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The misadventures of the Hardly Boys and Nancy Clueless continues in the next four chapters as the quartet works with Det. Tom Fogarty to set up a sting to ensnare LeRoy. Again, never have I so longed for Bruce Barnes and his incredibly wrong-headed theology.
Also, Fogarty has to be the worst cop ever, if he needs a bunch of kids to help him set up a sting. I haven't seen police work this shoddy since Sergeant Johnson relied on a group of thirteen-year-old girls to catch criminals for him. Not to mention, again why is busy playing cop with a bunch of teenagers when ever kid in the state has disappeared?
So anyway, Judd is spying on LeRoy who is, stupidly enough, hanging around Lionel's house. I'm not sure who's dumber, Judd for playing secret agent man on some guy who's shown he's not afraid to kill anyone who gets in his way, or LeRoy for continuing to hang around the house that belongs to the nephew of the guy he killed. I might put up a poll on this: Who's dumber? Fogarty or Judd or LeRoy
Ryan briefly reflects on his parents and apparently being converted results in your conscience being sucked out of its socket because he has no problem with the fact that his parents are in Hell.
He put out of his mind the fact that his parents had not been Christians and that unless something very strange and very quick had happened before they died, it was likely they weren't in heaven now.
[long passage of me screaming obscenities about the sheer wrong of this passage.]
Basically what happens next is LeRoy and his partners in crime are arrested and the cops and the kids hang out and talk about the disappearances and one of them seems to make the connection that only RTCs disapppeared.
But anyway, Fogarty asks this question which sets us up for some wrong-headed theology next chapter.
"You brought this up, kid. What's your take on the vanishings? What do you make of it?"
5 comments:
For that matter, is LeRoy really the post important person the cops could be trying to catch right now?
Exactly. There's a reason the adventures of the Hardly Boys and Nancy Clueless feel completely out of place here. It's like if Hercule Poirot was going through the motions of one of his investigations aboard a ship, searching rooms and interviewing suspects, only the ship is the Titanic and it's sinking, as Fred would put it.
It's like LaHaye is torn between:
o (trying, and failing miserably) depicting a scrappy bunch of kids who were just not good enough, and struggling to survive the Tribulation, and
o trying to scare kids straight into saying the Magic Words now before the Tribulation starts.
He can't do the first without, well, making the Tribulation Not All That Bad. And he can't do the second thing without making a book that would make Clive Barker gape in horror. It's either the ultimate expression of human suffering, or... it's not.
So Left Behind: The Kids really fails from he get-go. You can't make the Tribulation into family-friendly "edutainment."
Hm. It seems to me that it would actually be possible to depict kids in an increasingly horrible environment... but it would be a book that LaHaye and his ilk would regard as unsuitable for children.
(The need to put over the idea that being Raptured is better than converting later and then dying - go to the back of the bus! - is another constraint on story-telling technique...)
True. I imagine part of the problem is that LaHaye and Jenkins just are not up to the task of presenting the Rapture and the situation of the people who have been raptured in a good, not-corny, light. I suspect that would be difficult; I get a horrible image of people in white robes pointing at the Earth, and a good chunk of them laughing rather nastily.
Ah, I realize now why he can't do that. I am reminded -- ironically by the name of a band -- of the saints who are 'avenged sevenfold.' Can't really show them as saints when they're up there in Heaven, comfortable and at ease, and calling for the blood of the living. Except I can picture LaHaye being one of those who call out to God to avenge them 'sevenfold.'
Eugh. I think I just made myself a little ill.
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