Review: No Sophomore Slump
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 28, 2012
When you write crime novels, as I do, you tend to read them differently - and your experience often detracts from your enjoyment.Instead of being borne away by the story, as the author intended, you get distracted by craft. You get hung up, for example, on how a writer is getting his effects, and the tricks he uses to delineate character.But every now and then a new author comes along, whose touch is so subtle, and whose talent so well-developed, that you lose yourself within his pages.That's the way I feel about Dana King.I loved his first book, "Wild Bill".But, as every writer knows, a first book sometimes takes years to create and polish, arduous months of re-writing and re-writing. And, in the rush to get another book before the reading public before the first one is forgotten, that luxury of time is often lost.Hence the dreaded sophomore slump, the pit into which many an author falls when his second book is nowhere as good as his first.Not so with King. "Worst Enemies", his second outing, is a book every bit as good as his first - and maybe better.In the very first pages, he describes, in some detail, the killing around which the whole book rotates. He identifies the victim, identifies the murderer, and tells us why the killer was motivated to do what he did.What kind of murder mystery is this?Read it and find out.You're going to be surprised and delighted.It's a great book, and I recommend it unreservedly.