Review: Please Hire an Editor & Write One Whole Book, Not Three Partial Ones
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 12 31, 2013
I received this book in return for an honest review.  Beware what you ask for.Lust, Book One of Lust, Money and Murder is approximately 106 pages long, and is the first book in a trilogy.  Elaine Brogan was an engaging character and the subject of counterfeiting was either well-researched or one with which Mr. Wells was very familiar from his day-job.  The book was fast-paced and kept me on the edge of my seat, but there were continuity and grammar issues, info dumps, and point-of-view jumps that I found very off-putting and distracting.  I know what free-lance editors cost, but they make the difference between a polished, professional book, and the kind of amateurish presentation that gives independent publishing a bad name.Finally, these pieces should not have been published as a series.  Three hundred pages is not a long book.  Most of the big publishers won’t look at a manuscript of fewer than a hundred thousand words and that runs about three hundred pages.  When writing a series, each book should be able to stand on its own.  Look at Patterson’s Alex Cross books or Clancy’s Jack Ryan books, any of the Kellerman’s series (Jonathan, Faye or their son Jesse’s), or Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden Files.  You can pick up any one of those books and they stand on their own.  You can read one or all in each series.  Yes, "The Hunt for Red October" made me want to see more of Jack Ryan.  Storm Front made me want more of Harry Dresden.  But each book had a beginning, middle and end.  "Lust" does not have an end.  It just stops at the beginning of "Money."  That makes me crazy and makes me feel manipulated.  It’s not like this book would have been a couple thousand pages and needed to be split into manageable pieces like Tolkien’s "Lord of the Rings" (which was originally written as one book, but was split in three by the publisher).  If you still want to read this book, buy the bundle and read the trilogy as one book.  Otherwise, you’ll be stuck with only part of the story.