My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
Doctor Nye by Joseph C Lincoln C+
All of Joe Lincoln's stories are set on a slightly fictionalized Cape Cod, from about 1870's to the 1920's, and in doing so, chronicling the changes in Cape Cod, from a backwater fishing and cranberry growing region, to a summer resort of wealthy people. From horse drawn carriages and rutted roads to motor cars and rutted roads. His stories are filled with colorful characters, with plenty of local dialect tossed in. This story dates from 1923, somewhat late in his writing career, and perhaps as a result, is a more serious/melodramatic book than some of his earlier work. Well, sort of. Many of them have serious themes, though I seem to remember them to be a little more lighthearted than this story.
This is the story of the title character, Doctor Nye who returns as a black sheep to his Cape Cod hometown. Ten years previously he was just out of his medical internship and married a local girl, a girl who had some issues, including spending a lot of money. He was the treasurer of a congregation that was building a new church on a budget of $10,000, when it was discovered that he seemingly wrote and cashed a check for $7,000 on that account. He could not - or would not - account for the money. At this same time his wife was dying. He was charged, tried, found guilty, and sent to jail for five years. After his release he spent World War One in France as a doctor, before deciding to return to his home town and set up a practice, perhaps to eventually clear his name. He is shunned by most of the population except the "Portygees" i.e. Portuguese-Americans who where poor and looked down on by the rest of the community. (Someone always has to be looked down upon.) The story of Doc Nye's trials as a jailbird winds its way over the course of the long story, 423 pages to its inevitable happy ending.
Grading books on a reread is somewhat iffy, in that they are at least vaguely familiar. I knew the premise, and the resolution, going into this one, but little else. As I said above, this one rather lacked the humor and charm of some of his earlier stories, and laid the melodrama on rather heavily for my taste, hence the somewhat low score for this Joe Lincoln installment. Still, I have 21 Joe Lincoln books in my library because I always enjoy his stories, as light and entertaining yarns. He was a popular writer in his day, and as long as you judge his work by the tastes of the day, they are great entertainment. I just wouldn't start here.
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