Review - Thin Ice by Alex Keena

Five students end up marooned in the middle of a frozen lake in the depths of winter after a car crash. With no phone signal and the weather worsening there seems no hope of rescue and less chance of getting off the lake alive.

Following a potentially interesting premise, I have to say I was hugely disappointed by this book. It proved to be by turns frustrating, bizarre and disjointed. The five characters who are trapped on the lake – Matt, Sam, Mya, Lisa and Essie –are fairly insubstantial beings. I couldn’t relate to or like any of them. All were irritating in their own way and not even worth describing.

One by one the students, unable to get off the lake because as soon as they move any distance from the car the ice cracks, thankfully die off in a variety of ways until about half way through when a mystery man appears. He manages to walk across the same ice no-one else could to rescue two survivors. In a couple of pages, the author wipes out the whole basis of the novel. But it’s not over yet because Thin Ice gets really odd once the pair are in hospital they’re attacked by one of the apparent dead.

The story then really goes off the bizarre scale when the one last survivor is suddenly at the man’s house who rescued them. No explanation why. Then she’s back in the hospital, then at a funeral, then in a mine being chased down by the rescuer, all with no understandable and believable transition between the locations. It’s as cheesy as ripe brie.

But there’s more. You may or may not remember the original Dallas series, when Bobby ‘dies’and a series later comes back from the dead? If not, look it up. Well, that’s what Thin Ice is all about…I suspect the author hoped this would be a major twist, unfortunately it was very obvious.

There were a couple of high points, such as the crash and when the car sinks into the lake with someone trapped inside, but they were pretty much it.

As to the mechanics of the tale. The author made many repeats of the same word(s) within the same sentence(s). This is something I find particularly annoying because basic editing will sort this issue out. For example:

“…in a few minutes, that will be frozen solid and you’ll be frozen along with it!” Matt looked down at the freezing liquid that now covered the ice.

Then there was the SHOUTING. Yes, lots of words and even whole sentences in capitals for emphasis. Ouch. Also a lot of dialogue was punctuated by … which is easy to over-use and the author slipped into this other bad habit quite readily.

Finally the overall writing style was clunky, it just didn’t flow well. For example:

Like he, himself, had been, Lisa was also suspended upside-down but, unlike him, she didn’t suddenly wake up.

Thin Ice just about crept over the two star line saved by the reasonable premise in the first half and a couple of heartbeat moments. But only JUST.

Rating? Two Stars

Would I add this to my bookshelf? No

Originally reviewed for Books & Pals blog.

Review - Magenta Opium by Sharon Baillie

Veronica Dempsey divides her time between disposing of a body and inventing a new form of opium in her loft.

Where to start with Magenta Opium? First, I absolutely hated it. The opening chapter was horribly confusing. My initial view was the author was attempting a Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night Time approach with Veronica – police come knocking at the door and this is explored in an intricate and bizarre fashion. In particular the words ‘door’ and ‘letterbox’ are used incredibly repetitively 24 times in a couple of pages.

Likewise with the door, although able to be a door at standard temperatures and pressures, its door-like qualities are not altogether independent of temperature. At 800 degrees (Celsius or Fahrenheit, choose your poison) the door would be a doorway plus mess. At -200 it would be a wall; immovable. This is precisely why the Inuits didn’t invent alloyed metals.

I really struggle with repetition. It can work, like in Catch-22, but the writing has to be skilful. Guess what? It’s not, this is way off the scale.

This repetitive approach is used continuously throughout the book. Routine is used 30 in 144 words as well – there are others. The author also tries a Vernon God Little approach using Veronica’s initials in a (very large) variety of words. There’s also a person called Smyth who often reminds us it’s spelt with a Y (yes the capital is deliberate) – even though I can read that for myself. This habit of repeating points already made is also often, erm repeated. I don’t know why.

The ‘story’centres on Veronica for some reason deciding to make a variant of

opium. Apparently, she’s a genius, but mad (hence the crazy prose, more of that shortly). After the door incident we learn that Veronica’s mother has been living in the loft, unknown to husband and daughter for over 8 years (yeah, right). Now for another example:

The motherfound woman, once a motherlost girl, and wifefound man, happy and pungent wifelost man the day before, were taken in for questioning.

This is because the presumed dead woman living in the loft has been selling counterfeit DVD’s and partaking in online porn. And the family didn’t know for over 8 years (yeah, right). Veronica’s mother ended up in the loft because she was going to run off with a man, but after a tryst she decides against it:

Fortunately for Jessica all he wanted was a go of her. Unfortunately for Jessica all he wanted was a go of her. Unfortunately for Jessica he wasn’t very good. But fortunately for Jessica he wasn’t very good.

The opium development leads to a death and then disposal of the body. The problem is if the focus was on this thread only the book would (mercifully) be only a few thousand words long. When the opium works Veronica says:

It worked. Did it work? What worked? It did. But did it? It did. What did it do? How did it work? Chemistry. Why did it work? Magic. It did work though, eh? It worked. Did it work? How? Chemistry. Why? Magic. Because. And then. Ha! It worked! Stone me! They might. It worked. It did. It did. It did.

There is even a chapter late in the book where the author describes activities such as‘ties were tied’, developments were developed’, ‘traffic light changed from green to amber to red…(and back again several times)’ – this goes on for page after page with the summation at the end: ‘In short, life in the world progressed for several weeks, unaware of the life of Veronica (where do we go from here?) Dempsey et al.’ I don’t know why.

There are also little footnotes explaining comments, films, and odd little made up words like interpium (internet opium, which was explained several times too). Here are a couple more of the writing examples I found so frustrating. Just a few of the many, many that I could have used:

The void that wasn’t really there that he paid a big-strapping-woman to fill was not filled with sex. Not in the classical word sex.

13 people liked this, 8 people commented but none of the comments commented that the status would have benefitted from a comma.

Sofia pulled Proctor down on top of her and kissed him. His rare cooked steak complimented her Pinot Grigio and their superstring section crescendoed together.

And perhaps my ‘favourite’:

”Let’s get a penguin as a wedding present. We’ll call him Frederick on Sundays and Freddie the rest of the week. I don’t mind if he can’t dance, we’ll still love him. Or her. She can be Freddie as well as and Fredericka on a Sunday. Every new couple should have a penguin. We’ll eat shrimp vol-au-vents and drink Chardonnay together and watch a flatscreen television and Freddie will hug me while you’re out at work.” They sealed the deal with some funky sex followed by dinner at Luigi and Maria’s house where they broke the good news.

It wasn’t just me, I kept reading excerpts out to my wife until she told me to go away. So I stayed up late to finish Magenta Opium otherwise I wouldn’t have slept thinking about the story. Although I’m sure the author saw the point of all this the last comment belongs to the prose:

The rambling woman was still confusing [her] though.

 

Rating? One Star

Would add this to my bookshelf? Erm, no...

Originally reviewed for Books & Pals blog.

Review - Chief Inspector Jewel Friedman by Jan Jacob Mekes

Chief Inspector Jewel Friedman solves five unsolvable cases…

This is the single worst crime / detective ‘book’ I have ever read. By a country mile or three. If the author was deliberately aiming at producing clueless characters, dreadful dialogue and meaningless short stories then Chief Inspector Jewel Friedman would get six out of five stars. In a note at the beginning, the author describes the book as light-hearted detective stories which sometimes feature pretty heavy subject matter – more on this later.

Where to start? There are so many issues to evaluate. Let’s begin with the ‘characters’.There’s Jewel herself. She’s a Chief Inspector but thought Detective Inspector‘sounded cooler’. She cannot relate to people (despite being a detective who needs to have this skill) and makes sense of the world by investigating juicy murders. Jewel drives a broken-down police car – i.e. one that would more than likely fail safety inspections and therefore be illegal. It’s okay though because she later gets a new car as a reward for solving her 50th case – apparently as a result of her colleagues monitoring Jewel’s twitter feed.

Her boss the Superintendent is wet and weak. He simpers over Jewel and allows her to do whatever she wishes. In fact every single character is a cardboard cutout caricature that I cannot believe would exist in the real world, never mind the police force.

The five stories themselves are utterly ridiculous. In the first Lord Ryebread (sigh) is found shot to death in a locked room. It turns out the killer was flying a balloon past at the time and took her revenge. She also happens to be the butler’s daughter (the butler almost did it). Jewel figures all this out by analyzing a voicemail message left by the killer.

Her brilliance doesn’t end there - Jewel uses a nanoparticle tracking device embedded in lipstick to track a suspect she panics into running after having kissed him. Each sends out a GPS signal to make it easier to do so…I am honestly not making this up.

In another, a body is found impaled on The Shard, a very tall building in London. This is how the perpetrators acted:

They killed him earlier, cut out a beam shaped hole and disposed of the body at the top of the tallest building in London, making it seem like a burglary gone wrong.

The dead man is a thief who uses a helicopter to access buildings… Jewel guesses, by seeing a poster, that the killers are a Russian rock band. She confronts the artists when they’re on stage by asking them to play a song titled Body on the Roof by Jimmy and the Jetsets. They act suspiciously, confess all, and are arrested. Just like that.

Another kills and eats people. He just happens to be a friend she meets at the beginning of the piece in Hawaii where she is luckily on holiday. He has a Japanese father too – think that has no relevance? Largely you’re right, other than it seems to give them the desire to eat uncooked flesh.

The dialogue is awful. For example:

Oh, I am so glad you are here! So glad! It’s all so terrible! So terrible!

The major flaw in the stories is there’s no opportunity for the reader to work out the solution for themselves. Each time Jewel goes from murder to answer in a single previously unseen leap. Jewel also makes several serious mistakes. In one case a parcel delivery guy is present at the scene (he actually reports the crime) who she lets go without questioning because he claims he’ll be late on his rounds. This guy tries to create a belief that the suspect is actually a contortionist who he delivered in a crate. I cannot imagine a key witness being released without being questioned. Or anyone falling for or trying on the contortionist angle.

The writing is awful. For example:

The scene Jewel struggled to describe was particularly bloody. On the floor lay the body of a man in a large pool of blood.

To the‘pretty heavy subject matter’. At the end of the first story it’s alluded to that Jewel had a bad upbringing because she has a cat she confides in:

…her father had shown her the care she herself had never got from her own father who had been an abusive alcoholic, how today’s society was way too focused on sex and way too little on love…

The other is child abuse in the final case ‘Sockpuppetry’. A doctor and his mistress, Juliana, are abusing children. Uncle Wellington is found dead and he’s accused of being a child molester. In fact it is the doctor himself and he thinks he’s found a foolproof way of avoiding detection:

The idea of giving Juliana pancreatic cancer was Dr Pryce’s. It would ensure the police got off their tails by spinning the old “what’s the use of persecuting when the criminal is as good as dead” yarn.

Utterly tasteless. I actually sat through this (thankfully short) tale with my mouth open. I suspect ‘persecuting’ should read ‘prosecuting’ too.

Onto Uncle Wellington:

“…any idea why he was called Uncle Wellington?

" …he bore a striking resemblance to the Duke of Wellington…and he always wore wellies…sometimes he would re-enact the battle of Waterloo.”

Ludicrous from beginning to end.

Awful writing, dialogue, characters, everything.

 

Rating? One Stars

Would add this to my bookshelf? Not A Hope!

Originally reviewed for Books & Pals blog.

Review - JusThis, Curt Rude

Charles ‘Badge’ Pullet is a policeman in the small town of Normal. All his life he’s wanted to be on the force and to wear the badge. But Badge has a problem, the Urge, which affects his judgement, drawing him into deeper predicaments even as he rises through the ranks.

The Urge impacts others around him, his wife, his Deputy, and the women he targets, among others. For a small town Normal has some large personalities from which nothing good can come.

This was a seriously disappointing novel, a strange mix of bland ‘thriller’, police procedure ,and trashy erotic novel, although I suspect the latter was unintended.

The Urge is Badge’s sexual proclivity, he cannot help himself when it comes to satisfying his needs. Unfortunately, the author seems to delight in various descriptions of Badge’s penis and what he does with it. JusThis goes through the motions of attempting to bring the issues resulting from Badge’s activities to a justifiable conclusion. Ultimately, it was a depressing end.

A comparatively minor example of Badge’s ‘conquest’ description:

If a woman’s husband didn’t understand her, Badge found out what she needed, then gave it to her–and she did the same for him. She’d get wide-eyed as his pants hit the floor and would spend a wonderful night wrestling with his trouser python, but once it was over, Badge lost interest. Once he had defiled her, the thrill was gone. He’d move on to another man’s bride.

Periodically there would be some description of actual police work, although it tended to be a particularly gruesome car smash or a brush with a troubled personality, some of which had succumbed to ‘Mr. Intoxication’ or ‘Mr. Mental Illness’.

The characters were distinctly unpleasant, I didn’t warm to a single one of them. They all had huge flaws that ultimately made them weak-chinned individuals that I just wanted to shout at, kick in the pants, or both.

There was virtually no dialogue, vast swathes of text was dominated by internalized thought or long descriptions meaning there was little real action until the culmination of the story in the final chapters. What dialogue there was tended to be bland. The following example is supposed to be a light-hearted joke directed at Badge (I imagine it spoken in a high-pitched, Marilyn Monroe like tone):

You’re really the first policeman I’ve ever spent time with. You must be brave to do what you do. I’ve been a good girl all my life, so it’s not like I’ve ever gotten a speeding ticket or been handcuffed.

Enough said, I think.

 

Originally reviewed for Books & Pals blog.

 

Rating? One Star

Would I add this to my bookshelf? No

 

Review - The Bastard's Handbook

The Bastard’s Handbook is a manual for men, basically how to be a better bastard towards your friends and women in general. It contains information on how to steal your best friend’s girl, favourite sexual positions, how to recognize different types of bastards, how to borrow money and never pay it back, and must have bastard accessories.

There’s really not much to say about The Bastard’s Handbook, either you’ll like the humour or you won’t. For example there is a section about dumping your girlfriend for someone better:

Wait for her to make the first move and then kiss her with false passion, holding back tears due to the fake raw emotion will only add to the effect. Then if the situation presents itself have your wicked way, remember there is nothing better than to prey on the emotionally needy.

This is a very mild quote in comparison to some of the suggestions.

There are chapters on quotes by famous bastards (e.g. Napoleon), bastard categories (like lucky, dirty etc.), how to get more sex, how to cheat on your partner, suitable music and books and careers as a bastard among others. It can get a bit repetitive. For example, there are 37 types of bastard plus another section called ‘Other Bastard terms’ where a further 12 are listed.

The dropped capital T in the above heading is as it is in the book. This was quite typical. The version I reviewed looked thrown together. There were large gaps between lines and paragraphs and there were many and repeated punctuation and spacing errors.

Unfortunately, I didn’t laugh once. I once read How to be a Complete Bastard by Adrian Edmondson, a spin off from a UK comedy series, The Young Ones. At the time I loved it, however, I was 16. Perhaps that’s the problem…

 

Rating? Two Stars

Would add this to my bookshelf? No

 

Review - The 19th Element

An Al Qaeda terrorist cell plots to attack a nuclear power plant in the US heartland. Only one man, James Becker, can stop disaster happening.

What’s the point of a thriller? Well, I guess the clue is in the word itself. Unfortunately there were many issues with The 19^th Element from a contrived plot (an Al Qaeda attack on a nuclear power plant?!) that never got out of second gear, to weak characters, and odd dialogue.

First is Becker himself who failed to convince me of his credentials. He’s ex-secret service, but then describes himself as wealthy because he invented a new bullet that can kill people at 1.5 miles (great!). He also has an unused degree – this and the money mean he’s been able to change profession and still act undercover (although independently of the government) but seems able to call in favours at will, like bringing in two Apache helicopters to take out the bad guys at just the right moment.

The writing isn’t bad, it’s just overly descriptive and ponderous. It’s ‘tell’ instead of ‘show’, observation instead of participation. For example, Becker gets into a fight at one point, it felt like I was watching the process from afar. When Jack Reacher fights, he fights, you feel every punch, every injury, adrenalin pumps. Unfortunately not with Becker. I wanted to put on my pyjamas and go to bed with a hot water bottle.

There were quite a few examples of this over use of tell. Remember the unused degree and new job. From the following, can you guess what Becker does?

‘Today was Wednesday and I was at my office. Becker Law Office. James L. Becker, Attorney-at-Law.’

Um, I think he’s an attorney? But I could be wrong.

On occasion, there were long, bulleted and descriptive lists. Once Becker described everything he was carrying on a mission. So what? Then there was the whole set of instructions to take off in a B-24. Why?

Then there were continuity errors. Most, but not all, chapters started with some or all of the time, date, and location. In the early chapters, the date jumped around. It was May 8^th, then the 6^th, back to the 8^th, then the 7^th, then to 1979 (this chapter didn’t have a date description though!). It was difficult to keep an eye on. Sometimes you’d be informed that it was 3 am, then be immediately told this again the first line of the chapter. Or you’d be told you were on the plane, it’s obvious. We know where Becker is because he hasn’t moved. Tell, not show.

Also, a couple of sub-plots seemed thrown in. A Mongolian, part of a gang Becker took down in his past, follows his daughter on campus. He races to save her. There’s also some Al Qaeda observer early on that’s explained away at the end, tied into the Mongolian.

Finally, the style changed in some chapters. When in the nuclear plant scenes all of the dialogue is written as if it’s a screenplay. Why? For interest perhaps. If so, it didn’t work. It made the dialogue clunky.

So overall a disappointing read. The 19^th Element promised much but failed to deliver. I needed much more ‘thrill!’ and a lot less ‘er?’

Rating? Two Stars

Would add this to my bookshelf? No

Review - Insane & Out

Jason Carver is a newly promoted, newly divorced tax inspector, but he’s fed up and wants to make a change in his life. Jason has recently inherited a house in Orbaton and he wants to move away from London. However, he needs cash to pay for the refurbishment and afford to have a part-time job (so avoiding paying his ex-wife maintenance). Therefore, Jason bribes a tax evader, Albert Carlotti, to bank roll him.

But Jason has a new neighbor, Dennis Brodan, and they immediately get off on the wrong foot. Brodan is renting Jason’s garage and will not give it up. As Jason’s mind spins out of control, he fixates on Brodan as the source of his ill will and decides to do something about it.

I really don’t understand the purpose of this story. The premise, that Jason is going steadily mad and the underlying reason, aren’t clear at all. I sort of figured out what had ultimately sent him around the bend on the last page, but by then I just didn’t care because most of the outline leading up to it was unclear for a number of reasons.

First, Insane and Out completely failed to engage me. It’s not badly written, but some sentences are odd, i.e. they didn’t seem to fit with the prose, and others were just downright difficult to understand. To give an example of the former:

‘There was no-one else on the train, which hummed with a vile, sonorous drone, just like it was being pulled by a million meat flies.’

Okay Jason was having a dream, but it would probably fit better in the horror genre. And of the latter:

‘His hair was jet black and below his pallid, almost waxy complexion glowed an unhealthy tinge of hectic red.’

I’ve read that sentence perhaps 10 times and I still don’t get it. Maybe it’s me, but why make it difficult for the reader?

The characters are lifeless and add nothing to the narrative. They appear, make a few comments and then sidle off again. Sometimes a potential conflict is created by the character, but almost always isn’t followed through. For example Jason meets someone he calls Wolfman in the opening chapter. Wolfman wakes Jason up, helpfully meaning he doesn’t miss his train stop (the reasons why are explored for a few pages). Then he and the Wolfman walk to the same location. Wolfman invites Jason to join him in the park for a couple of beers…yes it is that dull.

This issue continues throughout the story. At one point Jason thinks Carlotti is going to kill him, potentially interesting, but then this possibility evaporates – instead Carlotti gives Jason a brand new car. The situation Jason gets himself into with Brodan is pointless, who cares that Brodan is renting the garage and he can get to his car faster than Jason? Not me. Yet the author spends many chapters investigating this. Yes, Jason might be going mad but the reason for the conflict? Far, far too weak and unbelievable to create tension in this context.

The dialogue is bland and laborious. It’s like sitting on a bus and being forced to listen in on a particularly boring conversation between two strangers who you hope to never meet again. Unfortunately, you’re treated to every word uttered.

Finally, there was absolutely no sense of place for me. Jason eventually lives in Orbaton, where’s that? In the ‘grim’ north of England where everyone’s ugly (where I happen to come from).

Overall, a very disappointing read that almost sent me mad in the process.

 

Rating? One Star

Would add this to my bookshelf? Categorically No

 

**Originally reviewed on Books & Pals blog.**

Review: A Verse To Murder - Tony Bailie

Dathai Devine, a well known Irish poet, is found dead in dubious circumstances – apparently by his own hand whilst fulfilling a less than salubrious sexual act and under the influence of narcotics. Enter Barry Crowe, investigative journalist, who pursues Dathai’s sad story. En route he meets Dathai’s muses, a policewoman with a bondage fetish, a drunken fellow poet and lesbians with the same odd tattoo on their inner thigh. It’s not long before Barry begins to suspect that there’s more to Dathai’s death than initially meets the eye.

This was a difficult read for a whole range of reasons. Besides the multiple formatting errors (see below) A Verse To Murder was more like a radio play than a novel – heavily weighted towards dialogue after an often cursory introductory description at the beginning of each chapter. This meant there was very little sense of character, place or activity. The story is supposed to occur in Belfast, however it could have been anywhere.

The plot was often disjointed, for example the book opens with Barry supposedly having a dream (I think), before the police turn up at his flat and awaken him. A Chief Inspector Hamilton then explains Dathai is dead under suspicious circumstances before the narrative inexplicably switches to Barry in conversation with a punk girl, Sally (“But don’t tell my friends that,” she says – why?) who appears out of nowhere to politely inform Barry she’d recently sold Dathai some mind bending substances. Although this meeting occurs chronologically after Barry has been to the scene of the crime it appears (that word again) in the book before Barry is described as having arrived at the scene of the crime. Confused? I was, and this was only the first chapter.  

This sudden appearance of characters continues throughout. For example, a policewoman on duty outside Dathai’s house (where the body was discovered) Barry claims to ‘vaguely recognise’ but within a page or two she is back in his flat and naked. Only by chance is she introduced as Dervla with no explanation (ever) as to where Barry knows her from. He also meets a friend, Tom Macken, himself a faded poet and some sort of female consort of Tom’s - again only pages later do we learn her name is Moira.

The story leaps around with little attempt at explaining what happens and why (because of the bias to dialogue). To a person the characters are flaccid, they all walk around in a daze and although Barry seems to have never met most of them before, he needs no effort to bend them to his will and they passively tell Barry everything. For example one of Dathai’s muses, Andrea de Burca, is being blackmailed, this apparently went on for 15 years without her making any attempt to find out who it was or report it to the police. Really?

This isn’t the only event that defies belief. At one point Barry is shot in the head at point blank range and he goes through an odd out of body experience. However, he somehow gets away with just a graze (unfortunately). Even the eventual murderer makes barely a credible appearance before being revealed.

On layout the book was badly formatted with a line break between each and every paragraph. I had to force my eye to skip over these which made for uncomfortable reading. There were also numbers randomly inserted throughout the text and inexplicable tabs were present that forced sentences onto new lines. There were often repetitions of the same word, for example:

“I’m a journalist, said Barry. “I wanted to interview him.”

“Yes I know you are a journalist. What did you want to interview him about?”

“Poetry.”

“Poetry?”

“That’s right, he’s a poet and I wanted to interview him about his poems.”

Oddest of all were when rather than actual speech the following were incorporated:

“…?” or “…!”

I’ve no idea what these are supposed to mean although the characters seemed to.

I really struggled to see a single redeeming feature about A Verse To Murder. Oh yes, it was mercifully short.

 

Rating? One Star

Would add this to my bookshelf? Categorically No

 

**Originally reviewd on Books & Pals blog.**

Children Of The Enemy - DJ Swykert

Jude St. Onge is a drug addict who thinks he’s onto the deal of his life when he steals a bag of drugs from heavyweight dealer, Mitchell Parson. But whilst fleeing Jude’s car breaks down. By chance he seeks refuge with Ray Little, a brooding junkyard owner and ex-con.

Parson’s fixer, a brutal Haitian called Swallow, is sent out by Parson to track Jude down. Swallow tortures and then kills Jude’s wife, Ariana. He kidnaps Jude’s daughter, Angelina, who was forced to watch her mother’s hard death, so he can use her as leverage to ensure Jude returns the drugs.

Swallow’s plan works, but not everything goes right for Jude. Ray swears he will rescue Angelina and, with the help of story hungry local reporter Ted Rogers, he goes about the task in single minded and lethal fashion.

If I was going to describe this book with one word it would be ‘argh!’ If I was allowed a second it would be ‘yuck’.

To elaborate a little, I found this book by turns frustrating and overtly graphic. First, the frustration. Children of the Enemy started out well enough, with a strung out Jude losing control of his car and coming across the complicated and enigmatic Ray in his moment of need. However, the story soon slowly went off the rails and by the latter quarter I’d had enough, primarily due to the writing style where dialogue and sometimes description was repetitive, meandering and unrealistic. For example:

“I want to do what’s right, Ray. But I don’t want to do something I’ll regret later.”

“The way I see it we either regret doing something or we regret doing nothing. Either way we end up living with regret. I’d rather regret what I did than regret what I didn’t.”

And on occasion the characters kept going over the same ground, for example (in a much, much shortened outline):

“Is he gonna make it?” McCants asked.

“…He must have one of the hardest heads on earth to still be alive. He shouldn’t be alive, but he is, and most likely he’s gonna survive…” Dr Litton said.

“Then you think he’s gonna recover…?”

And sometimes just downright clunky:

“I think all rich people are crazy. They do crazy shit and they get into crazy shit. What you have going on here is rich people crazy shit…” And so on.

Maybe it’s just me not taking to the author’s style, but after wading through what must have been in excess of one hundred of these types of lines I tired of it.

The second element was the graphic description of torture, drug use and sex on which I will barely dwell. I’m not the squeamish sort, but personally having to read about a fourteen year old girl having her finger chopped off was just too much. And that was by no means the end of it…

Rating? Two Stars

Would add this to my bookshelf? No

**Originally reviewed for Al's Books & Pals. May have received free review copy.**

Dangerous Times - Phillip Frey

Frank Moore, hitman for gangster boss Eddie Jones, has a plan. He intends to rip Eddie off to the tune of $5m, the trouble is he needs to find someone else to take the fall. Enter John Kirk, an ex-soldier turned car mechanic who bears a striking resemblance to Frank. However, things start to go wrong almost immediately. Frank ends up with $10m in his lap, John doesn’t die quite as Frank intended, all manner of people are after the money and then the bodies start piling up…

Even several days after finishing Dangerous Times I’m still not sure about whether I liked it or not. Yes, it’s well written, yes, the characters are well scoped out and yes, the dialogue is interesting. Although I appreciate an intriguing plot that gets to the point with a minimum of fuss and embellishment, Frey’s writing was economic to the point of being terse. So much so it proved sometimes difficult to keep track of what was happening, a few words missed here and there and I was soon lost and having to re-trace my steps for confirmation.

In addition there were several apparent methods of adding interest including switches of character perspective within a paragraph, which just served to jar the narrative and set the teeth slightly on edge. Also, the chapters rolled into one another, just a line space between them.

The whole cast of characters, from Frank’s wife and mistress, to John’s girlfriend and mother, to Hicks the bent cop (who seemed superfluous to needs most of the time), to Eddie and his cohorts, were particularly unpleasant and all, frankly, entirely out for themselves. That the plan went wrong almost immediately led to some interesting outcomes, however I found myself doubting that someone of Frank’s apparent intelligence would have left certain elements to chance (okay, this would have killed the story dead but then suspension of belief stretched).

And to Frank himself. Frey on his website says his protagonist is ‘impish’ and ‘playful’. This would not be how I would depict a sociopathic murderer with a penchant for cutting open main arteries with a razor. The book is also described as being darkly humourous, yet I can’t recall laughing once, it’s just not within that genre.

So, back to the beginning – did I like Dangerous Times? You know, I’m still not sure…

 

Rating? 3 Stars

 

Would I add this to my bookshelf? No 

**Originally published on Books & Pals blog (http://booksandpals.blogspot.co.uk/). May have received free review copy**

Sad Jingo - Ron Dionne

Jingo Dalhousie is a troubled wannabe musician who works as a janitor in his cousin’s New York jazz club. He finds his unusual name in a highly successful debut novel and feels driven to track the author down and discover why. However, the author has a secret she’s desperate to keep.

Sad Jingo opens with the protagonist, Jingo Dalhousie, being given a book that, mysteriously, has his name in it. Jingo cannot understand why and decides to track down debut author, Diana Medeiros. By night, he works as a janitor in a club surrounded by jazz musicians, something he aspires to be. The club is owned by his cousin, Harold. By day, he lives in a small flat, attempting to write and play music.

Jingo first goes to Diana’s publishers and then to a signing. There is a huge queue to see Diana, the book is a smash hit. Jingo finally gets to the front and questions her. Diana has no idea who he is and Jingo gets thrown out of the store without any answers. It’s worth saying that to reach this point in the plot I had to plough through 25% of the book – 15,000 words…

The focus then shifts to Diana. We learn she used to be a patient at a mental hospital and perhaps she knew Jingo there? But she cannot remember. Jingo for his own part continues to be obsessed with Diana. He appears at a reading and has a brief conversation with her before being beaten up by a guard and ends up in hospital.

Despite Diana’s reservations, she meets Jingo again and he plays for her in the club, the one time he manages to string together a decent piece of music. But Harold loses control of the business and Jingo is out of a job.

As Diana gets closer to Jingo (primarily because her problem mirrors his) she begins to admit her terrible secret is catching up with her.

If the above sounds a less than exciting summary, I apologise but there was little to get animated about in Sad Jingo. Where to begin? Well, there’s a mass of bland characters, some described, some not (it took me several thousand words to realise Jingo is a man in his sixties, well I think he is). Many of these featureless characters have ridiculous names which are used repeatedly, and often in full, instead of ‘he’ or ‘she’ making the reading a challenge. Jingo and Diana take turns in engaging in long periods of introspective internal dialogue supposedly to help us understand them better. However, this meant it took 25% of the book to achieve three key activities, as I mentioned.

In the early chapters there’s excessive use of punctuation interrupting what little plot flow there is (I was shocked to read an acknowledgement to a copy editor). Some paragraphs are a page or more long and the formatting is not great.

There are other problems – past and present tense are mixed together in the same paragraph on several occasions. The dialogue is often white noise and generally meaningless, dull and barely moves the tale along, like listening to clucking hens. Sentences are regularly horribly mangled with repeated usage of the same word – just two examples comprise:

‘…author of a book about her book but had not read the book.’

‘…what’s wrong with that, what’s wrong with that Harold, tell me a single thing that’s wrong with that?’

In the final chapter Jingo learns Diana has killed herself and, after 62,000 words, I felt like following her…

Rating? 1 Star

Would I add this to my bookshelf? Absolutely not!

**Originally published on Books & Pals blog (http://booksandpals.blogspot.co.uk/). May have received free review copy**