Hands on Reviewing--A Hypothetical Review

While some readers expect those that review cookbooks to try the recipes and report that in the review, it seems like a good thing that same standard is not applied to reviewing murder mysteries or writing crime type short stories. The research could be brutal on the populace. :)))

Can you just imagine.....A Hypothetical Review


While the overall story to be a good one, the decapitation sequence outlined in the opening chapter did not work out as expected. While using the kitchen knife described in the sequence, I found the victim much more uncooperative than expected with a considerable amount of strong neck tissue that resisted my efforts. Furthermore, unlike the minimal blood splatter described in the book, I found the process extremely messy with an additional unexpected consequence of the victim spontaneously releasing his bowels. Considering I had gone to the trouble to procure white carpeting as described in the chapter to test the scenario, this was an unexpected complication I could have done without and had not been described by the author. In addition to violating repeatedly the "show--don't tell" dictum, the author failed to do basic research to make his story believable. Beyond what has been noted above, this reviewer also found fault with the crime scene cleanup as described in the second chapter in terms of the crime scene itself as well as the disposal of the body and the goat fornication scene in Chapter Three.

Then there was the romance angle between our computer analysis/day trader turned into a contract killer thanks to the global recession and the stunningly sexy sorceress thanks to their spontaneous meeting on a riverboat at the mouth of the Mississippi as a hurricane rolls into the area. That whole combination didn't quite work for me. Nor did the angle that she, who could see the future and had just left her fourth disastrous relationship thanks to his cheating and severe fondness for pork products, never knew that her half-brother was secretly the head of a Mexican drug cartel that was also engaged in funneling arms to rebel fighters across the Middle East and Asia at the behest of the American and Icelandic governments. However, the 85 page section on Icelandic History that comprised the entirety of chapter five was interesting.

All in all, this novel of over seven hundred pages and featuring sixteen blurbs on the back cover and an incredibly endowed and shapely woman waving a gun and wearing a pink bikini on the cover just did not quite work for me. Not only is the choice of pink bikini against a rolling thundercloud not the smartest in terms of the color appearance of the cover, it also worth noting that the gun is not correct and there are no fingers depicted inside the trigger guard. Additionally, no woman ever wears a bikini in the entire novel and nobody ever throws a grenade despite the fact that two are strapped to her waist. Billed as a "cutting edge cozy that pushes the boundaries" this book may offend some readers expecting a cozy.

All locked rooms are guarded by key pads and visual scanners despite the fact that the book opens in 1971 before moving to 1983 and eventually 2009. No dogs are harmed in the book. Four squirrels die due to claymore mines being miss set and there is the graphic goat fornication scene.

A recent entry on the best seller list, the author is making his rounds among the talk show circuit and the movie version is scheduled to be out next summer. Charlie Sheen and John Stamos are rumored to be in casting talks. The next novel in the series, currently unnamed, is in a bidding war with expectations it will be out fall of 2012.

Kevin