Book Review: Henry Wood Detective Agency: Perception (Book 3)

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Book 3 in the Henry Wood serial and both Mr Meeks and the character are maturing into their stride.  I enjoyed the first two books, I did, as evidenced from my previous reviews but this one, to use a Henry Woodism, (or as I imagine he would say) Mr Meeks has just, "knocked it out of the ballpark", he really has.

I have been watching, on and off, another one of those American TV imports recently, not an avid watcher, but tune in now an again to The Americans which is set in the 50's and 60's and has Russian spies embedded in US Society.  Last week and I wasn't paying too much attention to it but I think part of the story was about the Russians trying to get their hands on US naval submarine technology as the US were making vast strides in improving the quality of their 'pipes' and what not, allowing their submarines to go even deeper than they could at that time and of course the Russians were desperate to get their hands on this material and of course the plans......

Well, switch off the telly folks and turn to Mr Meeks cos, he tells it a whole lot better, did the script writers get a hold of  Henry Woods Perception or were they just looking at the same historical info at the same time and did a poorer job of retelling it, you decide but my money is on Mr Meeks being a better story teller.

Celine is now firmly embedded as Henry's boss, I mean secretary but is soon demoted from boss, I mean secretary when Mr Buttons turns up and takes over as head of the office.

Big Mike of the NYPD has been promoted to detective and Bobby, well he is still a bit of an anachronism, although we do learn one of his little secrets.

Francis is still a food critic and now wants to write a novel, don't we all .....

Lawrence, one of the kids from the last book is back and it looks like Henry may be getting a new sidekick .....

And Luna is still enticing Henry with goodies from the bakery, he'll need to watch his waistline in future episodes ........

The cupboard in the basement continues to spill out 'clues' from the future, in this outing a DVD and a CD,  both of Billy Joel from the 70's, but we are no nearer to discovering the provenance of this contraption, how Henry came by it, where it came from or from whom, I suspect Bobby has something to do with it but Mr Meeks is keeping us guessing and as usual the clues are pretty abstract and thank goodness Henry gets there in the end because I never figure them out on my own .....

Anyways,  Henry is engaged by the personal secretary of Daniel Kupton who has recently thrown himself out of a window of the Woolworth Building.  Amy Silverton doesn't believe that it was suicide, he had a wife, he had a mistress and the fortunes of the family business had been turned around and was again making money and would make even more through being awarded a new Naval contract.......

Henry takes the job and the cold war intrigue really begins, we even get to sit in on a meeting with Nikita Khrushchev and the chairman of the KGB, Alexander Shelepin.  The CIA are operating on US soil, oops and the FBI are sniffing around, bodies are piling up and Henry is racing to save not only himself but those close to him, who is gonna kill him first, the CIA or the KGB ......

Perception turned a corner for Mr Meeks, his writing has improved tremendously and the dialogue is much crisper although a few more contractions wouldn't go amiss and he still needs just a tiny bit little more work on editing, but nothing too much to complain about and  character development is excellent, can't wait for number 4 in the series now .....

Editing for Kindle: 4 out 5
Reading Enjoyment: 5 out of 5
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5
Chapters: 90
Page length: 283