ANARCHY OF THE MICE - Jeff Bond


Molly McGill is a twice-divorced single mother with a struggling P.I. business. She's struggling to hold her life (and her kids' lives) together and seeing her teenage son wearing a t-shirt that supports the "Blind Mice" - a group of anarchists who have been disrupting government functions and have been in the news frequently - puts her on edge. Everything seems to be falling apart around her when she gets a visit from Quaid Rafferty, a former (now disgraced) Massachusetts governor and his partner Durwood Oak Jones.  They have a job for Molly ... infiltrate the Blind Mice.

They establish Molly as an outspoken blogger opposing government interference and Molly finds it surprisingly easy to write her vehement blog posts. Her blog posts get her noticed and she's soon invited to do some radio talk shows, and up the ladder to television, and then she's finally invited to become a more 'official' member of Blind Mice.

What Molly didn't foresee was the life-threatening dangers involved with associating with this highly organized group.

I'll admit that one of the main reasons I requested to read this book was the very pulp-like cover. I've been in a mood to read more classic pulp fiction and I've been searching for some modern day pulp that harkens back to the pulps of the 50's and 60's.  This awesome cover brings precisely that to mind. The writing, unfortunately, does not.

The biggest downfall here is the amount of time we spend setting up the story. It feels like it takes such a long time to establish our main character, then build up her cover story before we get to any actual pulp-like action.

Once we get to the action we have another problem - believability.  We spend a great deal of time with Molly, Quaid, and Durwood and there is a small cast of supporting characters who aren't as well established and we are forced to simply believe in their capabilities. One, in particular, made me roll my eyes when she (who has absolutely zero skills with computers) goes undercover as a tech genius and bluffs her way past the highly skilled employees. This kind of suspension of disbelief is okay with complete buy-in to the story, but because of the length of the set-up, establishing a quite believable premise, asking the reading to go back and forth ('believable, suspend your belief, believable' etc) makes this hard to really get in to.

I liked the general character of Molly and I'd be curious to read more of her adventures, but this lengthy adventure isn't strong enough to get me to read any more.

Looking for a good book? Anarchy of the Mice by Jeff Bond appears to be an attempt to bring back the adventure of classic pulp fiction, but where the pulps are fast and furious, this is slow and methodical and a bit of a challenge.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

2-1/2 stars

* * * * * *

Anarchy of the Mice

author: Jeff Bond

series: Third Chance Enterprises #1

publisher: Jeff Bond Books

ISBN: 9781732255272

paperback, 517 pages

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