{"id":10929,"date":"2022-02-09T11:30:18","date_gmt":"2022-02-09T16:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/?p=10929"},"modified":"2022-02-09T11:30:21","modified_gmt":"2022-02-09T16:30:21","slug":"regrets-only-by-nancy-geary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/09\/regrets-only-by-nancy-geary\/","title":{"rendered":"“Regrets Only” by Nancy Geary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Copyright 2004 by Nancy Whitman Geary. Published by Time Warner Book Group, New York.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

It is usually good when, in a mystery story, everything fits together. But sometimes everything fits together just a little too well to be realistic. I am thinking of some of the Agatha Christie books, like Ten Little Indians<\/a><\/em> or Murder on the Orient Express<\/a><\/em>. Entertaining, for sure, but too nicely packaged to be anything but fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regrets Only<\/em> is such a book. Exhibit A: A psychiatrist who is being interviewed for a prestigious post offers three “character witnesses” who turn out to be, respectively, her ex-husband, the father of her illegitimate twins and the adoptive father of said twins. Really? She couldn’t get a priest or a rabbi? And wouldn’t at least one of the two who were involved with her undisclosed illegitimate offspring recuse himself because of the obvious ethical conflict?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exhibit B: The rookie homicide detective assigned to the murder of this psychiatrist is dating – and in love with – the abandoned son of the victim. Again, shouldn’t she have recused herself due to her strong emotional involvement?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exhibit C: The cop’s boyfriend, who owns a bar, hosts an exhibit of drawings by a troubled young artist who, as it later becomes known, is the half-brother of the owner. This is a gratuitous coincidence that has little bearing on the plot. Why even include this odd coincidence?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, while I thought the book was well-written, the coincidences overwhelmed me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5 out of 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Copyright 2004 by Nancy Whitman Geary. Published by Time Warner Book Group, New York. It is usually good when, in a mystery story, everything fits together. But sometimes everything fits together just a little too well to be realistic. I am thinking of some of the Agatha Christie books, like Ten Little Indians or Murder … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1VniU-2Qh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10929"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10930,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10929\/revisions\/10930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}