Review: Flat Writing and Extraneous Detail Marr What Could Be a Great Plot
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 1, 2014
'Another Day in Paradise' is basically a road trip about a couple running from a bunch of terrorists.Jimmy has the key to an easy money gambling system and the terrorists want it so they can fund their activities. It's an interesting enough story, nothing exceptional, but it has the basics of a good read. The story begins with the couple, Jimmy and Naomi, in Key West. The terrorists find them, they give them the slip, but the terrorists find them again and a series of shootouts on a boat follow. The couple ends up in Las Vegas in a hotel room with the terrorists and two bombs. The question is, can Jimmy and Naomi stop Ben, the terrorist, from blowing up the country? And if they do, will Ben ever stop chasing them?Plot-wise, this is quite good except for the extraneous scenes at the end and the many instances of unnecessary detail about food and the kind of conversation that goes with ordering or making it, plus other irrelevant conversations such as what Naomi watched on television. These bloated the book, slowed the pace and detracted from the plot. Sometimes random bits of information that didn't add to the story appeared, e.g. 'When I lifted the receiver I discovered it was greasy.' The grease bore no relationship to anything before or after. We simply did not need to know it. This wasn't the only example by any means.The book went on too long after the final shootout. The last few chapters introduced a new character, who did nothing other than fly them to San Francisco, and detailed Naomi and Jimmy's shopping trip, food choices and shopping for a new boat. Rather than adding to the story, it detracted. Instead of ending with a bang, as it could have, it ended with a whimper.On top off this, the writing is often passive with many uses of variations of the verb 'to be' used where a more active verb would make the prose more lively and immediate. Many sentences start with the very dull 'there is',  'there are', 'it was' and so on. These are all indicators of a lack of sophistication in the writing.One example of this lack of sophistication is, "Several windows were open and you could feel a pleasant breeze in the room." The following would be a much better way to write this: "A pleasant breeze blew through several open windows."Most readers would probably not notice these things, but they give the book a kind of flatness and  lethargy.The characters came across as real people and I cared enough about them to finished the book. For that reason, I give it 3 stars.