The Short Drop : ****

Finally, I gave in and got myself the Kindle Unlimited membership, which is 10$ per month (even though it says $9.99…. I hated those .99 numbers anyways and would rather round it off to the nearest number). And the first book I started was ‘The Short Drop‘ by Matthew FitzSimmons.

It is a Mystery Thriller, which is my most favorite genre, so there wasn’t any other choice. I was going through some Linda Howard’s novels before picking this up. When I have less time to spend for my reading, but read I do every day irrespective of whatever the pressure is, I always choose romance or romantic suspense which is easy on my mind. But I have to read a thriller for every two romance I read. And trust me, this one kept me on the edge of my seat almost close to falling down from my sofa.

No spoiler alert, so you can rest easy. Instead of me trying to write a blurb for that story, let me copy paste the one from Goodreads, for purpose of making it easy on every one.

A decade ago, fourteen-year-old Suzanne Lombard, the daughter of Benjamin Lombard—then a senator, now a powerful vice president running for the presidency—disappeared in the most sensational missing-person case in the nation’s history. Still unsolved, the mystery remains a national obsession.

For legendary hacker and marine Gibson Vaughn, the case is personal—Suzanne Lombard had been like a sister to him. On the tenth anniversary of her disappearance, the former head of Benjamin Lombard’s security asks for Gibson’s help in a covert investigation of the case, with new evidence in hand.

Haunted by tragic memories, he jumps at the chance to uncover what happened all those years ago. Using his military and technical prowess, he soon discovers multiple conspiracies surrounding the Lombard family—and he encounters powerful, ruthless political players who will do anything to silence him and his team. With new information surfacing that could threaten Lombard’s bid for the presidency, Gibson must stay one step ahead as he navigates a dangerous web to get to the truth.

I gave this one 4 stars, why ? because I almost guessed the culprit in the second part. But that doesn’t mean, the one I suspected was the actual culprit, even though in part that person sure was. Its a little complicated than that. I am not a big fan of political drama. Politics bores me in any form, be it news, fiction….doesn’t matter. But I did find this one to be gripping and wanted to uncover the truth just as much as Gibson Vaughn did. It was not about getting justice but it was about finding the truth aboout the missing girl and why. Like they say in the book,

“Never leave accounts unsettled.”
― Matthew FitzSimmons, The Short Drop

Wondering about those likes ?

Most of you who follow OM and/or Linda might know what happened with the recent changes in the ToS of WordPress and the result of the recent automatic limitations on the follows and comments. In lieu with that, here are a few more things I found out and didn’t actually bother about it much. But then thought that it might help someone understand.

a) The Weekly Photography Challenge hosted by the DailyPost of WordPress garners almost thousands of entries. So if you really spend an hour or two going through them and liking the photographs, you might fail to notice that after your 100 or 108 th like of a post(I don’t have the exact count, but it was definitely between these two when I counted last) the rest of your likes don’t get registered. That means for a day you have a limit on the number of posts you like. I did notice this a couple of weeks ago , because I spend my Sunday’s mostly checking the results of the WPC. So make sure you don’t go beyond 100 likes in a day.
b) You might also wonder sometimes how a blogger you were following suddenly has gone MIA and figure out that the blogger was there all along, it was just you who unfollowed the blogger, when in reality you haven’t. I haven’t figured out how or why this happens, but it did happen to me thrice and this isn’t a new thing. This issue has been there since last year. That is why I have started to add a couple of them in Bloglovin’ to have a record of the bloggers I really like and would like to follow so as to not miss them, even though I do check Bloglovin’ only a couple of days a week.
c) WP Reader has a Bloglovin’ kind of interface to categorize and follow blogs. They are called Lists. You can create as many lists and then add only those blogs you want to follow in that category. One disadvantage here is that this doesn’t actually do a ‘follow’ of the blog perse. At least I tried adding mine and did not get any notifications about a follow.

d) With the recent changes to the Notifications, even though they look good and all, some comments have gone missing from the notification list. I had to make sure to check my email or the Comments section to figure them out. The Comments section of the Dashboard is always the one source of truth for the comments. And while you are there, make sure to check for non-spam comments in the Spam section too. I had times when the comments get wrongly marked as spam from people who do comment from time to time and for no reason and I end up finding their comments much later.

That is all I have for now and will update it as and when I find some more.

There will still be things that machines cannot do. They will not produce great art or great literature or great philosophy; they will not be able to discover the secret springs of happiness in the human heart; they will know nothing of love and friendship. – Bertrand Russell