Jordan Dane

Sunday 1/24 9am

I picked up the latest book by this author, The Wrong Side of Dead: a Sweet Justice novel. Can't remember ever reading her before. She's won all sorts of awards: her first book was Publisher's Weekly Best Book of 2008, and another book was Romantic Times Best Intrigue Novel of 2008. She was a manager in the oil and gas industry.

The blurb sounded interesting: a computer wizard guy in peril and a bounty hunter woman out to save him. And there were two other "strong" women characters.

It starts out fairly well in Chicago with a gruesome murder and the guy finding himself at the scene, not remembering anything, and busted by the cops. One of the strong women is a cop and she calls the bounty hunter, who is in the process of hauling in a bail jumper all by herself (sure, un huh).

Then we switch to New York with the third woman, whose boss/lover runs a secret society of vigilantes who hunt down evildoers that are beyond the law. This woman is also a secret sex addict.

All this by page 54.

Now, I can deal with the sex addict, though it gets really boring as that seems to be all she can think about (and not particularly imaginatively, either).

Vigilantes, however, bother me a great deal. Does no-one see the problem with that sort of secret society? Yes yes, there ought not to be people beyond the law, but the concept of vigilante justice is not a way of upholding the law. Just the opposite, it undermines the law and creates an atmosphere of ignoring and sneering at the law, and promotes the idea that "the end justifies the means."

Very dangerous.

And these kinds of groups are proliferating around the world (Blackwater "security" forces and the people who hire them, for example). It's a "shoot first, ask questions later" type of mentality, and always degenerates into groups like the KKK and the Nazis.

Not something I think should be applauded or lauded.