Review: It Must Be Me, But...
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 05 24, 2014
It must be me. I know I'm going to catch a lot of flack for this, considering all the five-star reviews this book received, but I just don't get it."Encounter" certainly has an interesting plot with a true surprise ending. The main characters are Vanessa Sanchez, an Inspector with the San Francisco Police department, plus Dan Hammer and Harry Wright, two Special Agents with the FBI.They are out to solve a terrible mystery - six different men, all ostensibly straight family men, disappear soon after landing in San Francisco. The only thing they have in common is that they all booked appointments with masseurs (who are actually male prostitutes) before arriving. The book spends a huge amount of time, and 400+ pages, following the police investigation, with a lot of detours into the private family lives of the victims, the police and even total strangers.The plot had great promise. The book had great problems.I surely don't understand how so many people really enjoyed the writing in this book, some even calling Mr. Wickard a "great author". They must have seen or read something I didn't, because, honestly, I thought it was a terribly poorly-written book.Whenever a police or FBI person talked, the dialogue was so stilted that it read like something written by someone for whom English is a second language:"When a call was received from the switchboard that had received its own "Message Murderer.." (I don't have a clue what this means, either.)"I'm transferring you a call inspector." ("transferring a call to you", perhaps?)"The Mayor is just trying to preserve time." (How do you "preserve time"?)"An interruption at the door" (Didn't know a door could be interrupted, although an interruption could "occur at the door".)"At one point, the Tenderloin District was known for its prostitutes and hookers" (They're the same thing. That's like saying "both men and males" or "both women and females".)Mr. Wickard also appears not to bother with research, and often manages to get things wrong:FBI titles: at some points in the book, his FBI agents introduce themselves as "Detectives Wright and Hammer". Someone should have told Wickard that the FBI doesn't have "Detectives", they have "Special Agents". At other times, he refers to them as Agents, and on one occasion, splits the difference: Detective Wright and Agent Hammer. This comes off as amateur writing and editing (or lack of same), and is handled inconsistently throughout the book."The plane's round port window"? (Is he thinking of a porthole - that's at least round, though its on a boat, not a plane)"You could see the trolley go back and forth to the island...", sitting in a restaurant called "The Tram" in Manhattan. I hate to tell Mr. Wickard this, but New York doesn't have trollies, and when New Yorkers say "the island", they're referring to Long Island. I suspect, from the name of the restaurant, that he's referring to the Roosevelt Island Tram, but that's certainly not what he wrote, not to mention that's it's on the other side of town from where the agents were supposed to be eating.The author refers to watching a "passenger tugboat". There is no such thing. Tugs nudge ships in and out of harbors or tow barges. If there's passengers, it's not a tugboat, it's a water-taxi or a ferry.In a show of bravado, the author does a bit of a dissertation on musculature. He gets it wrong. He writes about the "Abductor Longus" muscle, in the thigh, which does not exist. Its the "Adductor" Longus. "Abductor" and "Adductor" are actually opposites - "adductor" muscles pull into the body, "abductors" pull out. The muscle he refers to is on the inside of the thigh, and it pulls the leg in, hence "Adductor Longus".A lot of things he writes just don't make any sense, at all:"I don't think you'd be so depressed if you did more of." (?)"my daughter... talking to a boy her age, one of my classmates." (A missing apostrophe on "classmates'"? How could one of his FBI academy classmates be the same age as his 9-year-old daughter - as others have pointed out here?)"his hair... stood straight up at a perfectly erect mohawk pose." (Huh? Did you know hair could pose, and not even "in a pose" but "at a pose"?)"From his performance, I minted him into the Academy." (What does "minting" mean?)At other times, Wickard uses entirely wrong words:"... knew how to chuck and clean oysters" ("Shuck"?)"Male bodies lumbered over each other to reach their seats" ("clambered"?)"Mellon, a native San Franciscan, ventured into a clandestine situation." (There is virtually no "undercover" work in this book, and nothing is clandestine, so I don't have a clue what the author meant. I suspect he meant "dangerous".)"She received better bar reception." (I didn't know you could receive better bars on a cell phone.)"In for their bolt of Java." ("Jolt? Does coffee come in bolts?)"The front facade was all windows." ("Facade" is the front, it means, literally, the "face" of the building!)"...created an olfactory smell"  (As opposed to a "visual smell"?)"I saw it, visually" ( As opposed to "I saw it orally"?)"I made a visit, in person to..." (Is there any other way to "make a visit", other than "in person"?)And, apparently, Mr. Wickard never saw a preposition he didn't want to use wrong:"when I arrived into San Francisco" ("in" San Francisco?)"middle aged male holding court to a few elderly barflies." ("with", instead of "to"?)"After several days at the Beverley Hills Hotel, inclusive with expensive patio lunches..." ("inclusive with", as opposed to just "including", or "inclusive of"?)"his voice, tinged on youthful excitement..." ("Tinged with"?)And, oh yes, "thumbtack" is one word, not two, and "vile" is not a container that holds medication, "vial" is.Another thing that annoyed me was that important strands of the story (or at least strands that seemed important, based on the amount of time the author spent on them), just petered out and disappeared. Vanessa's threatening ex-husband was one example. Another is one of the major investigators who (wholly unbelievably) ends up having sex with another man, as part of his investigation (his partner doesn't even notice, while he watches, outside), and finds out, much to his surprise, that he really, really liked it, despite spending most of the book mooning over his ex-wife, with whom he's still madly in love. Absolutely nothing happens after that, no explanation, no followup. A third is a young witness who disappears toward the end of the book, but was apparently not murdered. What happened? No idea, it was another dropped strand. A guy with a Mohawk was seen in the gay bar when the investigator hooked up with a guy for the first time. Was that him? The author never tells us.I know some of the examples I quoted may sound like nits, but the endless assault of bad grammar, bad word choices, redundancies, misspellings and stilted dialogue was relentless, and lasted more than four hundred pages. Almost every page sported at least one (and often more) obvious editing or writing errors, making it difficult for me to read. Honestly, it got to the point where I just couldn't wait for the book to end and skipped ahead about fifty pages.There is one more thing, and admittedly, it is personal - and many others may not agree. But, as a gay man, I found his portrayal of the LGBT community to be bordering on the offensive. There are many gay characters in "Encounter", all of whom fit into a few neat categories: male prostitutes posing as masseurs, the victims, who are all closeted gay men cheating on their wives and families (and hence, must deserve their evil fate, right?), and drug-addled gay guys staggering around the city. The portrayal is so negative that, were I to take this book more seriously, I might be tempted to hand my "gay card" back in, and remain celibate for the rest of my life. To be honest, I actually was offended.I wish I could recommend this book. It had such a promising plot, but the poor writing and editing, not to mention the negative portrayal of the San Francisco LGBT community, just turned me off completely.