2-3-4 Challenge Book Discussions #2 discussion

Sam walks into a convenience store and finds herself embroiled in a robbery. She takes the gunman down but not before he wallops her in the face with his gun. The whole situation was recorded on video and, of course, it aired everywhere and went viral. Your thoughts about how she handled the robbery? How did it effect her image? Should she have been more forthcoming with Nick about the severity of her injuries or did she handle it appropriately at the time?

I always think Sam needs to be more forthcoming with Nick. That said, She did a good job handling the robber and saving everyone in the store.

The video does wonders for her popularity and Nick's.

Sam handled the robber the way any trained police officer would have. The video only enhanced her image as a badass. The injury Sam suffered wasn't life threatening, but she should have been more forthcoming with Nick about how bad it looked.

Again, this is straight out of "In Death" - Force needs to stop this and develop her characters without borrowing from Robb.

As to the robbery, yes, Sam handled it well and it only enhanced her image with the public.

Like Sharon and Anita, I think she should have been more forthcoming, but she is getting better in this area.

I agree Lauren. Force needs to get some original ideas. It is a little frustrating.

I thought she handled the robbery in sync with her training and Sam was pretty impressive. This time, I gave her a pass on minimizing the injury with Nick because she knew he had important hearings on the Hill. It was more about him than her, especially because she would have preferred he be there.

Sharon wrote: "I agree Lauren. Force needs to get some original ideas. It is a little frustrating."
As a dedicated reader of the In Death series, I, too, see the similarity
of the robbery incident, but I hesitate to accuse Force of stealing the idea. It seems likely that in the course of any active cop's career in a big city they are fairly likely to walk in on a similar situation. It made a good story and I enjoyed it.

Judy, I see where your coming from, but there are too many similarities between Eve and Sam. I read a lot of mysteries with women cops, and the themes often appear in the books. However, this is the first time the events jump out at me. The similarities are front loaded in Fatal series.

Judy wrote: "I hesitate to accuse Force of stealing the idea."

I agree Judy. I am not accusing Force of stealing the idea either. There are many books with this type of female detective and robbery scenes.

That said, there are too many similarities between the two series and one gets the impression that Force is borrowing too much. Moreover, she is not as good at characterization or plotting as Robb and the repeated borrowing results, at least for me, in Force coming off worse from the comparison.