Review: A Pleasant Surprise
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 20, 2010
This book was brought to my attention by a woman who used to be on my team at work because she knew I had a Kindle and an iPad and like to read plus her husband was the author :-) For several years I had been hearing about the merits of her husband's writing but had never seen any of his work so I bought it to see for myself. I promise my friend that I would try to read the book by September. The book sounded OK and I do like this type of book so I figured I had little to lose except [...] and a few hours and if I really hated it I could stop at anytime. However the surprise was all mine when I found that after I got past the first few introductory paragraphs that it really was good and that I was hooked.What I really liked about the book was that there was a great deal of psychology involved with all of the mind games going on and the main character (Roger) trying to figure out who was lying to him and who wasn't and why. There was of course all of the traditional murders, mysteries and red herrings involved too.After a few chapters I thought well this looks pretty much over how can I only be 15% or 20% through the book then the vary next chapter WHAM everything would change again. This element of surprise kept going and changing right up on to the last thrilling page.One thing to keep in mind is that this was set in the mid-1970s. Often I would think "why doesn't he just call their cell phone or give them his cell phone number" - OH I know - everyone didn't have cell phones in 1975 that's why!All in all a great book, a fun read that despite the length (just under 9000 locations which is probably about 450 printed pages) and working a full time job I finished in a few days.