Review: Dead Man's Image: A Complicated Image to Be Sure
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 25, 2011
Since receiving my Kindle, I've read a lot of free and reduced price books, and on the whole, most have been more than worth the price. Edna Curry's "Dead Man's Image" fits that category, both in cost (I received a complimentary copy of this book for the purpose of reviewing it) and in quality. Though I love thrillers and mysteries, I would not likely have picked up this Lacey Summers mystery; not only is our main character a woman, but our author is primarily a romance writer. Neither of those facts caused me any real consternation once I got into the story.Ms. Curry introduces our two main characters, long haul trucker Paul Menns and struggling P.I. Lacey Summers in short order. She also quickly lays out our plot, a murder with an obvious case of mistaken identity, since the alleged victim is reading about his death in the newspaper. All this is a good start, but then we spend nearly half of the book stumbling around before we reach our first "Ah-Ha" moment. That discovery is almost so revelatory that you wonder how Ms. Curry can finish the story. No need to fear; the plot twists and turns come at a dizzying pace from there forward. In fact, the plot becomes so complicated (convoluted?) that one very important detail is nearly settled as a post script.In addition to the wildly twisting plot, my other complaint is the lack of color Ms. Curry gives us. Much of the scenery, and even the physical descriptions of many of our characters, is left too much up to our own imagination. Some more attention to these details would have been appreciated. As I would assume befits a writer of romance novels, though, Ms. Curry writes a couple of really descriptive love scenes. If she'd have been that descriptive of Lacey Summers herself, I could at least have a mental image of what she looked like.While I mostly enjoyed the book, with so many great (free and reduced price) books out there, I'm fairly sure I won't visit Minnesota to see Lacey Summers again.