Customer Reviews

A Hard Rain (Star Trek The Next Generation)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

A Hard Rain by Dean Wesley Smith is an engaging Dixon Hill holodeck mystery. Jean-Luc Picard is playing the star roll as Dixon Hill a detective solving crime in the city by the bay in the 1940's. He is accompanied by the Luscious Bev (Beverly Crusher), Mr. Whelan and Mr. Data, all trying to find the Heart of the Adjuster. Its location is paramount in saving the Enterprise from certain destruction from an area of space known as the Blackness.

As with many private eye stories, this has clues woven throughout the story, so be forwarned read it carefully and you'll solve this crime story before Dixon Hill realizes he has all the clues he needs. But time is short and Dixon Hill has a bevy of suspects to encounter in order to find the "Heart."

This is a well written mystery, a few typos, but nevertheless a compelling story. The deterioration of the Enterprise by the quantum overlap (Blackness) is believeable and the solution found but will it work?

We have gangsters with some really original names; Cyrus Redblock, Ghost Johnson, Benny the Banger, Harvey Upstairs Benton, Slippery Stan Hand and his girl friend Jessica Daniels. An intrepid Detective Bell is Dixon Hill's inside source as the book evolves and is Hill's best friend.

But as Data said, as he took his gangster stance, "As Dexter Drake said, "The solving of almost every crime mystery depends on something which seems, at first glance, to bear no relation whatever to the original crime." Pay heed to these words and they will serve you well in solving this mystery.

I enjoyed reading this book as it was entertaining and a fast read. But not everyone will like this book to them all I can say is... better luck. Those who want a deeper engrossing mystery, this is not your best mystery, but at least there are attempts at writing more mystery into the suspense of Trek.

"Hard Rain" is a waste of the paper its printed on. Even the basic "hook" of Picard saving the day as Dixon Hill is cliche. How many times can that holodeck malfunction and nearly destroy the ship before they write it off as a bad idea. The 'plot' is Data and Geordi make up a TREKnospeak whatsis to save the ship from a spacial anomaly(again!). They have to test it on the Holodeck. Then the Dixon Hill program comes on and 'someone' steals the heart of the device. It is lost on the holodeck. Dixon has to get it away from the mob. Why don't they just shut the thing down and pick it up off the floor? The author comes up with a weak justification at the end of the book which says. Anything taken in and not held when the program is shut off is destroyed. Even if that was the case in "Encounter at Farpoint" Data shows that he can see past the holo image on his own if he wants to. Lets not even bring Geordi into this. This book is before STTNG Generations but Worf is no where to be seen or even heard from or referred to. As well as other plot/tech holes big enough to drive the Enterprise through. Also the "Mystery" is no mystery at all half way through the book you'll be going. "Please no dont let it be" But it is. This is arguably the worst STTNG novel to ever come out. Hopefully a single aberration from the generally high quality of the new ST books.

I came at this book from a different angle than most Trekkies (Trekkers, for you young people). I happen to love he old mysteries by Chandler, et al., and I knew this was an homage to -- not a parody of, as some have suggested -- the detective fiction of the golden age of pulp before I started reading.

Dean Wesley Smith clearly loves the genre as much as I do and cleverly worked in trademark touches from several writers of the period. Including Ellery Queen's summary of "clues" at the end of each chapter, some of which are red herrings. Even if you miss every little Easter egg and can't tell Sam Spade from Philip Marlowe, there's enough action, interesting characterizations and intriguing plot twists to keep you going.

If your Trek simply must have planets exploding and Romulans conspiring and the Enterprise locked in deadly combat against overwhelming odds, this is not the book for you. If you're in the mood for a delightful variation on familiar themes -- with more than a bit of whimsy and humor -- this could be just what you're looking for.

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.

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.

I am a fan of Piers Anthony's "Xanth" series, so the horrible cliche's and the many ways of saying "stolen" was amusing to me. "Xanth", by the way, is a world loaded with some very *bad* puns that can have you busting out with laughter on occasion. However, "A Hard Rain" suffers from excessive repetiveness. I got tired of reading the same lines over and over. Then there were the "clues" listed at the end of each chapter. I wondered if I was reading a children's book by mistake at first. Sometimes children's authors write things like that to help the young reader keep track. But then I got the idea that this is written like a PC game. You have the characters, the set-up, everything you need to play the game. Each chapter is a different section in the game that you can't get to until you gather up all the clues and can move onward. Unfortunatly, it didn't translate well into book form. The writing is too stilted and skimpy. Maybe the author should have gone on and made it into a game. It might have been more of a success.

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.

"It was a read so bad that it made an eye chart look like an award winning novel..." Anyone who loves hack writing and horrible prose in the fashion of old pulp detective novels will adore this book.

If on the other hand, you are looking for another excellent science fiction story written in the STNG world of culture and intelligent dialog, you should avoid this book at all costs. The story idea itself is bottom-of-the-barrel "first season" quality. The treatment (or lack thereof) of the STNG characters is embarassing. It's truly the most awful book I've ever read and you couldn't pay me enough money to suffer through it again.

I don't usually criticize Star Trek books because I can usually find something to like about them. Not this one. It's poorly written and inconsistent. It's written in 2 styles, that of a pulp mystery from the 1940s and in "real time" as a Captain's log. It's difficult to figure out what is going on at first. An object has been stolen, one that is needed to save the ship. It's obvious from almost the beginning who has stolen the object and you'll probably guess right away, but you have to slog through this awful book to find out if you''re correct. It's all one big misdirection and not a very good one. Skip this one, even if you're a die-hard STNG fan.

If you enjoy the detective & mystery fiction genre, as well as the science-fiction/Star Trek genre, and don't mind the idea of them being mixed together with a very implausible, trumped-up excuse as long as the story is well-written, then you'll doubtless enjoy this book.

If, on the other hand, you're reading this book because it's a Star Trek book and you want to read all of the Star Trek books, you can skip it. It isn't really a Star Trek book; it's a Dixon Hill novel with a few Star Trek trappings just to qualify it for publication under the Star Trek umbrella.

Furthermore, the very basic premise of the story -- that an item brought from the real world to the holodeck and left there would be absorbed into the virtual world of the holodeck and thus lost if the program was turned off, rather than remaining in the middle of the empty holodeck, is frankly wrong and incredibly stupid. So the entire story is built on a ridiculous premise. Again, if you don't mind this -- if you're willing and able to suspend a whole lot more disbelief than I can manage for the sake of a good yarn -- then be my guest. It's well-written and kind of fun, as fluff goes. But I have little tolerance in general for stories in which what happens on the holodeck is somehow made to matter, and this one was worse than most in that regard.