and a pretty good job revealing the incestuous relationship that can happen between tort lawyers, legislators, and the media. That alone will bring it kudos from the libertarian crowd, including me.

I loved two of the characters, Susan Hunter and Preston March. I'm a sucker for strong women, so I am always pleased to see a confident female character. And for Preston March, anyone who thinks outside the box gets my attention, especially if he is successful.

I was less enthusiastic about the LA cop. I've got nothing against smart characters, and I think the old Columbo-type routine of pretending to dumb to put the criminals off guard can be very effective. I know it works in business. My problem was that once he dropped the act, he came across as too perfect, physically, mentally, and emotionally. I'm also not quite sure why he started trusting Susan well enough to be himself around her, especially when he was investigating a murder.

The Mafia types came off as clichés.

The first thing that bothered me was some of the language. Not that it was offensive, just unusual. “Eschew” popped up twice in one chapter. That is a word I have seen maybe three times before in the last ten years, and never in a novel. I got the feeling that the old thesaurus program was working overtime. Some of the phrasing was a bit odd too.

But what really got me was the improbable situations that seemed like deus ex machina. Once or twice, maybe. It's bad though when one of the characters actually cites the Improbability Drive from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as a way to describe the story's events in LA. Things just seemed contrived. I kept wanting to feed the story into Dramatica Pro to fix it.

It was a fast read and an exciting read, at least until the first run on the beach. Some of Preston March's ideas aren't so far out, there could be money there.

If you overlook a couple of rough edges, BMOC is worth it.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Sun - December 24, 2006 at 08:11 PM  Tag

"Because LIBERTY demands more than just black and white"
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