A Spy Like Me
Written by Kim Sherwood & Reviewed by Noreen in her Cell
To fully understand the depths of our scathing cynicism, please see The Crime Carnival’s review of Double of Nothing.
Four months have passed since Double or Nothing. On the first two pages, we are again reminded that Moneypenny is in charge (not M) and then we are walked through the hearing aid fiefdom in 004 Joseph Dryden’s ear with technical exposition. Ahem, clearly we weren’t the only ones with these two specific complaints after reading the first. But thank you Kim for listening to the feedback, even if it was from a clandestine organization.
M is at Vauxhall, so he’s permanently tethered to the PM at this point. We’re in a bomb scare situation based on Moneypenny’s intel, and the team is combing the area for our Prologue’s villain, an alt-right straight white male named Pandy Panderson, aka Jason Kent. Evac is called and we’re introduced to Roger Dodger McIntyre, 008 and a former pilot. Some villainous decoy larps as a suicide bomber and 004 takes the bait, shooting him after he disregards Dryden’s orders. And then they casually glance outside and immediately spot Jason Kent near a pack of journalists, even though the entire chapter is based on M and Moneypenny’s thoroughness and all the surveillance teams being unable to find him. Then he suddenly appears, but somehow just for 004’s eyes only.
HOW CONVENIENT!
(The Carnival refuses to review this book if this romper room writing is going to continue. The last one was actively unlikeable and this first chapter is already nostalgic for the melodrama.)
Roger Dodger finds the bomb because some K9 barks three times (what????) and it’s duct-taped to a ceiling over the Tube. He grabs it and throws it but it detonates.
Just like last book, an absolute avalanche of forgettable characters at the beginning that makes it far too difficult to care about the characters (or the plot). They’re bringing in some 000 who apparently is like a methadone Bond and prefers to work alone. And then more chatter from Moneypenny about wanting Harwood 003 back in the field despite not being cleared after the last book. But Moneypenny gets her way and she gets to bring in her ‘wild card’. There’s a bunch of other names tossed around and it sounds like Sotheby’s auctions are the laundering front for these terrorism attacks.
A check in on Joanna who’s wearing two watches: one that speaks morse to Moneypenny and another Casio that Sid was wearing when he died protecting his lover Joanna. She also slept with 007, Sid’s mentor, but that was apparently only relevant in the last book. Speaking of the last book, seems odd that the chapters in this book have titles but didn’t in the last book.
HOW CONSISTENT!
Anyway, this is actually a well done chapter. And much like book 1, Kim Sherwood is at her best when two characters (in both cases, all women) are sizing each other up via tense dialogue. Joanna meets with the mistress of some new bad guy – Teddy the Magician – and tries to persuade her to roll on him since she’s just a mistress with a Harrod’s credit card. She reveals that Teddy has Russian prison tattoos, one of which is three cats – meaning trafficking. And one of a moth, just like Mora in the last book. Great Chapter!
We needed to ruin Tanner in the last book in order for the plot to make sense, and now this book is already relying on a second Death Star mole in MI6 to keep the plot reasonable. Sigh. But that aside, excellent chapter despite it being the Lazy Susan expo dump to jump start the plot’s arc. Moneypenny put a tracker on some item at Sotheby’s that is going to be sold to the mistress. She’ll pick it up and deliver it to her bad guy boyfriend, and we’re off. Moneypenny is also convinced this Sotheby’s hustle is how Ratenfangen is funded, (the uninspired secret group of villains from the first book – a bunch of foolish amateurs compared to the prestigious Crime Carnival) so she wants Dryden and his magical hearing aid to go to Crete and shake down people for intel.
Marilyn the mistress gives the dead man’s watch to Teddy and he gets all pissed and roughs her up for it, implying he will give it to his whore in Vienna. Apparently this is a person of interest to Harwood and she deduces it must be Lisl Baum, a Heidi Fleiss to sex traffickers type. Harwood tells Marilyn she’ll protect her going forward (despite failing thus far) and put her up in a safe house while she goes after Lisl and then ‘breaks’ Teddy.
000 Conrad goes to Lisl’s 40th party, where the reader learns they have a long history, she having done business (and pleasure) with both Conrad’s father and his boss Sir Emery. She also mentions having bedded 007. Tough to tell how much of their relationship is public knowledge to MI6 because there’s an air of secrecy about the two of them. Their dynamic was quite engaging – another good chapter.
Lisl is downstairs playing meet n greet while her partner Rachel Wolff is in Teddy’s hotel room cracking the safe. He interrupts her with some South Korean girl for a tryst. Rachel hides in the closet and then after they leave she pockets some item from the safe (watch?) and then hides in a violin case belonging to the orchestra before there’s some crash.
Chapter 8 is a pretty confusing chapter and a disappointing one to boot. We’re at the party right before the crash. Lisl and Conrad are putting on appearances downstairs when Teddy introduces himself, full of bravado and condescension. He seems to know Conrad’s father from past business. Then there’s gunshots? Or maybe two Audis that drove through the front door? Really confusing. Anyway, there’s now ANOTHER group of bad guys called the Chevaliers and they’re apparently responsible for robbing this wealthy birthday party. Except all they seem to want is something that was supposed to be in Teddy’s safe but is no longer there – the blind man’s mcguffin watch. They rob the patrons, including Conrad’s gps watch. Cut to Moneypenny telling Conrad not to bother following the gps because it’s airborne. Rachel disappeared in the chaos and flew away somehow. OK, but really with the Chevalier nonsense? We really don’t need another angle here. It’s so bogged down and we’re only 9 chapters in. And it sure feels like we’re gonna do the How I Met Your Mother third act retcon thing again because everyone seems to vaguely know one another so there’s gonna be triple crossing the double crossers, etc. Eye roll inducing chapter.
Dryden is now in Crete, he makes nice with some poolboy for the guy Mr Corso he’s targeting. He gives the kid his audio recording watch to wear around some party that night so he can learn about all of the associates of the guy he’s tailing. Suddenly the guy appears at Dryden’s AirBnB and a car chase takes place out of nowhere and then they end up in some tourist trap of Crete ruins. Dryden 004 has him by the tie like FYEO and then a sniper randomly shoots out the tie??? So the guy falls to his death before answering any questions. Dryden is sure the sniper is from the Gray Group. That’s right we’re adding ANOTHER group of bad guys! So yeah, the sniper knew to just hang out at these ruins because that’s where this car chase would end. Dryden gives his car to the pool boy and takes the dead target’s Toyota. Then he’s instructed to go thru the shipping containers of this guy in hopes of finding more while the other lead is being chased down at Lisl’s birthday party. It’s way too much information and not enough organic action. Even worse is that all of this won’t matter in a hundred pages or so because ‘it was all a set up’ or whatever. Damn this chapter was demoralizing. To the author’s credit, she addresses the serendipitous plot hole of the sniper just conveniently waiting at the finish line for these two adversaries. But acknowledging it doesn’t resolve its wildly disengaging effect on the reader.
We check in with Harwood since the other two 00’s are wrapped up on their missions – she gets a call via nightly update from Q branch – Ibrahim – that they found a sniper rifle where Corso was taken out by Dryden. This rifle matches the rifle from Sid’s death and also consequently from another crime Bond had overseen where this gun was used as well. So Harwood decides that since this sniper has surfaced, she’s going to save Bond and that will somehow be catharsis for losing Sid? Ostensibly, this could be plausible character development – grief hits everyone differently – but plotwise this is downright amateurish and a lazy method to weave Bond back into the plot that has had nothing to do with him for a book and a half now. Harwood then goes to MI6 to look at some records and finds Tracy Bond’s father – Marc Ange – is the godfather of the Corso guy or something? Anyway, this is who she will beckon to help her find James. If she’s so amazing and great and ready for duty, then why does she need help to do literally everything?
Chapter 11 is a nice take on the “your mission, should you choose to accept it” schtick. And worth noting that it’s an entire chapter of dialogue between Moneypenny and Rachel Wolff, two females who don’t know each other sizing one another up….hmm. Anyway, Moneypenny knows she’s a diamond thief and knows her parents’ history on the wrong side of the law. So she basically blackmails Rachel into going to Crete to assist 004 with some crate that will lead them to their next sale. And that sale should have the diamond Janus – who is Rachel’s primary target and her stealing that mcguffin watch from wherever it is now is like her job interview to persuade Janus to let her in. Then she’s to find out who Janus’s boss is. This is all supposed to be so that Rachel can get to the bottom of her parents’ death….which is way too similar to the arc of Harwood wanting to find Bond to rectify Sid’s death. A well written chapter that made the story worse.
Moneypenny visits tongueless Colonel Mora from the last book at his Bane inspired prison cell. She has visited before, trying to deduce the role of Janus, Grey Group, and Rattenfringfring and how it all fits together (we should applaud the author for answering the very questions we’ve been struggling to answer for the last 100 pages but hold your applause until the end like a proper gentleman). Last time she was there Mora would only say that ‘Money is king,’ not some group of criminals. And then Moneypenny is convinced that because he made that specific remark they’re gonna try to break him out? Perversely thin logic, come on! Then he says Bond is still alive last time he saw him, ho hum, then Moneypenny deduces that there must still be a 2nd Death Star mole, likely in the Q branch. It’s then that Mora tells Moneypenny to give Harwood his best…Moneypenny then visits 007’s flat, only to find Justina’s watch bedside….which apparently means that she has gone rogue?? But maybe that’s what Moneypenny wanted by sidelining her for so long since the last mission? Oh goody, the author is back on her rhetorical question as a cliff hanger quirk.
Sidereal
(The Carnival doesn’t remember the last book having titled subsections like this)
HOW CONSISTENT!
We open with Double or Nothing’s Anna’s POV, husband of Mikhail, a man who was just murdered in his hotel room in Australia that should’ve been safe from Russian eyes. She flees to some ranch in western Australia posing as a gap year student, hoping to remain anonymous. She laments her love for James Bond, and then some other rancher shows up and she gets nervous. Sounds like she’s going to flee out of fear.
Part II – Stolen
Rachel Wolff makes it to Crete and schemes with Dryden. They need to get into Labyrinth, some ultra secure port where this container is that has the bad guy’s safe that Dryden needs to get to so Rachel can crack the safe. The security is based on palm print and gait. Dryden has the guy’s severed hand so they can recreate the palm print, but not the gait. So Rachel is posing as a cleaner, so she’ll get in but she claims she’ll just parrot the cleaner’s gait. Soooo Dryden can’t replicate gait because the technology is too precise, but Rachel can? We’re at the point now where we’re running into plot holes within the same chapter. And here we were acting all foolish trying to reconcile plot holes from a book ago. Fool the Carnival once…
Harwood goes to some illegal gambling thing on a boat on the Seine…to meet Tracy Bond’s dad. He’s not there but the lady in charge says to meet her in Nice in two days and then Harwood can meet him. Harwood goes to Nice which just so happens to have an apartment that she was willed by her dead grandmother that her mother now rents out.
HOW CONVENIENT!
Anyway, their dialogue was excellent. Really good job of mother daughter dynamic with tons of unresolved issues bubbling during a conversation. Again….two women sizing each other up….the heated conversation ends with Mom implying that Dad was secretly a spy and that’s why she hates what Justina does.
We’re with Dryden and Ibrahim in Crete. Ibrahim is looking over something Dryden took for fingerprints. Author goes full shoehorn this chapter to let the reader know how awful the UK is because of their treatment of terps. Dryden just so happens to mention his old terp (interpreter), who just so happens to be stranded in Afghanistan after the UK pulled out. And guess what? The fingerprints belong to a man last seen on the Hill of Gold in afghani territory.
HOW CONVENIENT!
So Dryden is to go to Afghanistan – alone, cue dramatic music – find this hill of gold, put some tracker on some contraband that will end up in Frederich Hyde’s hands (the fingerprint guy), then he’ll ostensibly take it to the dreaded Grey Group for sale/purchase, and then MI6 can arrest them all. Plus Dryden wants to save Ahmed - his old terp - while he’s doing all this. Utter melodramatic poo. Going forward, the characters in this book are no longer double oh’s – they’re now double zeroes, a more emblematic representation of these two books thus far.
Rachel goes to see Marko on some yacht in Serbia. She wants to use him to float the watch to the Janus diamond guy or whatever. Then they do what agents do. An eye rolling chapter that was meant to be intense and charged with sexual tension
Marc Ange, Tracy’s dad meets with Harwood. The whole point to meeting this guy was to get help finding Teddy the magician (and apparently a sniper named Trigger….so….many…..unimportant plot people) but he offered no help, he just said go find James. Seriously?
Dryden finds Ahmad and him and his wife are super pissed at him for not coming through with the visas as promised years ago. He only says help me again and this time I’ll get you out of here…promise. Ahmad no longer has work, his wife is miserable, his two kids are malnourished and his parents have been killed. But sure, as long as it’s a pinky promise, Dryden.
Sigh. Ahmad and Dryden get to the museum and find the curator. He’s kept prisoner in the basement and Taliban have tortured him since the UK withdrawal in hopes of finding this treasure that they now know exists for sure. And of course the curator gave his captors nothing because he’s a proud Afghan. So Ahmad then convinces him in approximately three sentences to tell Dryden where just one artifact is so he can use it as bait to get rid of the smugglers currently funding this terror on Afghanistan? (the wives will exchange it at the hospital the next day as both are nurses). Let’s review – the guy has been tortured for months or years, but 2 or 3 sentences and an empty promise he’s heard 1000x (from a guy who already told an atomic whopper to Ahmad the last time he was here mind you) made him change his mind and throw away his lifetime of virtue and that glorious Afghani pride they were just discussing? Allah, what a terrible book.
Part III (smuggled – A week’s passage)
Oy vey. Ahmad and Dryden meet some guy who can make sure the smugglers get some sword. Also Ahmad reunites with Kadija – she’s important but I neither recall nor care why. Dryden and Ahmad hafta tail the smugglers though or else they lose the sword and Dryden needs to see this Janus that accepts it? (what was the point of bugging then?). Anyway the smugglers are taking some route called the desert of death to get to their buyer so this will likely be a problem. Might as well have called it Crime Alley.
Joanna Harwood is at some snowy Himalayan type place scaling a mountain. She discovers the dead body of 005 in some cave.
HOW CONVENIENT!
But 000 told her that he fell to his death, even though there’s a bullet hole and it looks like he froze to death. She uses a lighter to thaw him out and remove the bullet, confirming it’s one of Trigger’s bullets. That means it was 000 the whole time – he’s a triple agent!! (Law & Order music cue) Anyway then she looks through her binoculars and just so happens to see a guard on duty in front of some other cave and she recognizes him from her own intel. It’s one of Teddy Wiltshire’s bodyguards…meaning either Teddy is here or hopefully both Teddy and James are here apparently.
Felix Leiter meets with 000. They size each other up, though not nearly as well as the author usually does with this type of dialogue – maybe because they’re just men. They meet with someone who allegedly knows Trigger, it goes south, but 000 saves Felix, making him look honorable. They go to Panama now to meet with Trigger.
Rachel and Marko are somewhere exotic to meet some guy to get some diamonds to smuggle to the Janus. They sleep together because they have history, then they bribe and bribe their way to some crate where he keeps the dead man’s watch…but when he opens the crate it’s already taken out of its box and is just sitting there on some velvet…ostensibly done by Rachel beforehand based on Marko’s reaction. They then bribe and bribe to some port ship that’s going here then there then ultimately to Dubai where they are planning to meet the diamond Janus.
Action scene. The desert of death with Dryden and Ahmad and his family trying for Iran before they get mowed down, no clue by whom because half the smugglers they’re scared of, but the other half they’re tailing. There’s a pretty poorly written action scene, and by the end we don’t even know which car they ended up in but Ahmad is shot. They get to the embassy in Tehran after witnessing Frederich Hyde handle the sword that we’re supposed to care about – we definitely don’t – at the embassy he DEMANDS that this family be taken directly to UK. And one or two phone calls is all it takes. So this entire arc of Ahmad/Dryden is based on him making a false promise before that he’d get them out but couldn’t because his hands were tied, forcing him to break a promise that ruined the lives of his alleged friend and family. But he used swear words with the ambassador and that’s all it took to force this extraction through? Wretched chapter, but an Afghan family was rescued from terrorists by going full Karen on the Ambassador’s maître de. Stay off social media kids, it does serious mental damage to one’s relationship with reality…
Anyway, another dumb sidereal but it ends with Teddy telling Anna he’s taking her to James for some reason. Oh yeah, that’s right! This was supposed to be a James Bond novel (this is on page 242 btw)
Part IV
Sold
Joanna is infiltrating some dome at the end of everything desert, where the sidereal took place with Anna. She kills people, ends up in Teddy’s bedroom. Shoots him, but lo and behold there is Marilyn the mistress in the goldfinger pose on the bed, her throat slit. But don’t you worry, Joanna is a former surgeon, so she’s capable of achieving anything!! She somehow executes a blood transfusion to save Marilyn, using bedsheets and stale blood – yeah, um, a box of spare blood just so happens to be sitting around in the same room as the totally random shoot out so that all the characters can stay alive just long enough to advance the plot via precise informative dialogue.
HOW CONVENIENT!
(Good lord)
004 is at the party now on Moneypenny’s orders as backup to 000 who is there as Lisl Baum’s date. (Why would a double 0 need backup? How Convenient to put them both there for the plot). Anyway, author makes it seem like 000 left Leiter for dead in the mountains with the cartel and that 000 still intends to track the Trigger. Also he’s bitter because Moneypenny prefers 004 over 000 because he’s a war hero (ironic since the author prefers him because he’s black, gay, and deaf, and not straight or white) Also 000 has a slight limp that 004 registers and finds suspicious. Whatever. This was actually a decently written chapter but the story sucks so bad at this point that even the good chapters are infuriating. Only about 100 pages to go.
Double blind showdown in the hotel room. Teddy is hooked up to Marilyn for the transfusion – luckily they’re compatible blood types – phew.
HOW CONVENIENT!
She interrogates and gets that Teddy traffics to finance the Rattenfengshui crap and that there’s one treasurer – god of gods – handling it all. Also James is still alive and “at home in Scotland” he says before attempting to escape. Sounds like Joanna hit him with the shotgun.
Wait, hold on. Chapter 34 opens in Venice through the POV of Q. They’ve geotagged their two agents and their two targets…but Moneypenny knows that Joanna knows that 000 is actually a threat and not an asset? But she “can’t tell anyone yet”. WHY THE FUCK NOT!?! The writing is so horrendously juvenile that The Carnival can’t tell if that part of the story is through Moneypenny’s POV or just one random sentence shoe horned in from Joanna’s POV even though she’s not even in the same country as the story at the moment. Holy hell. And then the very next damn sentence is a one liner from 000’s POV about how despite 004 is only there to make sure the sale goes thru (how would 000 know that if Moneypenny sent her there discreetly), 000 is actually there to make sure the sale ‘doesn’t’ go through. Look it’s one thing to suck at story telling, but this is craft we’re now talking about. And this is unacceptable writing. Period. Continuing to be overly generous with the benefit of the doubt, and assume we’re in some sort of omnipotent 3rd person POV for a few paragraphs but this stinks. In the words of Billy Mays, “but wait there’s more”. Dryden and 000 are cheeky about their mission, both feigning to be working with one another. Dryden spots two ratenfugazi things that want to kill Frederick Hyde, which 004 must prevent. He does so by killing one with a broken neck and then killing another with a head butt while they pretend to slow dance in a busy room? The terrible writing has to be deliberate at this point. Like this person hates James Bond and all its misogyny so she became an author like Marky Mark became a ballerina in The Other Guys just so that she could infiltrate the Fleming Fraternity and completely destroy it by writing the worst James Bond story of all time, Max Bialystock be damned. That’s the only thing that makes sense at this point.
This was not just one of the typical lazy susan chapters to realign the plot for the final act, but there were about two straight pages of plot gymnastics too. You won’t care, but Joanna figured out that it was Anna from book 1 being trafficked because she recognized THE BACK OF HER NECK in a grainy photo. And she’s convinced they’re keeping her alive to taunt James Bond, meaning he must still have something they want from him. Then Joanna calls Dryden from Teddy’s laptop to warn him that 000 is crooked but the line goes dead at the most plot-convenient possible time. Also a helicopter randomly took off during the chapter.
Part V
Three days until detonation
(for the love of god please be the last part)
Marko and Rachel are still with Victor the diamond Janus. He’s on some dumb falconry bullshit when Teddy Whiltshire’s son Jordan randomly appears.
HOW CONVENEINT!
He wanted to make sure to hand deliver the money that Teddy was not willing to transfer because of the MI6 surveillance. The girl demands that Victor take her to his boss. There’s absolutely zero reason to do so as he holds all the cards, despite needing her diamonds. But I’m sure he’ll take her because that’s what dogshit books do.
Everybody stretch your eyes, otherwise you’ll pull a muscle from all the rolling they’re about to do in Chapter 45. Ok so Marko and Rachel and Victor go to meet the mysterious god of gods. It’s Lysl Baum. Not a single reader cares. Anyway, there’s a Mexican standoff and monologuing and some random butler pointing a machine gun at whomever. Also Victor brought his falcon for some reason. Victor convinces Lysl they can no longer use cash to fund their terror because of surveillance, but his diamonds are perfect because of size and discreet nature. Victor goes to place a call to his ‘cargo’ man – I guess that’s terrorist people. But Rachel pulls a gun on him, finally revealing that she’s a spy. Then Victor tells her that Marko always knew her father was a spy but also Rachel figured out her parents were killed by Victor and betrayed by Marko’s father. Not sure how, basically she was just looking at Victor and somehow deduced it. Seriously. Then the butler somehow misses everybody with the machine gun right after Rachel shoots Victor’s head clean off. Marko gets shot in the chaos, but not before trying to save Rachel which I guess is supposed to be heroic. Also there was a random sniper red light on Rachel the whole time…but never got pulled. Lysl tries to recruit Rachel, revealing that Marko was in on it the whole time. Give me a break. THEN, Lysl says kill her! Real loud, though not to the butler because who knows what happened to him - I think Marko shot him. But anyway, no more shots are fired after Lysl’s order. Instead Moneypenny appears. And here’s my favorite part…..the double zero is now dead because…..Joseph Dryden shot him!!!!! Give me a G.D. break. The hearing aid tournament fight from the last book was the most outrageous 007 chapter ever written but this one might have been the most embarrassing.
Chapter 46 – the aforementioned How I Met Your Mother chapter where the author retcons the past 10 chapters or so to make it all make sense.
Back to the Lysl crap. 000 and 004 fight until 000 escapes on some magnet train underneath the city but maybe he left some bomb on one. And Rachel is somehow there now – this is GOT Season 8 levels of nonsense now. Also they keep bringing the dead man’s watch up but The Carnival couldn’t tell you with a gun pointed at their heads how it matters at this point. Dryden and Rachel are trying to chase down 000 but found the bomb.
Oh jfc. A ‘tip’ just came in about bombs in the USA. This must be the terror. And the phone call to Moneypenny from M happens to come right as she’s pointing a gun at Lysl.
HOW CONVENIENT!
The Crime Carnival is a clandestine organization that has no respect for laws or rules or even protocol. And even we cannot beleive this book was allowed to be published. Also the USA wants UK to release all rattenfenger prisoners. Apparently the USA negotiates with terrorists now. And oh look 000 manages to magically appear just in time to disarm Moneypenny. And you can hear the bomb go off. Also Lysl took the falcon for some reason and told Moneypenny she was going to be given to Mora….but this was after she told 000 to kill her. Then Moneypenny said no, then Lysl said you’re a survivor, so I’ll just give you Tom Mora. Holy fuck. Oh and then cut to Rachel. She’s alive, she drags Dryden to safety, he’s wearing a bulletproof vest – what does that matter if a bomb goes off – then she begs him to snap back to life. Didn’t we already do this?
Holy illiteracy it’s actually getting worse. Luke the ex bf from the last book was in the Mora prison…but Moneypenny put him there to be her eyes and ears and befriend the rattenfenger prisoners. She offered him redemption and he took it! Thank god, or else we would’ve had to make a gay person a bad guy. God forbid even one non SWM in this entire literary universe have poor morality. Anyway, we’re just shoehorning this bullshit side plot in with like 7 pages left.
Harwood uses the barcode on Anna to figure out it’s secretly an address. Seriously. Anyway she breaks into some house and makes her way to the third floor. On the third floor is Anna’s corpse, a pile of blood with bloody wrists and a broken glass next to her body. And next to her is a dead guard. And next to him is 007!!!! He’s polished and groomed somehow. Anna says hello, James raises his gun and shoots her. End of book.
The author acknowledgements make it sound like she actually tried to write a good story. This is the most far fetched uninteresting story about James Bond ever written, but let’s applaud the author’s efforts nonetheless. Writing is difficult and she’s working with an ocean liner’s worth of baggage in crafting this story. But shame on the Fleming estate for doing this to your cash cow, even if he is a despicable straight white male. Is there any other kind? I know what this author thinks.
