Review: A big disappointment
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 03 29, 2013
Lalla Bains, a forty-year-old, twice divorced, ex-model, has been the unwilling recipient of attention and love letters from Billy Wayne.  The day after he covers her car with poems on paper snowflakes, he is stabbed to death.  With his final breath he tells her, "The more there is the less you see."  Even though he exasperated her, she thinks his death deserves more investigation than it is receiving.  So she begins her own investigation even while working with the problems of the aero-ag business run by her and her father.  Also involved is her friend and maybe fiancé Sheriff Caleb Stone.While she does use words originally at times-"His eyes left wet slug trails on my skin until I folded my arms over my breasts and broke the connection"--I found the book full of cliches and repetitions.  The terms "took off," "banked over" and "aimed for" were all used in one sentence.  In another she writes, "The wind had scoured the evening of its usual dust and debris, and now stars were punching holes in the velvety black dome over my head."  We hear about her age, divorce record, and former career several times.The book has poor grammar ("alright," "us girls have to stick together" "Go slow.").The men, on the whole, are obnoxious sexist pigs.  Her actions don't always make sense: A pen and paper drop to the floor of the car while she is driving so, instead of waiting until she stops, she reaches over, several times, to pick them up.  Naturally, she loses control of the car and has an accident.  Her car insurance had expired so she was driving illegally.A French phrase used a couple times is misspelled, differently each time.  There is an unexplained and quick transition from talking to her father at home and talking to a group of first graders.Even though she has known Caleb forever, she doesn't trust him entirely when it comes to exchanging information.One conversation talks about the danger of using meth.  It has good information but seems to have been thrown in just for that reason, not to advance the plot.She never does explain Billy Wayne's final words though they are mentioned frequently.I think some good rewriting and editing could have raised the level of this book to four stars.This was a free Amazon download.