I started what must have been among Wingate's earliest Deb
Ralston books because I'm pretty sure she didn't have a
husband or children. I thought the police work was described
well (although how would I know, having been only on the
receiving end), and the writing was OK, if a bit bland, but I
threw it across the room without finishing it. The
protagonist was portraying herself as a feminist IIRC, and,
without skipping a beat, an anti-abortion diatribe followed.
These two views are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but
the author seemed unaware of the need to make me the reader
find the combination credible. I wondered then if the
ambiguously named Lee Martin was male or female.
I plan to get one of the books
written by the Mississippi State Police commissioner, Jim.
The premise you described sounds interesting. (Anyone else
spend more on books than on food?) I had been sniffing
superciliously about Mississippi, of all places, etc., but
had to return to reality. Our local newspaper reminded me
this morning that whichever way Pennsylvania's gubernatorial
election goes in November, we'll have our highest ranking
state elected official ever, because both lieutenant governor
candidates are female. Pitiful. (The Republican female state
treasurer who was muscled out of running for governor by "the
back room boys" today endorsed the Democratic candidate,
prompting shock and hysteria and front-page stories.)
Joy, who thinks we should award Jim an honorary degree of
some sort for all this research and analysis JIM DOHERTY
<
jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com> described:
> Anne Wingate spent a number of years as a
police
> officer in Plano, Texas. . . .
> Under her most-used pen name, Lee Martin, she
writes
> about Detective Deb Ralston of Ft. Worth PD's
Major
> Crimes Squad. A mother and grandmother rasing a
large
> group of adopted kids with her husband, Deb,
during
> the course of the series, converts to the Mormon
faith
> and becomes pregnant for the first time in her
life,
> just as she's raised most of her adopted brood
to
> adulthood. I suspect that Deb Ralston is as close
as
> Ms. Wingate comes to a fictional
self-portrait.
>
> For all that she apparently regards Ms. Linnington
as
> a guide, Ms. Wingate more than betters her in
the
> matter of getting the police procedure right,
which
> is, after all, what the police procedural is
all
> about. I generally find her books enjoyable,
if
> sometimes hastily written (in one book,
her
> protagonist gets into a furious shootout early in
the
> novel, then later, at the climax, finds herself
in
> another tense gun battle during which she remarks
that
> it's the first time she's ever fired a shot in
the
> line of duty, completely forgetting the
early
> occassion only a hundred pages earlier).
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