Status Updates From Lost Light

It’s 2004? 2006? And a librarian is explaining how to do a keyword search in a digitized newspaper archive.

This book isn’t even 30 years old but it’s such a tech time capsule. The missing FBI agent was a cyber specialist which means she was making and using a database of serial numbers of stolen bills.

The description of the disappeared FBI agent is unintentionally comical… we are told twice that she was “attractive”; she was flattered that a gas station cashier told her she didn’t need to drink Diet Coke; she was tall and fit from Tae Bo workouts; she had 4% body fat. She evolves from a regular person to a femme superhero over a few pages!

The scene with the quadriplegic former detective becomes offensive. The descriptions are dehumanizing and situation contrived for maximum bleakness. The author has stacked the deck completely to paint a picture of this character’s life as not worth living, he’d be “better off dead,” his partner who died in the shooting was “the lucky one”, he’s begging friends to kill him. Ableist propaganda

Red flag, this plot with $2 million being stolen off a movie set seems ludicrous. An obvious scam. Like the whole movie project was probably a cover for the robbery. The director’s “realism” justification is absurd.

I hate the first person narration immediately.