Crap Collection: Mysterious Waste

This week is another installment in the Cooper Collection. You know, the brilliant PI that laughed at some jerk bullies when they were crippled in a horrible accident? By Bill Bernico? No? Well anyway, this time I checked out number 104: Mysterious Ways.

(Link)

Description:

"Elliott is served with a subpoena to appear in court as a witness to a murder trial. Justice does not always prevail but in the process Elliott is kidnapped, threatened and told to keep his mouth shut. Meanwhile, Gloria has a surprise for Elliott. It's true, life works in Mysterious Ways. "

I was so happy with the first story, I just had to see if it was a fluke. The description is sort of promising, implying something his wife does will crack the case all Encyclopedia Brown style. But no, the first story wasn't a fluke. This one is shit too!

So amazingly some random guy serves Cooper (now in first person, got that fixed) a subpoena (annoying word to spell but I got it on the first try!) while he is just standing on the street. These subpoena guys are getting fucking good! Then Cooper goes up and shows his wife and goes back onto the street and is immediately kidnapped. Fuck the subpoena guy, these kidnappers are like fucking psychic!

Anyway yadda yadda he gets back to his office and his cop friend is there so they immediately take a drive to try to get Cooper to remember where the place was even though he had a hood on the whole time. Guess what, fuck the kidnappers, because Cooper remembers exactly where it is like a goddamn magician. But there's nobody there.

So he goes to court, they can't use his evidence, then he takes a stop back home where the two lackey kidnappers are hanging around without their boss and beats the shit out of them. Well, in the end (and I am seriously skipping a lot of bullshit to get to the end (you're welcome)) this story proves to be pointless because he testifies in court but the murderer gets off anyway. At least everything is okay now because they beat up some random guys.

BUT life works in oh so mysterious ways because his wife reveals over many, MANY pages that she is.... pregnant.

CASE CLOSED

Wait, won't the kidnappers' boss come back to kill his whole fam-

I SAID CASE CLOSED

Ratings:

Research: 0 out of 5. I can stretch my mind to pretend some of this stuff could happen but it just doesn't feel realistic at all. For instance, when he gets the subpoena it says "SUBPOENA" in "big fancy letters" at the top of the page. No it doesn't. Google image search that shit for like half a second. Then, in court the defender kept saying, "OBJECTION! HEARSAY!" for goddamn everything. And he was saying it when Cooper was like, "Mr. Jigglums hired me to-" "HEARSAY!" "Sustained." Now, I'm no big city lawyer, but I do have a computer with Wikipedia and that isn't hearsay according to thirty seconds worth of research. Seriously, if everything a witness says is just hearsay because you're defining it as "We are hearing him say it right now," why the hell even have witnesses?

Dialogue Tags: 0 out of 5. This happened in the last story too, but I let it slide. This time, it really got on my nerves. Literally the only dialogue tag this guy knows is "he said." It is a really versatile tag, but it has it's limits. Examples:

"Have you seen my purse?" he said.

"NO, MY AYUSSSSSSS!!" he said.

"What!?" he said. "Don't you," he said. "know I can't" he said. "be out past eight?" he said.

He glanced around. There were a lot of people in the line. "Don't let anyone know I have infectious sores all over my body," he said.

Some of those examples are subtle and you might skip over them, but trust me, after a million they really start to sap the flavor from a story.

Actual Detective Work: 0 out of 5. Yep. Cooper did it again. And by "it" I mean nothing, not even his job. Even the evidence he presented in court was useless because his client literally died before he did any detective work whatsoever. Yes, I will grant you that he amazingly remembered where he was kidnapped to, but what came of that? Nothing. Even when his wife takes a pregnancy test and says, "Positive," he asks, "You mean you're positive that you're not pregnant?" All he's really good for is using a gun to disarm someone and then treat them roughly. Or, just laugh at people that are horribly injured, like the last story.

Overall: 2 out of 5. Why 2? I don't know. He doesn't deserve it. He's the worst detective ever. I mean, he came to the conclusion that his family was going to be okay because he simply forgot there was a third kidnapper. Good work, detective.

If you would also like to forget people and, frankly, huge chunks of time, go to amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall