Review: hilarious..
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 03 2, 2014
..except this is not supposed to be a comedy?  I won't even mention all the editing issues, as they have been well outlined by other reviewers.  They are not the only thing wrong with this novel.  I should have been suspicious of all the one line five star reviews with nothing substantive to say.Harry and Natasha are supposedly the best, most sought after detectives in this whole Jamaican police department department because they get results.  I hate to think of the worst because these two are dumb as posts.  They are sent undercover to investigate a murder of the president of a Christian college.Two of the first characters to be introduced are Taj Jackson, recruited for a new psychiatric dept. as well as potentially new president.  Another is Anne Carter, who Natasha knows from her church at home.  Taj knows he is adopted.  At least 6 people remark about his uncanny resemblance to the acting president, Ryan Bancroft.  Anne has remarkably curly hair, which is exactly like Taj's.  Natasha knows that Anne grew up in a poor family with many children whose fisherman father was lost at sea.  Then, when investigating the details of Taj's adoption, it is discovered that he was given up by a young pregnant girl with extremely curly hair who came from a family with many children; and yes, her fisherman father was lost at sea.  And yes, they discover that the Bancroft family used to live there as well, approximately the time when Taj was born.  At one point, the author writes: Harry rubbed his ears.  He always did that when he was close to some important piece of information and could not figure it out.  At about sixty percent through the book I literally laughed out loud when I read ...Natasha said, "I'm missing something.  Something vital."  No kidding, Sherlock, the rest of us have it in the bag!Besides the grammar and spelling issues, there is the stupid and awkward writing:  For years he worked on his accent so that it didn't have a trace of idiomatic slant clouding his otherwise smooth speech.  Or: Taj looked at her big limped brown eyes and realized something.  She was using her sex appeal on him.  And then: "Taj, huh?" Harry looked at her funnily.  "You said that too feelingly."  How about redundancy:  Natasha stared at Taj, taking in his curly ruffled hair that looked as if it had been ruffled... Yep, it was ruffled.  Or:  Now what was her story?  Everybody had a story and amount of relationship baggage.  She looked to be in her early twenties--no ring on her finger--very attractive.  Usually these days that meant a whole lot of baggage.  He usually stayed away from 'baggage."  Then there were just those WTF does she mean phrases:  The class was very near his office and he felt a twinge of regret that he had not made the effort to reach there on time.  He liked to start as he meant to go on and he did not want to have a reputation as the professor who was never on time.  Or Taj paused for awhile before he walked up to the impressive walkway.  On each stairwell was a representative of each of the four animals from Daniels vision in the Bible.  So, to be clear, the animals sent representatives?  And does the author know that a stairwell is an empty space for steps ...I'm having trouble picturing this...  Natasha ceased her sympathy like a lifeline and offered some of her own.  What?!  "I don't mean to cut you, Mrs. Carlisle," Harry said butting in.  Wow! don't interrupt him when he has a knife!  My favorite:  "Because I had five miscarriages and the doctor had to remove my womb from the last baby."  Baby hung on tight, I guess...This was sappy romance and ridiculous mystery.  The only ones not getting it were the detectives.  I'm a nurse, so I found the the whole potassium poison theory a farce.  Hyperkalemia is too much potassium and it's definitely not treated by giving someone more ( that would be hypokalemia.)  The  author has a doctor saying ...leads to a type of cardiac arrest known as ventricular fibrillation, just one of many types of cardiac arrest.  No, arrest means stop.  There is only one kind of cardiac arrest, in which the heart stops beating.  Ventricular fibrillation is a type of arrhythmia, or aberrant heartbeat...or, never mind.  The man who was stuck from behind and collapsed, rendering him conveniently unable to identify his attacker?  It would have to be injected directly into a vein and even then wouldn't be that immediate.  And the pathologist who was suspicious of the dead man's K levels did not look for an injection site?  Unbelievable!  But conjecture didn't stop Harry from announcing a least six times "he did it!" Or "she did it." about all of the suspects in succession -- except the real killer.  My very generous 2 stars is for plot, which developed by a skilled writer would have made an interesting read.,