Hazardous Duty, the 41st Book I Have Read by W.E.B. Griffin

On August 20, 2011, I wrote a blog about W.E.B. Griffin.  At that time, I had read 38 of his books.  With Hazardous Duty, it's up to 41.  I won't rehash what I said back then.  You can always take a look, if you're interested.  But I've got a couple of things to say about this one, the 8th in his Presidential Agent series.  1st the positives:

1.  Reading the names of the main protagonist, Carlos (Charley) Castillo, and all of the other characters (and there are a ton of them), makes me feel like I'm seeing old friends.
2.  The fact that Charley doesn't even make an appearance until P. 69 (out of 404) does not take away anything from my enjoyment of the story.  That's how strong the other characters are.
3.  When Charley's childhood was discussed on pages 96-97, I found that to be very emotional.  I really do care about this guy.
4.  I enjoy the history lesson that I get in each book.

Now the negatives:

1.  Piggybacking onto #4 in the positives, the history got to be a little too detailed for me. My mind wandered a bit with some of it.  I'm not sorry he did it.  I'm just sorry he went as far as he did.
2.  The last 25 pages are just plain silly.  He gives an explanation at the end of the book, in the Afterword, and cites MASH as his muse.  I don't buy it.  It doesn't fit with the rest of the book or the series itself.

Even with the negatives, Hazardous Duty is still a 3/4 for me.  It's just that most of his books are a 3.5.  A bit of drop but not a fall from grace.  I'll be right on the next book he comes out with (unless it's the police series - I'm not a fan of that one), and he usually puts out 2 each year.

P.S.  I didn't put a summary of the book in this post because it doesn't matter.  It's just a different episode from the other 7.

COMING ATTRACTIONS:  Back on April 5, 2011, I posted a few series that I liked.  I'm going to update that in the next day or 2.