Rating: 
Summary: A Whimsical Tale... with a Twist.
Review: I found this book delightful. A venture from the usual Star Trek tales full of moral delima and technobabble (which I like, by the way). If you're looking for something different that is seems more along the lines of fan fiction, rather than pro-fiction, this book is for you.
Rating: 
Summary: :(
Review: I was excited to see a Dixon Hill book, but after I started reading I was disappionted. I like the author but this wasn't his best work. He should stick to writing about the future and not cheesy private eye novels.
Rating: 
Summary: It was a hard read...
Review: I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting from this novel, but I'm pretty sure it didn't live up to my expectations, if that makes any sense. Dean Wesley Smith is one of my favorites, and the book's certainly written in his familiar style, but I think he fell short of the mark on this one. I kept waiting for the story to grip me, but it never did, and I figured it out way before Dix did.I did, however, LOVE the cover. As I have said in the past, I *do* buy books for their covers, and having met the artist, Sonia Hillios, at Shore Leave at the very time she had finished painting this one, well, I just had to have it when I saw it for sale. But unless you simply must have a complete set of TNG paperbacks or adore the covers like I do, you can skip this one and not be any worse for it. That having been said, I hope Dean gets a chance to try again, because I like the idea of Dixon Hill, and I'm sure Dean does, too.
Rating:
Summary: Oh, sigh...kinda disappointing.
Review: I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting from this novel, but I'm pretty sure it didn't live up to my expectations, if that makes any sense. Dean Wesley Smith is one of my favorites, and the book's certainly written in his familiar style, but I think he fell short of the mark on this one. I kept waiting for the story to grip me, but it never did, and I figured it out way before Dix did. I did, however, LOVE the cover. As I have said in the past, I *do* buy books for their covers, and having met the artist, Sonia Hillios, at Shore Leave at the very time she had finished painting this one, well, I just had to have it when I saw it for sale. But unless you simply must have a complete set of TNG paperbacks or adore the covers like I do, you can skip this one and not be any worse for it. That having been said, I hope Dean gets a chance to try again, because I like the idea of Dixon Hill, and I'm sure Dean does, too.
Rating: 
Summary: More Dixon Hill Mysteries
Review: It another one of those Enterprise in jepordy stories if Dixon does not solve the mystery...just like with Cyrus Redblock..I only wish they had a sequel to this one. It would have been neat if Dixon could fight retro 1940's creatures from outer space more often. A treat to any Dixon Hill fan without giving away the details...and this one is one of the better holodeck adventures. This one would have made a good TV episode!
Rating:
Summary: More like "A Light Drizzle"...
Review: It was an excellent idea--Picard visits the holodeck for a Dixon Hill mystery, accompanied by Bev Crusher, Data, and Whelan, the ship's historian, but things go terribly wrong and it becomes a race against time or dire consequences will ensue...wait, they already did that one... Which was part of the problem--the book's plot was too similar in basic outline to the episode "The Big Goodbye"; the spatial anomaly and the countdown until it destroys the Enterprise merely replaces the Jarada and their probable destruction of the ship if Picard doesn't cough up their ritual greeting a.s.a.p. I know there's a saying that there are only six or eight basic plots in Hollywood, anyway, but perhaps Mr. Smith should have chosen one of the others instead. And, as other reviewers have pointed out, spatial anomalies and technobabble are as worn as the soles of a beat-cop's shoes. That metaphor is another reason this book failed to impress me. The problem with writing a pastiche of those cliche-ridden
"hard-boiled" detective novels is that...one ends up sounding like a cliche-ridden "hard-boiled" detective novel. If that were a good thing, no one would want to write a pastiche of the style in the first place. And I really wasn't blown away by the revelation of the "culprit"...but perhaps I'm just being catty... In addition, I found it difficult to "place" this story in relation to the TNG timeline. The absence of both Wesley and Worf would seem to put it after the events in the film "Star Trek: Insurrection", but Data is still acting like his pre-emotion-chip self, with no mention made of his either turning the chip off or removing it for the investigation on the holodeck. Picky, I suppose, but it irritated me. Still, the characters were well-drawn, the villains aptly and imaginatively named, the chapter and section titles amusing--although the various ways of saying "stolen" felt more than a little forced--and many of the events (shorn of their cliches) were attention-grabbers. Thus the two stars instead of just one.
Rating:
Summary: Shallow but enjoyable
Review: This book is written in a fairly shallow, somewhat tongue-in-cheek fashion. With this author it is hard to tell if that shallow style is deliberate or not. Anyway, this does not read as a really serious or tense book, despite the situation the Enterprise is in. However it is definitely enjoyable. We have never had a chance to see Picard in the world of Dixon Hill for an extensive amount of time. Regardless of the circumstances, Picard is definitely enjoying the chance to spend so much time there. The 1930s detective genre is an interesting setting in itself. The characters are shallow, but they work well as a part of the story. There is also simply an enormous amount of action, of a very unusual type for the Next Generation: gunfights and shoot-outs. Finally, it is actually quite a mystery, and Picard is forced to do some hard deduction at the end, when all his leads seem broken, to finally solve it. I quite enjoyed it.
Rating:
Summary: Will not be to everyone's taste
Review: This novel was just not my cup of tea. It is written just like a pulp fiction dectective novel of the 1940's which is extremely appropriate considering it's a Dixon Hill mystery. I'd forgotten how badly written those stories could be-and a "Hard Rain" was pretty bad. I couldn't even finish it and that's rare for me.
| 
