Review: Ended with a Cheap Shot
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 7, 2014
You know when you watch those TV dramas, the ones that are on three or four nights in a week, or maybe once a week for a month, and you really get into it, and when it finishes you look at your spouse and say, “Eh? What happened there? Did he die? Did they get the money? Did he marry her? I bloody hate these TV dramas that don’t end properly!” You know those shows, right? Well ‘Lust, Money and Murder’ is like that. It just stops half way through the story. Just like that. Right in the middle of the action, it just stops….The author’s let himself down badly with this one. It actually deserves much more than a 3 Star because it’s an intriguing storyline with a number of sub-plots, likeable characters and edge-of-your-seat danger. But it’s not a trilogy.Truth to tell, I’m not even sure Mike Wells claims that it is a trilogy, which by the way dictionary.com describes as “a series or group of three plays, novels, operas, etc., that, although INDIVIDUALLY COMPLETE, are closely related in theme, sequence, or the like.” In ancient Greece a trilogy was “a series of three COMPLETE and usually related tragedies.” And there’s the rub, for when you pick up a book you expect it to be complete of itself.The marvellous Genghis Khan series by Tim Ellis can be read as individual complete books, as can the fantastic ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy by Philip Pullman (Harry Potter for grown ups). However ‘Lust, Money and Murder parts 1, 2 & 3’ are just one book (for the price of three).I was really enjoying the book when it suddenly came to a grinding halt without even bothering to work its way down through the gears. No doubt Mike expects the reader to immediately download volume 2, but not me. I’ve got 100 books on my Kindle waiting to be read, and I won’t read another Wells’ book out of principal because I think this finished with a cheap shot.