REVIEW: Troublemaker by Linda Howard
C Reviews / C- ReviewsContemporary / paramilitary / police / romantic-suspense / Small Town Romance / West Virginia25 Comments
Dear Ms. Howard,
Once upon a time, I was an avid reader of your novels. From the categories, which I discovered deep in the bowels of my university’s library, to the single title romantic suspense novels, which I purchased for years.
Around about the early 2000s, that started to change and I gradually became a more and more sporadic reader of your books. Until I picked up your latest, Troublemaker, I had not read one of them since Death Angel, which came out in 2008.
I decided to try Troublemaker because of a conversation two of my friends had about the book. One of them enjoyed it, and thought it had flashes of your old writing, while the other was disappointed. I wanted to see which camp I would fall into.
Troublemaker begins thirty-six hours after Morgan Yancy arrives home at his condo after a mission abroad. Morgan is a member of a GO-Team, some kind of paramilitary operatives whose missions are “highly classified and extremely sensitive politically.”
Morgan is currently on downtime so after he wakes up and has some coffee, he decides to go fishing. He calls a teammate, Kodak, who declines to join him, goes to the marina and says hi to its owner, who makes a phone call soon afterward, and once on the water, runs into a congresswoman and her husband in their motorboat. When he gets home, Morgan spots a shooter and manages to take him out but not before he is shot.
Morgan has open heart surgery and gets pneumonia. He is in a much weakened condition when his boss, Axel MacNamara, interviews him and they try to figure out why anyone in the U.S. would target Morgan, but they can’t. Axel then decides to send Morgan to a woman who was once, long-ago, briefly, Axel’s stepsister, until their parents divorced almost as quickly as they had married.
Isabeau “Bo” Maran is now the police chief of Hamrickville, a small town in West Virginia, a position which is purely administrative. Bo has not heard from Axel in years and she’s thrilled about it because they couldn’t stand each other. So when she finds a note from Axel in her mailbox wishing her happy birthday and expressing the hope that she’ll enjoy her “gift,” she is seriously annoyed.
Arriving home in her driveway with her dog Tricks, Bo finds an SUV parked there ahead of her. In the driver’s seat of the SUV is Morgan, clearly in poor health, and he explains to her that Axel has sent him to her to recuperate at her house, just like that.
Well, maybe not entirely just like that – Axel soon calls and offers Bo $150,000 if she’ll agree to take Morgan, and since she has some debt, she does – but she’s still unhappy about it. So Bo and Morgan get off on the wrong foot, especially since he doesn’t immediately respect how gifted Bo’s dog, Tricks, is.
Tricks, the dog, is something of a genius for a dog, able to understand a lot of human vocabulary and perform feats other dogs can’t. She’s also a very pretty dog, and extremely sociable and friendly, beloved by almost everyone in Hamrickville.
Tricks is stubborn, too, as Morgan learns the hard way when he accidentally takes her seat in Bo’s car. Gradually, as Morgan gets better, Bo and her dog, as well as the town of Hamrickville, begin to worm their way into his heart. Likewise, over meals of beer and spaghetti, Bo, who is naturally standoffish and guarded, nonetheless comes around to liking Morgan.
Meanwhile, a divorcing couple in Hamrickville get into a dispute that turns physical, and Bo and her deputy, Jesse, charge to the rescue. The husband of the divorcing couple, Kyle Gooding, is also the scion of the town mill’s owner, which leads to a headache for the town and eventually, to a threat against Bo.
Of course, there’s also the question of who it is who was behind the attempt on Morgan’s life, and why, still hanging out there. And even if Morgan can remember what he might have seen or done that put his life in danger, can Bo, who has never had anyone in her life stay put, bear to watch him leave on his next GO-Team mission?
As I mentioned before, I haven’t read one of your newer books since Death Angel, so I can’t speak to any changes in your oeuvre in the intervening years. Even though Death Angel wasn’t a favorite of mine among your books, I thought it felt much stronger and more confident than this book does.
For one thing, the suspense plot here feels weak. It doesn’t make sense that, with GO-Team missions so politically sensitive, Axel would send a barely-alive Morgan to Bo with no warning, when he hasn’t seen Bo in years but knows she hates his guts.
Spoiler (plot spoiler): Show
As Jia says, every novel gets one gimme. But this one has more than one. Morgan, for example, once he recovers, is capable of doing thousands of sit ups. Nor does supposedly 31 year old Morgan feel like a man of his generation, with his thoughts about how he would lose his man card if he didn’t go fishing, or about how certain foods aren’t masculine enough.
Then there is the genius dog, Tricks. My two friends disagreed about the book, but were in agreement about one thing: this was one irritating dog. After thinking about it, I realized why that was the case (Yes, I too found her annoying).
First, the dog doesn’t behave like most dogs. Morgan can tell her to put the ball in his hand and she does it, over and over and over. Later, when Miss Doris, the town’s baker, bakes dog treats for Tricks and some human almost eats them, Bo, the heroine, worries that it will upset the dog if someone tries to eat something that was made for her. These are just two examples out of many.
Second, and worse, Tricks is a Mary Sue character. It’s the first time I’ve come across an animal character that was a Mary Sue, but I can’t deny her Mary Sue nature.
Mary Sue characters are wish fulfillment characters. Not only are they good at everything — smart, attractive, and possessing of unusual skills and abilities, but other characters all either adore them or loathe them, with no in between, and those who hate them are usually the villains. All of this is true of Tricks.
Spoiler (plot spoiler): Show
Third and finally, Tricks was also annoying because she got so much page time that she was almost a protagonist in the book. Thus, she took up word count that could have been spent developing the human characters and their relationship.
I will add one last caveat about the dog, and that may seem contradictory to all that I just said. I think that if one took this dog out of the book, there wouldn’t be much book. Other than their relationship to this dog, there’s little that stands out about Morgan or Bo compared to earlier Linda Howard protagonists; in fact they kind of pale next to them. So the dog was needed, annoying as she is.
The romance takes a while to get off the ground, since Morgan and Bo don’t meet until about 12% of the way into the book. Even once it gets underway, it feels watered down with details, some of which are relevant to the story but many of which are not. For example, there’s this:
Straightening, she washed her hands and got a pizza pan out of the cabinet, then extracted a large frozen pizza from the freezer. “It’s a supreme. Want me to pick anything off before it cooks?”
“No, I like it all.” Except for anchovies. He’d tried them, though in his opinion whoever had come up with the idea of a fish pizza should be taken out and shot. Some things just shouldn’t be.
The oven beeped, signaling that it was hot, and she slid the pizza pan into it.
This is a lot of detail about a pizza that doesn’t affect the plot, the character’s relationships, or matter to their emotions in any significant way. It wasn’t the only example of this sort of thing.
I had heard that the sex scenes in some of the other recent Howard books were awkward, and I didn’t find them that way here, though I also didn’t find them as sexy as some of the sex scenes in your earlier books.
What I did enjoy about the book was what I enjoy about many of your books – the heroine’s emotional vulnerability, her fears about falling for the hero.
This is something I think you do far better than most, and although here it felt a little muted compared with some of your earlier books, I still enjoyed it enough to turn the pages from the point Bo and Morgan meet until, at around 80% of the way through the book, this emotional conflict was resolved.
To be honest, I almost quit the book a little after that 80% mark, mainly because of the Mary Sue dog, and also because the romantic conflict had been resolved.
Eventually I picked it back up, though, and I found the last 11%, which is where the suspenseful part of the story and the HEA took place, very readable. It wasn’t enough to make up for the weaknesses in the book, but I was glad I finished. C-/C.
Sincerely,
Janine
AmazonBNKoboBook DepositoryGoogle
Janine, if you had done this review as a “Guess the Author”, only revealing at the end, I would’ve said Diana Palmer. Which is disappointing, because I used to absolutely adore Linda Howard’s books as the anti-Diana Palmer.
Welp, looks like my TBR is now shorter by one.
I still love some of the older Howard books (I just bought a couple of audio books of them), but I gave up on the newer releases awhile ago and I guess that’s not going to change with this one. It’s sad because I *want* to still like her books and I’d heard elsewhere that this book marked the return of the old Howard.
BTW, I think you meant to say that Morgan says “hi” to the owner. . . unless someone really was high.
Morgan should try Bulgarian pizzas. They put pickles and dill on them and claim they make pizza just like the Italians do.
@cayenne: If it’s already in your TBR, it might be worth giving a shot to. Some readers seem to have liked it better than I did. Besides my friend who thought it had flashes of her old writing, I also saw that Miss Bates enjoyed it as she details on her blog.
@Susan: Like I said to Cayenne, you might like it better than I did although there was a time when I loved her books, too. Maybe get it out of the library and see? Thank you for pointing out my spelling error. I fixed it, LOL.
@SAO: LOL!
I just finished this book over the weekend and agree with pretty everything you’ve said. Your analysis of Tricks as a Mary Sue is spot on and I wish I’d thought of it. I’ve read only a handful of Howard’s books over the years so I can’t speak to the changes in her writing but this was a disappointing book.
@Bea: I haven’t seen anyone else mention Tricks as a Mary Sue and I think it’s because we’re not used to viewing animals through that lens. I found it really annoying that she could do all these amazing things, was so pretty, and everyone had such strong feelings about her (mostly love).
@Janine:
Oh yes, it was absolutely annoying, and she took up way too much of the book. It made me wonder if Howard lost a dog and was memorializing it via Tricks.
@Bea: It’s possible. The copy I read has gone back to the library so I can’t check the dedication or the author’s note, if there is one.
I like romances with dogs as prominent secondary characters, but only if they have personality. An interesting personality. Not a Mary Sue personality. (I can’t stop laughing at that description!) Fred from Crusie’s Anyone But You remains my fav-book-dog.
@Jo Savage: My friend who struggled with this book contrasted this dog with Crusie’s dogs too. This dog did have a personality, she was a bit of a diva, but lovable all the same (or so we were told). Actually, the diva aspect of her reminded me a little of Blair Mallory, Howard’s heroine from To Die For and Drop Dead Gorgeous.
@Janine: Divas are definitely more interesting than Mary Sues. Perhaps, if the plot had been a bit more tempting, I would have given this a shot. I have enjoyed the more action-packed Linda Howard books in the past, and do hope there are more coming from her in the future.
I started a comment thread on another site after I read Troublemaker because there really hadn’t been much talk about it and I was still trying to wrap my head around it. I found it really odd.
I enjoyed the parts with Midas the puppy in Open Season- I am not opposed at all to children or dogs in a story but I have to disagree with you as you say ‘Other than their relationship to this dog, there’s little that stands out about Morgan or Bo compared to earlier Linda Howard protagonists; in fact they kind of pale next to them. So the dog was needed, annoying as she is.” I don’t think the dog was needed at all, I think Howard would have been better served actually putting the time and story into the human protagonists. The story suffered because 80% of it was about Tricks the dog, or how everyone felt about Tricks the dog and there wasn’t room for anything else.
Another thing that really bothered me was how Bo the heroine was far weaker than any Howard heroine I have come across in decades. Instead of heroines getting stronger and more empowered, Bo was ten steps backward. She was completely emotionally dependent on the dog and built her entire day and life around Tricks. She completely fell apart at the IDEA someone would shoot at the dog and had to be carried off and babied while an actual PERSON was left shot and bleeding on the ground. (Not technically shot, it was ricochet but still, the guy’s head was bleeding and they didn’t know it wasn’t a bullet that did it).
There were a hundred other things that diminished Bo as a character- such as the way her male co-worker had to come out and vet her house guest! Sorry, but that was just weird. Who lets a male co-worker come out and pass judgement on a friend you have invited to stay at your house? Bo isn’t a child, but she sure acted like one at times. Howard seems to conflate a woman not wearing makeup or being “guy like” as somehow being a strong, cool character when she can’t even go to work without taking her (emotional crutch) dog and has a job she isn’t trained or equipped for. She certainly didn’t live up to the title of Chief of Police (she basically does paperwork and foolishly jumped into a fight she had no training for). Compare her to the uber-confident and professional Chief of Police Jack from Open Season.
@Jo Savage: This dog was a little bit of diva mixed with a lot of Mary Sue.
@Christine: I agree that if the human characters had been fleshed out and developed in lieu of all the pages about the dog, it could have served the book better–provided that the characters had been developed in an interesting way (I didn’t necessarily want more of Morgan’s thoughts on girly foods). But if the dog were taken out and the book shortened by that, without using those pages to focus on the human characters more, I think it would have been a very flimsy book with underdeveloped characters. And that was what I meant by saying that the dog was needed–that she added some dimension to Bo and Morgan’s characters, as they were.
And yeah, Bo’s chief of police job could have made her a much more compelling and empowered character than she was. I still liked her, but mildly, and not nearly as much as I liked some of Howard’s earlier heroines.
I gave up on Howard after many years of disappointing reads. Ice was the book which did me in.
I was on the hold list for this at the library as a friend said the writing style was more like her earlier stuff. Sounds like I need to cancel the hold though.
She’s one author I’ve broken up with where I’m still able to reread her earlier stuff I loved like the Kell Sabin series and her some of her early hardcovers. I don’t want to risk ruining that.
I enjoyed this book, but didn’t love it. And Tricks really bothered me, too. Everything revolved around her. I just checked my library copy. Dedication: ‘To all the beloved dogs who have enriched my life.’ Author’s note – she has 2 golden retrievers. I guess this really was all about the dog.
I loved this book! The two protagonists were well-drawn and interesting; their relationship was believable and well-developed–that’s what I read romance for. Plot is secondary. Sure, there was too much dog, but it was worth it for the characters. This is up there with another favorite, Veil of Night. I also enjoyed Ice and Prey because of the characters and their relationships. Linda Howard can write! Sadly, not all romance writers can.
Great review and I totally agree with you conclusions. I haven’t bought a Howard book in years. I just borrow them from the library. I found this book to be very tedious.
@library addict: I know other readers who felt much like your friend, that this one hearkened back to her older works. And I haven’t read Ice, or any of her books since Death Angel, so it’s hard for me to say to what extent it does or doesn’t.
It was a library book for me, and I am all right with having read it. I mean, it wasn’t wow, but I also didn’t feel resentful of the time I spent reading it.
I recently reread Diamond Bay and liked it better than this book, but not as much as I remembered loving it in the past. I’d need to revisit some of her other older books to know how they’d hold up for me. I think some would and some might not.
@Lynnette: LOL! Your comment really cracked me up.
@LeslieAnn: I’m glad you offered a different opinion. I agree that the relationship itself was believable, but I wanted more development of the characters as individuals and how it impacted their relationship.
For example, we were given some tantalizing information about how Bo’s upbringing had shaped her, but I wanted more about that and how it was affecting her thoughts and feelings toward Morgan. In some of Howard’s earlier books (for example After the Night and Shades of Twilight), there was more on how the heroines were affected by their childhoods even as adults. Here, we got a lot of irrelevant details about things like the food, apartment decor, etc., as well as a lot of the dog in place of that kind of exploration.
@sandyh: Thank you.
I still occasionally re-read older Howard books, some of which are wonderful like Cry No More, Dream Man or Open Season. I did also really like Death Angel, but her novel, Burn, that followed it was abysmally awful. I couldn’t believe how bad that book was. Since then I’ve been very cautious about reading her new releases. In fact, I rely on a number of reviews and sadly none since Death Angel have convinced me to read one.
I saw on Twitter that the kindle version of this book is on sale. However, after Prey (that was the one where we spent 1/3 of the story in the bear’s head, right? That one was just WRONG!) Linda Howard is not an auto-buy for me. Thanks for the review – I’ll request it from my library…
FWIW, while I enjoyed White Lies, it’s her CIA series (Kill and Tell plus All the Queen’s Men) that I think of as vintage Linda Howard.
If it’s even remotely like her older novels, I’m in!
@Jane: To judge by readers’ reactions, it is probably a bit more like her older books than some of her more recent books (the ones I haven’t read). The ebook is currently on sale for $5.99, so if you want to read it, this is a good time to purchase.
I was nervous about reading this book because Linda Howard used to be on my must list but I have only liked about two of her books in the last six years or so – Death Angel and Running Wilde. I actually thought Prey and Ice were kind of ok but they were more like novellas than anything else. I actually did like this book! I did feel like it was back to more of her writing style than her most recent offerings. Shadow Woman was hit or miss for me and I kind of forget about it – I thought this was a little better than Shadow Woman. Although the dog kind of annoyed me, it didn’t really take me out of the story (I agree that the scene at the parade was completely overdone). I also wondered why Bo was chief of police if she had absolutely no police training. Why not hire her as a secretary for the paperwork if that is her purpose? That was kind of weird. Otherwise I did like the development of the relationship between Bo and Morgan.
@A:
I’m so glad you enjoyed this book, that’s really good to know. I think Bo was the police chief in order to facilitate the Kyle Gooding plot, but you’re right, it’s odd that she didn’t have police training. All the more so since she carried a gun.
I enjoyed this book — agree that’s it’s more reminiscent of the older Howard books than more recent titles — but I think the blurb description is comically wrong: “A thrilling, fast-paced novel of romantic suspense”
This set my expectations up the wrong way. Once I tracked onto the actual pace of the story, I let go and did enjoy it (even with the diva/Mary Sue dog — fabulous characterization, there!).