“Doing Hard Time” by Stuart Woods – The Power of Shadows

With Doing Hard Time Stuart Woods returns to us once again with a short Stone Barrington story, and to be frank, due to its length I can only very tentatively refer to it as a novel.

In any case, we are following Stone Barrington once again, this time as he tries to catch a bit of a vacation from the rat race his life has turned to while in New York City. Of course, in such stories vacations never pan out as expected, and such is the case here as an old and supposedly resolved case resurfaces with many questions needing to be answered.

Somewhat tentatively, Barrington gets embroiled in the whole affair, and learns that things aren’t as simple as they appear to be as there are many puppeteers sitting behind the scenes and pulling the strings of common men. To overcome this kind of enemy, Barrington needs to make a friend of his own, one who can glide the shadows above the law and below suspicion.

To start things off, I believe that the author was successful, at least in what he set out to accomplish with this book. From my personal understanding, it was meant to be a short and purely entertaining novel, one that doesn’t stop to smell the flowers and frantically drags you from the beginning to the end.

I have to admit, there is a certain charm to this kind of thrill, especially seeing as how it allows you to experience the events and the story itself without having to worry about deeper implications.

Reading this book was a bit akin to watching a cookie-cutter Hollywood movie in the sense that we, the audience, aren’t really expected or required to make an effort and turn the experience into something greater than what it presents itself as.

With this being mindless entertainment at its best, don’t expect much in terms of literary techniques, style or a jaw-dropping story. It may be a bit sad to say, but it feels like Woods phoned it in on this one, creating something very simple and sup-bar from what we are used to.

The language is extremely simple and elementary, with there always being a feeling that the author wanted to make each sentence as short and economic as possible. The story itself also has its weak links, with Woods making use of more unlikely coincidences than most people would like in order to advance things.

With everything being said and done, I have to say that even though this book is below what Stuart Woods is capable of delivering and has its fair share of flaws, it does succeed at being mindless entertainment, at least for the very short while it lasts you.

If what you are looking for is a simple detective story to keep you occupied for the near future, Doing Hard Time should be worth your consideration.

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Stuart Woods Personal site Stuart Woods is an American novelist who began his career after serving in the military, publishing his first book, Blue Water, Green Skipper in 1977. Much of his books draw from his experiences as a sailor, being centered around the sea and its many perils.