Review: I Like Max!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 10, 2012
Right up front, I want to admit that this was a complimentary Kindle copy for an honest review. I know the author through GoodReads and have read other books by him. He knows I do not like mysteries as my favorite genre. All that still holds true. But his mysteries are at least not from the eyes of the murderer but from the detective trying to sort it all out.I have to also admit to smiling, and laughing out loud at the way L.H. Thomson's tongue in cheek, sometimes even cheesy phrases emerged when I wasn't expecting it. Case in point involves a gaze toward the skies. (Trying not to drop a spoiler.) I have grown to love this priest-turned-agnostic-detective, Max Castillo. He is self deprecating without making you want to throw up. He treats everyone with slight disdain yet respect. He isn't so much a womanizer like others of his ilk and blames his former religion. In fact, his woman friend is often the one who sees the answers first. She just doesn't want to play detective.Since I haven't had the opportunity to travel to Spain, I must admit this series has made me think about it. I can't say how true to life Mr. Thomson's descriptions are, but he does give the country, especially the beaches, an appealing draw.I would have given this 5 stars but there were places that the editor missed, I'm afraid. I don't know if they are places that show up when just reading, but text-to-speech, which is the way I read most often, brings little flubs up glaringly. When those happen I do stop the tts and look to make sure it isn't just the computerized voice screwing up. [TTS says n-p-s when it sees insp. That usually makes me laugh. Oh, mm. is millimeters which sounds funny when alluding to a gun.] But there were true grammatical, but mostly spelling errors, that could have been missed with human eyes alone. Not a lot of them, mind you. In this day of the independent publishing I have read far worse. Some of which were so bad I had to stop reading. This story kept me going. I wanted to see what Max would come up with, or what happened to him. And the other reason for the lack of one star, mysteries not being my favorite genreI have read a lot of LH's books and what I can say is he does keep the story interesting and his characters fun. The plots aren't hopeless messes (as I have found with mysteries most often) but situational stories that make you want to read more.