Hard to please

Hard to please, that's me. Just as I finished complaining that we don't get enough kick-ass heroines, I pick up Janet Evanovich's "Metro Girl". I enjoy (in a mindless way) Janet's Stephanie Plum series, but the main reason I picked up "Metro Girl" was because it was about scuba diving. (Or so I thought. As it turned out, the first scuba dive was outside the narration and the second one took less than a minute and the diver was anchored to a helicopter.)

So anyway, the heroine seems everything I'd requested: she can repair car and boat engines, she goes on rescue missions to get her younger brother out of trouble, she knows how to fist fight and she uses men as eye candy. Despite all that, she's still not the role model I had in mind for modern female readers. She's street-smart but not intelligent. Is intelligence too much to ask for? When has it gone out of fashion?

The book itself holds no tension despite its high stakes: 16 million dollars' worth of gold bars and a bomb that can kill free civilisation. The heroine's life is in constant danger, yet I've had no trouble putting the book down whenever my attention was required elsewhere.

The book is not all bad. I did finish it, after all.