Review: Decent short read
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 9, 2011
Although I couldn't read an entire novel with the feel of this short piece, it worked for something of this length. I read it in about ten minutes in a hospital waiting room, so it was a good time-filler.There was "bad language," as other reviewers have noted, but it was completely in character and I wouldn't expect the characters to have spoken any differently.The story was really pretty violent -- it would have been too much if the book were longer and had the same proportion of violence in it, but it wasn't overwhelming (for me) in this short piece, and the violence was mixed with some black humor that kept it from being too gruesome.I didn't really like any of the characters, but they were interesting, and again, for a short piece like this, it was enough for me to find the characters interesting. I didn't need to like them to keep reading.I can't say I felt sorry for the bank robber who, well, can't say without adding a spoiler, but in a sense, he was a victim, too -- but not one you could feel very sorry for, even if he was pathetic.The ending, which tied everything up, was both a nice twist and nicely ironic. The story closed with a bit of a chill.I can't say I loved "The Perfect Plan," but it was well-written and very neatly done in very few pages. (Shorter than I'd thought it would be, actually, from reading the reviews here.)