Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. A Shot in the Dark is an emotionally powerful romance novel about two people finding love after struggling with addiction--ultimately discovering what it means to be completely and unapologetically themselves. Each chapter left me more and more angry at what had happened to me and more and more informed for the first time about this dangerous vaccine. The book is fair and critical of the medical community and its research and accounts are sound and vivid. The authors themselves know of what they write and have made life work out of tragedy saving countless others from the same fate. An excellent look at the vaccine industry from the beginning; the inherent dangers of the DTP vaccine (the whole cell version given prior to the current acellular DTaP); and how the denial of vaccine injury, which began with the first administered vaccines in the 40s, hasn't changed much in nearly 80 years. Doctors still stubbornly and desperately cling to the safety and efficacy of vaccines, though their dangers have been well documented for nearly 8 decades. This book contains many personal stories from parents who trusted their physicians, vaccinated their child...sometimes multiple times despite serious reactions...simply because their doctor told them it was "normal."

The companies that manufacture vaccinations are making millions of dollars per year. When a child has a permanently debilitating reaction to a vaccine, the manufacturer is not even held financially responsible - the government uses our tax dollars to compensate families through an official program called the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Would this program even exist if it weren't obvious that vaccines DO cause damage in some instances? This is a typical follow up question after negative findings – perhaps the effect (whether good or bad) exists only in a subpopulation and therefore was statistically missed by studies of the general population. This is a common question that can be applied to any negative study, and therefore is a fairly generic alternate hypothesis, which most of the time turns out to be false.I'm so thankful for the chance to read this early, because this was truly one of my most anticipated releases of the year. And it's an immediate new favourite for me, because this was such a fantastic read. Truss has a lot of fun at the expense of conceited but idiotic policemen, pretentious and narcissistic theatre folk and so on, and I enjoyed the first half of the book a lot. However, it did begin to pall a bit; the plot moves slowly and rather predictably and the comedy is so broad-brush that it lost its appeal rather. Inspector Steine's colossal idiocy and vanity became just annoying and the rest of the developments weren't funny enough to maintain the book. I know that it is intentionally absurdly pantomimic and a parody of old-fashioned police dramas, but even Lynn Truss couldn't keep it going for me.

This is the first of a proposed crime series, set in Brighton. We begin in 1951, with the ‘Middle Street Massacre,’ where Inspector Steine (pronounced ‘Steen’) believes he has wiped out crime in the town, when two major gangs manage to wipe each other out. He has rather lived off this event, which was made into a film and we meet up with him, six years later, enjoying a pleasant and delusional existence as a minor celebrity. As a person with addiction issues who knows other people with addiction issues, I can say that of course we are all different. So while some may find Ely and Wyatt’s experience with addiction relatable, it didn’t quite ring true for me, like the author was going through the motions of what she thinks these characters would feel without totally understanding how addiction works. I was also put off by how heavily AA and NA (and, by extension, the language common to those organizations) were featured in this book. While these organizations have worked for thousands, they are not the only path to recovery and sometimes not even the best path to recovery, and I am wary of media that implies that it is. A Horror Story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 I think what truly made me fall for Ely and Wyatt as characters but also as a couple, is the exploration of their own identities and their art. They share the common thread of substance abuse and photography, but their journeys before that, Ely growing up in Orthodox Judaism, and Wyatt as a trans man (seriously, the way transness is looked at/explored in this book alone makes it worth it), are so interesting and given so much depth. A SHOT IN THE DARK is as much a character exploration as it is a romance, and it’s such a stronger romance for it. Even the tropier elements are given depth, though sometimes they are just funny. And Victoria Lee is officially on my list of favorite author's who write about gender and sexuality. There is a constant discussion in the community about who "has the right" to tell certain stories. And while I 100% believe that authors can write outside their own experiences, there is something extra special about reading own voices experiences.

Recommended

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Diffusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 note that i've marked this as sapphic because ely, our main character, is pansexual. the romance is m/f) There clearly is an increased risk of a convulsion after diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis immunization but no evidence that this produces brain injury or is a forerunner of epilepsy. Studies have also not linked immunization with either sudden infant death syndrome or infantile spasms.