Review: Nice premise. Poor execution.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 05 3, 2014
2 stars for effort, and I really liked the premise, but I cannot recommend this to anyone, unless they don't have very high standards for quality writing.Several things were extremely irritating about this book, but I kept telling myself not to be a snob and give the author a chance. (I assumed this was a first-time novel by an indie author.)Tense is inconsistent throughout the book; sometimes even using three tenses in a single sentence.Inappropriate or incorrect words are used, making for odd sentences that you have to interpret to understand what the author meant to say.The formatting is inconsistent and the paragraphs are double-spaced, making me wonder how long the book would actually be if it had been properly formatted. Here's an example:____It would take years for their city to heal.If ever.____Those are separate paragraphs, and the sentence, "If ever." appears on a page by itself. In some places the first line indent is nearly half the width of the page. (If using MS Word to compose, I would recommend 0.3 for first line indent.)Everyone in the book has the same reaction to the murders, which is, "Oh my God!" and "How could anyone kill innocent people like this?" (Paraphrasing.) One time, a person failed to have the standard response and I was momentarily shocked.The detective's teenaged daughter is one of the victims of the first town that is attacked. And yet shortly thereafter, he "chuckled to himself" as he thought of something amusing. Life pretty much carried on as normal after the loss of his child, although he did swear he would avenge her. Much of the story is unrealistic in this way. I could see it as a full-length cartoon movie or something, but not a novel I could take seriously.Another of my incorrect assumptions was that this was written by someone very young.64 people are killed by snipers in one town, then another, and another, etc. The police have no clues, except for a spent cartridge and a receipt from a gas station. On a hunch, while visiting one of the victimized cities, the detective asks a motel clerk if a group of people had stayed in the motel recently. The clerk says they did, and basically describes a perfect match for the sniper group.The detective does not think to ask if they have surveillance cameras, and does not even ask for a description of any one of the likely snipers, nor does he immediately call for a police sketch artist. This is the biggest break he could ever hope for, and in a case this huge, he'd want every possible resource devoted to stopping the massacres. So what does he do? He informally asks the clerk to do him a favor and not rent the rooms they stayed in so that techs can come in later and look for fingerprints.But at the gas station where the receipt came from, he asks the cashier about the surveillance camera, and then asks the young cashier if he can review the footage to see if he can find the person who made the purchase in question. He's working on the worst, ongoing mass-murders in American history and he doesn't get a warrant to secure the video system. He comes back later to find emergency vehicles at the gas station, the video equipment stolen, and the cashier murdered.By 53% completion, I couldn't take anymore and started skimming forward. It reminded me of the feeling when someone tells a really long bad joke and you know the ending is going to just make you groan, but now you need to hear the ending just to complete the ordeal. I had to find out the punchline to this novel, but I won't spoil it for anyone who wants to read the book or is a fan of the Michael Gallagher series of books.This book has plenty of good reviews on Amazon, and in response to one bad review, the author seems like a nice guy and recognized the need for editing and was working on it. But it's not just the punctuation and tenses that need work. Each scene needs to be examined and assessed and be re-written. The fact that the author is doing the editing himself explains why the story has all of these faults. The positive feedback from readers is likely the same type of feedback he's getting from friends and family - and all of them are doing him a disservice. An editor is a requirement. Not an option. Someone other than the author needs to go over the book and point out its weak points and flaws. Authors can't always see them because they're too close to the story.I think the author seems like a genuinely nice guy with a passion for storytelling; I just hope he'll take the time to give his craft the attention it needs so he can really shine.P.S. If the book was in perfect condition with zero of the problems I've mentioned, it would still be way over-priced. I can buy Stephen King books for less than $7.99. I would recommend a current price of 99 cents, then after it's been fully edited, bump it up to $1.99. (I picked it up on a free promo without previewing it, just on my immediate interest in the plot.)