Dr Rick

Peanuts gang in High School?

Reviewed: 04-17-25

Fanciful set of teenagers interacting with unreal motivations and actions with minimal adult involvement.

Consider if psychopath Linus loses his security blanket and disavows Great Pumpkin in favor of a modern influencer. Who knows how the Peanuts gang would act as adolescents in the modern era?
Im reaching for an analogy to explain the unrealistic actions of these immature characters in a cartoonish unartful world. It’s a story by the Anti-Schulz.

Ultimately I could not finish. I’m not sure how anyone could care about any of the characters

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Like the “moth joke” by Norm McDonald

Reviewed: 03-29-25

PG likes to tell a short story in a long way. A procedural with interfering politics. He repeatedly threatens melodrama then backs off just a bit. He never threatens concision.

Youtube Norm McDonald’s “moth joke” on Conan or similar talk shows—colorful and pointless embellishment precedes a goofy punchline. (Sadly no punchline here)

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All 4 parts are available, fast paced

Reviewed: 03-15-25

British actors speak rapidly, sometimes over-emotive and not always distinguishable. Credible sound effects. Mild music. Monophonic. Elfin singing is drab. (But) Overall it’s excellent!

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Dr Em is under qualified to practice in America

Reviewed: 03-08-25

Dr Em repeatedly and consistently indicates a lack of medical judgement or vocabulary. A last-of-class MD with no residency training does seem like the author’s intention. Backstory is thin. (It’s a good fallback for MDs to be the doc-in-a-box at a lonely ER where they are so desperate to get any doctor that residency training is not necessary.)

Escape to foreign lands is a good idea. Finding an assistant that can do your work is likewise a great move.
Dr Em is magic with lab tests tho—can’t imagine how she does her chemical analysis with no equipment.

It’s a clever irony that Dr Em thinks she can hide her incompetence in a rural country but then finds herself as coroner too! There’s also a natural comparison to Dr Watson who narrated Sherlock Holmes while personally blundering in his medical practice.
The biggest thematic surprise is how Dr Em’s friends and community rally around and defend her. Within 3 months, she has been accepted as one of their own!

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Australians are crazy

Reviewed: 03-07-25

The mother narrates most of the tale and she is crazy besides hard-to-hear obnoxious and a bad person. The prologue action description does not make sense but it’s a loose end that’s tied up later.
Chapter 10 is approximately where action begins (go fast before that and you will not miss clues).

Son Samuel seems the lone rational main character but we might even question that at the end. Which is more important: compliance with a legal system or loyalty to family?

The 5 star reviews are not wrong but (as usual) you must allow for unlikely character behaviors and author deceit for the plot to work. Though there is “depth”, likeablility or humor or entertainment value is missing for at least the first 3 hours

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Volume 3 of best ever storytelling

Reviewed: 02-21-25

How many times have I read or heard Herriot’s books over 4 decades? My all time favorites. If only Twain or Dickens could have written as well…
I have a special feeling for many chapters and cry or laugh a lot.

Chap 12 is separately special because animal and human medicine coincide. The diagnosis is often an epiphany and an epipen or equivalent is miraculous. (Primatine Mist or generic epinephrine inhaler works even better and is an excellent first aid kit component)

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Death of a Series

Reviewed: 02-19-25

It’s not the same. RWG inherited characters, location and culture but not the charm, humor or warmth that MCB infused in the 30+ years of storytelling. The 3-4 posthumous books are a decent homage but lack the quirkiness that made Hamish and friends worth hearing about since 1985. This is a “police procedural” with no twists. Attempted thrills or action scenes are incomprehensibly enacted. (Anxiety and excitement are there but the action is not physically realistic).

I suppose there is some nostalgia for days gone by as the technology is early 2000s with flip phones (?) only and no CSI, forensics or location tracking available. Security cameras seem uninvented.
Hamish is in a new 2 story station without chickens or sheep; he has armoured clothes but no gun or taser nor updated backup procedures. The Halburton-Smythe father and daughter are strange caricatures of their former selves. But (after so very many years of disappointment) Hamish has a promising ongoing relationship (with paramedic Clare)!

We do casually meet most familiar townsfolk and the summer beauty of NW Scotland is appreciable. (But) the story is formulaic and linear. The cop buddies theme is repeated.

I think the narration was terrible.
I love a Scot accent on BBC4, and whenever, and don’t understand why a Scotsman can’t narrate a book set in Scotland (?). Why is Hamish presented as elderly and English?

It’s a new series. The characters we hear about are not necessarily the same people we thought we knew. Unless RWG attains a sense of humor and charm, they will be stuck in prosaic formulaic activities without escape.

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2 people found this helpful

Story seems compromised

Reviewed: 02-06-25

Talented telling of a confused tale.
Versus prior Housemaid stories, this is more cliched and less coherent. It re-uses some vulgar villainy that has been done ad nauseam lately and I wish she invented something different.

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Story of hemi-neglect well told

Reviewed: 02-05-25

Thanks again Freida for reminding me of patients and people. Hemi-neglect is crazy fascinating. Your dextro-girl character is perfect. Nobody weaves a better tale.
(Caveat: the story is tinged with misandrism and a bit driven by the me-too-ism fad. It’s sad. Women authors seem to shame men as a part of every book.)

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Strong sense of apprehension

Reviewed: 01-23-25

Subtitle and Foreshadowing: Girls are daft and 4 people die. First-person account of theatre employees trapped with a killer.
We’re kept on the edge of our seats by the author’s constant reports (over 200) of her dysautonomia and her personality disorder. That was overdone. Otherwise it rivalled any good slasher flick.
It’s also hard to understand why running away was their only recourse. No other self-defense. No one ever even looked for a weapon!? No one… don’t want to further spoil but their semi-intentional self victimisation was also a detraction.

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