Review: This is a con for promotional material
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 19, 2012
I recently reviewed the 6 chapter free sampler for Michael Connelly's "The Black Box" and commented that it was a great idea to release a long sampler to attract you to the full book - still to be released. So while I was waiting for that release I saw this apparent Novella by Michael Connelly and thought that I would read it while waiting for "The Black Box" to be released. It was shown as a stand-alone story with no page count.I was stunned to find that "The Safe Man" only takes up 40% of the Kindle book, with the remaining 60% being the 6 chapter free sampler that I had already read. There was no indication in the book description that most of the book would be promotional material. IMHO this is a real con and (forgive the possible pun) is something that an author of Connelly's status should not be associated with.When Vince Flynn released "Kill Shot" over 30% of the content of the Kindle edition was excerpts from earlier books.  At the time Flynn said on his website "We thought readers would enjoy being able to read excerpts from all of my backlist, but as it turns out, we've heard otherwise from many of you." The backlist content was quickly removed. I would have thought that Michael Connelly and/or his publishers would have learned from that experience.This is not even a novella but a very short story which only took about 15 minutes to read. It is a minor ghost story and at best it would only scrape 3 stars by my ranking. (Edit) I have changed my rating to reflect this statement and not my 1 star view about the promotional content.(Edit) - FYO "The Black Box" was actually released on 21 November in Australia by Allen and Unwin, nearly a week ahead of its forthcoming release on 26 November in the US by Hatchette. My full (5 star) review is now shown on the US pre-order listing.