Review: Shoddy Plotting and Poor Characters = Top-Rated?
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 01 12, 2012
Okay, I bought In Memory of Greed for my Nook several months back after seeing it become the #1 Top-Rated Political Thriller here on Amazon. It's gotta be good, right?Turns out that was a serious mistake.Boudreau has a fascinating premise in this book--a corporation trying to control the world's seed stocks, an ex-SEAL caught up in the confusion trying to stop it. Unfortunately, the premise is quickly derailed by unlikable, one-note characters and shoddy plotting. Judging by Amazon, this was Boudreau's first effort, and it shows. By the time the book is over, you've completely forgotten about the seed stocks and moved on to a pretty much unconnected plot. If this, and the heavy-handed writing style(never have I seen so many adverbs!) don't ruin the book, the characters will.Mocado, the SEAL and "hero" of the story, is a highly-trained superman who never does anything wrong--except when he does something very stupid. This happens with enough frequency that you start wondering why natural selection hasn't weeded this guy out long before the story opens.Roth, the CEO, is a gluttonous, hard-drinking windbag whose chief skill lies in nearly killing himself in his fits of rage. Once again, natural selection.Jenn(no last name), the love interest, whose character really never elicits the kind of sympathy that would make you care whether she lives or dies. There's just not enough depth to her characterization.Keegan, Roth's enforcer, an Irishman whose behavior throughout the novel completely betrays the "twist" Boudreau tries to give him at the end.Graves, the politician. Pretty much a carbon copy of Roth, I spent most of the book trying to tell them apart--although Graves is not prone to the fits of rage of the CEO.And Barstow, the female secret agent. She's a good counterpart to Mocado, in that she's a highly trained operative prone to frequent moments of stupidity. She would have made a better love interest than the completely anemic and colorless Jenn, but not by much.I put down the book eight times before finally deciding to finish. Rather than having characters I could sympathize with--half-way through I was hoping for a nuke to eliminate them all and start afresh. To put it bluntly, it was a painful experience, and I'll never trust Amazon's Top-Rated list again. Mr. Boudreau is in serious need of writing classes, and a better editor. His reviewers, on the other hand, are in need of remedial studies in what makes a good political thriller. Try Clancy, Thor, or Baldacci.