Bubbles All the Way [Hardcover]

It had been over a year since I'd last read a Bubbles book, and clearly my memory sucked. Lucky for readers, throughout this novel there are references to earlier novels in the series, so you'll be caught up. Apparently, in the previous novel, BUBBLES BETROTHED, hairdresser/journalist Bubbles Yablonsky's daughter Jane had been kidnapped. Now Jane's undergone a personality transformation, scared to be left alone, and screwed up to the point that seemingly the only way she could improve is for her parents - Bubbles and the skeevy Dan `Chip' Ritter - to remarry. The author's acknowledgment page mentions a `hellish year': I don't know the details, but for a supposedly humorous novel, the tone is rather dour - Bubbles has problems big-time. The main worry is that a woman in the salon Bubbles works at part-time dies from hair extensions with mistaken latex glue. Bubbles's boss at the newspaper doesn't want her investigating, but of course she does. The novel was actually quite interesting, until I came to the final chapter. In the acknowledgments, the author mentions a `radical twist', and indeed it is. But it is also extremely unlikely. Now, when Karin Slaughter pulled a radical twist in SKIN PRIVILEGE (published in the U.S. as BEYOND REACH), she put a super-secret letter on her website to explain things to readers. Ms Strohmeyer didn't leave a note with a secret URL, so I'll have to do some investigating. But the final chapter aside, this novel is actually a pretty good read: even if you do want to knock some sense into the characters.

I bought this book as a light read. It was a light read but I was expecting more from an author who has a popular series published. This is the only Bubbles book I have read, so maybe I would have liked it more if I had read the earlier ones in the series.

Anyway, I thought the story throughout was weakly written. It went over and over the same points in the same way, adding little or no additional information each time topics like Jane's kidnapping and Bubble's upcoming wedding were mentioned. Potential clues as to who was responsible for the murder were scattered throughout but then the end didn't rely on them and was just completely uninteresting. It feels as if the author was told to keep to a certain number of pages and waxed lyrical for the first 90%, then had to tie it all together at the last minute. Also, there are a number of editorial mistakes in my copy. There is one chapter towards the end where a number of the names are wrong, also the name of the murdered lady in the book doesn't match the name used for her on the back cover blurb.

I wouldn't bother with this book unless you are already a fan of Bubbles and want to find out the real truth about her.

On the day (in 2007) that I write this, the composite Amazon US ratings for Ms. Strohmeyer's published books about Lehigh, Pennsylvania, beautician and news reporter Bubbles Yablonsky are as follows:
"Bubbles Unbound" - 4 stars
"Bubbles in Trouble" - 4 stars
"Bubbles Ablaze" - 4.5 stars
"Bubbles A Broad" - 4.5 stars
"Bubbles Betrothed" - 4.5 stars
"Bubbles All the Way" - 3 stars

The drop in rating for this, Bubbles' most recent outing, is actually greater than the collapse from 4.5 to 3 stars. Some reviewers are abandoning the series entirely. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they are lashing out in pain because they believe the series has abandoned them.

The causes of all this shock and dismay are to be found in Chapter Thirty-nine of "Bubbles All the Way," which begins on the 334th page of this 341-page paperback book. I think that if the book had stopped short at the final words of Chapter Thirty-eight, reviewers might either have grumbled about loose ends left dangling in the cliffhanger ending or, on the other hand, looked forward with delightedly anxious anticipation to the next book in the series. One way or the other, the composite rating of this book would have been at least 4 stars.

That is, 97.65% of this book would almost certainly have received 4 stars or better. All the dismay, hand-wringing, lamentations, denunciations, general rending of garments and thundered accusations of jumping the shark arise out of the remaining 2.35% of the text.

I have never found better evidence in support of my pet theory that what the fans of a series want is more of precisely, exactly what they had found before. And what they hate most is any change in the winning formula--even if the change be small as 2.35%.

Up to the last word on page 333, this is a Bubbles Yablonsky book that is just like all the previous Bubbles Yablonsky books. If you liked Bubbles in the past, you will certainly like her up to page 333. If you are the sort that cannot abide even the most trifling change without suffering literary hives, don't read Chapter Thirty-nine. If, however you are bold of spirit and rejoice in reckless adventuring, go ahead, explore the dangerous depths of those final, fatal pages at your own risk.

You might discover them to contain an unexpected and amusing twist.

Very well, you say, the unforgivable sins of this novel may only occupy 2.35% of its length, but what of it? It is not their quantity that is relevant, but their quality. Strohmeyer has defied the sacred compact between a mystery writer and her readers, committed the sin more unforgivable than tossing Holmes over the Reichenbach Falls, defied the collective deductions of her myriad amateur-sleuth fans by dumping in a major plot twist without laying a subtle trail of clues or, indeed, any form of foreshadowing at all: SHE HAS BEEN ARBITRARY!

And yes, I reply. She has been just as outrageously arbitrary as Agatha Christie was with that preposterously improbable, maliciously devised ... impossible to predict ... fiendishly clever ... inevitable solution to "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd." All right, all right, I exaggerate. Strohmeyer isn't Christie and Bubbles assuredly isn't Poirot. (Her little grey cells are permanently blocked from the world by all that big hair.)

But has there really been no foreshadowing of the shockingly arbitrary ending anywhere in the five previous books or in the first 333 pages of this one? When I turn from the surprising state of affairs at page 341 and look back toward the beginning of the series, it strikes me that a major character has always behaved rather oddly, but in a way that now appears strikingly consistent with this ending. And do not certain phrases occasionally used to describe another character, words that were amusing or even childish at the time, now seem heavily burdened with significance?

My inclination is to follow in the footsteps of past reviewers and award 4.5 stars to 97.65% of "Bubbles All the Way." That comes to 4.39 stars. I'll round down to 4 stars.

SUGGESTED FURTHER STUDY:
Those who still strain mightily at the gnat introduced in Chapter Thirty-nine of "Bubbles All the Way," might find it informative to look up well-known science fiction author-critic-editor Algis Budrys (b. 1931). He appears to be a real-world cousin to some residents of Bubbles' world, quite a close one, as a matter of fact.