Chapter By Chapter> Op-Center: Mirror Image chapters 4 & 5

Chapter by Chapter features me reading one chapter (or possibly multiple chapter for this one) of the selected book at the time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as read-along book club.

Last time we checked in with our “friends” at Op-Center, and not only are we doing the evil twin story way too early, but they’re taking the competent member of the team out of the loop. Too bad he’s also the one in charge.

Speaking of too early, I was expecting this, but not this soon. After the first novel I knew we’d have chapters so short that they had to be read with other chapters. We have reached that at chapter four, lasting two pages, while chapter five is five. Chapter six is also five pages, but we’ll barely count that as a chapter. That’s the problem when every chapter is a scene and there isn’t much to go over in a scene. Again, I really hope some of you authors out there go over your thought process when it comes to choosing chapter breaks in your novel. I make comics, so it’s not currently an issue with me, though one story idea I have would make a better novel series than a comic. I just wonder if I’m being too harsh or if these books really do have a hard time getting chapter breaks right.

Our longer chapter is in Russia, while the short one is in Brighton Beach. I’m not sure which Brighton Beach because I don’t read the chapters before writing the intros. It keeps things authentic when I have questions going in. All I know is we won’t be seeing the regular cast, and that’s usually a good thing according to the last book. With that, let’s dive in and see what’s going on.

Chapter 4: Saturday, 2 PM, Brighton Beach

I wasn’t expecting a lot to happen in two pages, but at least it’s presumably important. We have a KGB operation being run out of a bagel shop in New York. Apparently there’s also a Brighton Beach in England, which is why I wasn’t sure. One of the workers is sent on a “special order”. We don’t know what he’s going to do, but they aren’t planning on him getting caught. Just kill a dude and go back to making bagels. Just as this book gave us comic books saving the world, they give us a bagel shop trying to ruin it. My apologies to you bagel lovers out there. At least it wasn’t a pretzel shop. Then I’d be sad.

Now I want a pretzel.

Chapter 5: Sunday, 12 PM, St. Petersburg

Okay, I did a check. If it’s 2 PM in New York, it’s 9 PM in St. Petersburg. So this isn’t taking place at the tame time. I didn’t know if time looped to the next day by story events or time zones. Apparently it’s the former or this would still be Saturday.

Anyhow, our probably more interesting agent for the story, Keith Fields-Hutton, has made his way to the museum and with a simple cellphone (this novel came out in 1995 so it’s not a smartphone) one of the other agents found evidence of broadcasting equipment. While Fields-Hutton finds a door leading to the future television broadcast so that the Hermitage can show children how great the museum is (museums on YouTube today do that), he has a suspicion that it’s something else. We know he’s right, but he doesn’t know about Commie Op-Center yet.

Then we get some James Bond tech, though not as cool. It’s a peso coin, which doesn’t matter in Russia, that’s really an eavesdropping device, and his Walkman CD player is also a way to get info out to his superiors. At first I thought a lot of the flavor text was going to be just that, but it ended up mattering as Fields-Hutton noted that Catharine The Great ordered no weapons or ranks in the museum, and now Commie Op-Center has violated both rules. Support Mother Russia but not the mothers of Russia, I guess.

This was a good set of chapters, though they don’t necessarily connect. The next chapter is actually going to take place almost an hour after the last one and in the same place, but it’s a relatively full length chapter. We’ll see if Fields-Hutton gets anything for his coin next time.