book review, Volume 1, number 2, February 1999 Fish & Game Superheroes He was mad, or so they said...but others thought only "disturbed." Well, guess what? This wasn’t a prize-winning sentence from the Bulwer-Lytton Contest (See the book, It was a dark and stormy night, the Best (?) from the Bulwer-Lytton Contest: The funniest opening sentences from the worst novels never written). No, this is the opening sentence of Ken Goddard’s book, Double Blind. The Tampa Tribune and Times calls it an "intense environmental thriller." I can agree on the thriller part. How about this sentence, on page 230: It took the Ranger hunter-killer recon team almost an hour to camouflage themselves appropriately and work their way along the low, tree-filled ridge overlooking the designated site. If you think these sentences are funny, then this is the right book for you. It has 460 pages and they are all funny. I was never able to tell if the author deliberately wrote a spoof or if he is really that bad a writer. Ken Goddard, currently the director of the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon, writes like his job title sounds. His book bursts with sentences of the same caliber. He creates special agent operations teams working for the federal Fish and Wildlife agency, whose members are amazing characters. I especially like Thomas Woeshack, an Eskimo from Soldotna (traditional Eskimo country?), the Special Agent/Pilot of the Bravo Team, who is afraid of flying and who forgot his ammunition one time when he went out to hunt polar bears. You read that one right. I personally think it’s rather frightening that there are polar bears around Soldotna and nobody cared to warn me. And then here comes our hero Henry Lightstone, ta-ta-ra-tah! He’s a loner, good sport, and a martial arts specialist who is not afraid of big cats, neither feline nor human! He and his companions take on a sixteen-term congress-man who is corrupt (much to our surprise); a wealthy CEO who wants revenge and last but not least a fierce rogue Army Ranger hunter-killer recon team, whose even fiercer leader answers to First Sergeant Aran Wintersole. Do I have to tell you that this guy has pale grey eyes that make you shiver? Against all odds everything works out just fine in the end. Neither poisonous snakes nor spiders with red knees can stop our team of federal agents. Our hero gets his heroine and the bad guys get what they really deserve. Here is my final judgement: this is definitely a page turner par excellence, but it’s real mind fluff and as shlocky as it gets. So lean back and enjoy, it does no harm to the adult reader who doesn’t believe a word anyway. I won’t keep it, though. Yeah, I had fun reading it, but I’ll bring it back to the lending library (the post office) where I picked it up in the first place. Take it when you see it on the shelf. One piece of advice: next time you go fishing without a license, watch out! There might be a complete team of Fish and Game superheroes behind the next bush!
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